When and if they came across the drug dealer, then Michaels could decide whether to let NSA know about it. Probably they wouldn’t. Almost certainly not in time to do anything nasty with the knowledge. If NSA swooped in and grabbed the dope dealer from under the DEA’s nose and someone figured out that it was Net Force who gave the guy up, heads would roll.
Right now, it was a moot point anyhow. They didn’t have anything to give.
Before he could get back to his reading, the intercom cheeped again.
“Sir, Agent Brett Lee is here. He doesn’t have an appointment, but he seems, ah ... quite insistent on seeing you.”
“Show him in.”
Lee arrived in a huff, glowering. “What the hell is Zach George doing here?!”
“Nice to see you, too, Mr. Lee.”
“You didn’t answer my question!”
“Nor do I intend to. What goes on in my office is none of your damn business.”
Lee stepped forward, as if he planned on doing something physical.
Michaels was tired and cranky. He came to his feet, ready to move. Go for it, pal. Let me show you what my wife taught me!
But Lee stopped, having apparently realized that throwing a punch at the head of Net Force might not be a smart career move.
Too bad. Michaels felt like decking him. This clown had no right storming into his office demanding anything.
“You and George are up to something, and I’m warning you, it better not get in our way! My boss will be calling yours,” he said, still red-faced and angry.
“I hope they have a pleasant conversation, Mr. Lee. But right now, I’m busy, so if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.” He sat and reached for his viewer.
In another second, Brett Lee was gone, leaving an angry wake behind him.
This was a very interesting development. Much more fun than reading reports on a dull morning.
10
Malibu, California
When Drayne shuffled into the kitchen with just the tiniest headache from drinking most of two bottles of champagne, he saw Tad sprawled on the couch and dead to the world.
Good. One of these trips, Tad wasn’t gonna come back, but he was glad it wasn’t this time. He’d miss the guy. Tad was balls-to-the-wall and full-out, not too many like him. And loyal; you couldn’t buy that.
Drayne opened the cabinet over the microwave oven and dug through the vitamins until he found the ibuprofen. He shook four of the brown tabs into his palm, swallowed them dry, and put the bottle back. There were rows and rows of vitamin bottles there, he was a big believer in such things, but he wouldn’t take those until he had some food in his stomach. He took so many vitamins and minerals and assorted other healthy supplements that doing so on an empty belly was apt to make him nauseated. His normal intake each morning amounted to maybe twenty, twenty-five pills, caps, caplets, or softgels.
Two grams of C, two caplets; three E’s, 1200 IUs; 120 mg of ginkgo biloba, two caplets; two Pain Free tabs, that was 1,000 of glucosamine and 800 of chondroitin combined; couple of fat-burners, mostly chromium picolinate and L-caritine; 705 mg of ginseng, three softgels; 50,000 IUs of beta-carotene in two gelcaps; 100 mg of DHEA, that was four pills; couple of saw palm—he didn’t really need that yet, but better to get a head start on prostate problems, as much screwing as he did—two gels, 320 mg; five mg of Deprenyl to keep the gray matter from rotting; and however many creatine caps he thought he needed when he was on the cycle, those varied from day to day, depending on how hard he hit the weights.
He waited until bedtime before he took the multiple and his melatonin, plus a couple of other odds and ends. That many pills down the hatch every day, dry-swallowing four ibuprofen was nothing. The stack seemed to work for him, and as long as it did, he’d keep it up. Prevention was better than a cure.
Champagne was his only vice—well, unless you counted sex—and he made sure he was covered on the health stuff. He ate pretty well, exercised regularly, even wore sunblock these days. He planned to live a long, rich, full life, unlike Tad, who’d be dead in a year, tops, and probably a lot sooner.
He’d tried to talk Tad out of them, the Hammer trips, but Tad was who he was, and if he did quit, he’d turn into somebody else. Drayne could live with the guy running at half speed, but Tad couldn’t, and that was that.
