killing people, bringing the world more grief. He had to deal with his problems the way the samurai warrior Musashi had spoken of it: When faced with ten thousand, you fight them one at a time — the most dangerous ones first.
Of course you need to be pretty damned quick to beat ten thousand, and best he get back to it right now. His emotional life would just have to wait.
He left a note for Toni, then called for a cab to take him to MI-6.
Chapter 24
It was a beautiful, sunny morning, no wind, a perfect day to throw. Tyrone glanced at his watch. Ten A.M. Where was Nadine? She was supposed to meet him at the soccer field at — wait, there she was, coming around the gym, a backpack slung over one shoulder. She saw him, grinned, and waved.
'Hey, Tyrone!'
He waved back.
There were a couple of guys practicing at the goal on the south end of the field, so they headed for the north goal, then unpacked their gear. Tyrone had brought four of his favorite 'rangs, along with pixie dust and his timer; Nadine had three 'rangs, some finger dip wind-check, and a stopwatch.
The watch was odd-looking. It was an analog, round, big, silvery.
'Wow, where'd you get that?'
'My dad bought it on a trip to Russia,' she said. 'You hit this button to start it, same button to stop, the big sweep hand gives you seconds, the little inner dial gives you minutes. Doesn't use batteries.'
She handed it to him and he looked at it.
'Solar-powered?' He didn't see a cell.
'No, an internal wind-up spring. Good for, like, hours, then you wind it again.'
'Exemplary. I got a radio like that, you crank it, it plays for an hour, never needs to be charged.'
'My dad says we could save a lot of dump space for batteries if we used more springs and gravity-powered devices,' she said.
'Yeah. It's the next surge.'
They warmed up, rolled their shoulders and waved their arms back and forth, shook out their hands, something Tyrone had learned from watching the older throwers. There were special stretching exercises, too, to keep the muscles of the shoulders and back limber. He'd seen articles on the net about serious boomerangers who had torn ligaments and stuff by throwing too hard without warming up first, and he didn't want to put himself out of commission that way. Of course, most of the guys who hurt themselves were old — in their twenties and thirties.
Nadine went to take a few practice throws, and he watched her carefully. She was in good shape — you could see that vein in her upper arm — and she had excellent form when she threw, she used her whole body and not just her arm, what you were supposed to do. You could learn a lot watching somebody good work.
They'd been throwing for about half an hour, getting to the point where they could do some serious MTA stuff, when Tyrone saw three or four people watching them from across the field, standing in the shade of a sycamore tree by the fence. That happened a lot when he was throwing, and usually he didn't pay much attention, since if you took your gaze off your 'rang for a second, it might disappear. He knew too many guys who had lost a bright orange boomerang on a newly trimmed field, poof, just vanished. Sometimes they angled in and somehow managed to bury themselves in the grass just enough so you couldn't see them; sometimes they just… vanished. He had lost a red quad-blade once on a golf course where the grass was like half a centimeter high, no way, but there it was.
It took only one quick look to see that one of the watchers was Belladonna Wright.
He jerked his gaze back to his 'rang, found it floating toward him about thirty meters out, and stayed with it until it came close enough to catch. He managed to trap the 'rang without dropping it, but he was rattled.
Though he was trying hard not to look at Bella, Nadine picked up on it.
'Well, well. Looks like that old fire might not be out after all, hey, Ty?'
'What?'
'You and sweetie pie over there under the tree. You kinda acted like you didn't know her real well, but from what I hear, you and she spent some quality time together.'
'So what if we did?'
'Nothing, nothing, not my business. I just hate to see you get cooked, is all.'
'What do you mean?'
'Come on, Tyrone, gimme a bye here. Pretties like that go through guys like toilet paper. Use 'em, flush 'em, there's plenty more where the last one came from.
She's got a string of guys waiting to run around behind her and kiss the ground she walks on, just to enjoy the view from there.'
'Yeah? How would you know that?'
Nadine stared at the ground. 'You hear stuff.'
'Anything else you hear?'
'I'm not trying to start a fight.'
'Could have fooled me.'
She looked up, hefted her MTA. 'I came to practice. You interested in that? Or you want to wait for Miss America to crook her finger so you can go running?'
'I don't go running. For your information, it was my idea to break up with Bella.' Well, that wasn't strictly true, but he had opened the conversation that led to it. And when given the choice of being one of her string, he had told her he wasn't interested. Sort of.
'Good for you. You gonna throw?'
Tyrone glanced at Bella, then back at Nadine. 'Yeah, I'm gonna throw. Get ready to start your watch, I'm gonna hang you out to dry.'
'In your dreams.'
She flashed him a small grin, and he returned it, but even as he did, he wondered about what she had said. What if Bella crooked her finger? If she waved him over, told him she wanted him to drop by and sit on her couch and kiss him like she had kissed him before, would he go running?
No way. No. Fucking. Way.
Easy enough to say that when he was pretty sure it wasn't gonna happen. But if it actually did, would he drop everything and trot over?
That was a hard one. He didn't want to think too much about that one.
He gathered himself for the throw. Three steps: one, two, three!
The boomerang soared high into the air, an artificial bird climbing for the sun. And it was gonna be a long hang time, too. He could tell. That ought to shut Nadine up about whether he'd come to throw.
Flying the big jet wasn't a problem for the Net Force pilot, and landing it manually wasn't, either, assuming the weather in England wasn't so foul they needed a ground beacon to locate the airport. The 747's self-contained instruments weren't affected by the international snafu that had ensnarled the major computer systems. But trying to land in heavy traffic at Heathrow or Gatwick without some help from the ATCs on the ground was not at the top of any pilot's list.
'No way in hell, sir,' the pilot had put it to Howard.
Fortunately, there were military bases that were self-contained in the U.K., at least insofar as flight operations went, and they could put the big bird down at one of these, even though the wait would be fairly long. Most of the still-operational bases had been hauling in civilian planes affected by the snafu, or allowing takeoffs and
