Changing of the Guard

15

Howard heard the spang! as a jacketed assault rifle round ricocheted off the concrete wall a foot above his helmet. He ducked instinctively — too late, of course. You don’t hear the one that kills you, he knew that. But if you hear one, that means somebody has targeted you, and there will probably be more on the way. There were men who never bothered to duck at all when they were in a fire zone — they figured the one with their name on it would get them no matter if they were hunched over or standing upright, but Howard always figured that the smaller the target the less likely you’d get tagged. Might be more than one with your name on it — no point in tempting fate.

The tiny village was typical for the Mid East — a lot of adobe and concrete-block construction, some of the older stuff probably going back a thousand years. The streets had been made for pack animals — donkeys, camels, whatever — and not automobiles, and until recently the buildings had been designed to fit the terrain and not the other way around. The result was a third-world town that might have been created by giant rats, full of twists and turns, low overhangs, and alleyways no wider than two men walking side-by-side could traverse even without the garbage bins.

There were also a McDonald’s, a Starbucks, and even a Gap store.

“Able One, bring your aim to bear on that sniper in the second-story window on the northwest corner of the hotel,” Abe Kent said.

Despite the intermittent gun fire and occasional grenade going off, Howard didn’t have any trouble hearing the colonel’s clipped commands over the LOSIR headset built into the helmet.

“I want to see a metal hailstorm filling that aperture in five seconds. When it does, I want Baker Two’s AT man to cross the street and into that Starbucks. Everybody copy?”

“Able One copies.”

“Baker Two copies.”

“On my mark — five… four… three… two… and fire!”

Eight subguns spoke as one, and anybody in or around the mosque’s window who didn’t duck better be bulletproof.

Howard peeked around the edge of the Dumpster, a nice, thick, bullet-stopping steel-plated one, and watched as Baker’s antitank man scooted across the street, dodging and stutter-stepping, ending in a dive and roll. The man had some speed.

The subguns went quiet.

“Baker Two AT, put a rocket through that hotel window at your convenience.”

There were undoubtedly civilians in that hotel, and Kent wanted very much to minimize any unintended or “collateral” damage. But they were taking fire, and the first rule of engagement was always the right to self-defense.

Three seconds later, a new JAM-II antitank antisniper laser-guided smart rocket whooshed from a shoulder launcher, zipped the hundred yards from the Starbucks to the mosque, still gaining speed as it went through, and turned the room inside out in a fiery roar. The precision of the weapon meant, however, that the surrounding rooms were all untouched.

Adios, sniper.

Howard smiled. He was just here as an observer, and while he might have done it differently, there was no arguing with success. Abe Kent had been in combat as often as any man of his rank, more than most, and when you wanted the job done, he was your go-to guy.

“Nice shot, son, I owe you a beer. Able One, recon and report.”

Howard pulled his head back to cover and looked at Kent, who sat on his heels in a squat he had learned in some Southeast Asian jungle years before.

“Very neat, Colonel.”

“All in a day’s work, sir. Not like I haven’t been in this general vicinity before.” He waved at the street.

“Are we done?”

“Pretty much.”

“Computer, end scenario.”

Kent pulled off the headset and looked around the darkened training room. It wasn’t necessary for the troops to be here, they could have been anywhere in the country and logged into the communal VR scenario, but Kent liked his people together, so that he could talk to them face-to-face before and after a sortie. The center would allow sixty players to gear up at once, though there were only eighteen of them here now — Howard, Kent, and the two eight-person squads. Net Force seldom had large numbers in the field, though it was possible — they were much more like a Delta or SEAL team: small, portable, fast, hit-and-run and get out in a hurry.

Howard had done all right with them. Had some good officers and sergeants, and the troops were pretty sharp — their pay was better, and they had money for training — though he never trusted a VR scenario the same way he did reality. When you got shot in VR, you shook your head and tried to do better. When you got shot in combat, it wasn’t so easy. The map was never the territory.

Still, it was a good exercise, and it did instill enough sound and fury to keep you on your toes.

Howard would be gone soon, and it would be Kent’s command, and he needed to know what his people could do.

Colonel Kent went over the exercise with the troops, telling them what they had done right and what they had done wrong. Howard sat quietly in the background, nodding. That was good. It always helped if a superior officer backed you up. It wasn’t absolutely necessary if you knew you were right, but it was nice to have the acknowledgment.

When they were done and the troops had filed out to consider their performance, it was just Howard and Kent alone in the room.

“Anything new on the Gridley matter?” Kent asked.

“FBI has some info on the bug; they are sending it over. I figured we’d read it, then go show it to the Commander — if that’s all right with you.”

“Still your show, John.”

“Not really, but I’ll stay around long enough to see this one through. I like Gridley, he’s a good kid. But even if I hated him, he is one of ours. I want whoever did this to him to get nailed for it.”

“I understand.”

Natadze rolled past the impound yard. He avoided the temptation to look directly at the entrance and perhaps straight into the fiber-optic security cams surely hidden there. Who could know if that data might someday be strained by some curious and perceptive agent alert enough to recognize that a wolf had passed?

Part of preparation was eliminating such possibilities.

And he was prepared this time, better than before. Should he be noticed, he would appear to be a tourist; rental car in a phony name, travel tickets from Los Angeles, even a camera on the front seat, the perfect example of a patriotic citizen come to visit the capital of his great country.

Nobody to worry about.

He wanted very much to recover the tracking device which he had foolishly left on the target’s car. Like an amateur, his shock at the time had clouded his thoughts, and he had left evidence that the attack on a member of Net Force had been deliberate. Unforgivable, that.

In his hand was a device that resembled an MP3 player, and could be used as such. But if certain buttons were pressed just so, the liquid-crystal display on the face of the device would change, revealing an indicator that could be used to lock onto any one of a number of transmitters on varying frequencies.

