Virtual Vandals

Chapter 16

Sitting on his hands in the backseat of Caitlin’s car, Matt could only watch helplessly as the blond boy pulled out of the Bradford Academy parking lot.

If I were alone, I might just make a try for old Ng over there, Matt thought, looking at the wiry Asian boy with the pistol. Net Force instructors were Marine-trained, and expected everyone connected with the agency — even the young Explorers — to have some self-defense ability. Matt had done fairly well in his unarmed-combat courses. If he only had himself to worry about, he might have been able to get the gun from Ng’s hand.

But he couldn’t be sure of getting the gun before one shot went off. And the way things were set up, that shot would go into Cat Corrigan’s back.

So Matt sat where he was, grimly trying to memorize the route they were taking.

They quietly wove their way through local streets until they reached the Rock Creek Parkway. The blond boy pulled onto a northbound entrance ramp.

Sure, Matt thought. The Beltway.

Many years before, city planners had completely ringed the District of Columbia with highways, so that drivers could avoid the traffic of the city’s center. Improved transportation had also started a boom in the Maryland and Virginia suburbs. Housing developments were laid out, malls, office complexes — by the 1980s, sharp Washington business and government types were known as “Beltway Bandits.”

But even by the turn of the century, things were changing. As improvements were made in the city, problems emerged in the inner suburbs — those inside the ring of roads. Ironically, they were the sort of “city problems” that people had moved to suburbia to ignore. Immigrants. Poverty. Drugs. Gangs.

Cities, in spite of their problems, have business districts and lots of people to act as a tax base. The suburban towns found their police and social services overwhelmed.

Wherever they were going, Matt was sure it would be somewhere inside the Beltway.

The boy behind the wheel upped the speed, moving along with the flow of highway traffic.

“Nice,” said the boy at Matt’s left. “Is a nice car, Willy, no?”

“Nice car, yes,” Willy, the blond boy, said from behind the wheel. “Light-years past my daddy’s pickup. Too bad we have to dump it.”

On Matt’s right, Ng jumped in surprise. “We don’t keep?”

Willy jerked his head at Caitlin. “This little girl is a Senator’s daughter. Word gets out she’s been snatched, we’re gonna have the FBI and all the rest of the alphabet after us. Army, Navy, Marines, Coast Guard, who knows what-all?”

The other boy made a disappointed sound.

“No way, Mustafa. We don’t want to be anywhere near this car when the gov-boys find it. So we leave it where other folks will find it first. Leave them to get the blame.”

Willy exited the Beltway and drove along an access road to a seedy-looking mall. The place had probably been built before the turn of the century, and whatever shine the buildings might have had once was long gone. Half the storefronts were empty, and some of those had holes in the windows. The other places were what Matt’s father would call “junk stores,” full of cheap, shoddy merchandise with big signs about bargains in the windows.

Matt noticed a phony-looking electronics store with a banner screaming about the tremendous buys inside. The glaring colors had faded in the sunshine, and there were tears in the plastic.

This is exactly the kind of place where you could buy a cheap antique of a computer, he suddenly thought. Except they’d probably try to hold you up for too high a price.

They thudded their way across the cracked concrete parking lot until Willy brought them to a halt next to a beat-up sedan.

It was hard to tell what color the car had been originally. One door was bluish-gray, and a fender was green. The rest seemed to be beige, except for the leprous gray spots of body putty.

“Everybody out,” Willy ordered.

Willy hopped from behind the wheel and got a firm hold on Caitlin’s arm. In his other hand he had a Bowie knife, which he quickly showed to Matt, then lowered the weapon to the side of his leg where it wasn’t so obvious to the people passing by on the street. “Just so you don’t try anything stupid-like,” the boy said in his back-country drawl.

Ng held his gun down against his leg, but Matt knew he could have it up and shooting in a moment. Part of him was amazed that these guys were so cool about showing weapons so openly. But then again, they weren’t doing anything to catch anyone’s attention. They were just transferring themselves from a late-model car to a beat-up old rattletrap.

