Edge of Battle aow-2

by Dale Brown

  A SHORT TIME LATER

  “We suffered almost a half-million dollars’ worth of damage that our insurance probably won’t cover,” the station manager moaned, checking reports filed by the police and the insurance adjusters. “The ambulance company sent us a bill for transport of seventeen persons to the hospital for a variety of injuries; and every one of our Latino maintenance workers have left.”

  “But the show had the highest ratings in the history of talk radio,” Bob O’Rourke’s agent chimed in immediately, “and all but a couple of our sponsors have asked for multiyear advertising contract extensions. I’m expecting a call from the syndication folks, asking for the same—they might even be interested in doing a TV show. Congratulations, Bob.”

  “Thanks, Ken, thanks very much for the news,” Bob O’Rourke said, ignoring the station manager. As he usually did after a show, Bob O’Rourke relaxed in his office with his producer, Fand Kent, and the show’s other staff members; he would have one beer, discuss upcoming topics and research assignments, and then O’Rourke would move on to the half-dozen other promotional functions he had scheduled most afternoons, usually golf games with sponsors, speaking engagements, personal appearances, or commercial tapings. He clinked glasses and bottles with his staff, took a deep pull on his beer, then looked at his heavily bandaged right hand. “If I had known just a few broken fingers would get me all that, I would’ve done it long ago.” The laughter was a little strained, but no one in that room ever failed to laugh at one of Bob O’Rourke’s jokes, no matter how lame or unfunny—they all valued their jobs too much.

  “Bob, the district attorney, the FCC, the mayor, the sheriff’s department, the state Department of Public Safety, the FBI, and even the White House are screaming mad at you,” the station manager said. “They want to talk with you right away, especially about this Vega thing.”

  “I have nothing to say to any of them except I stand by my information and will refuse all requests to reveal my sources,” O’Rourke said.

  “That’s all you need to say, Bob—I’ll get your attorney on those calls right away,” the agent said. “Don’t worry about a thing. All those people don’t do a damned thing whenever some nut job like Comandante Veracruz wants to speak, but when a proud American wants to talk, they all want to squash him like a bug.” O’Rourke tipped his bottle in thanks. “I’ve got a car waiting outside to take you to the CNN affiliate, and then we’ll come back here for a few more satellite pieces with Fox News and the BBC. Then…”

  “Can’t. I have that match with Jason Gore at two at the country club.”

  “Jason said he’d be glad to slip it to tomorrow if you’ll autograph a bunch of visors for him.”

  “Deal.” He looked worriedly at his agent. “About the car…”

  “Don’t worry about your Excursion. The insurance company will total it, I’m sure, and I’ve already put out feelers to a few charities to auction it off on eBay.”

  O’Rourke gave his agent a shake of his head, and he bent down closer so he could whisper, “No, Ken, I mean the car for this afternoon.”

  “No worries, Bob. I found a company with armored limos. They’re comping the car for the week as long as they can put their signage in the back window and at the parking areas at your events. All your sponsors and venues said no problem.”

  “An armored car, you say?”

  “This company has a fleet of armored Suburbans that were rejected by a very wealthy real estate developer from Bahrain because they were too heavy—they wouldn’t fit on their jets,” the agent explained. “These things are like friggin’ tanks, Bob. It’s a good deal.”

  “I like my regular service…”

  “They don’t have armored limos, Bob, and besides they hesitated to help you after yesterday’s broadcast. Frankly, Bob, they ran like frightened chickens. Screw ’em.”

  “But is this a good company…you know, are they trustworthy?”

  “Don’t worry about a thing. I checked ’em out. They’re new, but I spoke with the owner and he seems okay. Young, a real go-getter, anxious to make a name for himself.” He read O’Rourke’s eyes and added, “And yes, he’s an Anglo, and all his drivers are Anglos. I said don’t worry. I have a bodyguard assigned to you, recommended by one of your sponsors, and I’ll be along every step of the way to keep an eye on things.” O’Rourke looked worried but said nothing as he reached for another beer.

