Net Force

7

One of the reasons Alex Michaels liked the condo in which he lived was the size of the attached garage. It was a two-car unit, and there was plenty of room for his hobby, which had been, for the last month, a thirteen-year-old Plymouth Prowler. It had replaced a ‘77 MG Midget that he'd spent a year and half rebuilding. He'd enjoyed that, gotten a nice profit for it, but the little English car couldn't hold a candle to the Prowler for looks.

Designed by the legendary Tom Gale for Chrysler as a concept car in the early nineties, the Prowler finally saw production four years later. It was essentially a slicked-up hot rod, a rear-wheel-drive, two-seat convertible roadster, painted a brilliant deep rich color known as Prowler purple. Since it wasn't old enough to be a classic, it had all the bells and whistles of a street car — air bags, power disc brakes, power steering and even a power rear window — but what it really was was a big kid's toy. It also had a manual transmission, smaller tires on the front than on the rear, exposed front wheels with just hints of fenders and a tachometer mounted on the steering column.

He'd been too young for the glory days of hot-rodding in the late forties and early fifties, days portrayed in rebel movies old before he was born in 1970. But his grandfather had told him stories. Told him tales about the Eisenhower years when he'd owned a primer-gray ‘32 Ford he'd souped up and taken to drag-race a quarter mile Sunday mornings in the summers on the cracked concrete runways of a shutdown airport. He'd filled Michael's mind's eye with chopped and channeled Chevys and Mercurys and Dodges that sometimes wore twenty hand-rubbed coats of candy-apple-red metalflake paint, with hubcaps called spinners or moons or fake wires. Showed him the stacks of old hot-rod magazines that had gone dry and yellow with time, but whose fading pictures still revealed the cars. He had smiled happily as he'd told a young Alex Michaels about impromptu races in the middle of town at every stoplight on any given Friday night, and of drive-in malt shops and rock and roll music blasting from AM radios, when gasoline had cost twenty cents a gallon for ethyl and nobody who was anybody walked anywhere when they could drive.

Some kids grew up wanting to be cowboys in the Old West of the 1870's. Michaels had wanted to be James Dean in the post-World War II 1950's…

He smiled as he rubbed creamy-gray degreaser into his palms, then over the rest of his hands. The stuff had that sharp, perfumed stink that reminded him of Grandaddy Michaels, who had started to teach him how to work on cars when he'd been fourteen.

You could have eaten off the floor in the old man's shop, so clean had it been, with its big red rolling-chest of Craftsman and Snap-On tools always at the ready. The old man could strip an engine, drop a transmission, break down a rear end, and when he was done there was never a trace of oil or grit left on the concrete floor of the workshop. He'd been an artist.

He hadn't lived long enough to see the Prowler. A heart attack had dropped him at seventy, but Michaels was sure his grandfather would have approved of the latest project, with a few reservations. Yeah, it wasn't as frill-free as the old man would have liked — he hadn't held much with air bags or power anything — but it was mostly an analog machine in a digital world, and it sure looked like one of the old hot rods. Drove nice, too, though Michaels hadn't gotten a chance to do much of that yet. Several parts of the engine were on the workbench, including the electronic fuel-injection unit, which was much in need of work or outright replacement. The last guy who'd owned the car had apparently tried to fix it on his own, and just as apparently, had not known which end of a screwdriver was which.

Michaels wiped much of the grime from his hands on a red shop rag, tossing the cloth into a steel rag bin when he was done. His grandfather had been a bug about spontaneous combustion, though the idea of a hand-cleaner rag bursting into flame seemed far-fetched to Michaels. The rest of the grease should come off just fine in the shower.

The doorbell rang. Hmm. Must be his driver. He was early; he wasn't supposed to show up for another half hour. The assassination protocols were still in effect — for another few days, anyhow — so one of the guards posted out front would have intercepted anybody who didn't have clearance to approach his house.

Michaels reached for the intercom. "Larry?"

"Not that I noticed," a woman's voice said.

"Toni?"

"Yep."

"Come around to the garage, I'll let you in." He hit the control for the electric gate lock that allowed access into his yard, then tapped the garage-door opener as Toni rounded the corner.

"Wow. So this is the new car?"

He grinned. "This is the beast."

She stepped into the garage, and put one hand on the right rear fender. "It looks great."

"I'd offer to take you for a ride, but she's not on-line at the moment." He waved at the part on the workbench.

"Fuel injectors clogged?" she said.

That surprised him. It must have shown in his face.

Before he could say anything, she shrugged. "I grew up with a house full of brothers. Cars were big status symbols in our neighborhood. The boys always had one beater or another up on jacks, trying to keep it running. I picked up a little bit about them on the way. This a V-Eight?"

"A V-Six," he said. "A 3.5 liter, 24-valve single overhead cam, but it'll develop just over two hundred horsepower at 5900 RPM. It's not a muscle machine like the Dodge Viper — one of those will blow the doors off a Corvette — but it'll scoot right along." Toni was tough, beautiful — and she knew about cars. There was a combination a lot of men would appreciate in a woman, him included.

Dangerous road, Alex. Better stay off it.

"Let me know when you get it running," she said.

"I will. So, what brings you here so early?"

"We've had some developments."

His house phone rang. He nodded at Toni. "Just a second." He walked to the wall, intending to get rid of whoever it was.

"Hello?"

"Hi, guess who!"

"Susie! How are you?"

