those out.'
'They won't come here?'
'Wishful thinking. Doctor. No, they'll want a place of their
choosing. They'll settle for one of our choosing, but it'll have to be
a lot more neutral than an armed camp where the shape of their eyes and
sallow skin color might get them shot, just for the fun of it. Wouldn't
you?'
'I suppose so.'
'You suppose correctly. This is where it really gets tricky.'
Morrison stared at him.
Ventura chuckled.
'We're in the tiger's cage, and he's not made of paper. Any mistakes
now, and he eats us.
Speaking of which, shall we try some of that barbecue?
I'm starving.'
Morrison shook his head. The last thing he felt like doing was
eating.
Tuesday, June 14th Quantico, Virginia
On the phone, Michaels realized he was all knotted up as he sat hunched
forward in his office chair. He tried to relax. Probably an oxymoron,
that, trying to relax. Nonetheless, he took a deep breath and let it
out slowly, and allowed his shoulders to slump with his exhalation. It
helped a little. He said, 'So what's your take on it, John?'
Howard didn't sound as if he had been shot and almost killed only hours
ago. He said, 'Morrison is our boy. No reason for him to resist the
marshals otherwise, and damned sure no reason for him to have shooters
on hand to resist with. If we can keep him away from HAARP or any of
the other transmitters like it, we can stop the attacks.'
Michaels asked the question that had been bothering him.
'Why would he do this? Drive people to a killing madness?'
There was a pause.
'I don't know. Maybe he's crazy himself.'
Michaels sighed. The man hadn't seemed crazy when he'd been sitting
right here in this office, talking about this stuff. In retrospect, it
was obvious that Morrison had been covering his ass, trying to
misdirect Net Force, and except for Jay's talking to a security guard,
he'd done a good job of it. So he wasn't that crazy. He'd known they
might come looking for him, known it and thought to head it off in
advance. Didn't sound crazy.
Why had he done it? To see if he could? Once would have proven that,
twice made it certain. Three times was overkill. If he had planned on
extortion, he'd screwed up--they knew who he was, and had an idea of
what it was he had done, if not actually how he'd pulled it off, so any
threat he had in mind was dead--especially since he no longer had the
tools to do it at his disposal. This wasn't something you could cobble
together with a kit from Radio Shack
So far. Jay hadn't been able to find anything else that directly
connected Morrison to the events in China or Portland. Hell, if he
hadn't come in. Net Force wouldn't have had a clue about any of this.
