Tom Clancy's Power Plays 5 - 8

by Tom Clancy

  Julia nodded again and stood quietly in the warm sunlight.

  “So,” Howell said after a moment. “How was your trip here?”

  “Oh, great,” Julia said. “Very relaxing, in fact.”

  “Any trouble spotting that sign down the hill? Guess it’s kind of hard to notice sometimes. With all the branches I’m always forgetting to trim—”

  “No, no, I saw it just fine.” She nodded over toward the house. “Those are beautiful dogs back there . . . are they up for placement?”

  “Actually, they’re our personal brood. Rachel, Monica, Phoebe, Ross, and Joey. Don’t ask how we got stuck with them—”

  “What about Chandler?” Julia said. “I assume they’re named after characters from that TV show Friends. . . .”

  “Right, that’s it.”

  “And Chandler being the sixth, well, friend . . .”

  “Cynthia and I try to leave an open slot. Just in case another dog turns out to be irresistible,” Howell said with another smile. “You have, what, two ex-racers of your own?”

  “Jack and Jill,” Julia said. “Which means a third pooch would have to be named Hill or Pail of Water. If I use your general naming formula.”

  “There’s a lesson in that for prospective adopters, I suppose,” he said. “Stick to nursery rhymes with lots of characters—”

  “And sitcoms with large ensemble casts.”

  Both were grinning now.

  “Follow me,” Howell said and nodded toward the center. “We should talk about the job.”

  The area just inside the building’s doorway turned out to be a combination waiting area and supply-and-gift shop. There were folding chairs to one side of the room that Julia guessed were for visitors, a counter and cash register, and walls lined with all manner of greyhound-related merchandise: books on the breed’s history and care; porcelain statues and life-size posters of greys; ashtrays, coffee mugs, pens, beach towels, cooking aprons, sweatshirts, T-shirts, jackets, and even socks featuring their likenesses. There were also leashes, collars, and coats as well as plenty of general dog health and grooming items.

  Howell had noticed Julia looking around the place.

  “Every cent we make here at our In the Money store . . . that’s a little play on words, since racing greyhounds get retired, really discarded, by their kennel owners and trainers after they’ve finished out of the money once too often . . . goes toward the upkeep of our facility and maintenance and veterinary expenses for the dogs,” he said. “We do lots of mail order and are just getting into online sales.”

  Julia faced him, impressed. “That’s quite an operation,” she said.

  Howell stood at one end of the counter, an elbow resting on its edge.

  “Right now, it’s tough,” he said. “Cyn’s got the baby on her hands, and I’m a night auditor over at a hotel out near San Gregario Beach. But we try our best to juggle everything.”

  “There are no other volunteers?”

  Howell shook his head.

  “We used to have a couple of regulars, super folks,” he said. “A college student who came in two, three afternoons a week. And a woman who’d help us out Saturdays. But the kid transferred to an out-of-state school, and the woman’s a single mom who’s had to take on a paying weekend job to make ends meet.” Howell shrugged. “When she couldn’t cut the schedule anymore, I decided to put up fliers in pet stores.”

  “Like the one I saw,” Julia said. “How’s the response been?”

  He wobbled a hand in the air.

  “I’d categorize it as lukewarm. There’ve been a few candidates, besides you. They were all well intentioned, bless ’em. But being a dog lover or even somebody who’s put in hours at an ordinary animal shelter, isn’t necessarily enough of a qualification. People who haven’t had experience with greys don’t expect the kind of work that’s involved after we rescue them from the track. The dogs are sick, malnourished, and covered with open sores from being cooped up in wooden boxes whenever they’re not racing. They’ve spent their lives in what amounts to a state of sensory deprivation, and it’s easy to lose patience with a seventy- or eighty-pound, five-year-old adult that’s basically a puppy in terms of behavioral development. They aren’t housebroken. They need to be taught how to walk up and down stairs. They’ve never seen windows before and think they can jump right through glass. They’re traumatized, afraid of everything. And with good reason. Maybe sixty percent of them have caught regular beatings from their handlers. I’ve got to figure, though it’s not as if anybody’s going to fess up to it. The dogs come in with gashes, bruises, torn ears, even broken teeth and ribs.”

