Cybernation (2001)

by Clancy, Tom - Net Force 06

  He forced himself to breathe slower. Maybe she was right. Maybe Santos was too smart to cause any problems. They were all getting rich off this project, and they stood to get a whole lot richer once their shares started really appreciating in value. He wouldn’t want to screw that up over a woman. Santos was not that stupid.

  But Keller wasn’t sure about that. Not sure enough to bet his life on it.

  Capitol Hill Washington, D.C.

  Michaels surreptitiously glanced at his watch. Next to him, Tommy Bender, the Net Force lawyer, caught the look and squelched a smile.

  The senate subcommittee room was hot and stuffy. There were no windows. The senators were talking for the camera again. One of the senators got up and walked away, as a second returned to his seat on the dais. They came and went like a roomful of small children who had drunk too much lemonade. One would go, another would return. There was more motion from the subcommittee than a soccer team playing a match. Michaels couldn’t leave to stretch or get a drink of water, though. He had to sit here at the table looking up at the sometimes-six, sometimes-eight, sometimes-five of them milling back and forth like somnolent sheep. Already it had been two hours, and there were no signs of an end in sight.

  Senator Theresa Genaloni, from the great state of New Jersey, made her obscure point about the dangers of invading citizens’ privacy, and finally shut up. This hearing didn’t have anything to do with on-line privacy per se, but she was the junior senator from her state, her party was in the minority, and this pissant committee was hardly Ways and Means, so she had to make her points where and how she could. Otherwise, how would the folks back home know she was on the job? She certainly wasn’t delivering jobs in their direction, nor much in the way of pork-barrel spending.

  Stewart George Jackson, the once red-haired but now mostly bald and gray junior senator from the great state of Arkansas, took over the microphone. Jackson liked to be called “Stonewall,” after the Southern Civil War hero. He was usually called “SJ” by his staff. While these were his initials, somebody had told Michaels that they also stood for “Strawberry Jell-O,” due to his extremely flexible ethics. Jackson had all the backbone of a baby squid. He’d sometimes switch sides on an issue faster than a speeding bullet. General Jackson must be spinning in his grave like an atomic-powered gyroscope every time somebody called Jell-O “Stonewall.”

  “Perhaps Commander Michaels can explain to this committee why this latest round of attack on the Internet structure has continued despite Net Force’s efforts to stop it?”

  What Michaels wanted to say was “Because I am here listening to the senatorial windbags blow warm hurricanes instead of at the office helping them?” That would have been very satisfying. Stupid, but satisfying. He had this fantasy every time he testified, and he had never acted on it; still, he thought about it.

  “Don’t do it,” Tommy said under his breath. It didn’t take much of a mind reader to glean what Michaels was thinking.

  No, he’d better not say anything nasty. Not only would that be career suicide, his agency would suffer, and he didn’t want to cause that.

  “Commander?”

  “I’m sorry, Senator. I didn’t realize you were asking me to speak.”

  That earned him a glare from Jell-O, and grins from three of the other senators.

  “We are following up leads on the attacks,” Michaels said. “Our operatives have narrowed down the suspects and are getting closer to a resolution.” You could always say that and it would be true enough.

  “Would you care to give us more specific information, Commander? Who, where, and when?”

  “I am sure you realize that this is an ongoing investigation, Senator. I would not wish to compromise it by releasing details in public. If you would like a private briefing, I will have my staff follow up.”

  Of course, Jell-O didn’t care about the investigation, and would no more want to spend his time going over the details of it than he would want to give up cigars and whiskey. This was a piddling committee, and one had to milk what one could from it. Scoring a few points for law and order was always good for the voters back home to see. He would have a staffer listen to the report and boil it down to half a page or so, highlighting key words to be spoken in his syrupy Foghorn Leghorn drawl next time Michaels had to show up and sit in the hot seat.

