Breaking Point nf-4

by Tom Clancy

  “That’s what the job description says.”

  “Okay. See what you can get from them on this.”

  If they could find out who this Ventura character was, if they could background and history him, they might be able to track him down. And if they found him, they’d find Morrison.

  The intercom blipped. “Yes?”

  His secretary said, “Sir, we have an incoming call from the director for Toni Fiorella.”

  Michaels frowned. He waved at Toni, who picked up a handset on the table.

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  The director said something, and Toni nodded. “Yes, ma’am, I have decided.” She glanced at Michaels. “I’ll take it.”

  His gut twisted a little at that, but she was a grown woman, she had to make her own choices.

  “Yes, ma’am, go ahead.”

  Toni listened for what seemed like a long time. Neither Michaels nor Jay made any pretense they were doing anything other than listening to her end of the conversation.

  “I see. Yes, I’ll tell them. Yes, ma’am, I’m glad to be onboard.”

  She cradled the phone, looking disturbed.

  “What?” Michaels said.

  “Sheriff’s deputies in Woodland Hills, California, were called to a disturbance at a movie theater there a few minutes ago. Inside, they found more than a dozen bodies, all shot dead, plus a locked storeroom full of screenwriters.”

  “Corpses and a room full of screenwriters? This concerns us how?” Jay put in.

  “One of the bodies was IDed as a man named Qian Ho Wu, a registered foreign lobbyist who the FBI Counter Espionage Unit has tagged as a probable spy for China.”

  “Uh-huh?”

  “One of the bodies has been identified as Dr. Patrick Morrison.”

  “Oh, shit,” Jay said. Then he thought about it a second, and said, “But that solves our problem, doesn’t it? Dead men don’t generate radio broadcasts.”

  Toni said it before Michaels had a chance to say it: “You’re assuming he didn’t tell anybody how he did it before he died.”

  “Well, he probably didn’t tell the Chinese. Maybe they were after him because they figured out he was responsible for what happened to their villages. They caught up with him, there was a shoot-out, end of story.”

  “Too easy,” Michaels said. He tapped the com. “Get me on the next flight going to Los Angeles.”

  “You’re not a field agent, Alex,” Toni said. “The FBI will take care of this, you can’t—”

  “But I can,” he said, cutting her off. “Portland got zapped with some kind of death ray, the leader of my strike team is in bed nursing a gunshot wound, and my top computer whiz just got the crap beat out of him — not to mention I had the guy responsible for all of this in my hands and I let him walk away. This has been a FUBAR from the word go.”

  “You didn’t know—”

  “But I know now. You want to tell your new boss I’m overstepping my bounds, fine, go ahead. I can take some vacation days myself if I have to.”

  “You don’t have to,” she said. “And if you want, I’ll go with you.”

  He considered his next words carefully. He considered not saying anything, but decided he needed to: “This is Net Force’s problem, Toni, and I think Net Force should take care of it.”

  She blinked at him. “And I’m not part of Net Force anymore, is that what you’re saying?”

  “You said it, not me.”

  She nodded. “I see.”

  He didn’t like the way it made him feel, didn’t like the distress on her face, but it was going to come out eventually, and better sooner than later. Maybe they could salvage their personal relationship; he sure hoped so. But the job had already changed. It wasn’t going to be the same as it had been. If Toni didn’t work for him anymore, okay, fine, he could learn to deal with that. If she was going to report about what he did to somebody else, he needed to have some control as to what he let her see and hear. If the director wanted to keep tabs on him, all right, that was her prerogative. Nothing said he had to make it easy for her.

  Toni had made her choice. Now they’d both have to live with it.

  In the air over northern California

  Ventura glanced around, uneasy. There was nobody looking at him, and he hadn’t seen anybody following him, but something felt… off, somehow. He was in full-alert mode, scanning, listening, being aware, and he hadn’t spotted anything about which to be worried, but even so, something was not quite right.

