Net Force

He blew out a sigh and calmed himself. Well. He was the best, but there had to be a second- or third- or tenth-best. The reason for the attacks on Net Force's Commander and its operations had been to keep their decent programmers busy elsewhere. Their best were not in his class, of course, but at the highest levels, skills were not galactic leaps apart. No, the top players were dangerous. If one of them happened to be in the right place at the right time, it could be a serious problem.

He rubbed at his eyes. He'd been spotted by the opposition. Of course, there hadn't been any real danger, he'd had his escape route planned, and several ways to discourage pursuit had the first one failed, and it had not failed. The reason those safeguards had been put in place was for just such an unlikely happenstance. He had escaped, had he not? The boy, that naturalized-American Thai orphan — what was his name? Groly? Gridley? — was a hotshot, but however fast his hands, he did not have the experience. Put the two of them into a VR ring with gloves on, and the boy would have an edge, but the Marquis of Queensbury rules did not apply in this arena. When the guidelines did not hobble them, the old and treacherous beat the young and quick every time…

Still, he would exercise even more caution. The perfect crime was not in getting away once you'd been spotted; the perfect crime was one nobody ever knew had been committed. That had never been in the cards for this venture, but outrunning a pursuer was not nearly as good as staying out of his sight. He would have to work on that.

Meanwhile, the trips to Belarus and Kyrgyzstan were next on the agenda. He would continue to sow; soon, he would reap.

Friday, October 1st, 4:02 p.m. Quantico

Michaels's boss was on-line, and what he had to convey was not happy news.

'The President is concerned, Alex. It's been more than three weeks.'

'I am aware of that, sir.' He was also aware of how stiff his voice was.

Walt Carver had not risen to FBI Director by missing the nuances. He said, 'Don't get your back up. I'm just pointing out something you already know. The politics here makes all the difference.'

'I understand,' Michaels said.

'We need a victory,' Carver continued. 'It doesn't have to be a major one, just something we can wave at the big dogs to keep them from gnawing on us. Sooner you come up with something, the better, and when I say sooner, I'm talking about a couple of days.'

'Yes, sir.'

'I'll keep the Senate committee off your butt, but I need something on Day's murder by Monday. Tuesday at the latest.'

'Yes, sir.'

After Carver disconnected, Michaels stood. He needed to move, to burn off some of this nervous tension. It wasn't enough that he'd almost been killed last night. Now he had the damned President of the United States after his hide. If he didn't come up with something, he'd be dead in this town; if the powers that be thought he was a sludge, he could kiss his career good-bye.

Well, fine. He loved the work, it was satisfying, but hell, he could get another job, that wasn't the problem. As long as he got Steve Day's killer before they threw him out, he could live with it. He hadn't wanted to sit in the damned chair in the first place — not given the cost.

He felt a sudden urge to call his daughter. He glanced at the time. Just after four p.m. here, but Idaho was a couple hours earlier. Would she be home from school yet? He didn't know. He should know, but he didn't. Did she have a beeper? He shook his head. He didn't know that, either. And even if she did, he wouldn't want to upset her by buzzing her in class. She'd worry, and what would he tell her when she called? Hi, honey. Guess what — Daddy almost got killed last night and probably is going to lose his job.

Yeah, right. There was nobody he could tell about this, even if he'd really wanted to tell somebody. And he didn't want to tell anybody. He wasn't going to whine about how tough life was — that never solved anything and nobody wanted to hear it anyhow.

He was too nervous to sit still. Maybe he should go to the gym and work up a sweat. It wouldn't hurt anything, might make him feel better. And sometimes exercise cleared his head out enough so he got some good ideas. Sure, a session on the multiplex machine might be worthwhile. What the hell, he sure wasn't getting anything done sitting here.

Being stuck as an administrator, he had discovered, wasn't much fun.

Friday, October 1st, 4:42 p.m. Quantico

Jay Gridley walked into the VR Cane Masters store in Incline Village, Nevada. Given his choice, he would rather be hunting the robber in New Orleans, but the programmer would have to wait. He had gotten a good look at the guy's vehicle, a feel for how he moved, and after backwalking the heist, he had a handle on the guy's MO. Some things you could hide, some things tended to stand out. Mostly, it was style that separated one good programmer from another, and Gridley knew one thing: If he found the guy's trail again, he would know him when he caught up with him. That was a big advantage, and he meant to jump on it as soon as he could.

But somebody had tried to kill his boss last night and that took precedence.

Inside the store, there were racks of gleaming, polished oak and hickory and walnut canes lined up neatly on the walls. Other martial-arts weaponry made from wood, too — staves, escrima sticks, plus exercise rubber bands, videos, books, jackets and T-shirts with 'Raising Cane' on them.

An attractive Chinese woman behind the counter smiled at Jay, who had the weapon used in the assault on Alex Michaels tucked under his arm.

'Help you?' the clerk said.

Gridley handed the cane to her. 'Is this one of yours?' He already knew it was, having gone through product descriptions and.GIF files of all the commercial cane manufacturers in North America until he'd found a match.

The woman examined the cane. 'Yes, it's the Instructor's model, in hickory. Is there a problem with it?'

'No, it works fine, far as I know. But I need some information about it. Do you keep records of your sales?'

'Of course.'

'Is there any way to find out who bought this?'

The woman's smile faded. 'I'm afraid our client records are confidential, sir.'

'You have a manager I could talk to?'

'Just a moment.'

A tall man wearing a frown appeared behind the clerk in a few seconds. 'May I help you, sir?'

Gridley produced his Net Force ID and held it out. He waved at the cane he'd brought. 'This stick was used in an attempted assassination of a federal government official,' he said. 'I need your sales records.'

'I'm afraid we can't do that,' the man said.

'Oh, you can. You can voluntarily give them to me, saving us both a lot of time and hassle, and earn my gratitude. Or I can get a federal subpoena and be back in an hour with a gang of IRS/CPA programmers to deconstruct everything your company has done in the last ten years. My guess is that these guys will almost certainly find some irregularities in the way you do business. I mean, given the tax code complexities and all these days, you can't be totally honest even if you want to be.'

The man took Gridley's ID, ran it under a scanner and waited for the verification. When it came, he said. 'We're happy to help the government in any way we can. Denise, would you transfer the records for this agent, please?'

Gridley nodded, but didn't smile. Too bad he didn't have this kind of clout when he wanted to get into a decent restaurant.

Outside the store, Gridley walked to his new Viper. Well, actually, since the program he was using was a backup for the one that had been trashed in New Orleans, it was the same age as his old Viper, and it also lacked a few bells and whistles compared to the wrecked one. He'd done a lot of fine-tuning on the wrecked unit, and he hadn't bothered to save the updates. No big deal, but it would require a little work to sharpen this one so it ran as well as the other.

In the car, he looked at the HC printout. Cane Masters had been around for at least fifteen years, and they had sold thousands of canes in that time. In the last ten years, they had sold several hundred of the particular model Net Force was interested in. Still, running down several hundred possibilities was better than running down