  Julia nodded.

  “Jill couldn’t do stairs for six months,” she said. “And Jack must’ve been very badly abused. He’d wake up from a dead sleep and spring onto all fours, screaming, his eyes bulging. The sound of those screams, God, it was so horrible. So human. The first time, I was sure he was in excruciating pain, having some kind of physical seizure. I think it was the middle of the night. My husband . . . well, my ex . . . phoned the veterinary clinic’s emergency number, but before we could reach anybody, Jack settled down. From then on, I’d try to soothe him whenever it happened, talk to him the way you’d talk to a person who’s had an awful nightmare. That worked okay after a while. But he still has occasional episodes.”

  Howell gave her an assaying look from where he stood against the counter.

  “Guess I don’t need to worry about your experience,” he said.

  She smiled. “Guess not.”

  Howell was silent a moment.

  “You want to know the hardest thing about running this show?” he said at length. “For me and Cyn, anyway?”

  She nodded again.

  “It’s letting go of the dogs once we’ve gotten them healthy,” he said. “We find that handling more than fifteen or twenty stretches us thin, though we’ve boarded as many as thirty at a time. Every grey we save arrives with a whole set of problems and needs lots of attention. Some are here months, even years, before we find a suitable home, and they can grow on you. One-on-one. But you have to be able to keep a certain distance, almost a doctor-patient relationship, and that takes a strong kind of person. You invest too much of yourself in a particular animal, you’re going to have your heart broken more than a little when it’s placed.”

  Julia looked at him.

  “Or wind up living with the whole cast of Friends,” she said, thinking she’d managed to survive her disastrous seven-year investment in a marriage that had been liquidated when Craig decided to take a sudden hike on her—talk about having to let go and learn to cope with heartbreak.

  The room was quiet. Howell leaned against the counter, a thoughtful expression on his face. Julia heard the distinctive throaty woofing of a grey somewhere out back of the building, followed by that of a second dog. Then the overlapping, explosive barks of what sounded like at least three or four more of them.

  “Rolling thunder,” Howell said. “They’ve been stuck in their kennels all day, and are letting me know they want to be let out to do their business.” He pushed himself off the counter. “You have time to help with that right now?”

  Julia smiled.

  “Sure,” she said. “Whatever dirty job you ask of me.”

  Howell motioned toward the door.

  “C’mon,” he said. “We’ll work out your schedule while we walk.”

  THREE

  SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA / MADRID, SPAIN / GABON, AFRICA

  WEARING PROTECTIVE GOGGLES AND EARMUFFS, THE two men stood ready, their knees bent, hands wrapped around the butts of their weapons.

  Then they heard the double beeps in their electronic muffs, a cue that their timed session had started.

  They sighted down the shooting range’s raceway lanes. Now, or maybe an instant from now, their targets would begin moving at changing speeds and angles in computer-generated, randomized tactical scenarios.

  In Nimec’s lane, inconspicuous lights di
mmed to simulate crepuscular conditions. It was dawn or twilight, and the big bad wolves were out on the prowl.

  Nimec saw a metal practice figure shaped like a male head and torso swing up at a firing point in front of him, snapped the muzzle of his Beretta 92 toward it, and squeezed the trigger. The exposed target turned edgewise on its pneumatic actuator stand, avoiding the first 9-mm round. Then it began to duck down. But Nimec’s second shot tagged its flank before it could reach concealment.

  He had no chance to congratulate himself. Another target had emerged from the left side of his raceway lane and charged. Nimec shifted his aim as Metal Man reversed and started to retreat, covering ten feet in about a second. One shot, two, and then the third stopped Metal Man dead in his tracks.

  Fast SOB, Nimec thought. He drew a breath, sliced his gaze this way and that. Another target leaned out from against the wall—a shoulder, a head. His gun crashed, good-bye Charlie.

