The Archimedes Effect (4 page)

Ellis looked grim. “Stay on this, son. It’s a big deal. We can’t have folks attacking our bases, blowing things up, and hurtin’ people. See my aide, get the contact information for our computer people.”

The general stood. The audience was over.

Jay also stood. Well, he had gone up against a lot of clever bad guys, and he had always come out on top. He figured he’d manage to run this one down, too—well, maybe once he got a nice, long nap in, anyway. . . .

“What you shooting there, General? An old hogleg?”

John Howard smiled at Abe Kent. “Well, General, sir, it is a revolver, but it’s not exactly an antique.”

Kent moved over to stand next to Howard, and the two men looked at the handgun Howard had just put on the shooting bench. Before he had moved on, Howard had held the position Kent now had—head of Net Force’s military arm. Though now that they were being run by the Marines instead of the National Guard, it was a horse of a different color, sure enough. Kent and Howard went way back. The reason Kent even had the job was that John had gone to bat for him.

Howard lifted the pistol and held it out to Kent. It was deeply blued, almost black, and had a barrel that appeared to be rectangular rather than round, with some fancy engraving on the cylinder, which was unfluted. The grip was carved wood, with finger grooves.

“Nice.”

“It’s a Skorpion,” Howard said. “Made by Roger Hunziker and finished by Gary Reeder. Reeder puts out some of the best custom guns in the country, if not the world. This one is multicaliber. It’ll shoot .38’s, .38 Special, 9mm, .357 Magnums, even .380 auto if you’re desperate—got these neat spring devices in the chambers, lines the ammo up properly. The original design was a little different, called a Medusa, from Phillips & Rodgers, down in Texas. They got into other things—our electronic hearing protectors? Those are made by Hunziker, same guy who built the Medusa. They realized they could do better by producing parts and electronics. Most of the DoD’s headphones come from them. Crank up the electronics, you can hear a mouse sneeze across the street, yet still cut off the noise of a shot. Great if you’re a hunter out in the woods listening for game. Smart move on his part, given the diminishing gun culture. But the revolver design was good enough that Reeder picked it up for a little while. I had a Medusa, but I lent it to a friend in the Army who got posted to South America as an advisor in one of the drug wars.”

Howard paused for a few seconds. “He didn’t make it back,” he said.

“Sorry.”

“How it goes when you put on the uniform.”

Kent nodded. He knew.

“Anyway, I went looking for a replacement, and found this. Captain Fernandez is always giving me a hard time about old tech, but I’m a wheelgunner.”

“Nothing wrong with that. If it comes down to side arms in battle, you’re gonna be in deep shit anyhow, doesn’t much matter which one you have.”

“I dunno. You ever read Ed McGivern’s book
Fast and Fancy Revolver Shooting
?”

“Can’t say I have.”

“He was a trick shooter, back in the 1930s. He could throw a big juice can up in the air, nail it six times with a double-action revolver before it hit the ground. Used to have two guys throw up two cans each at the same time, he’d hit all four of ’em on the way down. Could cut a playing card thrown at him edge-on in half in the air. When he was in a real hurry, he could crank off five rounds into a hand-sized target in two fifths of a second, using a standard S&W .38 Special right out of the box. Not nearly as much gun as this one.” He waved at the Skorpion.

“No kidding?”

“That was just the fancy up-close stuff. With a little more power—a .357 Magnum or a .38-44? He could keep all the hits on a man-sized target at more than two hundred and fifty meters. Man says he can’t hit anything with a handgun? Not the gun’s fault, nor God’s.”

“Don’t start that again,” Kent said, but he smiled to show it was a joke.

Howard returned the smile. “I’m telling you, Abe, our church is different.”

“I’ve heard that one before. Right up there with people trying to set me up on a blind date saying, ‘She’s got a great personality.’ ”

Howard laughed. “Speaking of which, my wife has this friend. . . .”

Kent groaned. “Don’t go down that road, John. Please.”

Howard laughed again.

“So, let’s see if you can shoot this here antique.”

“You ain’t got much room to talk, old son. That slab-side Colt has been around for a while, too.”

