“Nobody could be that stupid.”
“Oh, yeah they can. Dumb crooks are legion.”
Michaels said, “All right. I know this, in general, about NSA. So?”
“So you think NSA confines its eyes and ears to outside our borders? Yeah, home court’s supposed to be FBI territory for such things, but everybody in the biz knows which way that wind blows. NSA has the tools, and how would anybody know they were doing it if they didn’t tell us? Sheeit. If they are as hot to run down these dopers as the DEA, they will have assigned anything having to do with Thor a high priority. If we want to beat’em to this Wednesday, we better get somebody on the street PDQ. The dealer might get taken, and that’d be good, but it’s better for us if we get some credit, right?”
“Right,” Michaels said. “Let me step into my office and make a call. Thanks, Jay.”
“Info is in your in-file under the name ‘Rich Girl.’ Remember me when you give out the bonuses.”
Malibu, California
When Tad woke up again, he looked at his watch. Not so much for the time as for the date. Sometimes after a Hammer trip, he would be more or less unconscious for three or four days.
He had been awake a couple times before, to go pee and get some water and pain pills, and he thought he remembered Bobby telling him a story about stoning FBI HQ in L.A. all to hell and gone. Maybe that had been a dream. Make more sense if it was.
Not too bad, if the watch was right, only a couple days since he’d crashed. If he remembered the day he’d done it right.
And if it hadn’t been a week and some.
He hurt all over. It was like he’d been dropped off a tall building and then bounced like a superball for a couple of blocks, slamming a different part of his body against the concrete each time. The slightest movement stabbed him with hot needles, cut at him with cold, dull razors. He managed to roll to a sitting position, then up to his feet. He swayed there for a moment, fought for balance, then headed for the shower. Moving slowly. After he got clean, he’d feel a little better, though a little better wasn’t going to be much compared to how crappy he felt. Still, that was the price you paid. You could bitch after the first time, but after that, you had no excuses; you knew what it was gonna feel like. You couldn’t blame anybody but yourself.
He managed to achieve the bathroom without falling, though he had to lean against the wall a couple of times along the way. He stripped, then got into the shower and cranked the water up full blast from all the nozzles. Had to; water coming from only one direction would probably knock him down.
Halfway to using all the hot water in the house—and that was saying something—Bobby stuck his head into the steamed-up bathroom and yelled: “Still alive? Amazing.”
“Fuck you,” Tad yelled reflexively.
“You okay enough to work?”
“I’m up, aren’t I?” He shut off the water and stepped out, grabbed one of the beach towels, and started drying off.
Bobby watched him, shaking his head. “You look like hammered dog shit.”
“Why, thank you. So what?”
“Business is picking up. I’ve got a dozen orders I need to send out today, eight more tomorrow, and four more the day after that.”
“Got me a cap for the first run?”
“Jesus, Tad, you do want to die, don’t you?”
Tad didn’t answer but finished toweling off. He looked at himself in the foggy mirror. Skinny as hell, yes, but in the blurry, soft-focus mirror reflections, he didn’t really look that bad.
Bobby blew out a theatrical sigh. “Yeah, I got one for you.”
Tad nodded, managed a grin. He’d never gone riding with Thor twice in a week before, it always took a long time to recover completely, but with enough chemical assistance, he could get past the aches and injuries he collected while tripping. They were still there, of course, but he didn’t feel them. Well, not as much. Thing was, he’d built up a pretty good tolerance to Demerol and morphine over the years. He could take a handful of 50 mg tabs and walk around like it was nothing, a dose that would put much bigger guys on the floor in a dreamy trance for six or eight hours. Morphine was a better painkiller than Demerol, heroin better still, but of course, those had their own problems—he wasn’t a big fan of needles or gas-powered skin-poppers that blasted the drug into you. Getting addicted wasn’t a problem he worried about, and he used morphine or smack sometimes, when it got really bad, but only as a painkiller, not for the high. Some people liked downers, which was what the opiates were. Tad liked uppers. Being able to move, to do things. The months he’d spent in a bed coughing up bloody sputum when he had active TB never left him. He didn’t plan to die in bed. Live fast, die young, and if the corpse was ugly or good-looking, what did that matter? You weren’t gonna be around to hear praise or revulsion, were you?
Time was running out. Take the trip now, or miss it. You get to be dead a long time, right?
Even with the Demerol tabs he’d taken last time he was up, and the shower, he felt like Bobby said he looked: like shit. So a little of the Mexican white was called for, to dull the edges. Some muscle relaxants, some steroids for the swelling and inflammation, and a little speed to balance things, he’d be able to get around. And once he picked up the Hammer again? Well, then it would all go away.
Superman don’t need no pain pills.
“I’m on it,” Tad said. “Give me ten minutes.”
Bobby nodded. “I’m going to start final mix now.”
Tad waved him off. His stash was in his car, parked at the sandwich place. He’d have to go get it, come back, and hope he could find a vein he could hit. What a bitch.
Washington, D.C.
