State of War

35

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.

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…

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?”

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.”

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.”

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.

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.

“Where were they?”

“In the bathroom. On the back of the toilet.”

Toni shook her head. “How’d they get there?”

He shrugged. “Got me. I just find them, I don’t explain them.”

Toni grinned. “The boy was up half the night,” she said. “He’ll probably sleep late.”

That was an understatement. Little Alex had a nightmare that woke him up at midnight, and he’d spent the next two hours squirming on the bed between Toni and Alex, putting his cold little feet on her and pushing, which hadn’t done her sleep any good, either. When he had finally gotten back to sleep, Alex had carried him to his own bed. By then, it must have been two thirty or three A.M.

Yeah, he’d sleep until nine or ten. Toni wished she could stay in bed a couple more hours herself. They never told you that when you had a baby, you’d be in sleep-deficit for the next two or three years…

“Okay, I’m gone. Are you going to need a ride home?”

“No, ma’am. My mom is picking me up. I’ve got shooting club practice tonight. My pop got me a new pistol, and I get to try it out this evening.”

“Great. Okay. I’ll be back around one. Anything you need…”

“Yes, ma’am. I expect I can still operate the phone.” He grinned.

She returned the smile as she headed for the door. He was really a sweet kid. John and Nadine Howard had done a good job. She’d be sure to tell them that the next time she saw either of them.

She was in the car and rolling two minutes later, her mind already on the day’s work. The FBI had been pleased enough with the information she and Jay had developed on Marcus Boudreaux, and while they hadn’t apprehended him yet, they were working on it.

They hadn’t mentioned anything about Ames yet. All they had so far was the coincidence of his name showing up at a shooting club where Marcus Boudreaux was a member, and the word of a computer hacker. For just about anyone else, that would have been enough. But not for Mitchell Ames. Not for a high-level, almost celebrity-status attorney. And certainly not for a high-level, celebrity attorney who was currently suing Net Force.

No, they had to have everything nailed down perfectly before they even breathed a word about Ames.

In the meantime, Jay was digging into Ames’s personal life like a rabid steam shovel, looking for any hint of a connection with Boudreaux.

On a more personal front, Guru would be home tomorrow, she’d said. Her great-grandson was out of the woods, well enough so they had sent him home from the hospital. It was a hot, but not-too-smoggy sunny day.

Things were going along pretty well at the moment, she had to admit. But she couldn’t wait to get in to work.

Michaels leaned back in his chair and nodded at John Howard. “So that’s the situation, General.”

Howard nodded. “You really think Ames is involved in this?”

“I’m sure of it.”

Howard chuckled. “Wouldn’t that be something, Commander? Busting the guy suing you?”

Alex grinned. “I would think it would go a long way to making his case look bad to a jury. A lawyer with his own hit man?”

“I thought they all had hit men,” Howard said.

Michaels laughed.

“Well, I suppose there won’t be anything for me to do, once we’re ready to go with this,” Howard said. “I’d guess the New York police would frown on a Net Force team storming a Park penthouse.”

“Probably,” Michaels agreed.

Howard left, and Michaels took another moment to relish the idea of sending a crooked lawyer to jail. Even if it turned out he wasn’t guilty, it was a nice fantasy for a summer morning…