Springboard (16 page)

“The big fellow is Bob Talley. He’s foreman at the Rocking K ranch south of town. I don’t know the little Chinaman.”

“Chinaman?”

“I’m guessing he’s got some Chinee in him. Slanty eyes. Not supposed to be in here, we don’t usually serve their kind, but he looks white enough nobody’s noticed, and his money is good.”

Jay nodded. Being part Thai, he had a little Asian epicanthic variation, too, but in this kind of scenario, he usually altered his appearance to be as bland white-bread as possible. He didn’t want to draw any attention.

“You’re a bounty hunter, ain’t ’cha?”

“What makes you say that?”

“Stranger comes in, you right behind him. You’re carrying something heavy hidden in your right-hand coat pocket, dollar to a dime it’s a pistol. I don’t see a badge on your shirt. Plus you give me a dollar, no lawman would do that. So, bounty hunter. What’d the little Chinaman do?”

“Shot a nosy bartender,” Jay said.

The man grinned and moved off. He had his dollar.

Jay took a deep breath. There were times when social engineering—bribing somebody—was the way to go. Not the most elegant method, maybe, but Jay was to the point with this hunt that he was past worrying about elegance. He wanted results and he didn’t care how he got them.

He sipped his beer. He had his quarry identified. Now, he’d wait to make his move—

The bartender stopped in front of Buckles and said something.

Buckles jammed his hand into his coat pocket, fast.

Jay knew immediately what had happened. That double-crossing bartender had given him up!

Jay dropped the beer and went for his own pocket. His move was smoother and faster—he came out with his revolver and thrust it toward Buckles, stopped with his arm extended, ready to shoot.

Buckles froze, his own weapon but halfway out of his pocket.

The other man was maybe fifteen, eighteen feet away—an easy target for somebody with Jay’s skill.

“Let it go and put your hands up,” Jay ordered. “We’ll talk, nobody has to get hurt—”

Buckles shook his head, grinned, and jerked his gun from his pocket. He tried to get it lined up on Jay—

Jay squeezed the .38 Lightning’s trigger, one, two, three—!

The bullets hit Buckles solidly in the chest. The man collapsed.

Jay frowned in disgust. Didn’t people know when they’d been beaten?

As he looked at the dying sub-routine, he had to shake his head. Apparently not.

Still shaking his head, Jay turned his revolver on the bartender and shot him, too. The rat.

But at least it wasn’t a total loss. He knew something now he hadn’t known before.

Thorn looked at Jay. “Chinese? Are you sure?”

Jay, in the flesh, nodded. “Yep. I did as much backwalking as I could after the scenario, and knowing better where to look, I found some signs. He might not
be
Chinese, but he’s operating from there.”

Thorn shook his head. This was . . . unexpected. And in less than an hour, the head of the Chinese version of Net Force was supposed to be walking into Thorn’s office. How weird was that?

“So, what does this give us?”

“It narrows down the search pattern. I can start the Super-Cray straining access to the net from China. That’s a lot of hits, and disguised, I’m sure, but it’s a place to start. I can also start checking around. If the attacker is Chinese, he sure didn’t get that good over there, so he must have studied in Europe or the States. I can run sieves on that.”

Thorn nodded. “Good. Go for it.”

“When is the CyberNation guy getting here?”

“This afternoon, right after lunch. And guess who else is scheduled for a meeting an hour from now—Chang.”

“Huh. There’s a coincidence.” Jay paused. “He could help. He’s got ways of getting in and out of Chinese systems we’d have to go the long way to reach. Maybe I could talk to him?”

“I’ll let you know when he arrives.”

“Thanks, Boss.”

“Keep at it, Jay. I have every confidence in you.”

Jay grinned. “I wish I did. This one is a bear.”

“And you’ll hang around for Seurat later?”

“Yeah. If I have to.”