  The senator droned on, and Michaels listened with half an ear. This was the part of the job he hated most, the sitting in front of a bunch of old farts and being treated like a grammar school boy by men and women who, for the most part, couldn’t understand what it was he did. They were mostly lawyers, half of them were technophobes, if not Luddites, terrified of anything more complicated than a phone or television set, and their main strengths seemed to be the ability to get re-elected.

  Face it, if they had anything on the ball, they wouldn’t be stuck on this committee, now would they? The only one here who had more than two neurons to spark at each other inside his hollow head was Wayne DeWitt, the recently elected junior from West Virginia. He was young, sharp, and technically educated, with a degree in engineering. He was one of the few senators willing to stand up and say that the idea of CyberNation was stupid in the extreme. He was a fairly right-wing Republican, but even so, Michaels was willing to cut him a lot of slack—better a right-winger with a brain than anybody without one.

  Not very charitable of him, those thoughts, but, hey, if it was true, it was true.

  He glanced at his watch again. Another two hours of his life he’d never get back.

  Damn.

  On the Bon Chance

  Santos had left his most recent coin buy in a safe-deposit box at a bank in Fort Lauderdale. They’d be secure enough there, but he would prefer to have them in his own bank. He had worked out an arrangement with an assistant ambassador in Washington who flew home to Brazil now and again, and who had access to diplomatic pouches. For a healthy fee, he would transport whatever Santos gave him back there, where Santos’s cousin Estaban would collect it and take it to the branch of the Banco Vizinho where Santos did his business. He had an arrangement with a bank officer there to make sure his coins were well-cared for.

  Estaban was blood, and the bank official was also related, by marriage, to another cousin. Both were well-paid, and both knew what would happen to them if they got greedy and decided to pocket a few of the coins. Once, when they were much younger, Estaban had seen Santos take out a crooked policeman who tried to shake him down too hard. Crooked or not, killing a punño, a “fist,” as they were sometimes called in the shanty towns, was the act of a man with bolas grande. Those who dealt with Santos at home knew his reputation. He was not a man to be fooled with—aside from his own skills, he had a couple of paid friends in high places, always necessary in Brazil, and he was protected, at least to a degree.

  Once his gold was home, it would be safe enough.

  When Missy ordered him to take care of some business in Washington, D.C., this was perfect. He would stop at the bank in Florida and retrieve his Maple Leafs, speak with the diplomat once he got to the capital, and all would be well.

  The business Missy wanted him to handle? Well, that was of small importance. One man who needed to have a bad accident. He didn’t even have to die, merely be put out of commission for a month or two. Easy as falling out of a tree.

  He made a point of swinging by the computer rooms just before lunchtime. He saw Keller with two of his people as they headed for the private cafeteria. Keller was laughing at something one of the others said.

  Keller looked up, saw Santos.

  Santos gave Keller a quick two-fingered salute, a how-you-doin’-amigo? gesture, nothing the least bit threatening in it. He smiled.

  Keller went pale, as if somebody had just punched him in the belly.

  Santos didn’t stop. He turned away and ambled off down the corridor. All he’d wanted to do was make Jackson aware that he knew. That was enough, for now. Let him sweat a while, worry that maybe something hard w
as coming. Because it was coming, no question. There were some lines you did not cross, and Jackson had crossed one. He knew it. How much it would cost, when, where, he did not know. And that was part of the payment, too.

  Santos hummed to himself as he headed for the helipad. Good day, so far. Real good.

  20

  Net Force HQ

  Quantico, Virginia

  Toni sat at Alex’s desk, going over operations reports. She was glad to be back. She’d forgotten how interesting this work was in the time she’d been away. As Alex’s assistant, she had been privy to the inner workings of the nation’s computer business, all kinds of information the average citizen didn’t even know existed had come across her desk. When she’d quit—over a mistaken supposition that Alex had been too idiotic to correct—she hadn’t missed work, because almost immediately she’d had an offer from the director to start a job for the mainline FBI. The pregnancy, then the baby, had stopped that. It had been the better part of a year, and she’d lost a few steps. But it was like riding a bicycle—the basic balance was still there, and with a little practice, she’d be rolling smoothly again pretty fast.

