Tom Clancy's Net Force 6-10 by Tom Clancy Page A

clock, radio, TV, and emergency beacon all in one. They weren’t common devices, not in the version Michaels had, and it hadn’t taken him long to figure out that the FBI had his virgil monitored and sat-tracked 24/ 7. They said this was for the safety of high-level personnel. If you had a powered FBI-issue virgil attached to your belt, you could run, but you couldn’t hide, and unlike the civilian models with fudge-factors built in to keep terrorists from using them to guide ballistic missiles to targets, the military GPS was accurate to within a couple of feet. Michaels was fairly sure it would work even if it was turned off.
    If you actually went to the rest room and took the virgil with you, they could tell which stall you were in.
    “Battery is dead,” he said.
    “Uh-huh,” Becky said. “Right. And there aren’t a half-dozen new batteries in your top desk drawer where they always are?”
    “I’ll replace it when I get back.”
    “Chicken.”
    “That’s me. Bye.”

    San Francisco, California

    The night was alive with flashing lights, fading sirens, and the crackle of fire dining on everything it could chew and consume.
    The building, a five-story job built after the big quake of 1906, was burning like, well, like a big house on fire. Black smoke poured from the upper two stories, flames shot out through imploded windows on the third floor. Pumper engines filled the street with red lights and throaty mechanical drones. A hook-and-ladder with a mounted inch-and-halfer giraffe line blew water into the upper story, while ground-based hydrant-fed three-inchers as stiff as wooden beams spewed water into the third and fourth floors. Cops kept the lookie-loos back, and firefighters ran back and forth, moving hoses, gearing up with air tanks and masks, doing what they were supposed to do.
    Jay Gridley, dressed in a stiff and clumsy fireman’s turnout suit—coat, bunker pants, gloves, boots, and helmet, light reflecting off the glo-flex strips on the clothing—stood with a group of other firefighters near one of the building’s entrances.
    A captain stood there in front of a chart on a stand. He listened to a handheld tactical radio, looked at the team, and said, “Okay, here’s the situation. We got the building cleared of people so far as we know. Fire started on the third floor, which is two-thirds engulfed, and is spreading laterally and going up fast, but the first two floors are still cool. I want your line here.” He pointed at the chart. “Baker and Charlie squads are entering the structure from the east and south, and setting up here, and here.”
    Gridley wasn’t up to speed on real fire fighting tactics. He’d started creating this scenario a few days back, but hadn’t had time to do the research, so he doubted this was how it would work in RW. Would they go into a building on the ground floor if the floors above it were burning? Not something he’d want to do. His scenario was based on entertainment vids he’d seen, and everybody knew the movies never let truth get in the way of a story.
    Fortunately, in VR, it didn’t actually have to mirror reality. It didn’t even have to look that good, unless you wanted to invite somebody else in to play. It was only the anal-retentive types like Jay who wanted the scenario to be as real as possible—most people didn’t bother. For Jay, the test of his creation would be to bring in a squad of real firefighters and have them look around, nod, then say, “Yeah, this is how it really is.” He figured if you could fool somebody who really knew what it was like, you had a decent scenario.
    Most people could buy off-the-shelf software and be perfectly happy. Most people weren’t Net Force’s top VR honcho, Smokin’ Jay Gridley. If he couldn’t do it right, he didn’t want to do it.
    The captain finished his directions. The team started into the building, dragging a stiff and heavy pressurized hose. The power was out, so they switched on helmet and