The Archimedes Effect (25 page)

Carruth had his uses, and this would be right up his alley.

“You’re shittin’ me,” Carruth said.

“Would that I were.”

He shook his head. “Damned ragheads are thicker than fleas on a camel in this deal, ain’t they? How’d they find
me
?”

She said, “I don’t have any idea.”

He shrugged that off. “So, what’s the plan?”

“We set up a meeting with ‘Brian.’ You and some of your men will be there and when he shows up—probably with some of his men—you erase them.”

He nodded. That was the best way. Bastard couldn’t come back to backstab you if you cut him into enough pieces. How had they found him, though? He’d like to know, but if they weren’t around, it didn’t matter. “I can do that. They’ll be looking for trouble, though.”

“Set it up somewhere they’ll have to drive to, a long way from anything. Somewhere with one way in or out. You get there and prepare before we even tell them where. If they come armed and alert—which, you’re right, they will, of course—your troops still have the advantage.”

“They could bring a whole van full of shooters. I would, if I was them. It could get real gory.”

“You didn’t throw away the rest of those Dragons, did you?”

He grinned. “No, ma’am.”

“Find a place you like, reconnoiter, figure out what you need, let me know. But we have to do this soon. I don’t want this guy and his friends showing up for supper some night at my house.”

Carruth was not exactly thrilled to know that they’d found him, either. “Me, neither. I hear you.”

“Mr. Gridley?”

Jay stared at the image on his phone’s screen. “My number. Who else?”

“Doyle Samuels, FBI. I have some information for you.”

“Fire away.”

“As you are no doubt aware, we are conducting a joint investigation with Army Intelligence in regards to your agency’s investigation into the Army base break-ins.”

“Yeah?”

“This is in regard to Private First Class Jerome Jordan, who was one of the soldiers killed during the terrorists’ raid on Fort Thomas Braverman.”

“Right?”

“Private Jordan was the first man shot by the perpetrators. This was on the base itself. Before the destruction of the Hummer and its occupants.”

Jay stifled a sigh.
Why couldn’t these feebs ever just get to the point?

“Uh huh.”

“FBI Ballistics has determined that Jordan was killed by a single round from a handgun, and that the caliber of the slug was a variation of the .500 Maximum.” The agent let that hang for a second, as if it was supposed to mean something to Jay—which it did not.

“And . . . ?”

“This is an unusual caliber for a side arm. As large as legally allowed to be made in the U.S.”

“Agent Samuels, I don’t know from guns, I’m a computer guy. Are we getting to a point here any time soon?”

“It turns out that the rifling on the round matches that of the bullets that were used in a recent shooting in the District in which two Metro officers were killed.”

“Wow.” He’d sure heard about that.

“It further turns out that the particular kind of bullet used, a .510 GNR, is custom-made in small numbers for a discriminating user group, as are the guns that will shoot it, and we have begun to gather the information on those. Given that Net Force’s computer capabilities are better than most, it might be that you can help us find the gun for which we are looking.”

“Oh, yeah, you bet,” Jay said, suddenly very interested indeed.

“I’ll have the file uploaded to your secure address.”

“Yes, sir, you do that. And thank you.”

“You will keep us posted?”

“As soon as I have something, you’ll get it.”

“Pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Gridley.”

“Likewise.”

Jay grinned as he discommed. This was a break. He had access to the Super-Cray, as much time as he wanted. He knew people who would cheerfully kill their grandmothers to be able to do that, and that was understandable—Super-Cray access was worth gem-quality diamonds. If he could come up with a proper parameter set, he could strain down to the quantum level—and if the information was out there, he could find it.

He
would
find it.

He grinned again, then waved his hand over the control and waited for the file to finish downloading.

The scenario was in the dealer’s room.

Such a place was passing weird, even for VR. There were thousands of people in the huge room, a convention center space across the street from a big chain hotel in Phoenix, Arizona. There were hundreds of tables stacked with moldy, old pulp magazines, sci-fi videos, and all manner of science-fiction and fantasy impedimenta, from toy ray guns that flashed lights and made electronic cheeps and chirps, to movie posters, to real swords based on those used by Conan the Barbarian and the Highlander.

