Point of Impact

“I miss you, too. Fly safe.”

“I will. See you tonight.”

She hung up, and he blew out a relieved sigh. With all the pregnancy stuff, having her silat teacher kick off would have been another brick on Toni’s load, and she didn’t need any more weight right now.

A nice, quiet evening at home with Chinese take-out would be fine by him.

“Sir. You have a call from Richard Sharone on line five.”

Michaels shook off his daydream of supper and Toni. “Who is Richard Sharone, and why should I talk to him?”

“He’s the president and CEO of Merit-Wells Pharmaceuticals.”

Michaels blinked. Why would the head honcho at one of the world’s largest drug companies be calling him?

Oh.

Michaels stared at the com’s headset. He might not be the sharpest needle in the package, but he wasn’t completely dull. What did Net Force have to do with drugs? Nothing, until the DEA asked for their help with this esoteric dope they were trying to find. First it was NSA, now the overlord of a drug company. Man. Somebody wanted this stuff bad.

Probably get a call from the Food and Drug Administration next.

“This is Commander Alex Michaels. How can I help you, Mr. Sharone?”

But he was pretty sure he already knew.

Net Force Shooting Range, Quantico, Virginia

John Howard stood on the line at the firing range, ready to start. He said, “Eight meters, single. Go.”

A three-hundred pound crazed biker blinked into existence eight meters down the alley. The biker held a tire iron, and he lifted it and charged right at Howard, no hesitation.

Fast for a fat man, he was, too.

Howard slipped his right hand under his Net Force windbreaker, cleared the jacket, caught the smooth wooden grips of his side arm, and pulled the weapon from the custom-made Fist paddle holster. He brought the Phillips & Rodgers Model 47 Medusa up and shoved it one-handed toward the biker as if punching him.

The biker was less than four meters away now, three, two…

Howard pulled the trigger, once, twice…

The gun roared and bucked hard.

Two rounds hit the biker five feet away. The running man collapsed and slid to a stop inches from Howard’s spit-shined, patent-leather-bright shoes.

Cut that a little close, John.

The biker disappeared, like turning off a lamp.

Which, in essence, was what happened. The hologram was, after all, just a particularly coherent brand of light. But the computer cams that watched it all calculated the flight path of Howard’s two.357 slugs as they zipped down range, and having decided they would have struck vital areas on a real human target, gave him the ersatz victory.

Score one for the good guys.

Howard reholstered the handgun and looked at the score screen. He saw the image of the biker there and noted the pulsing red spots where the bullets hit. The one marked with #1 was in the heart, the #2 round was slightly higher and to the right. With the best.357 Magnum or.40 rounds, one-shot knockdowns hovered right about 94 to 96 percent with a solid body hit, as good as a handgun got — and it didn’t even have to be to a fatal area. The first shot would have done the trick, and probably a real attacker would be dead or well on the way there by now. Dead wasn’t the thing, though, it was the stopping power that was important. You could shoot somebody in the leg with a.22 and it might nick a big blood vessel and eventually kill him. Thing was, eventually wouldn’t do you much good if the guy kept coming, beat you to a pulp with his tire iron or crowbar, then went home and died in a few days, a few hours, even a few minutes. No good at all. When you shot somebody, you wanted them to fall down right now; anything less was bad. They lived or died, that was something to worry about later. You didn’t have time to ponder on it in the moment.

Handguns were lousy weapons for instant stops, relatively speaking. A shotgun was better, and a good rifle better still. He smiled as he remembered the old story about a civilian who carried a handgun. A friend asked him, “Why do you have a pistol? Are you expecting trouble?” And the guy answered, “Trouble? No. If I was expecting trouble, I’d be carrying a rifle.”

Then again, it was kind of hard to slip a scoped.308 sniper rifle under your Gore-Tex windbreaker. And the first rule of a gunfight was…

Come on, John. You gonna shoot or stand here day-dreaming?

“Reset,” he said.

The screen went blank.

“Ten meters, double. Thirty-second delay. Go.”

This time, the scenario computer gave him two attackers. One looked like a pro wrestler holding a long knife, the other an NFL lineman with a baseball bat. They charged.

Howard drew, gave the wrestler two, shifted his hand, and gave the lineman two. The last of the four cartridges in the revolver left the barrel at about the same time the lineman got within bat range.

Both attackers fell.

Howard thumbed the cylinder latch open with his right, pointed the gun at the ceiling, and used his left hand to slap the extractor rod hard enough to punch the empties out of the chambers. The hulls fell to the range floor. He pulled a speed loader with six more cartridges from his left windbreaker pocket. Reloading the P&R was trickier than doing it with his old S&W. There were spring-loaded clips in each chamber of the black-Teflon- coated P&R, to allow for using various calibers — the thing would shoot.380s, 38s, 38 Specials, and 9 mms, as well as.357 Magnums — and you had to keep the extractor partway out to make the speed loader work, and even so, it was slower than the Smith was.

Still, if you couldn’t get the job done with six, you probably weren’t going to be able to get it done at all.

He managed to get all six of the reloads into the chambers. He dropped the speed loader on the floor, hit the cartridges with the heel of his right hand a couple of times to get them fully seated, closed the cylinder, then brought the gun up into a two-handed grip as the third attacker appeared.

The attacker was a naked woman with a samurai sword.

Well. Somebody was getting creative with their programming. He wondered who Gunny had doing the scenarios. He’d have to ask.

Since he was ready when the woman came to life, he had plenty of time. He lined the front sight up on her nose and fired one round.

One to the head was plenty.

He looked at the score screen. Three for three. Not bad for an old man.

Gunny’s voice came over the intercom, easy to hear with the smart earphones that kept loud noises out but let normal sounds in. “General, we have a troop of Explorer Scouts coming by in a few minutes. Okay if they watch you shoot?”

Before he could respond, Gunny said, “That’s ’cause we want to show them how not to do it.”

“You want to come out here and let me show you how it is done, Sergeant?”

Gunny chuckled, and Howard had to smile. That was less than an idle threat. Gunny could shoot the pants off Wyatt Earp, Wild Bill Hickok, and John Wesley Hardin all at the same time, either hand, and you pick it. He was outstanding with anything you could pick up and fire. Came from being a full-time range officer and daily practice. Too bad Gunny didn’t want to compete anymore. They could use him in the annual shoot against the other services. He claimed he was too old, and as he was only three or four years past Howard’s age. Howard didn’t much like hearing that.

Howard himself was lucky if he got to the range three or four times a month. Usually Julio came with him, but with a new baby at home, he was doing father duty, and that cut into his practice time.