It was scary, but not altogether unexpected when the
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tibled call came in from the Japanese SysOp a few mutes later. The barge’s computers were history, too. That left the ship, and if Gridley and his guys knew at the train and the barge, they had to know about the Chance.
Fortunately, the ship was in international waters. If the J.S. could get a Coast Guard cutter or Navy ship to go -not politically likely, according to Jasmine-the nbling boat’s crew would see it coming fifteen miles way . Plenty of time to wipe those computers, too, though at would be a last resort. With Germany and Japan gone, their work was on the ship. They would have to be led certain it was endangered before they trashed it. tiousands and thousands of man-hours erased would hurt ray too much.
He had better call Jasmine and let her know where he fwas and what was going on. Better she hear it from him Prst.
|0n the Bon Chance
|:
|ln her office alone, Chance was absolutely pissed off. First
I there had been Roberto’s little routine with that slut of a
|secretary-she could have strangled him when he looked
i at her all innocently and said they were just having a
I friendly drink. Now there were the goddamned hits on the
train and barge, with a terrified Keller on his way back ; here practically peeing in his pants. She wasn’t worried i that the U.S. Navy was going to come calling as much as i she was frustrated over the losses. How had they figured
it out? Keller had told her it was impossible.
She was going to have to speak harshly with him about
this.
And the schedule was going to have to be moved up, \ just in case. They only had one arrow left in their quiver
now, and it had to be strung and loosed before their target
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had a chance to move out of the line of fire. She paged Roberta, a priority-one call. If he was interrupted trying to get into the secretary’s pants, too bad. She sent half a dozen other pages, also P-l calls. She didn’t like the way this felt. Not at all. She did not want it to come unraveled now, not when they were so close to winning. Better to move and win a partial victory than to stand still and lose it all. The clock was ticking, and if time ran out before they launched, it would be all over.
Net Force HQ Quantico, Virginia
Howard looked at Julio. “So, what do you think?”
Fernandez shook his head. “It’s just simple enough it might work. Gridley can get the computer stuff done?”
“He says so.”
“So if we get approval, we’d go when?”
‘Tomorrow. After dark.”
Julio shook his head. “Technology. Amazing stuff.”
“Put together three squads, mixed male and female. I want thirty troopers, two pilots and copilots, the usual bells and whistles, given the limitations. Air transport, briefings, maps, assignments, I need everything ready to roll by 0600 tomorrow.”
“Yes, sir. I’m on the way. Guess we’ll see if the new top kick is as good as he thinks he is.”
“He can’t possibly think he’s as good as you thought you were when you were a sergeant.”
“Well, sir, that’s because he couldn’t possibly be that good.”
Howard smiled.
After Julio had left, he looked at the computer images floating in the air above his conference table. The best
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f.
[plans were the simple ones, he knew, but maybe this one
| was too simple.
Only one way to find out.
On the Eon Chance
i Santos didn’t like being hurried. Once he set his mind to a plan, he liked to have it flow naturally. Sometimes, you
| had to adjust to the unexpected, but this new bug up Missy’s butt was too much, too quick. He’d tried to tell her, but she wasn’t having any of it. Still pissed at him for the secretary.
Too bad, that. This speeded-up schedule was going to put a crimp in his seduction. The secretary was as good as on her back when Missy came in, all Ice Bitch, and started trying to pull his chain. She was gonna pay. It was just one more coin it was gonna cost her.
Meanwhile, he had to get his teams ready to move. Missy wanted it fast. Tomorrow, if possible, the day after at the latest. Too soon-but what could you do? He didn’t want to miss the action.
Toni wandered around, taking more pictures, but feeling a sense of impending something. As the day wound down, nothing new happened she needed to think about. No sign of Santos, so maybe his boss had put the fear of God into him.
She briefly considered trying to get onto the private decks. Even went so far as to seem to get lost and wind up at one of the entrances to one such deck. But the electronic card reader would need a key, and as she started back the way she’d come, the door opened and revealed a couple of men standing on the other side, wearing photographer’s sleeveless vests over their shirts, which in this kind of climate meant they were using the vests to cover
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pistols tucked into their belts-they certainly weren’t cold.
One more small piece of circumstantial evidence, the armed guards. Of course, maybe they were there to guard a vault room, where the gambling winnings were kept?
Not likely. Most of what Toni had seen was cashless, all done on credit exchanges. You didn’t need guards for that.
No, she would pack up and catch a late-afternoon helicopter out, head home. Earlier, she had heard somebody say it was supposed to rain tonight or tomorrow, a little tropical depression, not a hurricane or anything, but some wind and weather. She would just as soon be gone if that was going to happen-she didn’t like to fly in the rain. She’d known some people who had been on a jet that tried to take off in a typhoon once. The jet had crashed and burned, and the folks she knew had been lucky to survive. Bad weather and flying didn’t go together in Toni’s book.
Le Boy, South Zone Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Jay looked around, and felt a little uncomfortable. The club was noisy, the music playing very loud, lights flashing, and people dancing. Most of the people dancing were men, there were only a handful of women, and some of them looked pretty mannish, too.
He turned back to his virtual beer. According to what he had learned, Le Boy was the biggest gay night club in the city. You kinda had to expect to see a lot of men, now, didn’t you?
A tall, well-built bodybuilder in a pair of skintight leather pants and a tank top arrived at the bar to Jay’s left and flashed him a big, toothy smile. “Com lisenfa,” he said, “voce 6 ativo? O passivo?”
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Jay tapped the tiny translator hidden in his right ear, land the Portuguese die man had spoken was translated |into English: “Excuse me, are you a top or a bottom?”
Even in VR, Jay flushed. “I’m waiting for a friend,” he |subvocalized. The translator turned the reply into Portufcguese.
The buffed bodybuilder-they called them “barbies” *here, Jay recalled from his research-kept smiling. “I :,could be your friend,” the translator said in Jay’s ear.
“Maybe,” Jay said. “Do you know a man named Rob- Santos?”
His would-be friend’s face went dark. “Bichal” he said.
Jay didn’t need the translator for that one.
“He is a friend of yours?” the barbie said, his voice dangerous.
“No. An enemy.”
The man nodded. “He is a bastard among bastards, a
son of a whore, a fucker of his sister and grandmother!”
He reached into his mouth and tugged. A partial dental
Isolate came out-his top four front teeth were false. The
?l”rbie waved the plate at Jay. “He did this to me!” He
put the plate back in.
Jay made sympathetic noises. ‘Tell me about him.”
The barbie needed no more prompting. “He cruises the gay scene, though he is not gay. He sometimes goes into the-the dark rooms, and lets some poor boy give him oral sex. Then he beats him. He has hurt other of my friends. He always picks big men, strong men. He is a t fighter, his fists are like iron. He enjoys hitting. He laughs while he does it.”
“Why haven’t the police arrested him? Has no one complained?”
The barbie nodded. “Oh, yes, many have complained. The police only laugh and shake their heads when they hear his name. He is protected. So protected that once he beat a man so bad the man died, and still the police did nothing. Santos is a devil.”
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