Breaking point - By Tom Clancy & Steve Perry & Steve Pieczenik Page 0,89
In a few minutes, an agent for the Chinese would arrive—already some of his people were probably lined up outside the theater waiting to get in—and Morrison was going to have to sit and negotiate a deal with the man who called himself Chilly Wu.
Morrison stood there for what seemed like a long time, staring into the mirror, but not really seeing himself any longer.
Ventura came around the comer behind him, and Morrison jumped.
“Wu just pulled up. You ready?”
“I—Yes, as ready as I can be.”
“Don’t worry. My man in the projection booth has an Anschutz Biathlon rifle that will be lined up on the back of Wu’s head the second he takes his seat. The shooter can hit a quarter ten for ten at that distance. Every one of Wu’s people will have somebody watching him. We have this covered.”
Despite just washing out his mouth, it was dry again. “Listen,” he said, “there’s something I want you to know. I have a hidden copy of the data. If something happens to me, I want you to have it. Sell it, give it away, whatever you want, I don’t care, but—sell it to anybody but the Chinese.”
“Nothing is going to happen to you.”
“I believe you. But just in case. This is the only original research I’ve ever done that amounted to anything. It’s important work. I don’t want to see it lost.”
“If it makes you feel better, fine. I’ll see that it gets to a good home.”
“It’s not here,” he said. “The copy.”
“All right. Where is it?”
Morrison told him. When he was done, Ventura smiled. “That’s pretty clever.”
“Maybe the Pakistanis, they hate the Chinese. They’d find a use for it.”
“This is all moot. I can guarantee you, the Chinese will not be walking out of this theater with you as their hostage. At the first sign of trouble they will all become past tense. This is what I do, Patrick.”
The use of his first name rattled him even more. Morrison
took a ragged breath, let it out, then took a larger one and held it for a moment. Deep breaths. Calm down. “All right.”
The movie wasn’t scheduled to start for another thirty minutes—but it was definitely show time.
32
Wednesday, June 15th
Quantico, Virginia
Toni had planned to sit down and tell Alex what she felt, to apologize for losing her temper, and to try to get him to see her side of things.
It seemed like it would work out, because the first thing he said was “Listen, I’m sorry about losing my temper.”
That was a great start. She said, “Me, too.”
But that was as far as it got. Alex’s secretary opened the conference room’s door and said, “Commander, we just got a distress call from Jay Gridley’s virgil.”
“What?”
“District police are on the way. Here is the location.”
Alex came to his feet.
Toni said, “I saw Jay earlier, he was here—”
“He went into town,” Alex said. He headed for the door in a hurry. To his secretary, he said, “Get the helicopter warmed up and get the GPS location to the pilot. I want to be in the air in three minutes.”
“Alex?”
“This place is falling apart,” he said. “Nothing is going right!” He looked at her. “You coming?”
She nodded.
Washington, D.C.
“Hit him again,” Fiscus said.
Rudy nodded. He threw a short uppercut that slammed into Jay’s belly like a steel brick.
Jay doubled over, the pain overwhelming. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see for the tears clouding his vision, couldn’t believe how much it hurt! He would have fallen if Vic hadn’t been standing behind him, holding him up, his huge paws meaty clamps on Jay’s upper arms.
Nothing in VR had ever come close to this, nothing.
“Catch your breath, Mr. Net Force Agent, and think about it a second.”
Jay managed to breathe again after a few seconds. He felt like puking, the urge was almost impossible to resist.
“You feel better? Good. Now tell me—why are you looking for K.S.?”
How long had he been here? It felt like years, but it couldn’t have been more than a couple of minutes. He’d tried to stall them, but Fiscus wasn’t buying it, and after the second punch, Jay didn’t know how much longer he could hold out. One more, maybe.
“Fuck you.”
“You’re not my type, but maybe Rudy will take you up on that later, hey? Boys, girls, sheep, cows—doesn’t matter to him. One more, Rudy.”
Jay went out with the third punch, at least partially. The intense flash of pain went from red to gray, and time seemed to ooze lazily, like tar on a