“Honey,” he said, “there’s a lot to what you say. I know that. But I can’t just leave. There’s a real big deal coming up in Virginia . . . Jeb says . . . well, Jeb says a lot of things . . . but if that all goes well, then it will all be worth it.”

  “What about us? I want you to live here.”

  “It was just a staff job,” Van told her. He was really talking to himself. “I never told Jeb I’d make it my career. Even Jeb’s post isn’t full-time. We were just supposed to . . . paper over the cracks until we can establish solid policy guidance and add permanent structure at a federal level, hopefully cabinet level.”

  “Derek, I never heard you talk like that before. Not when we were happy.”

  “Well, that’s how they have to talk.” Van groaned. “Honey, I know that I’m overdoing it. I need you to tell me when I go off the rails. When you’re not there for me, yeah, the inside of my head gets pretty strange.”

  The suite’s phone rang discreetly. Van’s limo had arrived.

  Van dug hastily inside his survival backpack. “I’ll miss my plane in Denver if I don’t leave right now. But here. I need you to hold on to some things for me. Take this hunting knife. Oh, and take this ray gun.”

  Dottie gripped the ray gun’s cord. “You really carried this thing around with you, Derek?”

  “All over. I need it to solder,” Van told her. “It makes a great office paperweight, too. But they’re so dumb on planes now that they won’t even let me take a thing that looks like a gun. And that bad gig I just did with the Space Force . . . well, I can’t tell you about that. But I wasn’t happy with that. That really backfired, it was so bad . . . It took me weeks to work on that, and I pulled in help from everyone I knew, but, yeah, you’re right, Dottie. I can’t fight with you about that. It would have been a hell of a lot better for everybody, everybody in the whole world, if I had just stayed here with you. Maybe watching some sci-fi on TV. Eating that venison sausage. With that cantaloupe. That stuff was great.”

  “They don’t have any TV here.”

  “That would have been even better. Some Bollywood movies with the venison sausage, yeah, I want that. I do.”

  She threw her slender arms around him. “We had a great time, didn’t we?”

  “Aw, Dots, it was such a honeymoon. It was just so great. I just wanted more and more. Someday, someday real soon now.”

  “I’ll come see you in Virginia.”

  “You send me some e-mail.”

  Van made the mistake of reading his e-mail in the Denver airport. He’d granted himself just three days out of the loop, one brief human chance to eat, and sleep, and maybe kiss his life’s companion. Three days, and the CCIAB’s office came right apart. It was like reaching out in a blackout to touch a spitting high-power wire.

  Jeb had forwarded a first-class flame from some Pentagon rat inside the Joint Chiefs. General Wessler hadn’t signed off on this bureaucratic nasty-gram himself. Wessler wasn’t the kind of guy to be that dumb. Van knew that it had Wessler’s fingerprints, though.

  Stingingly, the complaint didn’t even mention Van by name. It was all about “two self-appointed technicians from the so-called Transformational Communications Architecture Office.” Van found himself described as “some know-it-all Beltway buffoon” and “that Ivy League professor in his beard and beret.” A beret, for God’s sake?

  Most of the rest of Van’s e-mail centered on the CCIAB’s Virginia event. This was quickly taking on the proportions of a major crisis. The CCIAB was quickly running out of time and leeway.

  The CCIAB might be one place where the buck stopped, but they were too small and too temporary to function in the long term. Even the National Security Council was not big enough to run the giant federal government. The NSC just talked to the people, who talked to the people, who ran the federal government. Very soon, fatally soon, the CCIAB would be facing the fate of a million other small blue-ribbon boards and small federal advisory committees. Deliver, and die.

  Jeb had bet the farm on this battle in Virginia. It was going to be the CCIAB’s Bull Run and Gettysburg all at once.

  Strapped like a bondage victim in his narrow tourist-class seat at thirty thousand feet, Van was grim. He never asked Tony Carew for favors, but now his situation was hitting the fan. In pulling Tony, he was going to be pulling his last trump.

  Tony’s ever-eager answering service, a voice-mail jail full of sexy robots, told him that Tony was in Taipei. Van tugged at the aircraft’s phone wire and persisted.

  When Van finally managed to appear at Tony’s ear, Tony was very tolerant about it. Jet lag never bothered Tony. Tony was even elated.

