it turned out not to be their system, but USAT's. Howard had talked to the OOD there, but it wasn't going to help. Major Phillips was polite but terse: His system was acting up, and begging the colonel's pardon, but he had his hands full trying to unsnarl the bastard and could he have somebody call him back ASAP?
That had been hours ago, and still the feed wasn't accessible.
Howard looked at his watch, then at Fernandez. 'Okay, that's it. We're scrubbed. Tell them to stand down.'
As he expected, his top kick wasn't happy with that. 'Colonel, we don't need the feed from Big Squint. This guy is in the middle of the desert. We can eyeball it.'
'Negative, Sergeant, that's not the protocol.'
'Sir, troops have been taking territory without satellite coverage for thousands of years. It's one guy alone in a
'Come on, Julio, you know the rules. There's no leeway for emergency bypass here. Like you said, it's one guy. He's been there for months, he doesn't know we're here, and we've got the roads in and out covered. He's not going anywhere, and even if he wanted to, he couldn't. This is as by-the-numbers as it gets.'
Fernandez mumbled something.
'Say again, Sergeant?'
'Sir, this is bullshit. If twenty troops can't take down one man without help from big bird, we ought to turn in our uniforms and retire. Go sit on the bank of a catfish pond, drown worms, and wait to die. Sir.'
Howard's grin this time was real. 'I hear you, Julio, but it's our protocol for this op-sit. The RA guys will fix their system sooner or later. Tell the troops to take the night off. Go see the casinos, watch a show, enjoy the lights of Vegas. Be back here at oh six hundred, and we'll reset.'
Fernandez shrugged. Unexpected liberty was always good, and this was, after all, Las Vegas. A man with a little money in his pocket could get into all kinds of trouble without having to work too hard. 'Well, sir, since you put it like that, I suppose we'll just have to suffer through the wait.'
'And remember, you are practically a married man now, Sergeant.'
'Yes, sir, of course. But I'm not a
The two grinned at each other.
Howard headed toward the nearby motel where Net Force had booked enough rooms for his troops. It still felt weird to be bivouacked not in a tent under the stars but at an air-conditioned motel. It made more sense, of course. A military group camping anywhere around here would draw more attention than it would with its vehicles garaged and its troops tucked away out of sight.
He planned to call home and talk to his wife and son, grab a shower to wash some of the heat and dust off, and maybe find a nice restaurant for some dinner. They had good food in Las Vegas, especially at some of the casinos, and it was cheap, too. They figured they were going to get your money at the slots or the tables, so they might as well make it attractive to stay there and eat, to give them more chances at it. And you could play keno right at your table while you chowed down. Most places served breakfast, lunch, or dinner twenty-four hours a day. Once you stepped into the wonders of Gambling Land, time stood still. They didn't leave a lot of clocks around to remind you that you needed to be getting along home, either.
It had been a few years since he'd been here, but Howard didn't think it would have changed all that much. You could stick the kiddies in free day care or turn them loose in Warner Bros. World or the Hard Rock, and go lose their college education money. Fun for the whole family and a long way from the old days when the mob ran everything.
The motel was low key and also cheap, Net Force being like most other government agencies that way. GS employees didn't need to be staying at the best hotels on the taxpayer's credit card. It didn't look good, especially at election time.
There was an old-fashioned mechanical slot machine next to the Coke machine, and Howard shook his head at that. He wasn't a gambler. Oh, he'd buy a lottery ticket now and then or put a fiver on a soccer or baseball pool. He would root for the Orioles, maybe even cover a friendly bet on them, but he wasn't infested with gambling fever. The odds always favored the house, and the only way to look at games of chance as far as he was concerned was to consider them entertainment. You wanted to play in the casinos, you took a few dollars and spent them, just as if you were paying for dinner and a show. Once they were gone, that was it, you quit, end of story. You didn't dig into your pocket to win back what you'd lost, and if you happened to come out ahead by the time you were supposed to leave, you went home and put the money in the bank.
His father had taught him that. If you play somebody else's game, most of the time they are going to win. Better to spend your money where it will do you some good.
Howard's room was small, clean, and the water pressure in the shower was not as bad as he'd expected. After he cleaned up, he unpacked his duffel, slipped into a pair of no-iron khaki slacks and a short-sleeve shirt, and found some clean socks and his old loafers. Always paid to take civilian clothes if you were working anywhere near a town. One minute you were a soldier, the next you were a civilian. With the variation in hairstyles these days, nobody could tell by looking.
So, call home, visit with the family, then grab a bite to eat. And after that? Maybe come back to the room and read. After all, he had to get up early, and while the rare bacterial infection he'd had a while back that made him feel old and tired had been cleared up, the days when he could party all night long and then go straight to work without missing a beat were long past. If he was going to be up and ready to roll at 0600, he was going to have to get to bed at a decent hour.
He grinned at himself in the mirror. Maybe Fernandez was right; maybe he should retire and go drown worms in a catfish pond.
Nah. Not yet.
When Jay Gridley awoke, he had a moment of panic: Where was he?
There was an IV going into his left hand, a tube running from his penis into a bag attached to the side of the bed, and wireless pickups stuck to his chest and his head. There was a cuff around his left upper arm. He wore one of those shortie open-backed gowns.
A hospital, okay, he got that. And something must have happened to him for him to be here. An accident?
He couldn't remember. He started to look at his arms and legs more carefully, to see if anything was missing or damaged. No, they were there, and he wasn't feeling any pain—
A tall, short-haired brunette in green scrubs appeared next to the bed. She took Jay's right wrist in her hand and looked at her watch. She was about thirty, very attractive. She smiled at him. 'Hey,' she said.
He couldn't feel her fingers on his wrist. In fact, he couldn't feel his right arm at all. Couldn't even relate to it. As if that arm she was holding belonged to somebody else. What—?
She said, 'You're in the Neuro Ward at the base hospital. You had a CVA, a cerebrovascular accident. A stroke. My name is Rowena. I'm the floor nurse this shift. Do you understand?'
His incipient panic expanded into full-blown terror.
The nurse put her hand on his chest, on the left side. He felt that. 'Easy. Your doctor is on the way, she'll explain it all to you, but listen, don't worry. You've got some transient paralysis on the right side. It's going to go away. What happened to you was not major. The drugs you are on are going to fix the damage. It'll take a few days, maybe a couple of weeks, okay? But you are going to be all right.'
Gridley felt his panic abate a little. He was going to be all right. He clutched at that, trying to get a tighter grip on it. He was going to be all right.
Another woman entered the room, a short, heavyset bleached blonde. She also wore green scrubs, and she carried a flatscreen. Without preamble, she said, 'I'm Dr. West. Some time yesterday afternoon you had a small CVA — a stroke. There were no clots or major bleeders apparent on the CAT and MEG brain scans, and the cause is
