by Tom Clancy
Adios, Junior. Give my regards to the Devil…
Net Force Helipad Quantico, Virginia
The Net Force helicopter lifted, Toni and Alex the only passengers, and veered to the left in a dizzying maneuver.
Alex had told the pilot to do whatever he had to do to get them home, fast.
“Alex?” She had to yell over the sound of the engine and rotors.
“It’ll be okay!” he yelled back. “D.C. police are on the way, they’ll be there before we are.”
Toni was terrified.
Dear God, don’t let anything happen to my baby!
Washington, D.C.
Junior thought he could hear somebody talking, low and quiet, and he crept along the wall toward the sound, his left hand coming up to grip his right, holding the revolver in a double-grip. He kept the gun pointed at about a forty-five-degree angle in front of him, toward the floor. It was easier to bring it up and target than it was to bring it down from a barrel-up position, like a lot of cops and military guys did it.
He passed a couple of rooms with doors open, peeked in quickly, and didn’t see anybody.
He got to the end of the hall, where there was a closed door. He tried the knob quietly…
Locked.
He put his ear against the door, but the voice — if that’s what it had been — had gone quiet. He couldn’t hear a thing. He was sure somebody was in the room, though. Sure of it.
Junior sweated, despite the air-conditioning. He stood there for a long time, thinking about it.
Should he back off, go around and look in the window? Assuming there wasn’t a blind or curtain over it that wouldn’t let him see anything. Should he demand that whoever was inside come out? That might not be a good idea. They could be standing there holding a phone with the police emergency number already dialed. That could even be what he’d heard — somebody calling the police, who could even now be on their way here.
Or maybe it was the mama in there, holding her granddaddy’s old pump shotgun, ready to shred anything that came through the door.
He shook his head. Too many questions with no way to answer them unless he moved. No, if somebody was in the room, no point in giving them any warning, any time to do anything. Best thing was to kick the door open, jump in, and catch them off guard. People got spooked by loud noises and movement, distracted by yelling things like, “How’s your sister?” They got overwhelmed by too much coming at them at once, every time.
He took a deep breath, let a little of it out, and gathered himself. It was an interior door, hollow-core, with a snap-button lock. No problem.
Ames’s Corporate Jet Somewhere over Arkansas
Ames had opened a bottle of very good red wine when the jet had lifted, and it had breathed enough by now. Some wines didn’t travel very well, and the lower pressure in the cabin wasn’t good for wine in general, but he didn’t care. He would have a glass or two, and if the rest of it didn’t keep, what was a couple hundred bucks, given his income? Plenty more where that came from. He had dozens of cases of good stuff at the hideout in Texas.
He poured the wine and swirled it around in his glass, and thought about the lobbyist, Cory Skye. He hadn’t heard from her in a couple of days and wondered where she was, and how she was doing in her pursuit of Net Force’s commander.
He inhaled the sharp scent, then took a slow sip from the glass. Ah.
Washington, D.C.
Junior leaned into the kick, hit the door hard, and was happy to see it pop open, showing a bedroom. He leaped in—
He caught movement to his left, twisted, and saw several things at once:
There was a bathroom, and in it, crouched down under a sink, was the boy he’d come to collect.
There was also a skinny black kid — he’d been right about that! — standing in front of the door, partially blocking it.
There was a long-barreled target pistol in the skinny kid’s hand, pointing at the rug—
Gun!
Junior swung his revolver around. Driven by years of practice, made smooth by countless repetitions, he moved like oil on polished steel, no hesitation, no jerkiness, no roughness.
Turn. Index. Target—
He lined up on the black kid’s head, ready to squeeze off the first round…
The long-barreled gun in the kid’s hand blurred.
Jesus! How fast was that?
He didn’t have time to wonder very long. Before his finger was halfway through the trigger squeeze, there was fire and noise, but it cut off—
— Junior’s mind stopped dead. His last thought was:
How could—?
* * *
The D.C. cops were there, but they had established a perimeter, nobody had gone inside. Toni and Alex were out of the copter and almost to the front door, despite the cops yelling at them to stay back. It was going to take more than police to stop Toni getting to her child—
There came the horrible crack of a small-caliber gunshot.
Toni screamed something wordless and primal, a cry for her mate’s help, but it wasn’t necessary — Alex was moving. He hit the door with his shoulder, slammed it open against the wall, hard enough to break the doorstop, never slowing—
She ran down the hall, Alex a step ahead of her, both of them yelling—
The baby!
Heedless of guns, they ran into the bedroom—
— and almost tripped over the body of a man lying face-up on the floor, a stubby gun clutched in his hand. He had been hit in the forehead. Right between the eyes.
Boudreaux!
To her left, Tyrone stood, Alex clutched in one arm on his hip, the other hand holding a sleek pistol which was now pointed at the floor.
“H-H-He k-ki-kicked in the d-d-door, Mrs. Michaels! He had a g-g-gun!”
“Mama!” Alex said. He smiled and held out his arms to her, happy to see her. He wasn’t crying. Didn’t even seem particularly upset.
She took the boy, a sense of relief flooding her like a tsunami.