  More TV and media crews were outside the studios when Bob O’Rourke emerged about a half hour later after his staff meeting. The bodyguard took up a position on the other side of the car, facing the crowds being kept away by a greatly expanded police presence. O’Rourke made a few comments for the reporters, waved to the crowd with his left hand, raised his bandaged right hand defiantly to the delighted cheers of his supporters who easily drowned out the protesters on the other side of the street, and entered the massive armored Suburban limousine, making a pleased mental note of the inch-thick steel and Kevlar in the armored doors and three-inch-thick bulletproof glass.

  His agent was already inside. “I told you, Bob—first class all the way,” he said, checking out the very high-tech electronics and devices inside. “This is probably what the President’s limo looks like.” He handed O’Rourke the remote to the twenty-four-inch plasma TV inside. “Here—you might be able to catch the news piece on yourself.”

  O’Rourke took the remote and turned the TV on. “Get me another beer, will you?”

  “Better take it easy, Bob—you have a full afternoon.”

  “Just get me another beer and shut up, will you?”

  The agent shook his head, silently determined that this would be the last one until dinnertime. He opened the ice cabinet section of the limo…and his mouth dropped open in absolute horror.

  At the same time, the bodyguard had got into the front passenger seat, and the limo driver trotted around from holding O’Rourke’s door open to get in the driver’s side…but instead of getting in, he dashed off down the driveway, past the media crews, and disappeared into the crowds on the street.

  “Get out! Get out!” the bodyguard’s muffled voice shouted through the closed blast-proof privacy window. “Get out of the car, now!”

  “What the hell…?” The agent’s eyes widened in surprise, then fear, then abject panic. “Holy shit, this thing’s full of…!”

  O’Rourke tried the door handle. “The door’s locked!” He tried the other handle. “This one’s…”

  At that instant, the one hundred pounds of C4 explosives planted in the liquor and ice cabinets inside the SUV exploded. The armored body and windows of the SUV contained the explosion for a fraction of a second until, like an overfilled balloon, the powerful explosives first blew the windows out, then ripped the rest of the vehicle into a thousand pieces. Huge tongues of fire leaped out horizontally through the limo’s shattered windows, and then the area for an entire block was showered with flying shards of metal, a wave of fire, and a tremendous concussion, knocking over every person, vehicle, and any other standing object within one hundred yards and shattering every window for another hundred yards.

  CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY,

  NORTHRIDGE, CALIFORNIA

  A SHORT TIME LATER

  The white panel truck exited northbound Highway 101 at Reseda Boulevard and headed north, not speeding but zipping through many stoplights that had just turned red. It turned right on Vincennes Street, past Darby Avenue and onto the California State University–Northridge campus. West University Drive dead-ended at Jacaranda Walk, but the truck squeezed through a narrow brick campus entryway and continued eastbound onto the wide tree-lined sidewalk down two blocks until reaching Jacaranda Hall Engineering Building, the driver beeping its horn occasionally to warn students.

  The scene on and off campus was one of absolute confusion. There were several antimilitary, antiadministration, and anti-immigrant protest groups up and down West University Drive. The streets were littered with garbage, discarded signs and
banners, and projectiles. The acidy smell of tear gas could barely be detected, wafting in from many directions. Long lines of Hispanic men, women, and children were walking down both sides of the street in both directions, with cars following them, honking horns at them, or simply unable to move because of the chaos. Media crews were everywhere, adding to the confusion.

  Cal State–Northridge’s campus security was already out in force trying to keep most of the protesters and displaced Mexicans from swarming onto the campus, but they focused their attention squarely on the white panel truck as it drove up over the curb and onto the sidewalk on campus. The situation stopped being serious and had suddenly gotten potentially deadly.

  The truck took a left onto East University Drive, then an immediate left into the handicapped parking area outside Jacaranda Hall. Just as campus security patrols arrived, they saw the driver get out of the truck’s cab and step inside the back of the truck. Three patrol cars, lights flashing, blocked the truck. “Driver of the white panel truck,” one of the officers said, using the loudspeaker on his patrol car, “this is the campus police. Come out of the vehicle immediately.” There was no response from the vehicle, even after several repeated calls both in English and Spanish.

