Mama and Poppa had gone to evening mass with as many of the relatives as they could bully into going with them.
The fun part of the gathering was mostly done, and the inevitable too-close-together friction would be warming up about now. She loved her family, but after a couple of days cooped up in the apartments with them, things could get a little contentious. She’d left them trying to convince her father he shouldn’t be getting behind the wheel of his car anymore, and she knew that was a war the family was going to lose.
It surprised her too that Alex had cut short his visit home to fly from Boise to Arizona. He wasn’t a field operative, and she worried about him. John Howard wouldn’t let Alex do anything dangerous–she hoped–but it still gave her butterflies thinking about Alex being on-site for a hot op. He should be back at HQ, and the strike team should be doing its job without him.
When she’d called him, he’d told her she didn’t need to go into HQ herself, but she’d cut that short. If this was important enough for him to be there, it was important enough for her to get back to work too.
She leaned back in the seat and stared through the window.
The jet was half-empty. Not a lot of people traveling on Christmas Day.
Saturday, December 25th, 11:15 P.m.
Sugar Loaf Mountain, Boulder, Colorado Sitting in the propane-heated spa inset into the redwood deck behind the cabin, Joanna and Maudie watched the snow fall into the hot water and melt. The deck had three eight-foot high walls of cedar slats and wicker screen surrounding it, to keep occupants hidden from the neighbors’ view, with the cabin as the fourth wall, but there was no roof. The spa itself was big enough to seat six people in comfort, maybe eight if they were on real good personal terms. Upon the steaming water and the two women in it, fresh snow fell, fat, heavy flakes, adding to that already piled up eight or ten inches deep on the deck, pristine save where it had been foot printed by the naked women going to and from the tub.
Winthrop took another sip from the second bottle of champagne they’d bought, splurging their own money for the good vintage after they’d polished off Maudie’s admirer’s gift.
Maudie raised her glass and watched a few snowflakes hit the wine. She said, “Problem with this is that you get spoiled real quick. After the expensive stuff, the cheap champagne tastes like some thing you’d clean your oven with.” Winthrop waved her own glass.
“Hear, hear.” She reached across the big oval-shaped fiberglass tub with her foot and snagged the floating thermometer. She dragged it to her, lifted it, and looked at it.
“Hundred and six,” she said.
“And the air temperature is what? Twenty, twenty-five?” “Sounds about right.” Winthrop shook her head, and the melting snow fell from her hair into the water with a tiny slush! sound.
“I wonder what the poor folks are doing,” Maudie said.
“You know, it might not get any better than this.
Friends, Moet Chandon, hot water, and snow.” “Amen, sister. Well, except for maybe a couple of hunky young studs.” “Wouldn’t do much good in this,” Maudie said. She dragged her free hand through the water.
“You never heard of the Boiled Noodle Effect?” They both laughed.
From inside the cabin, a comm chirped, a one-two … three rhythm.
“That’s mine,” Winthrop said.
“Damn.” “Don’t answer it. Anybody asks when you get back to work, tell them we were in a digital dead zone. Mountains and all.” She considered it for a moment.
“Nah. I better. Could be my family.” Maudie shrugged, waved at the French doors.
“Go and sin no more.” Winthrop stepped out of the water, and felt an almost immediate chill despite the red glow of her skin as she padded through the snow to where a pair of thick beach towels hung on a rack next to the doors, under the roof’s overhang enough so they didn’t get rained or snowed on.
“Damn, girl, if I was into women, you’d be my first choice,” Maudie said.
“You got a great butt. Speaking strictly as somebody who knows how much work it takes to get one to look like that, of course.” Winthrop grinned.
“Beauty is only skin deep,” she said as she wrapped the towel around her. It was cool, but not too cold.
“Yeah, but a great butt is a joy forever!” Inside the cabin the fire crackled in the big stone fireplace.
Winthrop walked over a patch of cold wood floor, onto the Oriental rug, and picked up her comm.
