Tom Clancy's Net Force 6-10 (83 page)
Both Toni and Jay grinned like baboons.
Jay was gone, and Michaels sat at the conference table with Toni. Something was nagging at him, but he was still distracted enough with all the legal paperwork he was dealing with that he was having a hard time coming up with what it was.
He stared at the hard copy. “It’s just a coincidence,” he finally said. “It doesn’t mean anything. Why would a guy like Ames stoop to something like this? He doesn’t have to.”
“Somebody hired our boy Boudreaux,” Toni said. “I don’t know why he’d be shooting up biker bars and cops, but Congressman Wentworth was leading the fight against CyberNation on the House side, wasn’t he?”
“Hon, that’s a stretch on the order of the Golden Gate Bridge.”
“Maybe. But what if it’s true? You have to check it out.”
“Come on, Toni. You know what that will look like? Us going after the lawyer who is suing us over wrongful deaths for a Net Force operation?”
“Well, we’d have to be careful.”
He laughed. “Careful? This is a guy who can subpoena our records, e-mail, phone logs, everything! If we start snooping into his background, we have to
tell
him.”
tell
him.”
“No, we don’t. Technically, all he can ask for is material regarding operations against CyberNation. Investigating him for potential conspiracy charges doesn’t necessarily fall into that category. Maybe he hired Junior for something else. We wouldn’t know until we got there, would we?”
Michaels shook his head again. “One misstep and we’d be drawn, quartered, and our heads mounted on pikes on the city walls.”
“So we watch where we put our feet.”
He thought about it. It probably was nothing more than coincidence. The shooter belonged to four clubs. Between them, the memberships at those four clubs totaled more than two thousand people. He didn’t have to have any connections to any of them. But—what if he did? And what if Ames was the connection?
It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy, as far as Michaels was concerned. Maybe Toni was right. At the very least, they should check it out, right?
“If we can find this guy Boudreaux,” Toni said, “and persuade him to talk to us, that would be good.”
“And how are we going to do that?”
“Jay is working on it even as we speak,” she said. She smiled.
In that moment, he was very glad she was on his side. There was something of a hungry she-wolf in that expression.
Alex nodded. Something was still nagging at him.
He glanced at the list of names again, looking at the one that was highlighted. “Oh,” he said. “Of course.”
“What?”
He shook his head, thinking. “Hon, can you bring up that hacker’s statement?”
Toni went to the flatscreen computer on the conference room’s table. She hit a few keys, inputting her login code, and then called it up.
“Got it,” she said.
“Read his description of the guy who hired him.”
There was a pause while Toni scanned for that section and then read it. A moment later her eyebrows shot up.
“Alex,” she said. “It’s Mitchell Ames.”
Alex nodded. “Or his twin,” he said. “Get some photos down to that hacker, and include one of Ames in the mix. See if he picks him out of the batch.”
“I’m on it,” she said, already heading for the door.
“Oh, and Toni?”
She paused and turned back to face him.
“Good work, hon. And tell Jay I said so.”
She flashed him a big grin, nodded, and went out the door.
35
New York City, New York
Ames subscribed anonymously to a very expensive netweb service called HITS—a specialized search engine, updated twice a day, that kept track of inquiries on major databases and servers. He didn’t know how they managed it.
It was probably illegal, but he didn’t care. All that mattered to him was that it provided him with valuable information. He simply plugged in a name and, after a couple of minutes, the seekbot came back with records of inquiries about that subject on the web search engines it covered. These included those open to the general public, as well as some supposedly restricted to military, police, and federal agencies. It also searched a few that were subscription-only, for hospitals, medical record companies, and the like. While not totally comprehensive, the coverage was very wide.
With all those sites being covered, he had to be careful in his construction or he would download an enormous number of results. A lot of people shared names. Ask it about “John Smith,” and he’d be a long time reading the list. It was best to narrow things as much as possible. Ask about a specific person for example, using first, middle, and last names if he had them. Even then it was a good idea to limit the time to one day or less, otherwise, he might be elbow-deep in hits.
Ames felt that if somebody was asking questions about him or his people, he needed to know about it. He also needed to know who was doing the asking so he could try to determine what they wanted. HITS was his insurance policy.
It was with a cold, stomach-twisting dread that he looked at the computer image floating over his desk. The HITS program had come back with more than a dozen queries after the name of “Marcus Boudreaux,” and the databases being searched—police, prison, rental car, and hotel agencies—made it chillingly clear that the searcher was some kind of law-enforcement officer, and that the Boudreaux in question was none other than Junior.
One of the hits was about a cop-killing in Atlanta, Georgia. Another for a dead policeman in Baltimore. And there were inquiries about the congressman in California, too.
How could this have happened? he wondered. What had Junior done?
That the searcher had a NO ID AVAILABLE status could mean several things, but most likely, it meant “cop,” and probably a fed.
Which meant to Ames it was Net Force.
Junior had screwed up somehow. He’d tripped an alarm somewhere, the dogs had scented him, and now they were baying on his trail.
This changed everything. His earlier calculations of the risk Junior represented assumed that Junior hadn’t gone too far across the line. The kind of blackmail Ames had used him for wasn’t all that bad. The penalties for it, if Junior were ever caught, weren’t that steep. He knew that Junior would simply ride that out, trusting that Ames would help him out—and knowing that Ames would kill him if he turned on him.
But murder? Especially the murders of cops? That was a whole other ball game. There was no way Ames would be able to bail Junior out of this mess. Which meant that Junior would have no reason to protect his boss. Quite the opposite, in fact. Facing life imprisonment, or worse, he would be eager to work a deal. And the only card he had to play was Ames himself.
