Tom Clancy - Net Force 03 - Night Moves

Net Force 03: Night Moves

By: Tom Clancy

Synopsis:

Here’s another installment in the netforce series as an “old friend”, a deadly assassin, stalks netforce.

Tom Clancy’s

NET

FORCE

NIGHT MOVES

Created by Tom Clancy and Steve Piecxenik

BERKLEYBOOKS.NEW YORK

“The history of the sword is the history of humanity.”

Richard Burton

“Putting on the spectacles of science in expectation of finding the answer to everything looked at signifies

inner blindness.”

J. Frank Dobie

Tom Clancy’s Net

FORCE

NIGHT MOVES

PROLOGUE.

Friday, April 1st, 2011,2:15 a.m.

OutsideSahiwal,Pakistan

The middle of the night, and still the temperature hovered near ninety.

The humidity was so high that sweat did not evaporate and, having nowhere else to go, sour perspiration

soaked the men’s black uniforms.

Only April, and already a new record high for this date in thePunjab , almost a hundred and fifteen, with

more of the same predicted for tomorrow. Pah.

Three of the men in sodden black camouflage clothes lay in the darker shadow of a row of stunted

bushes a few dozen yards from the railroad tracks, waiting.

In the distance, the sound of the train’s whistle announced that it was on its way.

“It won’t be long now,” Bhattacharya said. Fat as he was, the others sometimes called him Ganesha,

after the elephant god, though they did not say this to his face.

However corpulent he might be, Bhattacharya was quick to anger, equally quick to move, and once

moving, a formidable opponent. Until two years ago, Bhattacharya had been an officer, a colonel. Then,

at a garden party 2 NET FORCE in Panipat, he had stabbed another colonel who had insulted him, and

it was only the lucky presence of a doctor that had saved the fat man from a murder charge. As it was,

what he’d done was enough to have him stripped of his rank and arrested—and offered jail or a transfer

to the Special Unit.

Like similar covert organizations around the world, the Special Unit did not officially exist. None of the

men carried regular army-issue weapons or gear. Their assault rifles were surplus Chinese AKS, their

pistols German, their sheath knives were fromJapan . Their communications equipment came fromNew

Zealand , their boots fromIndonesia , their clothes fromAustralia .

No man had upon his person any item that would officially identify him at all, much less identify him as an

Indian soldier. And during an operation, no man was to allow himself to be captured. If such an event

became likely, a quick suicide by gun or knife was expected.

This was not as heroic as it might seem. Anyone who refused to do his duty would soon be dead

anyway: Before embarking upon this mission, each man had taken a slow-acting poison; If he returned

from the mission, he would be given the antidote and would suffer only a few days of flu like misery. If he

did not return for any reason, he would die a lingering and painful death, the effects of which made

suicide seem a picnic in the park.

Better to choose the quick exit, if it came to that.

When there were dark military things to be done inIndia , the SU was called upon to do them. Most

countries had such units, though most would quickly deny such an accusation.

This mission was as dark as any. Sneaking intoPakistan for a covert operation was a risky proposition at

best. Packy was a touchy one, and given the current political situation, it was easy to understand why.

Next to Ganesha lay Rahman, around forty, a man of no particular caste fromNew Delhi . Rahman was

long and lean, the opposite of Bhattacharya. Rahman was familiar with this area ofPakistan , having once

been a member ofIndia ’s Border Security Force, the BSF foot-stampers who faced the Pakistan

Rangers across the wire at the Wagah Post. There, each evening, both sides danced the mutual show of

stylized aggression that marked the daily lowering of the flags and ceremonial blat ting of the bugles.

Crowds came from miles to see the mock battle, cheering each side on as if it were a soccer match.

The third man was Harbhajan Singh and, naturally, he was called The Sikh. Although Singh was certainly

not an unusual name for a Sikh, he had in fact been named specifically for the particular soldier who had

achieved moksha—enlightenment—while patrolling the border withChina in the 1960s near Nathu-La.

