by Tom Clancy
Red tapped his right fist, to show that would be his attacking weapon. They stood about six feet apart, and they circled each other slowly.
Red lunged, shot a fist at the center of Thin's chest. Thin pivoted slightly, did a scoop block and a backfist with his right hand, then followed up with a grab and sapu, a sweep, that upended Red and put him on the floor.
Not bad.
Red came up, gave Thin a fist-in-the-palm salute, and they reversed roles.
Thin punched. Red ducked under the punch, put his right shoulder into Thin's belly, stepped through and biset, a heel-drag, and took Thin to the floor.
Not bad at all. These would be the two senior students, Toni guessed.
Stewart waved the students off. Then he looked at Toni. "We have an American silat practitioner with us today, class. Perhaps she'd like to demonstrate how her style works?"
Toni smiled. She'd half expected this. Since she was in jeans and running shoes and a short-sleeved cotton pullover, she was dressed to move. "Sure," she said.
"Joseph, if you would?" Stewart nodded at Red. "Joseph is my senior student."
Toni nodded and gave Stewart, then Red, the fist-in-palm bow. Relaxed, hands low.
Red circled to her left. She did a back cross-step, turned to follow him.
Red lunged, bracing his right punch with his left hand, set up for the wipe if she blocked.
Toni dropped to the floor, caught Red in the belly with a short left-thrust kick, hooked her right foot behind his right knee, and thrust with her left again.
Red went over backward as Toni rolled up and did a heel scoop — a hackey-sack kick over his head, slapping it with her left hand to show the connection.
Red waited to see if she was done and, when she stepped back to show she was, came up with a big grin. "Nice move!"
Stewart also wore a smile. Her move had been flashy, but it had worked against his senior student, so he ought to be impressed.
"Very good, Ms. Fiorella."
"Toni, please, Guru."
"Mightn't I ask if you would feel up to performing kembangan?"
Toni nodded. Of course. Kembangan was the "flower dance" and, unlike forms or kata in most martial arts, was a spontaneous expression of a silat player's art, nothing prearranged. An expert never did the same form twice. Unlike buah, the full-speed and full-power dance, kembangan softened the moves, using the open hands more than fists, and turned the motions into a dance suitable for demonstrations, weddings, and social gatherings.
If you really wanted to see how good a silat player was, you watched them do kembangan. In the old days, when a fight was imminent but the contestants didn't want to maim or kill each other, they would sometimes offer each other kembangan instead of actual combat. Experts could recognize who would have won the fight by the skill they displayed during the dance, and there would be no need to come to blows. If you were defeated in kembangan, you apologized or made right whatever the problem was, and that was that. It would be dishonorable to continue against an opponent of much lesser skill, and foolish to challenge one who was obviously much better. Of course, the best dancers would sometimes deliberately put small errors into their routines to lull an opponent into thinking they were less skillful than they actually were. In kembangan competitions, only if the players considered each other to be of like abilities did the game progress to sweeps or strikes.
Toni took a deep breath, allowed it to escape softly. She made a full, formal bow to the guru, did another cleansing breath, then a third, and began.
There were days when you were off and days when you were on. Today, her flow was good, she felt the energy coursing through her, and she knew she could do a clean dance without major mistakes. Halfway through, she deliberately misstepped a hair, allowed her balance to drift slightly off before she recovered.
One did not wish to embarrass the guru in charge of a school one visited by being perfect. It might make him look bad in front of his students, and that was impolite.
A minute was enough. She finished the dance, bowed again. It was a great one, she knew, one of her best. Her guru would be proud.
The class broke into spontaneous applause.
Toni flushed, embarrassed.
Stewart smiled at her. "Beautiful. An outstanding kembangan. Thank you… Guru."
Toni gave him a short nod. He acknowledged her skill by calling her "teacher." And now she was curious. It was a bit forward, but she said, "I would be pleased to enjoy your kembangan, Guru."
