Breaking Point

  “No, no, you don’t have to explain. You can do what you want, I don’t have any strings on you. You want to work for the folks on the other side of the compound, hey, it’s not my business. You are going to take the job, right?”

  Her arms came back up and she crossed them tightly in front of her breasts. She stared back at him. “Yes. I am.”

  His gut twisted. Well. There you go. Signed, sealed, delivered.

  He stood. “Congratulations. I’m so glad we had a chance to discuss it before you made your decision.” He stalked past her toward the bedroom. Probably not as impressive as it might have been, since he was wearing nothing but his old ratty bathrobe with the frayed cuffs and torn shoulder.

  “Don’t do this, Alex! Don’t shut down on me!”

  “You have no room to say that right now,” he said. “No room at all. I’m going to work.”

  “If you do, I won’t be here when you get back!”

  “Fine, you’re going to do what you want anyhow—why bother to tell me!”

  And that pretty much ended that conversation.

  29

  Wednesday, June 15th

  Washington, D.C.

  In the cab on the way to the rental car place, Toni fumed. Why did Alex have to be such a horse’s ass?

  All right, yes, she should have told him about the job interview, and that she was seriously considering taking the offer. But, really, when did she have the chance? After she had seen the director, Alex had been out of his office and busy. He hadn’t come back to his condo until late, and she’d been in bed. The first time she could have reasonably brought it up was this morning, and before she had a chance to say anything, he’d jumped down her throat. How fair was that?

  Uh-huh. You can make the case that way to him if you want, but let’s not bullshit ourselves, okay? You could have mentioned it before you went to the meeting. And you were only pretending to be asleep when Alex got home because you didn’t want to talk about it. Try again.

  All right, yes, yes, it was true. But even so, he still didn’t have any right to blow up like that. He wasn’t her father!

  No, but he’s the man you love. And he was right about one thing—you did to him what you absolutely hate to see him do to you—you kept him in the dark about what was going on inside your head. And all that business about you not being there when he got home? What was that?

  Toni sighed. She hated these arguments with her inner self. She always lost. She could rationalize to somebody else, but she couldn’t fool herself—not for long, anyhow. Alex’s anger had ignited her own, and when they’d both had a chance to cool down, they’d be able to discuss things more rationally. He did love her, she knew that, and just because they’d had a fight didn’t mean all was lost forever. She hadn’t had much practice at that, fighting with somebody you loved, and every time it happened, she had a belly-twisting fear that it would be the end. One cross word, blap! they’d go their separate ways. Maybe you got over that, in time. She hoped so.

  All right. So now the question was, Should she wait and hash this out with Alex? Or should she go to Quantico, see the director, and tell her she was going to take the job? Her ego said to hell with him, do what you want. But her heart said she should at least sit down and explain to him why she wanted to do it. Okay, so he was pissed off at her, he was busy, and he had a lot on his mind, but they could find a few minutes to work this out. This was more important than anything else in her life, she couldn’t just turn and walk away from it.

  “Here we are, lady,” the cabbie said.

  Toni blinked. The trip had been a blur, she couldn’t remember any of it.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  Her mind was set. She would get the rental car, drive to the office, and find a time and space to talk to Alex. She could make him understand. She knew she could.

  New York City

  The bar was a rat hole—shoot, a self-respecting rat would think twice about sticking its nose in here, and if it had two neurons to spark at each other, it would decide not to risk it. The lighting was mercifully dim, but you could still see the knife scars in the wooden bar, the initials carved in the tables and stools. There were flats and holographs on the walls lit by neon beer signs, the posters of mostly naked women perched in various poses on Harley Davidson motorcycles. On a couple of the pictures, certain portions of the women’s anatomy had been worn through to the dark wall underneath, caused by somebody rubbing or kissing the images. The mirror behind the bar was cracked in two places, held together with glass-mend strips, and few of the liquor bottles on the shelves behind the bartender were more than half-full.