All they had ever found of that Singh were his snow goggles, his helmet, and his rifle. To this day, Singh’s

ghost still patrolled the area, and the Chinese often saw him standing on top of a mountain or walking

across the surface of a stream. The army had not believed the story for a long time, until a visiting general

offered disrespect to the ghost and for his attitude was promptly killed in a helicopter crash on his way

home. From then on, the new commanders of the region were most careful to send their personal cars to

the area once a year, to offer Singh a ride to the train station for his annual leave. And a seat would be

booked for the ghost on the train, too.

It must have made for an interesting trip to have been the driver of the car, though no one had ever

claimed to see Singh riding in the car or on the train.

All of which was fascinating, but not doing much to alleviate the discomfort this Singh felt under his beard

and turban from the night’s tropical heat. Even though his great-great-grandfather had lived nearLahore ,

only a few miles north of here, Singh had spent much of his life inMadras , on theBay of Bengal , and

while that city was certainly warm year-round, at least there were sea breezes to offer relief. Too, he had

lived several years inCalcutta , and that had been hotter thanMadras , but evenCalcutta was not baked as

was thePunjab , the hot test place on earth, so it was said. He could believe it.

“There it is,” Bhattacharya said.

“See the light, there?”

Singh and Rahman nodded and murmured their agreement.

Along the track, the other “mercenaries” would be gathering themselves for the attack. There were sixty

of them, and while some would probably die during the assault, they would be missed only by their

comrades.

You did not join the SU unless you were alone in the world: no wife, no family, no ties to anything. You

were expendable.

The train’s whistle bleated again, drawing nearer.

Singh gripped his AK-47 clone and took a deeper breath of the fetid and hot night air. He was not a

very good Sikh, had not been for many years, but he was moved to repeat God’s name a few times

anyway. No harm in that.

The train came into view. What the engineer could not see ahead was a set of angled derailing plates that

had been artfully welded to the rails, right where the tracks curved and banked a hair to the left.

The special train fromMultan toLahore was about to make an unscheduled and most abrupt stop.

Singh held his breath as the chugging engine hit the plates. There came a loud clang and a scream of

protesting metal. The engine jumped the tracks, plowed into the ground, and ripped up great chunks of

earth. More crashing noises filled the air as the engine slammed onto its side and kept skidding.

The following five or six cars also leaped from the rails and tumbled about like a child’s toy. More noise

and great clouds of smoke and dust billowed into the night.

Singh was already on his feet, running toward the still-moving train.

Some of the cars stayed on the track, and one of these, a boxcar with doors closed, loomed right in

front of him. The door opened, and five Pakistani Rangers leaped out.

Singh fired, waving his weapon back and forth, hosing the soldiers.

Next to him, Rahman’s weapon also spoke, as did Ganesha’s, and the Pakistanis went down, cut dead

by a sleet of jacketed metal.

Sorry, Packy, better luck next time around.

More guns went off; the darkness was lit by muzzle flashes and exploding grenades. White phosphor

blossomed, and red flares spewed.

It was all quite colorful.

There were as many soldiers defending as there were attacking, but the SU troops had surprise—and a

train wreck—on their side. Within a few moments, it was all over. A few wounded yelled in pain but

were quickly silenced by gunshots. Singh, Bhattacharya, and Rahman went to their assigned boxcar. It

was empty, but that did not matter. They set their explosives, activated the preset timers.

“Go!” Rahman said.

“Quick!”

The three of them joined the other fleeing SU troops.

They had only seconds to get clear. No one would have time to find and disarm the charges, if there had

been anybody still alive here with such a mind.

A gun went off to the left. Singh twisted and raked the spot where he’d seen the muzzle flash, spraying

quick three-round bursts from the AK, and heard a scream. One of the Pakistanis, playing dead. Dead

for real, now.

But the Pakistani’s last shot had found a mark.

Bhattacharya went down.

Singh skidded to a stop, though Rahman kept running.

The fat man was hit in the chest, high and slightly off center, and the camo was already soaked with

blood, a dark and wet splotch in the night. The fat man looked up at Singh.

“I’m done,” he said.

“Help me out here, Sikh.”

