guess he doesn’t care what we do together — as long as we do our jobs.”
Her smiled vanished, turned into a pout.
He laughed. “What? You think he is so jealous of your favors that he would kill his partner for indulging in them?
Wu is a pragmatist. Nothing you and I did today will lessen what you and he do tomorrow. If anything, it might make it better — I’ve shown you some tricks even you didn’t know. Those would be to his benefit, no?”
She sat up suddenly and threw a pillow at him. “Beast!”
He laughed as he reached out and caught the pillow in one hand. “That’s not what you said earlier.”
She smiled. “I cannot stay angry with you, can I?”
“No. I am too lovable.”
“No, not lovable. But… something.”
Locke tossed the pillow back at her, not hard, and went back to tying his tie. He had heard that plenty of times:
As for Wu, Locke was not only sure he was having him followed, he was pretty sure this apartment, for which Wu paid, was bugged. Audio at the least, maybe video. Locke hadn’t bothered to look for the microphones or cameras, but in Wu’s position, he would have made very sure he could verify what Mayli told him about Shing — at least enough of it to feel some confidence. There was probably a recording of Shing and Mayli rolling around on the bed in Wu’s desk, and no doubt he had watched such a thing if it existed.
Locke’s own performance with Mayli? Certainly nothing to feel insecure about — and no doubt at all much superior to Shing’s rootings…
“When will you return?”
He finished the Windsor knot and straightened the gray silk tie. Against the lighter gray of his tailored shirt and darker silk jacket, the tie was perfect. There were still some excellent tailors in Hong Kong, and with the British gone for decades, easier to get one whose work you liked. A five-thousand-dollar suit didn’t look that much better than a three-thousand-dollar one to most, but those who knew such things could spot the differences. Clothes might not make the man, but among the rich and powerful, they were badges that identified you as somebody with taste and means.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But maybe I’ll call you when I do. If I can’t find anybody better.”
By the time she had thrown the pillow at him again, he was already on his way to the door.
5
Jay Gridley sat in the back of an open-wall ragtop jitney with fifty other passengers; an oppressive, cloying, heat and humidity wrapped the bus like a sodden blanket. Had they been moving, there would at least have been some hot wind, but the vehicle was, like the hundreds of others he could see on the road, jammed to a full stop. Even the people on bicycles and Segways weren’t moving, and the air was as still as a tomb.
Around him, the passengers talked to each other in Malay or Bahasa or English, apparently unaffected by their lack of progress.
Jay shook his head. Whatever VR scenario he conjured, the military’s super-computers were not easy to navigate. The hardware, software, protocols — everything was a pain. Even with full access, delving into these things was as difficult and complex as anything Jay had ever done. The place was a rat’s nest of back alleys and twisted roads, with buildings looming over the narrow streets, far too many people — read information packets — and a host of other complicating factors Jay hadn’t even begun to sort out.
His respect for Major Bretton ratcheted up several notches. If the man could negotiate this mess at all, he was good.
Next to him a local man, probably seventy, and dressed in a white short-sleeved shirt and a sarong, smiled, showing better teeth than Jay expected.
“Selamat. You Thai?” the man asked. His voice was raspy and full of phlegm.
As it happened, that was partially true. “Yes.”
“You have children? I have five — four sons and a daughter, plus nine grandchildren.”
“I have a son. Only one.”
The old man laughed, a cackle. “You young. Plenty of time.”
He pulled a cigarette from his shirt pocket and offered it to Jay. “Smoke?”
Jay declined.
The old man lit the coffin nail and inhaled deeply. Gray tendrils rose in the hot and still air. The smoking explained the raspy, phlegmy sound to old man’s voice. Even though Jay had created the scenario, he sometimes fell into a kind of schizophrenic state where things for which he was responsible, such as the old man’s voice, came as a surprise to him, as if somebody else had built the program.
“Is it always like this?” Jay asked. He waved to encompass the gridlocked traffic.
The old man shrugged. “This a good day. Some times, much worse.”
Great. Just what he needed to hear.
The old man looked out through the open sides of the jitney. “Rain is coming soon. Cool things off.”
Jay nodded. How bad was it when a tropical storm, with lightning, thunder, and rain blasting down in sheets angled almost horizontal, was something you were looking
Ick.
This was going to be a long, long day…
The U.S. Air Force was doing a terrific job — the thousands of smart antimine bomblets, TDO-A2s, known unofficially as “garden weasels,” had cleared major pathways in the minefields on the NK side of the wire, so when the new M10A3 gasoline-powered heavy tanks began roaring across the line, they were able to make good speed. The tanks’ 105mm cannons added noise and smoke to the already shrouded battlefield, but the tin can drivers didn’t need to see anything outside their sensor screens — fog, rain, smoke, darkness, none of these were impediments to the electronic gear the heavies carried.
Overhead, the scores of fighters and bombers continued to roar — no need for stealth now — dropping huge pay-loads, ranging from the ten-ton BLU-84a “Big Blue” daisy-cutters that would chop down enemy soldiers like a lawn mower in dry grass, to the GBU-27B smart bombs from the F-111s that could find a chimney and go down it like Santa Claus bringing coal to the bad kids, to the BU- 28 five-thousand-pound bunkerbusters.
That section of North Korea was, for the moment, the most dangerous place on the planet, more so than an active volcano. You might outrun lava. No way could you outrun 20mm machine-gun rounds from a jet fighter chasing you.
Yes, the North Koreans had a huge army, and much armor and all, but with the full force of the United States military brought to bear all at once, there was no way anybody on this planet was going to stop it—
Except that it did stop.
Just like somebody switching off a lamp…
Thorn removed the VR headset and blew out a sigh, still astonished by the power of the simulation. It was as if he had been there, standing just behind the action, hearing and seeing and feeling the thrum of all-out war, smelling the gunpowder and cooked earth…
General Roger Ellis, U.S. Marines, head of Special Projects Command — SpecProjCom — for the Pentagon, and Thorn’s new boss, leaned back in his chair and looked at him.
“Very impressive,” Thorn said.
“Yeah, up until the point that it shut down,” Ellis said. “That simulation took a boatload of expensive log-in time and the lion’s share of attention from a cross-linked pair of supercomputers to run, and somebody killed it like
