Changing of the Guard (18 page)

He wouldn’t be able to objectively monitor what state of being he was in precisely, but gauging the level at which he could control his environment would give him a clue.

Jay considered several other benchmarks he could use to test his consciousness level. If his memory got markedly better, he might be in a Theta-wave state. If he suddenly felt more at ease and relaxed, he’d be in an Alpha-wave state. And when things got the most active, and he felt more in
control
, he’d have moved to Beta.

Jay relaxed on the sand, picturing it warmer, heated by the sun, and then even hotter. Things moved faster in a hot environment, so he figured that might help. If his real body got warmer as well, it might physiologically help his brain with improved blood flow, too.

With his eyes closed, he thought of heat, a vein of lava running under the sand. He felt warmer and imagined sweat rolling off himself.

At the same time, he began to think of his brain as a spinning top. He pictured it, gray and twisted, uncoiling and spinning faster and faster until it was a huge ring, the neurons more and more excited.

He remembered what he’d been doing just before the accident. He’d been thinking of flowers for Saji, to congratulate her about the news. Pink was one of her favorite colors, and he’d been debating whether or not he should go with a bouquet or something more symbolic, like three flowers to represent himself, her, and the baby.

And the car had come rolling at him, fast.

His brain twirled, as if in a centrifuge, the gray matter pressed up against the side. He pictured the centrifuge itself set inside an amusement park ride, spinning ever faster, wheels within wheels. The lava under him had moved closer to the surface, and he was baking now, his body on fire as he sped up.

A wave of knowledge hit him, and he had ideas, all kinds of them.

People in this state of mind were supposed to suddenly gain great insight as their thoughts passed from the seven-to eight-hertz range. He had a flash of memory about the Schumann resonance, the resonant frequency of the ionosphere, 7.5 hertz and multiples. In a flash of inspiration he saw another direction to go.

He dropped the heat and spinning visualizations and imagined himself in a bed. The images were coming faster now, and more clearly. It was like stepping from a black and white world into color. Everything was more intense.

Jay pictured the bed, the room quiet, made up of the same nondescript decor and hardware found in hospitals all across the nation. He could almost hear a beeping sound, and he imagined it might be an EKG keeping track of his heart. He tried to imagine the feel of the cool sheets on his skin, the whisper of an air conditioner nearby, the click of heels on a floor.

“He’s coming around!”

“The monitor’s going crazy!”

Voices! He heard voices!

But, in that moment, the voices faded, and he felt a heaviness wash over him. A moment later, he was back on the beach, sun shining mercilessly, sand under his butt.

He cried out in anger, then calmed himself. He had made progress, he was sure of it. He had a goal now, a direction, and he was going to beat this thing. It was only a matter of time.

He was Jay Gridley. He was not going to roll over and give up.

No way.

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.

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.