Point of Impact (32 page)

Time to make an assumption here. The shooter was probably using a scoped deer or sniper rifle, 30-6, maybe .308, something like that, and if it was, it would likely be a bolt action. So he was going to have to manually chamber a round after each shot, which meant that Howard would have half, maybe three-quarters of a second between shots.

Not much time to get set up. And if it was a semiauto, that would be really bad. But it was what he had.

Howard took a grip on the heavy rifle. He stuck his head up, held it there for an agonizingly long time, maybe half a second, then ducked.

The shot came, hit the trunk, zipped through, but missed by a good six inches.

Then Howard leaped up, dropped the .50's bipod on the trunk's lid, slamming it shut, and put the red dot on the middle of the Neon. He squeezed the trigger, a shade too quickly, and the recoil from the weapon knocked him back and almost off his feet. The blast of sound was like a bomb; it deafened him. Even as he fought to regain his position, he chambered another cartridge, the empty extracted and smoking to his right.

That would give the son of a bitch something to think about!
Not so much fun when the victim can shoot back, is it?

Howard looked through the scope. On high magnification, he could see the bullet hole where the side of the Neon had buckled in around it; it had blown paint off in a hand-sized crater, but there was no sign of the shooter. If the guy had any brains, now he would be behind the front tire with the engine block protecting him. When the .50 went off, it sounded like the wrath of God, and the assassin would know that the odds had just shifted dramatically into Howard's favor.

Howard's ears were ringing and he couldn't hear anything over that. He looked down, saw the earplugs that came with the rifle, and risked the second it took to scoop them up. He shoved them into his ears.

No sign of the shooter.

Fine. Let's see how
you
like being dinner, asshole.

He put the red dot on the top of the front tire and squeezed a shot off, more careful now.

The bullet hit a few inches high and must have shattered and sprayed the engine compartment. Vapor came out from under the hood, maybe from the radiator, maybe coolant for the AC. He'd bet that car wasn't going anywhere, either.

Now it was time to get the troops out here. He pulled his virgil and hit the emergency sig control in a rapid sequence.

"Sir?" came a voice.

Howard smiled.
Gotcha now, sucker.

"Hold on a second." Howard shot the Neon again. Hit the front tire this time. The car sagged.

"I want a helicopter with a squad of troops ready to shoot landing twenty meters east of the GPS location of my virgil in fifteen minutes maximum. This is not a drill."

"Yes, sir!"

"Here is the situation...."

But when the chopper from Quantico arrived and a dozen of Net Force's finest hit the ground, fanned out, and surrounded the mortally wounded Neon, the shooter was nowhere to be found. The car was much closer to the tree line than Howard's car was, and somehow, the would-be assassin had managed to slip away without Howard spotting him.

Damn!

Chapter
33.

Washington, D.C.

Jay looked up from his flatscreen at the boss and the general. "The shooter's car was stolen," he said.

They were in the airport, in one of the VIP lounges that the boss had access to, waiting for the flight to L.A. If John Howard was rattled about somebody trying to shoot him out in the boondocks where Stonewall Jackson had earned his fighting nickname, you couldn't tell it by looking at him.

As a licensed federal agent, however, Howard would be carrying a gun with him onto the plane, this at the boss's insistence. Both Michaels and Jay had their air tasers with them, too, though Jay had only fired his in the required semiannual qualification sessions, and the last of those had been four months past. He didn't try to kid himself that he was any kind of gunfighter, even with the nonlethal shock 'em and drop'em tasers most Net Force personnel outside the military arm were issued.

"A stolen car. Not a major surprise there," Howard said. "It would have been too much to hope for that he'd use his own vehicle. I don't suppose the lab rats managed to get any fingerprints or DNA for a match?"

"Not yet, sir," Jay said.

"That isn't a surprise, either," Michaels said. "Not if it was who we think it was in that car. How about Lee's whereabouts?"

"That's a little trickier," Jay said. "We couldn't just have the FBI hunt him down and grab his ass, not without tipping our hand. According to a sub-rosa contact we managed with the DEA, Mr. Lee was today taking some personal time. He was in Maryland, visiting his paternal grandmother, who is in a nursing home just outside Baltimore. Accessible on-line records at the Sisters of Saint Mary's Home for the Aged indicate that Mr. Lee did sign in about an hour before the attack on General Howard, and he signed out ten minutes after the attack. Nobody has gone in and done a face-to-face with the staff to check that yet, however."

"How easy would it be to fake the in and out signatures and records?" Howard asked.

"I could do it with both hands tied behind me and a cold so bad the voxax could only pick up every thirteenth word," Jay said. "While blindfolded and in my sleep."

"That hard, huh?"

"Shoot, boss,
you
could do it."

"All right, so we get an investigator out there to see if Lee actually did go visit his old granny."

"If he was there, that would make it impossible for him to have been the shooter," Jay said.

"Let's just see before we try to cross that bridge."

"I'd be very surprised if we can find a nurse or ward clerk who remembers seeing Lee there today," Howard said.

"Anything on other forensics at the scene?" Michaels asked.

"Nothing to write home about," Jay said. "No empty shells lying on the ground, no blood, no hair, no dropped bar matchbooks or IDs or maps showing how to get to the perp's house. Shoe prints are a popular brand of cheap sneaker. Fibers from where the shooter kneeled appear to be lightweight gray cotton, probably sweatpants."

"And the clothes and shoes and no doubt gloves are probably in a trash bin or burned to ash by now," Michaels said.

"This was a pro," Howard said. "If I hadn't had that portable cannon, I think he might well have taken me out."

"You tell your wife about it?" Michaels asked.

Howard looked at him. "Would you have told yours?"