The seating arrangements were just the same. Matt was in the back, sandwiched between Ng and Mustafa, sitting on his hands. He wondered if they were going to fall asleep there under his butt.

Willy sat behind the wheel, his knife having disappeared as miraculously as it had leapt into his hand. Caitlin had the passenger’s seat, right in front of Ng’s gun.

People still called that the death seat, Matt suddenly remembered. He tried to push the thought out of his head.

Willy started the engine, and the clunker lurched forward ahead of a cloud of bluish smoke. “You be careful with that gun, you hear?” he ordered Ng. “I don’t want you makin’ no useless holes in this here seat. When we finish, this car’s gonna be mine.”

Matt twisted to look out the filthy rear windshield at Cat’s sports car. It looked as out of place as a butterfly in an ant farm.

“Left the keys on the front seat,” Willy said. “Somebody’ll be moving it along any minute now.”

They headed back to the Beltway and began retracing their path — probably to throw off anyone who might have been tracing Caitlin’s car, Matt realized.

Their counterclockwise journey took them across the Potomac River above the Northwest section of D.C., halfway around the city, then across the much wider expanse of the river south of the city on the Woodrow Wilson Bridge.

They left the Beltway on the first exit past the bridge, entering Southwest Washington. This was still a decayed neighborhood. Willy pulled into a no-name gas station and drove right into the mechanic’s bay. A man was running a rag over a delivery van. When he saw the newcomers, he just walked away.

“Change your partners, once again,” Willy said. “You’ll get to sit in the back with your pal,” he told Caitlin. “And with my pals, too,” he added.

The back of the van was a little roomier, Matt had to admit. He and Caitlin sat side by side. Ng and Mustafa sat across from them. The Asian boy still covered them with Willy’s pistol.

Matt’s main complaint was that he couldn’t see where they were going. The rear of the van was completely enclosed. They were in a dark box, heading who knew where. Judging by the speed they were traveling, Matt figured that Willy was back on a parkway.

But then they got off, went through several turns, and came to a stop. Willy opened the rear door. Matt noticed he had his knife in his hand again. “We’re here,” the blond boy announced. “Shake a leg, you two.”

Willy pulled Caitlin out, keeping his grip on her wrist. Then it was Matt’s turn. He was very conscious of Ng with the gun behind him. Matt tried to take in his surroundings, but all he got was a quick glimpse of red brick before Willy gave him a not-too-gentle smack in the head with the hilt of his knife.

“You ain’t here to play tourist. Just watch where you’re walkin’. Let’s go.”

They were hustled to a scarred wooden door, which swung open just as they reached it. Inside was a reception committee — another trio of tough-looking street kids, each carrying a military rifle.

Matt paused in the doorway, his nose wrinkling at the mixed smells of sweat, beer, mildew, and rotting wood. Mustafa shoved him through.

“Went like a piece of cake,” Willy said. “We picked her up with no problem, and this one was with her.” He nodded at Matt. “Lucky thing Rob showed us pictures of all the suckers.”

He made his knife disappear, but kept his grip on Caitlin’s arm. “Come on along,” Willy said. “We got some people want to see you.”

The prisoners were marched into what had probably been a cozy parlor about 120 years ago. Now it was just a ruin. A few strips of wallpaper still dangled on the walls, but they were mainly defaced plaster. A couple of big pieces of furniture that no one had bothered to take with them sat rotting against the walls. They’d been moved to clear a space in the middle of the room, where a pair of tables held maps, papers, and a collection of mis-mated, old-fashioned computers.

Two figures stood in the improvised command center — Matt recognized the setup immediately. Then he realized that one of the gang members looked familiar.

Rob Falk was a little taller than the mental image Matt had kept of him. His skinny frame had put on some muscle. His chest was thicker, and Matt could see the sinews in his bare arms exposed by his sleeveless gang shirt.

“A little different from the gawky wimp at Bradford, huh?” Falk gave Matt and Caitlin a sort of sneering smile. “That’s what happens when you get stuck on the wrong side of the Beltway. For a while there, it was touch and go. Then I met James—”

“No last names,” growled the big black guy standing next to Rob. He was built like a wrestler, with arms as big as most people’s legs, a shaved head, and grim, almost glaring, black eyes.