After Jay was gone, Thorn decided he didn’t have enough time to eat and go work out before Chang arrived. Well, it wasn’t as if he didn’t have a boatload of e-paperwork that needed attention. He’d simply have lunch at his desk. The Republic had more than one computer problem nipping at its heels, and just because overall control of Net Force had been shifted didn’t mean any of those things had gone away. . . .

Daytime in the Garden of Perpetual Bliss was usually sunny and seventy-two degrees. It would rain now and again, sometimes a mild drizzle, sometimes a windy storm—but never too windy—and always warm enough to sit in without getting cold. Enough rain fell to keep the lush foliage nourished and vibrant, all the myriad shades of green, all the colorful flowers. Bees buzzed, but never stung. Butterflies danced and flitted by.

Here, a group of Hindus wearing orange robes sat in full lotus, meditating, connecting with the essence of Vishnu, Brahma, and Shiva. Next to them, in the shade of a giant baobab tree, a dozen Buddhists kneeled in
seiza,
counting their breaths and seeking no-mind.

A short way down the path, Christians and Jews and the followers of Mohammed sat in a large circle, exchanging prayers and smiles.

In the Garden, too, were those who thought every rock had a soul, that all wisdom came from their ancestors, that the Sun was the ruler of all it touched. And there were others who had no gods at all, but only their common humanity.

In the Garden, there was no dissent, no jealousy, no hatred. All who came here became one of the family of men, and no man’s hand was ever raised against another in anger. People dressed as they wished, or went nude.

Sometimes music drifted over the Garden, and such was its nature that the sounds each person heard on those occasions were suited to their personal tastes: Here, it was a raga, there a fugue, and past that, delta blues. People sang or danced or sat quietly and listened, and no one resented another’s manner of expression.

Fruit grew on the trees—apples, bananas, pears, coconuts, plums, oranges, every kind a hungry soul might desire was there somewhere. Vegetables, too, and nuts, and all manner of beasts—fish and fowl, even red meat—were available, if that was one’s wont.

One could come to the Garden to do, or just to be. It was all the same, and it was all wonderful.

When the dragon came, red-scaled and breathing fire, swooping down from the clear sky, most in the Garden thought it was some new entertainment.

Until it started cooking and eating people.

The Garden of Perpetual Bliss heard its first screams of terror that day. Smelled the stink of roasted human flesh. Beheld fear in a way that had never happened here before.

The dragon landed and stalked, crushing all before him, pausing to bite off a head here, a leg there, hissing with a sound that stirred neck hairs in atavistic panic. The people had no way to stop it, they had no weapons, and the dragon moved through them unmolested.

Some ran. Some stood their ground and waited for their end.

And in a short time, those who did not flee were consumed. . . .

“Merde!”
Seurat said, shaking his head. He removed the headset and sighed, staring at his portable computer. He was in no danger here in his Washington hotel room. As those in the Garden of Bliss VR scenario had not been in any real physical danger, either. But the assault on their psyches must have been a terrible jolt.

Seurat’s anger surged, a hot flush that made him want to scream and hit somebody. CyberNation had created a paradise in that garden, a place where those who wished such a thing could go and bask in an ideal that had never happened in the real world. All men as brothers.

And someone had ruined it. Attacked and destroyed the carefully built scenario, terrifying those tuned to it. Yet another of the hacks that added cracks to the CyberNation’s foundation. Small ones, so far, but left unchecked they could grow and threaten the entire organization.

Seurat could not—he
would
not allow such a thing to happen. Not on his watch.

The damage to the program had been repaired, of course, quickly and easily. But the damage to the memories of those who had been in it when the incident had taken place? Not so simply fixed. According to his techs, there had been fifteen thousand people worldwide in that scenario when it was attacked. And while that number was but a drop in the bucket compared to the total membership of CyberNation, some of those people would leave and not come back. Like a small stone tossed into a pond, the stories would spread.

Worse, what if the attackers chose one of the giant-scale scenarios next time? The Super Bowl ’cast, or the Pope’s Christmas message? The latest Hollywood blockbuster on demand?