Toni spent an hour playing with the scrimshaw, then had to quit. Her ankles were swelling, her right thumb and forefinger had gone numb from gripping the pin vise, and she was going blind looking through the magnifying lamp’s lens. That stereoscopic microscope would sure come in handy.
Yeah. So would some artistic talent and a lot more patience. Putting in a thousand tiny dots, each the size of a flea’s eye, was extremely exacting work. A couple of times, she had lost her concentration and put a dot outside the lines. Those would have to be sanded out and polished, and that was tricky, she’d already found out.
Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, taking up something this precise. Maybe she was just wasting her time and a lot of effort.
She went to the bathroom, washed her hands and face in cold water, and went into the living room. She sat on the couch. She could do her djuru hand work sitting down, most of it. The footwork was getting harder and harder to add in, and while Guru’s advice had been not to worry about it, it would all come back after the baby was born, she did worry about it. It had never occurred to her it would be like this.
The Indonesian martial art had been the core of who she was since she’d been thirteen. She hadn’t gotten into team sports, school clubs, or other extracurricular activities as a young woman in high school and college, not to speak of. No, she had dedicated herself to learning how to move in balance, to being able to deliver a focused attack against an aggressor, no matter if he was bigger, stronger, faster, or even well-trained. Yes, she had school, in which she did well, and yes, she had friends and lovers and a job, but in her own mind, she was a warrior.
A warrior with, she had to admit, some control issues.
Now a big, fat, pale, pregnant warrior with control issues, hey?
Shut up!
Putting scratches and itty-bitty dots on fake ivory instead of kicking ass. Some warrior.
Tears rose and threatened to spill, but Toni angrily wiped her eyes. No. She wouldn’t give in to this emotional turmoil. Hormones, that was all it was, goddamned hormones! She’d learned how to control PMS, and she never let her periods keep her from work or working out. She could beat this, too! It was a matter of will!
Sure, sure, it is, as long as you watch out for peg-legged guys with eye patches carrying harpoons, whale-girl. Th
ar she blows!
She was more angry than she was anything, but now the tears did flow, and she couldn’t stop them.
The com chirped. She stared at it. It kept on cheeping. Finally, she picked it up.
“Hello,” she said.
“Hi, babe, it’s me. How are you doing?”
Alex. Oh, boy. Was that the wrong thing for him to say.
“I hate my life,” she said.
He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to say anything. She had more. Much more.
15
Quantico, Virginia
“You want me to go along on a drug raid?” John Howard said.
Michaels nodded. “Yes. We have a vested interest here, even though it is officially a DEA matter. I just got off the com with Brett Lee. They are willing to allow a Net Force liaison to tag along ... if he’s field-qualified. In the interests of interagency cooperation, of course.”
“Let me see if I can translate that. We need credit for this, right?”
“Damn straight. This is going to be a high-profile bust. There is a lot of interest in catching these folks, from way up the food chain. When the media figures out what this is connected to, we don’t want to be left out in the cold. You standing there conspicuously in your Net Force blues on the six o‘clock news will make sure nobody accidentally ‘forgets’ to mention that it was us who located this evildoer and gave his location to the DEA.”
Howard smiled. “You’re getting a lot better at this political in-fighting, Commander.”
“I’d say thank you, but I’m not sure I consider that a compliment.”
Howard shrugged. “Goes with the job. Same with any organization. Once you get above the rank of major in the army, most of what you do requires one eye on the chain of command, the other eye on the internal and external politics affecting your unit. Makes it hard to see what you actually want to accomplish. You don’t watch out for us, you sure can’t expect anybody else to do it. Certainly not the DEA or NSA.”
“I wouldn’t order you to do it. Strictly voluntary, General.”
“Well, sir, I’d be happy to go along and help our fellow crime fighters take down this dope peddler. It’s been a little slow around here anyway.”
“Knock on wood,” Michaels said, rapping his desktop. “In case there are any bored angels watching who want to give us something to worry about.”
“Amen.”
After Howard left, Michaels’s secretary told him he had a call.
“From?”
“Gretta Henkel.”
“Why do I recognize that name?”
“She’s the CEO and largest shareholder of Henkel Pharmaceuticals, which is headquartered in Mannheim, Germany.”
Michaels rolled his eyes. Jesus, word was definitely out about this drug thing. He reached for the phone.
The conversation didn’t take long, and when it was done, Michaels leaned back in his chair and shook his head. Ms. Henkel, of Henkel Pharmaceuticals, the largest European drug manufacturing company and the fourth largest in the world, had offered him a job.
Ostensibly, Ms. Henkel was looking for somebody to run their computer security department, and who better than the man who ran the computer security service for the United States government? She had, she had said, heard great things about him. Would he be interested in speaking with her personally about this? She could have one of the corporate jets pick him up and fly him to Mannheim for a chat. She mentioned a starting salary that translated to roughly four times what he was making as a government employee, plus stock options and a medical and retirement package that would, in twenty years, make him a fairly wealthy man. He could also bring two or three of his best people with him if he elected to accept the job, of course, and with hefty increases in their salaries, too.
