"Sir, if it's all the same to you, please call me Jo, or Winthrop. This rank business isn't necessary unless we're in the field."

"Fine, Jo. Might as well call me Alex, while we're at it. We're pretty informal around here."

"Yes, sir. Uh, I mean, right, Alex. So, what's up?"

He smiled at her and waved his hand over his computer controls.

Chapter Three.

Sat.u.r.day, December 18th, 7:50 a.m. Quantico, Virginia Colonel John Howard wore his old Gortex windbreaker, covering the S&W Model 66 .357 short-barreled revolver nestled in the Galco paddle holster just behind the point of his right hip. When he had occasion to carry while out of uniform, he preferred this kind of holster. It used a plastic paddle that slipped between the waistband and shirt, so he could put it on and remove it without having to take off his belt and thread it through the loops. It was convenient, and just about as concealable as a regular belt slide or pancake holster- Ten yards away, a mugger with a knife leaped out of the darkness and ran at him. The a.s.sa.s.sin was no more than two seconds away.

Howard shifted his hips slightly to the left, opening a gap between his jacket and body, and swept his right hand back and under the Gortex. He grabbed the wooden grips of the revolver, automatically unsnapping the thumb-break safety snap on the holster when he closed his hand. He pulled the Smith, thrust it toward the mugger as if punching him one-handed, and pulled the trigger. At this range, trying to line up the sights was too slow. Instead, you could use the whole gun silhouette to index the target.

Six feet in front of Howard the mugger stopped cold as the 91-grain Cor-Bon BeeSafe frangible bullet slammed into his center of ma.s.s at just under 1600 feet per second.

The second shot was a quarter second behind the first.

The mugger froze, and glowing red lights pulsed on his chest where the rounds impacted. Most people didn't realize just how fast a running man with a knife could move. Another half a second and the ersatz thug would have been all over him.

Howard glanced at the computer next to the shooting box. There was a small holoprojection of the mugger over the computer and stats under it. Elapsed time: 1.34 seconds from start to shot. Organ hit: heart. Estimated one-shot-stop percentage: 94. The revolver didn't hold as many rounds as an H&K Tactical pistol, but it was a kind of talisman for Howard, and he was more comfortable with it.

As he reholstered the gun, he noticed his right shoulder felt sore. Well, no, not so much sore as... tired somehow. After one draw? Seemed like he'd been tired a lot lately- "Not bad for an old man," Sergeant Julio Fernandez said. He was in the next shooting box at the indoor range, making a lot of smoke and noise with his beat-up old Army-issue Beretta 9mm.

"Reset," Howard said. He grinned.

The mugger vanished. Had it been a real attacker instead of a holoprojic target, the frangible bullets would have each dumped 550 foot-pounds of energy into the man and, because the rounds were designed to fragment on impact, would have shredded the attacker's heart into mush, and and they wouldn't have over-penetrated and gone on down the street to maybe kill some little old lady out walking her dog. This was a very important consideration in an urban scenario. Of course, frangible wasn't good for shooting through solid walls or car doors, but the next two rounds in the cylinder were standard jacketed hollowpoints that would do that just fine. If the mugger had been in a car, Howard could have cycled past the first two rounds, or, in a hurry, just pulled the trigger twice to get to the jacketed stuff. they wouldn't have over-penetrated and gone on down the street to maybe kill some little old lady out walking her dog. This was a very important consideration in an urban scenario. Of course, frangible wasn't good for shooting through solid walls or car doors, but the next two rounds in the cylinder were standard jacketed hollowpoints that would do that just fine. If the mugger had been in a car, Howard could have cycled past the first two rounds, or, in a hurry, just pulled the trigger twice to get to the jacketed stuff.

"Morning, gentlemen," he heard somebody say behind him. The wolf-ear headphones he wore amplified normal sounds, but cut out anything loud enough to damage his hearing. He turned.

It was his boss, Alexander Michaels.

"Commander. What brings you to the range on a Sat.u.r.day morning?"

Michaels patted the taser clipped to his belt on his right hip. "Requalification. Thought I'd come down when it wasn't too busy."

Howard gave him a small smile and shook his head.

"Not a fan of the kick taser, Colonel?" Michaels asked.

"No, sir, not really. If a situation is dangerous enough to require a weapon, then it ought to be a real weapon."

"I am given to understand that the taser has a ninety-percent one-shot-stop rate, whether it penetrates clothes or not. It will defeat standard Kevlar vests, and there aren't any bodies to clean up afterward."