The students went quiet. It wasn't a direct challenge, but there was a broad hint: I showed you mine, now show me yours.
He smiled wider. "Of course."
He offered her a formal bow, different than hers but similar in intent, cleared his wind and mind, and began. Stewart's best days would be behind him. At fifty, she knew he would be past his physical peak, on the downhill slide. That was the nature of human physiology. His knowledge might be greater, but his body would be half a step behind, and steadily, if slowly, losing ground. Her own guru had been amazing, but she'd been an old woman when Toni started, and there were places she could no longer go. Stewart was still in good shape to look at, and certainly better shape than most men his age, but he would have lost a couple of steps by now. She should have made a couple more mistakes in her dance, she thought.
With Stewart's first series of moves, Toni realized she was wrong.
If you play decent guitar and you see a tape of Segovia practicing, it makes you want to cry because you know you'll never be that good.
Stewart was the martial artist equivalent of Segovia.
Toni watched, mesmerized. The man moved as if he had no bones, as if he was a drop of hot oil rolling down a clean glass window — smooth, effortless, and utterly amazing. She had never seen anybody perform kembangan as well.
At about the same point in his dance as Toni had done, Stewart offered a bobble. His foot came down a hair crooked, he had to shift his weight hurriedly to recover.
Toni didn't buy it for a second. This man, who was old enough to be her father, would not make that kind of mistake. He'd given it to her, a gift, so she would not lose face.
She was thrilled. If push came to shove, Stewart was superior to her. He was the perfect opponent, the one her guru had always trained her to face: bigger, stronger, probably faster, and with technique that exceeded her own. In silat, you didn't practice to beat attackers who had no skill, you strived to learn how to defeat those who were as good as or better than you. If you could prevail in those circumstances, you had the essence of the Indonesian system.
If she and Stewart fought, he would win. There was no question in her mind.
As soon as she realized this, Toni wanted to do it, wanted to test him, to be bested — and to learn from it.
Stewart finished the dance and bowed. The students wanted to go wild with cheering and clapping, but he held up a hand to silence them. He gave Toni a military bow, a slow nod.
Toni said, "I'm going to be here for a week or so longer. I would be honored if you would allow me to attend your classes, Guru."
"The honor," he said, "would be mine."
Oh, boy!
Saturday, April 2nd
Somewhere in the British Raj, India
Jay Gridley used a big silver machete to hack his way through leafy vines that draped low across the jungle trail. It was hard work, chopping at the bush, and the heat and humidity enveloped him in a miasmatic fog that kept him drenched in sweat. The wooden handle raised blisters on his hand, and the stink of cut branches and vines was so cloyingly… verdant, it was alive with greenness.
It wasn't comfortable, this hack through the jungle, but there was no good way to make this tracking scenario a cake walk. No matter what he created, it wasn't going to make the job easier. If he made a haystack, the needle he'd be looking for would be microscopic; if he created a beach, he'd be trying to find a sand-colored smudge on a particular grain of sand. It was hard, period, end of mission statement
, we don't need to see his ID, move along.
But he was getting closer, nonetheless.
A fat albino python sunned itself on a big branch to his left, well off the trail, no danger. Gridley grinned. It was the dog that didn't bark in the night that had pointed him in the right direction. The player who had broken the encrypted code in Pakistan was better than anybody Gridley had ever gone up against, no question. Better than the redneck from Georgia, better than the mad Russian, and — as much as he hated to admit it to himself — better than he was. This guy was a master, he'd have to be to do what he did, and he had not left a trail.
Well, not exactly. The tiger had left an also — a trail of omission, "TOO," thus brought to "also" — a concept that was impossible to convey to anybody who didn't know the VR field in and out, and exceedingly difficult to understand if you did know. It was a lot like trying to make sense of subatomic physics; it was counterintuitive. The tiger who had eaten the goat went this way because there was no trail and… because nobody could have gone this way.