  The reason for this soon came up. The Indian girlfriend had just fled from Tony’s hotel suite. Tony was insanely thrilled by her visit. Somehow, against all odds, Tony had stolen her from her watchful family in Bombay for one secret, rapturous night, with just the two of them, and none of her relations, servants, managers, or groomers. Tony couldn’t have been prouder if he had magically raised the Titanic.

  Tony granted Van his favor without a second thought. Then he went right back to chew and jaw on his obsession.

  It sure mattered a whole lot to Tony that this girlfriend of his was supposedly “the world’s most beautiful woman.” Van scowled. After hearing from Dottie about it, Van had changed his mind about Tony’s infatuation. Dottie was right, she was always the voice of good sense. This was not a healthy relationship for Tony, this goofy long-range romance with the constant travel. Tony needed to settle down with a woman that he could depend on.

  Why was Tony missing the obvious truth about her? His girlfriend was a movie star from a foreign country. It wasn’t her business to really care about Tony Carew. If he ever went broke, if he ever got sick, that little fortune hunter would be gone from his life like a shot.

  Tony ranted on, tirelessly. Van finally excused himself and hung up. He waited ninety seconds, slid a different credit card through the phone, and called Michael Hickok’s cell phone.

  “I’m up in a plane,” he told Hickok.

  Hickok dropped his cell phone with a clatter. Van heard drunken giggling in the background. Hickok scrabbled the phone up. “Gimme a break. I’m with a lady friend and I’m not even wearing pants.”

  Over the roar of the plane’s engines, the giggles sounded a lot like Fawn Glickleister. At least, Van hoped it was Fawn. It was pretty horrible to think that two women in the world would both giggle like that, and that Michael Hickok would sleep with both of them.

  “Mike, you’re a pilot, right?”

  “I’ve got a pilot’s license,” Hickok said, yawning. “That don’t make me Top Gun.”

  “Okay, you remember that AFOXAR device we were working on? The hijacker interface that overrides and controls private jets?”

  “I thought you blew that off, Van. You and your big fat boss can’t afford to rent any big fat private jet for your big fat shindig in Virginia.”

  “I just found a friend who will loan me his big fat jet.”

  “Oh,” Hickok concluded. “So that would be different.”

  “Now I need some guy who can fly a Boeing Business Jet, from the ground, with that little joystick.”

  Hickok chuckled richly. “Hey, you just found your man!”

  “Can you pick me up at Dulles tonight? I’ve got to stop by my apartment on the way to the Vault.”

  “What, you mean right now? I’ve gotta drive some more? I just got here! I broke speed laws in fifteen states!”

  “I get in at nine,” Van said. “If you’re still busy, bring Fawn with you.”

  Hickok slapped his cell phone shut with a flat plastic clack.

  Van’s flight arrived late due to weather. Hickok was waiting, and he stared right past him.

  Van tapped Hickok’s shoulder.

  “Whoa! Van! Where’s the beard?”

  Van shrugged.

  Hickok squinted. “You gotta do something serious about that long-ass hair now, Professor. You look like the jumbo version of the Little Dutch Boy.”

  Hickok hated leaving his Humvee parked outside Van’s Washington apartment. The Humvee was a military super-jeep, but Hickok, with a Southern-boy pride in his wheels, hated the thought of its paint job ever coming to harm.

  “I can’t believe you live around here,” Hickok groused. “There’s hookers around here. There’s crack gangs!”

  “I’m a security expert,” said Van. He avoided a splatter of vomit on his stairs.

  “Like what, so that makes my car safer?”

  Van pulled his keys. But the door of his apartment opened at a touch. “Oh, Lord,” he blurted.

  The lamp was lit. Van looked around. Nothing obvious was missing. There wasn’t much in the apartment to lose.

  The keyboard of his Linux machine had been pried open.

  “They’re still in here!” Hickok said tautly.

  The door of Van’s bathroom swung out. A stranger stepped out with a gun. Van was astounded. When leveled at his own chest, the black barrel of a pistol looked as cavernous as a garage.

  Van had no idea who this intruder was, but he instantly recognized the handgun as a seven-shot, all-electronic, Australian-made O’Dwyer VLE. A really nice gun. A great gun. A real beauty.

