No doubt in his mind.
The comm chirped.
“The Vice President is on three,” Cheryl said.
“I’ll take it,” Hughes said.
“But let’s let him wait a few seconds.
We don’t need an uppity Vice President, do we?” Cheryl chuckled, and Hughes felt pretty good himself.
So far, so good.
Friday, December 17th, 2:40 P.m.
Quantico, Virginia In his office, Alex Michaels looked at the clock blinking in the corner of his default holoproj, a bucolic scene of a modern day cattle drive blocking automobile traffic on a back road in Colorado. Michaels had worked one summer on a dude ranch while he was in college. He hated cows as a result, and the picture was another one of Jay Gridley’s little jokes.
The young man loved to do such things. Thought he was funny.
Michaels grinned. Jay was pretty funny, though Michaels preferred that somebody else be the butt of the young man’s jokes.
But the clock said that it was ten minutes past the time Lieutenant Joanna Winthrop was supposed to be here for her meeting, and that didn’t go with what he’d read about her in her history jacket. He touched the intercom’s manual control.
His secretary was a temp, filling in for Nadine, who was on vacation.
Maybe she had made a mistake.
“Liza, isn’t Lieutenant Winthrop on for two-thirty?” “Yes, sir. Commander,” the young woman said. She sounded harried.
“She’s uh, here, sir, but, uh, she’s occupied.” Occupied? Michaels went out to see what was going on.
On the floor next to his secretary’s desk, with a rat’s nest of red, white, and blue wires in her lap, sat Joanna Winthrop.
She had a pocket tool of some kind, probably a Leatherman, and was using it to twist two of the colored wires together.
He had not forgotten how attractive she was, but it still came as some thing of a shock to him to see her.
Winthrop was one of the most beautiful women Michaels had ever seen. She was tall, lean, had long, natural honey blond hair pinned up, and green eyes that put expensive emeralds to shame.
She wore a blue jumpsuit and black boots that would have made most women seem dumpy. On her, the drab clothes looked positively sexy.
She glanced at Michaels.
“Hello, Commander,” she said.
She shoved the tangle of wires under the desk, stood, closed her folding pliers, and said, “Try it now.” Liza tapped at her command module’s keyboard.
“Hey! It works. Thank you!” “No problem,” Winthrop said. She flashed a radiant smile, perfect save for one slightly crooked tooth that gave it just enough character so it didn’t look fake. She turned the grin in his direction, and Michaels could feel the warmth of it from fifteen feet away. A stunning woman, beautiful and smart, a lethal combination. She was single, in her mid-twenties, and much too young for him at his ancient age of forty; still, she was pleasant to look at, no question.
“Sorry I’m late, sir,” Winthrop said.
“Liza’s keyboard input had a short, and you know how Computer Services works; they’d be two hours getting a tech up here unless it was an emergency. And in an emergency–” “–x would take three hours,” Michaels finished. He smiled at her. It was a standing joke in Net Force.
“Well, come on in.” He gestured at the door, and waited for her to precede him into the office. He was merely being polite, he told himself.
It wasn’t just to get a look at her backside. Although, he had to admit, that was worth seeing. It reminded him of an old Flip Wilson joke, about the preacher’s wife being tempted by a new dress she was trying on. The Devil said, “Buy it, honey, buy it!” And the preacher’s wife said, “Get thee behind me, Satan!” And the Devil did, then he said, “Mm.
Looks good on you from here too…” Michaels shook off the semi-erotic thoughts.
Winthrop was a subordinate, more than a dozen years younger than he, and he didn’t need any entanglements just at the moment But it had been a long time since his divorce had become final, and things had not been too good at home for a lot of months before he’d moved out. He hadn’t been in bed with a woman since.
There was only so much space in a man’s life that work and hobbies would fill. You could only read yourself to sleep so many nights of the week.
He glanced up and saw Toni standing in the doorway of her office, leaning against the jamb, watching him. Michaels felt guilty, even though he hadn’t done anything. He gave her a half smile, then went into his office. If he was going to leap off a cliff into an office romance, Toni would be his first choice, but that was a bad road to even contemplate. Toni was a co worker and a friend, and he certainly didn’t want to damage either of those relationships for the sake of romance.
Friends were harder to come by than lovers.
Well. At least that was what he’d heard. It had been so long since he’d had a lover, he had forgotten how to play that game.
And it wasn’t exactly like ri ding a bicycle.
He looked at Joanna Winthrop, who stood in front of the chair across from his desk, waiting for him. A drop-dead gorgeous woman. Despite himself, he could easily imagine what her hair would look like unbound and spread over a pillow, what her face would look like staring up at his in passion.
He gave himself a twitch of a grin. Fortunately, his shower came equipped with plenty of cold water.
And he was probably going to be using his share of it tonight.
“Thanks for fix ing the keyboard,” he said.
“My pleasure.” He moved behind his desk, sat, and gestured for Winthrop to do the same.
She did so. Back to business now.
“We have a little problem, Lieutenant.
Colonel Howard thought you might be willing to help us out.” “Yes, sir, whatever the colonel wants. He thinks well of you, sir.” Michaels looked at her. Really? A few months back, hearing that would have been a surprise.
Although after the kidnapping of the mad Russian, maybe Howard did feel a bit better about having a civilian commander.
Michaels had risked his job ordering that, and Howard had done outstanding work on it.
Maybe a little mutual respect had come out of the mission.
“And he thinks well of you. Lieutenant. Yours was the first name he suggested when I asked him for assistance.” “Sir, if it’s all the same to you, please call me Jo, or Winthrop. This rank business isn’t necessary unless we’re in the field.” “Fine, Jo. Might as well call me Alex, while we’re at it.
We’re pretty informal around here,” “Yes, sir. Uh, I mean, right, Alex. So, what’s up?” He smiled at her and waved his hand over his computer controls.
Chapter 3 Saturday, December 18th, 7:50 a.m.
Quantico, Virginia Colonel John Howard wore his old Gortex windbreaker, covering the SandW Model 66.357 short-barreled revolver nestled in the Gaico paddle holster just behind the point of his right hip. When he had occasion to cary while out of uniform, he preferred this kind of holster. It used a plastic paddle that slipped between the waistband and shirt, so he could put it on and remove it without having to take off his belt and thread it through the loops. It was convenient, and just about as concealable as a regular belt slide or pancake holster-Ten yards away, a mugger with a knife leaped out of the darkness and ran at him. The assassin was no more than two seconds away.
Howard shifted his hips slightly to the left, opening a gap between his jacket and body, and swept his right hand back and under the Gortex. He grabbed the wooden grips of the revolver, automatically unsnapping the thumb-break safety snap on the holster when he closed his hand. He pulled the Smith, thrust it toward the mugger as if punching him one handed, and pulled the trigger. At this range, trying to line up the sights was too slow.
Instead, you could use the whole gun silhouette to index the target.
Six feet in front of Howard the mugger stopped cold as the 91-grain Cor-Bon Bee Safe frangible bullet slammed into his center of mass at just under 1600 feet per second.
The second shot was a quarter second behind the first.
The mugger froze, and glowing red lights pulsed on his chest where the rounds impacted. Most people didn’t realize just how fast a running man with a knife could move. Anot her half a second and the ersatz thug would have been all over him.
Howard glanced at the computer next to the shooting box.
There was a small holoprojection of the mugger over the computer and stats under it. Elapsed time: 1.34 seconds from start to shot. Organ hit: heart. Estimated one-shot-stop percentage: 94.