The mosquitoes were bad, but as long as he kept moving they didn’t settle too thickly on his exposed face and hands; they couldn’t penetrate the thick buckskin shirt and pants, nor what he wore under them. A few big wood spiders had spun card-table-sized webs here and there, and he avoided those when he saw them.
A bird called out ahead of him, a cheerful whistle he didn’t recognize. A man couldn’t know everything.
He came to a small clearing in the forest, a place where a couple of huge old-growth conifers had fallen and flattened a dozen smaller trees. The big trunks had mostly rotted away under sun and wind and rain, turning to reddish brown, pulpy food for termites, and fertilizer for the new growth that wiggled and broke through their corpses. There were also sedge grasses here, many of which had been nibbled short by the deer. It was maybe thirty meters across, the clearing, and the sun shined down upon it through the rent in the forest’s thick canopy.
He waited a few seconds, listening, looking, sniffing the air. Everything seemed okay.
He started across the clearing. Halfway to the other side, he heard something behind him. A startled animal, perhaps?
He looked over his shoulder in time to see a Native American warrior step out of the brush. The man had an iron-tipped lance, and from his dress Jay realized he was a Shawnee. He had forgotten about them-they were a Johnny-come-lately tribe in Pennsylvania, having arrived here only around the end of the 1600s.
Another warrior stepped into view, also armed with a long lance. A third slipped from the brush, and he had a
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|much like Jay’s, though the stock of his was deco- with a pattern of brass nail heads. They weren’t ; feathers or war paint, but they weren’t smiling at either.
to leave the party, Jay, he thought. He turned to : away, but three more Shawnees materialized ahead
Another trap. How interesting. of the Shawnee chanted something. Probably tiing like, “Say your prayers, round eyes, you’re a kman!” but Jay shook his head, ifot this time, pal,” he said.
i dropped his long rifle, tore open his buckskin shirt yeal a Kevlar and spider silk vest, along with an Uzi || from a strap under his armpit. He pulled the black im out and pointed it at the three Shawnee in front
“Rock ‘n’ roll!” he yelled. “Rock ‘n’ roll-!” pulled the Uzi’s trigger. Thirty-odd rounds ofjack- |9mm bullets spewed. The air filled with smoke and At this range, it was hard to miss. He waved the he a water hose-
soft lead bullet from the Shawnee’s rifle whacked ; Square in the middle of his back. He felt it flatten st the vest, sting, but do no damage- the time he spun to attend to the other three, the ^i-lorig fifty-round magazine was running low, so he himself to five-round bursts: Braaaap! Braaap! ,/
: held the final burst down, and stitched the sixth very rised Indian across the thighs. The last ambusher fell;
: the other five, he was down, but not dead. jpChe woods got very quiet after the angry roar of the
chine gun.
Hf3od bless the Israelis and their dependable technology, held the muzzle of the subgun up in front of his i and blew away the thin tendril of smoke rising from ^ hot barrel, fow’d you like them apples, pard?”
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He moved toward the wounded Shawnee. He had a few questions to ask him, and if he hurried he might get an answer before his opponent realized what was going on…
On the Bon Chance
“Son of a bitch,” Jackson Keller said. He grinned. “So you haven’t lost all your moves after all, Jay. Good for you.”
He looked at the holoprojic recording floating above his console. The packet Jay had managed to snag wasn’t going to take him anywhere useful, but it was surprising he had managed to avoid the scenario-destroying trap like that.
Well. Maybe it shouldn’t have been so surprising. At his peak, back in their college days, Jay had been sharp, as sharp as anybody. They had run with CIT’s and MIT’s best. It wasn’t unreasonable that some small part of his edge wasn’t completely dull. That just made it more interesting, didn’t it?
So he avoided a trap. No big deal. The next one would be better. He reached for his sensor set. Let’s play, Jay. Show me what you got…
His com chirped. He was tempted to ignore it and jack back into VR, but he glanced at the ID sig. Better get that.
“Hey,” he said.
Jasmine said, “Hey. Listen, there’s something you ought to know, just FYI.”
“Sure, shoot.”
“It seems that Roberto has, ah… found out that you and I have been … intimate.”
Keller both felt and heard himself take a deep breath. And his belly knotted as if somebody had stabbed him in it with a shard of dry ice. “Excuse me? How did that happen?”
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n’t know. I didn’t say anything.”
I sure as hell didn’t.” i not anything to worry about.” (anything to worry about? Santas killed people with hands! Keller had heard the story of the two i guys at the site of the telephone cable cut. About rFBI bodyguards for the Blue Whale veep. They’d trained, they’d all had guns and that hadn’t mat- fe’d killed five people, bap, just like that! And |.had been others … ‘. knew it had been a mistake to sleep with her. Good
was, it had been a mistake, i tried to keep his voice calm. He should have ex- this. It was a big boat, but not that big. They j’t invisible. “Oh. Really.” . e’s part of the team. He doesn’t want to screw that e’s making way too much money-he knows I’d fire ‘ he hurt you.”
II, wasn’t that comforting! I’m dead, but he’s fired? i didn’t say anything.
ay way, that’s it. I’ll be sending him on a little chore * today. We can … talk about it more when he’s
99
blinked at the frozen holoproj over his computer, she saying what he thought she was saying? That Santos was off the ship, they’d get back into the ^together? Was she that stupid? he?
ul there, Jacko. Pissing off The Dragon Lady 1 be worse than pissing off the stone killer! ‘. mumbled something, and she discommed.
heart was definitely beating faster, and his ding was rapid and unsteady, too. All of a sudden, (little intellectual match with Jay Gridley didn’t seem where near as interesting and fun as it had only a few
es ago.
i man who looked like he was chiseled out of granite, i killed people without batting an eye, a man with old
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ideas of machismo, had found out Keller was sleeping with his woman. How the hell was Keller supposed to just smile and shrug that off?
He forced himself to breathe slower. Maybe she was right. Maybe Santos was too smart to cause any problems. They were all getting rich off this project, and they stood to get a whole lot richer once their shares started really appreciating in value. He wouldn’t want to screw that up over a woman. Santos was not that stupid.
But Keller wasn’t sure about that. Not sure enough to bet his life on it.
Capitol Hill Washington, D.C.
Michaels surreptitiously glanced at his watch. Next to him, Tommy Bender, the Net Force lawyer, caught the look and squelched a smile.
The senate subcommittee room was hot and stuffy. There were no windows. The senators were talking for the camera again. One of the senators got up and walked away, as a second returned to his seat on the dais. They came and went like a roomful of small children who had drunk too much lemonade. One would go, another would return. There was more motion from the subcommittee than a soccer team playing a match. Michaels couldn’t leave to stretch or get a drink of water, though. He had to sit here at the table looking up at the sometimes-six, sometimes-eight, sometimes-five of them milling back and forth like somnolent sheep. Already it had been two hours, and there were no signs of an end in sight.
Senator Theresa Genaloni, from the great state of New Jersey, made her obscure point about the dangers of invading citizens’ privacy, and finally shut up. This hearing didn’t have anything to do with on-line privacy per se, but she was the junior senator from her state, her party
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i the minority, and this pissant committee was hardly and Means, so she had to make her points where ‘ she could. Otherwise, how would the folks back s know she was on the job? She certainly wasn’t de; jobs in their direction, nor much in the way of It-barrel spending.