SIMS 09

NEWARK, NJ

"Get ready," Zero murmured from the darkness behind her as the school bus pulled to a stop before the sim crib.

Romy raised her binoculars and focused on the front door. Patrick had parked the van in the same spot as last night. He sat beside her behind the wheel, training his own set of glasses on the door, and she knew Zero had his pair aimed between them. They had to know whether or not Tome got off the bus, and all agreed that three sets of eyes were better than one.

Romy licked her lips. Her fingers felt slick against the black matte finish of the binocular barrels. This was the night when it all could come together, when all her years of effort, when everything she'd worked for would come to fruition...

Or go up in smoke.

She took a breath. No smoke. This was going to work.

No movement yet. She noticed Patrick lowering his glasses.

He let out a long, slow breath, as if he'd been holding it. "What if somebody spots him and gets suspicious?" he said.

"No reason they should," Zero said. "Tome's dressed just like the other sims. And besides, the surveillance teams are looking for a pregnant female."

"But what about their warden or whatever you call the guy inside - what if he counts one extra and turns him over to the guys outside. I saw how they cut up those other sims."

Romy stared at Patrick. Was that a catch in his voice? He was really worried - not about blowing their chance to find Meerm, but about Tome being hurt. Same as last night when he'd refused to let Tome near the building.

She felt a burst of warmth for him. What a change from the hard case she'd met just a few months ago. She laid a gentle hand on his arm.

"We won't let anything happen to Tome. You know that."

"Better not," he said, staring straight ahead. "He's my roomie, you know."

"I know. And I - "

"There they are," Zero said and the three of them trained their glasses on the small patch of sidewalk between the bus and the front door.

Romy wished there were more light as the sims trooped out in ones and pairs. She fine-tuned the focus on her binocs, training her gaze on their faces. Since they all were dressed in identical coveralls, only the faces would tell. She watched one after another swim through her field of vision in a seemingly endless stream, and then suddenly the parade was over.

"I didn't see him," Romy said.

Neither had Zero or Patrick.

"Do you think this means what it's supposed to mean?" Patrick whispered.

Romy felt her heart rate kick up. The plan was for Tome to enter the sim dorm if he hadn't learned Meerm's whereabouts by the time the bus arrived. If he'd been successful, he was to hide on the bus until the driver parked it down the street, then sneak out and call for pick-up.

"I hope so," she said.

Patrick reached for the ignition but Zero stopped him.

"Wait till we hear from him. We're much less conspicuous sitting still."

And so they waited. And waited.

"Why doesn't he call?" Patrick said, tapping the steering wheel none too gently. "Something's wrong."

Romy prayed not.

  Tome lost.

Turn round and round in dark but not know where is.

Tome bad sim. Old fool sim. Not listen Mist Sulliman. Not do what told. Mist Sulliman say call but Tome not. Fool Tome wait driver go, then open bus window. Climb through, drop ground. Tome not call like Mist Sulliman say. Fool Tome go find Meerm self. Show Mist Sulliman can find. Bring back Meerm. Make Mist Sulliman proud.

Tome do bad thing. Wait by bus. See no car. Run cross street. Hide shadow. Try remember what Beece say. Wish Beece knew better where Meerm hide. Only know, "Left side home building. Many, many turn go see Mickey-D gold arch light over fence. Look black metal door. Red writing door. Meerm inside."

Tome go, make many many turn. No see Mickey-D. No see black metal door. Now Tome lost in ver dark place.

Tome keep walk. Hear car noise. Many car. See light. Go to and find big street. Many light and car. And there Mickey-D. Tome find! Tome not bad sim! Not fool!

But where steel door? Tome look-look but no see door, no red writing. Tome fail. Ver sad again. Pull out phone, remember what Mist Sulliman say: First press red button, wait for beep, then press 9 button, then press green button.

Tome hope Mist Sulliman not mad and say no more friend with Tome. That make Tome ver sad.

  "Yes!" Patrick cried as his PCA chirped.

Romy watched him jab theSEND button and crush the phone against his ear. He'd been sitting there with it clutched in his hand, thumb poised over the buttons like a mad bomber with a detonator.

"Tome!" he cried. "You're all right?" He turned and nodded to Romy and Zero.

Romy let out a sigh of relief. The last twenty-five minutes had been hell.

