Net Force (38 page)

    She heard the sound of fast footsteps. She grinned.

    

    
Friday, October 8th, 8:37 p.m. Grozny

    Plekhanov didn’t need to use VR to see that trip wires were broken all over his walkways. They knew who he was, and they were probing every aspect of his life they could reach. He didn’t think they could find much, but he was worried a bit more than he had been. This damnable
child
who worked for Net Force might be faster than he was smart, but somebody brighter might take notice of some of the patterns and draw a conclusion Plekhanov did not want them to draw. Or they might feed all the bits they had to an Al-analog, and have the computer make a connection a human might not be clever enough to see. This was very much not to his liking.

    And he was so close; it was but a matter of days until the special election was to be held. All he needed was to stall them just a little longer. Then it truly wouldn’t matter what they knew. Even now, it was probably too late for anybody to thwart him, but he was a careful man. People had told him that he was
too
careful, that he lingered for another look when he should be leaping, but they were wrong. Those who had uttered such stupidities-where were they now? Not where he was, poised to control the destinies of millions.

    No, he would add one more piece of insurance, something to make them think. One more obstacle to make certain they stumbled and could not recover in time to catch him.

    He put in a call to the Rifle.

    

    
Friday, October 8th, 12:37 p.m. Quantico

    Give him credit, the Selkie thought. As soon as he saw the gun, he knew what was going on. She quickly pointed it back at the woman in the shower. “Move and she dies.”

    The target nodded. “I understand. I’m not armed.” He spread his hands wide, to show they were empty.

    The Selkie shook her head. How stupid of him
not
to be armed.

    “All right. Slow and easy, over here.”

    

    Michaels felt the fear in the pit of his belly like shards of cold glass, but he knew he was going to have to go for the assassin anyway. He had to keep her from shooting Toni. And if he was going to die, he was going to go out on his feet, moving toward the threat and not away from it. He took a slow breath. Held it-

    Toni sat very still, watching. She was going to have to make her move soon. She tried to keep her breathing calm and steady, but it was hard. This was the assassin, the woman who had erased Ray Genaloni, tried to do the same to Alex, and who might or might not have murdered Steve Day. For sure, if Toni didn’t do something, the woman was going to kill her and Alex. The gun was one of those ceramic things, but that didn’t make it any less deadly.

    She could come up from a cross-legged sit, had done it in practice thousands of times. A
silat
player had to be able to work from the ground. If the woman was six inches closer, she could reach her with a kick.

    If,
if-

    Alex said, “Toni? You okay?”

    “Yes,” she said.

    Alex was getting closer. The gun was still pointed at her, and Toni knew if she moved, she was certainly going to get shot, but that would buy Alex a second or two. She had to do it.

    Toni inhaled slowly, a long breath. Held it. Made herself ready-

    “Don’t move! FBI!” somebody yelled.

    Toni looked at the reflection in the shower door.

    Rusty-?!

    The Selkie reacted without thinking, almost a reflex. When the man at the locker room entrance jumped into the room, pointing what looked like a gun at her, she swung her own pistol over and fired. The little gun bucked hard in her hand, light as it was, but she saw the man react as the shot took him in the center of mass. He went down. No vest-

    The target lunged at her, screaming something.

    Too fast to get to the knife. She thrust the pistol at him, fired-

    “No!” the woman in the shower screamed. Then she slammed into the Selkie and they both went flying. She lost the pistol, hit next to a bench, managed to roll up as Fiorella also got to her feet.

    The Selkie kicked away her shoes, ripped her skirt off, grabbed the knife and jerked it from the thigh sheath, gripped the blade in front of her to slash or stab. She glanced at the target-he was down, hit in the leg, it looked like-no threat to her. The Fiorella woman was the danger. She was up, trained, prepared.

    The Selkie turned to face her, knife held ready. She would have to hurry. The shots would draw attention.