Gridley hacked at a branch with heart-shaped dark leaves as big as dinner plates. The branch fell. The weight of the double rifle slung over his shoulder was oppressive, the belt with the holstered Webley revolver dug into his side. There was no trail here, but he was sure the tiger had gone this way. He cut another branch, tossed it aside—
He was right. It had gone this way.
He got only a glimpse of it as it leaped. A flash of orange and black, huge teeth, a paw as big as a dragon's.
Then the tiger slapped Jay Gridley's head with that monstrous paw and the world went red — and away.
Chapter 6
Sunday, April 3rd
London, England
Alex Michaels came out of a troubled dream to the sound of his virgil playing the Aaron Copland fanfare. He sat up and glared at the device where it sat next to his bed in the recharger. What was cute in the afternoon wasn't so funny at two in the morning, even when it woke you from a nightmare about your ex-wife.
Next to him, Toni stirred.
Michaels got up, grabbed the virgil and killed the call tone, then headed for the bathroom. Once there, he turned on the light, shut the door, and activated the phone circuit. After glancing at himself in the mirror, he left the visual mode off. Naked, with a sleep-wrinkled face and pillow-hair, wasn't his best look.
The call was from Allison's office.
"This is Alex Michaels."
"Hold for the director, please."
Yeah, right. Wake him up in the middle of the night, but couldn't be bothered to make the call herself?
She came on almost immediately.
"Michaels, we have a situation here. One of your men, a… Jason Gridley?… has had some kind of stroke. He is in the hospital."
"What?"
"He was found when the shift changed at the controls of his computer."
"A stroke? But — how? He's a kid! There's no history of stroke in his family."
"You'll have to ask the doctors about that." There was a pause. "I understand that Gridley is your point man on virtual reality scenarios."
"Yes." Jesus, a stroke? Jay? He couldn't get his mind around that. Jay was in his twenties.
"Could this have had anything to do with the investigation we are conducting into the situation in Pakistan?"
What was she talking about? "No, no way. You can't get hurt by a computer in VR mode, even with the power jacket at maximum, there's not enough juice. Why would you even ask?"
"Because a British Intelligence computer operative and one in Japan have also had cerebellar events similar to Gridley's, both of them in the last few hours."
"Not possible. I mean, it's not possible that they were caused by their computers."
"Nonetheless, Commander, it seems a striking coincidence that these events happened. And I am given to understand, unofficially, that these two computer operatives were also investigating the Pakistani situation."
"Jesus."
"Perhaps you might want to cut your vacation short."
"I — yes, you're right. I'll book a flight out as soon as I can get one."
"Good. Keep me informed."
Michaels stared at his reflection in the mirror. Never a dull moment.
"Alex?"
He opened the door. Toni, fogged with sleep and beautifully nude, stood outside the bathroom. "Who are you talking to?"
"The boss."
Then he gave her the bad news about Jay.
Sunday, April 3rd
Las Vegas, Nevada
"Son of a bitch!"
"Should I take that personally, Sergeant?"
Howard smiled at Fernandez, but the expression was tight and forced. He could well understand his friend's frustration; he was pissed off, too.
The tactical computer was down. It had flickered back to normal operation from the British flag a couple of times but then had lost the satellite signal and had been unable to regain it. The techs had fiddled with things, and it turned out not to be their system, but USAT's. Howard had talked to the OOD there, but it wasn't going to help. Major Phillips was polite but terse: His system was acting up, and begging the colonel's pardon, but he had his hands full trying to unsnarl the bastard and could he have somebody call him back ASAP?
That had been hours ago, and still the feed wasn't accessible.
Howard looked at his watch, then at Fernandez. "Okay, that's it. We're scrubbed. Tell them to stand down."
As he expected, his top kick wasn't happy with that. "Colonel, we don't need the feed from Big Squint. This guy is in the middle of the desert. We can eyeball it."
"Negative, Sergeant, that's not the protocol."
