Net Force (36 page)

    Toni tried to think how she would feel if the roles were reversed. It would be hard to be dumped, especially if she was in love with the man blandly telling her they should just be friends from now on. That was close enough to the relationship she had with Alex to be painful. If
they’d
slept together and
he’d
said it to
her
, she didn’t think she’d be able to stand it.

    Did Rusty love her? He had not said so in those words, but he certainly was attracted to her strongly. And since the sex had been good, he might have trouble understanding. The problem was,
he
hadn’t said or done anything wrong; it wasn’t his fault. But no matter how she polished and shined it up, no matter how many pretty flowers she covered it in, it was still going to be a rejection:
I don’t want you anymore
.

    Worse, it didn’t matter what Rusty thought-he didn’t have any choice. It was a done deal, not open to negotiation, end of discussion. So sorry.

    That it was already decided didn’t make it any easier. She didn’t want to hurt him, but it was either cut him off clean with a sudden slash, or poke him with a needle and let him slowly bleed out. That was the easier way. She could be too busy to see him, too busy to work out, too busy to answer his calls. His FBI training would end soon. He’d be posted as a junior agent to some field office a thousand miles away-a nasty part of her realized that if she wished it, she could even pull a few strings to
arrange
a distant posting-and that would be the end of it. A slow leak, eventually running dry, with Rusty probably wondering all the while what he’d done wrong.

    That was the coward’s way, to stand back at a distance and avoid the confrontation. She had been taught to face things head-on, to move in close and do what was needed to finish things. It was more dangerous, but it was quicker and cleaner.

    Quicker. Cleaner. Harder.

    Then again, maybe all he wanted to do was get laid. He was male, she wasn’t so ugly people crossed the street to avoid her-maybe sex was all he had in mind? That would make it easier.

    She wished she had somebody to talk to about this, a girlfriend to ask for advice, but there was nobody locally. She thought about calling her friend Irena back in the Bronx, but it didn’t seem fair. They hadn’t talked in months, and it didn’t feel right to call her just to cry on her shoulder. Besides, Irena had never been a heavy dater. She’d had a couple of boyfriends before she got married, and she was madly in love with Todd. Toni had never told her about Alex, how she felt, and she would have to do that, to put the Rusty thing into context. Otherwise, why would she
want
to dump him, with all he had going for him?

    No, she’d have to do this on her own.

    She was not looking forward to it.

    

    
Thursday, October 7th, 8:56 p.m. Quantico

    John Howard paced in his office while the computer put together yet another scenario for the theoretical snatch of the Russian programmer. So far, Howard had run five operation plans, with the computer’s estimates of their chances at success ranging from sixty-eight percent down to less than twelve percent. He did not like these numbers. Given his knowledge of ops out of the standard Strategy and Tactics modules, without at least an eighty-percent success estimate, people were likely to get hurt, maybe die. Could be the enemy lost troops, could be
he
did. The former was better than the latter, but in this particular combatsit, both were bad.

    Sometimes you had to fight the battle, no matter what the odds, but he didn’t like going in knowing he was going to lose people.

    The big elements were stable, but the small variables were always the problem. The more of those he had information on, the better he could program the Op S&T mod, but-how to determine some of these? A straight-up fire-fight in a big field in the middle of nowhere was easy. But what, for instance, could you do to predict the traffic pattern on the streets of any large city during a covert operation? An unexpected wreck on a major artery during rush hour could cause a total stoppage; you had to figure on alternate routes, and you had to assume that if you wanted to take those routes, others caught in the jam would also want to use them. But even if you planned on a big truck overturning, how could you figure out
where
and
when
it might do so?

    You could not, unless you put it there yourself.

    If you reckoned on an assault during off-peak hours, early in the morning or in the middle of the night, say, that offered other problems to replace the ones you solved by choosing that option. Local police noticed activity in the middle of the night they might ignore during the day; if discovered, it was much harder to hide, and outrunning air pursuit on the ground for any distance was nearly impossible. They had helicopters everywhere now, even in countries where most of the population still lived in grass huts.

    Plus, the snatch was only one element. A small unit, three or four troops, no more, would handle that. An escape route, preferably by air, would have to be arranged. Something that could fly fast enough to get away quickly, and yet stay under enemy radar while so doing, was necessary.

    But if the operation went south? How many men were necessary for a backup team? Did the Net Force team want to begin a firefight with troops of a supposedly friendly nation? What were the repercussions of that?

    Howard shook his head. It was a lot to chew on, and no matter how well he did it, he knew some bit would be missed. It might be small enough to pass through the system undigested. It might be just large enough to block a windpipe and choke him. There was a pleasant thought.

    The computer chimed. The new op was done. Chance of success, fifty-four percent.

    Might as well flip a coin for that one.

    “Computer, retain previous parameters, change operation begin-time to 2300 hours and run.”

    The computer chimed again and began cross-checking the op.

    He paced again. It was probably all going to be moot. He did not have much confidence that Michaels would give the order to use military intervention in this situation. He had too many people to answer to higher up the chain of command, and they were all civilians. It was one thing to go into a foreign country with the locals knowing you were there but pretending you were not there, thus offering a tacit approval of your actions. It was another thing to put troops on foreign soil with the expressed disapproval of the locals. The Chechens had been touchy about such things since the Russians had invaded them years ago; they would not welcome an American StrikeForce team wandering around in their country, no matter how covert. If it hit the fan, there would be major noise. Heads would roll, and likely his would be the first to hit the ground.

    Still, he had his orders. He would carry them out to the best of his ability. He was a soldier. That was what he did.

    

    
Thursday, October 7th, 9:02 p.m. Washington, D.C
.