It was a zoo. Noisy, packed, and very colorful. Must be a thousand people in the place milling back and forth.

Every third or fourth person in the place was dressed in some kind of science-fiction or fantasy costume—there were Darth Vaders, Captain Kirks and Mr. Spocks, Klingons, fairies, druids, Batmen, Supermen, purple aliens, and Luke Skywalkers. There were Princess Leias, in white robes and hair buns, and girls in tiny fur bikinis—some of whom looked great, some of whom looked like they—and anybody who had to look at them—would all be better served if, instead of bikinis, they had been wearing shrouds. . . .

At one point, what appeared to be the entire cast of the
Rocky Horror Picture Show
trooped past.

Jay shook his head. He’d read the stuff as a kid, but never really gotten into the fandom thing, though he had gone to a Worldcon once, just to see, and this was exactly what it had looked like in RW: a giant, multispecies party. . . .

Somewhere in this mob was a guy in a costume of an alien cowboy with a big six-shooter strapped on his hip, virtually speaking, anyhow. According to Jay’s Super-Cray search, this was the guy the feds were looking for, the guy who had bought the gun used to kill two Metro cops and at least one and probably a bunch of Army guys.

He hoped it didn’t turn out to be the dead and burned-up terrorist they’d found, Stark. That wasn’t going to do him any good.

Whatever.

Jay had come to one possibility he liked, a guy who had given his address as being in Alexandria, and that had turned out to be fake. Well, there
was
a guy with that name living there, only he was five-foot-two, a hundred and fifteen pounds, eighty years old,
and
in a wheelchair, and hadn’t bought any custom-made revolvers costing almost three thousand dollars. If he shot such a sucker, it would probably break both his wrists. Somebody had swiped his ID to get past the NICS registration. So, whoever did that might not be their man, but it was the best clue they had gotten so far. The guy might not be a computer player, but like any other person living in civilization these days, he left an electronic trail. His was faint, but Jay was on it.

He was in here somewhere. All Jay had to do was find him and, in this scenario, get him out of his costume and see who he really was. Then he’d pass that along to folks who could go and fetch him, and that would be that. Once the authorities had one of the terrorists in hand, they could probably convince him to give up the others.

Of course, with the mass of humanity milling around, and the hundreds of costumes in evidence, it might not be so easy to find the guy here. . . .

A very stout man wearing the costume of a Klingon warrior bumped into Jay, jolting him. “Watch where you step,
p’tahk
human!”

“Sorry,” Jay said.

For just a second, Jay considered manifesting a blaster and turning this clown into a pile of smoking ash. He didn’t recognize the words in what he assumed was Klingon, but he knew an insult when he heard it.

Then again, why bother? Everybody had to be somewhere, and if it made this guy, who was probably a file clerk or an accountant, feel better to spend a couple hours getting into costume as a Star Trek alien to wander around a media convention spouting a made-up language, so what? It was a harmless fantasy, and better than a lot of ways he could be getting into trouble. At least he wasn’t out on the street mugging old ladies or selling crack.

Jay was all for whatever floated your boat, as long as you didn’t hurt anybody when you did it.

Jay raised his right hand and split his fingers into the Vulcan V-sign that Spock used to do on the Trek television show. “Live long and prosper, Warrior.”

The ersatz Klingon sneered, but moved off.

Cowboy, cowboy, where was the space cowboy?

Jay wound his way past a display of toy rockets and space ships, then a table stacked with lurid magazines featuring busty women in what looked like brass bikinis, being menaced by tentacled monsters. A television monitor flickered with an old black-and-white serial showing Flash Gordon in front of the Emperor Ming. The music sounded familiar. Was that Liszt’s Prelude?

He glanced up from the TV and caught a glimpse of a white hat ahead. Definitely a Stetson-style cowboy hat.