Misty-Bunny-Buffy was gone, slipped out in the night sometime. He figured she had a steady boyfriend or a husband she had to get back to, sleeping with a producer to maybe get a job didn’t really count, especially not if you were home before dawn. He was done with her, anyhow. She’d been great, but she’d only be new once, and there was no point in going spelunking in caves where he’d already been, was there? Unless they were spectacular—and past a certain point, they didn’t seem to get much better—why bother? Might be a better one just ahead.
He looked at his watch, one of those Seiko Kinetics that you never had to wind or replace the batteries in; it ran off some kind of tiny generator that charged up a capacitor or something every time you moved your wrist. Watch would run as long as you could wiggle your arm a little, guaranteed for life. And if things got to the point where he couldn’t wiggle his arm a little, there wouldn’t be any reason to worry about what time it was.
At the moment, it was almost ten A.M.
He sighed. Too late to get in a workout or a jog on the beach. Better go take a shower and then get rolling. He had to drive out to the desert to restock his mobile lab, and it was a couple hours each way, even if the traffic was good. He could take his vitamins with him, get something to eat later. He needed to be back by six, he had a dinner with the Zee-ster, that was always good for some laughs. If Tad had been mobile, he’d have sent him, but he wasn’t and that was that, too.
Well, at least it looked as if the weather was okay. Once he got past the smog curtain, he could drop the top and enjoy the sunshine. Great thing about SoCal was that you could pretty much do that year round. Yeah, it rained in the winter and actually got chilly a couple times in season, but he’d spent many a January day lying on the beach cooking under a warm sun. Sure, the water got colder, but with a wet suit, you could surf any time. Not that he’d done much of that lately. Too busy working. Have to remedy that pretty soon.
He grinned. He wondered what his father would say if he knew how much money little Bobby had tucked away. Or how he had earned it. The old man would blow a gasket, that was certain, you’d be able to see the steam coming out his head for fucking miles. Thirty years with the Bureau, as straight an arrow as ever put on a suit, his old man, a guy who’d always paid his own parking tickets rather than flash his FBI badge at a meter maid.
And for what? What had all that nose-to-the-grindstone, johnny-be-good crap gotten his old man?
It had gotten him retired to a condo in Tucson, Arizona, just him and that little terrier of his, Franklin, living on a pension and bitching about how the world had gone to hell in a handbasket. Actually, Drayne kinda liked the dog. Best thing his old man had done since Mom died was get a dog, not saying much. First week he’d had the beast, it had come back inside carrying a big ole dead rat it had caught. Rat almost as big as the dog, and you’d have never thought by looking at the little barker that he had it in him. Drayne liked that.
It had been more than a year since he had gone to visit his father. Franklin must be pushing nine or ten by now, probably middle-aged in dog years.
Drayne often wondered, if his old man found out what he was doing, would he turn him in? Some days he was sure that former Special Agent in Charge Rickover Drayne, RD to his friends, most of whom were feds, would do it, no question. Other days, he wasn’t so sure. Maybe the old bastard had a soft spot for his only son. Not that Drayne had ever been able to see it.
As far as the old man knew, Bobby worked for a small chemical company that produced plastic polymer for use in industrial waste containers, earning a decent salary, just a hair more than his father had made in his last year before retirement. This was don
e so the old man would think all that tuition money for the chemistry degree hadn’t been wasted. He might have his differences with his son, but at least he could say the boy had a legitimate job making decent money.
Of course, that was as much for Drayne’s protection as for making his father proud. He had gone to some lengths to create the PolyChem Products company, duly incorporated in Delaware, to set up a modest history in a few selected computer banks, and to make sure he was listed as an employee. Just in case his father checked it out. He wouldn’t put it past the old man to do that. Paid taxes on the paper job salary he showed, too, and FICA and all that shit. IRS didn’t care what you did as long as you paid taxes. He could have declared his income from dope sales and paid the feds their cut, and the IRS would never say anything to the DEA about it. People had done it before.
The government, in whatever form it manifested, was plainly stupid. He could dick around with them all he wanted, and they’d never catch him.
