Breaking Point (11 page)
Morrison glanced at his control board, tapped a key. The computer screen scrolled more numbers. "Fine. So?"
"So, Ad went to the San Antonio Fair Grounds with a couple of relays of throwers, some official witnesses, three Winchester M-03 self-loading .22 rifles, and a--here's that word again--
bunch
of ammunition. He had his assistants stand about twenty-five feet in front of him. They tossed a block high into the air, and he snapped off a shot, only one, per block.
"He shot more than fourteen hundred of the little blocks before he had a miss. After that, he went more
than fourteen thousand
straight, hit every one."
"Jesus. That's a bunch, all right."
"Not yet it isn't. He did this for a week, seven hours a day. At the end of that time, he had fired at
fifty thousand blocks.
Of fifty thousand tries, he missed exactly ... four."
"Good Lord," Morrison said. "With a
rifle?
Not a shotgun ?" Morrison had done some target shooting as a boy with his father's .22 rifle. The idea of hitting fifty thousand blocks sitting on a
table
at twenty-five feet and only missing four was amazing. To hit them flying through the air? That was
astounding.
Ventura smiled. "It gets better. He was averaging more than a thousand blocks an hour, one every three and a half seconds or so, and so he finished ahead of schedule--he had allowed himself ten days. He had the record and could have quit, but he didn't. Instead, he had his assistants salvage some of the least-damaged blocks, got more ammo, and started shooting again. He was getting a bit tired after a week of constant shooting, so his tally fell off a little, but he shot for three more days.
"All totaled, he fired at seventy-two thousand, five hundred blocks. His final score was seventy-two thousand, four hundred and ninety-one. He missed nine.
"Sixty-eight and a half hours of point-and-shoot. Although there have been shooters who have actually potted
more
blocks since, none of them have done it under the same conditions, so the record still stands. I have a picture of Topperwein, in a black suit--with a tie--boots, and a campaign hat, sitting atop a mountain of shot-up blocks, his rifle cradled in his arm."
Morrison shook his head. "I can't even imagine waggling my finger seventy thousand times, much less maintaining enough concentration to shoot accurately that many times."
"Frankly, neither can I. Topperwein was the best exhibition shooter who ever lived. But he was also a relatively uneducated man from a little town in Texas, using bare-bones .22 rifles, no laser sights, no shooting glasses, no electronic hearing protection, nothing. Not exactly what you'd call high tech, and
his
accuracy percentage was .99988. More than a hundred years later, with all of this"--he waved one hand to take in the computer gear--"at your command, you'd think you could improve on target shooting."
Morrison considered that. Yes, you'd think so. Then again, with a tap of a single finger, he could drive seventy thousand people mad in a few hours. No man with a rifle could begin to match that.
Morrison powered up the system for his "test." Warning buzzers started to sound, a red light flashed on and off on the control board. He reached for the control, a covered button. The buzzers continued their howl, the lights their strobe, as he raised the cover, then pressed the button.
I got your blocks of wood right
here,
pal ...
Multnomah Falls, Oregon
John Howard stood by the stone restaurant watching his family look at the thin ribbon of water cascading down from a great height to splash into a cold pool at the base of the cliff. They were about twenty-five or so miles outside of Portland, in the Columbia River Gorge, looking at one of the highest waterfalls in the country, more than a six-hundred-foot drop in the second stage here. It was beautiful, though more impressive in the spring as the snowmelt fed the tributary a lot more water.
Everything was damp here, lots of moss and mold, fed by the constant spray off the falls.
Howard reached for the virgil--the virtual global interface link--hooked to his belt. This was a great toy, not much bigger than a standard pager or small cell phone, and it not only had a com, it was a working GPS, clock. radio, TV, modem, credit card, camera, scanner, and even a tiny fax that produced weavewire hardcopy. There were civilian models, but the military units were better--at least for now. Sharper Image was gaining, or so he had heard.
Sergeant Julio Fernandez appeared on the virgil's tiny screen, smiling.
"Congratulations. General. I didn't think you'd make it this long. I guess one of the others will win the pool."
"I am merely calling to check in, Sergeant."
"The country is getting along fine without you, sir. No wars, no terrorists taking over at Quantico--well, if you don't count the new feeb recruits--and the Republic endures."
"I just wanted to let you know where I was."
"John, your GPS sends us a homing signal as long as it's got power, remember? We
know
where you are. You want me to give you your longitude and latitude?"
"Nobody likes a smart-ass NCO, Julio."
"C'mon, you're on vacation. Relax. Enjoy yourself. I'll call if the Swiss or the French decide to invade the country, I promise."
Howard made a suggestion that was anatomically impossible and unlikely for a heterosexual even if it had been possible.
Fernandez laughed. "That's a discom, General. Adios."
Howard smiled as he rehooked the virgil to his belt. Well, yes, he did sometimes think things would go to hell if he left town. So he was a worrier, what could he say?
Nadine and the children were hot to climb up to the little bridge closer to the falls, and Howard went along. It was all part of the ambience, to get wet, wasn't it?
As they hiked up the damp macadam path, he recalled the first time he'd ever been to this part of the country. Back in '99 or '00, in the late fall or early winter. A friend of his from the army, Willie Kohler, had scored some two hundred buck tickets to a boxing match out on the coast. Not the best seats, but pretty good, only about fifty or sixty feet from the ring. It was in one of those Indian casinos that the local tribes had put up. Chinook something? Chinook Winds, that was it. In Lincoln City.
He remembered the event better now that he thought about it. They had given it some silly name, like the Rumble in the Jungle or the Thrill in Mantilla, it was ... ah, yes, Commotion at the Ocean. He and Willie had gotten some funny mileage out of that one.