“I–I-I—” Tyrone was sobbing too hard to get anything else out.
Tyrone and his target pistol. He had saved them from the killer.
Amazing.
Alex squatted on the floor next to the downed man. “Dead,” he said.
“It’s okay, Tyrone,” Toni said. “You did the right thing. It’s okay.” She reached out and encircled him with her free arm, pulling him close. “Thank you.”
Those two little words were so inadequate, but she saw Tyrone nod. Then she turned and looked back at the man by her bed and her husband. This was the second time Death had come to her house to visit. She shook her head. It was going to be the last. She wasn’t going to stay here and put her child at risk anymore. She would have to make Alex understand that. It was time to leave this town.
Alex was nodding, and she knew it was because he had read her mind. Their son was safe. And they were going to keep him that way, whatever it took.
37
Net Force HQ
Quantico, Virginia
Toni was at home with their son. Nadine Howard had come and collected Tyrone. The boy was shaken, but he seemed okay otherwise. John Howard had gone home, seen to his boy, and now was back.
The police had gotten their forensics people in and out, and the coroner had hauled the body away. It was late, almost seven P.M., but Michaels was at the office, and neither Jay nor John Howard had any plans to go home.
Michaels had been profuse in his gratitude to Tyrone, and in telling Howard how much he owed them. Howard had been rattled and worried for his son, but under it, a glimmer of pride showed through. In the face of deadly danger, his son had stepped up. Against a man who was a killer, Tyrone had prevailed. It was not every man who could have done it, and for a teenager untrained in violence, it was even more impressive.
But now, everybody in this room was frustrated and angry.
“No ID on the call?” Michaels said.
“No, boss,” Jay said. “But we did get a
location. We backwalked it to a cell tower in Tennessee.”
Michaels shook his head. “Who is in Tennessee?”
“Nobody we’re concerned with. But our boy Ames hopped on his private jet this morning, flight plans filed for Texas. At the time of the call to your virgil, given the jet’s cruising speed and path, it would have been somewhere over Tennessee.”
“We’ve got him, then,” Howard said.
Michaels nodded. “What’s in Texas?”
“Ames owns a big fallout shelter, built during the early years of the cold war.”
“A fallout shelter?”
“The size of a village, just about, buried under the plains in the middle of nowhere.”
“Why would he be going there?”
“Maybe he can read minds,” Howard said. “Because if he sent that thug to threaten our children, he’s going to have to hide somewhere. Though I am here to tell you, a fallout shelter will not be deep enough.”
The rage in Howard’s voice was quiet but no less deadly for that. And Michaels was a hundred percent in agreement.
“The thing is, we can’t be positive he made the call,” Jay said.
Both Howard and Michaels looked at him.
Jay blinked, and looked away.
“Who else?” Michaels said. “The only people likely to know that Boudreaux was going after Alex would Boudreaux and whoever sent him.”
“But — Why give him up like that?”
“Because the man had become a liability,” Howard said. “You and Toni made the connection. The Atlanta police are after him for two shootings — one of them a cop-killing — and the FBI is working up evidence to connect him to other murders, including the congressman. If Ames was his employer, Boudreaux would be in a position to do him a lot of damage by implicating him. But if he died in a shoot-out with the police…”
“Dead men tell no tales,” Jay said.
“Exactly.”
“It’s still not enough evidence to get an indictment, Boss,” Jay said, shaking his head. “Even with the hacker, it’s still real thin. We can pin those murders on Junior, I’m pretty sure, but unless Ames slipped up — and as careful as he’s been so far, that doesn’t seem likely — we’ll have a hard time proving he is the guy behind it all.”
“Maybe. But at the very least, we can have a little chat with him about it.”
Jay shook his head again. “You already got one lawsuit from this guy. We’ve got enough to keep digging, maybe even enough to start some serious prying into his affairs, but we don’t have near enough to go after him physically. Not yet.” He sighed. “I’m sorry, Boss.”
Michaels nodded and exchanged looks with Howard. “You’re right, Jay,” he said, “but you know what? I’m seriously thinking about retiring. If Ames turns out to be innocent, let him sue me.”
“Me, too,” Howard said. “I’ve done about all I wanted to do after I was called back into Net Force’s service. You can’t get much mileage with a threat to fire a man who’s ready to quit.”
Jay sighed again, then gave a tight little smile and nodded. “Okay,” he said. “What do you want me to do?”
“Get me some hard information on this bomb shelter,” Michaels said. “Find out everything there is to know. And, Jay,” he added, “this guy ran for a reason. Could be a coincidence, but it could be that he caught wind of us sniffing after his hired killer, so go carefully. Leave no tracks.”
“You got it, Boss.”
The thing about bureaucracy that Jay found so comforting was that there was always a record of any official governmental action. Sometimes it was buried deeply. Sometimes it was covered with so many top-secret layers it was almost impossible to get to. But it was always there, somewhere.
