Springboard

15

Locke had spent four days in and out of a motel not far from Net Force Headquarters at Quantico. It had been a productive time. Seurat had stayed another day in D.C., then gone home, and Locke had stuck around and done research, a bit of social engineering, and had learned some disturbing information.

None of which was nearly as disturbing as what was happening in his room right at the moment…

In his late twenties, Locke had had a paramour whose family had inherited a membership in Hong Kong’s Empire Gun Club. The club was made up of well-to-do Brits, ex-pats, and wealthy Chinese who could afford the five-thousand-pound-a-year membership fee. You didn’t even have to own a gun to use the place — there was an incredible variety of weapons locked away at the main range that they would allow members to shoot.

The woman with whom Locke had been having a professional liaison, Rowena, was fifty-something, well-made, and enjoyed firing off various handguns three or four times a month. She also took it upon herself to teach Locke all about the things: not only how to aim and shoot them, but how to take them apart, the differences between pistols and revolvers, the strengths and weaknesses of the different calibers, and a wide range of ballistic and other information. Locke had shown a professional interest — Rowena got very passionate after a session at the range, and she liked to slake her excitement in bed — but he hadn’t thought he would ever have much use for the ability to fire a pistol accurately.

Back in his days in the street gangs, it would have been useful, for those rare times when guns came out. Even in Hong Kong twenty-five years ago, handguns had been easy enough to come by, if you had enough money. But they were bad for business. Most of the boys who ran with Locke used their fists, sometimes augmented with clubs, knives, or even hatchets, but rarely firearms.

In the days before the English pulled out, the police, who might not raise an eyebrow if two rival gangs thumped each other bloody and filled up a local hospital, took a dim view of anything that might threaten tourists. A stray bullet that wounded a rich visitor from Japan would mean a lot of street criminals would be spending time in jail until the police sorted it out.

Many of the gang members had picked up odd bits of Chinese martial arts — kung fu, wushu—along the way. The town was thick with old Chinese men who danced those dances, and the techniques that worked on the street were passed along to fellow members. Locke was no Bruce Lee, but he could handle himself, and he’d never played with guns until he’d met Rowena.

It had been a waste of time, insofar as Locke never expected to use the knowledge again. But he’d been wrong.

At this moment, he was glad his former lover had spent all that time showing him what she had—

— because the man sitting in the chair across from him in the hotel room had a pistol in his hand, and it was loosely pointed in Locke’s direction.

The gun was a Colt 1911, a semiautomatic that had once been U.S. military issue, long ago. The man holding it, one T.A. Collins, aged sixty-four, was a former security guard who had worked briefly for Net Force. Collins had been fired for drinking on the job. Locke had poked around and found him, guessing that he would be amenable to selling information. Collins had been open to the idea. The day before yesterday, he had been an asset.

Now, he had become an annoying problem.

“Pointing a gun at me isn’t really a good way to cement a good business relationship,” Locke said.

Collins was fifteen feet away. Too far to jump, even knowing what Locke knew — which was that Collins apparently hadn’t spent much time practicing with his weapon — the thumb-safety was still on. While it would take only a half second to wipe the safety off, it shouldn’t be employed in such a situation as this — Collins couldn’t know if Locke had a weapon himself, and a half second might be enough for him to seize the advantage.

Collins said, “Yeah, well, let’s just think of this”—he waggled the gun—“as insurance.”

Locke nodded. “All right. How much?”

“Ten thousand. I go away, nobody hears any stories.”

Locke nodded, considering the proposal. He had paid Collins a thousand dollars U.S. and had found out about Net Force’s recent transfer to military control, a most useful bit of information. Now the man was blackmailing him, threatening to point him out to the authorities for asking his questions.

Ten thousand would not make a large dent in the operating fund Wu provided. If you could make a problem go away by throwing money at it — and if you had plenty of money — then it wasn’t much of a problem. Here, in this moment, it would be the easiest — and safest — action. Buy the fellow off. No muss, no fuss.

But, of course, blackmailers, once you caved in, tended to be greedy. Locke had known a few such men in his former profession, men who slept with married women, then made them pay and pay to keep it secret. More bad business.

Locke might not be in this country but a few more days. Then again, he might be here for weeks, depending on several factors, and if it was this easy for Collins to collect money, he would almost certainly return for more. Even that wasn’t necessarily a big problem in itself — the man was greedy, but small-minded. Five figures was essentially pocket change given the scope of the operation Locke and Wu had begun.

No, the real problem was that Collins, who’d been bought, had not stayed bought. True, it was hard to ask for the information he wanted without opening himself to risk, but any further down this road might put the entire plan in jeopardy. It would not do for the United States Homeland Security to be looking at him as a possible terrorist. They had the power to grab him up and lock him away, and while he might eventually get free, he had no desire whatsoever to have to deal with that.