  After the duty sergeant arrived and assessed the situation with his officers, it was quickly decided to evacuate Jacaranda, Sequoia, Sagebrush, and Redwood Halls and Oviatt Library, and call in the Highway Patrol and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. The recent bombings in Las Vegas and Mexico City, plus the considerable unrest among the Hispanic population all across California, put everyone on hair-trigger alert.

  Within ten minutes the sheriff’s department’s bomb squad arrived, and ten minutes after that a remote-controlled tracked robot was dispatched, carrying a bag with a cellular phone inside, plus microphones that could be attached to the outside of the truck with remote manipulator arms to listen to what was happening inside. By that time the buildings surrounding the truck had been evacuated and a one-hundred-yard perimeter established. The robot motored to the closed and locked double cargo doors in the back of the truck, just far enough away for one door to be opened.

  A loudspeaker on the bomb squad’s robot crackled to life: “Attention, any persons inside the truck. This is Sergeant Louis Cortez of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. We would like to speak with whoever is inside. We will not harm you. A remote-controlled unarmed robot is behind the truck. It is carrying a bag containing a telephone. You may open the right-side cargo door, reach out, and take the bag containing the phone. We assure you, we will not trick you. The bag contains only a phone, and we will not attempt to arrest or attack you. We wish to speak with whoever is in charge. Please take the phone.”

  The deputy began repeating the message in Spanish when those outside the truck could see the right cargo door handle move, and moments later open. The robot was positioned perfectly—all the person inside had to do was open the door less than six inches, reach out less than half an arm’s length, and grab the…

  Suddenly both cargo doors burst apart and completely flew off their hinges when some sort of tremendous burst of energy erupted from inside the truck. The police instinctively ducked down behind vehicles and barricades, expecting the shock wave of a huge bomb blast to crash into them—but there was nothing. When they looked up, all they saw…

  …was a large ten-foot-tall two-legged cyborg that had just jumped from the back of the truck. As the astonished police officers watched, Ariadna Vega, piloting the Cybernetic Infantry Device, dashed around the truck and into the main entrance of Jacaranda Hall—she was out of sight even before most of them realized what they had just seen.

  The entryway and hallways inside the building were empty—Ariadna was able to monitor the campus police radio frequencies from on board the CID unit, so she knew that everyone had been evacuated. Running on all fours—the approved CID technique for assaulting a building, learned the hard way from Task Force TALON’s assault into an oil refinery office building in Cairo—she headed upstairs to the third floor of the engineering building. She briefly considered how she would do her final approach to the target, but quickly decided there was only one way to do it

  Staying low so she wouldn’t hit the ceiling, running on all fours, she galloped around a corner, down a hallway…and crashed directly through the door at the end of the hall. It took her just two heartbeats to see that the outer office was empty, so she turned and bulldozed herself directly through another door to her left, then immediately rose up on her left knee, turned toward the windows, raised her mechanical arms in order to grab anyone within reach, and deployed the twenty-millimeter cannon in her backpack, all in one smooth motion. She heard a woman and a man scream, and the lights flickered. “Freeze!” she shouted. “No one move!”

  She then heard the sound of clapping. Ari turned and saw none other than Colonel Yegor Zakharov himself, seated on her father’s comfortable armchair at the head of an informal meeting area in front of her father’s desk, applauding her entrance! The coffee table in front of him had a tray with coffee cups and saucers on it—the ones she had given to her father when he became the chairman of the school of engineering at Northridge!—and even a plate of cookies. She aimed her cannon directly at Zakharov’s smirking face and…

  “No le mate, niño,” Ariadna’s mother Ernestina said. Ariadna looked up in complete surprise and saw her father seated behind his desk in the corner behind Zakharov, with her mother right beside him. They were clutching each other, but in surprise, not fear. “Is that you, Ariadna?”

  Ariadna immediately reached out, and in the blink of an eye had Zakharov by the throat, holding him up high enough so his toes just barely touched the carpet. “¿Es usted el daño dos?” she asked.

