He slapped the descrambler onto the keypad lock and activated it. Ha!
Bright flashes of light blossomed in his vision—
Jay watched as his VR viewpoint shifted backward from his body, rising to a point three meters overhead.
An alien wearing a guard’s uniform popped out from behind a doorway twenty or thirty feet away. It was grinning. If that hideous expression could be called a grin.
He hadn’t seen that one coming. Part of the problem with having never made it this far before. He’d gotten careless trying to beat the mission. Bright green letters from the VR menu popped up, accompanied by a deep bass techno theme:
Jay checked the RW time. 12:45. If he didn’t quit now, he’d miss lunch. He looked at the game timer. 15:23. He could have made it if the damn guard hadn’t gotten him.
Yeah. And if your aunt had wheels, she’d be a tea cart. . . .
He used his VR hand to reach for the try-again control, but had a sudden realization and stopped.
He shook his head.
He had to hand it to the guy who’d put this together. It was easy to see why it had gotten the results it had —it was addictive. But what he needed to do was figure out who had built the scenario, and how to run him down —not beat the game. He was here to drain the swamp, not wrestle the alligators. . . .
He smiled at himself. He could always play video games for fun. This was serious business. Best he remember that.
11
The terrorist—or “freedom fighter,” depending on your sociopolitical or religious belief—Abu Hassan was a Palestinian by birth, but raised in the U.S. as Ibrahim Sidys. He took his war-nom from, of all things, an old Popeye cartoon about Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. That’s not where it came from originally—the name was not at all uncommon—but that’s where
Only in America . . .
This Abu Hassan had never been a cartoon version of Bluto, but a cold-blooded killer responsible for the deaths of hundreds, in bombings, shootings, and even a couple of poisonings. For nine years he had led one of the most radical factions in the Middle East, and was wanted by just about everybody for capital crimes—even the Syrians hated him—for Abu Hassan did not discriminate when he dropped the hammer. Almost everybody was his enemy, and he had no problems with collateral damage if he got the job done. Allah would know his own, and as for the rest? Who cared?
As it happened, one Sunday morning in May of 2012, Terry “Butch” Reilly, then a major in the United States Army, had been having coffee at a Starbucks just outside the old Green Zone when Abu Hassan’s group rolled up to machine-gun a police station across the street. Four cops and six civilians went down initially in the hosing, but something happened to Hassan’s Land Cruiser as it was pulling away—later it was shown that a return round, probably from an Iraqi policeman, penetrated the car’s hood and broke off a battery terminal. The car died and wouldn’t restart, and the assassins, five of them, piled out and took off on foot.
Abu Hassan, waving an AK-47, ran into the Starbucks to obtain another automobile, assuming at least one of the patrons owned a car. Calm as you please, Major Reilly, in civvies and crouched low with the other patrons when the shooting started, drew his Beretta side arm from under a sleeveless fishing vest and put two rounds into Hassan from four meters away, one in the chest and one in the head.
Apparently, nobody was more amazed at this action than Reilly, largely because he was, and had been throughout his military career, a paper- and photon-pusher—he worked in PR, information services, and was doing a tour in the “semiactive, advisor-status-only” war zone only because he couldn’t get any more rank without it. He hadn’t fired a gun since basic training, except for recertification once a year, and had barely qualified doing that.
That the most wanted terrorist in the region was taken out by an armchair computer geek who barely knew which end of his weapon put forth the bullet eventually got much play in the press.
When Reilly went over to make sure the terrorist wasn’t going to be getting up and shooting anybody, he saw that the dead man carried a pistol along with his AK. Quite a striking gun it was: a blued-steel Walther PPK .380, with ivory grips, hand-tuned, Butch would eventually learn, by a master gunsmith in Laredo, Texas. The gun, Butch would also find out, had been a present from a fellow terrorist who had once been very high up in the PLO and a close associate of the late Yasir Arafat.
The major didn’t see as how Abu Hassan would be needing the piece any longer, and it would be a shame to have such a fine talisman wind up in some Iraqi evidence locker, so he stuck the gun into his pocket. If any of the stunned Starbucks patrons noticed, or cared, none said anything.
Taking out one of the most wanted terrorists in the world in a one-on-one didn’t hurt an officer’s career any. A few months later, Major Reilly was promoted to Colonel Reilly, and eventually assigned a base command back in the States. This turned out to be one of the new high-tech installations built to house a partner organization for Fort Huachuca. The fort and the partner organization, coming up just ahead, were north of the Mexican border off SR 90, outside of Huachuca City, Arizona. Colonel Reilly’s command was responsible for information management, DISA, in conjunction with JITC, mainly interoperability C4I support, operational field assessments, and technical assistance to various combat commands and assorted related agencies.
A buncha desk commandos, Carruth knew. Spin-controllers.
But: Behind his desk on the wall, mounted in an oak shadowbox, Colonel Reilly kept a souvenir from his one active afternoon in the field—Abu Hassan’s pistol.
All of this was public record, and Carruth had read about it, seen it on television, and heard stories about it when he’d still been in the Navy. Be in the right place at the right time, and even a pencil-neck could be some kind of accidental hero.
There was still some residual shame amongst terrorists that the deadly Abu Hassan had been taken down by someone who was less than a glorious warrior. It was one thing to be Goliath slain by a sneaky and treacherous David fielding superior weaponry; it was something else entirely to be potted by David’s dweeby little four-eyed Starbucks-coffee-drinking brother.
Despite the recent attacks, all you needed to get onto this particular base was a driver’s license, proof of car registration and insurance, and a copy of your orders or TDY. Carruth knew a printer who could make
Carruth flashed his phony orders and ID, drove onto the base, made his way to the adjunct run by Reilly, flashed more phony orders there, and during lunchtime, just strolled down the hall as if he owned it to the colonel’s office.
There was a keypad lock on the door, which was not much—he could have booted it open, but that would have set off an alarm. Since he had the code for the lock, which was supposed to be changed weekly, but which was changed maybe twice a year, Carruth just tapped in the combination and walked in.
Security. What a joke.
He took the shadowbox down, opened it, put the gun in his pocket, and replaced the stolen one with a BB- gun copy of a PPK he’d fitted with fake ivory grips. It wouldn’t pass inspection up close, but if you just glanced at it, you might not notice immediately. That could be fun, the next time the colonel showed it off:
