Michaels nodded. Politics. Of course. And there was more than met the ear here, too, if they were willing to bring in a foreign service to mitigate the situation. He couldn't imagine the FBI and the CIA allowing British Intelligence to come in and take over a joint operation. No, there was a lot more going on here than they were telling.
The door opened, and Toni stepped back into the room, clipping her virgil to her belt as she entered. She gave Michaels a short nod.
So. The director had put them on the hook.
He nodded back at Toni, then looked at Hamilton. "We will, of course, be happy to help in any way we can."
That brought smiles from all three Brits.
Michaels wished he felt like smiling. What he wanted to do was go home. He had Jay in the hospital, the legal problems with his ex-wife, and whatever else might have gone on while he was away.
His virgil cheeped. Michaels frowned. It was set to refuse all but priority-one calls. He pulled the unit from his belt and looked at it. Incoming call from Colonel Howard. "Gentlemen, if you will excuse me for a moment?"
The MP and MI-6 commander both smiled and nodded again.
Michaels stepped into the hall. Maybe it was good news.
Chapter 11
Tyrone Howard headed for his locker, keeping an eye out for Essay, the terror of the hall. Since Bella had dumped him, Tyrone's semiconnection to Bonebreaker LeMott, Bella's jock high school boyfriend, had become uncertain. Essay knew that his chances against Bonebreaker were zippo, and so for a time being Bella's friend had conferred a certain kind of immunity against the brain-dead thug. Essay — from the initials S.A., which stood for sore ass, which came from Brontosaurus — would just as soon thump you as look at you, and Tyrone's chances against him in a fight were also zippo, so it paid to be on the alert.
He made it to the locker without seeing Essay. Maybe he'd been kicked out of dear old Eisenhower Middle School for smoking again. That would be nice.
He was dumping his carry bag into the locker and not paying attention when somebody said, "Hey, Tyrone!"
He turned. It was Nadine Harris, the boomerang girl.
"Hey, Nadine."
She drifted over through the traffic flow, moving gracefully, like a swimmer treading water. "You got morning schedule, too. Exemplary."
"Yeah. Who's your anchor?"
"Peterson," she said.
"He's okay. I had him for Media One. What kind of register you got?"
"Eng Two, Math Three, Bioscience One, Media Two, Physical Three, History Two."
"That's pretty heavy redge for the quarter," he said.
She shrugged. "Not so bad. I tested high 'cause my last school was a couple steps ahead. How about you?"
"Eng Two, Math Three, Media Three, Comp Four, and, uh, MH One."
"Talk about my redge being heavy, whee-doggy, Ty! Comp Four? I didn't think you could take that unless you were in high school. And MH? Isn't that Military History?"
His turn to shrug. "My dad is military. I thought I'd check it out. He's told me some interesting stuff. He used to throw, and there's a section about throw sticks in the class."
"No feek? Wow. A dad who throws? He any good?"
"Well… not really. He, like, did it as a kid, had a couple of wooden 'rangs, entry-level plywoods. But he knows all kinds of things about battles and like that, and how the abos used to use their sticks in fights."
"Exemplary," she said.
While they were talking, Tyrone felt a strange sensation, as if he was being… watched. He glanced around, being careful not to be too obvious. Maybe Essay was around and had targeted him.
Belladonna Wright cruised down the hall with two of her girlfriends, and she was looking right at Tyrone.
His shoulders went tight, his face hot, his bowels loose. He wanted to run and hide under a rock.
She was as beautiful as ever, Bella was, maybe more so, and his memory of sitting on her bed kissing her, putting his hands on her body…
Don't go down that path, Tyrone. It will show. That would be embarrassing cubed.
But it was already too late. He slacked his grip on the carry bag, allowed it to hang lower, in front of his crotch.
"You okay, Tyrone?" Nadine said. "You look like you just swallowed a bug or something."
"Ah, no — I mean, yes, I'm okay. I — uh, just remembered something I forgot to do. A chore. At home."
Lame, Tyrone, blankwit slipbrain lame!
Bella steamed by like a battleship with two escort destroyers, awesome to behold in her beauty. She didn't look at him when she passed.
Nadine must have caught something in his face because she turned to look.
"Whoa. Who is that?"
"Belladonna Wright," Tyrone said. He fought to keep his voice from squeaking. He almost made it.
"Out of my league," Nadine said. "Killer wallpaper."
"Wallpaper?"
"Yeah, you know, it doesn't have to do anything except hang there and be pretty. Bet she gets invited everywhere, just to be looked at. You know her?"
"Not really," Tyrone said. He had thought he knew her, but he'd sure been wrong. She'd tossed him like a dirty sock.
"The beautiful get it free. When you're like me, you have to work for it."
"What, like you? You aren't ugly or anything."
She gave him another little shrug, looked away. "Put me next to that one—" she nodded in Bella's direction " — I'd disappear."
Tyrone didn't say anything, but that was true enough.
"I hope she doesn't have a brain, too. That would be the dregs — gorgeous and smart."
She didn't have to worry about that, Tyrone knew. Bella wasn't completely dull, but she wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, either. He didn't want to say that, though. Even after what she'd done, that seemed… disloyal, somehow. Besides, if word got back to Bonebreaker that Tyrone was doing oral graffiti on Bella, that would be bad. She might have half a dozen guys in orbit, but Bonebreaker was definitely one of them. Tyrone kept track. And they didn't call him Bonebreaker for nothing.
"Hey, I gotta go," Nadine said. "Keep a line open, okay? We'll get together and throw sometime."
"Yeah," he said. "We need to do that."
He watched her go. She had a muscular step, athletic and graceful, but she wasn't in Bella's class for looks, for sure.
Well, fine. Bella was history as far as he was concerned; gone, past, done, and he wasn't looking for a replacement. Maybe he and Nadine would get together and throw 'rangs, that was okay. She was good at that, he could learn from her, maybe. It wouldn't be so bad to have somebody who was into the birds to work out with, even if she was on the plain side. She had an arm and she could make a 'rang fly, that was the thing. He didn't have to kiss her.
"Colonel?" It was Julio.
Howard looked up from the holoproj image over his desk, the report upon which he was laboring. There wasn't any way to make it sound good, what had happened out there in Nevada. The only consolation was that he hadn't lost any of his troops. Reader was going to need some extensive plastic surgery on her face, but she'd pull through. When she'd heard the launch pop, she'd been prone, facing away from the APW, but she'd turned to look. Her face shield was down, but because of the angle, a couple of the pellets had zipped under the bottom of shield, a freak of bad timing. If her head had been inclined a centimeter or two more, the Lexan would have stopped the shrapnel. As it was, she was lucky the pellets hadn't gone deeper into her skull than they had. No brain damage—