Howard could almost hear Fernandez grin. "Sergeant, you have a comment?"

"Well, unless the guy you shoot has anything real flammable about his person, sir. Then he might just burst into flame. At which point your non-lethal weapon turns your guy into the Human Torch. It has happened a few times."

"The sergeant is correct. However, the biggest drawback, sir, is that you only get one shot," Howard added.

"Everybody is required to carry a spare reload or two. I'm told an expert can do that in about two seconds-snap off, snap on, be ready to fire again."

"In which time somebody just average with a handgun would have shot your taser expert four or five times. Or his buddy would have-if there is more than one of him. Sir."

Michaels grinned. "Well, you know how it is with us desk jockeys, Sarge. The weapon is more a formality than anything. We don't get out into the field that much."

"That's not what I hear, sir," Fernandez said.

Howard held his grin. Whatever Michaels said, he had faced an a.s.sa.s.sin who had snuck into HQ and he'd shot her dead using her own gun. That had earned him a bit of respect in a lot of opinions, including Howard's own.

"Besides, I have dedicated and trained men like you to do all my light fighting," Michaels said.

"Good thing," Fernandez said, but quietly enough so Michaels probably didn't catch it.

"I'll let you get back to your practice," Michaels said. "Have a good day, gentlemen." He walked to the end of the long row of shooting boxes and began to set up for his session.

Sarge shook his head, then looked at Howard. "Tasers, nightgowns, sticky foam, photon cannons, beanbag shooters, what are the feebs gonna come up with next? Sugar-and-spice spray? Flower-petal launchers? Seems like a lotta effort for not much gain."

"We live in politically correct times, Sergeant. Subgunning a mob is bad PR, even if all of the people in the mob are terrorists with pockets full of hand grenades. It looks bad on the evening news."

"Bleeding-heart liberals are gonna take all the fun out of being a soldier someday, sir."

"I expect they will, Sergeant."

"You know the definition of a conservative, sir?"

"I am afraid to ask."

"A liberal who's been mugged."

Howard grinned. "Light up your target, Sergeant, and let's see if you can shoot as well as you talk."

"Little side bet, Colonel?"

"I hate to take your money, but if you've got so much you can afford to lose it, you're on."

The two men laughed.

At the end of the row of shooting boxes, Michaels heard the colonel and sergeant laughing. Probably at him and his taser. Well, not everybody was a soldier. His father had been a career Army man and that had been enough to sour Michaels on it. He knew he could kill somebody, if it was self-defense, or to protect somebody he loved. He had done so when the a.s.sa.s.sin had slipped into Net Force HQ and used Toni to ambush him in the gym's locker room. He'd shot the woman known as the Selkie after she had shot him and tried to stab Toni. It was necessary, but it was not an experience he wanted to repeat.

He set his computer for a practice run on the taser qualification scenario, checked to make sure the spare compressed gas cartridge holder was on the left side of his belt, and then pulled the taser and inspected the weapon to make certain the cartridge in it was still active. It was. He reclipped it to his belt, took a deep breath, and blew it out. "Activate," he commanded the target computer. "Two to thirty seconds, random start."

The new-model taser was wireless. He wasn't sure he quite understood exactly how it worked, but supposedly the twin needles were essentially small but highly efficient capacitors. Powered by a simple nine-volt battery, each needle was slightly thicker than a pencil lead. The pair carried high-voltage, low-amperage charges, somewhere around a hundred thousand volts, and when they both struck a target, a circuit was completed. The compressed gas propellant-nitrogen or carbon dioxide, depending on the model-would spit the needles up to fifty feet with enough force to penetrate clothing. At normal combat range, about seven or eight yards, the weapon delivered a knockdown jolt virtually every time. There was a tiny, built-in laser. When you squeezed the handle, the little red dot from the laser showed you where the needles would bracket when they hit. If you missed, the backup feature was a pair of electrodes in the handle that would allow the taser to function as a stun gun-if the attacker got within range. What the device looked like was a long and skinny electric razor, or maybe one of the old Star Trek: Deep s.p.a.ce Nine Star Trek: Deep s.p.a.ce Nine phasers. phasers.

Operation was easy enough. You pointed the taser at a target, squeezed the handle, lined the laser's dot up, and thumbed the firing stud. If everything went right, half a second later your attacker was jittering on the floor in electrically induced convulsions, and any interest he might have had in harming you was the last thing on his mind. Recovery after a couple of minutes was virtually total, but you could do a lot in a couple of minutes to an a.s.sa.s.sin sprawled helplessly on his back.