Drayne wandered into the bathroom and cranked up the shower. It was a big sucker, room enough for four or five people, all pale green tile and glass bricks, with a dozen shower heads set all over: high, low, in-between. With the jets turned on full blast, it was like being stabbed by wet needles. Used a shitload of water—he had a pair of eighty-gallon water heaters in the garage—but when you came out of it, you felt clean and rejuvenated, that was for sure.
He stepped into the shower and gasped at the force of the spray.
Tad would be out for probably eighteen or twenty hours, maybe longer. He’d still be on the couch when Drayne got back. Maybe even still breathing. And he’d spend most of the next week or so on the couch, lying on the floor, or, if he made it that far, a bed. Recovering from the Hammer was a chore. It got harder each time.
Drayne stopped thinking and let the hot water take him.
The Bronx, New York
Toni sat in the chair next to Guru’s bed, watching the old woman sleep. Mrs. DeBeers had been lucky, the doctor told her. The stroke was mild, and she was in otherwise remarkable health for an eighty-three-year-old woman. There was only a slight effect on her grip and speech, no real paralysis, and they expected she’d make a full recovery. There were still tests they had to run and medications they had to administer and monitor for a couple of days, but pretty much they thought she was out of the woods.
The doctors only told her that because Guru had listed her as next of kin, even though that wasn’t true.
Toni was more than a little relieved. Guru DeBeers had been a part of her life since Toni had seen her, at sixty-five, clean the clocks of four neighborhood toughs who tried to give her a hard time. Toni had been amazed at the sight and had known immediately she wanted to learn how to protect herself against physical attacks that way. Men tended to take women for granted physically, and even at thirteen Toni had known she did not want to be at the mercy of some man who decided he wanted something from her she didn’t want to give. The training in pentjak silat, starting with the simple bukti negara style and progressing to the more complex serak, had been a part of Toni’s world ever since. She still went over to see her teacher whenever she went home to visit her parents, and the trip across the street had never gotten dull.
Old as Guru was, it was impossible to imagine her gone.
“Ah, how is my tunangannya today?”
Toni smiled. Best girl. There was the smallest slur to Guru’s voice, hardly noticeable. “I’m fine, Guru. How are you feeling?”
“I’ve felt worse. Better, too. It would be nice to have some coffee.”
“The doctors won’t let you do that, not after a stroke.”
“I have outlived three sets of doctors so far. I will outlive this set if they wait for coffee to kill me. And if does kill me, at least I die happy.”
Toni smiled again, and reached into her purse. She brought out a small stainless steel thermos.
The old woman’s smile was radiant, if a trifle saggy on the left side of her face. “Ah. You are a dutiful student.”
“It’s not fresh,” Toni said. “I didn’t have time to go by your place and grind your grand-nephew’s beans and make it. I got it at Starbucks more than an hour ago. I’m sorry.”
Guru shrugged. “It will do. Raise the bed.”
Toni operated the controls, and the motor hummed and raised Guru into a more-or-less sitting position. Toni poured the coffee into the thermos’s cup and passed it over.
Guru inhaled deeply through her nose. “Espresso?”
“Of course. The darkest they had.”
“Well, stale or not, it is welcome. Thank you, my best girl.” Guru brought the cup to her lips and took a small sip. “Not bad, not bad,” she pronounced. “Another hundred years or so, and Americans might learn how to make a decent brew. And certainly it is better than nothing.” She took another sip, then smiled again. “And how is our baby doing?”
“Fine, as far as I can tell. Mostly he elbows me in the bladder or rolls around and tries to boot my stomach inside out.”
“Yes, they do that. And he is tiny yet. Wait until you are eight or nine months along, and he kicks you so hard your pants fall down.” She chuckled.
“There’s a pleasant thought.”
“You are worried because you cannot train,” Guru said.
Toni shook her head. How could she know exactly what was going through her mind?
“I had four children,” Guru said. “All after I began my training. Each time, I had to alter my practice.”
