“Big ones.”
“Six four, six five. Two-seventy, two hundred eighty, easy. Not fun in close quarters.”
PIPed in the left corner of the image was a smaller, wider-angle view that took in most of the room. That would be from the sticky-cam, about the size of a dime and almost clear and invisible, stuck on the wall near the door by one of the agents when they’d arrived. The wide- angle image gave a better view of the play, and Toni picked up a remote and switched the picture-ina-picture around.
Toni looked at her watch. “Right about… now,” she said.
One of the agents-the regular FBI guy-removed an envelope from his jacket pocket and passed it to the two men across from him. The thief took the envelope and checked it, smiled real big, and showed it to his partner. His partner took it, riffled what was inside with his thumb, and also smiled.
While the two extortionists were looking at the money, the agent on the left, who was in fact one Julio Femandez of Net Force, removed something from his pocket, which he pointed at the man across from him.
It looked kind of like a pack of white playing cards with a small handle and a circular hole near the middle through which Fernandez had stuck his finger.
“Strange-looking weapon,” Alex said.
“Starn pistola,” Toni said. “9mm stripper clip, five shots, all plastic and ceramic construction, including the springs, fragmenting bullets made from some kind of zinc epoxy boron ceramic. Light, but very fast, even from a snubby. Eighteen hundred, nineteen hundred feet per sec
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Bullet comes apart on impact, creates a nasty tern- stretch cavity.”
bodyguard on the left made as if to draw a gun under his jacket in a shoulder holster. Julio waved : gun at him and said something. Too bad there wasn’t sound.
; bodyguard must have decided that Julio’s weapon n’t that dangerous. He pulled his own handgun, a big,
semiauto pistol, t wasn’t even halfway from the holster when Julio shot The resolution of the camera, while pretty good, n’t enough for Toni to see where the bullet or bullets but the man dropped the gun and staggered back the wall, then slid down into a sitting position, second bodyguard evidently decided that trying to aw a man pointing a gun at your face was maybe such a good idea. He raised his hands, fingers open
ly, my,” Alex said. “What’s the world coming to i hackers bring guns to the party.” fe live in dangerous times,” Toni said.
15
On the Bon Chance
In the conference room next to the computer center, Keller called his team together.
“Listen,” he said. “I know you are all doing outstanding work. Our projects thus far have been on target and very effective. However, due to the actions of Net Force, as well as other minor security agencies, our successes have not been as great as we’d hoped they’d be.”
Nobody was happy to hear that, but it wasn’t telling them anything they didn’t already know.
“There are real world contingencies; of course, those have always been in place, and those in charge of such matters will go forward as necessary. Some efforts have already been made in that direction.”
This drew a disappointed murmur.
He could understand that It had been his hope all along that the programmers and weavers could do the job without resorting to cruder methods. That would be the real victory, to use the very tools of that which they sought to bring about and nothing more. The reality of it was, how
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that there were still limits on what could be done ideally. The future had arrived, but there were still : out there who not only refused to log into it, they t to be heading back to the past. There were groups i “till used typewriters, for God’s sake. Fountain pens tmaking a comeback. Handwritten letters weren’t goto replace e-mail, of course, but there were people still corresponded that way. There were even people United States who not only refused to have an- ng machines or services, they didn’t have tele- es\
fou couldn’t reach people like that, couldn’t frighten i with worries of Internet problems. They didn’t care, ately, these Luddites were in the minority; but computer revolution was not yet complete. Some still had to be done the old-fashioned way. That’s men Like Santos were necessary. If you were doing you needed a laser scalpel, but now and again, pile medicine’s advances, you had to have a bone saw. E perhaps more accurately, a leech …
; was wandering. He drew himself back to the meet! at hand. “We are going to have to push up our dead, ; on Attack Omega,” he said. iThat drew louder grumbles.
“I know, I know. You are already running as fast as i can. There is no help for it-the decision comes from I high. We will be coordinating with the other agents of age on this, and we can’t slip the deadline even by an Whatever we have when Omega launches is what : have. I’d like for it to be as much as possible. Okay, t’s put on our question hats and get them all out in the
rtftfi ”
Later, after they had filed out, Keller sat at the table, ly tapping his fingertips on the wood, thinking. His team
Id give him all they had. And he would roll up his eves and help them-Jay Gridley was the linchpin which Net Force’s security operations revolved.
ow enough sand at Jay, and he’d grind to a halt, and
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if Jay was stymied, much of Net Force’s interference would also be slowed, maybe stopped.
Whatever Santos thought of him, all it would take would be for Keller to point a finger at Jay, and he’d be a dead man. That was the surest way of removing him from the picture. And probably it was safer for CyberNation to do it that way.
But…
Where was the honor in that? The skill? The knowing that he could take Jay on and beat him, using the weapons they had developed with their brains. Any thug could crack somebody over the head with a club. Beating Jay Gridley mono a mono, VR against VR, computer to computer, that was something to make a man feel good.
Kill Jay? No. Not with a gun or knife. Beating him at his own game, that was how he would do it. Defeating him intellectually, shattering his confidence, taking away what he thought he was, that was worse than death for a man like Jay Gridley.
Nothing less would do.
He took a deep breath. Well. Might as well get started. He had a couple of things he could give Jay to chew on. He smiled. Yes, indeed.
Santos finished his exercises. Drenched in sweat, he headed for the shower.
The workout had been good, but he was getting stale. It had been too long since he had trained against an expert. The solo dances were okay for maintaining muscle tone, to stay flexible and to keep alive the basics, but you did not learn to fight men by practicing alone. Mirror warriors were no threat. To keep a skill sharp, you had to hone it against another player of equal or better skill. Timing, distance, position, those could only be learned against dangerous opposition. The flow had to be there.
Soon, he would have to find players of enough ability to challenge him. There were none on this ship, none within easy travel range. Maybe in Cuba-he had heard
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fe were some old-line players still there, hiding in the f fields, practicing by moonlight, since the art was still 1 on, even after the Old Man was gone-but find- t would be the trick. There were some in the U.S., e, even in Florida, but to get a real challenge, he tneed to go home, that’s where the best players still and that was not hi the cards in the near future- atil this job was finished.
: sighed. A man had to learn to put off his wants to ? with his needs.
turned the cold water on full blast, shucked his , and stepped into the shower. The cold needles made It catch his breath, but it was a good feeling.
there was the problem of Missy Chance to con- She was sleeping with Jackson Keller, at least, others-who knew? One of the barmaids in the i had told Santos this while she had been enjoying r in her room, after he had returned from dispatch- ||he vice president of the server company.
soaped the long-handled and stiff-bristled brush I began to scrub his face and neck.
saw no irony in finding out that his mistress was ng with another man from a woman he was screw- Men were allowed to be with more than one woman, (had made men that way, but a woman who was un- ul? That was wrong. He could not blame Keller for ng Missy, though he, too, would have to pay. But if . not rape, and he could not imagine that happening then Missy must be made to… atone for her ac-