Too Wylde (10 page)

After a long vacation.

She lay there in Sarvasana, the Corpse Pose,
let what remaining tension there was drain out of her. Maybe she
should go find a yoga class somewhere; she loved her hard muscle
work outs but her flexibility was suffering, and a little power
yoga might suit her well. No shortage of yoga studios around, and
it was extremely unlikely she'd run into any of those pissed off
shooters tooling around in a little low-key yoga class
somewhere.

Mental note to look it up in the Internet,
when she checked on the arrival time of her Best Friend Forever,
Neo Death God. Though what the fuck was she going to do with a
13-year old, precocious or not? Sure as hell wasn't going to get
her laid or drunk. Dee might be an assassin, but she had morals.
That would be corruption of a minor.

Probably best not to try and entertain her;
just pay her and get her in the game, treat her like the player she
was on-line. Had to say, this kid had moves. Dee Dee had seven
hackers in her personal go-to list, and Neo Death God just bumped
everybody out of the #1 position, previously held by a sullen 19
year old boy who'd been paid with a video tape of himself getting a
Dee Dee blow job (face obscured, of course) and would do anything
for her, though his self-destructive swirl was increasing. Hence
her non-contact, though she tracked his whereabouts with the help
of another junior hacker she was raising up.

Used to be cyber-stuff was the province of
the .gov types, but now, even a run of the mill hired killer had to
have *someone* qualified to surf the Net and take care of
cyber-business. Maybe it was time to have a full-time partner in
that. Young Kiki was the right age and, most important, the right
gender (at least as far as Dee Dee was concerned) to make a good
partner. She'd raise her from a pup. Lots of advantages to having a
younger partner -- freedom from the same kind of prosecution, good
cover as a mother-daughter team, and the ability to play the Older
Wiser card to her advantage.

She sat up, leaned forward to stretch her
hamstrings. Okay, first a long hot shower, then some computer time,
then check out some yoga studios and take it from there. Let Irina
roll...though she should check on her whereabouts. Young Kiki the
Death God was tracking Irina's new cell phone, and the woman
couldn't take a shit without having it within arm's reach.

Always good to keep an eye on your friends,
and a closer eye on your enemies.

Irina Komorov

"It's very easy to track someone by cell
phone," the frail looking boy said to her. "There are commercial
services, some providers have it as an option, and law enforcement
can track any phone now."

"What if you take out the battery?"

The boy shrugged. "Depends on the phone. Most
of the new phones, and the smartphones, have an internal battery to
maintain memory; it gives off a signature that can be identified.
Older phones, not so easy. Without a power source, there is no
signal; without a signal, there is no tracking. Once you power it
up, you will have your location registered with the provider -- at
the very least to the cell you are in when you call, depending on
the phone, down to a meter or so from your actual location."

"So what can you do?"

"Realistically? Either plan all your
movements as though someone were tracking you, or else power it
down and put it in a lead lined bag like they sell for transporting
sensitive medical film. Harder to find these days since everything
is digital. I have some I can sell you, if you like."

"Can you find out who is tracking?"

The boy, his name Mullen, considered that.
"Yes. Not easy, not cheap, but it can be done."

"The cost, it does not matter."

"I need a grand, cash, up front, nothing
larger than $50 in non-sequential bills."

"I will get it for you later."

He shifted, shot a look at her low-cut
blouse. "Or we could maybe work out some barter or something.
Depends on what you're into."

"Keep it business," she said coldly. "We'll
see what you can actually do before we start making any *other*
kind of deal."

Mullen blushed. "I'm good at what I do."

"We'll see," Irina said. "Then perhaps we can
find a way to amuse one another."

He looked down at the ground. "Okay.
Money?"

"This afternoon. I'll bring it here."

She waved one hand around the cluttered
electronics store, a privately owned repair and consultation
business for all things electronic.

"Done."

She turned and walked out. Mullen watched her
ass in skin-tight black tights tucked into knee high leather boots
under a black leather short jacket. OMG, he thought. I better get
my cameras set up.

Outside, Irina took a deep breath. Somewhere
deep down inside her, the wounded child who'd grown into the
wounded woman twisted and turned, cried out, missed her husband,
drowning in fear and complete uncertainty brought on by a complete
dependence on a sociopath who could not be controlled, only
influenced by the things she prized: money and autonomy.

