Net Force

Gridley shook his head. 'I dunno, Chief. I went for a ride on half-a-dozen major highways — netways — and there were wrecks on all of them. Plus a bunch of others I didn't get around to. The cops — ah, the sysops — didn't have any big problems clearing most of them, although the Australian pileup was a real bastard. It was simple stuff, but traffic slowed down everywhere.'

'But we're not talking major sabotage? And it didn't seem focused on one particular system?'

Jay shook his head. 'Well, sort of and no. No piece of it was a biggie, but taken altogether, it adds up to major. Time is money, especially on the commercial roads, and there was a lot of stuff got shuffled because of some of the delays. If some big portion of that was diverted into one pocket, the guy wearing that jacket could retire and buy Cleveland, if he wanted. Though I can't imagine he'd want to. But as far as we can tell, nobody got rich off the snafu — least we haven't found who or how yet.'

Jay paused, blinked, then stared into space as if he'd gone into a trance.

'Jay?'

'Oh, sorry. Far as I can tell, no one system was hit any harder than another. It was spread over dozens of links fairly evenly. I've got houndbots sniffing, but none of ‘em have run anything to a source. Whoever built this program is good, real good, ‘cause he slipped it past a bunch of safeguards and the only people who caught him was us.'

Gridley smiled, obviously pleased with that fact.

'So Net Force systems were unaffected?'

'Yep. He tried, but he bounced off our wards. Guy's not as sharp as he thinks. He doesn't know who he's messing with. We'll run him down.'

For no reason at all, Michaels had a sudden flare of suspicion. Unless he wanted us to think he couldn't get past our guards.

'All right. Go and find whoever did this. Let me know how it progresses.'

'You got it, Chief.'

Gridley stood and sauntered from his office. Once the young man was gone, Michaels leaned back in his chair and pondered the situation. Since Steve Day's death, something hadn't felt right. He couldn't quite put his finger on what it was, but he felt as if somehow Net Force was under attack. It could be nothing more than the professional paranoia of course, that went with the job, but if it wasn't, if somebody was out to damage Net Force, who was it? And more important than that, why?

He waved a hand back and forth over his com unit.

From her office next door, Toni said, 'Yes?'

'Hey, Toni. Anything new?'

'Sorry, Alex, no.'

Day's murder still hung over the unit like a heavy thundercloud: dark, threatening, unresolved.

He started to say something to his assistant, but decided to hold off. He didn't want to sound like the little boy crying wolf; besides, there was enough on his plate to worry about: the murder investigation, the situation in Ukraine, the other net problems. Better to keep his unfounded suspicions to himself, unless something else came along to give them some weight.

9

Friday, September 17th, 5:01 a.m. In the air over Northern Europe

Colonel John Howard leaned back in the jetliner's seat and nodded at Sergeant Fernandez next to him. Probably one of the smartest things Net Force had ever done was to lease several 747's, then outfit them for fast tactical flights. The big Boeing jets were a long way from the old bone-jarring military transports that were little more than hollowed-out aluminum shells, so noisy you couldn't talk or even think straight. Aside from the comfort factor, there was a very practical reason for this choice: A 747 with civilian markings could land in places where a U.S. military cargo plane would get a Stinger missile up the spout for being stupid enough to try.

'Okay, Julio, let's run through it one more time.'

The sergeant shook his head. 'Begging the colonel's pardon—'

'There would be a first,' Howard broke in.

'— and no disrespect intended,' Fernandez continued, ignoring Howard's comment, 'but the colonel must have a brain like a sieve.'

'Thank you for your neurological opinion, Dr. Fernandez.' He rolled his finger in the 'continue' sign. 'Move along.'

Fernandez sighed. 'Sir. Ukraine is about the size of France, holds fifty-two million people, has an elected President, and a four-hundred-fifty-person parliament called the Verkhovna Rada. The U.S. Embassy is in the capital of Kiev, at 10 Yuriya Kotsubinskoho. The building used to be the Communist Party precinct and Communist Youth League HQ, before the Ukrainians kicked the Commies out in ‘91. There are one hundred and ninety-eight American employees and two hundred and forty-four Ukrainian nationals working at or for the embassy.'

Howard smiled, but kept it to himself. Sarge never told it the same way twice.

Fernandez continued. 'Kiev has a population of three million, covers forty-five by forty-four kilometers and sits on the Dnieper River, which runs all the way to the Black Sea. This time of year it's still warm, though mostly overcast and about to get rainy. About seventy-five percent of the population is Ukrainian, twenty percent are Russian, the rest are Jews, Byelorussians, Moldovans, Poles, Armenians, Greeks and Bulgarians. Counting yourself, there might be three people of African descent in the country, although some of the Crimeans and ethnic Mongols are a bit dark. You will draw a crowd on the streets, sir.'

Howard waved him off. They had argued about this for half the trip. According to Fernandez, there was no way the colonel should be on this operation. He should sit back at the embassy and direct traffic by radio and satlink. Sir.

'Go on.'

'Sir. The city is eight time zones ahead of D.C. It has an okay subway and surface street system, lousy radio and TV stations. You can get the CNBC Superstation until noon, and CNN after six p.m., and yesterday's Wall Street Journal and New York Times if you go to a big hotel and are willing to pay half your retirement for a copy of either. If you go into a public bathroom, best you take your own toilet paper, you will need it.

'Money is the ‘hryvnia,' and one of ours will get you two of theirs at the legal exchanges. The water is okay to bathe in if you let it run a few seconds for the lead to settle out, but you don't want to drink it without boiling it, due to bacteria and intestinal parasites. Radiation levels from Chernobyl are mostly normal, but don't eat local mushrooms, berries, or game animals unless you want to maybe be able to read at night without using a bedside lamp.

'If you drink alcohol and drive and get caught, you'll probably get thrown into jail, unless it is the militia that catches you, in which case you'll probably be shot on the spot. They drink like fish here, but they walk when they get potted. Zero tolerance for drunk drivers and more power to ‘em.

'A lot of folks still speak Russian, but the official language is now Ukrainian. The most useful phrase you'll want to know in Ukrainian is, ‘Probachteh, deh cholovee-chy tualeht.' '

Howard said, 'Which means?'

' ‘Excuse me, but where is the men's room?' '

Howard grinned, and shook his head. 'Keep going.'

Fernandez droned on, but now Howard was only listening with half his attention. Despite his sergeant's concern over his brain leakage, he did know this material. He was just burning it in deeper. Better to be sure than sorry.

Unfortunately, Sarge was right about him not skulking around on the streets of Kiev. He'd been to China, and everywhere he had gone people had come up to him to stare, and sometimes to touch him. Black wasn't just different in some cultures; it was amazing. No way could he move around surreptitiously with that kind of attention on him. And yet, the idea of sitting in an embassy command room trading comments with the CIA station chief