Net Force by Tom Clancy

passport.
        Eventually, he would have to program himself a female passenger to complete this scenario. A sultry redhead, perhaps, or a dark and deadly brunette. A woman afraid of the speed, but excited by it nonetheless. Yeah…
        In the real world, an electronic password was tendered to a gate server on the web, bits of binary hex code pulsed from one system to another, but in VR, the visuals were so much more pleasing and much more intuitive.
        A cursory inspection, then the guard returned his passport, nodded curtly and raised the barrier. Gridley had come this way before. There was never any problem.
        Around the next curve, the mountain road turned suddenly into an autobahn, with traffic zooming past at speeds in excess of 160 kilometers per hour. He tromped the Viper accelerator, laid rubber-first… second… even in third-upshifted when the engine peaked in fourth, then fifth gears, achieved sixth as he merged with the flow of cars and trucks barreling along.
        James Bond’s old Aston-Martin, and in the later movies the BMW, would never have kept up with the Viper. It had a top speed of around 260 kilometers per hour, with an eight-liter, ten-cylinder engine that would get one to that top speed with unbelievable rapidity. It was a rocket with wheels.
        He was in the netstream now, his program running smoothly. He liked the freeway image, but he could, if he wished, switch to a more leisurely hike along a stream, or a bicycle tour of France, although that kind of sudden program change did tend to jar one somewhat.
        Ahead was an exit sign: CyberNation.
        Gridley frowned. There had been a lot of infospew lately about CyberNation, a VR “country” that was accepting not only tourists, but residents. They-whoever the programmers were who’d created the VRland-were offering a whole bunch of computer perks if you were willing to “emigrate” to their creation-if you were willing to give up your electronic citizenship in your own country for theirs, a thing that seemed unlikely. He hadn’t checked into it himself, but it was an interesting idea. Some day, in his copious spare time, he’d have to see what all the fuss was about.
        He glanced at the analog clock inset into the car’s dashboard-no digital gauges for this beast.
        A sleek Jaguar passed the Viper, and Gridley smiled at it. Oh, yeah?
        He goosed the Viper, felt the jolt of acceleration even in sixth gear as the car surged forward and began to gain on the Jag as if it were standing still. He flew past, seeing the frowning driver’s face. Gridley grinned. The Jag didn’t have any more, and the Viper wasn’t even close to redlining the tach. So long, pal!
        He was still feeling pretty full of himself when he saw the wreck about half a mile ahead of him. A big semi had flipped and turned onto its side, the trailer now blocked all the lanes on his side of the freeway. Traffic was lined up for a quarter mile, and the line was getting longer fast.
        Damn!
        Gridley hit the brakes-carefully, they were top-of-the-line disk but not little-old-granny ABS-and started downshifting. Fortunately, the Viper was as good at stopping as it was at going. He pulled to a halt behind a big Mercedes full of men in hats, then checked his rearview mirror to see that the Jag was also slowing to a stop behind him.
        What the virtual image meant was that someone had bollixed the system link he was using. Whether by accident or on purpose, he couldn’t say.
        A European-style siren dopplered and hee-haw-hee-hawed toward the wreck on the other side of the Autobahn, blue lights flashing. That would be the cops-or the diagnostics-coming to see what was what.
        Traffic was now at a standstill on his side of the highway. Gridley vaulted over the Viper’s low door; fortunately the tux had plenty of stretch. He’d just mosey over to the cops and see if he could find out what was going