Irina required revenge to feel safe. Irina
required revenge on anyone who tried to control her. Irina required
revenge on anyone who hurt those she loved, those few, and those
men had taken from her the only man she loved, and the only
semblance of security she'd had.

So she had to work with what she had, which
was money and sex. But then, what else would she need? It had
worked for her her entire life.

Except for Dee Dee Kozak. She was unknowable.
The most dangerous person she had ever spent time with. Working
with her was like holding a tiger by the tail. She couldn't let go.
Not yet.

She looked up at the sky, then at her new
Rolex. Almost two o'clock.

Jimmy John Wylde, meet Mr. Smith

Technology was a wonderful thing.

The Old School Way to set up a meet was to
set an entry point, with all avenues of approach covered by living
eyes on foot and mobile, connected by covert encrypted radio, for
the person invited to the meet to move into. They'd arrive at the
designated time (and in case they were savvy, the meet-up was
covered hours in advance, sometimes before the invitee was invited)
and then walk their route, and all along the route static posts
would watch their trail, spot any likely subjects, call them out to
the walkers who would check them out, and all of this was relayed
in real-time to the case officer, who would make a decision as to
whether the meet was a go or a no-go.

These days, what with dwindling man-power and
the general lack of balls amongst the younger generation (not all,
but certainly among the generation that grew up playing video
game), it was done electronically. You tagged the subject in
advance with a marked coat or a RFID secreted somewhere in their
goods or through their cell phone signature/phone number, tracked
them electronically into a route seeded with micro cams
transmitting wirelessly -- hell, you didn't even have to leave the
safe house or the van, you could track the whole thing
electronically assuming you had dominance of the ELINT space, make
sure the guy was clean and tag anyone you suspected, and then guide
them into a meet space that was swept constantly for any electronic
interference: cell phone blockers, wireless transmission
scramblers, white noise generators on the sub-sonic and sonic
levels...

Technology. Great stuff.

When it worked. When it didn't, the
weaknesses in the New School training came out when the so-called
operators actually had to eyeball someone, get out on foot, get out
of their car, close in and make sure --

-- unless they had an Old Guy around who knew
how to do what needed to be done, and did it, most often by him or
her self, and show the young guns a trick or two while doing
it.

Mr. Smith as an Old School Old Guy who still
had his chops, and had coupled the New School technology to the Old
School skill set and drove it with a ruthlessness only someone who
had his life burned out of him would have.

Scary.

He laughed and whistled the tune from Mr.
Rogers's neighborhood again and again, his own little personal
mantra for work and play:
It's a beautiful day in the
neighborhood, a beautiful day in the neighborhood, won't you be
mine, won't you be mine...

He sat in his Cherokee three blocks from the
park and watched an array of micro-cams transmitting from the route
on his laptop; a small split screen showed the real-time location
of Jimmy John's cell phone circling around looking for a place to
park. True to form, Jimmy John pulled into the parking lot outside
the ice cream parlor at the top of the hill, two blocks away from
the entry point into the SDR, and he'd be leaving his cell phone in
the car.

The advantage of .gov, though, was that we
get all the coolest toys.

Mr. Smith grinned. Only the absolutely
*coolest* fucking toys.

He opened another split screen, touched a
touch pad, and a graphic scrolled up a three-dimensional rendition
of a human figure surrounded in glowing colors, as seen from above,
WAYYYYY above, like satellite height maybe, with a certain
wavelength of light not too far from the laser but not quite to the
death ray level, illuminating a certain individual who had been
calibrated a long, long time ago, in a country (or on a planet,
depending on your favorite movie) far, far away -- and tracking a
specific radio frequency as individual as a fingerprint or a human
heartbeat, as well as DNA, which is given off pretty much
constantly by an individual and appears as dandruff or house dust,
anywhere you linger, and if illuminated and magnified gives off a
specific individual light signature that Presto Whammy-o means:
specific individual.

Which is of extraordinary use in the world of
man-hunting, which was what Special Operations was all about. The
shooters got the best stuff and the Federales and law enforcement
and the consultants and the contractors who built the damn gear
took every opportunity they had to test it under field conditions,
even if it sometimes bent the law, but that's what the Patriot Act
was good for, if you're a person of interest or a terrorist or
designated combatant, regardless of where you were born or who
you'd served with or what you'd done, you didn't have rights when
it came to little things like privacy and so on.