"Great, Dadster. Mom said I should call and thank you for the skates."

For a moment, he went blank; then the empty spot was filled with panic. Her birthday was yesterday! Jesus, how could he have forgotten that? And what skates was she talking about? Had Megan covered for him? That would be a first.

"How was the party, hon? I'm sorry I couldn't be there for it."

"It was terrif. All my friends came, except Lori, but she's got the flu, so that's okay, and even Tommy Jerkface Stupid Dumb Head came."

Michaels grinned. At seven — no, eight, now — Susie had never been shy in expressing herself. Tommy must be the new boy she liked. The worse the names, the more the like. He felt a pang of sadness, another stabbing sensation in his gut. It was a long way from Boise to Washington, D.C. He was missing all of Susie's best moments.

"How's your mother?"

"She's fine. She's making breakfast. We got to sleep in because it's a teacher work day. You want to talk to her?"

Michaels suddenly remembered that Toni was there in the garage. He flicked a glance in her direction, but she had squatted down next to the Prowler and was looking at the front struts. The pants she wore pulled tight across her tight rear end. He looked away. It was not something he should be noticing while talking to his daughter.

"No, I'll talk to her later, hon. Give her my love."

"I will. When are you coming out to visit, Dadster?"

"Soon, baby, soon as I can get loose."

"Got a crisis, huh?"

For a moment, he wondered how she knew that. But she didn't let it lie very long. "That's what Mom said, you got a crisis, why you couldn't come to my party. She said you always got a crisis."

"That's the truth, baby. Never a dull moment."

"I gotta go. I just heard the microwave go off, so the waffles are done. I love you, Dadster."

"I love you, too, Susie. Say hello to your mom for me."

"Bye!"

He hung up. He missed her. Missed Megan, too, even though the divorce had become final more than three years ago. It hadn't been his idea to split up. Even after the decree, he'd still had hope. Somehow, they'd get together, work things out…

He turned his attention back to Toni, who had come up from her squat and was now leaning over the engine compartment, looking inside. He moved to stand next to her. "My daughter," he said.

"How'd she like the skates?" Toni said.

He blinked at her as she leaned back from the car and looked at him. "You sent them?"

"I — well, yeah. You were up to your eyeballs in things, so — yeah. I hope that wasn't out of line."

He shook his head. "Not at all. You saved my butt. I can't believe I forgot. Her mother would have never let me live it down. Thank you, Toni."

"I'm still your assistant," she said. "My job is to make you look good."

Well. He had hired her because of her credentials, and she'd been very good at her job. But she was proving to be a lot more than that.

He became aware they were standing only half a meter apart. She was an attractive woman, she smelled clean and fresh and he wanted to hug her. But he was her boss, after all, and he was afraid the hug might be misinterpreted. Especially given that his feeling right at that moment wasn't exactly platonic.

Oh? his little inner voice said. Maybe you're really afraid a hug won't be misinterpreted at all, hey? What if she likes it?

He suddenly felt the need to wipe his hands again. He turned, took a couple of steps and grabbed a fresh shop rag. "So, what's up?"

Toni felt a stab of disappointment. She had felt the heat in him, thought for just a moment he might reach out to her, literally, and her breath had caught in anticipation. Yes. Yes, do it!

But — no. Instead, Alex turned away from her and began wiping his already clean hands on a cloth. Became all business again.

Damn. She had a sudden flash of fantasy — lying with him right here, making passionate love in this wild purple car of his.

Wishful thinking, Toni.

Still, it had definitely been a good thing to have sent that birthday present to his daughter. His gratitude had been real enough. She felt that, too.

"You want the bad news? Or the worse news?"

"God."

"Colonel? I think maybe you ought to saddle up," Michaels said.

"Sir?" John Howard sat forward in his office chair, his back suddenly straight and tense.

"According to a coded message intercepted by CIA listening post at the U.S. embassy in the Ukraine, a physical attack is planned on the station there, likely in the next few days. We'd like two things. One, you take a platoon or so of your best to augment the Marine guard at the embassy and head off any attack. Two, and more importantly, we wouldn't be real unhappy if you could find out who is behind it while you're sitting around waiting for the shooting to start."

Howard grinned at the blank screen. Yes! "Won't the Ukrainians, uh, frown on us wandering around in their country chasing terrorists?"

"Officially, yes. Officially, you and your troops won't be leaving the embassy, which is U.S. territory. Unofficially, the local government won't get in your way. We've got a Dad Tee policy in effect for this operation."

Howard grinned again. Dad Tee, from the acronym DADT — Don't Ask, Don't Tell — a policy spawned long before the Clinton Administration had made the term popular. What that meant was, as long as he and his men didn't get caught doing something too blatant, the host country could — and would — pretend it didn't see them. If he didn't burn down the capitol or assassinate the President while CNN had a camera on him, they'd be okay.

"I'll have my teams in the air in thirty minutes, Commander Michaels."

"Don't break a leg, Colonel. Take an hour or two. The pertinent information is being downloaded to your S&T computer even as we speak. Your contact at the embassy will be Morgan Hunter, the CIA station chief, but it's your operation."

"Sir."

After he hung up, Howard couldn't keep the grin from his face. Finally. A field operation, and not a virtual one. The real thing.

He found himself breathing faster, and with a sudden urge to visit the bathroom. This was it.

"Time to rock and roll," he said to the air. "Rock and roll!"