Greg Bear - Quantico

‘All right, listen up,’ Pete Farrow called out. The recruits-two women and seven men: two blacks, one Asian, one Middle-Eastern, five shades of white-stopped talking and assumed parade rest. Compared to the instructor they were a motley bunch, spread over the range of physical specimens: plump and skinny, tall and short, dark-haired and light.

Farrow walked along the loose line. ‘All right, agents, this is it. Today, you will be using equipment worth about two hundred thousand dollars. Try not to break it. Only about twenty percent of our field offices have all this stuff. It is rare. It is valuable. But it is the future-and you will get used to it.

‘If you are a sadist, you are shit out of luck. Some of this new stuff threatens to turn you bloody-minded SOBs into kinder, gentler peace officers.’ Farrow winked in the general direction of William Griffin. ‘Out on the street, if you do this right, nobody has to die. Though I do expect a few sprained ankles and wrenched necks, and we have been known to break arms and even legs. Understood?’

The class nodded in unison.

Three men in gray suits passed behind the students and entered the Bank of Hogantown. They were carrying bagged sandwiches from the Pastime Deli. One turned and said, ‘Farrow’s litter. What do you think? Blood in the gutters?’ The others flashed evil smiles and pushed through the swinging glass doors.

William watched Jane Rowland scratch her ribs under her suit coat and the white FBI Academy golf-style shirt. His underwear itched, too. Something about the diagnostic sensors embedded in the bulletproof weave or the fluid piping that smoothly wrapped around the torso.

Medium-sized piles of equipment lay at their feet. They would soon put on masks and special network jackets. More weight, more wires.

In their holsters they carried blue-handled revolvers filled with paint ball rounds. The Academy cars were equipped with pump-action shotguns with blue stocks that discharged a nasty, smelly pink spray, and mock H &K MP5 9mm carbines that fired nothing but made a horrible racket-all networked training weapons. Everything they did with these guns showed up on monitors somewhere in the recesses of Hogantown.

‘You have made your case,’ Farrow said. ‘You are now about to arrest four suspects who are transporting an illegal substance for sale. This is no longer the good old days of cocaine or heroin. Neuraminoline tartrate, known on the street as Tart, is colorless, odorless, and tasteless-but it is the most dangerous and destructive GM drug on the market today. Loser users tell themselves that Tart is a harmless organic performance enhancer. It produces long-lasting feelings of angelic well-being. But in five percent of its devotees, Tart leads to a degenerative neuromuscular disease called Kepler’s Syndrome. You end up in a wheelchair, drooling, unable to control your bowels and in constant pain. But that’s not the end of Tart’s charms. In an estimated seven percent of users, Tart binds to chromosomes in sex cells- eggs and sperm. It causes distortions that can be passed on to future offspring, who, if they survive beyond the age of two, will suffer the agonies of the damned. Tart makes babies into monsters.’ Farrow slipped on his grid-linked gogs-short for goggles, but actually more like a thick-framed pair of glasses. ‘If that doesn’t psych you for this bust nothing will. Remember-if you screw up, your classmates could get hurt. I do not like to have my heart flutter. I do not want to grieve for lost ducklings. Stay tactical. Use all the skills we’ve taught you. Ready?’

‘Ready!’ they shouted.

‘Suit up and get your Lynxes on the grid. Today we’re all top code, to keep the bad guys from knowing who and where you are, so line up and get your numbers.’ He began handing out strips of paper.

William Griffin put on his gogs and field jacket, labeled with a strip of silver tape with his name on it. He ran his index finger along the bumps and ridges on the forearm Lynx keyboard, logging on to the team server and inputting his number and five fake numbers and positions that his node would disperse like chaff, should someone hack in. The others did the same. They all stood clutching their paintball masks, clear visors with plastic headbands. Cheeks, temples, and ears were no longer protected-hadn’t been for years. Pain was a teacher, a tool.

They then clipped health stats boxes to their belts and arranged their shoulder-mounted holsters. Farrow checked them over, as solicitous as a mother hen.

‘Keep boxy stuff away from your mid-back. Clip everything to the side. If you fall backward on a hard surface, you could injure your spine.’

They sheepishly readjusted. This was basic stuff and already they were screwing up.

Farrow checked his slate. ‘Mr. Al-Husam, you’re not on the grid. Get your numbers.’

Fouad Al-Husam, a small man with beautiful black eyes and a round, almost feminine face, touched his keyboard, trying to find the bumps. Farrow approached him and patted his jacket sleeve. ‘Here,’ he said, and lifted Al-Husam’s arm to the right place. ‘Follow the guide ridges.’ Al-Husam smiled but his face darkened with embarrassment.

‘Still not there,’ Farrow said after a few seconds. ‘Reboot your pad. I have eight Lynxes on the grid, all healthy and happy. I see code in action. Good scatter. Ms. Lee, are you happy?’

Lee was the shortest and lightest person in the group but that did not faze Farrow. He was running her hard through her paces. ‘Yes, sir, I am happy,’ she called out.

‘Happy to be here at the Q?’

‘Sir, I am very happy to be here at the Q.’

‘We are not Gyrenes, Ms. Lee. Academy mandates snappy repartee. Show me your FBI beef.’

‘Happy as an aardvark under a full moon…at the Q, sir.’

Farrow’s grin was tepid. ‘Is wit truly dead?’ He glanced around the group, raising his shoulders in a long, sad shrug.

They all laughed.

‘ Focus ,’ Farrow shouted. ‘You’ve been working toward this moment for three weeks. You have the bastards in your sights. Remember your training. You ARE ready.’

William quietly sucked in his breath. He was far from sure of that. Standing beside him, Jane Rowland looked confident-hard as a piece of glass and about as brittle.

‘Okay-Al-Husam, you’re on the grid. You can stop fiddling with the keys.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘You are knights in high-tech armor,’ Farrow said. ‘Make the flame-tormented shade of Mr. Hoover proud. Let’s go.’

‘Right, coach,’ William Griffin said under his breath as they fanned out.

They dispersed as four teams in four vehicles. William and Jane Rowland had drawn chits and were partnered for the bust. They climbed into an unmarked tan Caprice from the last century. Rowland took the wheel. ‘Ready?’ she asked William, face forward.

‘I am icy. ’ He grinned.

Rowland rotated and poked her finger. ‘Don’t mess up,’ she instructed. ‘We have our docs, right?’

William held up his steno pad and a plastic folder full of paper-copy warrants and mug shots. The actors in the shots looked tough and bored.

‘We’ll do fine,’ he said. ‘You’ll do great.’

Rowland gave William a don’t patronize me scowl and cinched her seat belt. A helicopter blew overhead. Rowland flinched. Hostage Rescue Team personnel dressed in black and armed to the teeth hung out of the chopper doors like commandoes, waiting to abseil down to a roof. Hogantown could get crowded and noisy. Ten or twelve practicals could fill any given day.

‘Yeah. Right,’ Rowland said. She started the Caprice, pulled out onto Hogan Boulevard and drove around the corner and down Ness Avenue to their stake-out, just across the two-way street from the Giga-Mart parking lot. The suspects had been sighted shopping there this morning by an alert police officer, who had traced one of the men back to the Dogwood Hotel and the other to the Tolson Arms apartments. The Dogwood was across the street from the Giga-Mart. The Giga-Mart was small but functional. Its shelves had been stocked with goods that agents and Marines could buy but its clerks doubled as actors in Academy scenarios.