  She felt a quick stab of guilt. Did that make her a bad mother, that she wanted to work? Shouldn’t she be at home, doing mommy things, putting all this away until Little Alex was old enough to go off to school? It wasn’t as if they needed the money. And she did miss the baby, that was true. But her husband needed her, too, and what was she to do? Guru had showed up, and that had seemed like some kind of sign.

  Still, she worried.

  Well, it was only temporary, after all. A few days, a week, until the crisis was over, that was all . . .

  “Boss still testifying?” Jay said from the doorway.

  “I think so,” she said. “Anything new on your front?”

  “Yes and no. I’m on the right track, I got ambushed in VR again. But this time, I surprised the sucker. Didn’t get a solid lead, unfortunately.”

  “Win some, lose some.”

  “Oh, this one ain’t won or lost yet. Too early. But I have some feelers out on the CyberNation gambling ship, down in the Caribbean, and I’m expecting those to come in later today.”

  “You think they are responsible?”

  “Gut-check? Yes. Proof? None.”

  “Lay it out for me.”

  “Sure.” He came in, flopped down on the couch. He started ticking points off on his fingers: “One, CyberNation has a lot to gain if people switch to them because of net woes. Two, CyberNation has the talent to pull this kind of thing off. I don’t have a complete list of their programmers and weavers, but I’ve seen their public face, and it is very slick, uses all the latest language. Three, their advertisements increased just about the time all this started, a vigorous campaign to sign up new members, stressing the integrity of their systems. Four, there’s that connection with the casino ship and the dead guy from Blue Whale. Five, I haven’t found anybody better, and I’ve been looking real hard.”

  “Circumstantial and iffy,” she said.

  “Hey, I got another whole hand of fingers here. Six, CyberNation is pushing on other fronts. They have a powerful lobby working in D.C., and in various major countries around the world. Isn’t that what the boss is over on the Hill about today? Problems with the net that CyberNation claims it can cure?”

  She shrugged. “So what are seven, eight, nine, and ten?”

  “I haven’t filled those in yet,” Jay said, grinning. “But I’m working on it.”

  “How are the wedding plans coming?”

  His smile faded. “Okay, I guess.”

  “Getting cold feet?”

  “What? No!”

  “Easy. I was just joking.”

  He didn’t speak for a moment. Then he said, “Did you? Get cold feet, I mean?”

  “Not really. Of course, I was pregnant, and I didn’t want to have the baby by myself.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Hey, look, it’s only natural to worry about making major changes in your life. I wanted to get married, but I did think about it. Alex was married before—what if I didn’t measure up to his first wife? And he’s got a daughter from that marriage, a great kid, but I had to wonder, was he going to be thinking about her when he looked at our child? It’s not like buying a new pair of shoes, is it?”

  “No.”

  “You should talk to Julio Fernandez. He got married after a lot of years on his own, he had to make some adjustments.”

  “I was thinking that. I mean, I want to be with Saji, no question, it’s just, I dunno, scary sometimes.”

  “Welcome to the human race, computer-boy.”

  “Thanks.”

  John Howard looked at the computer log and stack of hard copy on his desk and shook his head. Forms and clogged e-file boxes were the bane of military officers everywhere. Yes, they had to be attended to for the command to continue working, and mostly, he managed to pass a significant amount of paper shuffling and signing off to senior officers on his staff, but if you missed a few days, your piece of it always grew, it never shrank. He’d been at it for an hour and a half, and hadn’t really made much of a dent.

  How important was most of this junk? An invitation to speak at an upscale military school in Mississippi? He knew the school. Enrollment was ninety percent white males, with a few women and minority students sprinkled in to keep things legal. Yes, he was the commanding military officer of Net Force, but they didn’t want him—he’d bet dollars to dimes they didn’t know he was black. It might be amusing to show up just to see the expressions on their faces. Then again, that wasn’t worth a trip to Mississippi, was it?

