Changing of the Guard

  Julio led Kent to the driver’s compartment. “Here’s the real fun part. That bank of switches, there? Watch.” He lifted the switch covers and pressed three buttons. There came a hum of power, and as Kent watched, a pair of dark gray plates folded in from above and below over the windshield, coming to a sharp angle in front of the glass.

  “Stealth gear,” Fernandez said. “Extrudable spun-carbon fiber sheets and plates that give you some nice radar-shielding angles. You get an exploratory ping on your detector, you turn toward the source, hit the buttons, and you turn invisible, more or less.”

  “Very interesting,” Kent said.

  “Yes, sir. What with domestic and international terrorists getting more and more sophisticated with their own surveillance gear, this vehicle is the perfect Command-and-Control Center for mounting operations in a hurry at a far remove.”

  “I assume this hardware is not cheap,” Kent observed.

  “No, sir, but it is reasonable. If we supply the electronics, the maker will build it to our specifications, and our cost is less than a hundred thousand per unit, delivered.”

  Kent raised an eyebrow. “Really? That seems very reasonable.”

  “Yes, sir. Company is in Iowa, American to the core, good Christian family-value kind of place. Sure, if we let it to the lowest bidder, we might get units cheaper somewhere, but they won’t be made as well. See those ridges, there, there, and back there? Those are steel roll bars. This is the safest RV you can ride in. In the forty-odd years the company has been making them, they’ve never had a single fatality in an accident. Not one.”

  “That’s interesting.”

  “Yes, sir, I thought so.”

  “And you are telling me this because you think we should have some of these vehicles.”

  “Yes, sir. They are portable. Stash five or six around the country, we’d have one a few hours away from any situation we’d need covered. They run about eleven or twelve thousand pounds in this configuration, so if we borrowed a big transport plane from somebody, we could haul one to any air base in the world where we could land one of the big honkers, like a C5A.”

  “I can’t see one of these on the back roads of Afghanistan or Iraq,” Kent said. His voice was dry.

  “We’re not supposed to go to those places anyway, sir; it’s against our charter. But from the outside, this could belong to Ma and Pa Retiree out to see America, and even without the stealth gear, it would give us advanced operations capabilities in places we couldn’t sneak into otherwise. Nothing like a fleet of camouflaged military trucks full of guys in uniform rolling down a desert highway in Utah or the woods of Idaho to draw attention.”

  Kent considered it. “Do we have room in our budget for this?”

  “Yes, sir. With a little creative swapping, I believe we can manage five units, maybe six, no problem.”

  Kent gave him a tight nod. He knew all about wheeler-dealers. If Fernandez could horse trade as well as he talked—and John had always said that he could—it was a done deal. “And you say that General Howard wants this to be my decision?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “All right, Lieutenant. Make it happen.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “What are you grinning at, Lieutenant?”

  “Permission to speak freely, sir?”

  “You’ve been with John Howard since he was a shavetail, correct?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I can’t imagine he kept you shut up. Fire away.”

  “I was just thinking how reasonable the Colonel is, for a, uh . . .”

  “—a jarhead?”

  “Yes, sir. My thought exactly.”

  “We might have a reputation for respecting history and tradition, Lieutenant, but we aren’t stupid. We would rather have our people in top-of-the-line gear when we can get it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Go do your deal, Lieutenant.”

  “Sir.” Fernandez gave him a crisp salute. Kent just shook his head.

  5

  Net Force HQ

  Quantico, Virginia

  It was late when Thorn walked into the empty gym. He had his equipment bag with him—it was too big to fit in his locker. He looked around and smiled. He had hopes of eventually turning this into a regular salle d’arms—mirrors on the walls, racks of swords lining the room—but first he better make sure he was going to be here long enough to warrant the change.

  It was after nine P.M., long after he should have left for home, but he needed to work out. The exercise relaxed him, helped to clear his mind, and after these past few days, he needed both.

  He’d met everyone at this point, and it looked like a good team.

  General Howard had impressed him, so much so that Thorn would be sorry to see him go. Abe Kent seemed competent enough, and might turn out to be a better man even than John Howard, but right now Thorn would prefer Howard’s humor—and especially his experience—while he settled in to his own new role.

  Gridley? He wasn’t sure about him yet. There was no question Jay knew his stuff, or that he could handle just about any net-based problem. He’d shown that with the progress he’d already made with the Iranian disk. Still, there was something . . . young about him. He was certainly full of himself, and he had that type of cockiness that made Thorn wonder just how severely he’d been tested. Was he really that good, or was it just that he hadn’t run into a situation hard enough to knock the strut out of him?

  Had the ground truly quaked for him yet, as Thorn’s grandfather, a full-blooded Nez Pierce, would have asked.

  He smiled at the memory of the old man, and the quake reference brought up another recollection: What do you do in case of an earthquake? Go to the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Why? Because nothing ever moves at the BIA. . . .

  He shook his head. Enough thinking. He’d come down here to get away from thoughts, after all. Now it was time to move.

