“Is he any threat?”
“Not to me. Oh, I’ll admit that he’s got some moves, but so do I, and I have the advantage—I know who he is.”
“Well . . . crap. So that means we can’t use any of the stuff we got?”
“Not from the original game scenario. We have two sets of follow-ups. Gridley will get the first game, and, eventually, he’ll think to look for more DCPs, but those are almost ready, another day or two, we can harvest them and trash the rest. He can’t backwalk any of them to me.”
Carruth nodded, sipped at his coffee, frowned. “This tastes better than most coffee you buy me, Lewis.”
She smiled. “I aim to please.” She didn’t bother explaining her choice of diners to him.
“So, what now?”
“I’ll get you the stats on the next target the day after tomorrow. The Army will have upped security everywhere, but we factored that in. Gridley will give them a list of the first round of targets and they will think that’s it, so that’s where they’ll beef things up. They are as predictable as winter snow in North Dakota.”
Carruth shook his head. “You really got a hard-on for the Army, don’tcha, hon?”
She fixed him with a stare that could etch glass. “First, that’s none of your business. Second, you call me ‘hon’ again, you are going to be looking for your balls.”
He chuckled. “You want to wrestle, I got a hundred and thirty pounds and a whole lotta muscle on you, Lewis, plus I’m a trained Navy SEAL killer. You some kinda kung-fu master, you gonna toss me around like a beach ball?”
“Look under the table.”
He bent, looked. Laughed.
“Not much gun,” he said once he’d sat back up. “Little snub-nose like that. Not very accurate.”
“This close, a .38 Special with +P hollowpoints is as much gun as I need. I’d have to try to miss, and that monster piece you carry? By the time you haul it out, I could put five in you, reload, and be halfway through the next cylinder. Even a big strong guy like you would find it passing uncomfortable picking the bullets out of your crotch.”
She didn’t mention that she could shoot well enough with the little snubbie to keep all the bullets on a man-sized target at fifty meters all day long. If he didn’t think the gun was dangerous farther away than under a table? That might be to her advantage someday. A lot of people underestimated how accurate a snub-nosed revolver could be—in the right hands.
“I do like a beautiful woman who talks dirty,” he said. But he didn’t call her “hon.”
This was her show, and if he behaved, he would come away rich, and he knew it. Otherwise, she was pretty sure he’d have already made a move on her. Guys like Carruth thought with their little heads for most things, most of the time. He could blow up a bridge, sink a ship, kick ass, and take names fine, but outside of his narrow range, he wasn’t a thinker. He needed a leader, and he was smart enough to know that much. Which was just what she needed in a lieutenant—not too smart, not too stupid—so she couldn’t complain too much—as long as he knew his place. And that place wasn’t lying next to her in a bed. . . .
“So, what, in the meanwhile?” he asked.
“Stand by,” she said. She stood and dropped a five-dollar bill on the scarred Formica table to pay for their coffee. “I’ll call you on the secure cell.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. He gave her a snappy salute, grinning all the while.
He might be a problem eventually, but “eventually” the sun was going to go nova and Earth was going to be turned into a burned-out cinder. Worry about that when the time came.
As she headed toward her car, a politically correct hybrid import, Lewis considered the situation. She had anticipated Net Force’s involvement, of course. General Hadden had co-opted the organization, taking it away from the FBI, for just such problems. And she knew Gridley’s rep—he had been two years ahead of her in school, already the boy wonder, and at this level, it was like playing chess against a master at the top of his game—you didn’t make a mistake and hope it would get by, because it almost never would. But she could handle Gridley. What was important was that they be able to sting another Army base or three, and soon. Once was a fluke. Two or three times, those were selling points. Some terrorist who wanted to make a big statement by knocking over a U.S. Army base and who could get funding? She’d have to beat them away with a stick. . . .
Revenge—and money for doing it? That was as good as it got.
U.S. Army’s MILDAT Computer Center
The Pentagon
Washington, D.C.
Jay walked down another seemingly endless corridor on his way to see his liaison with the Army’s MILDAT. His escort this time, a buzz-cut trooper with “Wilcoxen” etched on his name badge, led the way. Another boots-on-the-ground reality trip, and why couldn’t they do it in VR? The horse was gone; closing the barn door now wasn’t going to help. You’d think that a computer guy, even an Army one, would be comfortable in VR.
He wasn’t looking forward to the meeting, since he was going to have to tell this Captain Whoever that his network had been compromised. There was little doubt that it had been—the military records matched the specs he’d found in the alien game too cleanly for there to be any other option. Which meant that either the security work protecting the data had failed, or that someone inside the network had sold out. Social engineering was usually cheaper than hiring a first-class hacker, and a lot easier just to have somebody give you the stuff than working for it. Not as much fun, but easier.
And while being the bearer of bad news was a part of his job, the process of pointing out security holes and finding fault with a colleague’s work was never fun. People tended to greet such news with less than cheery smiles.
Oh, Captain, by the way? All this expensive and dangerous crap everybody is running around trying to figure out? It came out of your unit. Sorry, pal . . .
“Here we are, sir,” said the guard, indicating a frosted-glass door. The guard knocked.
Things could always be worse—I could be escorting people into the Pentagon, wondering when and if they were going to attack me.
A gorgeous and very well-built short-haired blonde opened the door. She was Jay’s age, maybe a few years younger, and she smiled at Jay and his escort. The woman wore an Army uniform with captain’s bars, and a name tag:
R. Lewis.
Whoa! When he’d seen the name in his datafile, “Captain R. Lewis,” he had naturally assumed it was a man. There was a dumb mistake—he knew better.
“Another stray? Thanks, Willie.”
“Anything that gets me to your door, ma’am.” He nodded and left.
Lewis turned to Jay and all the focus was on him.
“Well, well, if it isn’t Smokin’ Jay Gridley,” she said, “although I seem to recall that you never inhaled. Come on in.”
Jay frowned. “We couldn’t have met. I’d remember.”
“We haven’t. I’m Rachel Lewis. I was two years behind you at MIT.”
“No shit?” Jay had actually attended most of college electronically, and right around the time MIT and CIT did their e-merge. He liked to joke about CIT being better, but in truth, he was technically a grad of both.
Jay followed her into the office. He noted how neat and tidy it was: books, shelves, everything in place. On her desk was a state-of-the art VR setup that rivaled his own, with a pair of Raptor-vision VR glasses hanging off the side, the word “prototype” stamped on it. They looked newer than the ones he had. He didn’t much like that.