    She had first learned street fighting from her father, who had survived several hand-to-hand encounters. She had trained with half-a-dozen fighters since, including a couple of Filipinos who were experts with a stick or blade. She would cut the woman down, finish the target and run. If she hurried, she could still get free in the confusion.

    She moved toward Fiorella-

    

    Michaels felt the bullet hit him-it was a hot ball-peen hammer smashing against the front of his right thigh. He fell. It didn’t really hurt, but he couldn’t get back to his feet. The shot leg didn’t want to work.

    In front of him, Toni faced the woman, who had torn off her skirt and pulled a white-bladed knife. The assassin edged toward Toni. It wasn’t over. He had to do something-

    The gun! She had dropped the gun. Where was it-?

    

    Toni actually felt calmer now. An attacker with a knife-this was something she had dealt with in practice, over and over again. High, low. The most important thing was to control the knife. You couldn’t trade a punch for a stab, so you had to take high line and low line, you had to stop the knife arm at two points, high, low, to control it-

    The Selkie moved in, keeping her balance. Fiorella stood and watched her, waiting, and she looked as if she knew what she was doing. It didn’t matter. She had to finish this and go.

    The Selkie feinted with a kick, then lunged-

    Back of the arm, back of the arm, where there were fewer vessels to get slashed! Guru’s instructions came back, crystal clear, as sharp as the approaching blade:
Against an expert, you
will
get cut. Give him a sparse target
.

    The kick was a feint, but the slash was also a feint. When Toni threw up her left arm to block, the assassin jerked the knife back. The edge scored a deep line along the outside of Toni’s forearm, just above the elbow.

    It didn’t matter. She wouldn’t bleed out from that. Her hand still worked. She shifted her feet, waited-

    

    Fiorella didn’t react to the cut, didn’t look at it, kept watching the attacker. The Selkie grinned. She was good, but time was running out.

    There was a sequence attack, two feints, a shift of the knife to the other hand, then the heart stab between the ribs, followed by the backslash to the throat. It always worked in practice, and she had also killed a man with it in real combat.

    The party was over. It was time to do what she did best, then leave.

    The Selkie moved-

    

    The attacker came in again, feinted, faked, thrust, then flipped the knife to her other hand as Toni went for the block. Toni would have been impressed watching from elsewhere, but she didn’t have time to be impressed now. All the years of practice had to take over, no time to think anymore-!

    Toni shifted her stance, passed the fake and did the block and break on the attacker’s knife arm. Her right arm stopped the thrust at the wrist-low. Blood flew from the cut on her arm as she slammed the back of her left wrist under the woman’s elbow-high.

    The arm broke, the knife fell. Toni moved in, went over the wrecked arm and slammed her elbow into the woman’s face. Followed her as she stumbled back and hit the lockers, drove a knee into the attacker’s belly, then did
sapu luar
and dropped her to the floor. The attacker hit hard, her head bounced, but she rolled, dove for the knife, caught it in her good hand, came up and cocked the blade for a throw. Her nose was broken and bloody, her eyebrow split-

    She knew now she couldn’t take Fiorella in a one-on-one, even if her arm hadn’t just been broken. One chance. The knife wasn’t the best for throwing, but it would back the other woman off if it hit, point or butt. She’d lost, but she could still get away-

    The Selkie aimed her elbow at the target, knife held by the blade next to her ear-

    Michaels found the white gun, rolled over his bad leg-
now
it hurt!-and shoved the weapon out in front of him. He yelled to distract the woman about to throw the knife: “
Hey
!!”

    She didn’t waver, started to make the throw-

    He pulled the trigger.

    The recoil twisted the gun from his grip, and the sound was so loud it was like a bomb going off next to him.

    A long moment held. Aeons passed. Nobody moved.

    The knife flew-but clattered to the floor five feet away.

    He’d hit her. Right in the middle of the back. The woman dropped to her knees, tried to reach the wound in her back with one hand, could not. She turned to look at him, her face puzzled more than anything. Then she toppled over onto her side.

    

    

    Toni ran to where Alex lay. “Alex!?”

