Breaking Point

  Michaels could fight it. His lawyer said he had a pretty good chance of winning in court, and Michaels’s knee-jerk reaction at first had been to do just that, fight it until his last breath, if need be. But he loved his daughter, and she was at a tender age, still years away from being a teenager. What would a nasty court battle do to her? The last thing he wanted to do was traumatize his only child.

  Would it be better for her to have a mother and father— even a stepfather—there with her all the time? Washington, D.C., was a long way from Boise, and Michaels didn’t see his daughter as much as he wished. Had shuffling out to see him in the summers done some kind of irreparable harm to Susie? Would it make her life worse in the long run?

  The big banked curve on the bike trail was just ahead, and rather than slow down, Michaels decided he was going to power his way through it. He upshifted and pumped even harder. But as he started into the curve, he saw a group of walkers ahead, residents of a local nursing home. They were spread almost all the way across the path. He didn’t have a warning horn on the trike, and he had a sudden fear that if he yelled for them to get out of the way, one of the old folks might well keel over from a heart attack.

  He stopped pedaling and squeezed the handbrakes. The heavy-duty disk brakes on all three wheels squeaked from the sudden pressure, and there came the smell of burning circuit boards as the trike slowed dramatically. On a two-wheeler, he’d probably be going sideways now, but the trike just wobbled the rear end back and forth a little as it came almost to a stop.

  None of the geriatric crowd, most of whom looked to be in their eighties, even noticed him until he crept around them at walking speed.

  That would have been all he needed, to plow into Grandma and Granddaddy on his trike at full tilt. One more brick on the load.

  And, of course, there was the big problem in his life: Toni.

  She was still in England, practicing pentjak silat, the Indonesian martial art in which she was an adept, studying with that Carl somebody. There hadn’t been anything personal between Carl and Toni when Michaels had left the U.K., but—who knew about now? It had been more than a month. A lot could happen in a month.

  Toni Fiorella was smart, beautiful, and could kill you with her hands if she felt so inclined. She’d been his deputy commander until she’d quit. And she’d been his lover—until she’d found out about his indiscretion with the blond MI-6 agent Angela Cooper.

  Near indiscretion, Alex, his little voice said. We didn’t actually do anything, remember?

  Yeah, we did. It never should have gotten to the point where I even thought about it.

  We were tired, half-drunk, and Cooper was working at it—the massage and all—

  No excuse.

  It was an argument he’d had with himself a thousand times in the last six weeks. With a thousand variations. If only Toni hadn’t gone under the channel to France. If only he hadn’t agreed to a beer and fish and chips with Angela. If only he hadn’t agreed to go to her place to let her massage his back. If, if, if.

  It was all pointless speculation now. And he couldn’t lie to himself about it, no matter how much he wished it.

  He thought about bringing the trike back up to speed, but it suddenly didn’t seem worth the effort. The Chinese place was not that far away. It wasn’t as if he was in any kind of hurry now, was it? Or was hungry. Or gave a rat’s ass about getting back to work on time.

  Even the thought of getting a new project car hadn’t given him any great joy. He’d done a Plymouth Prowler and a Mazda MX-5, a Miata, but the garage at his condo sat empty now. The Miata had been the car in which he’d first kissed Toni. He couldn’t keep it after she’d quit on him and stayed in England.

  He blew out a sigh.

  You sure are a sorry, self-pitying bastard, aren’t you? Snap out of it! Suck it up! Be a man!

  “Fuck you,” he told his inner voice. But that part of him was right. He wasn’t a sensitive New Age kinda guy who got all weepy in sad movies. In his world, men took care of business and soldiered on. That was the way his father had taught him, and that was how he’d lived his life. Wailing and wringing your hands was not what a man did. You screwed up, then you took the heat, and you got on with your life, period, end of story. What was that old saying: You can’t do the time, don’t do the crime? That was pretty much it.

  In theory, anyway.

  Thursday

  Sperryville, Virginia

  “Ow,” Jay Gridley said. He slapped at his bare arm, and when he pulled his hand away, there was a splotch of liquid red surrounding the crushed body of a mosquito. At least he thought it was a mosquito—it was hard to tell.

