Net Force - Tom Clancy [116]
A car honked at her as it swung around to pass the bike. She waved, trying to give the impression she was sorry for blocking the road. The car passed. The driver yelled something at her, the last part of which was -stupid bastard! He didnt slow down.
The Selkie grinned. The driver of the car had no idea how dangerous it would have been to pull over and beat on a small bicyclist whod slowed him down more than he wanted. She didnt want to have to use the pistol in her fanny pack on some angry motorist, but it was always an option if she couldnt beat his head in with all her training.
No, the only viable alternative for a deletion now was to do it where the target wouldnt be constantly surrounded by guards, and in such a way that nobody would know hed been hit until she had plenty of time to get away.
Given her options, the only place that fit was a place considered secure.
Shed have to kill him inside Net Force Headquarters.
36
Friday, October 8th, 9:05 a.m. Quantico
Getting yourself-or some illegal object-into a secure area when you werent supposed to was not as hard as most people would like to believe. Offhand, the Selkie knew of at least four ways to smuggle a firearm onto a plane, even without resorting to a ceramic one, like the little pistol she now had tucked into the waistband of her panty hose. The pistol was a three-shooter with triple-stack-two-inch barrels. The weapon had been illegally made in Brazil, for their foreign service operatives, from the same hard-ceramic the Japanese had developed for those ever-sharp kitchen knives. The caliber was 9mm short, and the ammo was caseless boron-epoxy, no cartridges, fired by a rotating piezoelectric igniter. Propellant was a more stable variation of solid rocket fuel. The thing even had a rudimentary rifling in the trio of snub-nose barrels, though the bullets were light enough so long-range target shooting wasnt an option. The piece had a twenty-meter effective accuracy range; outside that, it was fire and hope you had a patron deity if you wanted to hit anything on purpose.
At close range, the non-metal gun would kill a man as dead as the biggest steel cowboy six-shooter ever made.
The gun had been cast in two main pieces, barrels and frame; the pivots, hinges, screws, trigger and firing mechanism were also ceramic. In theory, the weapon could be reloaded and used again, but in practice, it was a throw-away. Once it had fired its initial load, the internal ceramics got a little fragile. It made a lot more sense to use a new gun than risk having the old one misfire at a critical moment. The trivalent metalloid boron in the three composite bullets contained less metal than a tooth filling. The piece wouldnt pass a Hard Object scan, but standing on its end it would likely skate by a fluroscanner because it didnt look like a gun from that angle, and it would go through any standard security metal detector on the planet without a blip. Lying on a table, the pistol would look almost as if it had been carved from a bar of Ivory soap.
Strapped to her right inner thigh, almost to her groin, was a sheath knife, also of ceramic, full-tang, with a plastic handle. The blade was a tanto-style, with the angled point, and was both short and very thick. Ceramic tended to be brittle, and it needed thickness to keep from snapping if it was going to be used for stabbing, and not just throat-cutting.
The standard security setup at most government buildings, which were, after all, limited in their funding for such things, involved picture or fingerprint identification tags, metal detectors and uniformed guards. If you had business in such a place and were not an employee, the process could be as detailed as the security force was willing to use. A computer check of your ID, a search of your carry-in and your person, somebody from inside assigned to accompany you wherever you went-these