by Tom Clancy
Ames forced himself to take a deep breath. Yes. That was true. But — What if they hadn’t come to arrest him? What if this was some kind of black op deal? What if they were assassins?
They sure weren’t ordinary cops. Nobody had yelled, “Police, freeze!” or anything like that. Yes, he had shot at them, but they shot back in a hurry, and nobody had said a thing.
They had gone to great lengths to track him here — extraordinary measures, really, just to sneak up on him. They had blown up a truck to cover themselves breaking in. And they were armed to the teeth.
Who were they? How could he get past them to the escape hatch?
Would there be others aboveground, waiting for him?
Giving up was the smart thing, right?
But if he put down his gun and raised his hands, what if they just smiled and then cut him to bloody pieces? He’d be dead, and he’d never even know who had killed him, or why…
He shook his head. No, he couldn’t just surrender. Not yet. He had to find out more about them, make sure it was safe first.
And to do that, he had to stay alive.
* * *
Michaels held his pistol pointed at the floor, standing fifty feet behind the last of the others. His breathing was fast, but he found he wasn’t afraid. Nervous, yes, and excited, but not frightened.
The place was a maze of corridors and doorways, and they moved carefully through it, Fernandez and Howard slipping into rooms along the way to check them out while Michaels stayed in the hall.
It was a big place, a lot of spots where a man could hide. Even with the sensors, they might miss him. And wouldn’t that be a snafu. It was good that he was thinking of retiring, because they would surely fire him if this didn’t end well.
* * *
Ames didn’t know how many of them there were, could be ten, could be fifty. He couldn’t shoot it out with them. They were obviously better armed, and however many of them there were, he was outnumbered. If he wasn’t going to give himself up, then the only other option was to hide and wait for an opportunity to escape.
After that? Well, he’d worry about that if he got that far.
His advantage was that he knew the place better than they possibly could, even if they had the floor plans. They couldn’t know where stuff was stacked, where he had put supplies, rearranged furniture, like that. If he could hide somewhere they wouldn’t immediately look, get behind them, go down one of the other halls or levels, he could maybe slip by. It was his best chance.
The main kitchen was a good place. Lots of bins, coolers, pantries. If they did find him, he could still try to surrender. If they were law enforcement of some kind, they ought not shoot him if he surrendered.
It was a chance, anyway, and right now it looked like the only one he had.
* * *
“Got a hot spot in there,” Julio said. He pointed to an open doorway. “Looks like a kitchen.”
Howard moved up. “Clear the left, I’ll take the right. Reaves, watch the door, Holder, cover that next hallway, just ahead. Commander, if you would stay right there and make sure he doesn’t somehow get behind us?”
Michaels nodded. “Got it.”
“Okay, Julio, on three. One… two… three!”
Julio went in first, low and to the left, and Howard was right behind him, higher, and covering the other half of the large room.
It was a kitchen, sure enough. A big one, with three stoves, refrigerators, sinks, tables, and institutional-sized food trays and bins.
Julio nodded at the stoves. The two of them edged that way, guns ready.
Julio put one hand on the stove. “There’s the heat source. He must have had a late supper.”
“Sensor getting anything else?”
“Negative.”
“Okay. Get Reaves and Holder in here, let them search. We’ll move on.”
* * *
Ames heard the voices, and even though they were muffled because of his hiding place in the walk-in fridge, he recognized one of them.
It was John Howard, the leader of Net Force’s military arm.
Ah. That made sense, sort of. Somehow, they had connected him to Junior. Maybe he hadn’t died right away when he’d been shot. Ames grinned. Maybe Junior wasn’t even dead at all. It could be some kind of misinformation campaign. Maybe Junior was alive and well and singing like a flock of canaries…
The fact that it was Net Force changed things. In his lawsuit, he claimed that all the Net Force personnel were violence-prone, trigger-happy vigilantes who went out of their way to find trouble and used deadly force whenever possible, but he knew that wasn’t true. And up until now he hadn’t cared.
Now, however, it mattered.
He’d read the reports himself. He had to in order to be able to spin them for a jury. And he knew that he could lay his weapon down and walk out of that refrigerator and be as safe as he would in his own offices.
Except that they would take him to jail. And if Net Force was out there, they had something concrete, even though he had no idea what it possibly could be. They’d crossed the lines before, he knew, but he also knew that his own lawsuit had turned a very bright spotlight on their actions. There was no way they’d be coming for him as part of a bluff. No way.
Which meant he couldn’t turn himself in. Not yet. Not until he’d had some time to think things through, maybe find out what they had — or thought they had — on him, and had a plan for dealing with it. Then he could be caught.
But not until he already had some sort of get-out-of-jail-free card in his pocket.
He frowned, then checked the bullets left in his magazine. Getting away would be a trick, that was for sure, given that more men were coming in here to look for him, and it wouldn’t be a good idea for him to shoot any of them. Move, he decided. Get to the dumbwaiter, go down a level, and sneak past them. It’s the only way. Go!
* * *
Michaels had his breathing under control — well, more or less — and he was still ten yards behind John. The two troopers had gone into the huge kitchen to search it. It was beginning to look to Michaels as if they might not find Ames again, which would be a real shame after all the trouble they had gone to.
He was passing a stairwell going down when he heard something.
It wasn’t much, a small click, and it probably didn’t mean anything. He leaned over and looked down the stairs. Nothing to see — wait, what was that? A flash of shadow, as if somebody had passed in front of a light source—
“John.”
