Breaking Point

Beaverton, Oregon

  Tyrone stood by the Coke machine at the hotel and ran his credit card through the scanner slot. The credit appeared on the screen, and he tapped the button that delivered a plastic bottle of the cola. The noise it made seemed loud in the quiet night.

  He was still rattled. Once everything seemed to be okay, his dad had gone off to Alaska, to help collect the man supposedly responsible for what had happened at the boomerang tournament. Tyrone, Nadine, and his mother were at the motel, miles away from the park, and the madness had stopped, but he couldn’t forget it. It was like some kind of nightmare. He had wanted to kill people, and if he’d had a weapon—a knife or a gun or a stick—he would have killed somebody. And the thing was, it would have felt just great to do it, too.

  He sipped at the soft drink. Life had been easier when he’d been into computers. He sat at home, jacked into the web, lived his life in VR. Once he’d discovered girls and boomerangs, things had gotten a lot more complex. Nothing risked, nothing gained—but nothing lost, either. But the thought of going back to where he’d been before, a web-head with butt calluses from sitting in a chair? That just didn’t resonate. Data interruptus, Jimmy-Joe would say.

  The tournament had been canceled after all the crazy stuff. He’d never even gotten a chance to compete. Given all the other crap, winning or losing a contest like that meant zed, but even so, he wondered how he would have done.

  “Hey, Ty.”

  He looked up to see Nadine standing there. “Hey,” he said.

  “Couldn’t sleep?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Me, neither.”

  They stood silently for a few seconds. “You want a Coke?”

  “I’ll just have a sip of yours, if that’s okay.”

  “Sure.” He passed her the plastic bottle and watched her sip from it.

  She handed the bottle back to him. “You think it’s true?” she said. “That somebody did it on purpose?”

  “My dad thinks so, and he knows about stuff like this, so, yeah, I think so.”

  “Why? Why would somebody do a thing like that? Zap people and make them go crazy? Make people hurt each other?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. I can’t think of any reason good enough.”

  “I didn’t like how it made me feel,” she said. “I was so angry. I wanted to hurt people. I didn’t care about them at all. I was watching the vids on the news. They showed a Catholic school somewhere. Some nuns beat a janitor to a pulp. How could that be? Something that could make nuns do that, that’s really scary.”

  He could see she was on the edge of tears, really upset. “Yeah. Scares me, too. But it’s okay. My dad is going to get the guy. It’ll be all right.”

  “You think so?”

  “Yeah. I do.”

  She gave him a little smile, and he felt better himself. He took another sip from the Coke. He hoped his dad would kick the guy’s ass.

  Monday, June 13th

  Gakona, Alaska

  Howard was still peeved. The marshals were supposed to meet him at the airport, but his plane had been delayed an hour coming out of SeaTac, and they hadn’t waited for him. He hated being late, but there had been no help for it. He couldn’t really bitch about it officially; Net Force didn’t have any jurisdiction in the matter per se, even though they had gotten the warrants and the marshals would be delivering Morrison to HQ in Quantico. And as the commander of Net Force’s military arm, he shouldn’t be out in the field on this kind of errand anyhow, no job for a general, but it pissed him off being left behind just the same. It was no more than professional courtesy—he’d have waited for them.

  Howard rented a car and burned the speed limits trying to catch up, but by the time he got to Gakona, he still hadn’t seen any sign of the marshals. He couldn’t believe he had gotten ahead of them, so they must have already reached the HAARP compound. Probably had already collected Morrison and were on the way back. Well, if they passed him going the other way, he’d spot them, there wasn’t that much traffic. He’d seen only a few cars and trucks in the last hour of travel, and nobody in the last fifteen minutes. Of course, it was almost two in the morning, and in the middle of the great northwest woods, too, not exactly the Harbor Freeway in downtown L.A.

  The narrow road he was on ran parallel to a tall chainlink fence topped with razor wire and hung with government warning signs. HAARP would be on the other side of the fence, somewhere past the thick forest of evergreens.

