Breaking point - By Tom Clancy & Steve Perry & Steve Pieczenik Page 0,51

us—you and me—does it?”

Ventura shrugged. “Everybody has to be someplace. One is as good as another.”

“I suppose.” Within the tiny shrug of indifference, there was a flash of something on Wu’s face, something cold and ugly, just a fast hint, and Ventura had to fight the urge to pull the trigger and cook the little man right here and right now.

No, he didn’t look like much, but Ventura had a feeling deep in his gut that Chilly Wu here would be a formidable opponent in any kind of a fight. With any luck, he wouldn’t have to find out. If he did, it was going to end in blood, he was sure. He hoped it wouldn’t be his own.

18

Vermillion River, Lafayette, Louisiana

Jay had to smile at the imagery the boss enjoyed. He had a thing for the swamps—a couple of times Jay had gone with Michaels’s default scenarios and they had been boats on bayous, like that. They weren’t bad, better than a lot of off-the-shelf stuff, but not as textured as Jay normally liked to create. He’d added in some pretty neat stuff for this setting, at least he thought so, even if Michaels might not notice. Of course, the boss was management, and VR programming wasn’t his real strength.

As he motored along the narrow river in the little outboard-rigged flat-bottomed skiff, or whatever they called them down in Cajun country, Jay decided to stay with this sequence. He had a lot of work to do—places to go, things to look for—and it was easier to use this than to create a new ersatz, so he cruised past the Spanish moss and the alligator and right on up to the ... Dewdrop Inn.

That name was worth another smile.

Carrying a small satchel, Jay approached the front door. There was a raggy, bearded yehaw kinda guy in nothing but overalls leaning against the door, and Jay walked right up to him, smiling. Yehaw, so the joke went, was the kinda guy whose father might also be his brother or his uncle.

“Ain’t open,” the man said.

“I know. I just wanted to let you know that somebody is around back trying to break in.”

It took a second or three for it to register—probably because Yehaw had some kind of dinosaur-like sub-brain down in his nether regions that had to relay the thought back and forth a few times before he got it.

Yehaw frowned, pushed off the wall, and lumbered away, heading for the back door.

Jay waited until he was out of sight, then slipped the lock on the front door with a thin piece of steel, stepped inside, and relocked the door behind him.

The door guard—in reality a fire wall program for the HAARP computer system to stop outside access—was strong, but not very bright. The guard would amble around back, not see anybody trying to break in, then return to his post in the front. He’d remember that Jay had approached, if anybody asked, but since Jay wouldn’t be visible, the guard wouldn’t worry about him. He’d never think to look inside; that would be beyond his capabilities.

That was the problem with software. Hardware, too. People didn’t upgrade for all kinds of different reasons, and it always cost them something. Shoot, the military arm of Net Force still had—and still used—some subgigabyte-RAM

tactical computers when there were systems with ten or fifteen times that much power you could buy off a department store shelf! Might as well be steam-powered. The honchos-military would mumble, and say that was all they needed to run their tried-and-true programs; they were dependable, and shockproof, why bother going for more power with some untested unit or software that might crap out when they really couldn’t afford that? Shortsighted of them, Jay thought, but then he wasn’t interested in being anywhere except on the cutting edge. A lot of people still thought slow and steady won the race, when fast and steady was much better.

Well, that was not his problem at the moment.

Jay found the lockbox under the bar that the boss’s report had mentioned. He removed a pair of latex gloves from his satchel, slipped them on, and bent to examine the box. He saw the scratches showing that the padlock had been tampered with. Humming to himself, Jay removed a small aerosol container from the satchel, aimed it at the lock, then sprayed it with a fine mist of dry powder. He blew the excess dust off, then used a second aerosol can on the lock, this