Both men laughed.

Gunny’s amplified voice said, “You better leave that fancy shootin’ iron with me to get the smart-gun electronics installed, General, sir.”

“Bullshit I will,” Howard said under his breath. “Mess up a perfectly good gun with all that safety crap?”

“I heard that, sir,” Gunny said. “It’s regulations.”

“Not for me, it isn’t!” Howard yelled. “I don’t work for you anymore. The rule doesn’t say any piece that comes into the range has to be screwed up, only the ones that Net Force ops carry! And I’m not even sure that applies to the military anyhow!”

“I don’t think you have to yell, John,” Abe Kent said. “I do believe our shooting bench is bugged.”

“He’s right,” Gunny said. He added a nasty smoker’s laugh.

“Them cigarettes are going to kill you, Gunny, if I don’t beat them to it!” Howard said.

“Let’s shoot. We can pretend the targets are Gunny.”

“I heard that. Sirs.”

With Marissa Lowe seated next to him on the bleachers watching the fencers, Thorn was about as happy as he figured a man could get. A beautiful woman who loved him and was willing to marry him, a warm seat watching a bunch of top competitors fencing with foils, épées, and sabers, and no place else he had to be. Life was good.

“When is Jamal supposed to come up?” Marissa asked.

“Pretty soon,” Thorn said. “Ah, there he is now—over there.” He pointed.

“He’s black,” she said.

“So are you, last time I looked.”

“You didn’t mention that before.”

“You didn’t know you were black?”

“I
will
hit you, Tommy.”

“Okay, okay, I didn’t want you overcome with adoration.”

He smiled, but she punched him in the shoulder anyhow.

“Ow. You CIA types are all brute force and violence, aren’t you?”

“With a word in the right ear, I can have you knee-capped, Tommy.”

He laughed. Funny. Smart. Beautiful. Couldn’t get much better than that, could it? She even liked fencing, though she had just started learning herself.

“Jamal is warming up. His match’ll start in a couple minutes.”

“This is a good thing you’re doing here, Tommy.”

He shrugged. Jamal had real talent. He was good with a foil, but outstanding with an épée, and for an inner-city D.C. kid who came to the sport at the ripe old age of twelve, only four years at it, without access to world-class teachers, that was pretty amazing.

Thorn had made a lot of money with some of the software his companies had developed before he went to work for Net Force. Sponsoring a few poor kid fencers around the country so they could get good teachers and gear, and covering their travel to tournaments? That wasn’t much. He’d grown up poor on the rez himself; he knew what it cost just to learn to fence, to say nothing of what it took to compete at a high level. He’d been sent across country a couple of times with money raised from bake sales and car washes. This was the least he could do to pay that back.

Jamal walked toward the piste, the metal mesh-covered strip laid out on the floor.

“Here he goes. Watch.”

Some of this Thorn still hadn’t gotten used to. In his day, all the equipment was pretty much the same as it had been for decades: a blade, connected to a body cord running up your sleeve and down your back, plugging into a floor reel you had to watch out for on fleches or quick retreats, which in turn connected to the scoring box. These days, though, everything was pretty much wireless—well, almost. The body cord still ran up the sleeve and down the back, but now it plugged into a little box each fencer wore at the small of his or her back.

Used to be one of your teammates helped hook you up, spoke some encouraging words in your ear, maybe rubbed your shoulders before you fenced. These days you were more like a Christian sent out to face the lions—on your own. . . .

Jamal stepped up to the en garde line. His opponent, another youth of about the same age, did likewise. The director, a young man who looked to be in his early twenties, told them, in French, to salute, don their masks, and come to guard.

Jamal brought his épée up to his chin, saluted his opponent, the director, and the scorers. He also gave a quick flick toward the spectators before pulling his helmet into place.

“Êtes-vous prêts?”
the director asked.

Both fencers nodded.

“Watch this,” Thorn said.

There were a lot of ways to approach épée: fast and furious, slow and cautious, subtle, strong, leverage, speed. Jamal, like most fencers, could use a variety of techniques and styles, but he preferred slow and cautious. He excelled at capitalizing on his opponents’ mistakes—and he was very, very good at helping them to make mistakes.