  In the next lane of the newly overhauled indoor course, Tom Ricci stared into different lighting conditions. Diffuse, full. It could have been the artificial illumination of an office building, a warehouse. Or—

  No, not there, he didn’t want to go there.

  Ricci held his FN Five-Seven by its stippled grip, waited, his nose stinging from the nitrate smell of propellent powder. He’d aced a pair of badguys that had sprung into sight back at the end of the lane and expected more of them, knew there’d be more, wanted more.

  Ricci kept waiting, concentrating, eyes hard for the kill. He tasted acid at the root of his tongue and liked it.

  Then, about forty feet down, here was pop-up badguy number three. Dead center in the lane, cutout gun in hand, got himself some balls, this one. Okay. Okay. Ricci aimed, eager to take him.

  And suddenly his mind turned the hated, unwilling loop. Could be it was the preprogrammed lighting. Or maybe that was groping for a reason. Ricci wouldn’t think about it until later. Office building, warehouse . . . germ factory. Right now he was back. He was there.

  Northern Ontario. The Earthglow facility. Déjà vu all over and over and over again—

  Together they move down the hall. Ricci in the lead, followed by Nichols, Rosander, and Simmons, three members of the Sword rapid deployment team assembled at Ricci’s unrelenting insistence. This is their first mission as a unit, and it is one hell of a nasty biscuit: They have penetrated the heavily guarded facility seeking a cure— or information that might lead to a cure—for the lab-engineered virus with which Roger Gordian has been deliberately infected. Around them are austere gray walls, doors with plain institutional signs. Ricci slows before each sign to read it, then trots forward, seeking the one they need.

  The corridor bends to the right, runs straight for twenty feet, hangs another right, then goes straight again for a short hitch and angles left. The men sprint around this last elbow and see a bottleneck elevator. An arrow below its single call button points downward—a sublevel. On the wall next to the button is a glass plate, what Ricci believes to be an electronic eye, hand, or facial geometry scanner. There is a biohazard trefoil above the elevator’s shiny convex door. The sign beneath it reads:

  RESTRICTED

  BSL-4 LABORATORIES

  AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY

  Ricci feels a cold tack push into his heart. While no medical expert, he’s done his homework in preparation for the raid, and knows that BSL-4 is the highest level of safeguard for personnel working with dangerous pathogens. It occurs to him that this may well be the birthplace of the mutant virus that is turning Gordian’s internal organs to bloody sludge in a San Jose hospital bed. He also realizes that the killer, who Rollie Thibodeau—Ricci’s co-supervisor of field security operations—calls the Wildcat, is likely one of the authorized. Ricci detests the name Thibodeau has attached to him, thinks it sounds too much like a badge of honor. But then, he and Thibodeau are on very different pages about almost everything.

  Ricci lets these thoughts have their unpleasant moment, then he looks at Rosander and Simmons.

  “We have to separate,” he says. “Somebody could come up this elevator, surprise us from the rear. It’s got to be watched while I scope out the rest of the hall.”

  The two men accept his orders in silence. Then a thumbs-up from Rosander, his eyes fastened on Ricci’s.

  “Good luck,” he says. “Chief.”

  There is pride and respect in Rosander’s voice as he addresses Ricci with that informal designation of rank. Chief. Even if there were time, Ricci knows he could never express how much it means to him. He is not the share-and-bare-it-all type. Not by a hobbled man’s mile.

  He nods, claps Rosander’s shoulder, shifts his gaze to Nichols, who is young, green, and has made mistakes in training that might have gotten someone else dismissed from the team. In fact, the kid had been prepared to lay his head on the chopping block afterward. But Ricci had seen some of his own fire in Nichols’s eyes—only a cleaner, brighter, untainted flame—and convinced him to stay on.

  “Ready?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Ricci nods again.

  “Come on, it’s you and me,” he says, and they hurry on along the corridor, leaving the other two men behind to guard their rear.

  Though Ricci cannot know it, the next time he sees them they will be dead on the floor near the elevator, Simmons bleeding out from multiple bullet wounds to the side of his rib cage, Rosander with a crushed windpipe, and his brains oozing from a point-blank gunshot to the head meant to finish him off like an animal in a slaughterhouse pen.