Singh nodded.

“Yes.” He pointed the assault rifle at Bhattacharya’s forehead, squeezed the trigger fast, got off one

round. The man’s body spasmed and went limp.

No time to stand around and offer prayers. Singh ran.

A few seconds later, light and noise shattered what was left of the hot and clammy night. The exploding

train could easily be seen for miles by any who happened to look.

And it was felt, in a different way, around the entire world.

PART ONE The Sun tv ever Sets on the British Empire Friday, April 1stHampton Court, England The

palace, whose first royal occupant had been Henry VIII, back in the 1500s, was huge. The stone

buildings themselves covered more than six acres, with ten times that much walled-in lawn and gardens

around the structures.

The chambers were mostly big, with high ceilings, tall windows, and a couple had stone fireplaces large

enough to walk into without bumping your head. Most of the rooms were empty, save for giant wall

hangings and baroque chandeliers. A few chambers had monstrous canopied beds or chairs and desks in

them. There were art galleries, with age-muddied paintings hung. Much of the section they were in at the

moment, called the King’s Apartments, had burned in a sudden fire in the mid-1980s and had been since

restored to what it supposedly looked like in the 1700s.

Alex Michaels glanced around in awe. It was hard to imagine that anybody had ever actually lived in

such a place.

It had cost them fifteen euros each to be admitted to the palace, after the ride on the tube fromLondon .

They’d strolled across theThames on theHamptonCourtBridge , to the main entrance. Michaels had

traveled over the years, more since he had become commander of the FBI stand-alone unit, Net Force,

but he had somehow never made it toEngland until now. He and Toni had decided to add some vacation

time to the week they had been allotted for the International Computer Crime Conference. They needed

some time off; things had gotten a little rocky on a personal level the last few weeks.

So here they were, in the huge house of kings and queens, but, vast as it was,HamptonCourtPalace was

not big enough to contain Toni Fiorella’s simmering anger.

Michaels expected it to burst out any second, to blast him and whatever room they were in to a

blackened crisp. They weren’t married, but it seemed the honeymoon period was coming to an end, as

much as he did not want it to happen.

Fifteen euros: that was a lot to be allowed to walk around inside a musty castle for a couple of hours. If

it hadn’t been for the calculator built into the electronic virgil on his belt, Michaels would never have been

able to figure out what that was in real money.

Multiplying fractions was not his favorite pastime.

He pointed out the security beam generator to Toni, inset into the support that held the drooping velvet

ropes that were supposed to keep the tourists from sitting in the antique chairs.

“Step over that, I bet we’ll hear an alarm scream.” Toni said nothing.

Oh, Lord, what have I done now?

“You okay?”

“I’m fine.”

Michaels drew in a long, slow breath and let it escape silently as they walked along. A costumed man

who looked as if he might be from Henry’s court stood under a painting of an ugly couple and two much

better-looking dogs, explaining to a tour group the significance of the painting. The costumed man had

what Michaels had been told was a posh accent, nary a dropped aitch, very upper class.

Before he and Toni had become lovers, Michaels had been married and divorced. There was a way that

a woman said, “I’m fine,” the tone clipped and brusque, that meant she was anything but fine. He had

learned not to go any farther down that road unless he was really ready to hear what was wrong,

sometimes at a decibel level equal to standing in front of the speakers at a This Is Your Brain on Drugs

rock concert.

Would Toni yell at him in the Great Hall? Or would she wait until they were in the smaller Tudor rooms

where Cardinal Wolsey once pursued his studies? Right at the moment, if Michaels dared to touch her,

he was almost sure his fingers would get burned. She was pissed, and he was pretty sure it was at him.

Why wasn’t life simple? Two people love each other, they get together, and live happily ever after?

Probably what Anne Boleyn thought when she hooked up with the fat man, you reckon? said his inner

voice.

He told his inner voice to shut up.

She waited until they were outside, strolling across a damp and chilly lawn toward theNorthGardens and

the carefully tended hedge maze before she said anything.