So far, throughout the previous bouts, he had been very slow to strike. Now, however, as soon as the director gave the command, he closed the distance as fast as he could, his tip licking out and around his opponent’s blade and landing solidly in the middle of his mask.

“What happened?” Marissa asked.

Thorn chuckled. “Took him by surprise,” he said.

“I could see that. But how?”

Thorn smiled. “Set him up. Most fencing matches are pools—round-robin in the early going—and all fencers watch their upcoming opponents, sizing them up as they face the other people in their pool. Jamal simply changed his tactics here. He knew that this guy had him pegged as a counterpuncher and would be looking for him to once again be cautious, to wait until he had a sense of his opponent before really taking the attack to him. So he did what any good fencer would do: He crossed him up, setting up an expectation in his opponent and then using that to his own advantage.”

Marissa frowned. “Seems kind of dangerous, doesn’t it?” she asked. “Seems like the other guy could do the same thing.”

Thorn grinned. “Exactly. And that’s what makes it so fun.”

On the strip, the director had awarded the touch to Jamal and resumed the fencing. At his command to begin, Jamal once again took the attack to his opponent. He took two rapid steps forward, his blade already engaging his opponent’s, pressed once, twice, and a third time, inside, outside, and back to the inside, then released the blade with a spank.

His tip shot toward his opponent’s inside wrist in a feint, then darted down toward his foot in another feint. As his opponent thrust toward his head, Jamal brought his blade back up, meeting his opponent’s in a partial bind. Deflecting it to the side and ending up striking the wrist.

Touché, Jamal.

“Nice touch,” Thorn said.

Beside him, Marissa smiled. “Hey, I could see that one!”

Thorn laughed. “Yep, that was style over speed all the way.”

“So,” Marissa said, “you want to predict this next touch?”

“Aw, this one’s easy. Jamal will revert to form. His opponent started out expecting him to be cautious and he scored two quick touches by surprising him. Now his opponent will be looking for another quick attack. Jamal will take advantage of that. Watch.”

The director signaled the touch, reset the fencers on their guard lines, and again gave the command to fence. Once again, Jamal rushed forward, but this time his whole advance was a feint. His tip circled his opponent’s, darting in as though he were setting up for another mask shot.

His opponent thrust forward, expecting Jamal to continue pressing and aiming to strike his forearm as he came in, but this time Jamal pulled up, his blade pressing up and out in another bind.

His opponent’s tip brushed harmlessly past the outer edge of his sleeve, while Jamal’s tip circled completely around the blade, maintaining contact and pressure the entire time, and ended up landing solidly on the inside of the wrist.

“See?” Thorn said. “Anticipation will get you killed. My first—and best—teacher taught me that. Jamal is setting up expectations and taking advantage of them.”

Marissa nodded. “So how do you avoid that yourself?” she asked.

Thorn shrugged. “Depends on your philosophy. Western mind-set: Anticipate everything. Eastern mind-set: Anticipate nothing. Me, I used to follow the Western way. Very active mind, always thinking, always rethinking. These days, I’m much more Eastern: calmer, flowing, more in the moment.”

He looked over at her and smiled at the expression on her face. “Keep fencing,” he said. “You’ll see.”

The rest of the bout went quickly. Jamal had his opponent off guard and on his heels, and took full advantage of it.

Thorn and Marissa went up to him at the end of the bout.

“Hey, Jamal—great match.”

“Mr. Thorn! Thanks for coming!” He looked at Marissa, and there was no disguising the teenager’s appreciation for her.

“Jamal, this is Marissa Lowe. My fiancée.”

God, he loved saying that. He’d never seriously considered getting married before he’d met her. Now, the idea of not having her around most of the time was painful.

“That’s too bad,” Jamal said. “You being taken, I mean.”

Marissa laughed. “Jamal, I’m old enough to be your mother!”

“No, ma’am, I can’t see that at all. You twenty-five? Twenty-six maybe? My sister. Stepsister.”