Authors: Tom Clancy

Tags: #Fiction, #Action & Adventure

Tom Clancy's Net Force 6-10 (208 page)

BOOK: Tom Clancy's Net Force 6-10

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After a few minutes, the man paused to drink something colored a phosphorescent orange from a plastic bottle, and to wipe his face with a towel.

“What?” he said.

“We had a friend in common.”

“Yeah? Who?”

“Stark.”

Jethro shook his head. “Stark didn’t have any friends.”

“It was more of a work arrangement,” Jay said.

“So?”

“So I need to know something he knew.”

“Too bad. Why would I care?”

“I cut a deal with somebody. I find out this information he knew and pass it along.”

“And this buys you what?”

Here Jay had but one thing of any real value to sell. Everybody here was a lifer. The only way to leave The Cage was to die, get recycled, and flushed through narrow sewage pipes into the swamp. Hardly a glorious exit.

“A way out.”

“Sheeit.”

Jay shrugged.

Jethro wiped at his face again. “How?”

“A door is going to be left unlocked, a guard will be looking the other way. I’ll have a weapon. Not much chance I’ll survive the run to Port Tau, but at least it’s a shot. Better to die on my feet free and running than in here.”

Jethro considered that. “Say I buy this. How long is that door going to be unlocked? How long is the guard gonna be blind?”

Jay shrugged. “Could be long enough for two guys to pass.”

The boxer shook his head. “You know that’s how Stark got it? He was trying to run, got a needler bolt in the back.”

“I heard.”

“Been a while since Stark and I were tight.”

“I just got here,” Jay said. “More likely you can talk to people than I can.”

“What do I have to pay them with?”

“Two, three fast guys can run through an open door as quick as one, if they hurry.”

Jethro considered it. Nodded. “I can maybe talk to a couple people. Of course, if this is bunta-crap, you’re a dead man.”

“Of course. Whaddya got to lose?”

“That’s the prongin’ truth.” Jethro hung the towel over a steel strut, stepped back up to the bag. Hit it with a short right, hard. “I’ll find you if I get something.”

“I ain’t goin’ anywhere,” Jay said. “For a while, anyway.”

Jethro smiled at that one.

Partin’s Country Store
Near Damascus, Maryland

Lewis had picked the little country store because it had recently closed. She had happened across the place while out driving one day, feeling too cooped up after a long VR session and needing to move. The store was for sale, and there was a sign up over the front window saying so. Who owned it? Why had they shut it down? Where were they now? Those things didn’t really matter.

The place was not exactly the middle of nowhere—the sun didn’t come up between it and town—but it was an hour and some away from the District, half a mile from any other building, and the closest of those was a farmhouse off the road and mostly screened by trees. If she could get in and out fast, there wouldn’t be a problem. She rented a car, switched license plates with a vehicle parked in the back of an apartment complex that was the same make and model, and wore her standard disguise—baseball cap with her hair tucked under, sunglasses, dark T-shirt, jeans, running shoes, and a Windbreaker. Plus she had a new revolver, another S&W Chief .38 Special.

She didn’t want to be parked out in the boondocks long enough for anybody driving past to take notice. Her intent was to arrive five minutes before the meeting time, pull in, and wait for Carruth. As soon as he showed up, she would put two into his head before he could get out of the car. She hoped he had that big handgun with him, but if not, she would make sure there was something in the car to lead the state troopers who worked the case to his house. He’d rented that under a phony name, and she didn’t know if his driver’s license matched the address or not, but a wadded-up piece of paper with the street number and name on it dropped onto the floor would be enough, and they’d find it. They tended to search the cars of murdered folks very carefully. If Carruth still had the cop-killing gun, it would be on his hip, in the car, or stashed at his home somewhere.

She was tempted to run past his house and make sure there wasn’t anything she didn’t want the cops to find, but she didn’t think there would be. Carruth was pretty good about stuff like that.

Well, that’s what you thought about him before you found out about the two cops and that goddamned gun. . . .

So she drove slowly and carefully, and got to Partin’s Country Market four minutes before the appointed time. The sun was shining and it was cool, maybe forty degrees or so. Bracing . . .

Carruth arrived three minutes later.

She had been breathing slowly and deeply, but even so, her belly was roiling and her heart pumping faster than normal. It wasn’t every day you cold-bloodedly shot somebody to death. That thing in New Orleans hadn’t been planned, it had just happened, and yeah, she had been prepared, but she had not really expected, nor wanted, it to go down that way.

This was different. She was gonna smile at Carruth, a guy she had worked with for months, and knew, and then punch holes in his skull,
bam-bam.
Yeah, it had to be done, but still, it made for a dry mouth and fluttery bowels. She took a deep breath.
Get to it, sister
.

As she stepped out of her rented car, she looked up to see a state police patrol cruiser coming along the country road. And slowing down.

She went cold, but let none of her reactions show.

Unless she was willing to kill a state cop, Carruth was going to live to see another day.

She considered it.

Carruth was armed and he was good with a gun. She didn’t know how good the trooper might be. If she pulled her piece and blasted Carruth, the cop might be a danger before she could do him. Carruth certainly would be if she shot the cop first, though he would hesitate, trying to figure what she was doing, and she could nail him while he was trying to work it out. . . .

No. She didn’t need any complications—somebody might spot the dead police officer before she was out of range, and they would certainly throw up roadblocks every which way. Maybe he had already called in their license plates. Dead police officers were a major glitch, to be avoided if at all possible. She could screw up Jay Gridley’s search for a little while longer, and take care of Carruth later.

“Follow my lead,” she said to Carruth as the trooper pulled into the lot. “We’re thinking about buying this place,” she said.

