F Wilson: Fatal Error

Jack's mind wandered as Russ went on about viruses and worms and trojans. He noticed the blond guy in the sweater stopping Julio again as he returned to the bar. He pointed toward Jack and Russ.

"How come they get to sit over there and we don't?"

Julio swung on him and got in his face. He was a good head shorter than the blond guy but he was thickly muscled and had that air of barely restrained violence. He went into his Soup Nazi act.

"You ask me one more time about those tables, meng, and you outta here. You hear me? You out and you never come back!"

Julio loved to use "meng" whenever he could, especially with the yups and dinks.

As Julio strutted away, the blond guy turned to his companions, grinning.

"I just love this place."

"So all in all," Russ was saying, "a pretty cool gig."

"Sounds utterly fascinating."

Russ grinned. "I can tell you'd rather stick pins in your eyes."

"Not pins. Nails. Glowing, red-hot nails."

"Hey, it's not bad being a white hat. It pays and they may go to bat for me and get me back on the Net." One of the terms of Russ's probation was banishment from the Internet, cruel and unusual for a guy like him. Of course, he'd found numerous ways around that. "But that's not why I'm here. Got a friend in trouble."

"This 'friend' wouldn't be named Russ, would he?"

"No. This is a buddy. We've been working on an MMO game hack-"

"NRO… MMO… I don't speak acronymese."

"Sorry. A massively multiplayer online game."

"Sounds like bad English."

"It's a big deal these days. WoW-I mean, Warcraft-has eleven million players, Habbo's got eight, and people average between twenty and thirty hours a week at it."

Jack shook his head. He got game playing, but didn't get Russ. "And you want to hack it? Don't you ever learn?"

He laughed. "Hack's an umbrella term. Me and Munir are working on a way to make MMOs play faster. If it works out the way we hope it will, we'll patent it and be sitting pretty."

"And this Munir's got trouble? What kind?"

Russ shrugged. "Don't know. Won't tell me. I think it involves his wife and kid."

Jack remembered a voice mail that said, Jack, please save my family! He'd decided not to call back.

"And he can't go to the cops," Russ added. "You thinking what I'm thinking?"

A kidnap, most likely. One of Jack's rules was to avoid kidnappings. They were the latest crime fad these days, usually over drugs. They attracted feds and Jack had less use for feds than he had for local cops.

"Yeah." He leaned forward. "Look, Russ, kidnapping is best left to the big boys. They've got assets and manpower and teams specially trained-"

"He's scared shitless to make that call. I told him I knew a guy who could look into it and keep it outside the system."

"Sorry, Russ. No way."

"Drexler, I have a task for you."

Ernst straightened in his chair as he recognized the voice: the One.

His office seemed to shrink around him. Contact with the One never failed to make him feel like a frightened child. He grabbed a pen and poised it over the legal pad before him.

"Yes, sir."

"Do you remember the woman who created such a nuisance last summer?"

"Louise Myers? The woman posting on the nine/eleven sites?"

"Yes. Her."

Everyone Ernst had sent against that woman had ended up dead. A bit more than a nuisance. Quite a bit more.

"Did you ever find her?"

"No, sir. We gave up on the search some months ago. She's stopped posting and there didn't seem much hope-"

"Resume the search. Widen it. Find her."

"Is there something I should know?"

"Merely a contingency plan. She has a book I may have use for. She's in the city. I could find her myself if I were there, but I am in the middle of something else at the moment."

"I'll get on it right away."

"Also, a package shall be arriving for your safekeeping. As for the woman, remember this: I want no contact. Locate her, but do not contact her."

"No contact? But-"

He was gone.

The One had said to widen the search. Ernst assumed that meant mobilizing more than just the Order. He called his right-hand man, Kristof Szeto, and told him to fax a copy of her picture to the head of security for the Dormentalists-their Grand Paladin-as well as get it out to the members of the Order.

"The Myers woman," Szeto said in Eastern Europe-flavored English. "Yes, this is good. This time we will find her. I have score to settle-"

"No settling anything." Ernst knew he was still bridling from losing so many men to her. "No contact."

"But-"

"A personal directive from the One."

A pause, then, "Well, in that case…"

Hank Thompson had strolled in-as usual, without knocking-toward the end of the conversation.

"Her again?" he said when Ernst hung up. He was tall and trim, with a dark, shaggy mane. "Didn't you track her to Wyoming?"

Ernst nodded. "We did. But that was as close as we came. It turned out to be a dead end."

"I thought we gave up on her."

"The One, apparently, has not."

He dropped his lanky form into a chair. "He says 'boo' and your bosses drop everything, right?"

Ernst sighed. "The Ancient Fraternal Septimus Order-"

"Is this where you remind me once more that you and your Order have loaned this building to me and my guys? I know that. And we're grateful."

Thompson's posturing could be entertaining at times, tiring at others.

"The Order is devoted to the One's cause. I am an Actuator for the Order. It is my duty to carry out his wishes. It is to your benefit to do the same."

"Says who?"

"The One." Ernst pointed to the corner behind Thompson. "Why don't you ask him yourself."

It gave him enormous satisfaction to watch the color drain from the man's face as he did a slow turn, then flush with anger when he realized he'd been had.

"You son of a bitch!"

Ernst allowed a smile. Thompson was an odd case. A combustible farrago of intelligence and animal cunning. An ex-con who'd had the drive to write an internationally bestselling… how to classify his book? Kick was a manifesto and a memoir and a call to arms. A Mein Kampf without the racism. His call to kick down the doors that penned you in and evolve into something new cut through racial, religious, and ethnic barriers.

It is time to separate yourselves from the herd. You know who you are. You know who I'm talking to. You don't belong with the herd. Come out of hiding. Step away from the crowd. Let the dissimilation begin!

People everywhere-mostly males, an unusually high percentage of whom came with criminal records-answered the call and began thinking of themselves as "Kickers," even going so far as to have the Kicker Man, the symbol of what Thompson called "the Kicker Evolution," tattooed on their hands.

The strange thing was, Thompson had gathered this huge, worldwide following that cut across all national and cultural boundaries, with no idea of what to do with them.

Ernst had solved that problem, but the key was to let Thompson think it was all his idea.

"Speaking of sons of bitches and looking for people," Thompson said, "what about that guy we were after?"

Although Ernst knew exactly who he meant, he said, "And what 'guy' would that be?"

"The one who tasered us."

"Oh, him. I've gotten past that."

True, at least as far as being tasered. But he hadn't gotten past what the man had said to him. He'd known things he shouldn't have. And something about him had been hauntingly familiar.

"Well, I haven't. Shave off that beard and I bet he'd have been the same guy who stole the Compendium from me." His hands knotted into fists. "If I ever get hold of that fuck…"

Another thing about Thompson, he held grudges. Ernst couldn't resist rubbing salt in the wound.