"Oh, fuck off. If I had a stroke and sniffed glue, I'd wind up with your IQ. I mean, you spend all day watching hentai and playing video games. How smart can you be?"

Video games was an oversimplification; Gragg played massively multi-player online games, or MMOGs, and as he stared coolly at his partner, it occurred to him that the games' complex societies contained far more social stimulation than anything that existed in Heider's world. All the more reason for what was to come.

Gragg turned up the stereo to an Oakenfold mix and drowned out Heider's voice.

He drove out to the Katy Freeway and headed west, exiting onto State Highway 6 North about ten miles out of Houston. Highway 6 was a bleak four-lane stretch of concrete running through marshy ground and wide prairie fields bordered by walls of trees-remnants of an agrarian past. Now the only growth was in strip malls, subdivisions, and office parks, sprouting like bunches of grapes off the vine of highway and separated by long stretches of nothing useful.

Gragg glowered at the road. He hadn't said a word in ten minutes.

Heider just watched him. "What's with you tonight?"

"The fucking Filipinos. They posted a message telling me to meet them."

"What for?"

"To pick up a new encryption key."

"In person?"

"They're trying to keep the Feds off their tail."

"Fuck that. Sell the data to the Brazilians, man."

"The Filipinos owe me for five hundred identities already. If I don't pick up the code, I don't get paid."

"What a pain in the ass. Last time we do business with them."

Gragg flipped open his cell phone and started keying a text message while driving. He spoke to Heider without looking at him. "We've got less than forty minutes to showtime. The Filipinos can wait."

In a deserted cul-de-sac of an under-construction subdivision, half a dozen cars sat in the darkness. Knots of teenagers drank and smoked on their car hoods, laughing, arguing, or staring at the distant glow of the freeway. The pounding bass beat of rap music thudded into the cold night air from several car stereos all tuned to the same satellite radio channel. It reverberated in their chests as they threw rocks, shattering the newly installed windows of half-built homes. One kid zipped from car to car on a motorized scooter.

They were a racially mixed group, mostly white, but with Asian, black, and Hispanic kids here and there. Their cars displayed their social class; a Mustang GT convertible with eighteen-inch chrome rims; late-model SUVs with vanity plates; Mom's BMW. Economic class, not race, was the glue that bound them.

A cell phone somewhere began a faint MIDI of Eine kleine Nachtmusik, and every girl in the group groped for her phone. The alpha girl-a thin, sexy blonde with low-cut denims and a midriff top despite the cold-clucked her tongue at the others. "Y'all stole my ring." She read the text message. "Austin! Guys, turn down the music!"

Stereos were quickly muted.

Alpha girl used her best cheerleader voice to project the coordinates: "29.98075, and -95.687274. Everybody got that?" She repeated the coordinates while several others keyed them into GPS receivers.

An athletically built African American kid and his buddies stared at the console of his Lexus SUV. He keyed in the coordinates, and a graphical map appeared on the GPS's LCD. "Tennet Field. It's closed down. My dad used to have his plane there. Let's roll!"

A dozen kids paused to text-message the coordinates to still other friends. The smart mob was forming and would be en route in minutes.

Gragg strode the tarmac in the pale moonlight, heading toward the dark silhouette of Hangar Two.

The radio crackled in his head. He wore a bone-conduction headset. It was capable of projecting sound directly into his skull, regardless of the noise in his surrounding environment. It was a useful tool for managing a for-profit rave. The radio crackled again. "Unit 19 to Unit 3, do you copy?"

Gragg touched his receiver. "Unit 3. Talk to me."

"The Other White Meat headed south on Farmington. Range two-point-three miles."

Unit 3 was a lookout placed on the east perimeter with night vision goggles. Gragg saw headlights turning into the main airport entrance. "Unit 20, Zone One is a blackout area."

"10- 4, Unit 3."

The headlights soon went out.

Signature control was a never-ending battle for a prairie rave. Lines of car headlights were the enemy.

Gragg followed the thick generator cables running from the machine shop, past the parking lot, and up to the main hangar doors, where a subsonic bass beat rumbled, threatening to detach his retinas. A long roll of black Duvateen hung down at the entrance, blocking the light and some of the noise within.

A line of a hundred or so teens hooted and hollered at the entrance, while a dozen heavyset thugs in SECURITY windbreakers flanked the opening. The bouncers collected twenty dollars from everybody at the door and then slipped an RFID-equipped neck badge around each teen's neck. Once tagged like cows, the patrons then proceeded through the metal detectors and into the main hangar. Each guard was equipped with a Taser and pepper spray to quickly subdue and remove those inclined to disrupt the party. Dozens more patrolled the party inside.

Gragg ran a tight operation, and for this reason he was always in demand by rave promoters. Tonight's promoter, a young Albanian drug dealer named Cheko, stalked the tarmac nervously. But then again, he did everything nervously.

Gragg sniffed the night air, then walked past the bouncers into the head-pounding madness that was the rave. He pushed through the crowd of youths. Although he was several years older than most of them, Gragg was of slimmer build and shorter stature. His lip piercing and arm tats gave him a menacing blue-collar appearance-but if anyone looked closely, the tattoos depicted entwined CAT-5 cable.

Gragg looked up at the DJ tower, flickering in the strobing laser light. Mix Master Jamal was laying a trance groove. The topless go-go dancers on ten-foot pedestals danced rhythmically. Gragg smirked. The strippers weren't so much for the teen guys as the teen girls. Suburban girls acted scandalized, but they'd tell friends who'd have to see it for themselves. Where else would girls from good families see nude dancers? In the seedy strip club on the state highway? Hardly.

Gragg came inside specifically to find one of these girls from a good family. He moved through the crowd to the back of the hangar, where the real money was made-at the "pharmacy," where Cheko's people sold ecstasy, meth, DMT, ketamine, and a dozen other recreation-grade pharmaceuticals, in addition to soft drinks and bottled water.

Gragg could usually spot his quarry easily-the sexy girl with a guy she didn't look particularly intimate with. A first date, or perhaps just dancing together. He avoided girls with a group of female friends and girls who weren't having fun.

He soon found his target; the girl was gorgeous, perhaps seventeen, thin-waisted, but with a good rack shadowing her exposed midsection. Strands of glo-stick circled her belly and neck. It reminded Gragg of Mardi Gras, and that was a good sign. He motioned to a couple of security guards and moved toward her.

He timed it so he and the guards converged on the dancing couple. Gragg tapped the guy on the shoulder-which sent him twirling around defensively. Gragg held up two neck badges clearly marked ALL AREA ACCESS. Smiling, he looped one around the guy's neck.

Few symbols have more power over the Western teenage mind than the All Area Access badge. The guy glanced at the uniformed security guards and evidently felt reassured.

Gragg, meanwhile, draped the badge over the laughing girl's neck. Her cleavage glistened with sweat. Gragg leaned over and yelled into the guy's ear. "Your girl is fabulous, man! She should be dancing on the top floor-not down here!" With that, Gragg slid a couple of pills into the guy's hand and nodded his head toward the girl. He motioned for them both to follow and led them through the crowd as the burly security guards made a path.