  The bartender was six and a half feet tall, probably weighed three hundred pounds, and he wore a leather vest and oil-stained jeans that presumably went to the tops of his big old motorcycle boots. He had tattoos all over what was visible of his body, everything from Li’l Hot Stuff to naked women with large breasts—and large fangs. The centerpiece was a Harley logo on his chest, partially obscured with thick patches of graying hair.

  Lined up at the bar and seated at the tables were other bikers, men and women, and none of them looking what you would call ... wholesome ...

  On a raised platform off to one side of the bar, red and blue lights played over a listless dancer. She was naked, save for several rings piercing various body parts, and a few small but interesting tattoos of her own, including a flame-colored one shaped like an arrow that pointed at one of the more intimate piercings—or what was being pierced. The music was some bump-and-grind number with saxophones and a lot of drums, and the dancer could have phoned in her performance. From her face, one could see the dancer was well past her prime; from stretch marks and scars, one could guess that she’d had children, cosmetic surgery, and probably an appendectomy. The overall effect was as erotic as a chunk of concrete, and nobody was watching the woman dance.

  Jay Gridley, wearing a sleeveless blue denim jacket sporting colors from the Thai Tigers Motorcycle Club—TTMC superimposed over a growling tiger’s face—stood between two bruisers a foot taller than he and probably half again his weight.

  One of the bruisers accidentally tapped Jay with his elbow as he turned to speak to a mama on the other side of him.

  “Watch it,” Jay said.

  The biker turned back to Jay, death in his eyes, but when he saw Jay, he blinked and said, “Sorry, man.”

  Jan grinned. Well, what the hell, it was his scenario, wasn’t it? If he was gonna be in a bad biker titty bar, he might as well be the baddest guy in the place, right? Jay knew he had the moves to wipe up the virtual floor with anybody in the place, and even in VR, people could sense a real expert from his moves and stance.

  It probably said something about his fantasy life that he would come up with such a scenario, and was able to flesh it out-as well as he had, but hey, if you can’t have fun, what is the point?

  The bartender came over, and Jay pointed at his empty glass. The giant nodded, reached behind himself, and pulled a bottle of tequila off the shelf. When he poured, the worm sloshed into the glass with the fiery liquid. He looked at Jay.

  Jay shrugged. “Leave it. It adds texture.”

  The bartender started to turn away. Jay said, “I’m looking for somebody.”

  “Yeah?” He locked gazes with Jay.

  “Yeah. A shooter.” He pulled the smudged drawing from his jacket pocket. This was the composite put together by the computer artist, based on the HAARP guards’ description of “Dick Grayson.”

  The bartender never took his gaze from Jay’s. “Don’t know him, ain’t seen him,” he said.

  “Look at the picture.”

  “Don’t need to. Won’t matter.”

  “So that’s how it is.”

  “Yeah. That’s how it is.”

  Jay grabbed the bartender by a clump of chest hair and jerked him against the edge of the bar. With his free hand, he pulled an automatic knife with a five-inch blade from his jeans. He put the point against the
bartender’s throat, just under his chin.

  In the real world, Jay had grabbed the home address of the guy playing bartender and force-fed the generating computer a virus-laced cookie. If he didn’t pull the knife away, the guy’s system was going to go belly up in about ten seconds after he “cut” him.

  “Look at the picture or I give you a new smile.”

  The bar patrons hadn’t noticed the action, save for those closest to Jay, and they quickly edged away. The dancer continued her sleepwalking shuffle.

  “Okay, don’t get twitchy.” The bartender glanced down at the image.

  Jay grinned. This visit to a mercenary chat room on VR was a lot more interesting than running facial points of comparison against the image files of the NCIC, NAPC, or the FBI, looking for a match—which he had already done, and come up with zed-edward-roger-oliver.

  “Jeez,” somebody said from the doorway. “Jay?”

  The voice sounded familiar. Jay released the bartender and turned.