Of course, such a device could be used by the bad guys too. To counter that, all tasers were required to carry taggants in their propellant, thousands of tiny bits of colored or clear plastic that would identify the registered buyer. There was no way to sweep all these tags up after a taser was fired- A mugger appeared and ran at Michaels. The mugger had a crowbar in one hand. He raised the bar of steel as he ran- Michaels pulled the taser from his belt, pointed it, and squeezed the handle. The little red dot danced up and down on the mugger's leg, but that didn't matter. Anywhere on the body was good. He thumbed the firing stud- A splash of yellow light flared on the mugger's leg, but he kept coming.

s.h.i.t-!

Michaels grabbed the taser's cartridge with his left hand, pressed the two b.u.t.tons that ejected it, fumbled for the spare cartridge, but it was too late. By the time he got the thing reloaded, the mugger was on him. A loud buzzer blared. The mugger froze.

d.a.m.n. He should have tried for the stun-gun backup.

The computer image to Michaels's left strobed the letters FTS-G in bright red. Failure to Stop-Gotcha. The tiny image of the mugger on the proj showed the reason why. The needles were designed to spread apart, to make the circuit's arc big enough to work. At the distance he'd fired, the leg hadn't been a good target. The left needle hit the mugger's thigh square on, but the right missile had been ten inches to the right-a clean miss. He must have jerked his hand when he touched the firing stud. It didn't take much to screw up the shot.

Had this been a real mugger, Michaels would have been looking at a crushed skull-unless Toni's silat silat instruction would have let him dance the crowbar and poke the guy with the stun-gun electrodes. And he wasn't good enough at that to trust it yet. instruction would have let him dance the crowbar and poke the guy with the stun-gun electrodes. And he wasn't good enough at that to trust it yet.

He shook his head in disgust. He picked up a spare cartridge from the supply on the table and put it into his belt holder. He reclipped the taser to his belt. "Reset," he told the computer. "Two to thirty seconds random start." He pointedly did not look at Howard and Fernandez. He knew they'd be smiling.

Sat.u.r.day, December 18th, 8:15 a.m. Washington, D.C Washington, D.C.

Toni sat on the lounger her oldest brother, Junior, had given her for Christmas three years ago. He owned a furniture store in a nicer section of Queens-which wasn't saying much-and had gotten stuck with several chairs he couldn't sell and couldn't ship back, since the manufacturing company had gone out of business between the time he ordered the shipment and when it arrived. It was a comfortable chair, but kind of a putrid, mottled green color that apparently hadn't overwhelmed any of his customers. Somebody might as well get some use from it, he'd told her.

She smiled into the phone, a vox-only connection with her mother. Mama had never cottoned to the idea of picture phones. What if the phone rang before she put her face on? If her hair was messed up? If she was in the shower?

"Mama, if you're so worried about how much these calls are costing me, why don't you get an ISDN or a DL and let Aldo hook Papa's computer to it? For ten dollars a month, we could talk over the net as much as we want."

"I don't wanna be foolin' with no computer business," Mama said. "It's too complicated."

"It's not any more complicated than using the telephone. All you have to do it turn it on and tell it my number if you want to call. If I call you, you just have to touch a b.u.t.ton when it beeps, and you get audio and video."

"It's too complicated."

Toni grinned again. Mama would never change. There was a bare-bones computer in the ground-floor brownstone apartments where Toni had grown up, a birthday gift from Toni and the boys a couple of years ago. Most American homes these days had some kind of house computer, but Mama didn't want anything to do with it. While she didn't cross herself when she walked past it, Toni had long believed that Mama looked at the thing as if it were the sp.a.w.n of Satan, just waiting to ensnare her in its tendrils and drag her off to electronic Hades. Sophia Banks Fiorella was sixty-five, and had six children, five of them boys, all of them college-educated. Aldo, at thirty-one, the youngest child save for Toni, was a high-level programmer for the State of New York's judicial system, and if he couldn't convince Mama to use the computer after all the Sunday dinners trying, Toni was wasting her time.

"So, whenna you comin' home?"

"Thursday night late," Toni said. "They're giving us the 24th off, but I have to work on the 23rd."

"You need Papa to pick you up at the airport?"

"Papa is not not supposed to be supposed to be drivin drivin', Mama, he can't see that good. I thought Larry was gonna talk to him about that." Toni noticed that her Bronx accent had thickened considerably as she talked to Mama. It always did. "That" sounded an awful like like "dat," and the "-ing" endings to words lost the "g" completely.