  “We are fine, dear,” Ernestina said. “Yegor has been a complete gentleman.”

  “Yegor…gentleman…?”

  “Let him explain, Ari,” her father Dominic said. “You can make up your own mind, but we believe what he has told us.”

  “You…believe…him?” Ariadna asked incredulously. “This man is an international terrorist and a mass murderer! He has masterminded the most deadly attacks in the entire world! What has he told you? Has he drugged you? Has he…?”

  “He has not done anything except make an appointment to talk to us. He said…”

  “He made an appointment?”

  “Perhaps you should let the man breathe so he can tell you himself, Ari,” her father said with a hint of a smile on his face. “He looks like he is beginning to turn blue.”

  “I should kill him just for coming near you!” Ari turned back to Zakharov who indeed was starting to look like he was in some distress—he gasped like a fish out of water for several moments after she finally lowered him to the floor and loosened, but did not release, her grip on his neck. “You came here to kill my mother and father, didn’t you, hijoputa?”

  “Ariadna!” her mother admonished her. “Watch your language!” It was comical to watch the robot shake its head in disbelief.

  “I came here…to give you…information,” Zakharov said, his voice strained and croaking as he caught his breath. “Kill me if you want, but hear me out. I may even be able to help you.”

  “Your help? You want to help me?”

  “I have been double-crossed, Dr. Vega, and I lack the resources to exact my revenge,” Zakharov said. “Listen to me for two minutes, and I will tell you who is behind this Mexican immigration madness.”

  THE WHITE HOUSE,

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  A SHORT TIME LATER

  “I apologize for the confusion, Mr. President,” Felix Díaz said when he took the call from the President of the United States in the president of Mexico’s office. “I am somewhat at a loss to explain what has happened. All I know for certain is that President Maravilloso, the vice president, the Minister of Defense, and several other Council of Government ministers are missing or incommunicado. As fifth in line of presiden
tial succession, I have temporarily assumed the role of president until a thorough investigation can be conducted.”

  “Do you think this is related to the embassy bombing in the Federal District, Minister Díaz?” the President of the United States asked. “Is there a coup underway? Is all this being engineered by that right-wing fanatic Comandante Veracruz?”

  “Again, sir, I do not have that information at this time,” Díaz said. “The situation here is confusing and fluid.”

  “I want to know just one thing, Minister Díaz: are all these announcements and threats from this Comandante Veracruz guy sanctioned and endorsed by the Mexican government? I require only a simple yes or no answer.”

  “I assure you, Mr. President, that this Comandante Veracruz character does not speak for Mexico,” Minister of Internal Affairs Felix Díaz replied. “However, Ernesto Fuerza is a private citizen of Mexico; he has not been charged with any crimes here in Mexico, and therefore has the constitutional freedom to move and speak wherever he chooses; and if the private media outlets in my country wish to give him airtime to voice his opinions, that is their decision.”

  “Minister Díaz, his remarks are inflammatory, counterproductive, and obviously dangerous,” Conrad said. “Cities and counties all over the United States are complaining of traffic gridlock, acts of vandalism and violence, theft, assaults—all because of this man’s announcements. Since your Internal Affairs Ministry controls the communications outlets in your country, I want to know if his remarks are officially—”

  “I have told you my government’s official position many times, Mr. President,” Díaz interrupted. “Mexico wishes to participate in formulating a just, fair, and equitable immigration and border security program with your government.”

  “And that is?”

  “Very simple, sir: all military forces on the U.S.-Mexico border must be removed; all Mexican citizens being held in detention facilities must be released immediately; an in-place guest worker program should be initiated immediately, with Mexican citizens wishing to work being allowed to register with their employers or directly through your Citizenship and Immigration Services bureau without requiring them to return to Mexico; all Mexican workers in the United States are to be guaranteed the federal or state minimum wage, whichever is higher; and all Mexican citizens living and working in the United States for more than two years should receive a Social Security identification card, not just a useless taxpayer ID number.”