Ames shook his head. What was he going to do about this? They wouldn’t be able to substantiate any of Junior’s claims. They would certainly never be able to prove that he had even known Junior, much less hired him. But an accusation by a man arrested for murder would throw mud on his good reputation. Even the hint of scandal would be bad for business.
No, they’d never prove anything, but it would be an embarrassment, and that was something he’d rather not endure.
He had to lose Junior, no question about it, and he had to do it quickly.
As these things sometimes did when he was under sudden and intense pressure, a plan came to him, all of a piece,
bam!
just like that. The way to be rid of Junior, without any real risk to himself. Once that link was gone, he was in the clear.
bam!
just like that. The way to be rid of Junior, without any real risk to himself. Once that link was gone, he was in the clear.
He smiled, impressed with his own cleverness. He really was brilliant. Back him into a corner, and he did not turn into a rat, he turned into Einstein. . . .
Brooklyn, New York
It was just after sunrise. Ames sat at his desk in the new safe office. This was the third one in as many weeks. Across from him was the man who was shortly going to be leaving this world, though he didn’t know it.
Junior shook his head. “Kidnapping? That’s not exactly in my line.”
“You don’t have any problem shooting somebody, but you won’t grab a child to get his father off our back?”
“The feds will come out in droves,” Junior said. “And little kids are the worst.”
“Nobody is going to know he was kidnapped,” Ames said. “We aren’t calling for ransom. The only person who counts is Alex Michaels.”
“What about the kid’s mama? She’s just going to hand him over to me, right?”
Ames laughed, putting an edge of scorn in it. “You don’t think you can handle somebody’s
mother
?”
mother
?”
Junior shook his head. “If she sees me, she can testify against me.”
Ames looked at him, his eyes hard and unyielding. “Not if she isn’t around to testify, she can’t.”
Junior sighed and sat back in his chair. “You don’t want much, do you?”
“Junior, I can’t impress on you enough how serious this situation is. Net Force knows who you are and what you did. They are all over your trail.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe you actually shot a
cop
.”
cop
.”
When Ames had called him and told him they were in deep trouble, Junior assumed he had figured that out somehow. He’d admitted to it when Ames waved it in his face, and almost blurted out that the Atlanta cop was only one of many he’d capped. Fortunately, he had kept that to himself.
He shrugged. “It was him or me,” he said.
“That’s the same thing you said about the congressman.”
“That’s because it
was
the same thing. I had some trouble with Joan, yeah. It involved some . . . gunplay in a biker bar. Somebody else got shot. When the cop stopped me I was still carrying the gun that did that shooting. I didn’t have time to get rid of it. A felon in possession of a firearm, aggravated assault, attempted murder, murder? I’d be up the creek with no paddle, and you know it. There wasn’t any choice.”
was
the same thing. I had some trouble with Joan, yeah. It involved some . . . gunplay in a biker bar. Somebody else got shot. When the cop stopped me I was still carrying the gun that did that shooting. I didn’t have time to get rid of it. A felon in possession of a firearm, aggravated assault, attempted murder, murder? I’d be up the creek with no paddle, and you know it. There wasn’t any choice.”
Ames leaned forward in his chair. “All right,” he said. “What’s done is done. But we’re up against it, now. We need to give Alex Michaels something else to think about. So you get down to Washington, now, today, you drop by his house, and you take his son for a ride.”
“I don’t much like the idea of killing a kid.”
“So don’t kill him. Drop him off a hundred miles away at a mall, after we’re done with him. Killing the woman shouldn’t bother you—once you get past the first, they’re all the same, right?”
Junior nodded. Probably. But since he hadn’t actually gotten Joan, he wasn’t past the first one yet. Still, he wasn’t a virgin when it came to dropping the hammer anymore, was he? Man or woman, the bullet didn’t know the difference.
“Trust me on this, Junior,” Ames said. “I know this guy, this Alex Michaels. I’ve met him, talked to him. He’ll fold, and once we get what we need, I settle with you for a nice sum and you go off to live on the Mexican coast happily ever after.”
“How much settlement are we talking about here?”
“Five million seems fair. If you leave the country.”
Junior blinked at that. Five million. A nice house in Mexico, servants, a mistress, tequila, and lying in the sun, not having to work? You could live like a king for the rest of your life with five million U.S. down there. You didn’t even have to speak the language if you didn’t want to bother—money was the universal language. You could get whatever you wanted if you had enough of it. Five million? That was lot better than being shipped back to Angola or some federal pen.
“Okay,” he said.
“Call me when you get ready to move,” Ames said. “The timing on this is critical. Today. As soon as you can get there.”
“Yeah, yeah, okay.”
Ames watched Junior leave. This was bad, all of it, and maybe it was time to take a little vacation, spend a few days or a week at his hideaway in Texas, until it blew over. Low profile was definitely the ticket.
He looked around. This was the last time he would see this place. He wasn’t going to give anybody the chance to come and sneak up on him here.
Yes, it was definitely time to crank up the corporate jet and leave town for a while. He could make the call from anywhere, just as easy to do it from Texas as here. Like he’d told Junior, the timing was critical.
For Junior, it would be exactly that.
Washington, D.C.
Toni was running late. She was anxious to get back into the office and follow up on Ames. Thumper had picked his photo out of the group of twelve or so still shots she’d shown him. She’d turned Jay loose on Ames right away, and wanted to get in to see what he’d found.
But she couldn’t find her car keys. She knew she had put them on the mail table by the front door, she was sure of it, but somehow, they had vanished.
“Here they are, Mrs. Michaels,” Tyrone said.
She was in the kitchen, and she looked up to see Tyrone dangling the keys as he came toward her.
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