  He glanced at his watch. Maybe it was the flight. He was concerned about being in the jet’s first-class cabin—

  “Can I get you anything?”

  Ventura gave the young flight attendant a polite smile. “No, thank you.” He had booked a business-class e-ticket, using one of a dozen fake IDs he always carried, but the flight had been full, and by the time he’d checked in, the only empty seats remaining had been in first class. Normally, he didn’t fly first class; it was harder to blend into the herd when you were up front. But demanding to sit in the tourist section would really make you stand out — who refused a free upgrade? — and the idea was to be as anonymous as possible. You wanted to be just another middle-aged businessman, do nothing to stick in somebody’s memory, and hope you didn’t remind the stewardess of her favorite uncle.

  The attendant moved on, and Ventura turned to stare out at the terrain. The flight from L.A. to Seattle took about three hours. He’d rent a car at SeaTac and drive to Port Townsend, probably another three or four hours — you had to allow for the ferry ride, plus he wanted to do a little circling for his approach. That would put him there in the evening, but it didn’t get dark up this far north in the summer before maybe nine-thirty or ten. So there was no real hurry, since night was your friend. Plenty of time to stop and have supper, get set up, do the job.

  He looked out through the jet’s double-plastic window. There was a big snow-covered mountain below and in the distance. Shasta? Must be.

  Ventura figured the local authorities in L.A. had uncovered the mess in the theater by now, and if so, they had certainly identified Dr. Morrison. As hard as the feds would have been looking for Morrison after the shootings in Alaska, they’d be on the case quickly. He had considered hauling the corpse away, disposing of it, but since the man was dead and no longer his responsibility, it was tactically much smarter to let him be found. He’d made sure that Morrison’s wallet was still in the dead man’s pocket, to speed things up. That would certainly stop the direct search, and maybe the feds wouldn’t be all that interested in looking for accomplices.

  It wouldn’t slow the Chinese down. Surely Wu had passed his intel along to somebody higher up the food chain — Ventura couldn’t imagine that the man’s stingy government had given him hundreds of millions of dollars to spend without knowing every detail of what they were buying. The Chinese would very much like to speak to anybody connected to the deal. Once they found out Morrison was dead, they’d really have their underwear in a wad. Ventura would be at the top of their list of people to see.

  The feds would have dropped their surveillance of Morrison’s house as soon as they realized what had happened to him — dead men didn’t move around a lot on their own, and the only way he’d be coming home would be in a box. Ventura’s team was, of course, long gone, pulled off as soon as he’d realized the man he’d shot in Alaska was a marshal and not a Chinese agent, and that more feds would thus be coming to have a little chat with Morrison’s spouse. He hadn’t told his client, who thought his young trophy wife was protected — no point in giving him anything else to worry about.

  The feds would probably want to have a few more chats with the widow Morrison, and certainly the Chinese would pay the young lady a visit, but since she didn’t know anything, she couldn’t tell either side anything. She might be joining her late husband by the time the Chinese figured that out, but that wasn’t his problem — as long as he wasn’t there when the Yellow Peril came to call.

  Th
e Yellow Peril. He smiled. He wasn’t a racist. Sure, he played that card for people like Bull Smith, to allow them to believe he was simpatico with their beliefs, but he didn’t care one way or another about somebody’s skin color or gender. He’d worked with people of every race, male and female, and the single criterion that mattered to him was how well they could do the job. If you could pull the trigger when it came to that, and hit your mark, you could be a green hermaphrodite with purple stripes for all he cared. He’d learned the term “Yellow Peril” from the old Fu Manchu books, material that had been written in an age where racism was the default belief and nobody thought much about it.

  Normally for this kind of work Ventura would have wanted to take his time. He’d get to know the territory, learn the patterns, who went where, when, and how, and not move until he had everything pinned down. The more you knew, the fewer chances for surprises. He didn’t have that luxury now. He needed to move quickly, get his business done, and leave this behind him. He had his money cleared, clean IDs, and safe places where he could hide until he had a chance to work out his longer-term plans. Being in the moment didn’t mean you couldn’t think about the future; it merely meant you didn’t live in the future.

