Net Force

'Not a major surprise,' Michaels said.

A small town appeared on both sides of the bayou. A drawbridge linking the halves of the split town loomed ahead of the drifting boat. Downriver, a pair of weathered shrimp boats churned against the slow current toward the bridge. A warning horn blasted from the drawbridge as the center span clamshelled up. Traffic stopped on both sides of the interrupted road, parked behind red-and-white-striped barriers.

Michaels stood and walked to the pilot's chair inside, on the port side of the houseboat. He cranked the engines, waved at the bridge tender, throttled up and hurried the boat toward the opposite side of the bayou from the boats coming upriver.

Behind him, Jay said, 'Build the bridges kinda low in this scenario, don't they?'

'He's not raising it for us. It's for the shrimp boats,' Michaels said.

In reality, the passage was a rerouting of a multigigabyte information flow from one node to another server, a switching operation necessary when large amounts of data needed to move in bulk without interruption. The drawbridge was as good an image as any.

Once they were clear of the bridge and fishing craft, Michaels steered the houseboat toward the center of the bayou, then cut the engines and let it drift. He moved back to the stern. Normally, he'd be paying more attention to the channel around him, but he'd chosen this scenario in part because it didn't require his full attention on the straight and wide sections of the waterway.

Gridley said, 'We're running the signature and looking for matches, but there are hundreds of thousands of professional programmers out there.'

'Assuming he even is a professional and not some gifted amateur,' Michaels said.

Gridley shook his head. 'Guy's gotta be a player. Rascals are too clean to be some kid or duffer.'

Michaels nodded. 'All right. Keep looking. Anything else I should know?'

'Not really. We've got rovers everywhere, looking for more trouble. You know Tyrone Howard?'

'The colonel's son?'

'Yeah. I talked to him netmail. He's checking with his friends. They spend a lot of time on the air, they might notice something. He and his buddies are even checking out CyberNation.'

'CyberNation?'

'A new VR abode. Supposed to be a whole country online.'

'Interesting. Is this something we need to worry about?'

'Someday, maybe, but I don't think it has anything to do with our current problems. CyberNation didn't erase the Commander, and I don't think it's them doing rascals on the net.'

'So about our problem…?'

'Well. If this guy uses the same setup he's been using, we should be on him like ketchup on fries pretty quick.'

'But you don't think he'll use the same setup?'

'Nah. I wouldn't — and this guy is almost as good as I am.'

Michaels laughed.

'Hey, it's hard to be humble when you're great,' Gridley said. He looked at his watch. 'Oops. Better shove off. I have a VR staff meeting in half an hour. Probably take me twice that long to get there using this thing.' He waved at the green bateau, then pointed at the bayou with a side-ways nod. 'Fortunately, I cleverly left my car just around that next bend.'

Michaels cast off the rope as Gridley climbed down into the bateau and started the outboard motor.

'Bye-bye, you-all!' Gridley yelled.

Alex watched the young computer genius head toward the nearer shore. A red Viper convertible was parked at a small dock. As Michaels continued to watch, Gridley pulled the boat to the dock and tied it to a piling. He climbed out of the craft, turned and waved at the houseboat, then headed for the car.

Tuesday, September 21st, 11:50 a.m. Kiev

The terrorists' meeting was supposed to begin at 1130 hours, but Howard had allowed twenty minutes more for late arrivals. That extra allotment of time was now up. There were eighteen men and three women inside the warehouse, and while none of them had openly carried weapons, several had worn long coats, and at least three had arrived bearing what appeared to be cased musical instruments — a cello, a double bass and some kind of large-belled horn, probably a tuba, to judge from the shapes.

Howard would be very surprised if those cases contained anything a musician would use onstage. More likely, inside the cases would be pistols, assault rifles and a rocket launcher, maybe even a few grenades or other explosives. Since this was the staging area for the attack on the embassy, there was a distinct possibility there were other armaments already hidden inside when the terrorists arrived.

The terrorists were in an office on the second floor of a small, and apparently otherwise unoccupied, two- story warehouse. No one was on the ground level, save for a guard at the building's south entrance. Howard's recon team, led by Fernandez, had done a quick scout when they'd arrived, and discovered that same guard just inside the big metal roll-up door on the south side of the building. While the stealthiest of the recon team could have easily slipped into the warehouse at another entrance and installed surveillance gear in the building itself, Howard chose not to risk it. Maybe these yahoos had set up some alarms of their own, and he didn't want to be tripping one of those and scaring them off.

Instead, he'd had his teams put cams, motion sensors and parabolics outside the building, along with digital radio and IR scanners. Each of the arrivees was photographed as they entered the warehouse, and vidcaps should clear enough to ID anyone who somehow escaped.

Not that escape was going to be real likely.

It was tempting to have his troops kick in the upstairs door, toss a few flashbang grenades inside, and then blast anybody not blind and bleeding from the ears stupid enough to go for a gun, but — no. Instead, he had his troops deployed around the warehouse, watching all possible modes of egress. He would prefer not to do any shooting outside; however, he was prepared for such an eventuality.

There was still just the one guard watching the only unlocked entrance to the building.

'Sarge.'

'Sir.'

'Do you suppose somebody in this unit of tripfoots might manage to take out the guard without raising the dead?' This was a rhetorical question. Howard already knew who had the assignment.

'Why, yes, sir, I believe that might be possible.'

'Then make it so, Sergeant Fernandez.'

'On my way, sir.'

'You? You're going? A moth-eaten, tired old man like you?'

The two men grinned at each other.

Howard watched from his vantage point in the building across the alley from the south entrance as Fernandez approached the closed roll-up door. Fernandez did not wear any obvious weaponry, just dark and greasy coveralls and a battered yellow hardhat, and he carried an old metal lunch pail he must have scrounged from somewhere.

The parabolics picked up the sound of Fernandez whistling something as he arrived at the door. Sounded like something from Swan Lake. Nice touch, that.

Fernandez banged on the door with his free hand.

After a moment, he hammered on the door again. The door accordioned up about six feet. The guard, unarmed, stepped into view and rattled off something Howard didn't understand, but in a questioning and somewhat irritated tone of voice.

Fernandez said something in return, and it had a familiar ring to it.

Howard grinned. If he wasn't mistaken, Fernandez had just asked the guard where the men's room was. Before the man could respond, Fernandez said something else, and pointed behind the guard. The man turned to look, puzzled.

A tactical error on the guard's part.

Fernandez swung the lunch pail and slammed it into the guard's right temple. The man dropped as if his legs had suddenly vanished. Fernandez put the lunch pail down, grabbed the obviously unconscious man, and dragged him into the warehouse. After a moment, the sarge reappeared, and waved: Come on in.