No. Mr. Collins here had made a big mistake.

If there was one thing Locke knew how to do well, it was to massage an ego.

“All right,” Locke said. “You got me. I’ll get the money.”

“You have that kind of cash here?”

“In my suitcase, in the closet there. I have about twenty-five thousand.” Locke stood.

The flare of greed in the man’s eyes almost made Locke laugh. He stood.

So did Collins. “No, I’ll get it. I wouldn’t want you maybe finding a gun in that case next to the money.”

“I don’t own a gun.” True enough.

“All the same.”

“Fine. You’ll need a key to open the suitcase. May I?”

Collins nodded. “Carefully.”

The luggage was closed, but not locked — these days, too many airports would just break into cases if they were— and Locke didn’t even have keys to his suitcases. But he withdrew the keys to the rental car from his pocket slowly and extended them toward Collins. He took a step. Another.

Collins put his own free hand out to collect the keys.

Locke gently tossed them at the man, aiming to Collins’s right. With the gun in that hand, Collins couldn’t use it to catch the keys, and the angle was awkward for him to use his left hand, though he tried. It turned him slightly, so the gun swung to his right and toward the floor, where the missed keys fell.

Locke was maybe seven feet away. He took two fast steps and kicked Collins in the groin.

“Uhh—!” Collins grunted and bent over, suddenly in great pain.

Before he could slip the gun’s safety off and get the pistol aimed, Locke grabbed the man’s head with both hands and twisted sharply, pulling up at the same time. That was the trick — one or the other wouldn’t do it, chiropractors twisted necks all the time and made people feel better, but moving in two planes was risky—

Collins’s neck snapped. Locke let go, and the man collapsed, paralyzed. Locke squatted, put his hands around Collins’s throat, and squeezed. With his air shut off, it was only a matter of a couple of minutes until the man was dead.

Locke stood, feeling the flow of adrenaline ebb. His heart was still racing, his breathing fast, but it was over.

Locke saved by a lock. Ironic.

Now the problem was: How was he going to get rid of the body?

Wu did not consider himself a gambler. There were times when a man had to take risks — all life had risk — but he came to such times prepared to deal with them as best he could. A man who wagered much against the roll of a pair of dice or the fall of a marble onto a roulette wheel, unless he was rich and could afford to lose, was an idiot in Wu’s book.

Unless, of course, he knew the dice were loaded or the wheel rigged to pay off in his favor.

The line between shrewdness and idiocy was sometimes thin, but there was such a divider, and you wanted to be on the right side of it.

The slot machines’ noises were tiresome, but Wu continued to pull the handle of the one in front of him, feeding it from a credit card issued by the casino. The room smelled of stale cigarette smoke and perspiration, despite the air conditioners that filtered and cooled it. And maybe a little stink of desperation was mixed in. All around him, scores, maybe hundreds of people, were losing money they couldn’t afford to lose.

Wu wore civilian clothes. To a tourist, he’d be just another graying local pumping a slot machine.

Wu had more than one reason to be here, but the immediate one was the young Mr. Shing, who sat at a blackjack table with Mayli standing next to him, one hand on his shoulder. Shing was playing for small stakes, and was down a couple hundred. He had, of course, a system. Mayli had told him all about it, and for a man who thought himself as smart as Shing did, that was incredibly stupid.

The only way to beat the house was to be some kind of savant who could count cards in your head. Since the casino used multiple decks, this was more than a little difficult, and even if you could track every card played accurately and bet accordingly, all you did was shift the odds a little bit in your favor. Play for five hours at a time, and with good counting skills, you could win six times out of ten. Not a major killing without a lot of work, but a slow and steady income.

Of course, the best dealers at most casinos also knew how to count cards, and if they saw that a player had an increased chance of winning, they could shuffle up and kill that advantage.

And then there were ways to cheat outright.

A pair of glasses with small television cameras built into them, to send images via radio or cell phone to a partner who had a computer figuring the odds with each hand. Most casinos now ran wideband jammers in their gambling rooms, killing transmitters or receivers, and they had infrared detectors to catch those using line-of-sight IR devices.

Wu knew there were small personal computers you could hide in a pocket that would keep track of the cards and offer advice on amounts to bet. For four or five thousand dollars U.S., you could get one of these, and increase your odds from winning six out of ten sessions to maybe seven or eight. The casinos knew about these devices, of course, and some of them had scanners that would spot them, even in this day of so many personal electronics — phones, personal assistants, and the like.

If you got caught bringing a card computer or spyware into a casino, they’d just ask you to leave. If you got caught using these at the tables? That could get you beaten and left in an alley, and the local police would not be the least bit sympathetic.

Any way a man could think of cheating, the casinos had already seen it and twenty variations. And if you had a system and real money? They would send a chartered jet to pick you up and bring you.

