Net Force

'Alpha, we have returned fire, repeat, we have returned fire. Omega Cubs are all uninjured, say again, no injuries our squad, but we have one local down and the other has — has—' Proper report terminology failed him. 'Has hauled ass behind a big fucking oil tank, sir. Stand by. Barnes and Powell, flank right, Jessel, left, go, go!'

Howard waited for what seemed like another couple of thousand years. He exchanged glances with Fernandez.

Captain Marcus came back on-line. 'Sir, the downed local is… ah, defunct. He had a belt phone, and we have to assume the other one also carries communication gear, but we lost him. I would guess that we are going to have unfriendly company soon, Alpha. Please advise.'

Howard looked at Fernandez. There was no choice. Nobody was leaving anybody out here. 'Bag it up, troops! We lift in three minutes!'

To the squad leader waiting on the other end of the scrambled comline, Howard said, 'Stand fast, Omega. The pack is on the way.'

'Copy that, Alpha. Thank you, sir.'

'Let's go, Julio.'

'Yes, sir!'

Howard and Fernandez ran for the helicopters.

Saturday, October 9th, 4:10 p.m. Quantico

Michaels and Toni were in the small conference room, working on their second pot of coffee. As the doctor had predicted, Michaels was a lot more sore than he had been right after he'd been shot. It hurt to move, it hurt to stand still, it hurt to sit. He'd taken pills at home, to sleep, but he wanted to stay sharp while Howard's operation was in progress. He had finally popped a couple of the pain tabs from their plastic-and-foil blisters, and washed them down with his fifth or sixth cup of coffee an hour or so ago, and the sharp stabbing pain had faded to a more- bearable dull stabbing pain. And despite all the coffee, he felt relatively mellow.

'How's your arm?' he asked Toni.

'It was a nice clean cut. It doesn't hurt much,' she said, 'but it itches.'

He had thanked her after it had happened, but he'd had plenty of time to think about it since. 'You saved my life in that locker room,' he said. 'If you hadn't jumped that woman, she would have killed me.'

'Rusty saved us both. I'd never gotten to her if he hadn't come in and started yelling. Holding an ink pen and pretending it was a gun.' She shook her head.

'I'm really sorry about Agent Russell,' he said. 'I knew you were teaching him your fighting art. Were you, uh, close?'

She hesitated for a moment. 'Not really, no.' She stared into her coffee cup. 'His parents are having the body flown back to Jackson, Mississippi, for the funeral and burial. That's where he was from. They seem like nice people. I'd like to go, if that's all right. It's in a couple of days.'

'Sure. After we get though all this — if we get through it — I wonder if I might get you to show me some of what you do — the silat?'

She looked up from her coffee.

'Lately, I don't know why, I've kind of felt the need to know a little more about self-defense.'

He smiled, and she matched his expression.

'I'd be happy to show you.'

'Might take a few weeks for me to stop gimping around.' He touched his bandaged leg.

'I'll wait.'

He sipped at the coffee, then decided if he had anymore, he was going to have to have a bladder transplant. He put the cup down. 'I wonder how it's going. They are supposed to be done about now.'

'I'm sure they'll call as soon as they can.'

'I'm sure. And I am confident that Colonel Howard will execute his mission.'

She smiled again.

'What?' he asked.

'Nothing. I was just remembering something from a long time ago.'

'Yeah?'

'Between my junior and senior year at John Jay, I moved to an apartment with two other students. My brother Tony had lost his job, so his wife and two kids moved in with my parents while he went to Maine to find work.

Things were a little crowded at home. We lucked into a rent-controlled place that actually had heat and windows that would open. Building is probably a parking lot by now, but it was perfect for three girls away from home for the first time.

'Anyway, one of my roomies was an Eye-tie like me, that was Mary Louise Bergamo, from Philadelphia; the other was a tall, lanky black woman from Texas, a volleyball player, Dirisha Mae Jones. She was the funniest person I ever met. She was always coming up with these little homespun homilies she'd gotten from somewhere. One night we were drinking cheap wine and making a lot of noise and she defined ‘confident' for us.

' ‘Well, girls, listen here. There's this black man, name of Ernest, who is married to this here beauuutiful woman, Loretta, but Loretta is gone up and leave him ‘cause Ernest got fired from his job — even though it wasn't no fault of his own.' '

Michaels grinned. Her imitation of her friend's Texas accent was pretty good.

Toni continued: ' ‘So Ernest gets up one morning and puts on his best tie and his only white shirt and his Sunday-go-to-meeting pants, and leaves the house to go to this job interview. Ernest knows he don't get this job, his woman is gone leave him. He also know the good old boy doing the hirin' don't particularly care for men of color, so he got to be sharp.

' ‘By now, though, it's lunchtime. On the way to the interview, Ernest stops at Rick's Pit Barbecue, where he orders a double helping of pork ribs and a beer to wash ‘em down. So while he's waiting for Rick's boy James to dish up the ribs — which are drenched in about half a gallon of hot, greasy barbecue sauce, and which are the absolute best ribs anywhere in East Texas, and pretty much in Central or West Texas, too, and that's sayin' something — while he's waitin', Ernest walks on over to the phone and calls up Loretta. Says to her, 'Honey, shake out your blue dress — we gone go out dancin' tonight to celebrate my new job.'

' ‘Now, a man that eats ribs wearing a white shirt he knows got to stay clean, that's a confident man, girls.'

Michaels laughed.

'I like seeing you do that, Alex. Laugh. You don't do it enough.'

Michaels felt a little stab of something through the pain medication. Something in her voice. She liked him. It made him feel a little uncomfortable, but not too uncomfortable. 'There have been better times for it. So, what happened to them? Your roommates?'

'Mary Louise went to law school — Harvard — then home to go into practice with her father's firm. She was on the team that took the State versus Pennco Housing to the Supreme Court last year and won.'

'And the woman from Texas?'

'Dirisha joined the Woman's Pro Volleyball Tour right after she graduated. Played for three years, was on the Nike Team that won the Four Woman Outdoor Championships a couple of times. She retired from the circuit, wrote a book about her adventures, got a job as a sports columnist for The New York Times. Got married a few years ago, had a baby, a boy. Want to guess what she named him?'

'Come on.'

'Yep. Ernest.'

'You're making this up.'

She raised her hand, made the scout sign. 'Not a word, I swear.'

He chuckled again. She was right. He needed to laugh more.

Right now, though, he was a little nervous. Where was Howard? He should have called by now. He looked at his watch.

Even if it all went as smooth as silk on silk, Michaels was going to have to do some fast and fancy dancing to keep Carver from going for his throat when he found out. If they went through all this and failed to retrieve Plekhanov, well, he was definitely going to be in crap up to his