It was tempting to think her offer was exactly what she said. A recognition of his ability to manage a complex technical operation. An offer tendered on merit. A deserved and great opportunity.
Michaels smiled at that. He had never considered himself the brightest light on the string, but neither had he thought he was the dimmest.
What this was about, of course, was this damned purple capsule everybody wanted so badly. Probably Ms. Henkel wanted it to move her company from fourth largest to third or maybe even first place. Or maybe she wanted it so the Germans could gear up for another war with supersoldiers. It didn’t really matter. But she was assuming that if she paved a road with platinum for him to get there, Michaels would bring the secret of the stuff with him. It would be interesting to see if the job offer became real if he didn’t happen to have that information at hand or didn’t want to give it up. Or even how long his new job would last if he did.
He smiled again as he thought about telling Toni: “Hi, honey, I’m home! Guess what. We’re moving to Germany!”
Deutschland, Deutschland, über alles ...
He chuckled at that thought.
He’d declined the offer with appropriate regrets and thanked Ms. Henkel politely.
Whatever the hell was in that mysterious capsule must be very interesting indeed.
Beverly Hills, California
He could have requisitioned a Net Force jet, but having risen on merit as a colonel in the regular army before taking command of the Net Force military arm, John Howard had a few friends still active in other services. An old Air Force buddy who had likewise risen high in the ranks got him second seat on a fighter going across the country. The training flight had to refuel midair, of course, but since it didn’t land, Howard was more than two hours ahead of Mr. Brett Lee’s commercial flight and waiting at the airport for him when he got off the plane. A small victory but worth the effort for the look on the face of a man who had left Washington, D.C., an hour before Howard had and well knew it.
Lee filled him in on details as they drove toward Beverly Hills.
“The suspect’s name is George Harris Zeigler, age thirty-one.” He looked at Howard as if expecting some response, but the name didn’t mean anything to him, and Howard said so.
“He’s a fairly well-known actor,” Lee said. “A pretty boy who plays action heroes, has the teenage girls all hot for him. They call him the Zee-ster.”
“There you go,” Howard said. “I’m neither teenage nor female. And not much of a movie fan.”
“In any event, we have the warrants, and our surveillance teams have him at home. He lives in a big, gated estate in Beverly Hills.”
“Of course he does.”
“We’re going in hot and fast. We need to do this quick enough to get samples of the drug. He has bodyguards and a commercial security system. It is unlikely he is the chemist. He flunked out of high school before becoming an actor, but we think he either sells or gives the stuff to his friends, especially his female friends. He doesn’t need the money; he gets fifteen or twenty million dollars each for the movies he stars in. And you’ve never heard of him?”
“I guess I need to get out more,” Howard allowed.
Lee glared but then forced a smile. It was his operation, and he would be giving Howard his assignment. He’d have the last word. “You will be assisting the agents covering the garage, ” he said. “In case Mr. Zeigler decides to try to escape. It’s a twelve-car garage, but he only has ten in it at the moment. The usual toys, including a Ferrari, a Land Cruiser, a Ford Cobra, a Dodge Viper, and a couple of antique Rolls-Royces.”
“Must be nice. How many agents do you have going into the house?”
“Sixteen.”
“Ah. Well, if he gets past you, we’ll do our best to try to stop him.”
Lee didn’t speak to that, and Howard leaned back in the seat, looking out the window. Smoggy out here today. Big surprise.
When they got to the staging area, a local park, Howard pulled his gear out of his tactical duffel bag. He had his side arm, the Medusa, his blue coveralls, and the spidersilk vest with “Net Force” stenciled in big phosphorescent yellow letters across the back. He strapped on his re
volver, slipped into the coveralls, and tabbed the vest into place. It was class-one armor with full side panels and a crotch drape. The tightweave silk and overlapping ceramic plates would stop any handgun round and most rifle bullets, assuming the shooter went for the body and not the head or legs. Somehow, he didn’t think an actor who let himself be called the Zee-ster would be doing much blasting. Rich folks generally fought with lawyers, not firearms. And his chances of getting past a whole slew of DEA agents armed with subguns were slim and snowball.
Howard had wanted to bring his old Thompson, the ancient .45 submachine gun his grandfather had gotten when he was an unofficial deputy in the preintegration days, but he thought that might be a bit ostentatious in front of the cameras. And there were sure to be news copters flitting around pretty quick in this kind of operation. Dead-eye John Howard and his Chicago typewriter might not provide the image Net Force wanted.
During the briefing, Howard memorized the maps, met the two agents who’d be watching the garage with him—their names were Brown and Peterson, a tall woman and a short man, respectively. Lee, despite his quick fuse, gave a pretty good sitrep and assignment layout. Everybody synchronized their watches and slipped into tactical radio headphones set to a narrow-band opchan. Whatever the DEA’s political agendas, they had done enough drug busts to know how to enter a secured residence efficiently.