  Tyrone Howard stood there, looking around the inside of the biker’s hangout.

  “Tyrone? What are you doing here?”

  There were a few people to whom Jay had given his forwarding code, so that if they needed to contact him electronically, they could in essence meet him on the net wherever he was. It wouldn’t work in a high-classification security area, but any hacker worth three bytes could follow the line into anything as simple as this kind of public access site if Jay allowed him past the fire wall. Tyrone Howard had been very helpful during the mad Russian thing a few months back, and Jay had added him to the list of people who could contact him in a hurry.

  Might have been a mistake, considering the overlay.

  Apparently Tyrone had decided to let Jay’s scenario be the default, and it wasn’t one you particularly wanted to have a thirteen-year-old boy see you in. He might get the wrong idea.

  “Yeah, I seen him,” the bartender said.

  Jay turned back to the giant biker, breaking character: “Really?”

  “Yeah. He’s been in once or twice.”

  “Where can I find him?”

  “I dunno. But the guy over by the pool table, the one in the Army shirt, drinking boilermakers, he’s had some dealings with him.”

  Jay nodded.

  Tyrone walked into the place toward Jay.

  “Gimme a second here, Ty, I’ll be right with you.”

  “No hurry, Jay. I’ll just ... enjoy the ambience. Jeez, this is as bad as Jimmy-Joe’s strip joint.”

  Great. All he needed was Tyrone telling his father about this scenario.

  Worry about that later, Jay. Let’s go see the man who likes boilermakers.

  But the man who enjoyed dropping a shot glass of whiskey into his beer stein, depth-charge style, wasn’t really there—he was a proxy.

  While it was true that none of the people in the ersatz biker bar were really “there,” some were less so than others. A proxy was a shell, little more than a link to another location, something to mark a place, and not somebody you could interface with directly. A ghost of a shadow.

  Jay was able to get a location, but a quick pulse in that direction did a reverb with nothing more than an RW street address, somewhere in the District. Apparently Mr. Boilermaker here didn’t like to reveal too much on the net, and if Jay wanted to speak with him, he was going to have to drop out of VR and go RW.

  Huh. Who did that anymore?

  He wasn’t a field op, he was a netjet, so he could pass this along to one of the staff investigators to have them look up Boilermaker here and have a face-to-face chat with him.

  Jay shook his head. That might take days, given the way the field ops took their sweet time about such requests. Even if the boss put a rush on it, Jay didn’t altogether trust the shoe skidders—some of them weren’t particularly sharp, and it would be his luck to get a dull one who’d mess up the interview.

  Soji had been after him to get out more. No reason why he couldn’t drop by and do the interview himself, was there? It wasn’t as if he was afraid of going outside.

  He looked around for Tyrone, but the boy had vanished.

  “Tyrone?”

  A biker with the physique of a competition bodybuilder whose monthly steroid bill was higher than his house note smiled at him. “Hey, Jay.”

  “Nice suit,” Jay said, waving at the mound of muscle.

  “I thought it was a good idea. It’s a modified pro wrestler, all I had to do was change the clothes and add a couple of tattoos. I didn’t want to stand out.”

  “Come on, let’s leave this pit. I’ve got a private room.” He rattled off the password and headed for the door.

  As he reached the exit, the exotic dancer’s music changed, and the first notes of Destroyers’ version of “Bad to the Bone” rumbled its bass beat from the speakers. Jay grinned. For a second, he’d forgotten he’d programmed that in. Yep, that’s me. Jay Gridley, better not step into my path, ’cause I’m b-b-b-b-bad!

  30

  Wednesday, June 15th

  Woodland Hills, California

  Ventura wiped a thin film of sweat from his forehead as he stood outside the theater, smiling into the parking lot. It was probably almost eighty degrees, and it was not yet nine A.M. Hardly a surprise that the sun came up bright and hot here this time of year. The Los Angeles basin pretty much had two seasons—hot and real hot. Ventura could remember going to the beach in January, and getting sunburned lying on the sand, watching girls hip-roll past in bikinis. He grinned again. That had been a long time ago.