He was watching her peripherally, admiring her athletic walk, her beautiful face and figure. She had been

his assistant since he’d been at Net Force, and she was very good at her job. She was also almost a

dozen years younger than he was, a bright, tough, nice Italian girl from theBronx who was an adept at an

Indonesian martial art called pentjak silat. She had been teaching it to him, and he was getting better at it,

but if push came to shove and she was really angry, she could wipe the floor with him and never break a

sweat. That was an odd sensation, knowing the woman you loved could kick your ass if she felt like it.

When she spoke, her voice was quiet, even, no anger apparent in it.

“Why did you sendMarshall to the OCIC meeting inKabul ?”

Michaels took another deep breath. Why hadn’t he sent her? BecauseAfghanistan was not a place he

wanted Toni to be. It was backward, women were fourth-class citizens, after men, boys, and horses, and

there were frequent terrorist attacks on foreigners, particularly Americans. He did not want to put her at

risk.

But he couldn’t say that straight out. Instead, he said, “Marshallwanted to go. I didn’t think you did.” “I

didn’t, particularly,” she said.

“Well, so there it is. You didn’t have to. No problem, right?”

He should be so lucky. She said, “I was up. I should have gone.”

“But you just said you didn’t want to go.”

She stopped walking and stared at him. God, she was beautiful, even when she was mad at him. Maybe

even more so when she was mad at him.

“That’s not the point. I was up; you should have sent me, whether I wanted to or not. Why didn’t you?”

He had a pretty good memory, a necessary requisite for prevarication, but even so, when it got right

down to it, Michaels was not a very good liar. Oh, sure, he could tell somebody their hair looked nice

when it didn’t, or smile and nod at a superior’s bad taste in clothes without blurting it out, but beyond

simple and harmless white lies designed to spare feelings, he had no real interest in games of deceit. She

had caught him, he had tried to slip past and couldn’t, so he wasn’t going to try to lie his way out of it. He

shook his head and went for the truth: “Because I didn’t want to send you into a place where you might

be at risk.”

“That’s what I thought.” She started walking again.

He went after her.

“Look, Toni, I love you. Is it so wrong to want to keep you out of harm’s way?”

“For a lover, no. I’d be unhappy if you didn’t want that. But for a colleague in the intelligence

community, yes, it’s wrong. You know I can take care of myself.”

“Yes,” he said. He knew, he’d seen that demonstrated a few times. She was better able to take care of

herself when things got physical than he was, but even so, she wasn’t Superwoman.

“I want you to treat me like one of the boys.”

He smiled.

“That would be a trick. I can’t think of you that way, and if I did, well, I wouldn’t be interested.

I like girls. You in particular.”

She gave him a tiny grin in return, a quick flash, so she wasn’t totally pissed off at him.

“I meant at the office. I very much like being treated as a woman when we’re on our own time.”

“I understand.”

“Do you? You really need to, you know. I want you to hold my hand when we walk in the

moonlight—but not when we’re at work. You need to separate your personal life from your work life,

Alex.”

“Okay. I will. Next time you’re up, you go, no matter where it is.”

She flashed a bigger smile.

“Good. Now, you suppose we might find some chocolate somewhere?”

They both laughed, and he felt a great sense of relief.

Neither of them had been toEngland before, and one of the things they noticed early on was that there

were chocolate candy machines everywhere: in stores, train stations, even pubs. It had become a running

joke between them, finding chocolate. They both expected to gain thirty pounds and have their faces

break out before they returned to the States.

His virgil played the first few bars of Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man.” He had an

incoming tele com He pulled the device from his belt and saw that the caller was from the office of the

FBI’s director.

“That’s cute,” Toni said, meaning the music. She waved her finger as if directing an orchestra.

“Jay must have sneaked into my office and reprogrammed the ringer again.

Better than last time, when it was George Thorogood’s “Bad to the Bone.”

“Ta dah dah clan dah dump!” Toni sang.

“Everybody I work with has a warped sense of humor,” he said.

“This is Alex Michaels.”

“Please hold for the director,” a secretary said.

Toni looked at him, and he held his hand over the virgil’s microphone.