  The call of nature that had been nagging at him for miles finally couldn’t be denied any longer. If he didn’t stop and take a whiz, he was going to drown.

  He pulled the car over, shut off the engine, and killed the headlamps. He waited for a moment for his night vision to clear, then stepped out of the car.

  He watered the plants nearest the shoulder, felt a lot better, and zipped up.

  It was really dark out here, nothing offering relief save for a clear sky thick with glittery stars and the glowing face of his watch. It was cool, but not cold, and the scent of evergreen, car exhaust, and even urine blended into a not-unpleasant odor. It was also quiet, save for a few mosquitoes buzzing about. There was something very relaxing about being out in the middle of nowhere, nobody else around.

  From the last road sign he’d seen, he judged that he was almost to the compound’s gate. He started back toward the car when he saw a bright flash of light over the treetops, almost like distant heat lightning, a brief strobe against the night. What was that?

  But the light was gone, and once again the fierce darkness claimed the night. And that was odd, because this close, he expected some kind of glow from the HAARP compound bleeding into the sky. He had been on night patrols in the outback where you could see the light from a campfire or a propane lantern for miles. They must keep some lights on, right?

  Almost immediately after the light faded, he heard three shots, a stacatto pap! pap! pap! followed by two more that resonated with a louder, sharper crack! crack! The shots echoed, and it was hard to pinpoint the direction, but it sounded as if they were to his right and behind him. Inside the fence, and not too far off. There was no question in Howard’s mind that the reports came from weapons, and they sounded like handguns. Two shooters, close together, using different calibers. The second of them, he was almost certain, was a .357 Magnum, a round with which he was very familiar, having fired tens of thousands of them himself. Two shooters firing at the same target? Or at each other?

  Almost reflexively, he reached down to where the new revolver rode back of his right hip, to touch the gun’s butt and reassure himself it was still there.

  It could have been a lot of things—spotlighters doing some illegal hunting, drunks blasting at beer bottles, maybe even a couple of campers attacked in their tent by a bear and cutting loose at it—but knowing there were U.S. Marshals serving an arrest warrant on a man suspected of involvement in multiple deaths, Howard had to consider that maybe something had gone wrong with the operation. And what would campers or hunters be doing inside the fence?

  He pulled the door open and slid back into the rental car, started the engine, and hit the light switch. The entrance gate was ahead of him, and that was the way to get into the compound, but he spun the wheel and the car into a one-eighty and headed back the way he had come. When guns go off, that’s where you find the action.

  It was half a mile away when things got tricky. Because it was so dark and he was moving and watching the fence to his left, and because the black SUV was parked off to the right in the trees, he almost missed it. A glint of light off the windshield—the SUV was facing the road at a right angle—was what he caught, and a fast glance didn’t give him much more. He took his foot off the gas pedal, but managed to keep from hitting the brakes, so his tail-lights didn’t flare. He kept going, considering his options.

  The SUV could have been parked there empty for days, for all he knew. Maybe it belonged to those hypothetical campers shooting at the equally hypothetical bear. Fo
r some reason in that moment, an old memory popped up: An Alaskan hunter he’d known had once told him that if you had to stop a really big bear, you needed a heavy rifle or a shotgun with slugs to do it. He said that when newbies to the tundra asked about which caliber handguns to carry, they were told it didn’t really matter, but that they should file the front sight off nice and smooth—that way it wouldn’t hurt so much when the bear took it away from them and shoved it up where the sun didn’t shine ...

  Options, John, options!

  He could keep going and do nothing. He could keep going, use his virgil, and call for help. Of course he was hours by road or even air from any law to speak of, and that was too long. Besides, until he knew what he was facing, he couldn’t risk using his virgil. There was a chance that the perpetrators, whoever they were, would pick up his call. They wouldn’t be able to decode it, but they might trace his location—and at the very least they would know he was still out there.