  He and Morrison had been here for almost two hours, and of course his people had been in place since before Wu had called yesterday. The regular staff had been given three days off with pay and told that a special training session for employees of a different theater was being conducted. If anybody had wondered about it, the free days off were apparently enough to keep them from asking.

  Wu would expect Ventura to get there early, of course, and he wouldn’t know who normally worked there, but he’d figure Ventura hadn’t chosen the place because he liked breathing hot smog.

  Like a game of chess or go, any move in this level of play, no matter how innocuous it might seem, could have a major impact later on. You had to be very careful, always looking ahead.

  Only a fool would choose a neutral meeting place if he could pick one that would tilt the playing field in his favor. Taking the high ground was an old and battle-tested adage. The Chinese knew this—their culture had been steeped in war for thousands of years, and it made for a pungent, bitter drink. They knew this brew.

  Within three hours of the call, Chinese agents had put the theater under surveillance, and a couple of them had tried to con their way inside. Ventura’s people had kept the place secure, though they really couldn’t do anything about the watchers outside. Well. That didn’t matter.

  The arrival of an ostentatious stretch limo in the front two hours ago had likely drawn most of the outside attention while Morrison and Ventura slipped in the back door, bracketed by four of his best shooters. The guy having coffee in the Starbucks all morning would have seen them and reported it, but Wu wouldn’t want to risk a shoot-out in broad daylight next to a major street—it would be too easy for Morrison to take a round, and nobody wanted that. Yet.

  Once inside, Morrison felt a lot safer, and Ventura let him believe that, though the truth was, it didn’t much matter. If Ventura screwed up, the client was in deep shit no matter where he was.

  Still, Ventura knew they had the advantages: He had chosen the time and place, he controlled the building, and they needed Morrison alive, whereas Ventura could pot anybody on their side he wanted. And when it got right down to it, he was pretty sure he was better at strategy and tactics than Chilly Wu.

  Of course, that was the crux of it—“pretty sure” was not the same as “absolutely certain,” which you could never be in such an encounter. And in that was the secret shared by serious martial artists everywhere. If you were a wa
rrior—a real warrior—there was only one way to test yourself. You had to go into battle, guns ready, and face the enemy. No amount of virtual reality, no practice with targeting lasers against others, nothing other than the real thing mattered. In the end, the only way to know you were better when it came to life and death was to pull the triggers, rock and roll, and see who walked away when the smoke cleared.

  That instant of truth, when the guns and knives came out, that was as much in the moment as a man got. That was the ultimate realization that you were alive, when you stared laughing Death in the face and backed him down. Death always laughed, of course, because he knew that in the end, he always won. That was Death—but life wasn’t about the destination, it was about the trek. Playing the song was about the flow of the music, not about reaching the end.

  If a man spent years, decades, perfecting a skill, no matter how awful the skill was in application, some part of him wanted to test it. To know.

  So, part of this was protecting his client. And part of it was, if necessary, defeating the one who would harm his client. You stepped up and knocked the other guy’s dick into the dirt, and thus you knew that in this instance, however briefly the moment lasted, you were better than he was.

  It was not the best measure of a man, to pit yourself against another, but it was a method that gave at least a partial answer right then and there.

  Ego, and no way around that, but Ventura had come to terms with his ego a long time ago. Yes, he had to accept that there were likely better assassins out there now than he was—younger, stronger, faster. And while old and devious beat young and strong most of the time, that didn’t happen when it was quicker reaction time that made the crucial difference.

  So, yes, there were better assassins, but he was pretty sure that Chilly Wu wasn’t one of them. If the deal went smoothly, well and good, but if things went sour, well, then they’d see.

  They’d dance the dance, and then they’d know for sure.