The caller ID showed the name “Lonesome Jay Gridley.” She grinned in spite of herself.
“Hello?” “Lieutenant. I take it you haven’t been watching the network news lately?” “Nope. I’ve been enjoying champagne and a hot tub lately.” “I thought not, or you’d have called. A few things you need to know.” She listened as he filled her in on the situation with the terrorists attacks on nuclear transports. When he was done, she said, “Christ.
I’ll catch the next plane I can get back to HQ.” “That isn’t necessary, I believe we can get along without you for a couple more days. Enjoy your hot tub.” “What aren’t you telling me, Gridley? I hear some thing else hiding there. What is it?” “Not much. That leak I mentioned that seemed to come from inside Net Force?” “Yes?
“It came from your station.” “What?” “Yes, ma’am, no doubt about it. You weren’t here when it went out, of course, and we all know you had nothing to do with it, but I’m sure glad it didn’t come from my station. Byebye. Talk to you later.” He discommed.
Winthrop stared at her commas if it were a rat come to life in her hand.
Oh, man backslash This sucked’.
Chapter 17 Sunday, December 26th, 1:50 a.m.
Gila Bend, Arizona Howard looked around. His strike team troops were loaded in three transport vehicles, and they were parked in a dusty stretch of desert with a slightly overcast sky. Without their headlights, it would be very dark out here.
The troop vehicles were highly modified Toyota Land Cruisers–mostly just the engines, frames, and wheels left from the originals–and they all wore flat-black carbon-fiber stealth shells. Close-range radar was cheap, a rig swiped from any big powerboat or sailboat would be sufficient for a ranch house, and since they had the cruisers, they might as well use them.
The trick was not so much to be completely invisible, but rather to be hard to see and identify–until you were right on top of whoever was looking at you. Even the new stealth gear wasn’t a hundred percent efficient on a land vehicle, but it would give a radar operator an odd blip that might be mistaken for ground clutter or maybe even a herd of deer or some thing.
Probably the stealth shells wouldn’t even be necessary; so far, there hadn’t been any radar signature emitted from the ranch, so maybe the terrorists hadn’t had time to get a unit, or if they had, to set it up.
But you tried to cover all the bases as best you could, just in case.
Each of the vehicles held six troopers, suited, locked, and loaded. The assault suits were modified from Regular Army SIPE’S, slimmed down a bit since field operations were usually in and out, and the LOL–LIVE-OFF-THE-LAND– systems weren’t necessary. The tactical suits should be enough to turn away what the average terrorist had to shoot at them. The shirt-vests and pants were cloned-spider silk hard weave, with overlapping body pockets lined with ceramic plates. Boots and helmets were Kevlar, with titanium inserts in the helmets.
The slim back CPU’S were armored and shock proofed, and the tactical CPU’S did everything from encrypting long-range radio and short-range LO SIR units, to downloading and uploading sat-links and giving motion-sensitive heads-up displays.
Except for the LO SIR headsets– lineofsight-infrared tactical coms–the strike team would keep radio silence until after they had secured the objective. And since LO SIR signals were encrypted, even if the terrorists had a full-range scanner, they wouldn’t get anything but gibberish. Besides, by the time the strike team was close enough for the terrorists to scan and hear LO SIR, it would be too late even if they could understand the voxtrans.
Weapons of choice were HandK 9mm sub guns, and HandK tactical pistols. They had considered using the 5.65mm OICW, with the 20mm grenade launcher.
The bullpup-stocked weapon had an outstanding bracketingst tracking target laser, and it could drop an explosive round into a trench where you couldn’t even see an enemy, but Howard didn’t completely trust it.
Too many bells and whistles with the cameras and computers, and besides, they didn’t want anything blowing up on this operation, not even a little bit. Bad enough that the SIPE-SUIT radios went out every time a thunderstorm passed within a parsec, or that the tactical com ps sometimes got confused and had to be reset on the fly.