“They’re snipers.”
4:00 P.M.–5:04 P.M.
D on’t have too much fun in there,” someone yelled merrily at Special Agent Jeffrey Neal.
He was one of the bright guys, tech-style, who worked in the Hoover Building, detecting mainly on a computer. He was an unbuttoner, a penetrator, a second-story man, a slippery little shadow in the night of cyberspace. It was said he’d get the department if he didn’t fuck up but that he would fuck up, as guys with his IQ could be counted on to get busted for falling in love with escorts or acquiring a drug habit or coming to believe Ancient Grecians were communicating with him through his Grecian Formula hair coloring brush, something self-destructive that for some reason always draws the hyperintelligent into its flame.
“Ha ha,” he commented from within the shroud.
The shroud was a canopy draped over his second computer, which was connected to the Internet. It was next to his unshrouded non-Internet-connected computer, and the two machines and two monitors crowded his small cubicle in the Computer Services Division of the Pennsylvania Avenue monstrosity. The shroud on the net beast kept inquiring eyes out and political correctness at its highest level, for one had to dip inside it and only in dark secrecy encounter the very special hell known as the universe of child pornography.
It was dues you had to pay, even if nobody wanted to.
But Neal had three months left to go on his six-month tour on the Child Porn Task Force, which meant he went home each night feeling like a used condom. His own sex life, mild as it was, had been destroyed. The things people did to kids, the sick worms in their heads that compelled them to conjure new variations in torment, abuse, piercing, and posture. You wanted to reach through the screen and crush skulls, watch the bastards—not just fat white guys in their forties, but amazingly handsome people of all races, ages, demo groups, normal-looking people, even distinguished-looking people—bleed out in the gutter, whimpering. But he soldiered on, knowing that at the end of—
“Neal, hey, wake up in there, hot one in from HQ. There’s some kind of mall takedown in Minneapolis and we have to get into the computer system.” It was his supervisor, Dr. Bob Benson, SA and PhD.
“He’s in the system?” Neal asked.
“Is he ever. He’s got a thousand hostages, he’s locked down the mall, no local agencies have been able to penetrate. Guess on whose plate it is now.”
“On it,” said Neal.
“Get upstairs ASAP for the briefing, then get down here and get your action into gear. This baby’s so hot it’s steaming. No more kiddie rape.”
Neal rose quickly, started to dash out. But he turned back, reached out, grabbed the shroud of his enforced disgust, and ripped it down. It was sort of like John Wayne throwing off the rifle scabbard as he saw the burning ranch before him in
The Searchers.
It meant he was going to war.
On the way over, Kemp had been on the phone with Washington the whole time. Subject: politics. Tone: unpleasant. Reality: discouraging.
“You have to play this very well, Will,” said Assistant Director NickMemphis. “He will not want to give up command, and if you backstreet him, he will go to the media and they love him, you know that.”
“So how the hell do I play it?” said Kemp.
“I wouldn’t buck him,” said Nick. “Let him come to you. He has to.”
“He better come to me, goddammit,” said Kemp, the SAIC of the Minneapolis Office, a vet of several task forces including a long spell in Texas with ATF and Drug Enforcement that got him shot in the leg. “He doesn’t know a goddamn thing.”
It was true. Colonel Douglas Obobo really hadn’t done anything. His career was primarily a phenomenon of showing up, giving speeches, accepting awards, then moving up to the next level, as assisted by the superb public relations and career advisor David Renfro, who’d spent years working the trade,
4:00 P.M.–5:04 P.M.
D on’t have too much fun in there,” someone yelled merrily at Special Agent Jeffrey Neal.
He was one of the bright guys, tech-style, who worked in the Hoover Building, detecting mainly on a computer. He was an unbuttoner, a penetrator, a second-story man, a slippery little shadow in the night of cyberspace. It was said he’d get the department if he didn’t fuck up but that he would fuck up, as guys with his IQ could be counted on to get busted for falling in love with escorts or acquiring a drug habit or coming to believe Ancient Grecians were communicating with him through his Grecian Formula hair coloring brush, something self-destructive that for some reason always draws the hyperintelligent into its flame.
“Ha ha,” he commented from within the shroud.
The shroud was a canopy draped over his second computer, which was connected to the Internet. It was next to his unshrouded non-Internet-connected computer, and the two machines and two monitors crowded his small cubicle in the Computer Services Division of the Pennsylvania Avenue monstrosity. The shroud on the net beast kept inquiring eyes out and political correctness at its highest level, for one had to dip inside it and only in dark secrecy encounter the very special hell known as the universe of child pornography.
It was dues you had to pay, even if nobody wanted to.
But Neal had three months left to go on his six-month tour on the Child Porn Task Force, which meant he went home each night feeling like a used condom. His own sex life, mild as it was, had been destroyed. The things people did to kids, the sick worms in their heads that compelled them to conjure new variations in torment, abuse, piercing, and posture. You wanted to reach through the screen and crush skulls, watch the bastards—not just fat white guys in their forties, but amazingly handsome people of all races, ages, demo groups, normal-looking people, even distinguished-looking people—bleed out in the gutter, whimpering. But he soldiered on, knowing that at the end of—
“Neal, hey, wake up in there, hot one in from HQ. There’s some kind of mall takedown in Minneapolis and we have to get into the computer system.” It was his supervisor, Dr. Bob Benson, SA and PhD.
“He’s in the system?” Neal asked.
“Is he ever. He’s got a thousand hostages, he’s locked down the mall, no local agencies have been able to penetrate. Guess on whose plate it is now.”
“On it,” said Neal.
“Get upstairs ASAP for the briefing, then get down here and get your action into gear. This baby’s so hot it’s steaming. No more kiddie rape.”
Neal rose quickly, started to dash out. But he turned back, reached out, grabbed the shroud of his enforced disgust, and ripped it down. It was sort of like John Wayne throwing off the rifle scabbard as he saw the burning ranch before him in
The Searchers.
It meant he was going to war.
On the way over, Kemp had been on the phone with Washington the whole time. Subject: politics. Tone: unpleasant. Reality: discouraging.
“You have to play this very well, Will,” said Assistant Director NickMemphis. “He will not want to give up command, and if you backstreet him, he will go to the media and they love him, you know that.”
“So how the hell do I play it?” said Kemp.
“I wouldn’t buck him,” said Nick. “Let him come to you. He has to.”
“He better come to me, goddammit,” said Kemp, the SAIC of the Minneapolis Office, a vet of several task forces including a long spell in Texas with ATF and Drug Enforcement that got him shot in the leg. “He doesn’t know a goddamn thing.”
It was true. Colonel Douglas Obobo really hadn’t done anything. His career was primarily a phenomenon of showing up, giving speeches, accepting awards, then moving up to the next level, as assisted by the superb public relations and career advisor David Renfro, who’d spent years working the trade,
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