"No-no," Patrick was saying. "That's all right. As long as you're okay, it doesn't matter. Listen, you stay there but keep out of sight. We'll come by and get you." He closed the PCA and started the van.

"What happened?" Zero said.

"He thought he could find Meerm himself."

"Oh, God!" Romy said.

"I know, I know, it was foolish. But it's okay. We're picking him up at the McDonald's we passed back there on Springfield Avenue. Now nobody get on his case, okay? He was just trying - "

"But this means he found out where Meerm is."

Patrick nodded, with no little pride in his grin. "That he did. And if we can decipher the directions he got, we'll have Meerm on her way to Dr. Cannon before you know it."

Romy smiled, sharing his infectious optimism, allowing herself to hope.

  Lister's voice grated through the encrypted phone line. "Still no sign of that damned monkey?"

Damned monkey was right. Double-damned monkey. Luca leaned back in his sofa, put his feet up on the old coffee table, and scratched his throat. His shaver had been a little dull this morning and it had irritated his skin, but not as much as the events of the past few days were irritating his gut. How many places could a pregnant sim hide?

"Not a trace."

Behind him, in the kitchen, he could hear Maria humming as she cooked up their Saturday night feast. A spicy aroma wafted around him, making his mouth water.

"Shit," Lister said. "I'm getting lots of questions about all the men we're tying up. Let me get this straight: You've got five cars and twelve men involved in this surveillance?"

"Correct: four cars stationary, one on patrol, with rotating twelve-hour shifts of six men each."

Suddenly Maria's face hovered above him, grinning as she dangled a glistening sliver of chicken over his lips. He opened his mouth and she dropped it in. Delicious. He blew her a kiss and she swayed back to the kitchen.

Damn, he was going to miss her.

"And you think that's the way to go?"

Luca chewed and swallowed quickly. "That's what all our sim experts advise. They say she's got to eat, so that means if we don't catch her wandering around or trying to sneak back into the sim crib, we'll find another sim sneaking out to bring her food."

"Makes sense to me, but upstairs is complaining about the manpower commitment."

"It's not as if these guys have anything better to keep them busy."

"Oh, but very soon they will. Guillotine is a go."

Luca stiffened. "When?"

"Can't say more now. Maybe in person."

Luca understood. Even a hard-encrypted phone wasn't secure enough for a conversation about Operation Guillotine. Because Guillotine was what SIRG was all about, and the neck scheduled to be placed under that blade was Aazim Saad's.

Al Qaeda was gone, but its goals and methods lived on in various smaller offshoots. The most active was the Malaysian Mujahideen led by Aazim Saad.

One of his men had ratted out the Omani terrorist kingpin, and his headquarters had been traced to a rubber plantation in Borneo. Operation Guillotine would drop three commando teams of specially trained mandrilla sims into the surrounding jungle and have them raid the compound, killing anything that moved. All their gear - weapons, clothing, communications - would be foreign-made to obscure their point of origin. Even if one were captured alive, it couldn't give anything away, because it wouldn't know anything, and couldn't tell if it did. The Malaysian Mujahideen would be wiped out, and no one would know by whom.

This had been the Old Man's dream: an anonymous strike force that could operate with greater efficiency and ferocity than any human equivalent. All SIRG had needed was clearance from the Pentagon to proceed. Now they had it. And if Guillotine was a success, Conrad Landon would be the toast of a very small, very elite inner circle in the Department of Defense.

Luca had seen the mandrillas in training. Their ferocity awed him. They knew no fear, and gave no quarter. Their downside was the difficulty controlling them, and stopping them once they got started. Heaven help any innocent bystanders near the Saad compound.

"All I can say," Lister said, "is that some of those surveillance men are going to be needed back in Idaho for the launch."

"I don't think I'll need much more time. It's been only forty-eight hours. She can't go - "

His PCA rang. "Just a sec. That's from the surveillance team." He put Lister on hold, snatched up the phone, and recognized Snyder's voice.

"Guess what just happened?"

"What?" Please, Luca thought. Nothing bad. Don't tell me anyone's dead.

But Snyder sounded pleased with himself; almost happy.