  “Murderer,” Soji said. She smiled.

  “Self-defense,” he said. “If I’d known I was gonna be attacked by all these itty-bitty vampires, I’d have thought twice about going for a walk in the woods with you. Or maybe brought a bunch of matches I could carve into wooden stakes. This would be so much more pleasant in VR.”

  “My father used to say that God made two mistakes,” she said. “Mosquitoes and politicians. Of course, he was an alderman, so he could say that. But he was wrong—both mosquitoes and politicians have their places.”

  Jay shook his head. “Sounds like more Buddhistic smoke and mirrors to me. You got to go some to justify mosquitoes.”

  “Really? Tell that to the bats who eat them.”

  “They could eat something else. Plenty of bugs that don’t bite people. They could double up on gnats or something.”

  “Come on, Jay. If you take away everything that causes you discomfort, there’s no way to measure your pleasure.”

  They were on a narrow dirt trail that wound through a section of mostly hardwood forest. There was enough shade so the day’s heat didn’t lay too heavy a hand on them, and the air was rich in oxygen, the smells of warm summer vegetation, and decades of damp humus. The backpack was a lot heavier than anything Jay was used to carrying, but since Soji’s was every bit as heavy, he could hardly complain. He had the tent, but she had the cooking gear.

  He shook his head. He couldn’t successfully argue philosophy or religion with Sojan Rinpoche. She could talk circles around him. Though only in her twenties, she was much more educated in such things than he was. They had met after the on-line injury he’d got stalking the creator of a quantum computer that had caused Net Force all kinds of problems. Since they had come together initially in VR—virtual reality—via the internet, they had been in persona, and hers had been that of an aged Tibetan monk. She was a lot better looking as a young woman than she had been as an old man. And she had been instrumental in helping him recover from a brain injury that theoretically wasn’t even possible.

  “See, that’s the problem with you, Jay. You spend too much time on-line. You need to get out more.”

  “I could put mosquitoes in a scenario if I wanted.”

  “You could. But have you ever?”

  “Well, no.”

  “And without experiencing real bugs sucking your blood and going splat when you slap them, you wouldn’t be able to do it accurately. And even then, it would only be an imitation, and not the real thing.”

  “But isn’t this all just an illusion?” He waved one hand to encompass the wooded hillside.

  “Wrong religion, white boy. Try the Hindus or the existentialists. Buddhists aren’t into denying reality. We like to get down and roll around in it.”

  “What about that old man persona of yours on the net?”

  “A tool, that’s all. Got me past a lot of preconceptions, and made my patients relax. Besides, an illusion is by definition not real, so altering it one way or the other doesn’t make it any more or less real, now does it?”

  He chuckled. Boy, he liked being with her.

  “So how much farther is it to this secret place of yours?”

  “Not far. Couple more miles.”

  He gave out a theatrical groan. “You didn’t tell me I was going to have to hike halfway around the planet car
rying a house on my back. This better be worth the walk.”

  “Oh, it will be. Guaranteed satisfaction or your money back.”

  Well, that sounded promising. He slapped at another mosquito, and was inclined to agree with Soji’s father on at least one point, despite what she’d said.

  2

  Quantico, Virginia

  When John Howard walked into the range, he heard, “Tens-hut! General in the house! Morning, Brigadier.”

  Howard fought the grin, but lost. Amid the familiar tang of burned gunpowder, Sergeant Julio Fernandez stood at ramrod attention, a perfect salute in place. Any crisper and he would have crinkled.

  “No such thing as a brigadier anymore, you know that.”

  “It has a nice ring, sir!”

  “At ease, Lieutenant,” Howard said. He returned the salute.

  “Not funny, John.”

  “Hey, I can do it, you know. Me being a general now instead of a colonel. What do you think, Gunny?”

  Behind Julio, the rangemaster grinned. “Oh, yes, sir, I believe Sergeant Fernandez is excellent officer material, sir. Never has earned his money.”