  He was, he figured, in a fairly good position. Still there was that nagging uneasiness, that sense of being a bug on a slide. As if a giant eye could appear in the microscope at any time, staring down at him. He did not like the feeling.

  Well. You did the best you could, and that was that; nothing else mattered.

  They were still an hour or more away from SeaTac. He’d get some rest. It might be a while before he had another chance. He took a series of slow, deep breaths.

  In three minutes. he was asleep.

  35

  Quantico, Virginia

  Toni went to the small gym to work off the tension and anger she felt. There was a guy in steel-rimmed glasses, a T-shirt, and bike shorts doing hatha yoga in the corner, otherwise the place was empty. She hurried through her own stretching routine, bowed in, and began practicing djurus, working the triangle, the tiga. Half an hour later, when she was done, she started footwork exercises on the square, langkas on the sliwa.

  The moves were there, automatic after so many years, but her mind was elsewhere.

  Alex was upset with her, that was obvious. Well, what had she expected? That he would smile and pat her on the head and offer his congratulations? She tried to see it from his viewpoint, but she knew she couldn’t have it both ways, not this time. This was the best thing. Working for him had become a sore point even before they had gone to London; he wasn’t treating her like he did the other members of the Net Force team, he was shielding her, and she didn’t want that, not in the work. So, okay, there was going to be an uncomfortable period while he adjusted to her new job. She didn’t like it, but that was how it seemed to be working out.

  In the long run, she kept telling herself, it would be better for them. They’d be able to relate to each other more like equals, the personal relationship wouldn’t be bogged down in the professional one.

  Yeah, but in the long run, we’re all dead, aren’t we? So what happens after a couple months of nobody having a good time if you or Alex get hit by a bus crossing the street? How is that going to fit in with your “long run” plan, hmm?

  Toni stopped moving and stared into the mirror at the end of the room. Crap. I really don’t need this.

  But — what help was there for it? What else could she do? She had to make a living!

  She sighed, went back to her footwork.

  A few minutes later, she was aware that the yoga guy had finished his routine and left, but that he’d been replaced by a trio of other men. Two of them were in karate uniforms, the third wore dark blue FBI sweats. One of the karate guys wore a brown cloth belt tied around his waist to keep his gi shut, the other a black belt. They were watching her. Watching and smiling. Then the guy in sweats leaned over and said something to the other two.

  Pentjak silat wasn’t a flashy art; a lot of what went on in it didn’t look particularly impressive to the uninitiated. The last time a martial arts player from another style stood here and watched her practice, he had made the mistake of making some ignorant remarks out loud. She had been having a bad day when that happened — not nearly as bad as this one — and she had demonstrated to the loudmouth that what she was doing was in many ways superior to what he knew about fighting. It had been a painful lesson for the man.

  The lesson she had learned was pretty painful, too.

  She didn’t want to think about what had happened with — and to — that man later, but she couldn’t avoid it. Rusty had become her student, then her lover, however briefly, and as a direct result, he was dead.

  Given the day so far, the opportunity to offer a correction to any — or all — of these three if they spouted off would feel pretty good. It wasn’t part of a self-defense mind-set to entertain such thoughts, but silat wasn’t primarily a self-defense art, it was a fighting art, and there was a big difference in your level of aggressiveness.

  Toni stopped what she was doing and walked toward the trio.

  “Afternoon,” she said. “Can I help you with something?”

  The guy in sweats was the oldest of the three men; he had short and curly gray hair. He smiled and gave her a small bow. “No, ma’am,” he said. “We were just admiring your art, guru. Silat Tjimande?”

  That surprised her. He got the subset wrong, but he knew it was silat and he had enough appreciation and understanding to call her “guru,” as well. Damn.