  And that will not be the worst of it. Unbelievably, unbearably, not the worst . . .

  Ricci heard the flat, electronically baffled report of his gun through his earmuffs—a sound that tugged him from the sinkhole of memory with his finger still tight on the trigger. He took in the present like a drowning man starved for air as the third firing-range badguy went down, caught by a single clean shot. The Five-Seven raised level with his chest, Ricci stood waiting, ready, wanting to stay fluid as the tac sequence progressed. To keep his mind on the controllable here and now, and resist the desirous undertow of the past.

  A second ticked by. Ricci breathed, exhaled. Ready. Steady. A crouched figure appeared from the right side of the course, the computerized lights dimming around it for a little added mischief and chaos. Go! Ricci swiveled his extended arms, sighted over the nub of his gun barrel, and bang. Crouching badguy was no more.

  Ricci held a motionless shooter’s stance. Took another breath. Kept trying not to think but to be. Here, now. In the moment, as the movie stars liked to say. Then a fifth badguy sprang out at him, standing at full height, facing Ricci from the middle of the corridor—

  No, no. The firing lane.

  Ricci swore to himself. Just what moment had he been in?

  He got that biting, bitter taste in his mouth again, his gun swinging into position, his finger starting its deadly squeeze . . . and stopping.

  Another figure had sprung up out of nowhere directly in front of the badguy. A woman, her painted-on eyes wide, her painted-on mouth gaping in a silent scream, the expression a cartoon facsimile of terror. Ricci held his fire. This was goddamned unexpected. Sure, why not? Unexpected was the whole point of this exercise.

  Clever fucking software.

  Practice badguy, practice hostage.

  Ricci hesitated. Tick-tick-tick. Decision time. Now thought had to reenter the process. And with thought came a backslide into the choking memories of Ontario, and his dash through that final passage with Nichols, deep in the hornet’s nest, desperate to find what he needed to save Gordian’s life, uncertain whether he’d even know how to recognize it, or the place where it would be stored. Ricci’s helmet gear had provided wireless audiovisual contact with Eric Oh, an epidemiologist who was coaching him from three time zones away in California, and who Ricci had been told might know if they were very lucky—

  On his right, behind a thick plate-glass inset, Ricci sees a large room filled with equipment
that seems to indicate he’s getting hot. Tanks, ducting, air feed, and intake pumps.

  “Doc? You with me?” he says into his helmet mike.

  “Yes. You’re looking at the microencapsulation lab. This can’t be far from where they’d keep the cure.”

  “Right. Assuming there is one.”

  Silence to that remark.

  Ricci looks at the solid concrete wall ahead of him with a stitch of apprehension, hustles along at a trot. The problem is he’s running out of hallway. Three, four more office doors on either side, and that’s it. Dead end. If he doesn’t find what he needs here, it’s doubtful he can shift the hunt to another part of the facility without turning all his men into casualties. He can almost feel the weight of their lives on his shoulders.

  “Ricci, wait, slow down!” Eric’s voice is loud, excited in his comlink’s earpiece. “Over on your left, that door!”

  He stops, turns, scans the sign above it:

  POLYMERASE ACTIVATORS/ANTIVIRALS

  “Tom, listen—”

  “You don’t have to translate,” Ricci says. “We’re going in.”

  He quickly moves to the left of the door, waves Nichols to the opposite side, tries the knob. Locked. Stepping back, Ricci aims his weapon—it is a compact variable velocity rifle system subgun with adjustable lethal or nonlethal settings—at the spot below the knob, squeezes off a staccato burst, then kicks out at the door. It flings inward without resistance, the lock mechanism in fragments from his shots.

  They scramble into the room, Ricci fanning his outthrust gun to the left, Nichols buttonhooking to the right of the doorway, looking sharp, his technique perfect.

  The office is unoccupied, its lights off. Ricci finds the wall switch and they come on.

  He is seconds from a decision that he will always wish he could unmake.