“So I’m discovering.”
“You can do djuru-djuru sitting down,” she said. “Your langkas will need to be sharpened, but there is no reason to stop upper body movements.”
Toni nodded. The Indonesian martial art forms Guru taught were divided into two parts, upper body, or djurus, and lower body, or langkas. You usually lumped them together and called the whole thing a djuru, though that was not technically correct.
“I have some things in my house for you to take home with you when you go. I have packed them into a big box by the front door.”
Before Toni could protest, Guru continued, “No, it is not my time yet, and I am not giving you your legacy before I go. These are merely things I think you will enjoy and that I no longer have a need for.”
“Thank you, Guru.”
“I am proud of you as a student and as a woman, best girl. I expect I will live long enough to cuddle your child.”
Toni smiled. She certainly hoped so.
11
Quantico, Virginia
The woman was young, maybe twenty-two, twenty-three, and dressed in jeans, a black T-shirt, and running shoes, nothing that unusual about her appearance. She was nobody you’d cross the street to get a better look at, but nobody you’d cross the street the other way to avoid because she was hideous, either. Average-looking.
The woman approached an automated bank teller, put in her card, and stood back. Apparently there was some malfunction. The woman smiled, then, without preamble, drove her fist through the teller’s vid screen. Shattered glass flew every which way, and even before it finished falling, the woman was grabbing at a garbage basket on the sidewalk. She picked up the basket and began hammering at the teller, smiling all the while.
Alex Michaels leaned back in the chair and said, “There’s something you don’t see every day.”
Jay Gridley said, “Actually, it happens quite a lot, according to Bureau agents I’ve talked to. Although the level of violence is usually much less. People tend to spit at the screen or camera, slam it with the edge of their fist once or twice, even kick at it. Sometimes they scratch the glass with their car keys. Nobody’s ever seen one quite this ... ah ... active before.”
“What happened after she trashed the videocam recording it?”
Jay said, “According to witnesses, the destruction continued until she really got pissed off, whereupon she somehow managed to rip the machine free of its mountings, scattering several thousand dollars in twenty-dollar bil
ls all over the sidewalk. A small riot ensued as concerned citizens sought to ... ah ... recover the money for the bank.”
The boss laughed. “I bet. How much of it was turned in?”
“About fifteen percent.”
“Well, at least there are still a few honest citizens left. So we have another drug berserker who destroyed a bank machine. Why is this more special than the others?”
“The woman is Mary Jane Kent.”
“Related to the arms and chemical companies Kents?”
“Yes, sir. She’s the secretary of defense’s daughter.”
“Oh, my.”
“Slumming in those clothes,” Jay said. “Way I hear it, she could paste her diamonds all over herself and show less skin than in jeans and a T-shirt. With enough left over to make a cape.”
“The family has a bit of money.”
Jay nodded. There was an understatement. The Kent family had become modestly rich during the Spanish Civil War in the ’30s, running guns into Spain via Portugal. They made out like bandits in World War II, and had done quite well in assorted revolutions and border wars, since. The men in the family generally took turns managing the family fortune and tended to became ambassadors, cabinet officers, or U.S. senators; the women did charity work, ran foundations, and tended to marry badly. Every now and then, a couple of the scions would switch roles, and the girl would manage the company while the boy ran a foundation.
Certainly, the rich had their problems, too, but Jay couldn’t feel too sorry for somebody with half a gazillion dollars tucked away waiting for them to come of age. It was one thing to start poor and earn your way to luxury, another thing to be born with a platinum spoon in your mouth.
He said, “She beat the crap out of four of LAPD’s finest before she ran out of steam. A passing doctor happened along during the struggle and sedated her. Hit her with a hypo full of enough Thorazine to knock out a large horse, according to the reports, and it slowed her down, but not completely. She isn’t talking about what drug she took or where she got it, but she was apparently on a shopping trip, and she used her credit card until it maxed out. That was why the bank machine wouldn’t give her any cash.”