  He started with stretches. He’d learned to fence in high school, and had stayed with it. It had earned him some flack as a teen—typical “Red-man-with-a-long-knife” kind of crap—but he’d eventually earned a B rating in épée, and that had shut a lot of that down. He had been respectable at the national level, but he was not quite serious enough to pursue it beyond that.

  He’d wanted something more than mere strip fencing. He’d needed a challenge that extended beyond the narrow metal piste. Oh, he still enjoyed it, but it was not the be-all it had once seemed.

  He moved slowly into a lunge to stretch his hamstrings, and felt a little twinge. Used to be he never bothered to warm up or stretch. He’d always tried to bring a sense of reality to his game, going more for touches that would have counted in the real world rather than just lighting up the scoring machine. And in an RW setting, no opponent was going to give him time to loosen up his hamstrings before launching an attack.

  Of course, in a real-world setting, it wasn’t likely he’d be carrying a sword anyway. . . .

  He could still fight without stretching if he had to, he knew that, but he also knew that he’d pay a price for it later, and limping around for three or four days just wasn’t worth it.

  Warmed up after a few minutes, he pulled his protective gear out of his bag and slipped it on. Without an opponent, he didn’t really need the padded plastron under his jacket. For that matter, he didn’t really need the jacket, mask, or glove, either. But fencing was, first and foremost, a sport of tradition. Courtesy ruled—at least until the director called allez!—and the uniform was a part of that tradition.

  Besides, if Jay’s little surprise worked, the feel of the jacket and plastron would be necessary.

  Thorn took his épée out of his bag, picked up Jay’s mask in his left hand, and went out to the fencing strip he’d earlier outlined with tape on the wooden floor. At the en garde line, he saluted his imaginary director and opponent, then he took a deep breath.

  “All right, Jay,” he said softly. “Let’s see how good you are.”

  He pressed
a button on the back tab of the mask and then slipped it on.

  As the mask settled into place, Thorn looked up and saw his opponent standing on the opposite guard line.

  He smiled.

  Jay hadn’t had much time to play with the programming. He’d mentioned that, given a few days, he could work up VR versions of any historic fencer, from the American saber fencer Peter Westbrook to the Italian épée expert Antonio D’Addario—as long as there were video archives and other data banks to pull details from.

  For now, though, all he’d been able to do was put together a sort of composite fencer, taken from various video clips and a few manuals. He’d gone for breadth rather than depth, programming in skills in multiple weapons and styles—or so he’d said, anyway—and promised more development soon.

  Jay had also coded a director for the bout, even though they were fencing “dry,” without the electrical hook-ups. Thorn didn’t need the lights for this; he didn’t even need the director; all he needed was an opponent—and the opponent didn’t even have to be very good. He was looking for exercise, not a challenge.

  He sketched another quick salute and dropped into his guard position, knees flexed, right toe pointed at his opponent, left toe pointing exactly ninety degrees off to the left, right hand extended almost completely, shoulder height, sword point aimed at his opponent’s chin. His left hand floated easily like a flag above and behind him.

  His opponent mirrored him.

  “Et vous pret?” the director asked.

  “Oui,” Thorn and his opponent said as one.

  “Allez!”

  Thorn started with a ballestra, a quick, short step to close distance followed immediately by a strong lunge. Normally, he was a counterpuncher. He liked to let his opponent take the first move and then react to it. But he could attack, too, and he was anxious to see how well Jay had done.

  As he lunged, he feinted toward his opponent’s face mask, eyes unfocused, looking at nothing but seeing everything.

  There! He felt his opponent’s blade begin to come up in a parry.

  Thorn smiled. In épée there were no rules, no right-of-way. It didn’t matter who launched the attack. It only mattered who struck first. If both struck simultaneously, both would score a point. With electronic gear, the equipment was sensitive to one twentieth of a second. With VR, there was no limit.

  He hadn’t been sure how his opponent would react. It wouldn’t have surprised him to see the other blade come toward him in a counterattack, especially one aimed at his right wrist or forearm. If that had happened, he would have tried to bind it, capturing the point and corkscrewing down the blade until he drove his own tip into his opponent.

  This was better, though.

  As the other blade came up to meet his, Thorn dropped his hand and sent his point streaking toward his opponent’s right toe. It was a risky shot, since it took his own blade far from any sort of defensive position, but in épée the entire body was a valid target, and a shot to the toe counted the same as a hit on the mask.

  Against a human, Thorn would probably have thrown this as a feint—if he even tried it this early in the bout. He likely would have reversed direction with his point one more time, as quickly and as tightly as he could, starting high, feinting toward the foot, then darting high again, aiming the final thrust at his opponent’s right wrist.

  This wasn’t a human, though, and he wasn’t so interested in scoring as in moving—and in testing—so he didn’t turn this into a feint.

  He should have.

  As his point dropped, his opponent shifted his weight slightly, drew his right foot back, and then leaped into the air.

  Thorn’s point crashed harmlessly into the floor. His opponent’s point, however, came down solidly on his mask.

  “Halt!” the director cried. “Touché.”

  Thorn nodded and acknowledged the touch.

  “Nice one, Jay,” he said.