"You know your father. He don't hear what he don't wanna hear."

"We're gonna get one of those steering-wheel lockbars for the car if he doesn't stop it."

"Tony Junior already tried that. It took Papa about two minutes to figure out how to take it off. He's not stupid."

"I didn't say he was stupid. But he is is half blind and if he keeps driving, he is gonna kill somebody." half blind and if he keeps driving, he is gonna kill somebody."

"Okay, so Larry or Jimmy will pick you up."

"I'm not flying. Mama, I'm taking the train and I'll catch a cab from Penn Station."

"Late at night my daughter should be inna cab? That's dangerous, a young girl by herself."

Toni laughed. She was pushing thirty and adept at self-defense, more so than any man she knew. She carried a laser with which she was qualified Expert, and had been a federal agent for years, but Mama didn't want her riding in a taxi from the train station.

"Don't worry about me. I've got my key, I'll go to the guest unit."

"Mike is coming from Baltimore with his wife and children, they'll be in the big bedroom and the kid's room."

"I'll stay in the little bedroom. Don't worry, Mama, I'll see you Christmas Eve morning, okay?"

"Okay. Look, you need to go, this call is probably costing you a fortune. I'll see you Friday. What time do you want to get up? You want to sleep late?"

Toni grinned again. It didn't matter what time she said. Mama would be at her door at six-thirty sharp, and breakfast would be ready. "About six-thirty," Toni said.

"Okay. I'll get up early. I love you, baby. You be careful."

"I will be, Mama. I love you too."

Toni put the phone down and shook her head. One of the joys of her big Catholic family was the annual holiday gathering. What with her brothers, their wives, and the nieces and nephews, there would be twenty-some people at Mama's, not even counting the uncles, aunts, and odd cousin or two who might show up for dinner. It wasn't so crowded since Papa had bought the units on either side of the old one and knocked out walls to make one large apartment, but even so, it would be bustling.

Toni was very much looking forward to it. Too bad she couldn't bring Alex with her. Mama would be so thrilled that Toni had a potential husband-and any man she looked at more than twice was, as far as Mama was concerned, a potential husband-that she wouldn't be able to sit down, she'd be so busy doing things for him.

Maybe someday.

Chapter Four.

Sat.u.r.day, December 18th, 11:45 a.m. Arizona Territory Jay Gridley rode the net.

On a horse.

Until recently, he had favored a Dodge Viper in virtual reality, playing scenarios that involved superhighways and high speed. h.e.l.l of a car, the Viper, a rocket with wheels, and he liked putting the pedal to the metal and feeling the wind in his hair. But he'd gotten into a Western frame of mind a couple of weeks ago, and after doing a fair amount of research had built himself a cowboy scenario. You could use just about anything you wanted for virtual reality-VR-net travel, and it didn't have to be historically accurate; you could have cowboys and s.p.a.cemen in the same scenario. But when you were a programmer at Jay's level, you had certain standards. At the very least, it had to be consistent, and above all, it had to look look good. good.

In this scenario, Jay wore b.u.t.ton-fly Levi's, real cowhide pointed-toe cowboy boots, and a plaid wool shirt, along with a red bandanna, a cream-colored Stetson hat measured in gallons, and a Colt .45 Peacemaker six-gun strapped around his waist in a period leather holster. No drugstore cowpoke clothes for him, no pearl-b.u.t.ton shirts with fringe, or chaps or anything like that. He sat upon a hand-tooled saddle, and his horse was a pinto stallion named Buck. Well, formerly a stallion-the VR horse had been gelded, to keep him from tearing off after pa.s.sing female horses. Jay had thought about a white horse or even a palomino, but figured those were maybe a bit over the top. Most of the off-the-shelf software would never have gotten into this kind of detail, but they weren't held to his standards.

Buck picked his way along a narrow switchbacked trail that wound through the foothills of a VR mountain range in the Old West. Jay kept a lookout for rattlesnakes-sidewinders, they called them out here-Indians, or desperados who might want to stick him up. There was a net nexus coming up, represented by a little town called Black Rock ahead a couple of miles, but the sun was almost straight up and it was oven-hot and bone-dry here, and he needed to stop for a drink. The rocky trail was mostly bare, with only a few lizards and some scraggly bushes that might grow to be tumbleweeds someday-if they were lucky, and if they didn't spontaneously burst into flame first...