  No, it was against SOP, but he had no choice. What he was going to do was keep going until he was around a curve or far enough away so anybody who might be in the SUV would think he was gone, then he would pull over and backtrack on foot. He was dressed in jeans, black running shoes, and a dark green T-shirt, with a dark green windbreaker, so he’d be practically invisible in the trees. He had some bug dope in his kit, though the mosquitoes didn’t usually bother him that much. He had his little SL- 4 flashlight from Underwater Kinetics, and he had the Phillips and Rodgers with its six rounds, a speed strip with six more rounds zipped into his jacket pocket. What else did he need for a walk in the Alaskan woods at night?

  The idea of action filled him with sudden purpose. As the road curved, he killed the lights and coasted off the shoulder. He pulled the car behind a patch of scrub brush—not perfect, but what cover was available. He switched the dome light off before he opened the door, and as soon as the trunk light went on, he grabbed it to block the glow, and collected his kit bag with his free hand. He fished out the flashlight and stuck it into his back pocket, found two more speed strips of ammo and pocketed those. Found the bug dope and a packet of waterproof matches, too. He remembered to shut off his virgil, then started working his way back along the treeline toward the SUV. It was maybe three-quarters of a mile back. It would only take a few minutes to get there. He’d scope out the scenario and see what he could figure out. He could call Net Force or the local state cops and give them a sitrep after that.

  Man. He’d never expected this, but he was in it now, and he’d have to follow up and see it through—whatever it was ...

  Ventura glanced at his watch. Just past 0200. He had given them the clue by killing the lights, but the kidnap team still hadn’t spotted him. He frowned. Were they really that bad? And where was the genuine attack, if these four were only faking? Were they that good, that his people hadn’t spotted them?

  He called the surveillance team. “Where is my black man?”

  “Still heading toward the gate. He passed the Mercury Falling point a minute ago. Should be there soon.”

  They’d be long gone by the time anybody came through the front gate and got here. “All right. Let me know when—” He cut it off as he spotted the threat.

  Two seconds later, Morrison saw it, too. “Look!”

  One of the kidnappers had left his vehicle and circled around one of the trailers. The man was twenty-five, maybe twenty-eight meters away. Dim as it was, it was only his darker form against the lighter color of the building that gave him away. Was he sight- or hearing-augmented? Did he see them? Could he hear the little fuel cell motor?

  Ventura could hear the man, because Ventura was wearing bat ears—tiny electronic plugs that functioned both as a hearing aid for normal sounds and suppressors for sudden loud noises.

  Ventura pulled the flash grenade from his pocket, thumbed the safety ring out and flipped the cover up, then pressed the timer button. He had five seconds, and he wanted it to go off in the air. One ... two ... three ... four—throw, the overhand lob, up and outward ...

  Ventura closed his eyes against the bright flash he knew was coming. It wouldn’t make much noise.

  He could see the photonic blast through his closed eyelids anyway. It faded, and he opened his eyes at the same time he heard the kidnapper’s startled yell. If the man was wearing spookeyes, that would close the automatic shutters for a heartbeat. If he wasn’t, his night vision was going to be gone.

  Ventura drew his pistol and goosed the little scooter. The kidnapper fired three shots, but from the angle of the flashes, he was shooting way behind them. Probably no spookeyes, then.

  Ventura indexed the flashes and shot back, two rounds. His own earplugs cut out the harsh noise within a hundredth of a second, suppressing the hurtful decibel level. He heard the man scream, and heard him hit the ground.

  One down.

  He circled the scooter away and back toward the fence, along the path he’d decided upon earlier. He did a tactical reload, changed magazines, dropping the one missing a round into his pocket. Something bothered him, something was wrong, and it took a few seconds before he figured out what it was:

  Why had the kidnapper shot at them? Two men on a scooter, more than twenty meters away, in the dark? It was a very risky shot; Ventura was an expert with his pistol and he wouldn’t have chanced it. Even if the shooter knew which man was which, how could he take the risk of hitting Morrison? He’d have to know that if he killed the scientist, the game was over, and his ass would be fried. Could the Chinese have hired somebody that foolish? Somebody who would panic at a bright light and accidentally cook the golden goose?