His machine chortled and paid out fifty dollars in credit, and lights flashed and bells rang, to tell other patrons that winning was possible.

Wu smiled. He was slightly ahead and playing on the house’s money, not that it mattered. He was more interested in watching Shing and Mayli. He had no worry that the boy would spot him. Shing had never seen him out of uniform, and Wu would bet that the computer expert would walk right past him without noticing who he was. Too full of himself to pay attention to old men on stools playing slot machines.

Mayli would know him, of course. She had seen him out of uniform — out of clothes altogether — but if she did see him, nobody looking at her would mark it. She was a professional. She would know he wasn’t here just to play the slots, and she’d probably guess he was watching Shing. Or her. But she would not let on, not even a hint. She knew better.

Wu’s machine went crazy. The buzzer buzzed, bells rang, a bank of red and blue lights on top flashed in a rapid sequence.

What—?

He glanced at the screen, and saw that he had just won a five-thousand-dollar jackpot.

Around him, people looked at him, they smiled or frowned, some offering congratulations. Casino personnel headed toward him.

Wu frowned. He didn’t need this attention. He turned away from the blackjack tables to make sure his face wasn’t visible. Yes, Shing was full of his own ego, but walking past a loser and turning to notice a big winner were different things. Wu had no desire to explain anything to Shing he did not want the man to know.

Getting from Washington to Nebraska had been easy. Colonel Abe Kent had found a military flight headed that way and got himself invited on board. Getting back, however, was proving more of a challenge.

It turned out there wasn’t a military flight from Nebraska heading toward Washington/Quantico until Sunday around noon. On top of that, to catch the first available flight he would have to drive to Offutt AFB. Though fairly close, it certainly wasn’t walking distance, so he rented a motel room on the highway to Omaha, and went there after the classical guitar competition was done.

Just after midnight, he was lying on the bed staring at the open closet. In the alcove, next to his git’n’go travel bag, was another case — one he hadn’t brought with him from Quantico.

He recalled the evening as he lay there. Any of the four finalists had been professional enough to make a living at it, from what Kent could tell — and the guy who had won was maybe not quite as technically perfect as the one who came in second, but he had a more intense connection with his instrument and the audience. Kept his eyes closed most of the time, and given the complex pieces and fingerings, that impressed Kent. Plus, he just seemed to get into the music more than the others.

It was also interesting in that the contestants had played without any kind of amplification, at a university theater with maybe three hundred people watching. They simply came out onto the stage, sat on a piano bench, and propped one foot up on a little footstool. One guy had used a plain wooden chair, and had some kind of prop stuck to his guitar that kept the neck angled up.

You could have heard a pin drop just before the players got started, the quietest theater Kent could remember being in, and despite the size of the theater, which could probably hold twice as many people as were there, the nylon-stringed guitars had enough volume to carry all the way to the rear seats, which is where he’d sat, looking for Natadze.

Kent hadn’t seen him, but he had heard the music just fine.

The luthier displays afterward were also impressive. Objects of art, most of them, guitars that looked great and made sweet music — when somebody else picked them up and played them. Kent’s musical talent was zero, except that he liked to listen to all kinds — from classical to jazz to rock to country, whatever — if it was done well.

The hunt for Natadze had come up empty. The former hit man for Cox hadn’t shown up looking for a new guitar. Kent would have spotted him, even if he’d changed his appearance, he was sure of that.

Well. It had been a remote possibility at best.

He had talked to Otto Bergman, once the makers had started packing their stuff away to leave. He’d identified himself, and told the man why he was there. Bergman, who was sixty-something, white-haired, wrinkled, and tanned more than Kent would have thought a guitar-builder would be, had pointed out the very instrument that Natadze had ordered.

“I don’t have that many at any given time,” the man had said. “And since that one seemed destined to stay at my shop forever, I figured I might as well get some use out of it. It belongs to Net Force — you could take it with you, if you wish. It’s just taking up space at my place, and if your man was going to try and get it, he would have done so by now.”

The idea of hauling an eight-thousand-dollar guitar across country rattling around in the back of a C-130 didn’t appeal to Kent. He might hitch a ride on something a little more upscale, a C-40 or maybe even a C-12 or C-21, and that would be more like flying commercial, but still.

As if the man could read his thoughts, Bergman had said, “I outfit my guitars with Josey Herumin cases, Colonel. They are made of carbon fiber and Kevlar, custom-fitted. Josey gives me a deal on them because I buy five or six a year, and they add eight hundred dollars to the price of the guitar. You could drive a truck over one of them and it wouldn’t hurt the guitar inside. I have a picture of a Toyota pickup with one of the front wheels resting on a Herumin case, and tire doesn’t even dent it.”

“How do you know I’m really from Net Force and not some con man trying to steal one of your instruments?”