He wasn't the world's biggest boxing fan, but he'd done a little in the service when he'd been younger, fighting camp matches as a light-heavyweight and giving about as good as he got. No future there for him, getting bashed in the face, but he didn't mind watching somebody with real skill demonstrate it. As he remembered, there had been six or eight matches at the casino, all fairly low weight classes, and a couple of them were championship bouts. The most interesting fights had been on the under card. Some black kid from Washington, D.C., with sweet moves had put his man down in the second round. And there had been a couple of female fighters, one a little girl in red, a featherweight, all of a hundred and twenty-two or -three pounds, who had great hands--and great legs, too. Only her third pro fight, but she had real boxing skills. Of course, this was back when boxing wasn't considered a brutal crime against humanity, and women were just getting into it. And when it still wasn't too politically incorrect to admire a woman's legs ...
What he remembered most of all was that they played bad rap music--if that wasn't redundant--between each fight, and it was way, way too loud. Earmuffs should have been mandatory; it was noisier than a shooting range, and probably less musical. After the second or third fight, he and Willie were ready to go and kick out the damned speakers to kill the noise. But like at gun shows, you needed to be polite at a big boxing match--you never knew but that guy you just sloshed your beer on might have been the number one contender for the cruiserweight title a few years back, and no matter what self-defense system you knew, a good pro boxer was going to get at least a couple of shots in if he smited--and then threw the first punch.
Howard smiled as they climbed into the waterfall mist. There was a lot of green on the hillside now--moss, ferns, all kinds of water-loving plants.
Julio was right, he needed to relax and enjoy his vacation. His son was growing up, and pretty soon he'd be a lot more interested in girls and cars than boomerangs and family trips. Might as well enjoy it while he could. He was out in the Wild West, nothing of any major military importance was apt to happen here, certainly nothing he needed to worry about.
Nadine looked back at him and smiled. "Isn't this fun?"
"Yep," he said, "it is."
Chapter
11.
Thursday, June 9th
Quantico, Virginia
Jay Gridley wasn't exactly thrilled about having to go back to work. Yeah, sure, it was what he did, and yeah, sure, he loved it, but rolling around with Soji, even in a drafty tent in the rainy woods? Well, that had work beat all
hollow.
He never thought he'd hear himself think that, but there it was.
Truth was, even though he was dropping by the Net Force compound late Thursday afternoon, he didn't really have to be back until Monday. But Soji had clients she had to counsel, and she refused to take a laptop or net-phone with her into the woods, so they had packed up the camping gear and came back to civilization. In her net persona of the old Tibetan priest Sojan Rinpoche, Soji taught basic Buddhism and also offered a kind of psycho-spiritual first aid to people who had suffered various forms of brain damage, usually secondary to drugs or stroke. That was how they'd met, on-line, when Jay had been zapped while chasing the guy with the quantum computer.
Soji had an apartment in Los Angeles, but she was going to be working out of Jay's place, at least for now. And he hoped he could convince her to make it permanent, though he hadn't yet worked up the nerve to ask her to move in, much less to marry him. But he was gonna. Eventually.
Commander Michaels was in his office when Jay got there. He waved at the receptionist. "He busy?"
"No, go ahead in."
Jay tapped at the door, then opened it. "Hey, Boss."
"Jay? What you doing here? You're not supposed to be back until Monday. How did it go?"
"The mosquitoes got so bad we had to come back for a transfusion. Other than that, it went great. How's business ?"
"Slow. Nothing major. Usual net scams, viruses, illegal porno stuff. Nobody trying to topple the world that we've noticed, thank God."
Jay wanted to ask if Michaels had heard from Toni Fiorella--her quitting had hit the Net Force group hard--but he didn't bring it up. Toni had called Jay from London and he had heard that she'd called a couple of other people in Net Force, too, but he still didn't know what exactly had gone down between her and the boss. It must have been bad, though. Michaels had been pretty miserable about it, even if he tried to pretend otherwise.
"Nothing interesting at all?"
"Nope. Well, one little thing. You know about something called HAARP?"
"Sure, the atmosphere burner up in Alaska. The guys in aluminum-foil hats
love
that one. What happen, it melt down?"
"According to one of the scientists working on the thing, somebody sneaked in and stole something from their computer."
"Who would bother? The technology is moldy, goes back to Tesla, more than a hundred years ago."
Michaels shrugged. "Got me. I did a little web walking in VR, and it does look as if somebody got into their computer."
"Kid hacker, maybe," Jay said.
"Could be. You want to check it out, be my guest."
"Soji is gonna be busy for the next couple days. I'll take a look at it, get a jump on work."
"Background and what I saw is in the work file under 'HAARP.' "
"Copy, Boss. See you Monday morning."
"My best to Soji," he said.
Jay went to his office and looked around, but there wasn't much new to see. Some hardcopy reports was all. He had checked his e-mail and phone messages using a virgil he'd checked out and taken with him, so he was pretty much up to date.
Just for grins, he lit his computer and read over the information on HAARP the boss had given him, including the hiddencam vid of the interview with the scientist, Morrison.
Very interesting stuff. Mind control? That would be worth stealing, but that also didn't seem likely. People had been playing with low-frequency stuff for a long time without much in the way of results. Still. it was intriguing.
Jay logged off his computer. He'd been here for a couple of hours. Time to head home. Soji didn't have to be on-line
all
the time ...
But as he started for the door to leave, his com chirped, and the sexy, throaty female vox he'd programmed into his computer said, "Jay! Priority One com, Jay! Heads up! Answer the phone, you hunk of burning love!"
