Breaking point - By Tom Clancy & Steve Perry & Steve Pieczenik Page 0,59
men of wealth and power who had to go away for whatever reason, and they survived twenty, thirty, fifty years, some of them. Some of the ones who are very careful are likely still out there. The careless are for sure dead.”
Morrison stared at the button, and a realization solidified in his belly like a lump of cold steel. He said, “It’s already too late to turn back, isn’t it?”
Ventura gave him a thin smile. “Truth? Yes.”
Morrison took a deep breath. “Fuck it, then.”
He reached out and pushed the button.
PART TWO
All Problems are Personal
21
Sunday, June 12th
Washington, D.C.
At home, Jay came out of VR, took a deep breath, and removed his headset and gloves. It had been a milk run, a visit to a library, and no matter how skilled you were in creating scenarios, sooner or later, reading a pile of material came down to reading a pile of material.
He had all he could find on Dr. Patrick Morrison, and while he had skimmed it as it was being copied, he hadn’t begun to take it all in. From what he’d gleaned so far, the guy was legit enough. Degrees, work experience, marriages, the usual living-life stuff. No trouble with the law, no beefs at work, pretty much Mr. Dull N. Boring right down the line.
The only blot on an otherwise white-bread career was at the job he’d had before going to work for HAARP. He’d been doing some kind of behavioral modification experiments on chimps, working with extremely low-frequency radiation, a post-doc research project at Johns Hopkins, and it had apparently petered out. He failed to get the results for which he had been looking. His grant, as the report mildly and politely put it, had not been renewed, and he’d been out of a job.
A small red flag went up in Jay’s mind, but when he thought about it, it wasn’t that big a deal. Yeah, the guy was into ELF stuff, but that’s what a lot of HAARP was about. If you were looking for a plumber, you didn’t hire a cabdriver, now did you?
“All work and no play make Jay a dull boy,” Soji said.
He smiled up at her. She stood there in a bathrobe. “Look who’s talking. You’ve been so deep into the web I haven’t been able to see anything but your back for days.”
“Want to see something else?” She undid the bathrobe and held it open.
“Oh, mama! Come here!”
Before she could move, however, the phone played the opening strains of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. Unfortunately, his phone was programmed so it played that particular tune only if the call was IDed as coming from Net Force HQ or Alex Michaels’s virgil.
“Shit,” he said.
Soji closed her robe and belted it shut. “He who hesitates stays horny,” she said.
“Hey, Boss,” Jay said.
“Better get to the office, Jay,” Michaels said. “There’s been another case of collective madness.”
“In China?”
“No,” Michaels said. His voice was grim. “Closer than that.”
Sunday, June 12th
Portland, Oregon
John Howard watched as his son came up to make his throw. The boy stopped, rubbed his fingers back and forth, and allowed some glittery dust to fall to check wind direction. He held a stopwatch in one hand and his boomerang in the other. The judges waved Tyrone into the circle.
Howard felt more tense than he’d thought he would. It was a big deal to Tyrone, of course, but it was just a game, after all. No reason to be digging his fingernails into his palms.
Off to one side and behind Tyrone, Little Nadine stood, waiting for her turn to compete. She was three contestants behind Tyrone, so she’d know what time she had to beat. So far, the times hadn’t been very good, according to Tyrone, and both kids had done better in practice.
The judge nearest the circle held up his hand in a halt sign, then called another judge over for some kind of consultation.
“Come on, come on!” Howard said. “Let the boy throw before his arm gets cold!”
Next to him, his wife said, “Asshole.”
He looked at her. “You talkin’ to me?”
“Not particularly, I was referring to the judge, but if the shoe fits ...”
That pissed him off. What was she on the rag about now? He hadn’t done anything. He glared at her. She glared right back.
Tyrone stood there for another few seconds, then walked to where the judges were. Howard couldn’t hear what his boy had to say, but apparently the judges really didn’t like it.