Ruzhyo, however, was tired. And looking over his shoulder made him more tired. He had the Americans back there somewhere, and eventually they might figure out how to track him. He did not need another enemy dogging his trail. No, he would finish this business with Peel first, and when he left, it would be on his own terms. One way or another, he would resolve things. Once he was home, then what came, came, and he would deal with it.
Peel came out of the converted church and nodded in his direction before setting off for his own car. Ruzhyo nodded in return and started his car's engine. They were going back to see the computer scientist where Ruzhyo had spotted the surveillance that had ended with a dead man in a bookstore. Apparently, Major Peel had plans for the man in that building that Mr. Bascomb-Coombs would not in the least enjoy.
Ruzhyo didn't care about the scientist. He would stay with Peel until the right opportunity came up, and then he would take his leave. And it would be soon, he reflected as they pulled out of the estate. Soon.
There had been an all-hours assembly at school, and when it was done, Tyrone drifted down the hall, waving at Jimmy Joe in passing. The hall-monster, Essay, had indeed been expelled, for at least two weeks, and while there were other denizens to be avoided in the corridors, they weren't in the big idiot's league.
As he headed for the bus queue, he saw Bella, book reader in hand, walking and laughing with three girlfriends. She spotted him and smiled. "Ty, hey, over here."
He felt that rush of belly-clenching cold energy that radiated excitement all the way to his groin. He started toward her, holding his steps slow so as not to seem in a hurry. He tried to look sparse, matter-of-fact, and AF — almost frozen, he was so cool. Bella wanted to see him? That was DFF and all, but no huge kluge, hey? Amble. That was the look he wanted; he wanted to amble her way. But he moved maybe a little too fast to pull it off. Kind of a twelve-frames-per-second amble that would look a lot better at twenty-four.
"Hey, Bella."
"We're going to the mall. You want to come along?"
He smiled. And at that second, just when he was about to deliver a liquid-oxy AF "Sure, why not?" he glanced past Bella and saw Nadine walking down the hall.
Nadine saw him, then looked away.
Bella caught his look and flicked her own gaze in that direction. It was quick, her peek, and she pretended not to notice, but Tyrone got it. Nadine had been inspected, stamped failed, and dismissed, all in a half-second glance, and thank you very much.
And all of a sudden, Tyrone Howard, pushing fourteen, found himself at the crossroads of the rest of his life. Looming here were two paths at right angles to each other, and not likely he would be able to switch from one to the other once he made his choice.
You got the com in your hand, Tyrone. Who are you gonna call?
Maybe he could still do both. He said, "Why don't I meet you at the bus? I got something I have to take care of first."
Bella might not be the brightest diode on the board, but she wasn't so dim she couldn't see immediately what he was doing. She let him know she knew, too: "We're going to the mall now, Ty." What was left unsaid, was Now or never, Tyrone. Your call.
Well… shit. It would be great to be able to have his cake and eat it, too, but that wasn't gonna happen, no way, no how, DSS — data scrambled, stupid.
The moment stretched for a couple million years. He felt like he was going to explode. Damn, damn, damn!
You could skulk one or you could skulk the other, but you didn't get both.
Hell with it. He made his decision. "Nadine! Hey, Nadine! Hold up a second!"
Nadine turned, surprised, he could see. He didn't dare look back at Bella, though he wanted to see her face. He'd been given a second chance to get into paradise, and he'd just put it in the trash and emptied that sucker. He wanted to run and hide.
Nadine smiled, and her face didn't seem so plain. When he got there, she said, "Your girlfriend just left without you. Didn't look real happy, either."
He shrugged. "So what?" He felt bad, but he also felt good at the same time. "How's the arm? You want to go throw some?"
"You sure about this?"
"I'm sure."
The smile got bigger. "My arm is a lot better now. Yeah. Let's go throw."
As he walked along next to her, Tyrone felt his own smile begin. Something his dad had told him. When you do the right thing, it almost always feels better than when you don't.
Score another one for the old man.
Chapter 35
"Looks as if it can swim," Saji said.
Jay pulled the Humvee to a halt and shut the engine off. The monster's tracks led to the edge of a sea and disappeared into the water. Small, silky waves with pristine whitecaps rolled machinelike tubes onto the shore. "Looks like," he said.
"What now?"
"We change vehicles. Boat or helicopter. I'm favoring the copter."
"I can understand that. Better to be a few hundred feet above it than sailing along and having it come up under us like Moby-Dick."
Jay nodded. "The disadvantage is that we can arm the boat better than we can the helicopter. We're limited to weapons we can physically carry, so if we see it from the air, one of us has to lean out and shoot at it. You don't want a rocket launcher going off inside a copter. The exhaust gases would cook us as dead as if we got hit by the rocket itself."
"There's a pleasant image. Why the limits on weaponry?"
"Well. Even in sim, you have to think about what the real situation is like. This thing is bigger and stronger and faster than we are, and we can't just lob a nuke at it, 'cause we don't have one vis a vis the hardware and software we are up against." He stepped out of the car and looked at the shore. He pulled a GPS handheld from his jacket and consulted it. "This is a cheat in this scenario," he said. "I should be looking at a paper map, since there are no global positioning satellites in this time. But we can get away with this. Not with a Seawolf-class sub, though. Too bad. And I'm not really sure this body of water would be here, either. My knowledge of geological history is not that great."
Saji climbed out of the car, stretched, and said, "Where is here?"
"Coast of France. What will be Great Britain is over the horizon thataway."
"So in RW, that's where the trail leads?"
"That's what it looks like, yeah."
"Is that any help to your theory?"
Jay nodded. "Yeah. Maybe."
"Are we going after it?"
"Oh, yeah. I want to drop out of VR for a while to check some stuff and give the boss a call, first. I think it would be a good idea to run my theory past him. Just in case."
In the MI-6 conference room, Michaels sat waiting for Jay's visual to appear on the call-waiting holoproj that floated bluely over the table. With him were Toni, Howard, Fernandez, and Angela Cooper.
Michaels said, "I wanted you all to hear this, so I had them route Jay's com in here. We'll get to him in a minute. Any other business in the meanwhile?"
Howard said, "We've got an appointment to see the retired major out at his employer's estate in…" he looked down at his flatscreen."… in Sussex this afternoon."
"A lovely drive," Angela said. "Beautiful country, if somewhat narrow roads."
"No more attacks on major webs or military systems to note," Toni said. "Looks as if our hacker has backed off, at least for the time being."