“Boss.”

“I sure wish Walt Carver hadn’t had that heart attack,” Toni said.

“I think he’s glad he did. It gave him an excuse to retire and go

fishing. It’s only been a month; we should give her a chance—“

“Commander, this is Melissa Allison. I’m sorry to interrupt your vacation, but we have a situation of

which you need to be aware.”

Her face appeared on the virgil’s liquid crystal display screen, so he tapped his send-visual mode and

held the unit so he could see the virgil’s cam thumbnail of his own face in the screen’s corner.

Allison, forty-six, was a thin redhead with a cool bordering-on-cold voice and demeanor. She was a

political appointee, a lawyer with no experience in the field but an encyclopedic knowledge of where

dozens of political bodies were buried. The rumor was that certain high-ranking members of congress

had prevailed on the President to offer her the FBI directorship vacated by Walt Carver’s mild cardiac

event so she’d keep quiet about things better left that way. Outside of a couple of meetings and a few

memos, Michaels hadn’t had to deal with her yet.

“Go ahead.”

“Some hours ago, an unidentified military force attacked a Pakistani train near the Indian border, killed a

dozen guards, and then blew the train to pieces. The cargo was a top-secret shipment of electronic

components on their way to be used in the Pakistani nuclear bomb program.”

“I thought there was a nonproliferation treaty betweenPakistan andIndia .”

“There is, but neither country pays any attention to it.

The government ofPakistan is convinced the attacking terrorist force was a special unit of the Indian

Army.”

“Do they have proof of this?”

“Not enough to start a war. Not yet—but they are looking hard.”

Michaels looked at the tiny image of the director’s face.

“With all due respect, ma’am, what’s this got to do with us? Shouldn’t the spooks be on the hot seat?”

“They are, but if they and the Pakistanis can be believed, there was no way anyone could know about

the train and what it carried. The terrorists had plenty of time to get into position for the ambush, and the

Pakistanis say this wasn’t possible.”

“Obviously it was,” Michaels said.

“The liaison with the CIA tells him there were only four people who knew about the shipment and the

route.

The crates were unmarked, and the workmen and train personnel who loaded and were delivering the

materials didn’t know what they were carrying.”

“Coincidence, maybe? They attacked a train at random?”

“Nineteen trains passed that point in the twenty-four hours prior to the one that was destroyed. Only one

carried anything of strategic importance.” “Then somebody told.”

“The Pakistanis say not. Nobody had a chance to tell.

Once the operation began, three of the four who knew were together, and the other one—who happens

to be the head of their secret police—didn’t get around to decoding the computer message telling him

about the shipment until an hour before the attack. Some kind of computer failure on his end had his

system down. Even if he had wanted to tell, there wasn’t enough time.”

“Somebody intercepted the message and broke the code, then,” Michaels said.

“Which is why it concerns us,” she said.

“The problem there is, the security encryption was supposedly bulletproof, a factored number hundreds

of digits long.

According to the CIA, it would take a Super Cray running full time, day and night, about a million years

to break the code.”

Great, Michaels thought. He said, “I’ll have my people look into it.”

“Good. Keep me informed.”

Her picture disappeared as she broke the connection.

Toni, who had been listening, shook her head.

“Not possible,” she said.

“Right. The difficult we do immediately. The impossible takes a little longer. Come on, let’s go see the

maze.”

“You going to call Jay?”

“It can wait a few more minutes.”

Friday, April 1stLondon,EnglandThe waiter arrived with aBombay gin and tonic and set it on the table

next to the overstaffed leather chair where Lord Geoffrey Goswell sat reading the Times. The Japanese

markets were going to hell in a handbasket, the American stock market was holding steady, and gold

futures were up.

The weather forecast forLondon called for rain on the morrow.

Nothing about which to be concerned.

Goswell glanced up. He watched the servant bide a moment to see if there was anything else required,

and gave the waiter a military nod.

“Thank you, Paddington.”

“Milord.”

The waiter glided noiselessly away. Here was a good man, old Paddington.

Tom Clancy - Net Force 03 - Night Moves

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