“James is the warlord of the Buzzards, one of the many…ah, voluntary organizations available for suburban youth.” Rob’s lips quirked. “Yeah, I know, the new technological opportunities combined with urban renewal were supposed to mean the end of the old street gangs. It didn’t happen. When the people who got displaced from their old neighborhoods arrived in the suburbs, they found a stew just simmering. All kinds of immigrants, legal and illegal. Salvadorans, Mexicanos, Cubans, Nigerians, Jordanians, Pakistanis, refugees from the Balkans. Plus, there were people just coming to the big city. You met Willy? His parents grew up in a coal-mining town in Appalachia — until the coal ran out. Lots of folks have come to this country — this city — in search of a better life.”

He laughed. “I sound like a damn politician, don’t I?” Then the laughter left his voice. “Instead, they were stuck out along the Beltway. None of these folks have found a place in your brave new world…but they did find a place in the Buzzards — a fine gang with a tradition that goes back a good seventy-five years, now.”

“And the Buzzards found you,” Matt added.

Rob gave him the same look that Mr. Fairlie used for a good answer. “Very good!”

He nodded to the big guy beside him. “James saw that I understood the new technology and could use it. We had a rough time at first, scraping the necessary hardware together. Finally, we ended up heisting a couple of these so-called appliance stores.”

“Got a couple of good holo-sets out of the deal, too,” Willy said.

“It’s mostly junk, of course, especially compared to the systems you’re used to,” Rob went on. “But I managed. Compiled some pretty good programs, didn’t I?” His smile became shark-like. “Good enough to sucker in the great Cat Corrigan and her friends from many lands.”

He shook his head at Matt, making a “naughty-naughty” gesture with his finger. “I can’t figure out how you got involved in all this, Hunter. From what I remember, you always seemed a pretty levelheaded, safe and sane, boring guy. But then”—Rob looked over at Caitlin—“I guess you wouldn’t be the first to be led astray by a pretty face.”

“Why did you drag us here?” Cat demanded.

“You looked about ready to blab,” Rob said, “And we don’t want you blabbing about what we’ve been up to.”

“Was that why you killed Gerry?”

Matt gave Caitlin a glance from the corner of his eye. As helpless prisoners, now was not the time to start annoying Rob and his buddy James.

“Guy was turning into a loose cannon,” the gang warlord said flatly. “That stunt he pulled with the Irish could have caught the wrong people’s attention.”

“I thought you’d be more upset about our attempt to kill your new friend over here,” Rob said with a nod for Matt. “That was pretty clever how you got out of there, Hunter. Of course, I was working third-hand from this pile of…” He paused for a moment. “If I had a first-rate system, they’d still be spooning your brains off the comp-link chair in Veeyar Lab Six!”

Matt shrugged. “Yeah, well, I guess we all have our disappointments. Frankly, I think you went a little overboard. I couldn’t figure out what you were doing. And from the way they were acting, Caitlin and the others didn’t have a clue, either.”

“Maybe not,” Rob said. “But they might give a clue to other people, if they gave up a full list of the systems they’d visited.”

He sighed. “I really thought they’d hunker down and keep their mouths shut until we were completely ready. You know how those people love their reputations. But then you came along and started rocking the boat. Savage began acting crazy, and the others became…unreliable. We’ve had to push up our timetable, and shut some mouths.”

“Your timetable?” Matt tried to get a look at the map taped to the tabletop. It was upside down from his point of view, but he could see it was a point of land jutting out into the joining point of two rivers. Somehow, it looked familiar, but Matt couldn’t place it.

“You’ve got to forgive me but I still have no idea what you’re talking about,” Matt said. “What were the virtual vandals doing for you, besides causing confusion?”

Rob Falk gave him that shark’s smile again. “If they confused you, then they did their job perfectly. Cat and her not-so-diplomatic friends were supposed to raise a fair amount of hell to keep the law’s attention on them.”

He paused, and thumped his fist down on the map. “While all the time, they were opening a way for us to get into the Gardens at Carrollsburg.”