"I'm pulling up to the drive-thru window of this McDonald's near the crib to get coffees for the guys when I see this beat-up old van with New York tags pull into the lot. And I'm thinking, you know, there's a lot of dirty old white vans with New York plates, but maybe this is the one I spotted in Brooklyn, you know, when Palmer and Jackson disappeared from that op. And I was wishing I had the tag number handy when - "

"Get to the goddamn point!"

"Okay, okay. So I'm watching the van and I see the rear door swing open. No big deal, but then this sim hops out of the bushes and jumps inside."

The PCA's seams let out a faint squeak as Luca's grip tightened. "Was it her?"

"Nah. This was a skinny male, but you could tell from his coveralls he's from the crib."

"He's leading them to her! Where are they now?"

"About twenty-five yards ahead of me, heading back toward the crib."

"Don't lose them. You hear me, Snyder? Do...not...lose them. And don't let them spot you either. You spook them, they'll take off."

"Maybe I should contact the others so we can tag team them on the tail."

"Good idea. No, wait."

Luca's mind raced over the possibilities. These people had fooled him before. Was it sheer luck that Snyder spotted the sim jumping into the van, or was hesupposed to see it? The expected response was to mobilize the entire surveillance team, which would leave the sim crib unguarded. Could that be their real purpose?

"Do it this way. Lowery and Stritch have the front door. While Lowery takes the car to back you up, tell Stritch to go inside and find out from that jerk Morales which of his sims is missing. If the sim from the van somehow makes it back to the crib, I want to know which one it is."

"Got it," Snyder said.

"I'm on my way over now. I can't emphasize how important this is, Snyder. Don't blow it."

He returned to Lister. "Gotta go. Tell the folks upstairs our 'big manpower commitment' just paid off."

He ended the call without waiting for a response. He told Maria not to wait up as he rushed for the door.

  "You did a good job, Tome," Romy said, feeling for the agitated old sim.

Tome sat hunched on a rear seat of the van, distraught that he'd failed to find Meerm. Romy had moved out of the front. She and Zero flanked him.

"Yes," Zero added. "An excellent job. But now tell us again what Beece said. Try to remember exactly."

Romy listened closely to Tome's recitation of Beece's fractured directions to Meerm's hiding place, trying to fathom a way to put them to practical use.

And then from the front seat Patrick said, "I think we've got trouble."

Zero leaned forward. "What's wrong?"

"A green Taurus has been following us since McDonald's."

Romy tensed. "You're sure?"

"He's hanging back, but I just made a couple of turns and he's still with us."

"Let's leave the neighborhood, then," Zero said. "Head for one of the highways - 22, 78, doesn't matter, just so long as it takes us to the airport."

"Newark Airport?"

"It's a maze, and a traffic nightmare. If we can't lose them there, we never will."

"But what about Meerm?" Romy said.

Zero shook his head. "Too risky to look for her now. We'd lead them right to her."

Romy hung on as they bounced along. She saw a red, white, and blueTO 78 sign flash by and cried out, "There!"

"Damn!" Patrick said. "Missed it! Look for another."

Romy peered through the windshield. "Where are we?"

"Haven't a clue." Patrick shook his head. "Don't know a thing about Newark."

The buildings had fallen away behind them and now they were moving through a no-man's-land of junkyards and railroad tracks, bouncing along a rutted gravel path.

"The Taurus isn't pretending anymore," Patrick said, and Romy thought she detected a tremor in his voice. "He's getting closer. And there's another car behind him."

"He knows we've spotted him," Zero said. He moved to the rear doors and crouched among the overnight bags he'd told Romy and Patrick to bring. If they found Meerm, they wouldn't be going home. She watched him peer through a small, unpainted area of one of the windows. "Looks like he brought back-up along. I was afraid of this."

"He's getting closer!" Patrick called from the front.

Romy moved back beside Zero. "What do you think they'll do?"

"Try to stop us, find out who we are, maybe kill us. Except for Tome. They'll want to interrogate him."

Romy sensed a cold wave slip over her, just as it had last week when it had come time to dose the man called David Palmer with his own truth drug. As she felt her emotions crystallizing, falling one by one into deep-freeze hibernation, she reached into her shoulder bag and pulled out a .45 caliber HK semiautomatic. She worked the slide to chamber a shell.

"I don't think so," she said.

Zero's head swiveled to the pistol, then to her. "Where'd you get that?"