  “I get promoted, first thing I’ll do is fire your sorry ass,” Fernandez said. “You’ll be out whitewashing rocks on the parade ground eighteen hours a day.”

  Gunny laughed. “Long arms or sidearms today, sir?”

  Howard said, “I believe the sergeant needs a lesson in how to shoot his pistol.”

  Gunny nodded and set two plastic boxes of ammo on the counter. The blue box contained .357 cartridges, the orange box 9mm. Howard grabbed the blue box, Fernandez the orange.

  “Lanes eight and nine,” the rangemaster said.

  Howard put his earplugs in as he headed for the entrance to the gallery, Fernandez hurrying to beat him to the door so he could hold it open. “Let me, General. I wouldn’t want you complaining you hurt your hand or anything after I shoot the pants off of you. I never got to beat a general before.”

  “And not likely you’ll start today, Sergeant.”

  In their respective lanes, the two Net Force military men set their ammo down and started up the holoprojectors. They used identical scenarios when they went for scores against each other, so there would be no doubt who had outshot whom.

  Howard slipped the Fist paddle holster with his Smith & Wesson .357 Model 66 revolver nestled in it into his waistband and adjusted things. The S&W was an antique, stainless steel and not nearly as efficient as the polymer tactical pistols Net Force issued. The H&Ks and the Walthers carried almost three times as much ammo, and had all kinds of bells and whistles—lasers, suppressors, flashlights, all very modular. Until recently, the Smith had been pretty much stock, unmodified. Howard had allowed Gunny to talk him into trying a red dot scope, a tiny one that mounted where the iron sights were, which had improved his shooting immediately. Even so, it felt like sacrilege—the old wheel gun was as much talisman as anything, his good luck piece, and in the same category as the tommy gun he had gotten from his grandfather. It worked, but it couldn’t really run with the newer hardware out there, even with the Tasco scope.

  Julio was still smiling every time he saw the scope, too.

  “You ready, John?”

  “Crank it up.”

  Fernandez was using his blued Beretta Model 92, not as ancient as the Smith, but certainly not in the same class as the tactical pistols, either. Two old and grizzled types they were, set in their ways. If they weren’t careful, the future was going to blow right past them.

  The mugger, armed with a crowbar, materialized thirty feet away and ran toward Howard. He snatched his piece out of the holster, brought it up, and did a fast double tap, aiming at the chest. The mugger stopped and fell down. The holographics on the range were pretty good, and the computer registered the hits and kept track of everything.

  “Got me by a quarter second,” Fernandez said from the other side of the bullet-resistant barrier. “General’s luck.”

  “Right,” Howard said. “Rack ’em up and I’ll show you how lucky I really am.”

  The second mugger had a long knife, and Howard’s first round caught him a hair high, just at the base of the throat. Good enough, since the second round didn’t go off. Instead, there was a metallic pop! and the cylinder jammed.

  “Got a mechanical malfunction here!” Howard yelled. He kept the weapon pointed downrange, waiting.

  Julio came around the barrier, an eyebrow raised in question.

  “Something broke. Cylinder won’t turn.”

  “I’ll get Gunny out here to take a look. So much for your six-for-sure theory.”

  The rangemaster said, “Sorry, sir, but sooner or later, everything wears out. You probably put thirty or forty thousand rounds through this thing over the years, you got to expect it to metal fatigue and start nickel-and-diming you to death. I can fix it, but it’s gonna take a few days to get the parts and get ’em installed.”

  “General will need a loaner,” Julio said. “Can’t have him walking around naked. Why don’t you show him the Medusa?”

  Gunny smiled and went to the gun safe. He came back with a Styrofoam box. On top of it was a little pamphlet. It said “Phillips & Rodgers, Inc.,” over a little logo with a reversed “P” and an “R” separated by a big “I.” The words “Owners Manual” were under that. Gunny handed Howard the pamphlet. Howard flipped it open to the first page and saw “Firearms Are Dangerous Weapons” in bold print at the top of the page.

  He shook his head. That’s what came of too many lawyers without enough to do. A maker had to warn you that a gun was dangerous. What was the duh-factor there?