  “It’s Serak,” she said, the “k” silent. “But it’s Western Javanese, like Tjimande. I’m surprised you recognized it.”

  “I used to work out with an old Dutch kuntao teacher in San Diego,” he said. “He had done a little training in silat as a boy. My JKD teacher also had some training in Harimau, tiger-style.”

  Toni nodded. JKD — jeet kun do, the way of the intercepting fist — was the style created by the late Bruce Lee. It was a hybrid system, and while they weren’t big on forms, many of the moves were based on wing chun, which to some people looked at least superficially like silat. At least the WC players knew in theory what the centerline was, even if they didn’t cover it adequately according to Serak standards…

  If Curly here knew enough to recognize and respect what she was doing, he probably wouldn’t be interested in trying to deck her to impress his friends. Silat fighters didn’t go in much for point-sparring, and for that matter, neither did JKD players.

  Well. Too bad. Kicking somebody’s butt would feel pretty good about now.

  And she was going to have to do something or she would explode.

  But — what could she do?

  Woodland Hills, California

  It was dark by the time Michaels got to the theater, and there really wasn’t much left to look at by then. Truth was, there really wasn’t any good reason for him to be here, except to see things — such as they were — for himself. Anybody involved with this who was still alive was undoubtedly long gone.

  The bodies had been removed, the screenwriters released after giving their statements, and the local police still puzzled as to what had happened. The mainline FBI op who showed up to meet Michaels was a junior man, not the special-agent-in-charge, but he was willing to say what he thought. His name was Dixon.

  Michaels and Agent Dixon ducked under the yellow crime-scene tape covering the doors and went into the building.

  “Here’s what we know,” Dixon said. “The dead men, all thirteen of them, were shot in the theater proper. We have identification on six so far”—he looked at his palm computer—“Wu, Morrison, a screenwriter named C. B. Shane, and three men with criminal records: two Vietnamese-Americans, Jimmy Nguyen and Phuc Khiev, and a man named Maxim Schell. Nguyen, Khiev, Schell, and Morrison were armed with handguns. Nguyen’s was in his hand, Khiev’s on the floor under his body, Schell’s still tucked into his belt. None of them got a shot off, though some o
f the other dead men did fire their weapons.

  “Morrison’s gun, a little.22, was locked in his right hand in a death grip, and shot empty. Nobody got hit with a.22 that we can tell. We haven’t come up with IDs on the other dead men yet, but all of them had guns, too.”

  Michaels said, “So what do you think happened here?”

  “No way to tell for sure. The dead guys were mostly shot in the back or back of the head, so what it looks like is some kind of ambush. You have to figure that if you have a dozen armed men, most of whom didn’t do any shooting before they got taken down, there were a lot of other guys in here blasting away, too. Forensics hasn’t gotten the blood all sorted out, but a quick prelim says there were a few who got hit hard enough to bleed, but who didn’t stick around.”

  “Jesus.”

  “We’d take his help if he offered. You must have some ideas. You got anything for us?”

  Michaels thought about it. Toni would tell the director anyway, it was her job now, so it didn’t matter if Dixon knew. He said, “Morrison had some kind of valuable data and he used it against the Chinese. We think maybe they were after him. Maybe they caught up with him.”

  “What kind of data?”

  “Sorry, that’s need-to-know only.”

  Dixon shook his head. “Doesn’t seem right. The dead guys were all sitting down when the shooting started. And according to the interviews with the screenwriters, everything was quiet until somebody yelled ‘Gun!’ At which point, all hell busted loose. It sounds more like a negotiation than a face-off.”

  “It must have been an ugly scene in here.”

  “Yeah. Though a couple of the screenwriters were more pissed because they didn’t get to see the movie than they were upset about all the corpses. Welcome to L.A.”

  Michaels considered what Dixon had said. A negotiation. Yes, it did, didn’t it? Why would the Chinese be negotiating with a man who had wiped out a couple of their villages?

  Maybe they wanted him to tell them how. Maybe they were willing to pay for it?