Night Moves

'Ah.'

'Anything new?'

'Afraid not. I was just going over the disk your boss sent over. The airlines are back on-line.'

She strolled in his direction, leaned in to look over his shoulder.

He felt her right breast brush against his back.

Apparently Casual Saturday meant no bra, too. Damn.

She quickly leaned back. 'Well, that's good news, at least.'

The young man who had delivered the disk came into the room, not exactly running, but close to it. 'Commander, DG Hamilton would like to have a word. You, as well, Cooper.'

'Trouble?'

'I couldn't say, sir.'

Trouble.

Saturday, April 9th

The Yews, Sussex, England

Lord Goswell sat in his study, sipping a gin and tonic, looking through the French doors. Seemed as if it might rain again. Maybe it would come down hard enough to drown the bloody rabbits; certainly his shooting hadn't been much good there. Perhaps he needed to have his eyes done sooner rather than later.

He heard one of the maids chattering madly at somebody in the hall. He smiled as he sipped his drink. He pulled his pocket watch out and looked at it.

'What is the problem, Applewhite?'

The butler came into the room, looking apologetic. 'Sorry about the disturbance, milord. The maid and Cook were distraught.'

'Whatever for?'

'It seems the telly has gone down. And the telephones are also on the blink.'

'Really?'

'Yes, milord. Can't even pick up most of the radio channels on the battery unit or in the automobiles.'

'Well, that would be distressing then, wouldn't it? Think it's the Russians dropping bombs?'

'I hardly think so, milord.'

'Well, I'm sure his majesty's government will see to whatever the problem is soonest.'

'Yes, milord.'

Applewhite went back to calm the maid and Cook, and Goswell rattled his ice cubes around in his drink. Had to hand it to that scientist fellow, he was dashedly good at the computer business. Not only had the airlines been knocked down again, but worldwide communications had been whacked solidly, most of the satellites taken off-line. And the telly and radio signals that depended on the network of satellites had been disrupted, along with telephonic operations. Quite a stroke. And, of course, operations in the U.K. would come back much sooner than the rest of the world, if Bascomb-Coombs's calculations were correct — and so far, they always had been. A brilliant fellow, he was.

A pity he would have to die. Good help was so hard to find.

Chapter 21

Saturday, April 9th

In the air over the Virginia coast

Net Force's military arm had cranked up one of the old overhauled and refitted 747s for the hop to England, and John Howard sat in the thing, wishing it was an SST. The sooner they got to the U.K., the better. Of course, he might as well wish for a time-travel machine so he could have gotten there yesterday. Government agencies went on diets and binges as often as attendees at a fat farm, and Congress had been in moderate belt-tightening mode when Net Force had been funded. It could have been worse, though. They might have come up with some old DC-3 prop jobs the DEA had confiscated from drug runners instead of the 747s.

He wanted to get his hands on Ruzhyo right now, but at least he was on the way. He'd have to work the logistics with the Brits when they got there, but they had an arrangement with his majesty's government, and having Alex Michaels already in England wouldn't hurt. Howard couldn't imagine the British would give them any flak about collecting a former Spetsnaz killer. Of course, they didn't have the death penalty over there, and if they went through formal extradition, that could be a problem. A lot of countries had gotten on their high horses about that, refusing to turn escaped scum over to the U.S. unless they agreed not to fry the bastards.

Well, it wasn't going to come to that. There wouldn't be any paperwork filed on the killer through his majesty's legal system. If he didn't come back with them to face American justice, then it would certainly be because he was beyond any earthly justice.

You didn't kill Net Force people and get away with it. Not on Howard's watch.

He was dressed for travel and not the field, but he had his smaller gear pack on the empty seat next to him, and now he pawed through it. He tended to recheck his gear frequently when he went on a mission, even though not much was likely to have happened to it since he'd checked it five minutes earlier. It was a nervous habit, and he'd realized a long time ago he was going to do it, so he didn't worry about it any longer. Better safe than sorry.

He looked around and saw that Julio was all the way back toward the tail, heading for an empty washroom. Good. It wouldn't do for Julio to see what he'd done to his good luck talisman, not yet anyway.

He removed the charm from the pack and looked at it. Talisman was a funny way of thinking about a handgun. But this was an ancient Smith & Wesson.357 model 66 stainless steel revolver, unlike the polymer H&K tacticals the rest of his unit had been issued. For years, he had carried the piece as it had come stock from the box — well, except for a little action smoothing by the armorer and a set of hand-filing, after-market grips. A six-shot wheelgun, plain iron sights, no bells and whistles. He was comfortable with it, it had been on his hip every time he had gone into a firefight, and like the old Thompson subgun he had inherited, there was a kind of energy wrapped around it. He wasn't particularly superstitious, didn't avoid black cats or worry about ladders or mirrors, but he did believe the Smith had some magic about it. Part of that was that the Smith was a trusted, dependable design, functional, nothing complex to go wrong. Not that he was a technophobe or some kind of Luddite, but Howard had always liked the simple-is-better philosophy when it came to hardware. The RA and Navy SpecForce elites, the Rangers, the SEALs, the green hats, had all kinds of new computer-augmented personal weaponry. Things like carbines with TV cams on them you could stick around a corner and shoot without being seen; pieces with built-in trackers, lasers, grenade launchers, the whole package, expensive as hell, and he could have put in for them, but Howard's Strike Teams carried plain-Jane — if top of the line—9mm subguns. They went bang when you pulled the trigger, you could get the ammo anywhere in the world if you ran out, it being the most common military handgun round, and he figured it was the operator's job to make sure the bullet was on target. Sure, they had the modified SIPESUIT armor, and it had plenty of tactical computer stuff built in, LOSIR corns and headset graphics and GPS and all, but if those failed, you could at least still shoot your weapon manually. The principle of KISS for the lethal hardware had always appealed, and he'd never been shy about letting people know he favored it.

So when he looked at his trusty six-gun with the Tasco Optima 2000 dot scope mounted where the notch- and-post sights used to be, it felt, well, a little weird. And after all the years of shaking his head and calling the polymer sidearms 'Tupperware guns,' his new acquisition might be thought by those who knew him to have shaded right on into the hypocritical.

It wasn't all that complex, the scope. What you had was a tiny, clear plastic window mounted an inch and a half or so in front of a tiny red diode that projected a red dot onto the window. Unless the safety cap was over it, the sight was always on, and the battery was good for a lot of use. The way you turned the thing off was, you put the cap on it, and the tiny computer in the scope put it to sleep. How it worked in practice was also simple: You popped the cover off, held the gun up, both eyes open, and the little red dot floated in the air in front of you, just over the piece. Wherever you put the dot — once you had it zeroed — that was where