  Gunny opened the box. Inside was a flat-black revolver with what looked like ivory grips. It had an unfluted cylinder, and seemed like a K-frame S&W with a funny-looking squared-off and grooved barrel.

  Fernandez took the revolver from the rangemaster. “General, this here is a P&R Model 47, aka Medusa. Three-inch, match-grade, one-in-nine twist barrel, 8620 steel, heat-treated to 28 Rockwell, with a vanadium cylinder at 36 Rockwell. Got a neat little red fiber-optic front sight, and fully adjustable rear sight. Coated with black Teflon, so it won’t rust.”

  He handed the piece to Howard. It felt good, familiar, if it looked a little squarish for his tastes. “You getting a commission from these people, Julio? And why would I like this more than my Smith?”

  Fernandez grinned widely. “Well, sir, if we can’t get you to use a semiauto, at least we can get you closer to the current century. These first came out in 1996, I believe, and they have a big advantage over your antique Smith. They will chamber and fire everything from an anemic .380 ACP to the hottest .357 Magnum rounds, and a whole bunch of stuff in between. You can load it up with any variation of 9mm you can think of—Kurz, Largo, Long, Luger, Mauser, Parabellum, Steyr, whatever, as well as .38 ACP, .38 auto, .38 Super, or .38 Special. Bunch of other calibers will work, too, but the manufacturer doesn’t recommend ’em.”

  “And how many cylinder changes do I have to carry to accomplish this miracle? Three? Five?”

  “No, sir, not a one. Pop the cylinder and push back on the extractor rod.”

  Howard did so. The extractor looked very odd.

  “Those are springs, those little things in the chambers. Anything that’ll fit, they’ll hold in place, and it’ll cook ’em off just fine.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, sir. You happen to find yourself on a battlefield somewhere and you run out of .357, you can always find 9mm somewhere, it still being the most popular military caliber worldwide. It’ll shoot the stuff we use in our subguns.”

  Howard looked at the gun. “What’s the catch?”

  “Well, sir, there are three. It doesn’t much like speed-loaders, because of the springs. You can make them work, but there’s a little trick to it. Speed strips would be better, and they are easier to carry anyhow. Second, if you are going to mix calibers, you should shoot the longer stuff first, so as not to gunk up the chambers. And thir
d, if you are mixing calibers, the sights won’t be dead-on for the different ones, so you have to adjust the rear sights. But that’s the same with mixing bullet weights, and most of the time, you’ll be shooting the same ammo. Still, you can put a different caliber in every chamber and fire them off just fine. At close range, you don’t need to worry about the sights, anyhow.”

  Howard hefted the revolver. “Interesting.”

  Gunny said, “Only thing I got in .357, General. I have a snubnose Smith M60 in .38 Special if you want to try that, but even with plus-P, it ain’t much gun, and it only holds five.”

  Julio nodded at the Medusa. “Why don’t you put a few through it, long as we are here? Unless you want to, uh, forfeit the match?”

  “You wish.”

  Gunny said, “Lemme see your ring, sir.”

  Howard nodded and slipped the Net Force signet ring from his right third finger. It looked ordinary enough, but inside the mounting was a tiny computer chip powered by a capacitor whose stored electricity came from a small kinetic generator, basically a little weight that shifted back and forth. As of a month ago, all Net Force who carry and field-issue sidearms, subguns, and rifles were equipped with smart technology. The guns had an internal chip that kept the actions from operating unless they received a coded signal. The rings sent the signal, and had a range of a few centimeters, no more. The Net Force guns were all tuned to the same signal, so if needed, they could shoot each other’s weapons, but if anybody not wearing the transmitting signet ring tried to fire a Net Force small arm, it would simply refuse to go off.

  Howard was not happy with the things, but he had been made to understand that there was no choice in accepting them. All federal agencies would eventually be using smart guns, and the FBI was taking the lead.

  So far, the new guns had operated at 100 percent, no failures. So far.

  Gunny put the ring into a slot on the coder and checked the program, then did the same for the new gun. “All set, sir.” He passed the ring and revolver back to Howard.