    The Selkie couldn’t expect the teams guarding the target to use the same route to his condo twice in a row. However, the closer they got, the fewer options they had. There were only two main approaches to the neighborhood, and if they wanted to drive there, they would have to use one or the other. If they didn’t use this one today, they would likely use it tomorrow.

    She got lucky. Today, they picked this route.

    She stood at a public phone kiosk next to a stop-and-rob a mile away from Michaels’s place, her new bicycle on its kickstand next to her. She was dressed as a man in boots, baggy jeans, an oversized jacket, with a short and well-trimmed fake beard, and while the bodyguards saw her, she had her back to them as the procession passed, watching them via the small rearview bicycle safety mirror attached to the helmet she wore. They paid little attention to her.

    As she’d expected, they had ramped up the level of protection. There were two close-in outrider cars, one in front, one behind, and the target rode in an armored limo. She hadn’t wanted to risk a drive-by look at his condo, but she had to assume the place was covered with a tight net of security. She wasn’t going to granny her way down the street, nor be able to slip over a back fence and sneak into his house unseen. And these guys would be quicker on the draw than a mobster’s bodyguard. They’d be firing as soon as they spotted her.

    She stayed at the kiosk for another minute, and was rewarded by a second tail vehicle, with two more guards in it. There might have been a fourth, further out in front, too-she hadn’t noticed.

    Given the location and logistics of the neighborhood, the Selkie eliminated the target’s condo as a place to do the deletion. She might be able to set up to make a rifle shot as he left or entered the limo at home, but that would be risky. Likely the guards had thought of that and had any decent vantage points covered. She wouldn’t be able to get outside their coverage and line up-there weren’t any tall buildings around, no good angles. And even if she made the shot, getting away afterward would be the bigger problem. Escape was a primary goal, more important than the deletion.

    No, the condo was out.

    She hung up the phone, climbed onto her bike and headed for the motel where she’d rented a room. It was a couple of miles away and she’d used the male identity to register, in case they were looking for any single women checking in.

    Trying for a hit on a convoy was also risky. The only practical way was explosives. A Stinger missile, maybe an antitank rocket or a bomb. To use a rocket or missile, she would have to expose herself to the guards for a line-of-sight shot. If they spotted somebody with a rocket launcher standing on the side of the road or leaning from a window, she would bet heavy they’d shoot first and ask the body questions later. And rockets were iffy. She had heard of cases where missiles had hit ordinary windshield glass at an angle and bounced off without exploding. Bullets did it all the time.

    And as for a bomb? She would also bet that the FBI or Net Force teams in charge of protecting the target sent somebody along the route to check manholes and garbage cans for strange packages, once they were down to one or two routes to the condo. Besides, a remote-controlled bomb might not dispatch somebody inside a well-armored limo. A big enough charge to be sure of a kill would probably be picked up by an electronic sniffer or even a bomb dog. If they knew for certain she was still after the target, they would stick him into a secure facility and he’d camp out for weeks or months. She didn’t want to wait for that. Once, she would have been as patient as necessary, but having made the decision to retire, she was ready to finish this and move on. A few days, a week maybe, that was all she had to give it. And given how she had failed before, she wanted to do this up close and personal. The cane was out, but a knife or bare hands had a certain appeal.

    A car honked at her as it swung around to pass the bike. She waved, trying to give the impression she was sorry for blocking the road. The car passed. The driver yelled something at her, the last part of which was “-stupid bastard!” He didn’t slow down.

    The Selkie grinned. The driver of the car had no idea how dangerous it would have been to pull over and beat on a small bicyclist who’d slowed him down more than he wanted. She didn’t want to have to use the pistol in her fanny pack on some angry motorist, but it was always an option if she couldn’t beat his head in with all her training.

    No, the only viable alternative for a deletion now was to do it where the target wouldn’t be constantly surrounded by guards, and in such a way that nobody would know he’d been hit until she had plenty of time to get away.

    Given her options, the only place that fit was a place considered secure.

    She’d have to kill him inside Net Force Headquarters.

    

    
Friday, October 8th, 9:05 a.m. Quantico

    Getting yourself-or some illegal object-into a secure area when you weren’t supposed to was not as hard as most people would like to believe. Offhand, the Selkie knew of at least four ways to smuggle a firearm onto a plane, even without resorting to a ceramic one, like the little pistol she now had tucked into the waistband of her panty hose. The pistol was a three-shooter with triple-stack-two-inch barrels. The weapon had been illegally made in Brazil, for their foreign service operatives, from the same hard-ceramic the Japanese had developed for those ever-sharp kitchen knives. The caliber was 9mm short, and the ammo was caseless boron-epoxy, no cartridges, fired by a rotating piezoelectric igniter. Propellant was a more stable variation of solid rocket fuel. The thing even had a rudimentary rifling in the trio of snub-nose barrels, though the bullets were light enough so long-range target shooting wasn’t an option. The piece had a twenty-meter effective accuracy range; outside that, it was fire and hope you had a patron deity if you wanted to hit anything on purpose.

    At close range, the non-metal gun would kill a man as dead as the biggest steel cowboy six-shooter ever made.

    The gun had been cast in two main pieces, barrels and frame; the pivots, hinges, screws, trigger and firing mechanism were also ceramic. In theory, the weapon could be reloaded and used again, but in practice, it was a throw-away. Once it had fired its initial load, the internal ceramics got a little fragile. It made a lot more sense to use a new gun than risk having the old one misfire at a critical moment. The trivalent metalloid boron in the three composite bullets contained less metal than a tooth filling. The piece wouldn’t pass a Hard Object scan, but standing on its end it would likely skate by a fluroscanner because it didn’t look like a gun from that angle, and it would go through any standard security metal detector on the planet without a blip. Lying on a table, the pistol would look almost as if it had been carved from a bar of Ivory soap.