In such a place, the set of small footprints on the wet sand at the shoreline was easy to spot and follow. Once Jay caught up with the person who had made those prints, he would have access to a vital bit of information. Which, at this point, would be a lot more than he currently had — which was to say, at this point, he didn’t have anything at all.
Jay was not used to being stymied. Part of the problem with being really good at what you did was the realization that a lot of people weren’t able to run with you. You started to take it for granted that, when given a problem, not only would you be able to solve it, you’d be able to do it fast. Like being an international chess grandmaster, most of the players you ran into simply weren’t in your league. But even the world champion lost now and then — nobody was perfect. Nobody stayed champ forever. Sooner or later, somebody better came along and beat you.
Intellectually, Jay knew this. Emotionally, however, it was hard to accept.
Jay Gridley did not like to lose. Ever.
The track followed the shoreline for maybe a quarter of a mile, then veered into the dry sand, heading away from the beach. The footprints weren’t as distinct here, but still easy to see across the otherwise smooth sand. Two hundred yards away from the water, there was a line of trees and underbrush, and there the footprints disappeared. But even so, there was a trail, narrow and winding, and no sign of broken branches or disturbed bushes leaving the path. A couple years back, Jay had learned how to track a man on foot, even one trying to hide his trail, and whoever this was, he was sticking to the easy way.
There was a gentle rise, and it was cooler here in the trees, but not enough so that Jay needed a shirt. The dirt and moss underfoot were soft and warm. Birds cheeped, some kind of small creature chittered in the trees, and Jay enjoyed the hike.
After another fifteen minutes or so, the animal track widened into a clearing, ringed by banana and palm trees.
In the middle of this glen stood a woman dressed in a sarong, a bright red patterned wrap that covered her from her breasts to just above her knees. She had a Polynesian look to her, silky black hair that hung to the middle of her back, dark skin made darker by the sun, and a flashing white smile. Altogether gorgeous, Jay decided.
He returned her smile. Well. This was easy enough. About time.
He walked toward her. She waited.
Fifteen feet away, he stepped onto a broad palm leaf and felt his belly lurch as he fell into a pit.
He landed heavily on his feet, collapsed, and stood up again, shaking his head, already angry with himself. Fortunately, the trap had not been lined with stakes; but it could have been. As it was, the edges of the pit were two feet above his outstretched hands. He jumped up, caught the edge, and it gave way under his grip. He fell, cursing.
He shook his head again, disgusted with himself. And here he’d just been thinking about how great he was.
Jay shook his head. He would have to dig climbing notches in the dirt, which, with his bare hands, was going to take a while, even in the soft soil. And he knew that the smiling woman he had been following would be long gone by the time he reached the surface.
Gritting his teeth, and biting back a few more choice curses, he got to work.
Locke wished that the Concorde SSTs were still flying the Atlantic route between Paris and New York. Yes, he was in first class, and certainly there were things he could do to pass the time; still, commercial air travel was so much less interesting than almost any other mode of transportation. There was nothing to see, just clouds and distant ocean. The air on board a modern jet was dry, stale, and full of enough germs to infect an entire army.
A train, a riverboat, those gave you sights. Even an old prop plane chugging along at low altitude was better. Riding a bike or walking was the best of all — you could interact with the scenery. You saw things while walking you’d miss in a car or on a train, and certainly would miss on a jet roaring along at six hundred miles an hour.
Still, if you needed to get somewhere quickly, the jet was obviously the way to travel. Crossing an ocean on a ship could take a week; flying over it, a matter of hours. One had to balance the means against the end. Too bad there were no such things as matter transmitters, like in the sci-fi stories on television.
Locke had seen those as a kid — with Captain Kirk and Spock speaking dubbed Mandarin. Step onto a pad, Scotty pushes the sliders, and presto! You were instantly where you wanted to be…
Locke sipped at his club soda. When he had been making his living from women, he had drunk alcoholic beverages at social gatherings; it was necessary. These days, he seldom indulged in liquor. He did not like to have his thoughts fuzzed by anything.
In fact, he had found certain smart drugs and mild psychedelics to be enhancing, and he sometimes took these. In competition, with all things else being equal, the smartest player had the advantage. The kind of work he had come to required a sharpness of mind, a concentration, and anything that altered his consciousness and made him feel less clever? No, thanks.
This venture with Wu was intriguing on many levels. If it succeeded, it would be hard to top. The money aspect of it was enormous, the level of detail needed immense, and offhand, Locke couldn’t think of any way he could better it. Well, toppling a government, perhaps, and becoming a king himself…
Locke smiled, and sipped his tonic water again. He would worry about that once he accomplished the task at hand.
He had come a long way from the streets of Hong Kong. And not just in distance.
9
Wu hated computers. But then he pretty much disliked high technology in general. Were it not for such things, the Chinese would rule the world. It was a simple matter of numbers, and the Chinese had more of them — more citizens, more soldiers, more weapons, more everything. At least, everything that wasn’t high-tech.
But with their electronic smart missiles and radar and sonar and IR satellites that could spot a man smoking a cigarette at night in the fog from hundreds of miles up in the sky, the armies of the West had the advantage. And their superiority in technology more than made up for the Chinese superiority in numbers, the Chinese superiority in tradition, and the Chinese superiority in moral standards.
For now, anyway.
Wu recalled the first American Gulf War, wherein the Iraqi troops had dug in, formed lines as had been done for hundreds of years — and had been whipped like a housewife beating a dirty rug. The Iraqis had been outflanked, outmaneuvered, and outgunned. They sat there in their trenches in the desert while the United States flew over them unseen like a sharp-eyed eagle, watching every move they made. If, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man was king, then a man with two eyes and high-tech telescopes was a god. The Iraqis had not had a prayer of winning — not using the tactics of the past against those of the future. No chance at all.
Wu sighed. The Chinese could put millions of soldiers onto a field, but today, those numbers were not enough. To win a battle, much less a war, against an enemy with a vastly superior technology, you either had to develop weapons of your own to match his — or you had to somehow take his away.
A smart weapon with its brain removed was no danger. The playing field would be leveled considerably if the West could not bring its toys to the game.