Breaking point - By Tom Clancy & Steve Perry & Steve Pieczenik Page 0,1
” And with that, she reached out, as if to grab him and physically drag him into the house.
This was a mistake. With a speed and strength that surprised him, Zang snapped the cane up and jabbed it into the sow’s belly.
“Oof!” she said, as she leaned forward, grabbing at her stomach.
Zang stood, pulled the cane back as if it were an axe, and delivered a mighty blow to the side of her head. The bone made a wet, but satisfying crack! and the sow went down in a heap.
Ha-ha!
Zang leaned over and smashed the cane into the sow’s body with all the strength he possessed. Ah, this was good. He hit her again. Better. And again. Better still!
He was not the man he had been, but there were still a few moves left in him, and the sense of rage he felt continued to burn as he beat upon the prostrate and unresponsive sow. Block his sun, would she? He would show her!
He grew tired after a while, and decided to rest before resuming his chore. As he stood there contemplating the sow, he chanced to look up, and thus saw his idiot grandson charging toward him, a three-tined pitchfork in hand.
Amazing, since his grandson was the meekest of men, who would step around a beetle to avoid crushing it, who let others prepare his chum for him because he could not stand to hurt the bait fish, and who had never in Zang’s memory uttered even a harsh word in anger at another human being.
“Old fool! I will kill you!” Ming-Yang screamed.
Old Zang smiled wolfishly. “Yes? Come and try, wiper of asses!” He raised his cane to meet the charge.
Zang was paying attention to how he planned to dance around the fork’s tines to strike Ming, but even so, with his heightened senses, he was aware of his great-grandson Cheng, aged thirteen, rushing up behind his father, a gleaming fish gaff lifted over his head.
Now, who was Cheng planning to skewer?
Well. It did not matter, did it? Zang would deal with him in due course, just as he would deal with every other person in this mud hole of a village.
He would kill them all.
Finally, a happy thought. He laughed aloud.
1
Thursday, June 2nd
Quantico, Virginia
Alex Michaels pedaled his recumbent trike along the wide bike path between Net Force HQ and the Chinese restaurant where he sometimes had lunch, pumping hard. The day was hot and muggy, despite a cloudy overcast, and sweat had already drenched his T-shirt and spandex shorts. He shifted up another gear as he zipped past a trio of Marine officers from the base, jogging along at a pretty good clip themselves. Ordinarily, he enjoyed riding the trike, feeling the burn in his legs and lungs, knowing he was working his muscles and cooking off that half carton of Häagen-Dazs he’d eaten the night before. Ordinarily, the commander of Net Force enjoyed a lot of things, but like his feet toe-clipped into the pedals, a lot of what he had been doing lately had been no more than going through the motions.
Work was pretty good. Aside from the ten thousand usual small fish Net Force had to school and round up, there weren’t any major problems in the world of computer crime just at the moment. Nothing like the mad Russian who’d wanted to take over the planet, or the senator’s aide who wanted to buy up the world bit by bit, or even the dotty English lord who’d wanted to bring back the glory days of the Empire. Congress hadn’t cut him off at the knees lately, and his boss, the new FBI director, was sometimes hardheaded, but basically not too bad, and she mostly left him alone.
Work was fine. It was his personal life that was an absolute wreck.
He guided the trike to the right, to make sure the two bicyclers coming from the other direction side-by-side had plenty of room to get by. The couple, an older man and woman, waved as he went by. He gave them a quick lift of his hand in return.
His ex-wife, Megan, had gotten engaged, and was petitioning the courts in Idaho for sole custody of their daughter, Susie. Her new love wanted to adopt the girl. Susie liked her mom’s new friend, which was more than Michaels could say. That he had decked the man at a family Christmas gathering had not helped the situation any—even though it had felt pretty good at the time.