The gravel crunched under the trooper’s tires. The cop eased closer and rolled his window down. “You folks okay?”

Carruth stepped of his car with a notepad. He looked at the for-sale sign and began writing on the pad. He smiled at the trooper and raised a hand in greeting.

“Yes, sir,” Lewis said. “My friend and I came out to look at the store. We heard it was for sale.”

“You live around here?”

“No, in the District. But we’re tired of the city,” she said. “And we’re thinking maybe about getting married and starting a business away from all the noise and traffic.”

The cop, who was maybe twenty-five, smiled. “Really nice country.”

“It is. We figured we’d get the Realtor’s number and see if we can set up a meeting.”

She smiled at the trooper, who grinned back. “Shame you had to come in two cars.”

Cops never just took anything at face value, the good ones. She leaned down closer to the cop. “My friend and I, we’re, uh, married to . . . other people right now. We’re going to, uh, take care of that, but we kind of don’t want to be seen together just yet.”

“Ah. I understand.”

She nodded. Give them a story they like, they’ll buy it.

“Well, you all have a nice day.”

Carruth turned and ambled over to where Lewis stood. He put his arm around her and smiled at the trooper. Pressed the tips of his fingers against her breast so the cop could see that.

The trooper pulled out of the lot and drove slowly away.

“Bet he turns into a driveway a mile down the road and waits to see what we are going to do,” Carruth said.

“If you don’t get your hand off my boob, he’s going to see me kick you in the balls.”

Carruth laughed. He moved his hand away. “I had to help sell it, didn’t I?”

“We need to leave,” she said.

“Why? We can talk for a couple minutes, walk around the place. Even if the cop can see us, it’s not like we’re trying to break into the place. We can hold hands, make out, give him something to tell the boys back at the station.” He grinned.

“Forget it.”

She hadn’t planned on having to lay out another base incursion, since she’d expected he’d be dead by now. She didn’t have anything to tell him. A mistake. “No, we’ll do it later. I’ll call and set it up.”

“Why’d you want to meet way the hell out here anyway?”

“I wanted a quiet drive in the country. What do you care?”

He shrugged. “I don’t.
My
last trip to the country involved shooting down a helicopter full of armed dweebos—not a real peaceful memory.”

“Go. I’ll call.”

He shrugged again and ambled to his car.

Well—damn. This certainly hadn’t gone the way she’d visualized it. A reminder that RW was messier than VR. She needed to keep that in mind. If that trooper had chosen to play it differently, maybe been in a bad mood and needing to feel powerful, if he’d wanted to see ID, maybe decided he needed to pat them down, it would have really been a bad scene. She supposed she ought to consider herself lucky it hadn’t gone that way. Carruth killing cops was why they were here—they didn’t need another dead one calling attention their way.

She climbed back into her car and started the engine.

As she did, she had a sudden inspiration. A way to get rid of Carruth without doing it herself. She smiled. It was perfect. She should have thought of it before.

Better late than never.

Net Force HQ Quantico, Virginia

Thorn sat at the head of the conference table, with Jay Gridley and Abe Kent sitting across from each other to his left and right. Thorn said, “All right, Jay, if you’ll update us, please?”

Jay nodded. “Not a whole lot new. Most of what I’ve been chasing has run to dead ends. I haven’t been able to chase the game-maker down.”

He paused, taking a moment to make eye contact with General Kent as well. “There are two lines of inquiry that I can see might still pay off, though there is a possibility they lead to the same place. First, there’s the gun that killed the Army guy and the Metro cops. I’ve narrowed down the possibilities to one good one, but I haven’t been able to pin it to the wall yet. The gun was bought under a phony name and ID and I’m working on that.”

Thorn nodded. “Go on.”

“Second, there’s the dead terrorist found in the burning truck down in Kentucky. We have an ID on him, including his name and CV. He was a Special Forces guy, an Army Ranger, by the name of Dallas R. Stark. He was doing soldier-of-fortune and security work in the Middle East two years ago when State lost track of him. I am running down his old military unit, guys he worked with in the Middle East, family and childhood friends, all the usual stuff. Since we know he was using a phony passport, otherwise he couldn’t have gotten back into the U.S., it could be that he was the guy who bought the gun and shot people with it. That wouldn’t be real helpful. If I can pin the Alien Cowboy—sorry, that’s a characterization from my search-scenario—I should be able to figure it out. If he matches Stark, then that line ends. If he doesn’t, we have another player. Stark has been somewhere for the last two years, and since he wasn’t alone when the terrorists hit Braverman, if we can link him to anybody in that group, that’ll be good.”

Thorn nodded again. “Anything else?”

“Not really. I’ve been working with Captain Lewis at the Pentagon, but most of what we’ve done has been eliminating stuff, not coming up with any arrows pointing in the right direction. She’s pretty sharp, though. She spotted some things before I did.”

“General?”

Kent smiled. “I don’t know enough to ask intelligent questions. General Ellis has indicated that General Hadden is about to blow a gasket and I’m supposed to hurry things up, but since Jay is already going as fast as anybody can go, me saying, ‘Go faster!’ ain’t gonna help.” He nodded at Jay, then added, “Although, when you do catch these guys, it would be to my benefit and General Ellis’s if you allowed in a report somewhere as how our urging somehow expedited the process, even though we all know it didn’t.”

Jay grinned at that. “I can do that.”

“Thanks, Jay,” Kent said.

Thorn looked around at the small meeting. “Okay, gentlemen,” he said, “I think that’s it for now.”

BOOK: Tom Clancy's Net Force 6-10

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