Point of Impact

She got up, went to the bathroom, did what she needed to do, and padded back to bed. Alex didn’t stir. You could come in and walk off with the place, and he wouldn’t wake up, he slept heavy. He had told her he hadn’t done that before they got married, but now that she was here, he could could relax. That amused and pleased her on one level; on another level, it was mildly irritating. So she had to be responsible for their safety after hours? Not that she wasn’t qualified, but still…

She slipped carefully back into bed and began practicing her djurus mentally, going through them step by step in her mind’s eye, striving to capture all the details of each move. That usually would put her to sleep before she got very far along, but it wasn’t working tonight. She managed to go all the way through the eighteen on the right side, and was halfway through doing them on the left when the phone rang.

It managed less than half a cycle before Toni grabbed it. “Hello?”

“Toni? It’s me, Mama.”

Toni felt her bowels and belly twist suddenly. Mama would never call at two in the morning unless somebody was seriously injured or dying. “Is it Poppa?”

“No, dear, Poppa’s fine. But I’m afraid it’s Mrs. DeBeers.”

“Guru? What happened?”

“She had a stroke. About fifteen minutes ago.”

Toni glanced at the clock again. Exactly when she had awakened. Was this some weird coincidence, or were she and her elderly teacher psychically connected as Guru sometimes said?

“She’s on the way to the hospital,” Mama continued. “When it happened, she managed to reach her medical alert button, and the paramedics and ambulances woke us all up. Poppa is going to the hospital with your brother. I thought you’d want to know.”

Alex finally woke up. “Toni?”

She waved him quiet. “Which hospital, Mama?”

“Saint Agnes.”

“Thanks for calling me, Mama. I’ll talk to you later.”

She cradled the phone. Alex was sitting up. “Who—?”

“Guru had a stroke,” she said.

“How bad?”

“I don’t know.”

He nodded. “I’ll drive you to the airport.”

She blinked at him. Just like that, no question, he knew she was going. “Thank you, Alex. I love you.”

“I know. I love you, too. I’ll call and get you a flight while you get dressed.”

Toni nodded, already up and headed for the shower. Guru had been her teacher for more than fifteen years. Toni had started learning the art of pentjak silat from the old lady when she was already past retirement age, and she was eighty-three now. Guru was still built like a squat brick, but even so, she was not a young woman. A stroke.

Dear God.

She turned the shower control on and waited for the water to warm up. Was she supposed to fly in her condition? Well, supposed to or not, she was going. Guru was like her own grandmother; whatever was happening to her, she wasn’t going to suffer through it alone.

Alex was mostly quiet during the drive to the airport, though he did offer to go with her.

“Nothing you can do to help,” she said.

“Not her. But I can be there for you.”

She smiled at him. “I knew there was a reason I married you. Keep the home fires burning. I’ll call as soon as I know what’s happening.”

It was hard to think about Guru dying. She had been so much a part of Toni’s day-to-day life from her early teenage years until she left for college. Every morning, they’d practice before Toni went off to school. Every afternoon, after she had done her homework, Toni would head across the street to the old woman’s place, and they would practice the Indonesian martial art for an hour or two. Guru DeBeers had become part of the family, was included in all the gatherings: Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, birthday parties, weddings, graduations. She had finally given up smoking that nasty old pipe, but she still drank half a gallon of coffee a day and ate whatever she pleased. And even though she was in her eighties, Guru could still give most big strong men fits if they bothered her enough. She was slower and frailer, but her mind and skills were still sharp.

Toni hadn’t been to Mass except with Mama on home visits for a long time, but she offered a silent prayer: Please let her live.

9

Net Force HQ, Quantico, Virginia

Michaels hadn’t managed to get back to sleep after Toni left for New York, so he was a little tired. Fortunately, as slow as things were, he could probably take off early.

He had a partial staff meeting scheduled, and when he got there, his people were already at the conference table. John Howard, Jay Gridley, and the just-promoted Julio Fernandez. A few months ago, Fernandez’s wife, Joanna, would have been there, as would Toni. He missed seeing them.

“Good morning,” he said.

“Commander,” Howard and Fernandez said in unison.

“Hey, I thought it was your turn to bring the doughnuts, boss,” Jay said as Michaels sat. This was an old joke; they never ate doughnuts at the morning meetings.

“You didn’t give up sugar when you gave up flesh?” Fernandez said.

“Very funny, Julio.”

Michaels raised an eyebrow.

Fernandez answered the unasked question: “Our computer wizard here is turning Buddhist. No more eating flesh for him. Gonna step around ants on the sidewalk, too, I expect, chanting om mani padme hum while he does.”

Michaels shook his head. Never a dull moment around here.

“Okay, what do we have? John?”

General Howard led off with his weekly report. New gear, new troops, old business. Things were slow. They’d be taking various units out on training runs over the next couple of weeks, unless something came up.

Jay didn’t have a lot to report, either. “Nothing on your dope dealers,” he finished. “The DEA’s info was pretty sparse and dead-ended quick. I’ll run some other things into the mix and see what comes up.”

Michaels turned to Howard. “I sent a report your way, but in case you haven’t had a chance to read it, we’re helping the DEA run down some kind of new designer drug that turns the users into temporary supermen. And sometimes it makes them jump off tall buildings.”

Howard said, “Yes, sir, I saw the report. Thor’s Hammer.”

Michaels said, “Here’s another little twist. I got a call from an NSA guy yesterday. He’s made an appointment to come see me today, in about an hour, my secretary tells me. He says it’s about this designer drug thing. I’m curious as to why.”

“What’s his name?” Jay asked. “The NSA guy?”

“Last name, George, first name, Zachary.”

Jay shrugged, but tapped it into his flatscreen’s manual keyboard. “Never heard of him, but I’ll scope him out.”

“John?”

“Doesn’t ring any bells with me, either,” he said. “I can check with my Pentagon contacts.”

“Why would the National Security Agency be interested in this?” Michaels asked. “Dope isn’t in their mission statement, is it?”

Howard said, “Mission statements aren’t worth the paper they are written on, sir. Everybody stretches them to fit whatever they need.”