Ahead of him, Howard turned. “Yes?”
“I think he might have gone down the stairs!”
Without thinking, Michaels started down.
“Alex, wait—!”
But Michaels was already four steps down and speeding up.
There wasn’t a door at the bottom of the landing, just a wide opening to the next level. Probably didn’t have to worry about fire codes when they built this place.
He was cautious enough not to run full speed through the doorway. He slowed, stuck his head through, and saw a man moving quickly away from him down the corridor, a hundred feet away. Had to be Ames.
Michaels stepped out into the hall, brought his pistol up. “Freeze!” he yelled. “Net Force!”
He was aware of Howard’s boots thumping down the stairs behind him.
Ames turned, saw him, and stared. He had a gun in his right hand, but it was pointed at the floor.
“Don’t shoot!” Ames yelled. “I give up!”
Michaels felt himself relax a hair. Good. He wasn’t sure he could have hit the man that far away with a handgun anyhow.
“Put your weapon down!”
“Okay, take it easy!” Ames bent and started to put his pistol on the floor—
— except that he didn’t. He jerked the gun back up and started shooting—!
Michaels felt the bullets hit him, at least two of them, square in the chest. Even though he was wearing armor, the impact felt like being sma
shed with a hammer. He lurched to the side, to get out of the way, fired his own pistol in return—
Howard yelled from behind him: “Commander, down!”
Michaels went prone, shoving his pistol out in front of him as he did so.
Howard’s submachine gun roared, the sound of it joining those of Michaels’s and Ames’s weapons.
* * *
Ames saw Michaels go down, was sure he had hit him, but then the second man was there, firing—
Why had he shot? Why hadn’t he surrendered, like he said?
But he didn’t have an answer for that. It hadn’t been a decision. It had been a reflex, an action born of something deep within him, something he hadn’t even known had been a part of him until that moment.
Fire blossomed in his chest, in his shoulder, in his leg. He spun away from the hurt, but the pain followed him. He looked down, saw the blood—
More impacts. The gun fell from his suddenly nerveless fingers, clattered on the floor, but he was past worrying about that. He felt weak, too weak to stand. He fell, hit the wall, slid to the floor in a sitting position. He was having trouble breathing…
He saw the two men come toward him. He should do something, but he was suddenly so tired…
I’ll just rest a second here. Get my strength back. Close my eyes for a minute, then I’ll be better…
* * *
Howard moved quickly, Michaels now on his feet and following. Ames was down, bleeding. It didn’t look as if he was breathing.
Howard kicked the fallen man’s pistol down the hall, then bent and laid two fingers on Ames’s right carotid.
Nothing.
Julio came running, slid to a stop as Howard shook his head.
Michaels said, “Did I hit him?”
“Hard to say, but I think that one in the leg was yours,” Howard said.
“Good.”
Howard looked at Michaels, wondering.
“That man sent a killer to my house,” Michaels said. “He threatened my child.”
Howard nodded. “Mine, too. God will judge him for his actions, but I’m not sorry He will get the chance sooner rather than later.”
“Amen,” Julio said.
EPILOGUE
Washington, D.C.
Michaels and Toni went for a walk to the park with Alex and Guru. The day was unseasonably cool, in the seven-ties. As Guru followed the boy toward the merry-go-round, Toni turned to Alex and asked, “So John is really retiring this time?”
Michaels nodded. “Yes. He’s been offered a job in the private sector. An old friend is running the place, and I think he is going to go for it. More money, and he’ll be dealing with a different class of people. Not necessarily better, but probably less dangerous. At least physically. I think he might find some kind of security job there for Julio Fernandez, too.”
“Good for them.”
He smiled at her. “And good for us, too.”
“You’re really going to pull the plug?”
“It’s already done. I talked to the director today. You can help me draft my letter of resignation.”
“You’re sure?”
“Absolutely. I’ll stay on long enough to bring a new commander up to speed, a few weeks at most. We can sell the condo, cash in some bonds, buy a nice house in the Colorado suburbs, and take some time off before I have to worry about a job.”
She looked at him. “And what about CyberNation?”
He paused, then shrugged. “Yeah, that’s a point. We’ve cut off some of its heads, but CyberNation is still out there, and I don’t think it’s going away anytime soon. The thing is, I’m not sure what I think about it anymore.”
Toni frowned. “That’s a switch.”
He nodded. “That lobbyist I told you about, Corinna Skye, made some good points in my office one day. I can’t say I agree with her, not completely, but maybe I don’t disagree quite so strongly as I once did.”
He reached out and took her hand. “I guess the way I see it is that CyberNation will either happen or it won’t — and if it does happen, it’ll either be a good thing or a bad… or somewhere in between. Like most things in life, it’s not as simple as I’d like it to be.” He shrugged. “Either way, though, it’s not up to me any longer. And that’s okay.”
She slid her arm around his waist. “You aren’t worried that we might turn into a dull, old married couple?”
He laughed. “That’s not high on my list of things to worry about, no. We have already had enough excitement for ten lifetimes.”
“Look, Guru is getting on the merry-go-round with the boy,” she said.
“Great, that’s all we need, Guru with a broken hip.”
But the old lady stood in the middle of the twirling playground equipment as solidly as if she were bolted down. Little Alex was delighted, laughing as the merry-go-round twirled.
This was what life was supposed to be about, Toni thought. Your family with you, healthy, and safe. Not necessarily living happily ever after, no one could promise that — but it was a start.
And right now, that was enough.
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