  How could he get killed by some device that he had once taken apart with his own hands?

  “Yo, Fred!” said Hickok, his deep voice squeaking just a little. “Long time no see!”

  “Reach for the sky,” Fred ordered.

  Hickok only laughed. “I’m not packing any heat. You’re packing heat in here, Fred?”

  “I’m on assignment,” Fred said defensively.

  “You have any idea who you’re aiming to shoot here? This guy is from the National Security Council! Dr. Derek Vandeveer, this would be Mr. Federico Gonzales. Old war buddy of mine.”

  Gonzales scowled. “Why the hell did you have to tell this chump my name?”

  “We’re supposed to be all on one side in the War on Terror, aren’t we? You let me know if you changed sides, Fred.”

  “Nope,” said Fred. He kept the pistol steady, though, and he spoke from the side of his mustached lip. “You might as well come out now, kid.”

  A second burglar emerged from Van’s bathroom. He was tall, stooped, and thin as whipcord. He wore black-rimmed glasses, and had a military haircut. The “jarhead” look. Brown fringe on top, white sidewalls all around.

  The second burglar carried a black plastic impact-resistant toolbox in one big hand.

  “Hey, you guys are AFOCI,” Van realized, recognizing the hardware.

  “No, sir, I’m William C. Wimberley.”

  “But that’s an AFOCI toolbox,” Van insisted. “I helped to vet that thing.”

  “Air Force Office of Cyber Investigation,” Hickok clarified. “The AFOCI boys are in and out of the professor’s office all the time.”

  “We’re not AFOCI,” said Gonzales. “I heard of ’em, though.”

  “We’re Cyberspace Force,” said Wimberley.

  “Okay, maybe he’s in Cyberspace,” said Gonzales hastily. “That doesn’t mean I have to be in any damn Cyberspace.”

  “You just installed an AFOCI keyboard bug inside my Linux box,” said Van, staring at Wimberley.

  “Okay, yeah, fine,” Wimberley told him. “Maybe I did that. Why should you care? You would never have known about that.”

  “Who the hell do you think you’re talking to? Of course I would have known!”

  “Nobody ever looks inside their keyboards,” said Wimberley with a sneer. He was very young. “Not even you, Professor. I know who I’m talking to here, okay? If I hadn’t pled out, you would have testified at my trial!”

  Van stared at him. Wimberley looked vaguely familiar, but only vaguely. “So what was your handle?”

  “Bionic Ninja of 214.”

  An anklebiter. “What, you were like fifteen back then?”

  “Sixteen,” Wimberley said. “The Secret Service broke into my parents’ house. My mom never got over that. She still takes Prozac. All just because I borrowed a little long distance from your sad-ass phone company that just lost forty-five billion dollars!”

  Van took a sorrowful breath. “The Air Force didn’t mind your rap sheet?”

  “The modern United States military loves troubled, aggressive young men with high IQs,” Wimberley told him. He had a settled voice and a lethal stare.

  With an effort, Van stopped his knees from shaking. The hell of it was that Wimberley’s bug would have worked. Of course Van would never have looked inside his own keyboard, and the tiny device would have been silently beaming every keystroke he made to some monitoring station blocks away.

  “Look, I’m NSC, and I know something about your so-called outfit. The U.S. Space Force can’t just start up a ‘Cyberspace Force’ on its own get-go. They’ve got no policy guidance from the top.”

  Gonzales weighed in suddenly. “The Space Force are the only service branch that can run mil-spec cyber-security,” he recited. “No other military outfit has the extensive computer networks or the time-tested technical skills.”

  “Are you nuts?” said Van. “The Space Force is supposed to run satellites! That’s got nothing to do with viruses or DOS attacks! The guys tasked with defending military systems are the Computer Network Defense Joint Task Force over at DISA.”

  “Who’s Deeza?” said Wimberley. “I never heard of ’em.”

  “They’ve been at the job since 1998!”

  Hickok was even more skeptical. “Look here, kid, there ain’t no such thing as ‘cyberspace’!”

  “There is if we say there is,” insisted Wimberley.

  “But why did you come here to my place?” Van said. He was genuinely baffled.