Much of what the U.S. government had been up to during those worrisome days when schoolchildren were taught to duck and cover when the nukes started going off had been kept secret for so long that nobody alive knew where to find it. A great deal of what went on during the cold war had not made the transition from hard copy documents to microfilm and then computer media. It was locked away in a storeroom or vault or somebody’s old desk — extant, but, for all practical purposes, invisible. Finding it would be a Herculean labor. But when it came to real estate that generated income, Uncle Sam didn’t drop that particular ball very often.
The plans, record of sale, and other documentation regarding the underground bunker near Odessa, Texas, had indeed made the shift from paper to pixels. It was all there. Right in the safe-deposit box of the bank vault scenario Jay was currently using.
Of course, Jay wasn’t supposed to be in the vault looking at those plans. He didn’t have the particular clearance necessary.
Jay grinned. That had never stopped him before. Besides, it was just plain silly. What possible threat to national security could it be for him to see it? Here was a site that had been sold to a civilian fifty years after it had been built, having never been used. Keeping this under a top-secret seal was, in a word, and not to put too fine a point on it, stupid.
If he had to guess, Ames had probably paid an additional little premium to someone to keep that top-secret flag on the files. Ames liked his privacy, no doubt about it.
Jay copied the files and exited the scenario.
* * *
Howard looked at the printout of the plans and shook his head. “Hard to imagine how worried people were about being bombed by the Russians back then.”
Michaels nodded. “So, what do you think, General?”
Howard frowned. “Well, even assuming the feds pulled all the defensives they had in there when they bailed out, this one’s going to be hard. This guy has money, it’s for sure he’s reinstalled some sort of protective system. He could have rockets, mines, Lord knows what all out there. In addition to that, this place is huge. He could hide from a small crew for a long time — and maybe even get past them if he had a good bolt hole.”
“So, what exactly are you saying?” Michaels asked.
“Our only chance is to sneak up on him. If he knows we’re coming, we’re in trouble.”
Michaels grinned. “So we wait until it gets dark, right?” Howard laughed. “Not quite that easy, Commander. It’s hard to tell by looking, but this place is in the middle of nowhere. If he has any kind of sensor gear, radar, doppler — stuff you can buy in any boat shop — he’ll see us coming a long way off.”
“So, how do you get around that?”
Howard smiled. “I have a couple of ideas,” he said.
Odessa, Texas
Ames was able to call the hideaway on a secure phone and start the power generators by remote control, so that by the time he got there, the main building would be cooler and not so stale-smelling.
The entrance to the hydraulic automobile elevator was an upgrade he’d had installed with a triple-redundant system. There was a mechanical lock that used a magnetic key, an electronic code via a keypad, and a voxax computer chip that not only used a password, but was coded to his voice only. You had to use all three devices or the door wouldn’t open, nor would the lift work. Once inside, the locks could be overridden so they no longer operated from without. The steel door itself was in a reinforced concrete and steel frame that made the average bank vault look puny. Nobody was going to get in that way without enough heavy equipment to knock down a nuclear power plant.
Not that he expected company. Still, it was nice to know no one would be dropping by unexpectedly. He had caught the newscast just before he had landed — an armed man who had broken into the home of Alex Michaels, the commander of Net Force, had been shot and killed by the family’s baby-sitter, a young man whose name wasn’t being revealed because of his age.
Ames had to laugh at that — ace pistoleer Junior Boudreaux shot dead by a juvenile. How galling that must have felt to Junior.
He pulled his car to a stop and got out. Walking over to the override panel, he shut off access to the lift. No point in concerning himself about Junior anymore, he was hi
story, and good riddance.
When he thought about it, there wasn’t any real reason he’d had to leave town. Net Force didn’t have a link to him — and Junior certainly wasn’t going to be providing one now. His exit had been driven by nerves. Not panic, exactly, but, he had to admit, he had been worried.
Well, as long as he was here, he might as well relax and enjoy himself. He deserved it.
He walked down the corridor from the garage, his foot-steps echoing from the tile on floor, walls, and ceiling. Some good wine, a steak and salad, maybe a nice baked potato, then watch a movie, really kick back.
Yeah, he was ready for a little vacation. Then he’d go back to Washington and really turn up the heat on Net Force.
38
Net Force HQ
Quantico, Virginia
Julio didn’t hesitate even a heartbeat. “I’m in,” he said.
“We might not be on firm legal ground here,” Howard said.
Julio laughed. “Since when did that matter?”
“I don’t want you blindsided.”
“John,” Julio said, “you’re my boss, but you’re also my best friend. When that assassin pointed a gun in Tyrone’s direction, everything changed. If this guy Mitchell Ames sent that man to the commander’s house, I want to be part of nailing him.” He shrugged. “Besides, I can always get another job.”
Howard was silent for a moment. Not that he had expected anything else. Still, it was gratifying to hear his old friend say it. “Thanks, Julio.”
Julio nodded. “Okay, so what’s the plan?”
They were in Howard’s office. Nobody else was around. Howard fiddled with the computer controls on his workstation. A satellite view of the Texas desert appeared.
“Okay, here’s what we’ve got… ”
* * *
When Michaels called Toni, she was doing a little better — not so much that she was happy, but at least she wasn’t about to boil over.
He explained where they were regarding Ames.
“That’s fine,” she said. “I’m going to sit this one out.”