"From one of the two creeps who invaded my home."

"How long have you been carrying it?"

"Ever since two creeps invaded my home."

"He's riding my tail!" Patrick cried from the front.

Romy gestured with her HK toward the rear door. "Hold that open and we'll stop this right now."

Zero shook his head. "It may come to that, but let's try my way first." He opened a heavy-duty plastic cooler and reached inside.

"You were ready for something like this?"

"I try to be prepared for everything."

Despite the situation, she had to smile. "You must have been a great Boy Scout."

He looked at her again. "No. Never had the chance." His voice sounded sad. "But I think I would have loved it."

He came up with a red, softball-size object that jiggled in his gloved hand.

Romy stared at it. "A water balloon?"

"Not quite. Put your pistol away and get ready to open the door for me."

Romy didn't know what Zero was up to, but she'd learned to trust his judgment. And his preternatural calm bolstered her confidence. She stowed the pistol and unlatched the door.

Zero called toward the front: "Do we have any curves coming up, Patrick?"

"About thirty yards."

Zero turned to Romy. "Get ready. Five-four-three-two-one-open!"

Romy gave the door a shove. As soon as it swung open, revealing the green Taurus no more than half a dozen feet from their rear bumper, Zero launched the balloon with a gentle underhand toss.

Romy watched it wobble through the air and land on their pursuer's windshield - which then disappeared in a splatter of dark green paint.

The car swerved as the windshield wipers came on.

"Those won't help," Zero said. "Oil-based."

And then the van leaned to the right as it rounded a curve, but the Taurus kept going straight, bounding off the gravel roadway and ramming nose first into a deep ditch. It hung there, trunk skyward, steam boiling from under its crumpled hood.

She heard Patrick laugh. "What the hell?"

"Not in the clear yet," Zero said, staring out the rear door at the second car. He had another paint balloon in his hand. "Come on," he whispered. "Just a little closer."

But the second car, a dark blue Jeep, hung back. Obviously they'd seen what happened to the Taurus.

"Have to try something else," Zero said. He rummaged in the chest and came up with a plastic container. "Here. Toss these out."

Romy lifted the lid to find a couple of dozen steel objects that looked like jacks. But these were much bigger, and instead of six tips, these had only four, each ending in a sharp barbed point.

"What are - ?"

"Road stars. Just toss them out. They're configured so that they always land with a point up."

Romy emptied the container, watched the Jeep roll over them, and waited for its tires to go flat.

"Hmmm," Zero said. "Must have self-sealing tires. The stars will chew them up eventually but we don't have time for that. They're probably calling for more back-up now."

He pulled two lengths of chain from the chest, each with a dozen or so road stars attached, and dropped them out the back.

Again Romy watched the Jeep run over them, but nothing happened.

"They didn't work."

"Just give them a few seconds longer. The chains will wrap themselves around an axle, and drag the stars through the rubber - "

Romy saw a puff of dust as the front left tire blew out.

" - tearing the tire to shreds."

The Jeep swerved on the gravel and then another tire blew. The van left it behind in the dark, eating dust.

"Back to that 78 sign, Patrick," Zero called, "and please don't miss it this time."

Romy gazed at Zero and tried to sort through the strange mix of emotions scattering through her at that moment. They were warm - no, they were hot - and if this wasn't love, it should be.

  Luca thumbed theSEND button on his ringing PCA. It was Stritch.

"I'm in the crib now," he said. "Our buddy Benny here is in charge of forty-two sims, and that's how many I count."

"Count again. You made a mistake."

"I've counted three times already. There's forty-two sims here; not forty-three, not forty-one. Forty- two."

"Then he's lying about the number."

"That's what I thought so I made him show me his records. Sure enough: forty-two."

Portero growled and hung up. All sims accounted for? Then where did the sim in the van come from?

The PCA rang again. Snyder this time. His voice sounded strange...nasal.

"Give me some good news."

"We lost them."

Luca's car swerved when he heard the words and he didn't trust himself to drive. He pulled over and listened to Snyder's long-winded, jumbled, broken-nosed, ass-covering version of whatever really happened, blaming it on a guy in a ski mask or some such shit. When it was over Luca broke the connection and sat with his forehead resting on the steering wheel. For the first time in his adult life, Luca Portero wanted to cry.