True, those had gotten increased security since the attacks had begun, but since they still did not have a handle on the hacker, who was to say that he couldn’t worm or trojan his way into one of those?

If ten or fifteen million people got a dose of nastiness like that which had happened in the Garden of Perpetual Bliss? That would be . . . bad.

Very bad, indeed.

Seurat glanced at his watch. Almost time to leave for the meeting with Thorn, at Net Force.

CyberNation’s past with Net Force had been less than happy, and Seurat could not expect them to welcome him with open arms; still, if they could help, he would welcome it. If he had to lie with the Devil to save his child, then that was what he would do. Whatever it took.

 

None of Locke’s sources at CyberNation in France knew exactly why its leader had traveled to the U.S. Parked in his rented cab near the hotel’s Virginia Avenue entrance—that had been a bit of a trick, but at least this way he would blend in—Locke waited and watched. Even with the occupied sign lit, he’d had to turn away people who wanted a ride. Blind fools.

Such a location—a busy hotel with several entrances and exits—was a surveillance problem for an operative alone. You couldn’t cover all the ways in and out, and if you picked the wrong one, you would lose your subject.

Not that it was of major concern. Seurat was not much of a threat. And whatever his reasons were for being here, they could hardly affect what Shing was doing to CyberNation, if indeed that was why Seurat had come. Still, Locke prided himself on being thorough, and if you went somewhere to shadow a subject, it was better to stay with him than not.

Fortunately, Locke was experienced enough in these matters to have dealt with such problems more than once. This was one of the easier ones: Seurat wasn’t aware he was being followed, nor did he have reason to suspect that he was. He had rented a car at the airport, and that vehicle was now parked in the hotel’s lot. Under the rear end of Seurat’s car—a high-end Porsche—was quick-glued a powerful, on-demand radio transmitter the size of a match-book. Untriggered, the bug did nothing—anybody looking for it using broadband field-strength meters would not find anything. Even a casual visual inspection would miss it, since it was colored to match a car’s undercarriage and tended to blend in. But if Locke sent a coded signal to it, the device would begin narrowcasting a GPS signal that would pinpoint its location—if you had the proper receiver.

The device was live now, and it told Locke that the car was in the hotel’s parking garage.

It was not foolproof, of course. Seurat could leave by a side or back door on foot, catch a taxi, or be picked up by a limo, and Locke would not know. Still, Seurat liked to drive, and he had not rented a Porsche to let it sit in a parking lot while he took a cab.

It probably wasn’t important to any of Locke’s plans what the French computer guru did while here, but it was better to know than not.

As it happened, Seurat must have left the building via another exit, for the coded sig from the Porsche began emitting a higher-pitched tone, sending an alert that indicated a change in position.

Locke started his car’s engine, and lit the tracker. A map of the city appeared on the screen, and a tiny red light showing the position of Seurat’s car blinked on and began to pulse.

Wu might not like technology, but Locke was certainly happy with this little toy. As long as he stayed within fifteen miles of the transmitter, and as long as the battery held out—at least six hours of continuous ’casting—the map would show Locke exactly where the Porsche went, and give him the best route to get to it.

When John Howard called to confirm lunch, Abe Kent suggested they go where a lot of military business had been conducted over the years: a local bar—or, in this case, a brew pub.

Both were dressed in civilian clothes, with one of the pub’s own beers, made right there on the premises, in frosty mugs on the table in front of them. Kent and Howard were just two old friends relaxing at the pub. They were trying the new house beer, Heavy Lifting, a dark ale fizzed with nitrogen instead of carbon dioxide—the bubbles fell rather than rose. It was mildly bitter, with a chocolaty, smooth finish. Good stuff.

“How’s work going?” John asked.

“Slow,” Colonel Kent replied, taking a sip of his beer. “There’s really nothing for me to do but training at the moment.”

“Something will come up.”