He smiled as he recalled the Stagolee scenario. All about the
hat
. . .

Jay tried to worm his way closer, but the crowd was thick here. He stepped on an alien’s foot, and was rewarded with a curse that was very much human. He brushed past a guy with a head shaved bald, save for a topknot, with green makeup on his face and hands, and long fingernails. He was holding hands with a drop-dead-gorgeous blond woman in purple spandex and leather boots, with a blaster on a hip belt.

Jay nearly stepped on somebody down on all fours, dressed up like some kind of four-legged alien critter and following the happy couple. The creature snarked at him, halfway between a bark and a moan.

Lord.

He looked up, but he’d lost sight of the hat.

Damn!

A very tall man dressed as an Amazon woman, complete with a wig, a spear, and what looked like a fiberglass copy of a bronze breastplate over huge fake hooters, stood in front of a table stacked with tapes from 1950s Saturday morning television shows, like
Howdy Doody.
The Amazon was six-four, if he was an inch. Somebody that tall would have a good view. “Excuse me, I’m looking for a cowboy,” Jay said.

“Honey, aren’t we all?” the faux-Amazon said. “Her” voice was as dark brown as L-O-L-A Lola’s, and closer to Darth Vader’s than any woman Jay had ever heard. She could sing the bass parts in opera, easy.

After a fruitless fifteen minutes of searching, which included at one point hopping up on a bare table to see better, Jay gave up, at least for now. The cowboy with his six-gun was here at the convention somewhere, but he seemed to have left the room.

Maybe he had gone across the street? There were all kinds of programs scheduled at the hotel.

Jay headed for the door. As he worked his way through the stream of humanity, real and fake, he thought it was kinda fun, actually, though he wondered what a straight person who happened into this scene would think upon seeing people dressed up in such outlandish costumes.

Probably think they were all nutty as fruitcakes.

Oh, well. Reality was almost always stranger than fiction.

Jay headed out into the hot afternoon. Jeez, it was like an oven! Like being hit in the face with a board. Dry heat or not, when you went from seventy and AC to maybe a hundred and ten, that was hot. A wonder people weren’t passing out in the street.

The hotel was just across the street. Jay started walking.

Was that somebody wearing a cowboy hat, just heading into the building?

Heedless of the heat, Jay ran.

Carruth picked a place he’d been to back when he’d been in the Navy. He and a bunch of buddies had gone camping, hiking into the woods in Virginia, and they’d passed this old falling-down barn way the hell out and gone in the country, down a gravel road. The farmhouse that had been there was gone, burned down, except for a chimney mostly covered with kudzu.

There were other farms around, but nobody within a mile or two of the old place.

He took Dexter, Hill, and Russell. They spent a couple hours checking things out—nobody had been down the gravel road as far as the barn lately; there might have been some hunters or cold-weather campers using the road, but no fresh tracks.

One they had the lay of the land, they turned to tactics. A couple shaped-charge shot-canisters were set up next to the road in trees, devices that could be triggered by a remote, right at eye level for a guy driving a car or van. Those would serve as backup. Nasty little things, they were essentially explosives packed heavy inside a fan-shaped tube that was welded shut on one end. The explosives were laced with little steel ball bearings. When the thing went
blam!
anything in front of the blunderbuss-bell would get blasted hard. It would turn the driver of a car within ten meters into bloody hash, window down or up, and with a pair of them, one on both sides of the narrow road, any passengers would be likewise chewed to ratburger PDQ.

Other than that, they didn’t need anything fancy. They had the ground. Carruth knew that Keep-It-Simple-Stupid was the best way. It might not always work every time, but KISS kept you from screwing up more often than not.

There were plenty of trees and scrub brush around the barn. Nobody would be inside the place—the wood was so rotten it might collapse from a big sneeze. They’d come in two cars—one would be the decoy, set up where it was easy to see, the other well hidden. They’d wear gillie-suits, and when the bad guys showed up, they’d do it by the numbers. Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am . . .