Which made for a conundrum for those who
bothered to think about it, but then, introspection is not a
particularly sought after attribute in field operators.

In which genre Mr. Smith most definitely was
set, very close to the very top of the heap, which is why the Task
Force (the Tier One Type Task Force) sent him out to do very
special things that required complete deniability, wherever it
might take him, even in CONUS.

But back to Jimmy John, no sandwich, though
the chain might actually label one after him if they knew what he
was like; they'd have to call it The Meat Eater or something,
because his old friend Jimmy John was The Real Deal, just as Mr.
Smith his own self was The Real Deal, and they'd been classmates
and serious competitors, top of the class, First and Second, in the
Old School. So if either one of them was going to fuck the other,
they'd make sure to at least give the other a kiss, in memory of
old-timey times.

And there he was, alive and bright on his
nickel-sized web-cam transmitting to a repeater the size of a
key-fob stuck in a tree, Jimmy John Wylde, AKA Johnny Wylde to
people who didn't share his history, or at least a certain chapter.
Mr. Smith found that what was left of his mouth and lips wanted to
curl in a smile, and he felt a certain warming he wanted to deny
deep in his belly.

Jimmy John, Jimmy John. Where do we
belong?

He laughed. Probably in the grave. And there
you have it.

Jimmy had aged well. Still fit, though with a
little hitch in his get-along that was noticeable. Mr. Smith
clicked on the image to make sure the variation in his gait was
captured in the database; gaits change, but there are certain
parameters that mark it out, and coupled with other things like
ELINT signature, DNA, facial bone structure analysis and gait, you
can get a purty darn good ID on someone from a distance. Human
Identification At A Distance, as the geeks at DARPA liked to
say.

Worked for him.

He zoomed in on Jimmy's face. Lots of lines
there, boyo. A hard life. He remembered Jimmy as a young-gun
he'd been a young gun, too...
hard charging and full of the
testosterone and adrenaline that made for a great young operator,
coupled with just the right seasoning of humility in the face of
seniors and the forward lean of the terminally aggressive.

Hank, what the fuck are we doing here?

Shit, son, where else we get paid to do this
shit? Tell me that? Only thing lacking is the Swedish Bikini Team
and a bucket of Roofies, and I believe they'll teach us how to get
that here shortly.

Raucous laughter, as the two of them lay up
in a hide with water trickling all around them, taking turns on the
spotting scope...

Mr. Smith watched Jimmy come down the street,
look around, do a casual 360 degree scan disguised (well) by a
stretch
look near, far, high, low, don't hang on the target,
everything must have a reason...
and then start a stroll down
the hill, paralleling the grassy knoll where once, long ago, when
Jimmy John was a teen, he'd surprised a man attacking a young girl
at dusk and chased them off
should of killed that fucker, Jimmy
John, hate those kind of assholes...but I gotta ask...did you get a
date with the girl?
and Jimmy paused, crossed the road, went
across a lane of bike traffic and turned to the left, starting
walking against the flow
these cameras rock, and the switching
software is pretty seamless, gotta let the geeks know I need more
of these
and now he was walking the route, relaxed, enjoying
the water, the nice soft Midwesterners in their expensive North
Face and Patagonia walking along, more than a few cute girls,
and nary a sign of any one spotting for him, though if it had
been me, I'd stand off and go Old School, use some binos like a
local bird watcher, but today, it's just me and thee, Jimmy
and
now Jimmy was approaching the choke point, where Mr. Smith had a
little surprise waiting
remember that day when that asshole in
the O Course gave us shit about putting a claymore in the trees?
Hell, I ended up disguising one as a radio
because a claymore
was Old School, especially with the very cool encrypted frequency
detonator that made it New School/Old School, which was Mr. Smith's
favorite combination, because, son, not many motherfuckers can roll
like that, LOL as the geeks liked to say, and a choke point
required a decision, the branching point in the decision tree as
the theorists like to say, the point where to put up or shut up
came about: kill the boy right now in a most-dramatic fashion, or,
hell, maybe have that long deferred chat? Kill him now or kill him
later?