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

hand-carried lanterns. The sounds they made were loud in the darkness, and the roar of the fire a couple of stories up was muted but audible, the building vibrating as it was being eaten alive by the orange monster. A lot of firefighters anthropomorphized fire, Jay knew that much. They talked about it as if it were some kind of malevolent creature rather than what was essentially a real fast version of rust-oxidation and combustion . . .
    Back at Net Force HQ, Jay and his team were working their computers, trying to find the source of the problem at Blue Whale—and they weren’t alone—but in this scenario, he was about to take a turn up a dark hallway by himself to get closer to the source of the fire. Not something any sane fireman would do, and certainly not alone, he knew at least that much.
    As the team moved to the location where it was supposed to deploy its hose, Jay slipped into the stairway and started climbing. The smell of burning material and the hint of smoke in the stairwell was a nice touch, he thought, congratulating himself.
    As he climbed to the second floor landing, then past it, he suddenly thought about Saji. Despite her life-is-about-suffering Buddhist thing, she was very excited about their upcoming wedding. And while the idea of being without her and back like he’d been before they had met was as bleak a scenario as Jay could imagine, he had to confess to himself that he’d had some second thoughts. Getting married had never really been in Jay’s life plan. Oh, sure, he had figured there’d be women in his life, maybe even children someday, but the reality of it was different than the vague imaginings he’d had. That he would marry a Buddhist he’d met on-line while recovering from an induced-stroke—a woman whose net persona had been that of an old Tibetan lama—had never figured into his fastasies. And now that the actual date had been set and the plans were being carefully laid, the idea that he was going to be married to somebody had begun to hit home.
    One woman, for the rest of his life. Day in, day out, always around . . .
    Yeah, the sex was great, and yeah, he loved her, couldn’t really imagine being alone, no Saji around; still, there was this . . . finality about the idea of saying “I do” and signing a lifelong contract that had never really occurred to him until it was actually staring him in the face . . .
    He got to the third floor. Took off his right glove, pressed it against the door. The door was cool to the touch. He took a couple of deep breaths of the stale-tasting compressed air from his bottle, then reached for the doorknob. Worry about getting married later. Right now, he had a job to do. Some guys were screwing with the web, and he was the guy who was going to track them down and stop them.
    They obviously didn’t know who they were messing with . . .

    On the  Bon Chance

    The fire scenario was okay, but overblown. Jay had always been too gaudy about such things, spending too much time on how good something looked when he should have been concentrating on how well it worked. Style and not substance.
    Still, as Keller stood there in his fireman’s gear, watching Jay work, he had to give him credit. He was sniffing in the right direction.
    Keller waited until Jay went past, heading for the source of the “fire.” Maybe he could figure something out, maybe not, but he wasn’t going to get the chance. Keller followed Jay up the stairwell, being careful to stay out of sight, tracking him by the sound of his boots on the steps.
    Once Jay was on the right floor, Keller moved in. It was dark, smoky, hot, all in all, a pretty good representation, as such things went. Jay was always big on details. But that was the curse of a small picture man, wasn’t it? Couldn’t see the forest for the trees in the way. No long-range vision.
    From a cabinet near the door, Keller pulled a thermite bomb, shaped like a bowling ball. He triggered the timer for ten seconds, then