Dick Stivers - Deathbites

"Well, it's this way, officer."

"Where do you get this officer jazz? Do you think you're in the Army?"

He let go of her foot and sat up.

"Yeah. It's a dirty war, but we're on the same side — trying to rid the world of a few more terrorist scum."

She was cautious, examining the words, looking for some indication of whether they were a trap.

"What gave you the idea that I'm some sort of cop?"

Lyons rolled his eyes. "Oh lady, are you ever some sort of cop. The looks you gave me had me uncertain right to the moment you lured me into your little jungle here and jumped me."

"Can I have my foot back?"

Lyons let go of her foot, pushed his hands into the rich loam and brought both feet under himself. He was prepared to spring, if she took off or tried attacking him again.

She did neither. She rolled onto her back, then sat up. She pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs. She sat there, staring at Lyons.

"You say you weren't sure. That means you were suspicious," she said.

"Yeah. You gave yourself away in a lot of little ways, but I didn't see how you'd be trusted to keep an eye on me, if you were that obvious. So, I thought maybe you were testing me. How come they trust you so completely?"

"They don't trust me at all. That's why we were followed. Put your rotten fruit in a separate basket so it won't affect the rest," she said. "How did I give myself away?"

"You're too calm, too sure of yourself. And the way you handled that gunman in the parking lot. That was a takedown usually taught in police academies and seldom elsewhere."

"You mean I should have been more nervous?"

"No, Deborah... nice name that... but what do your friends call you?"

She hesitated for a moment and then smiled, almost shyly. "My friends call me Dibs."

"Well, Dibs, I gave you some severe pokes about killing the defenseless. All it did was make you try to figure out what sort of a nut I am. A terrorist reacts with anger when you suggest that they pick only on easy targets."

"I thought you must be insane. I bought it, when you told me that you enjoyed hurting people."

"I don't enjoy making anything suffer, but I will if I must. That doesn't mean I'm sane, just effective."

"You make weird jokes," she told him. "What kind of a cop are you?"

"The deadly type."

She searched his face to see signs of laughter. She did not find any.

"What kind of a cop are you?" he asked.

"State. We've spent months and I'm the first one to get inside a Harassment Initiation Team, but I can't say I'm a trusted team member."

"Even less so, after we return without our tails."

"What happened to them?" she asked.

"I imagine they were taken care of before they could take care of us."

She shuddered. "Why take care of us? We're following orders."

"Some undercover cop. You do nothing but follow orders, huh?"

"Well, as far as HIT is concerned."

"Don't underestimate them. Those were professional terrorists following us around. Jishin wouldn't waste their energy just to give us backup.''

Deborah shuddered. "You make it sound like we should be under this earth and not on it."

"Let's just say we're into it, but still kicking."

She put her forearms on his shoulders. Her hands nervously twisted the hair on the back of his head. She locked eyes with Lyons.

"Don't get me wrong. I volunteered for this. I wouldn't back out if I were offered the chance, but God! I want to continue kicking!"

"Of course."

He wrapped an arm around her and pulled her into his lap. Her arms went around him.

"Only those who believe that life is precious risk their own lives to defend it. So, of course you don't want to die. People with death wishes find easier ways to fulfill them."

She rested her head on his shoulder.

"We'd better get back to the war," Lyons said after a long silence.

She slid off his lap onto her back. Her arms stayed around him and pulled him down on top of her.

"Let's remind ourselves we're alive," she whispered.

Lyons laughed. He knew he was alive.

When they finished making love, when their energy abated, they lay sweating, and panting, tangled in the midst of a huge circle of ruined shrubbery and flowers.

Later they found an employee lavatory with running water. After ten minutes of washing and brushing, they were as presentable as they were going to get. Deborah used the opportunity to telephone in a report.

As the two wandered out of the lobby, Lyons looked back at the desolated jungle.

"People should really be more careful about locking doors," he muttered.

July 12, 1905 hours, Smyrna, Georgia

Hal Brognola leaned back in the comfortable leather chair behind the desk in the president's office at Elwood Electronic Industries. He sipped black coffee from a mug and looked across the rim at Lao Ti. She was sitting in a chair in front of the desk, her legs tucked under her. There was a pot of tea on a side table close by and she held a handleless, Japanese teacup.

"What are Gadgets and Pol up to?" he asked.

"They're double checking my security arrangements. I don't think they quite trust me, yet."

"They never fully trust anyone. It goes with the territory. They even check out each other whenever there's time. That's the way they stay alive."

Ti nodded. "Of course. Bushido , the way of the warrior, dictates vigilance all of the time, but I always thought that was theory. I've never seen it in practice before."

"It's rare, because the price is high," Hal reflected. "You see it only where lives are always on the line. I imagine Miyamoto Musashi understood it very well."

Ti grinned at Hal's reference to the "Sword Saint" of Japan.

Brognola took another sip of coffee and then got down to business. "How ready are we for another terrorist attack?"

"An attack will be difficult for us to handle. We hold 'fire drills' to evacuate people quickly from the building, but I think everyone's figured out that they're attack drills. When someone asks what to do if the terrorists show up, I tell them everything is being taken care of. But truthfully, if we don't have at least a few minutes' warning, we're bound to have casualties. We're gambling with these people's lives."

"We've substituted Justice Department employees wherever we can," Brognola said, "but we've had to hire some outsiders with creative potential to keep this company going. Here at Elwood we have a chance of stopping the terrorists. We have no chance of stopping them if they strike a new target."

"But... " Ti began.

She was interrupted by the beeping of a pager that she wore on the belt of her jeans.

"The computer has monitored some activity on the central WAR computer," she said. "Shall we check it out now?"

"Might as well."

When Lao Ti did not have a portable computer, she breadboarded her own. Miscellaneous boards of chips and a riot of wires filled an entire workbench. The only items Brognola recognized were a monitor, a keyboard and a bank of floppy-disk drives.

"Wouldn't this be better pulled together in a cabinet?" he asked.

Ti shook her head. "Not at the rate I've got the clock set. Too much heat. If I really get going, I turn some fans on the bench to move the air faster."

She sat down at the keyboard. Her fingers would blur for a few seconds and then pause while the screen filled with a mishmash of symbols. She would take these in at a glance and then her fingers would start their frantic dance once again.

The messages on the screen were as impossible to follow as the arcane symbols that Ti was entering. Often there was nothing but long strips of ones and zeros.

"Do either of you speak English?" Brognola cracked.