  “I hate to break the news to you, Professor, but information warfare happens inside people’s computers! And you, you’re trying to sabotage a mission-critical eighteen-billion-dollar satellite project! You don’t think important people are gonna notice about that? We know what you’re up to.”

  Alarmed, Van turned to Hickok. Hickok just shrugged. “‘Important people,’ he says.”

  “You’re a left-wing professor from Stanford,” Wimberley amplified. “You’re a peacenik.”

  “‘Left-wing’?” said Van, stunned. “‘Peacenik’? I just had lunch with Paul Wolfowitz!”

  “Your wife is in the antiwar movement,” said Wimberley. “She was Eastern Seaboard Coordinator for Physicists for Social Responsibility!”

  “Dottie is from Massachusetts!” Van said, outraged. “They’re all like that up there!”

  Wimberley stared back at him. “Don’t you ever Google yourself? It’s written all over you. Look at that hair and those clothes.”

  “And that’s supposed to give you some kind of right to Watergate my apartment?” Van blurted.

  “Oh, yeah,” said Wimberley. “It generally does.”

  “Nobody ever catches us,” said Gonzales, shifting his shining handgun and looking at his wristwatch. “You’re supposed to be way off in another state. We’re supposed to be long gone from here by now.”

  “Yeah,” said Wimberley, hefting his case. “We kinda need to be going right now.”

  “Hold on,” said Van. “I just happen to be the Deputy Technical Director of the CCIAB.”

  “So what?” said Wimberley. “I never heard of them either.”

  “So I built you that burglar case, you sorry little punk! There’s no way you’re just walking out of here when you just broke into my own house and tapped my own computer with my own hardware!”

  Wimberley set the heavy plastic case by his feet and folded his long, wiry arms. “What are you gonna do about it, Dr. Superspy? Call the cops on me?”

  “I’ve got a gun right here,” Gonzales bargained hopefully.

  Hickok chuckled. “Aw, come on, Fred.”

  “If you want these cyberweapons,” said Wimberley, putting his boot on the case, “then you’re gonna have to take them away from me.”

  Blood rushed hotly to Van’s face. “You don’t think I could do that?”

  Wimberley laughed in scorn. “Let me put you in touch with reality! I’m not some make-believe warfighter, like you are. I enlisted, dude. I am tomorrow’s cyber-military. You’re just some flabby-ass civilian professor from some failed telecom company. Plus, you’re ten years older than me. So if you attempt to confiscate my weapons here, I will kick your fat ass right up between your shoulders.”

  “You are out of your mind,” Van told him. “You’re some nutcase punk who called himself ‘Bionic Ninja.’ I outweigh you by fifty pounds. Plus, this is my house!”

  Wimberley turned to Gonzales. “The hippie here is hallucinating. I think maybe you’d better just shoot these guys.”

  Gonzales snorted. He thumb-jacked the magazine out of his pistol and threw it to Hickok. Hickok, ever-alert, snatched the bullet clip right out of midair.

  Gonzales sat down cozily in Van’s magnesium chair. “Do I look that stupid?” he announced. “One bullet, two bullets, that’s not even gonna slow this dude here down. Because, boys, this dude here is Air Force Special Operations, just like me. Mike Hickok and me, we are always ‘The First Ones There’!”

  Hickok burst into laughter. He sat on Van’s stained and ragged couch, with a loud thrum of broken springs. “Aw, come on, Fred, this is D.C., man. This is some guy’s apartment!”

  Gonzales put both his elbows on his knees. “The way I see it, these candy-ass computer geeks have got a score to settle.”

  “You’re right,” Van said. The words startled him as they hit his own ears, but then he realized that he meant them. Rage rumbled through his chest like a rolling cannonball. He was in deadly earnest.

  Hickok coughed into his fist. “Van, sit down. Let ’em both go. It’s all some big mistake.”

  “Your friend Fred here can go if he wants,” Van said. “I didn’t build him that O’Dwyer pistol. That intrusion case though. That tool case is mine.”

  Wimberley took off his black-rimmed glasses and set them on a table at the foot of Van’s lamp. “I can see that I’ve got to kick this guy’s ass now,” he announced. He put one fist inside another and loudly cracked his knuckles. “This won’t take long.” He looked at Hickok and Gonzales. “I just don’t want to see you two snake-eater boys start crying about this, or anything.”