Breaking Point (20 page)

"About ready," Morrison said. He picked up a dogeared phonebook-sized tome of locations by latitude and longitude and thumbed through it until he found the ones he wanted. There it was ... 45 degrees, 28 minutes, 24 seconds North; 122 degrees, 38 minutes, 39 seconds West ... Not the center of the city, but it would take in all of downtown on both sides of the river ...

Ventura nodded. "Okay."

"It'll have to run for a couple of hours to get the optimal effect. Not as long as it did in China, since the target is closer, and we lose less energy for the beam."

"Fine."

He looked at the control. Flip the cover up, push the button, and it was done. He could go eat or take a nap while it worked. "I feel kind of, I don't know, awkward about this."

"Why?"

"Well, the target being in the United States and all."

"A pang of nationalism?"

"Maybe a little. I somehow didn't think it was going to go like this."

"That's always the way. 'No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy.' You know why it's a deal breaker if you don't do this, don't you?"

"No, why?"

"Because if this works, and if as a result of it a few dozen people die, then you haven't just killed some faceless people nobody cares about a million miles away, you're a multiple-murderer in your
own
country. And the city you were given as a target? It is in a state with the death penalty, did you know that?"

Morrison felt the taste of bile threaten to rise in his throat. "No. I didn't think about that."

Ventura shrugged. "You can only ride the needle once--that's how they do it there, strapped to a gurney by lethal injection. What the Chinese want is more assurance you won't change your mind and go running to the authorities once the deal is done. Once this deal is complete, they don't have to find you and kill you--all they have to do is tell the feds who you are, sit back, and let them do the work. The Chinese wouldn't want a trial, of course, having all this come out, but neither do you. And once you get arrested? Well, then they'd know
exactly
where to find you. It's very difficult to stop an assassin who is willing to die to get the job done."

Morrison felt the ugly truth of this flood into him like liquid oxygen, chilling him to his core. "I--I see."

"Not quite yet, you don't. Before you push that button, let me lay out a few more things you have to know.

"Once you get your money, Patrick Morrison has to disappear. You have to vanish so completely that the best agents in China and maybe the United States and half a dozen other countries can't find you, because eventually they all might be looking. If you had visions of yourself being on the board of directors of some university and benevolently awarding grants to starving scientists or some such, you might as well erase those ideas now. The only way you are going to survive to spend that money is to become somebody completely different from the man you are. You will have to sever
all
links to your past--and unless your wife is willing to go along for the ride, which'll get a little bumpy up front--that will include giving up contact with her, too. You'll be a new man, in a new country, with a made-up background and history. You won't even be able to read the same
magazines
you used to read, or practice any of your hobbies, because you can bank on it, somebody will try to track you from something as innocuous as those, and probably be able to do it. Say you subscribe to a small scholarly journal that thirty or forty thousand people get. You better read somebody else's copy, because while it might take years to physically look at everybody on the subscription list, the Chinese are nothing if not patient. You only have to make one mistake, Doctor, and you lose the game. Patrick Morrison will have to die figuratively, or he will surely die literally."

Morrison stared at him. He hadn't thought it through to this end. But as he heard Ventura speak, he knew what the man said was so. For a moment, it took his breath away. How could he have been so shortsighted?

"That's how it will have to be if you want to survive. I can help you do it, point you in the right direction, tell you the steps you have to take, but once you're set, I can't have any more contact with you, either. They might want to convince me to tell them, and better for you if I don't know your new name and face."

"I didn't even think about the risk to you," Morrison admitted.

"Don't worry about it. I've had people looking for me for a long time, and I've managed to stay alive against the best. I came into this with my eyes open, and I've been living on borrowed time for years. But this is what you are facing. So the question you have to ask yourself is, Does four hundred million dollars justify you becoming an entirely new man? With that kind of money, there are places in the world where you can live like a king, have luxury, sex, the power of life and death--as long as you don't stick your head up too high and get noticed. There are men who have done this before, men of wealth and power who had to go away for whatever reason, and they survived twenty, thirty, fifty years, some of them. Some of the ones who are very careful are likely still out there. The careless are for sure dead."

Morrison stared at the button, and a realization solidified in his belly like a lump of cold steel. He said, "It's already too late to turn back, isn't it?"

Ventura gave him a thin smile. "Truth? Yes."

Morrison took a deep breath. "Fuck it, then."

He reached out and pushed the button.

PART TWO

All Problems are Personal

Chapter
21.

Sunday, June 12th

Washington, D.C.

At home, Jay came out of VR, took a deep breath, and removed his headset and gloves. It had been a milk run, a visit to a library, and no matter how skilled you were in creating scenarios, sooner or later, reading a pile of material came down to reading a pile of material.

He had all he could find on Dr. Patrick Morrison, and while he had skimmed it as it was being copied, he hadn't begun to take it all in. From what he'd gleaned so far, the guy was legit enough. Degrees, work experience, marriages, the usual living-life stuff. No trouble with the law, no beefs at work, pretty much Mr. Dull N. Boring right down the line.

The only blot on an otherwise white-bread career was at the job he'd had before going to work for HAARP. He'd been doing some kind of behavioral modification experiments on chimps, working with extremely low-frequency radiation, a post-doc research project at Johns Hopkins, and it had apparently petered out. He failed to get the results for which he had been looking. His grant, as the report mildly and politely put it, had not been renewed, and he'd been out of a job.