  He returned to his guard line, saluted his opponent, and came to guard.

  “Et vous pret? Allez!”

  Thorn smiled and moved forward.

  He maintained his guard, more cautious now. He looked for an opening, a weakness, anything.

  There wasn’t much. Jay had done a good job, coding in all the basics and also giving his construct good reaction time. That would make it hard to fool him.

  Good.

  Blade extended, his right hand and wrist shielded by his bell guard, Thorn began testing his opponent. He engaged his point, throwing a fast beat at his foible, the weak part of the blade near the tip, to try and open up his wrist. He followed that with a quick thrust at the bell guard, hoping to slide off and pick up part of his cuff.

  The move didn’t work, but he hadn’t really expected it would. He’d throw that shot again and again, setting up an expectation in his opponent’s mind. With a real opponent—a human one—there was the chance that he would tire and start to get sloppy on his parries, and leave an opening for Thorn to slip through. He didn’t think that would happen here, unless Jay had programmed in a fatigue factor.

  He threw the beat again, working the interior of his opponent’s blade. Did it seem as though he was a trifle strong in his counter? Thorn nodded. He thought so, and that was something that could be exploited.

  He made the beat a third time, but now it was a feint.

  Instead of hitting his opponent’s blade, he came up and pressed it to the outside. As soon as he felt the counter pressure, he disengaged, dropping below his opponent’s point and circling, coming up on the outside. He pressed and added momentum to the parry—

  His opponent’s point drifted in just a hair too far, and Thorn extended, aiming for the outside of the wrist. He caught fabric, and felt the point of his épée sink home.

  “Halt!” the director cried. “Touché.”

  Gotcha!

  He had a sense of his opponent now. He could work with this. Give Gridley credit, it was a good simulacrum.

  He returned to his guard line, saluted, came to guard, and waited for the director’s command to begin.

  Now they were having fun. . . .

  Cal’s Bistro Manhattan, New York

  Natadze took a sip of the beer—some kind of dark ale—and nodded. “Good,” he said.

  Cox waited. The place was crowded and noisy, they were in a booth in the back, and the lunch crowd’s babble was probably a more effective protection than debugging his office once a week was. The food and beer were good, but Cal’s, there for forty years, was on the verge of being “discovered.” Another couple of weeks and Cox would have to stop coming here because he would start running into people who knew him. Too bad.

  “I have considered the matter,” Natadze said, after another sip of the dark brew.

  Cox waited, knowing that the man would get to the subject in his own time. Part of having a highly trained expert was allowing him to present what he was being paid to present in the manner he thought best. You don’t hire Michelangelo and then try to give him lessons on how to paint a ceiling.

  “This information will be restricted,” Natadze said. “It will not be ‘Net Force’ working on it, but a man or perhaps a small team of men within the organization.”

  Cox nodded. “Right.”

  “The team leader, if there is more than one man, is the key. He will know how much progress has been made, who has made it, and any other pertinent information related to it.”

  Well, of course, Cox thought. Any idiot could figure that much. But Cox refrained from saying such aloud. Let him go where he wanted to go.

  “Therefore, we need only to secure this man’s help.”

  “Are you thinking about bribing him, Eduard?”

  “No. Collecting him.”

  Startled, Cox looked around. Nobody was watching them. “Kidnapping?”

  “It is the simplest solution. The data remains at all times within their headquarters, and a building like that will have wards. Getting inside and collecting data, while not impossi
ble, would be complicated. It would require documents, either stolen or forged. It would require an agent who would likely be scanned, photographed, or otherwise recorded. On top of that, even with a proper disguise and identification, simply gaining admittance would not be enough to guarantee finding and securing the data. It is very complex.”

  Cox nodded. “I understand.”

  “But the man who works upon the code? He comes and goes. He will be unprotected away from his workplace, or, at worst, will have a bodyguard or two. Much easier to deal with. There are many options. His home. In transit to or from work. Recreating. We gather him in, question him, and with the information he provides, we will be in a much better position. Maybe he takes his work home. Perhaps there are but one or two copies of it, which he can tell us how to collect. He will hand us a lever; with it, we can pry what we need into our hands. Not difficult at all, really.” He shrugged, reached for his beer.

  Cox shook his head. The thought had literally never occurred to him to kidnap a Net Force operative. This was why Eduard was so valuable to him. He easily walked down roads that Cox would never even consider taking, roads he would never even know were there.

  “Can you find out who the operative is?”

  Natadze held his beer up to the light and examined it. “I already know that.”

  “How?”

  “We live in an age of information, sir. There are many public records available—news media, government reports, Internet and web material. Certain names appear in these records with regard to their areas of expertise. The head of Net Force’s technical section is a man named Gridley. I have a researcher gathering information on him. Shortly, we will know all there is to know about this man—or at least all that is publicly available. Once I have this, it is simply a matter of choosing when, where, and how to best approach him.”

  Cox reached for his own untouched beer. He took a sip. It was warm, slightly bitter, and smelled of hops or yeast or something, but that didn’t matter. At the moment, suddenly, the taste was wonderful. “We are in something of a hurry, Eduard.”