  Another e-mail was a cc notification from the NF Quartermaster from a military supplier in Maine that there was a recall on part number MS-239-45/A, due to possible stress fractures in materials that might lead to failure in critical situations. The Quartermaster would have already addressed the situation, but it still sounded worth knowing about. A man needed to see where his troops might be at risk.

  A check of the Net Force parts catalogue, which naturally changed the supplier’s part number to their own designation, NF-P-154387, showed the part in question to be the “flexible containment system locking device for a Model B dorsal-unit personal supply and equipment carrier.” After years of military jargon, that one was easy: They were talking about the plastic buckle on a backpack strap. The B-model had been in service for approximately three years, according to the computer file, and had been superseded by the C-model.

  If the buckles on the old packs hadn’t busted by now, then it probably wasn’t going be a problem that would bring the Net Force strike teams to their knees.

  And how many man-hours had been lost to this tidbit?

  Here was a directive from the U.S. National Guard regarding the directive from the General Accounting Office, regarding the directive from the Department of Defense’s Revised and Updated Guidelines for Officers Regarding Sexual Harassment.

  Oh, please. How relevant to anything was a directive about a directive about a directive about guidelines?

  His intercom chirped. “Yes?”

  “Sir,” his secretary said. “Lieutenant Fernandez to see you.”

  Julio had just left a couple hours ago, but anything to get out of this drudgery. “Send him in.”

  Julio arrived.

  “Yes?”

  “Sir. I’d hate to tear you away from all this excitement, but we’ve got a new shipment of goodies and there are a couple of things you might enjoy seeing.”

  “I really need to get this done,” he said. He waved at his desk.

  “You’re the general, General.” He started to leave.

  “Wait a second, I’ll go with you. This can wait.”

  Julio grinned. “I thought it might.”

  As they walked out, Julio said, “I ran into Jay Gridley out in the hall a few minutes ago. He seems to be a little nervous about his upcoming nuptials.”

  “What did you tell him?”
/>
  “That being married is worse than death by Chinese water torture, of course. That if I had it to do all over again, I’d jump in front of a speeding train before I said ‘I do.’ ”

  “You’re a braver man than I thought, Lieutenant. What if that somehow gets back to Joanna?”

  “I’ll deny having said it to my last breath.”

  “Which wouldn’t be long in coming if she thought you said such a thing.”

  Julio chuckled. “I’m a career military man, sir. Not much she could do would scare me.”

  “She could make you watch little Hoo on your poker night.”

  “I was only joking. I told Gridley that. I also told him it was natural that he should feel nervous about taking the big step. That everybody does.”

  “I never did,” Howard said. “Never crossed my mind.”

  “And you were what—twelve when you got married? Never had a room of your own, much less a life before you met Nadine. You didn’t have anything to give up, except your virginity, now did you, sir?”

  Howard laughed. “Unlike you, who lived alone so long that you had to relearn how to pick your socks up because you had never had to do that before? No, I knew Nadine was the best thing that was ever going to happen to me. Just like Joanna is the best thing that ever happened to you.”

  “Yes, sir. But don’t let that get back to her, either. I’d never hear the end of it if she knew that was true.”

  “She knows, Lieutenant, she knows.”

  If he had had time, Santos would have taken the train up from Florida to the District of Columbia. The East Coast trains usually ran pretty well, they were clean, and it was relaxing to watch the country roll past your window at a speed where you could see much of it. The trip would have taken most of the day, and he could have gotten up, moved around, stretched out, eaten, drank, enjoyed the drone of wheels on steel.

  But time was a luxury he seemed to have too little of, so he caught the jet shuttle, and what would have been a relaxing all-day ride became a two-hour hop. Not counting the forty-five minutes they circled the airport, waiting to land.