Point of Impact

Pee flowed downhill, and the director’s drain was right above his head…

Unfortunately, business was slow, and because it was, this was rapidly becoming the case to solve, and quickly. If there had been some major e-terrorism going, some big-time computer frauds, or even more bored hackers, he could beg off, point to those, and wash his hands of this crap fobbed off on them. But his people were good, they were on top of the day-to-day stuff. Even though it was the DEA’s problem, had almost nothing to do with computers, and Net Force was just helping out, if they didn’t do something pretty quick, it could get ugly.

A couple more millionaires going bonzo, and the powers that be would be looking for a scapegoat to roast, and while it should be the DEA, it could well turn out to be a major barbecue, with Net Force on the spit, too.

As he got back into the hinterlands and his own office at Net Force HQ, he saw Jay Gridley standing in the door, grinning.

“Tell me you have good news, Jay.”

“Oh, yeah. I think I got a solid lead on our dope dealer.”

“Really?”

“Yes, sir, boss.”

“How?”

“The rich man’s daughter. I backtracked her spending spree. Somebody remembered that she used a public computer in one of the shops for some kind of on-line transaction. I sieved the computers she might have operated, found all the e-mail for the time she would have been in the shop, and did some cross-references and keyword hits, in case she used a phony name… which, by the way, she did.”

“Go on, impress me.”

“I had the searchbots looking for a long list of pointers, about forty keys, including Thor, Thor’s Hammer, and all like that. I got a hit on one and followed it up.”

“And this keyword was…?”

“Purple.”

“Purple?”

“As in the color of the caps. Here’s the e-mail I ran down.”

He handed Michaels a hardcopy print. It said, “Yo, Friday Girl-I’ll have that purple thingee for you when you come by.”

It was signed, “Wednesday.”

“No offense, Jay, but this is a reach. A ‘purple thingee’? It could be some kind of plush kid’s toy for all we know. And days of the week as code names? Why would that be our rich woman and her dealer?”

Jay grinned. “That’s the key, boss. Friday was named for the Norse goddess Frigga. Wednesday comes from Woden, which, as I’m sure you must know, is the way the Norse in the southern countries spelled Odin.”

“Fascinating. So?”

“Frigga and Odin were Thor’s mom and pop.”

Michaels thought about that for a few seconds. “Ah. That would seem to be a bit of a coincidence, wouldn’t it.”

“Yeah, I’d say so. Doesn’t mean it’s the chemist himself, but I’d bet my next month’s pay against a week-old, road-killed possum this ‘Wednesday’ guy has something to do with this drug.”

“Good work, Jay.”

“I didn’t spook the guy, stayed well back, but I can run him down to an addy.”

“Better still.”

“Well, the thing is, this is good and bad. If I found it, the NSA people will find it, too, if they haven’t already.”

“How do you figure?”

“Well, their mission is to monitor communications outside the U.S. for possible terrorist activity, assorted plots, and things it would be good for us to know in general. So they have a whole list of words which, if they come up in a telephone conversation, a com-radio, telegraph signal, or e-mail, stuff like that, it kicks in a recorder. The message is taped and downloaded into one of a shitload of mainframes NSA operates, and rescanned, then routed to a computer program that reads the message and assigns it a priority code on a scale of one to ten. Anything above five gets sent to a human, and the higher a number, the faster it gets there. So if you put the words Suicide mission and bomb into your e-mail heading in any one of a hundred major or twenty minor languages, and NSA happens across it, somebody checks it. Most of the time it’s nothing, guys screwing around or whatever, but sometimes it pans out. A message that says something like ‘Shoot and kill the president and blow up Washington D.C.’ had better be a line from a TV show or an upcoming techno-thriller novel.”

“Nobody could be that stupid.”

“Oh, yeah they can. Dumb crooks are legion.”

Michaels said, “All right. I know this, in general, about NSA. So?”

“So you think NSA confines its eyes and ears to outside our borders? Yeah, home court’s supposed to be FBI territory for such things, but everybody in the biz knows which way that wind blows. NSA has the tools, and how would anybody know they were doing it if they didn’t tell us? Sheeit. If they are as hot to run down these dopers as the DEA, they will have assigned anything having to do with Thor a high priority. If we want to beat’em to this Wednesday, we better get somebody on the street PDQ. The dealer might get taken, and that’d be good, but it’s better for us if we get some credit, right?”

“Right,” Michaels said. “Let me step into my office and make a call. Thanks, Jay.”

“Info is in your in-file under the name ‘Rich Girl.’ Remember me when you give out the bonuses.”

Malibu, California

When Tad woke up again, he looked at his watch. Not so much for the time as for the date. Sometimes after a Hammer trip, he would be more or less unconscious for three or four days.

He had been awake a couple times before, to go pee and get some water and pain pills, and he thought he remembered Bobby telling him a story about stoning FBI HQ in L.A. all to hell and gone. Maybe that had been a dream. Make more sense if it was.

Not too bad, if the watch was right, only a couple days since he’d crashed. If he remembered the day he’d done it right.

And if it hadn’t been a week and some.

He hurt all over. It was like he’d been dropped off a tall building and then bounced like a superball for a couple of blocks, slamming a different part of his body against the concrete each time. The slightest movement stabbed him with hot needles, cut at him with cold, dull razors. He managed to roll to a sitting position, then up to his feet. He swayed there for a moment, fought for balance, then headed for the shower. Moving slowly. After he got clean, he’d feel a little better, though a little better wasn’t going to be much compared to how crappy he felt. Still, that was the price you paid. You could bitch after the first time, but after that, you had no excuses; you knew what it was gonna feel like. You couldn’t blame anybody but yourself.

He managed to achieve the bathroom without falling, though he had to lean against the wall a couple of times along the way. He stripped, then got into the shower and cranked the water up full blast from all the nozzles. Had to; water coming from only one direction would probably knock him down.

Halfway to using all the hot water in the house — and that was saying something — Bobby stuck his head into the steamed-up bathroom and yelled: “Still alive? Amazing.”

“Fuck you,” Tad yelled reflexively.

“You okay enough to work?”

“I’m up, aren’t I?” He shut off the water and stepped out, grabbed one of the beach towels, and started drying off.

Bobby watched him, shaking his head. “You look like hammered dog shit.”

“Why, thank you. So what?”

“Business is picking up. I’ve got a dozen orders I need to send out today, eight more tomorrow, and four more the day after that.”

“Got me a cap for the first run?”