The boss looked uncomfortable. "Maybe. Toni was a Net Force op, she knows how things go sometimes. Of course, she's pregnant, and I wouldn't have wanted to upset her once everything was over with."

"The local cops weren't called in, the media doesn't have it, we're keeping it in house," Howard said. "I didn't want to worry my wife, either. I'll mention it to her later. After we catch the son of a bitch who did it."

Jay didn't say anything. He'd have told Saji, but she was a Buddhist, they were into the real world and all. He looked around. Technically, they weren't supposed to be doing this, since it wasn't really part of their mission statement. Plus they weren't supposed to be flying on the same jet. If the flight went down, it would take out the commander, the military chief, and the head of Computer Operations, which would be bad for Net Force. The director would be royally pissed; then again, Jay wouldn't much care about that, being dead and all. What the hell.

Jay wasn't worried about flying, that had never bothered him. A plane went down now and then, that was awful, but it was like being struck by lightning. If it happened, it happened. What were you gonna do, stay home all your life?

He was looking forward to visiting Hollywood. Outside virtual visits, he had only been there once in real time, on a trip when he'd been in high school, part of a computer team entered into a national contest. They'd come in second and should have won, except that one of the twits on his team had flubbed an easy program a third-grader could have managed. As much time as Jay did creating scenario in VR, he felt as if he'd be right at home among the moviemakers. It would be the middle of the night before they got there, and they'd head straight for the hotel, but tomorrow would no doubt be sunny and delightful.

He spun up the flatscreen's power, hit the wireless air-net key, and logged via an encoded sig into the Net Force mainframe again. He had VR gear in his bag, but he didn't like to do VR work in a public place, too many people, no telling who might decide to come up and swipe your luggage while you were sensory deprived and deep in scenario. Probably they'd be okay here in the VIP lounge, but no sense in developing bad habits. He'd just have to do it the old-fashioned and boring way, using the vox controls and hand-jives, a pain, but there it was.

Banning, California

Drayne had the air conditioner going full blast in the RV, and Ma and Pa Yeehaw had unshipped the little car they towed behind the RV and gone into town to do a little bar hopping or whatever, while Drayne mixed up a new batch of the Hammer. He'd hold off on adding the final catalyst until he got back to town. Now was a good time to check out the new safe house, and nobody would be looking over his shoulder there while he did the final mix. Once the clock started running, he'd send one of the bodyguards to FedEx with the packages, and that would be that, another forty-five thousand into the secure e-account, and wasn't life beautiful?

He grinned.
I
wonder what the poor folks are doing now?

Beverly Hills, California

Mae Jean Kent was an impressive-looking woman, Michaels noted, oozing sexuality, and however powerful her lungs might be, they were certainly augmented with a major pair of headlights, double-D, at least. Toni had been quick to tell him these weren't real, but nonetheless ...

She was beautiful, blond, tanned, fit, and wore a halter top and hip-hugger pants and sandals. She also wore big sunglasses. She agreed to meet them at some local restaurant that was apparently the place to meet locally, and she was constantly waving at people who passed the outdoor table at which she, Michaels, Jay, and John had been situated.

"Hi, Muffy! Hey, Brad! I'm sorry, Alex, what was that again?"

"Ms. Kent--"

"Oh, please, call me MJ, everybody does!"

Michaels guessed her age at thirty, judging from her hands, but she was acting more like eighteen. Part of the youth culture out here, where you might be over the hill at twenty-five.

"MJ. So tell me about this beach picture."

"Oh, it was a terrible shoot! First thing was, Todd--that's Todd Atchinson, the director?--was having a major crisis and he ran out of Paxil and was a bear to work with. He just kept
yelling
at everybody. Then Larry--that's Larry Wright--had a major fight with his boyfriend, he's gay, such a waste of a perfect bod, you know? Anyway, Larry was so depressed he just moped around like an old hound dog. And George--I was so sorry to hear that he died, so sorry, but he was a major doper, major--kept getting a, you know, a
woody
every time we shot a scene together, and they had to shoot around it because his bathing suit was, you know, bulging all the time!" She giggled and took a deep breath, showing off the results of what must have been expensive plastic surgery.

Michaels wished Toni were here, so she could see just how vapid and unattractive this woman was, despite her looks and attempt at what she thought passed for sophisticated animation.

Michaels glanced at Howard, who kept a straight face but offered no help. Jay seemed entranced by the rise and fall of MJ's hooters under the barely-able-to-hold-them halter top.

"Is there anything you can think of that might have a connection to something called Thor's Hammer?"

She turned and waved at somebody passing the tables. "Hey, Tom, baby! How are you!" She made a kissy face at Tom baby.

Michaels caught the hint of a grin on Howard's face, but when he looked closer, the grin vanished.

"MJ?"

"What? Oh, no, I don't remember anything about a sore hammer."

"Where was the movie shot?" Jay asked. Apparently his breast-induced trance was not as deep as Michaels thought.

"Where?"

"Yes. The location."

She glanced upward, as if expecting the answer to be written on the underside of the big umbrella sheltering their table. Then she looked at Jay and gave him her full-wattage smile: "Malibu," she said. "On the beach."

Michaels got the gist of Jay's question and followed it up. "Anything unusual about the location?"

"Unusual? No, I don't think so. It was kind of like a private beach, Todd knew some of the owners who had houses right next to it, so they roped it off for the shoot. A lot of tourists came by every day and asked for autographs between setups. I have a lot of fans."

"I heard a critic say your performance in
Scream, Baby, Scream
was first-rate," Howard put in. He smiled.

Michaels looked at Howard. Butter wouldn't melt in his mouth.