The device was yet more complex — it had the capability to receive GPS signals so as to track a transmitter across the globe. He could have punched a control on the tracker and had it send code out to the bug to activate a feature that would give its longitude and latitude to him to within a twenty-foot radius, anywhere in the world.

He wasn’t using that setting now. Since the mishap on the highway, and his mistake, Natadze had decided to go back to the basics. The fewer machines the better. Had the feds found the bug, they might decide to check and see if anyone beamed a signal to it, and then backtrack it to the originating transmitter. Such a thing was possible, if they were alert and ready.

So he was operating passively, relying on the sensitivity of his receiver to indicate if it were near. Since he wasn’t sending anything out, he couldn’t be caught — at least not that way.

He’d found the impound yard, and had driven there. If the target’s car suddenly started moving, he wasn’t going to follow it where any watch might take note of him.

There were two possibilities, and he was prepared for either. The first was that he’d get a strong signal from the bug, indicating that it was still in the impound yard. If that were the case, he would go to the entrance and present a different set of credentials, showing him to be an insurance adjustor. A car of similar make and color to his target’s had recently been involved in a hit-and-run accident. No one had been hurt, but the car had been impounded, and a follow-up visit from a claims adjustor who had forgotten to take a measurement wouldn’t be out-of-line.

He had caused this to happen, and that automobile was in this yard somewhere.

He would remove the device while he took the measurements, and all would be as it should have been. And if he were questioned about getting the wrong car, it would be easy to believe a mistake: Darkness was drawing near, he had only seen the car once, and it had been a busy day. He knew that most people were so sloppy that they believed in the possibility of infinite mistakes. His story would hold under all but the most rigorous scrutiny, and if it came to that, he would simply not allow himself to be taken.

This was not only about survival, but being professional, clearing up all the loose threads.

The other possibility he had to consider was that the Net Force operative’s auto had been taken elsewhere, perhaps to an FBI lab. This would mean they’d found the bug, or were shortly going to do so — they were thorough about such things, he knew. No harm done: The car he’d staged would be left here in this lot, he would drive on and write it off. He had been careful to wear a disguise when he’d purchased the device, during a busy time of day. There would be no way to trace him.

He was good, but going after the car inside a Federal facility, with their suspicions alerted, would not do.

He tapped the switch, listened. There was a faint chirp from the MP3 player, and a tiny lower response, like an echo. But the sound was weak; even without looking at the signal-strength meter, Natadze knew the bug was not here.

Too bad, but it was done, and beyond his control. He had to assume that the FBI was trying to track the bug, see what it could collect. He touched the player’s controls, returning the device to its ostensible use. He tapped PLAY, and the tiny FM transmitter inside beamed a digital recording into his radio, that of Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumblebee,” arranged for guitar and piano.

He had another piece of business to attend to — checking on the target. Since Jay had seen him, and there was always the chance of being identified, however small, he had to consider permanent removal as an option. It wasn’t what he would like, but given the choice between killing Jay now or allowing him to live and ending up in jail, he would choose the former.

If it comes down to you or me, my friend, it must be you.

In his mission preplanning, he’d studied the area he used for the attack: He knew where the police stations were, estimated response times, and also where the hospitals were.

He’d considered the latter in case the target had hurt him, but knowledge was knowledge. The nearest major hospital off the Beltway at that point was Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The center didn’t serve civilians such as himself, so he’d needed to locate a second hospital.

Jay, not being technically a civilian, had wound up in Walter Reed. Having his target in a facility full of military personnel could made things more difficult, so he wanted to take a look.

He pulled onto I-495 and headed for town.

Natadze took Exit 318, Georgia Avenue South, and rolled down the street. It wasn’t far to the hospital.

The medical center was huge, and set well back from the road, looking like some kind of giant bunker. The war on terror, begun years before, had resulted in several pill-boxes that were thinly disguised as welcome areas.

It was not a sight to inspire confidence.

He could pass as military and could probably get in, but if an alarm were raised, getting out would be difficult at best.

Taking the target would require either a massive strike on the building with a great deal of collateral damage, beyond his ability to accomplish alone, or a carefully researched and planned strike through multiple levels of security.

He didn’t like either idea. If they had found the bug, they already knew the attack was not a case of road rage, and would be wondering why Jay had been targeted. Very likely, there would be armed guards, and success in an assassination at the cost of his own life was more than he was willing to pay.

He would have to come up with another way.

He shook his head as he listened to the music. Vynograd, the Russian chasing the bumblebee, had fast hands, no question. Two hundred forty beats per minute at the peak, and on an eight-string, no less, using his chin to fret the bass notes, that was something to see. Even though you needed at least a piano for the accompaniment, the guitar part was a very nasty test of hand speed. It was a showpiece, of course, something you would play for a jury, and, naturally, a lay audience would love it. Classical guitar competitions were always full of such things — there would be a fugue by Brouwer, or one of Nikita Koshkin’s pieces, “Rain,” for instance. While technically demanding and impressive for that, such pieces were not as impressive to another competent player as, say, a careful rendition of the “Concierto Aranjuez,” by Rodrigo. This was played in concerts perhaps more frequently than any other classical work around the world, save maybe for “Romanza,” and against an orchestra, but it offered places where a player could make things more interesting or less, depending on his skill. The first part ran just over six minutes, the second eleven and a half minutes, and the third part a little more than five minutes. Natadze could manage this work, but not as well as he would like — and he figured when he could play it as well as Romero or Fernandez or Bream, then he would be in good company indeed.

Yes, and if he could flap his arms hard enough, perhaps he could fly like a bumblebee.

He sighed. It was easier to think about the guitar than his job at the moment. But now it was time to get back to work.