"Clancy, Tom - Net Force 06 - Cybernation" - читать интересную книгу автора (Clancy Tom)

40
NET FORCE


Washington, D.C.

When he finally got home, Michaels was tired, but looking forward to seeing Toni and the baby.
She met him at the door. Before he could ask, she said, "He's asleep. I just got him down. Wake him up, and you die."
He chuckled.
"Let me go turn the baby monitor on and I'll be right back."
When she left, he opened his briefcase and removed the gift-wrapped present he'd hidden there. He had spent some time looking for it. It wasn't their wedding anniversary, but the anniversary of the day they had first kissed, sitting in that old Mazda MX-S he had bought to restore, somewhere in Virginia. It had taken a while to find what he wanted, and it had cost five times what it had sold for new, only a decade back. He'd stashed it at the office for a couple of months after he'd gotten it. He hadn't wanted to wait, he'd wanted to give it to Toni the first day it arrived, but he'd held off. She was gonna be surprised, he was sure of it.
When she came back from Little Alex's room, he had set the blue foil-wrapped box casually on the end table.
"Chinese food'll be here in about ten minutes. Hot and spicy chicken, purse shrimp, chow mein, dried, sauteed string beans."
"Sounds good. How's the boy been today?"
"An angel."
"But of course."
"Better enjoy it while we can. We-what's this?"
"That. Oh, you mean that package there? Got me."
"What did you do, Alex?"
"Me? I didn't do anything. I never saw that before."
She grinned and picked up the package. Shook it.
"What's it for?"
"You've forgotten what today's date is?"
"January 15th, isn't it?"

41
CYBERNATION


"Toni."
She grinned wider. "And they say women are romantic. No, I haven't forgotten. It's the day you bought the Miata."
"And... ?"
"Isn't that all?"
"You're scum."
She laughed. "Our first date, first kiss, and the first time you were able to admit what I had known for a long time before that. You didn't need to buy me anything."
"No, I didn't need to, I wanted to. Go on, open it"
She did, ripping the paper off with abandon.
"Wow. Where did you find this?"
"You like it?"
"You're an idiot. Of course I like it."
"It's a first generation," he said. "A collector's item."
She turned the old VHS videotape box in her hands, and he smiled at her happiness.
The tape was an introduction to Pukulan Pentjak Silat Serak, techniques from djuru one, as taught by Maha Guru Stevan Plinck. There was a web address and a picture.
According to what Michaels had learned, the vid had been shot in a borrowed kung fu school in Longview, Washington, ten or eleven years ago, the first one of a series, about the time Americans started realizing there were such things as Indonesian martial arts. Toni had another tape by Plinck, an intro to Bukti Negara shot a couple of years earlier, also in the old VHS format. The serak tapes were harder to find, since they were self-marketed by Plinck in the backs of martial arts magazines, and from a single web page on the net. Most of the commercial producers had gone to DVD or super SQD formats years ago, and the old magnetic- tapes were harder and harder to come by. The instructional video consisted of Plinck, who looked to be in his early forties, lecturing on laws and principles of serak, then demonstrating them on various students, along with the students punching, kicking

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NET FORCE


and bouncing each other off the floor and walls. The players all wore T-shirts, sweatpants, and sarongs, most of them men, a couple of women. One of the women was even smaller than Toni.