Interesting. Jay had what he came here for. Time to move on.
School of Business University of Hong Kong Hong Kong, China
Professor Wang, a forty-five-ish woman with a pageboy haircut and a gray business suit so severe it made her look like a business nun, said, “Oh, yes, I remember her.”
They were in a business library, the air conditioning blasting away. Jay nodded. “Anything you’d feel comfortable in saying about her?”
Wang smiled. “The words comfortable and Jasmine Chance don’t belong in the same sentence. There’s a story the students and staff used to pass around. Once, Jasmine was visiting the zoo, and there was a terrible earthquake. Some of the animals got loose. A pair of man-eating tigers escaped from their cage. Free and hungry, the tigers charged a group of school children. At the last second, Jasmine Chance stepped in between the hungry tigers and their prey. The tigers took one look at her, turned tail, and ran back to their cages in terror.”
Jay chuckled politely.
“That’s not the good part,” Wang said. “The good part is, she charged the parents HK$400 each for saving their children.”
“That sounds … harsh.”
“Harsh? Let me tell you something I know is true. Jasmine wanted to be first in her class. But she was not doing well in one subject-and for her, not doing well was being second in her grades, only a high A instead of the highest one. So she seduced the teacher, a middle-aged man with a wife, four children, and three grandchildren. She got her first place. When the professor said he would leave his wife for her, she laughed at him. In great shame
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; over what he had done and her refusal to accept him, he | committed suicide. When somebody told Jasmine what pad happened, she shrugged. Too bad,’ she said. That | woman is as moral as a shark. You don’t ever want to get 1between her and what she wants.” Jay nodded. Even more interesting.
j Net Force HQ IQuantico, Virginia
“So there you have it, boss. CyberNation has themselves a gay basher who apparently got away with at least one murder, and a woman who will do anything to accomplish her goals. I don’t have a lot of other history on them, but Santos has been essentially a high-class knee-breaker for a couple of organizations, and Chance has risen up a couple of corporate ladders so fast she seemed to have wings. Add them into the mix, it just keeps getting thicker and thicker. Pretty soon, we have the whole cake.”
“We’re missing a couple of ingredients yet,” Michaels said. “Your friend Keller wasn’t on the train; neither were the others you listed who were supposed to be there.”
Jay cursed.
“Yes, indeed. The German government is checking airports and other trains, but it appears he has flown the coop.”
Jay cursed again.
“I believe you said that.”
Jay shook his head. “Yeah. So, what now?”
“I am expecting a call from the director sometime in the next five minutes. If her clout is enough, we will be sending visitors to the Son Chance in the very near future.”
“I bet she named it after herself,” Jay said.
“Excuse me?”
“The boat.” He blew out a sigh. “Where is Toni?”
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He looked at his watch. “She should be catching a helicopter from the ship about now. In fact, if you can access the passenger lists, I’d appreciate knowing which flight she is on.”
“No problem. Mary Johnson.”
Before Michaels could say anything else, the com chimed. His secretary said, “The director is on line one.”
Michaels reached for the receiver, and shooed Jay out with a wave as he picked it up. Jay stood, but moved very slowly toward the door.
“Hello?”
“Commander. We have a ‘go.’ You better be right about this.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
Jay raised an eyebrow from the doorway. Michaels nodded at him and raised one hand in a thumb’s-up gesture.
“Yes!” Jay said in a stage whisper. He made a fist and pumped it.
Michaels wished he felt so positive.
34
On the Bon Chance
Toni waited in line for the shuttle boat. The sky had gone gray, and while it wasn’t raining yet, the wind had picked up and the southeasterly breeze felt damp. There was a full load of departing passengers waiting. Apparently more than a few people were worried about the weather, and didn’t want to be on a ship ninety miles away from land if it got nasty.
The boat from the helicopter barge arrived and tied up at the base of the ramp, and after a few seconds, new arrivals climbed the stairs or wheelchair ramp onto the ship.
She hoped they had all come to gamble, because they surely weren’t going to get much sun-
Hold on-
Coming up the ramp was a face she recognized. It took a second for her to realize why.
Keller. From the picture she’d seen. This was Jay’s guy!
What was he doing here? He was supposed to be in
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Germany, wasn’t he? This must mean something.
As soon as he’d passed, Toni left the shuttle boat line, as if she had suddenly remembered that she had forgotten something. The gap she left filled instantly. She glanced at her watch. The comsat wasn’t due for another forty- five minutes. Could she risk calling Alex on the ship’s phones? She could keep it innocuous-Hey, you know that picture you gave me? Well, I thought I had lost it, but I found it after all, right here on the ship.
Anybody who didn’t know who she was could hardly tell what she was talking about from that, could they?
Not likely. But if the ship’s phones were tapped, and that would be easy enough to do since they were owned and maintained by CyberNation, they might wonder why a secretary from Falls Church was calling somebody at Net Force headquarters. Or maybe they might be even able to recognize Alex’s name on the home phone or his virgil. And even if her scrambler kept them from hearing anything other than noise, maybe they would wonder what a secretary was doing with a scrambled phone.
Any of those would be bad.
No, she would wait until the next footprint so she could call on the secure line. There were still a dozen more copters leaving this evening, and she needed to get a better look at this guy, maybe even see where he went or who he might talk to-
As if some bored deity had been listening, Toni suddenly saw Jasmine Chance, now dressed in a black jumpsuit and sandals, step into view ahead. Toni turned away and put a hand up to block her face from view.
Keller went straight to her, and while she couldn’t overhear his conversation, he was obviously pretty excited from the way he waved his hands around.
Well, well. What did this mean?
Alex would surely want to know about this. Yes, she could call him from the Mainland, or even from the shuttle copter, but there was no hurry, was there? Maybe she could find out something more before she had to leave.
X
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In the Air near Fort Lauderdale, Florida
The old 727’s rebuilt engines were reassuring in their smooth, dependable drone. They were only a few minutes out now, and Julio was going over the checklist a final time as they began their descent into Fort Lauderdale.
“Our boy Mr. Gridley here came through.” Julio smiled at Jay, who sat across the aisle. “First squad and half of second squad will be on Bird A; third squad and the other half of second on Bird B.”
Howard nodded. Next to him sat Commander Michaels. Michaels hadn’t planned to come along at all, even to sit onshore, but he hadn’t heard from Toni, who was supposed to have left the ship by now. According to Jay, Mary Johnson had not gotten on any of the shuttle copters for the Mainland yet. Maybe the weather had more people leaving than normal, delaying the flights, but Michaels was worried enough to go along. Howard didn’t blame him. He knew how he’d feel if it was his wife there.
“Weather radar shows an ugly set of heavy showers moving from the southeast toward the target, the main body of which will have arrived by 2100-we’re gonna get wet.”
“I’ll be sure to bring my umbrella,” Howard said.
“Wind’11 just turn it inside out, sir. Steady breeze will be almost thirty knots, gusting to forty.”
“Go on.”
“Troops all have Class JJJ spider silk vests for armor- that’s the best we can do, given the scenario-so nobody is real bulletproof. Augmented-LOSIR corns will be set on opchan Gamma, and we carry sidearms and subguns, plus the usual assortment of puke gas, flashbangs, and all like that, packed away in our luggage. Everybody knows what he or she is supposed to do.”