Night Moves

knife in the drawer, either. He didn't want to say that, though. Even after what she'd done, that seemed… disloyal, somehow. Besides, if word got back to Bonebreaker that Tyrone was doing oral graffiti on Bella, that would be bad. She might have half a dozen guys in orbit, but Bonebreaker was definitely one of them. Tyrone kept track. And they didn't call him Bonebreaker for nothing.

'Hey, I gotta go,' Nadine said. 'Keep a line open, okay? We'll get together and throw sometime.'

'Yeah,' he said. 'We need to do that.'

He watched her go. She had a muscular step, athletic and graceful, but she wasn't in Bella's class for looks, for sure.

Well, fine. Bella was history as far as he was concerned; gone, past, done, and he wasn't looking for a replacement. Maybe he and Nadine would get together and throw 'rangs, that was okay. She was good at that, he could learn from her, maybe. It wouldn't be so bad to have somebody who was into the birds to work out with, even if she was on the plain side. She had an arm and she could make a 'rang fly, that was the thing. He didn't have to kiss her.

Monday, April 4th

Quantico, Virginia

'Colonel?' It was Julio.

Howard looked up from the holoproj image over his desk, the report upon which he was laboring. There wasn't any way to make it sound good, what had happened out there in Nevada. The only consolation was that he hadn't lost any of his troops. Reader was going to need some extensive plastic surgery on her face, but she'd pull through. When she'd heard the launch pop, she'd been prone, facing away from the APW, but she'd turned to look. Her face shield was down, but because of the angle, a couple of the pellets had zipped under the bottom of shield, a freak of bad timing. If her head had been inclined a centimeter or two more, the Lexan would have stopped the shrapnel. As it was, she was lucky the pellets hadn't gone deeper into her skull than they had. No brain damage—

'I hate to have to tell you this, John, but we've got a real problem.'

'Worse than yesterday?'

'Yes, sir, afraid so.'

'Wonderful. Spill it.'

'Lindholm and Hobbs are dead, both shot in the head at close range, small-caliber rounds.'

'What?'

'Their transport is gone. We've got teams in the air, deputies and state police on the ground looking, but no sign of it so far.'

Howard stared at him. How could this be?

'Forensics says the teeth and skull bits we brought back are human, but they came from somebody who's been dead a long time. The blood and other bones, that piece of brain, they all belong to a member of the domestic Suidae family — a pig.'

The implications hit Howard fast and hard. 'He's alive. He wasn't in the car.'

'Yes, sir, that's the only thing that makes any sense. He must have hidden somewhere — I've got a search unit combing the area — waited until our men were off guard, then deleted them and stole their ride.'

'Shit,' Howard said.

'My sentiments exactly. We underestimated this guy bad, John. He foxed us.'

'Not we, Julio. Me. The buck stops here.'

Fernandez stared at the floor. He knew it was true.

Howard stared into space. This was terrible. In the years he'd been running the Net Force military arm, he'd had several troops wounded in brush firefights, but he'd never had one killed. And now, because he had screwed up, he had two soldiers down. Oh, man!

And worse, the guy who had done it had gotten away.

Now what was he going to do?

Monday, April 4th

London, England

'You sure you don't want to go?' Toni said.

'I'd like to, I really would,' Alex said, 'but I need to go over all this crap.' He waved at the laptop on the bed table.

'I could stay and help you.'

'I appreciate it, but you can't read it for me, you might as well take a break while you can. Go, work out, burn off some tension. You'll feel better, and you can spell me later. This class is important to you. I saw your face when you got back from it. Go. Have fun.'

She nodded. She could see his point. She really did want to go to silat class, and Alex was right, her mind did work better after she exercised. 'Okay,' she said. 'I'll be back in about three hours.'

He leaned over and kissed her lightly on the lips, then smiled at her. 'Take your time. I'm not going anywhere.'

The cab ride though London to the school in Clapham was an adventure in itself, and by the time Toni got there, it was growing dark. But she was fifteen minutes early, time enough to change and stretch before the class started.

Inside, eight or ten students were warming up, doing djurus and practicing two- person drills. Toni went to the bathroom, changed into sweatpants, wrestling shoes, a sports bra, and a T-shirt. She joined the other students and began doing leg stretches. She could still do the splits, front and side, but it took longer to warm into them than it had when she'd been fifteen. Leg flexibility helped — not so much in the Bukti, but it was a definite advantage in Serak. The basic turnaround required a drop from a high stance to a low one as you twisted, and the lower, the better. Tight hamstrings made that hard to do.

Guru Stewart arrived, already dressed to work out. He came over to Toni. 'Glad to see you made it, Guru. I'm sure we have much to teach each other.'

Toni smiled. 'I don't know how much I can teach you, Guru, but I sure have a lot I can learn.'

He returned her smile, and she felt a small sense of triumph at being able to make him grin.

Stewart walked to the front of the room and turned around. 'All right, then. Shall we get started?'

Toni felt a rush of energy as she lined up to bow in. Until now, all of her teaching had been private. She'd never actually gone through a formal class from beginning to end. She was thrilled at the chance to do it.

Michaels pored over the small flatscreen's holoproj logs, scanning files related to the British investigation of the hacker's assault. It was tedious work, made worse because they spelled things wrong: labour, colour, like that. He kept mentally correcting the odd words when he came to them, and it slowed his scan speed.

His virgil announced an incoming call.

'Telecom from Angela Cooper,' the virgil's voxchip said. He had switched the device from Jay's musical joke to vox, unable to listen to the fanfare after hearing that Jay was in the hospital.

'Connect,' Michaels said.

'Commander Michaels? Angela Cooper here. I have some eyes-only material to add to your reading list. Mightn't I bring it round?'

'Sure. I'll be here for the rest of the evening.'

'Shouldn't take that long. I'm in the lobby.'

He grinned. 'Come on up.'

There was a tap at the hotel room's door two minutes later. Michaels opened it to see that Cooper could dress down as well as up. She wore a pair of snug-fitting blue jeans, oxblood Doc Martin boots, and a black scoop- necked blouse. She carried another flatscreen, but if she was armed, he couldn't see where she might be hiding a taser or a pistol in those clothes. Very attractive.

'Commander.'

'Come in.'

She did, and offered him the flatscreen. 'Not much new here, but there are a couple of things we've gotten