A small red flag went up in Jay's mind, but when he thought about it, it wasn't that big a deal. Yeah, the guy was into ELF stuff, but that's what a lot of HAARP was about. If you were looking for a plumber, you didn't hire a cabdriver, now did you?

"All work and no play make Jay a dull boy," Soji said.

He smiled up at her. She stood there in a bathrobe. "Look who's talking. You've been so deep into the web I haven't been able to see anything but your back for days."

"Want to see something else?" She undid the bathrobe and held it open.

"Oh,
mama!
Come here!"

Before she could move, however, the phone played the opening strains of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. Unfortunately, his phone was programmed so it played that particular tune only if the call was IDed as coming from Net Force HQ or Alex Michaels's virgil.

"Shit," he said.

Soji closed her robe and belted it shut. "He who hesitates stays horny," she said.

"Hey, Boss," Jay said.

"Better get to the office, Jay," Michaels said. "There's been another case of collective madness."

"In China?"

"No," Michaels said. His voice was grim. "Closer than that."

Sunday, June 12th

Portland, Oregon

John Howard watched as his son came up to make his throw. The boy stopped, rubbed his fingers back and forth, and allowed some glittery dust to fall to check wind direction. He held a stopwatch in one hand and his boomerang in the other. The judges waved Tyrone into the circle.

Howard felt more tense than he'd thought he would. It was a big deal to Tyrone, of course, but it was just a game, after all. No reason to be digging his fingernails into his palms.

Off to one side and behind Tyrone, Little Nadine stood, waiting for her turn to compete. She was three contestants behind Tyrone, so she'd know what time she had to beat. So far, the times hadn't been very good, according to Tyrone, and both kids had done better in practice.

The judge nearest the circle held up his hand in a halt sign, then called another judge over for some kind of consultation.

"Come on, come on!" Howard said. "Let the boy throw before his arm gets cold!"

Next to him, his wife said, "Asshole."

He looked at her. "You talkin' to me?"

"Not particularly, I was referring to the judge, but if the shoe fits ..."

That pissed him off. What was she on the rag about now? He hadn't done anything. He glared at her. She glared right back.

Tyrone stood there for another few seconds, then walked to where the judges were. Howard couldn't hear what his boy had to say, but apparently the judges really didn't like it.

The head judge reached out and slapped Tyrone upside the head.

"Fuck!" Howard yelled. "You see that? He
hit
our son!" Even as he spoke, Howard ran toward Tyrone and the judges.

The second judge must have figured the slap was rude, because he hauled off and punched the head judge square in the mouth, knocking the man down. Certainly this was justice, but that irritated Howard even more.

"Leave him!" Howard yelled as he ran. "That bastard is
mine
!"

Tyrone stepped in and delivered a solid kick to the fallen judge's ribs. It sounded like somebody dropping a watermelon,
thoo-wock!

Even as he drew near to the trio, Howard was aware of noises coming up the hill: horns honked, metal crashed into metal. He slid to a stop as the second judge spun to face him.

"Get off the circle!" the man screamed. "You can't be here!"

"Oh, yeah?" Howard said. "Hey, pal, I'm
already
here! What are you gonna do about it?"

Tyrone gave the fallen judge another kick. Not as good as the first one; it had a flatter sound.
Weak, son, weak.

The second judge threw a haymaker at Howard, who ducked it, came up, launched a fast left hook to the face, then a right cross to the chin, bap
-bap!
That straightened the sucker out like popping a shoe shine cloth. The guy sailed backward and to the ground.
Get off
that,
asshole!

The judge Tyrone was kicking got to his feet and lurched at the boy, but before Howard could get there, both Nadines arrived. His wife kneed the guy in the crotch as Little Nadine latched onto his arm and sank her teeth into his shoulder.

Irritated, Howard moved toward them. This was
his
business to take care of, he didn't need the goddamned women getting in the goddamned way--!

A car came across the field, lights on and horn honking, a big, powder-blue Cadillac. It plowed into a group of five men who stood there giving the driver the finger. The men flew like dolls in all directions as the driver gunned the engine.

Not real smart to shoot the bird at a man coming at you in a car at speed.

"Eat shit and die!" the driver screamed. Then he started to laugh.

Four or five other people attacked the Caddy, slamming their fists and feet at it. The driver spun a donut in the grass, still cackling madly.

Something wrong here,
Howard thought. He shook his head, then looked at the man he had just decked. What was he
doing?

He looked down the hill and saw a dozen people fighting. One of them was a policeman. The cop pulled his gun, and a quick succession of shots--
pop-pop-pop-pop-pop!
--echoed up the hill. Gunshot victims fell, and added more screams to the din.

Dazed, Howard looked up the hill. There were people there, too, but they weren't fighting; they were watching, staring in surprise.

Howard's thoughts were fogged with rage, but something was trying to make its way through the anger: This was a bad place. Down the hill it was worse, but up the hill, it was better. Therefore ...

"Come on!" he yelled to his family. "We have to get up the hill!"

"Fuck off!" Tyrone yelled back.

Little Nadine released her hold on the judge, who was screaming in pain. She stared at Howard. "What is going on?" she said, her voice high and frightened.

"I don't know. Gas, maybe. We've got to get out of here. Help me."

His wife kneed the judge in the nuts again. The man gurgled in agony. Howard grabbed her, pulled her off.