Changing of the Guard

round when he knows Natadze will be here.”

“Exactly,” Jay said. “I’m thinking our delivery guy probably just scanned the guitars as delivered at some point during the day — probably on his lunch hour, which would explain why the time was exactly the same for each delivery. But he didn’t actually deliver them until later, probably after hours.”

“Could be,” Kent said, “But even so…?”

Howard picked it up. “That would be service worth a nice tip.”

Kent got it. “Ah. You’re saying this guy is in Natadze’s pocket.”

“He told the Commander about the deliveries. Maybe he told Natadze about the Commander,” Jay said.

“Oh,” Kent and Howard said as one.

“Maybe we better have somebody have a little talk with this delivery guy,” Jay said.

It took a couple of hours, but when the FBI agent called them, he confirmed it. The delivery driver had stalled, but in the end, had confessed to telling Natadze about the query from Net Force.

Jay was right. That was that. At least for now.

“So we missed him,” Kent said. “Probably by minutes.”

Howard nodded, feeling the man’s frustration. “It happens.”

“Not to me.”

Howard said. “Have you taken up walking next to the ferry when you cross the river, Abe?”

Kent’s jaw muscles danced. He was probably thinking something he didn’t want to say to a general, even one who was his friend. Howard understood the feeling. He glanced at Julio, who had come by to hear the sitrep. Maybe he could make Abe feel a little better.

Howard said, “Listen, a few years back, we had a shooter on our to-do list, a Russian guy who called himself Ruzhyo.”

He saw Julio smile and shake his head.

“The op was out in the middle of the Nevada desert, nobody else around, the guy living in a trailer. Should have been a walk in the park. We set it up, went to collect him, by-the-book, and this one guy gave us a world of hurt. Had bouncing-betty mines jury-rigged, bigger explosives, a rack full of guns, and he was ready for us. We had troops blasted and down before we knew what hit us. Guy laid smoke and took off in his car, but we had the perimeter and he didn’t have a prayer. A couple hundred yards away, his car blew up. Big explosion, body parts everywhere, and end of mission.

“We packed it up, I left a couple of men in the trailer to secure it, and we went home to lick our wounds.”

“But at least you got him.”

Howard shook his head. “No, we didn’t. He suckered us. He was buried in a hidey-hole. The car ran on a remote, the body parts were a mix of an old lab skeleton and a butcher shop. After we left, he climbed out of his concealment, went to the trailer, killed the two men I’d left, and disappeared.”

Kent turned to look at Howard.

“Yeah. One step ahead of me all the way. He’d been a Spetsnaz guy and a shooter for years, he had figured we’d find him one day, and he set up his scenario well in advance. He knew the terrain, knew how we would come in, and he had an answer for all our questions. We underestimated him—I underestimated him — and he cost me two dead and two wounded.

“You didn’t lose anybody here today. The guy was tipped off before we ever rolled, before we even heard about it. There was nothing you could have done to make it work, Abe. He knew we were coming before we did, and he took off. It’s just the breaks.”

Kent nodded. “Point taken.” After a moment, he said, “Knowing you, General, you wouldn’t have been real happy about your Russian. That the end of the story?”

“No. We ran into him again, in England. He hooked up with another bad guy we had reason to talk to, and our second meeting ended with Mr. Ruzhyo pushing up the daisies.”

“That name means ‘rifle,’ doesn’t it? My Russian is very rusty.”

“Yes. And he had one when we came across him — a little twenty-two built into a cane. If we hadn’t been wearing body armor, he would have taken three of us out with that sucker — five shots, five hits. He got one round through a glove, and knocked out another shooter’s weapon. He could have escaped, but for whatever reason, he didn’t, he stood and fought. Hell of a gunslinger. I wished he’d been one of ours.” He paused, then looked at Kent.

“Bad pennies keep turning up. You did everything right, but this guy got a pass. Not your fault. You’ll do better next time.”

“Damn straight I will,” Kent said.

Both Howard and Julio smiled. They knew exactly how he felt.

28

Net Force HQ

Quantico, Virginia

Thorn jacked out of VR and sighed. Much of yesterday and this morning, he had hunted for traces of the man called Eduard Natadze, and had found nothing more useful than what they already knew. Using the new parameters and expanding the time limits, he had searched all manner of things connected to classical guitars, and found that Natadze had bought other instruments. An examination of his house already gave them that — a locked room in the basement had a collection of them, neatly cased, and a gun safe that held others, according to the portable X-ray scanner the FBI had used to check it. They left the house as they found it and set up surveillance, but nobody expected the man to return — he’d been burned, and he had to know they’d watch the place. Still, according to what they knew, the killer loved his guitars. Maybe he would risk it to recover them.

That he showed up on a couple of security cams at shops or concerts did them no good.

There were no records of him anywhere officially. If he was here on a visa, it was not under the name of Eduard Natadze or anything even remotely similar to that. Nor was his photo registered anywhere in the INS. Neither the car in his driveway nor the house itself were listed in his name; they were officially owned by corporations, holding companies, and dead ends. Nor were there any driver’s licenses issued in that name or carrying that photo in any of the fifty states, the District of Columbia, or Puerto Rico.

The man was off the radar — at least as far as Thorn had been able to determine.

It did not seem possible in the information age that somebody could walk in civilized society and not leave any more tracks than this man did, but there it was. And when the Invisible Man goes to ground, how do you find him?

Maybe Jay Gridley was doing better.

Endless Summer Modesto, California

Jay crept slowly along the strip, the murmur of the Viper’s exhaust a deep, throaty rumble loud in the summer night. The cruisers were out, low-riders and candy-apple-red or green metal flake paint jobs twenty coats deep; custom rods showing their brilliant feathers, a fine display of rolling automobile iron, mostly Detroit, but a few foreign cars sprinkled in among the big machines. The Beach Boys’ classic hit, “I Get Around,” blared from somebody’s radio — bad guys and hip chicks and driving around on a Saturday night. Easier back in the days when gasoline was leaded and thirty cents a gallon for ethyl.

His fire-engine-yellow Dodge was tiny compared to the full-sized cars, an open cockpit two-seater, but the engine was more than respectable. The Viper could scream with the biggest dinosaurs, and once you pressed the pedal to the metal, the speedometer needle went one way and the gas gauge needle went the other. A rocket on wheels, Jay liked to think, and while expensive to drive in RW, it was considerably cheaper here in VR.

Despite the admiring gazes of the girls dressed in tight shorts watching the cars grumble past in the warm summer night, Jay was frustrated.

Natadze was nowhere to be found. The scenario was entertaining, but that was all — the guy Jay wanted wasn’t in it, and no matter which block he circled, he could not find the man.