Breaking point - By Tom Clancy & Steve Perry & Steve Pieczenik Page 0,75

marshals went down, too.”

“No shit?”

“I don’t think they know who we are. And they can’t know where we went.”

Smith nodded. “Well. Revolution might be starting sooner than expected. We’re ready, if it comes to that.”

“I don’t believe it will, General, but I had to bring you up to speed.”

“I appreciate it, Colonel. Why don’t y’all come on in and have a beer? Got barbecued pork cooking.”

“That sounds great,” Ventura said.

After Smith was out of earshot, Morrison, mindful of listening devices, said, “Good that you updated the general.” What he meant was “Why the hell did you tell him?”

Ventura’s answer also carried a hidden meaning: He said, “I expect the general’s own intel sources would have gotten it in short order anyhow.” And what Morrison heard was “He needed to hear it from us, just in case he ever got a clue.”

“What now?” Morrison asked.

“We wait for our friends to get in touch with us as to the transfers on both sides of the negotiation. Since nobody trusts anybody—nor should they—certain safeguards must be put into effect. We’ll have to work those out.”

“They won’t come here?”

“Wishful thinking, Doctor. No, they’ll want a place of their choosing. They’ll settle for one of our choosing, but it’ll have to be a lot more neutral than an armed camp where the shape of their eyes and sallow skin color might get them shot, just for the fun of it. Wouldn’t you?”

“I suppose so.”

“You suppose correctly. This is where it really gets tricky.”

Morrison stared at him.

Ventura chuckled. “We’re in the tiger’s cage, and he’s not made of paper. Any mistakes now, and he eats us. Speaking of which, shall we try some of that barbecue? I’m starving.”

Morrison shook his head. The last thing he felt like doing was eating.

27

Tuesday, June 14th

Quantico, Virginia

On the phone, Michaels realized he was all knotted up as he sat hunched forward in his office chair. He tried to relax. Probably an oxymoron, that, trying to relax. Nonetheless, he took a deep breath and let it out slowly, and allowed his shoulders to slump with his exhalation. It helped a little. He said, “So what’s your take on it, John?”

Howard didn’t sound as if he had been shot and almost killed only hours ago. He said, “Morrison is our boy. No reason for him to resist the marshals otherwise, and damned sure no reason for him to have shooters on hand to resist with. If we can keep him away from HAARP or any of the other transmitters like it, we can stop the attacks.”

Michaels asked the question that had been bothering him. “Why would he do this? Drive people to a killing madness?”

There was a pause. “I don’t know. Maybe he’s crazy himself.”

Michaels sighed. The man hadn’t seemed crazy when he’d been sitting right here in this office, talking about this stuff. In retrospect, it was obvious that Morrison had been covering his ass, trying to misdirect Net Force, and except for Jay’s talking to a security guard, he’d done a good job of it. So he wasn’t that crazy. He’d known they might come looking for him, known it and thought to head it off in advance. Didn’t sound crazy.

Why had he done it? To see if he could? Once would have proven that, twice made it certain. Three times was overkill. If he had planned on extortion, he’d screwed up—they knew who he was, and had an idea of what it was he had done, if not actually how he’d pulled it off, so any threat he had in mind was dead—especially since he no longer had the tools to do it at his disposal. This wasn’t something you could cobble together with a kit from RadioShack.

So far, Jay hadn’t been able to find anything else that directly connected Morrison to the events in China or Portland. Hell, if he hadn’t come in, Net Force wouldn’t have had a clue about any of this. Maybe the guy was too smart for his own good. What he’d overlooked had been so simple, so basic, that it seemed incredibly stupid on the face of it. Like that mission to Mars a dozen years or so ago where the scientists had mixed up English measures with metric and plowed the little vessel right into the surface of the planet at speed because the calculations had been so basic nobody had even thought about them. Overlooking something as simple as a security guard’s log was the kind of thing a scientist just