Breaking point - By Tom Clancy & Steve Perry & Steve Pieczenik Page 0,57

Come and see me and we’ll discuss it.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

With that, the director was gone. Toni hooked the phone back into the belt of her jeans.

Alex turned away from the children and looked at her, lifting his eyebrows in question: Who was that?

Maybe it was selfish of her, but Toni didn’t want to kill the rest of the afternoon. If she told Alex it was the director, she’d have to explain the rest, he’d want to talk about it, and she just wasn’t up to that. She’d only been back with Alex for a couple of days, it didn’t feel as secure as once it had, and if he knew she was thinking about going over to the feeb shop, she was sure he would be upset. He might not say anything, he would cover up his feelings—he was good at that, covering up his feelings—and she just wasn’t ready to go down that road.

She slipped her hand around his arm. “Nothing important,” she said. “Come on, I want to see the Smith’s new Ancient Wheels exhibit.”

He smiled at her. “Sure.”

All right. It wasn’t a lie, if maybe not strictly true, but if anything came of it, she would tell him. Why bring it up and ruin the mood now, since it might not amount to anything anyhow? A conversation with the director was all it was.

As they passed the young parents and children, Alex grinned at the little girl, who had finally gotten tired and plopped upon the neatly clipped grass, where she sat quietly cooing.

“Ever think about having children?” Alex said.

Toni was caught flatfooted. She stopped, as if she had forgotten how to walk. She stared at him. Children? With Alex? Of course she had thought about it. Dreamed about it, even. But before she could gather herself enough to say anything, he shrugged.

“Just an idle thought,” he said.

20

Sunday, June 12th

Gakona, Alaska

No Chinese assassins materialized to try and intercept them as they drove from the old pipeline airstrip just north of Paxon toward Gakona. Ventura said it wasn’t likely, and he had ten of his people checking possible ambush sites along the route, plus cars in front and behind of theirs. The older man, Walker, drove again, with Morrison in the front and Ventura sitting in the back. “If anybody shows up, they’ll probably think I’m you, since the VIP usually rides in the back,” Ventura had explained.

“You think they’ll be here?”

“Oh, they are here, somewhere. I’m not sure they’ll try for you yet; they may be waiting for the test, to be certain you can do as you say before they get really serious.”

“You think once we’re inside the facility we’ll be safe?”

“No. I have a roster of the guards, and if any new faces show up, we’ll deal with that, but that fence and a few half-trained guys on patrol won’t stop somebody really determined to get inside. I’ll have my people watching the roads and the air, so if they show up in force we’ll know about it in time to haul ass. I’ve worked out a few escape routes from the facility.”

Again, Morrison was surprised at the man’s thoroughness. Everything he did seemed thought out to the last detail.

The trip was uneventful, however—if you didn’t count a small elk herd crossing the road—and within an hour they were inside the auxiliary trailer, warming up the system. As Morrison worked, Ventura prowled around like some kind of big cat—alert, watching, listening.

“About ready,” Morrison said. He picked up a dogeared phonebook-sized tome of locations by latitude and longitude and thumbed through it until he found the ones he wanted. There it was ... 45 degrees, 28 minutes, 24 seconds North; 122 degrees, 38 minutes, 39 seconds West ... Not the center of the city, but it would take in all of downtown on both sides of the river ...

Ventura nodded. “Okay.”

“It’ll have to run for a couple of hours to get the optimal effect. Not as long as it did in China, since the target is closer, and we lose less energy for the beam.”

“Fine.”

He looked at the control. Flip the cover up, push the button, and it was done. He could go eat or take a nap while it worked. “I feel kind of, I don’t know, awkward about this.”

“Why?”

“Well, the target being in the United States and all.”

“A pang of nationalism?”

“Maybe a little. I somehow didn’t think it was going to go like this.”

“That’s always the way. ‘No battle plan survives first contact with the