    “I’m okay, I’m okay, she just got me in the leg.”

    The sound of approaching and excited voices rolled over them.

    “You’re hurt,” he said.

    “Just a cut. Looks worse than it is,” she said. “Stay there, I’ll get us some towels.”

    “I’m not going anywhere.”

    She got to her feet. Remembered Rusty. She hurried to where he lay. His eyes were open wide, not blinking. He had a bloody wound in the center of his chest-wasn’t breathing-there was no pulse in his neck.

    Two of the men from the gym ran in. “He needs help!” she said, pointing at Rusty. She dropped to her knees.

    The two men were joined by a third. “We got it, Toni,” one of them said. “Go wrap up that cut.”

    Alex had dragged himself to where the woman lay. He rolled her onto her back. The assassin moaned. She looked at him. Toni moved back toward Alex and the assassin, found a towel, pressed it against the wound in Alex’s leg.

    “Ow.” He looked at Toni. “Thanks.” Then he looked back at the woman.

    “Son-of-a… bitch,” the woman said. Her voice was burbly. Probably bleeding into a lung.

    Alex said, “Who paid you to kill Steve Day?”

    The woman was dying. But she laughed, a bubbly, liquid noise. “Who?”

    “Day. Steve Day.”

    “Don’t know the name,” she said. “I never… forget a… target. He’s… not one of mine.”

    “You didn’t kill Steve Day?” Alex said.

    “You deaf? I was hired to… do you. I-Genaloni. I did him. And some others. I don’t-”

    And just like that, she blinked out. Whatever she’d intended to say was chopped off in mid-sentence. There was a final outrush of bubbly air, and she was gone.

    Alex and Toni looked at each other. Somebody from Medical ran in. The place seemed filled with people. Toni felt an overwhelming urge to hug Alex. She did.

    He let her. And he hugged her back.

    

    
Friday, October 8th, 1:02 p.m. Quantico

    Bureau Medical had a doctor and several nurses on staff in the main compound, and their own ambulance for anything they couldn’t handle on their own. The in-house medic sutured the cut on Toni’s arm-it took eighteen stitches inside and out-sprayed it with clear statskin, gave her a tetanus shot, and told her to have the sutures removed in five days. X-rays of Michaels’s leg showed that his bullet wound was a through-and-through. It had hit him slightly to the outside of the right thigh, glanced off the femur without breaking it and exited just under the outer edge of his buttock, all without doing any major damage-except for a couple of holes the size of his little finger’s tip. The doctor cleaned and bandaged the wounds, but didn’t sew them up; gave him a tetanus shot and a pair of crutches, and advised Michaels to avoid playing soccer for the next couple of weeks. He had his nurse give them samples of pain tablets, and told them they would hurt more tomorrow than they did right now. If they wanted to go and spend a couple of hours in the local ER to get a second opinion, that was up to them.

    Both Toni and Michaels declined the ER trip.

    Instead, they were back in Michaels’s office. He sat on the couch, resting on his good hip. Toni stood by the door.

    “Something bothering you, Alex?”

    “Other than getting shot?”

    “Yes.”

    He said, “I didn’t feel particularly heroic in that locker room.”

    “Excuse me?”

    “I should have done more.”

    “You came to help me. You charged a killer with a gun and you were unarmed. You managed to shoot her after you were wounded. How heroic do you think you need to be? You planning on leaping tall buildings in a single bound?”

    He gave her a small smile. “Yeah. Well. Still, it kinda felt like Larry and Curly catch a killer,” Michaels said.

    She looked blank.

    “Two of the Three Stooges,” he said. “Hey, Larry! Hey, Moe! Woowoowoowoo!”

    “Oh, yeah. My brothers used to watch those old vids. They must be a male thing. I never thought they were funny. Too violent.” She smiled at the irony.

    “I’m really sorry about your friend, the FBI trainee.”

    “Yeah.”

    There was a long pause. Then: “You believe her?” he said. “About Steve Day?”