Breaking point - By Tom Clancy & Steve Perry & Steve Pieczenik Page 0,97

buying. The Chinese would very much like to speak to anybody connected to the deal. Once they found out Morrison was dead, they’d really have their underwear in a wad. Ventura would be at the top of their list of people to see.

The feds would have dropped their surveillance of Morrison’s house as soon as they realized what had happened to him—dead men didn’t move around a lot on their own, and the only way he’d be coming home would be in a box. Ventura’s team was, of course, long gone, pulled off as soon as he’d realized the man he’d shot in Alaska was a marshal and not a Chinese agent, and that more feds would thus be coming to have a little chat with Morrison’s spouse. He hadn’t told his client, who thought his young trophy wife was protected—no point in giving him anything else to worry about.

The feds would probably want to have a few more chats with the widow Morrison, and certainly the Chinese would pay the young lady a visit, but since she didn’t know anything, she couldn’t tell either side anything. She might be joining her late husband by the time the Chinese figured that out, but that wasn’t his problem—as long as he wasn’t there when the Yellow Peril came to call.

The Yellow Peril. He smiled. He wasn’t a racist. Sure, he played that card for people like Bull Smith, to allow them to believe he was simpatico with their beliefs, but he didn’t care one way or another about somebody’s skin color or gender. He’d worked with people of every race, male and female, and the single criterion that mattered to him was how well they could do the job. If you could pull the trigger when it came to that, and hit your mark, you could be a green hermaphrodite with purple stripes for all he cared. He’d learned the term “Yellow Peril” from the old Fu Manchu books, material that had been written in an age where racism was the default belief and nobody thought much about it.

Normally for this kind of work Ventura would have wanted to take his time. He’d get to know the territory, learn the patterns, who went where, when, and how, and not move until he had everything pinned down. The more you knew, the fewer chances for surprises. He didn’t have that luxury now. He needed to move quickly, get his business done, and leave this behind him. He had his money cleared, clean IDs, and safe places where he could hide until he had a chance to work out his longer-term plans. Being in the moment didn’t mean you couldn’t think about the future; it merely meant you didn’t live in the future.

He was, he figured, in a fairly good position. Still there was that nagging uneasiness, that sense of being a bug on a slide. As if a giant eye could appear in the microscope at any time, staring down at him. He did not like the feeling.

Well. You did the best you could, and that was that; nothing else mattered.

They were still an hour or more away from SeaTac. He’d get some rest. It might be a while before he had another chance. He took a series of slow, deep breaths.

In three minutes. he was asleep.

35

Quantico, Virginia

Toni went to the small gym to work off the tension and anger she felt. There was a guy in steel-rimmed glasses, a T-shirt, and bike shorts doing hatha yoga in the corner, otherwise the place was empty. She hurried through her own stretching routine, bowed in, and began practicing djurus, working the triangle, the tiga. Half an hour later, when she was done, she started footwork exercises on the square, langkas on the sliwa.

The moves were there, automatic after so many years, but her mind was elsewhere.

Alex was upset with her, that was obvious. Well, what had she expected? That he would smile and pat her on the head and offer his congratulations? She tried to see it from his viewpoint, but she knew she couldn’t have it both ways, not this time. This was the best thing. Working for him had become a sore point even before they had gone to London; he wasn’t treating her like he did the other members of the Net Force team, he was shielding her, and she didn’t want that, not in the work. So, okay, there was going to be an uncomfortable period while he adjusted