Designated Targets

“Oh, puh-leeze! Come on, Dan, the good ship Lollipop pulled away from the pier a long fucking time ago. Haven’t you been paying attention? Hoover is a fucking lunatic and a hypocrite and a screaming bender. He’s only been able to hold on to his job because half the fucking country is terrified he’s got something on them.”

“But Davidson is a known criminal!” her fiancé protested. “He doesn’t even try to deny it.”

“Was a criminal, Dan. But he’s super rich now—’legitimate businessman’ is now the correct phrase, I believe.”

She could see that he was really ticked off, and she knew her gentle flirting with Davidson had probably been the cause. Dan’s frown line, which she called the Grand Canyon, was etched deeply into his forehead. It was kind of cute, really, but it would get old if he didn’t snap out of it soon. She was about to say so when her flexipad began to chime in a way that signaled a high-priority call from the office.

“Sorry,” she said. “I have to take this.”

The Times had secured two flexipads and one data slate, clearly at great expense. Besides giving them access to Fleetnet’s publicly available Web cache, it also meant that Julia was instantly available 24-7, as long as she was within shortcast range here in Manhattan, or jacked into Fleetnet as an embed while on tour. It was rare for them to call, however. The traffic was mostly one way, when she sent in stories after the censors had cleared them.

A bitter wind blew grit into her eyes as she hauled the pad out of her overcoat.

While she was answering, Dan’s pad went off, too.

“Shit,” said Julia. “I’ll bet something’s up.”

“What makes you—?”

She held up a hand and waved it to indicate that he should take his call. His frown added even more depth to the canyon, but he did as she suggested, wandering into a bookshop where it was little quieter, and probably warmer.

She remained on the sidewalk, oblivious of the passersby who were staring, some even stopping to gawk openly. The signal came through, and Graeme Blundell, the chief of staff, was frowning on Julia’s display. A lot of the ’temps did that when they were confronted with the technology.

“What’s up, Graeme?”

“Julia, you need to get over to Chambers Street, to the subway station. There’s been an explosion. A bomb or something has gone off over there.”

“What sort of bomb?” she asked as all of her nerve endings lit up.

“I don’t know,” he spluttered. “A big bomb, from the sound of it. There are a lot of people hurt. And that’s not all. The wires are saying there are another dozen or more of these things gone off around the country. And we’re getting reports from Hawaii that the Japanese have struck there again.”

Julia shooed away a couple of teenaged boys who tried to crowd in for a closer look at the flexipad. “Piss off,” she said. “I’m working here. No, not you Graeme, go on. How’d they get near Hawaii? I thought the Clinton left the better part of a fighter wing there. Sea Raptors and Hawkeyes.”

Blundell threw up his hands. “I don’t know, damn it! We don’t know much about Pearl yet. It’s all too early. But I can tell you, we’ve got a big story developing over at Chambers Street. And I’m afraid it’s right up your alley, Julia. It looks like the sort of thing you say used to happen all the time, back where you came from.”

“Yeah, okay,” she said. “I’m sorry to hear that. I’ll get over there right now. And just so you know, I’ve got Dan with me. We were heading out to dinner, and he took a call same time as me. That won’t be a coincidence. There are no coincidences where I come from. If he can tell me anything about Pearl, I’ll get back to you with an update.

“Do you think you could send me a briefing note on what you’ve got off the wires? I can’t access them.”

She could see Blundell shooting the flexipad at the other end a nervous look. “I’ll get Miss Meade to do it. She’s much better on these things than me.”

“It’s because she’s a chick, Graeme. We’re better at everything, y’know. See you soon.”

She cut him off and looked around for Dan. He was still on the pad. If he was talking like that, it meant that Kolhammer had a live link running between the East and West Coasts. They didn’t do that very often, because of the amount of dicking around involved in setting up the relay.

The shit had definitely hit the fan.

“Miss, miss, can we have a look at your flexipad, miss?”

It was those kids again. She recognized them as bicycle couriers, a new industry that had taken off in the city about a month ago. Now it seemed as if they were everywhere. Julia had even had a close call with a couple of female riders. At the time she hadn’t known whether to be pissed at them for nearly taking her out, or proud of them for having the cojones to do the job in the first place. In the end, she’d opted for wry amusement.