“How would you know I have one belonging to Net Force? I didn’t tell anybody, and I’m assuming they didn’t, so if you know, either you are with them or a very clever thief.” He paused, and looked at Kent intently. “You aren’t a crook, are you?”

“No.”

“Good enough for me. Anyway, I’ve been paid for it. Wouldn’t cost me a thing if you swiped it.” He grinned, then, his face softening. “Besides, you’d be the guy who has to deal with Net Force.”

Which was how Kent came to have a very expensive classical guitar in the closet of his motel room, inside a black case you could use for stopping bullets.

He had a paperback book he’d picked up at the airport, one of those military history things done by some big-name writer and a former general, and he read for thirty or forty minutes before he turned off the light and went to sleep.

Kent came awake in an instant. He’d heard something, some noise in the room with him that ought not to be there.

His side arm was on the floor next to the bed and he reached down and pulled it from the holster. He thumbed the safety off and cocked it. That sound seemed very loud. There was a small flashlight on the bedside table, a butt-button job he carried when he traveled, in case a fire or some other disaster cut the power. He grabbed the light, then carefully rolled over the bed and onto the floor to his left, away from the front door. He crossed wrists so that the light and the gun’s muzzle were aimed in the same direction, then he thumbed the light button on.

He did a fast sweep of the room with the light. Nobody there.

The little metal safety loop-latch on the door was still in place — nobody had come or gone that way.

He came up to a low crouch and worked his way to the bathroom.

Nobody in there, either.

He straightened up. Must have been something outside that sounded closer than it was. He switched on the overhead light.

He was only a meter or so away from the closet, and there, he saw two things immediately:

The guitar case was gone.

There was a stack of hundred-dollar bills on the floor where the case had been.

He knew immediately what had happened.

He ran to the door. He flicked off the safety loop and unlocked the door, jerked it wide, jumped outside and dropped low, and spun three-sixty as he looked for a target—

Nothing—

He was in his skivvies, with a pistol in his hand, and fortunately, at three in the morning, no civilians were standing around in the parking lot to have heart attacks when they saw him. He came up from his crouch, all alone.

Natadze!

The bastard had come into his room—had to be through the bathroom window — taken the guitar, and left what Kent was sure was going to be five thousand dollars in its place.

Son of a bitch!

After he hurriedly got dressed, Kent searched the parking lot and the area around it. Natadze wasn’t there.

Sure enough, his room’s bathroom window had been the point of entry — there were tool marks on the frame, where somebody had forced the sliding glass panel open, and what he took to be shoe heel or sole scuffs on the painted wall.

The guy had balls, no question. To break into his room, take the guitar, and then pay for the sucker? That was nervy.

But maybe worse was, Natadze had spotted him, figured out who he was and what he was doing, and managed to tail him — without Kent having a clue. That really galled.

Of course, Kent should have considered that if he would recognize Natadze at first sight, then Natadze might know him as well. Back when they’d been after Cox, Natadze could have seen him. Or maybe just found an image of Kent somewhere — a lot of Net Force information was available to the public, and certainly Kent’s appointment to head the military wing hadn’t been any kind of state secret. Natadze could have found that out easily enough.

Well, that didn’t really matter. What did matter was that the guy had been within a couple meters of Kent while he snored away. If Natadze had wanted to, he could have just as easily shot Kent dead as not, and that made him feel worse still.

Why hadn’t Natadze shot him? Why had he left the money? What kind of man was he, to do that?

Despite his anger, Kent felt a grudging admiration building for the guy. He had made a couple of big points: He hadn’t stolen the guitar, and he could have iced Kent, but had chosen to let him live.

Had to give the man credit for style.

But that wouldn’t slow Kent from trying to find him.

There were two security cams at the motel. One was inside the lobby, set to scan anybody approaching, or at the front desk; the other cam watched the parking lot. Kent waved his ID, made some vague threats about Homeland Security, and the night clerk was only too happy to let him view the recorder.

Natadze wasn’t on the hard disk. There was a good shot of Kent twirling around in his underwear, waving his gun, though.

If Natadze had a car, he hadn’t pulled it into the lot, so he was thinking ahead.

Half a step ahead, just like before.

For a few seconds, Kent considered calling the state police and trying to set up roadblocks. But what information did he have to give them? Natadze could have changed his looks entirely — hair color and style, could have grown a beard, gotten colored contact lenses, maybe even had plastic surgery.

He didn’t know what the fugitive would be driving, wearing, anything. The only certain identification would be the guitar, but Natadze could hide that — under a blanket on the floor, in the trunk, anywhere. Was Kent going to ask the state police to stop and search every car with a man alone? Who was even to say he was alone? He could have a girlfriend, a confederate; for that matter, he might be on a bus or a train by now.

Too many variables, not enough information.

So close. But he might as well have been on the moon, for all the good it did Kent.