"Sir, troops have been taking territory without satellite coverage for thousands of years. It's one guy alone in a trailer. We got two squads and enough gear to fill up a boxcar! How hard can it be?"
"Come on, Julio, you know the rules. There's no leeway for emergency bypass here. Like you said, it's one guy. He's been there for months, he doesn't know we're here, and we've got the roads in and out covered. He's not going anywhere, and even if he wanted to, he couldn't. This is as by-the-numbers as it gets."
Fernandez mumbled something.
"Say again, Sergeant?"
"Sir, this is bullshit. If twenty troops can't take down one man without help from big bird, we ought to turn in our uniforms and retire. Go sit on the bank of a catfish pond, drown worms, and wait to die. Sir."
Howard's grin this time was real. "I hear you, Julio, but it's our protocol for this op-sit. The RA guys will fix their system sooner or later. Tell the troops to take the night off. Go see the casinos, watch a show, enjoy the lights of Vegas. Be back here at oh six hundred, and we'll reset."
Fernandez shrugged. Unexpected liberty was always good, and this was, after all, Las Vegas. A man with a little money in his pocket could get into all kinds of trouble without having to work too hard. "Well, sir, since you put it like that, I suppose we'll just have to suffer through the wait."
"And remember, you are practically a married man now, Sergeant."
"Yes, sir, of course. But I'm not a dead practically married man. I can still look."
The two grinned at each other.
Howard headed toward the nearby motel where Net Force had booked enough rooms for his troops. It still felt weird to be bivouacked not in a tent under the stars but at an air-conditioned motel. It made more sense, of course. A military group camping anywhere around here would draw more attention than it would with its vehicles garaged and its troops tucked away out of sight.
He planned to call home and talk to his wife and son, grab a shower to wash some of the heat and dust off, and maybe find a nice restaurant for some dinner. They had good food in Las Vegas, especially at some of the casinos, and it was cheap, too. They figured they were going to get your money at the slots or the tables, so they might as well make it attractive to stay there and eat, to give them more chances at it. And you could play keno right at you
r table while you chowed down. Most places served breakfast, lunch, or dinner twenty-four hours a day. Once you stepped into the wonders of Gambling Land, time stood still. They didn't leave a lot of clocks around to remind you that you needed to be getting along home, either.
It had been a few years since he'd been here, but Howard didn't think it would have changed all that much. You could stick the kiddies in free day care or turn them loose in Warner Bros. World or the Hard Rock, and go lose their college education money. Fun for the whole family and a long way from the old days when the mob ran everything.
The motel was low key and also cheap, Net Force being like most other government agencies that way. GS employees didn't need to be staying at the best hotels on the taxpayer's credit card. It didn't look good, especially at election time.
There was an old-fashioned mechanical slot machine next to the Coke machine, and Howard shook his head at that. He wasn't a gambler. Oh, he'd buy a lottery ticket now and then or put a fiver on a soccer or baseball pool. He would root for the Orioles, maybe even cover a friendly bet on them, but he wasn't infested with gambling fever. The odds always favored the house, and the only way to look at games of chance as far as he was concerned was to consider them entertainment. You wanted to play in the casinos, you took a few dollars and spent them, just as if you were paying for dinner and a show. Once they were gone, that was it, you quit, end of story. You didn't dig into your pocket to win back what you'd lost, and if you happened to come out ahead by the time you were supposed to leave, you went home and put the money in the bank.
His father had taught him that. If you play somebody else's game, most of the time they are going to win. Better to spend your money where it will do you some good.
Howard's room was small, clean, and the water pressure in the shower was not as bad as he'd expected. After he cleaned up, he unpacked his duffel, slipped into a pair of no-iron khaki slacks and a short-sleeve shirt, and found some clean socks and his old loafers. Always paid to take civilian clothes if you were working anywhere near a town. One minute you were a soldier, the next you were a civilian. With the variation in hairstyles these days, nobody could tell by looking.