  It was one more inconsistency that didn’t add up. But he’d have to work it out later—there were still three of them running around, and the one who had gotten into range had surprised him. You didn’t want to tilt the playing field too far in your enemy’s favor. Ventura did not have a death wish.

  “You shot him,” Morrison said.

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Is he ... dead, do you think?”

  Ventura shrugged. “Who cares? He knew the job was dangerous when he took it. If he didn’t, then he’s an idiot. Or he was an idiot. And he shot at us first, remember? We were just defending ourselves.”

  Morrison didn’t say anything.

  The fence was through that patch of woods just ahead, and there was a path through them. They could play Q&A later. One step at a time.

  Be in the moment ...

  24

  Monday, June 13th

  Gakona, Alaska

  It had been a long time since Howard had done any real hunting, and even the most realistic VR scenario was not the same as creeping through the woods and sneaking up on a vehicle that might or might not contain unfriendlies. In this case, it had to be done by feel—it was so damned dark he ran a real risk of smacking his face into trees if he didn’t go slow. He couldn’t use his flashlight, that would be way too easy to spot, and he didn’t even want to think about bumping into some hungry critter bigger than he was.

  His advantage was that if he couldn’t see them, they probably couldn’t see him. Even if there were a couple of bad guys in the SUV and they had starlight scopes, he’d be hard to spot unless they were looking right at him, and unless they had eyes in the backs of their heads, or just happened to have their scopes pointed at the rearview mirror, they weren’t apt to be looking right at him.

  Once he’d left the edge of the woods and moved in deeper to circle around behind the vehicle, it took a few minutes to crawl up behind it. He inched his way forward in the old knees and elbows locomotion, until he was only a couple of meters behind the black SUV, a Ford Explorer. The thing had tinted windows so dark he probably couldn’t have seen inside even in bright sunshine, much less the near-pitch night out here. Nobody inside smoked cigarettes to reveal themselves with a telltale glow, there was no radio playing, nobody talking. No sign that the Explorer was anything but empty. And wouldn’t he feel stupid if it turned out he was s
talking an empty car?

  Yeah. But worry about that later.

  He inched closer, until he was right at the back bumper. He had in mind listening very carefully, maybe making a little noise to see if there would be any kind of response, but he didn’t get that far. A man’s voice said, “I gotta piss.”

  “We’re supposed to stay in the car until we see the signal.”

  “Fuck the signal. I can see it just as well taking a leak as I can from in here.”

  The passenger door opened, but the dome light didn’t go on. The door stayed open and the sound of footsteps approaching on dry fir needles got louder fast. The guy was walking around to the back of the truck!

  Even this dark, he’d likely see or hear Howard if he tried to crawl away.

  Howard flattened himself fully prone and used his knees to push himself under the Explorer.

  Three heartbeats later, the sound of a stream of urine splashing against the side of a tree came loud in the night. It went on for a long time, and Howard could even hear the man’s pants’ zipper going back up when he was done.

  The peeing man was halfway back to the car door when the driver said, “There it is! Come on, get in!”

  From his vantage point under the vehicle, Howard couldn’t see much, but he was able to catch a glimmer of light from across the road.

  That would be the signal.

  Who was giving the signal and what exactly it meant, well, that wasn’t altogether clear, but the gist of it was fairly evident to Howard. Somebody was on the other side of the fence that surrounded HAARP, and these two were there to meet whoever it was. His money was on that somebody being Morrison, otherwise it was going to be one hell of a coincidence.

  The Ford’s engine cranked, and that was incredibly loud from where Howard lay, his head directly under it. He heard the clunk! as the driver shifted the transmission from park into gear.

  If the guy swung any kind of sharp turn when he pulled out, he’d feel a big bump at the same time John Howard felt the back wheel crush him. He took a deep breath—