Cybernarc

by Robert Cain

  The SEAL had been turning the questions over in his head ever since they’d left the airport. Their escort was not dressed in the usual SWAT or HRT fashion, in combat blacks or camouflage fatigues. Instead they wore conservative business suits, white shirts, and ties, and seemed uncomfortably out of place.

  Drake was uncomfortable, too. Weston had admitted that there was a possibility Braden would put up a fight when he was cornered at the CIA’s Georgetown safe house, but he’d refused when Drake asked if he could carry a weapon. "Only the FBI agents will be armed,” he said. "Our Bureau friends are, ah, less than enthusiastic about people running around D.C. with loaded weapons.”

  So Drake, Weston, and Rod would be unarmed.

  If only all of them weren’t crowded together into three cars. Tactically, Drake felt like a sitting duck. He remembered Weston talking about drawing Diamond into the open and decided that this must be a part of it. Sure, give the guy a target he couldn’t refuse and shoot him before he could spring an ambush.

  No problem.

  Drake looked out the right-hand window. East, across the river, he could see the marble columns of the Lincoln Memorial at the head of the Arlington Memorial Bridge, and beyond, the sky-piercing thrust of the Washington Monument.

  Washington, Drake thought, the tourist’s Washington, had always struck him as such a clean city, with its monuments and orderly, parklike streets around the Mall, the splendor of its public buildings, the color of its hordes of out-of-town visitors.

  He knew that the tourist’s view of the city was quite different from the reality. He’d heard the figures, read the news stories of how drugs were sold openly on street corners within half a mile of the Capitol Building, of how whole neighborhoods lived in a virtual state of siege as rival drug gangs battled with automatic weapons for control of the city’s streets.

  Drake had never paid much attention to those stories before. His own experiences with the city of Washington had always been limited to the public buildings, the monuments, and the tourists. His favorite place was the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, where the technological achievements of the past century were on display. It was a bright, clean place of hope and pride far removed from the festering crime and blood of the streets only a few blocks beyond the Mall.

  He was seeing the cityscape differently now, as though through different eyes. The drug war was a daily fact of life for the vast majority of the people living there among the brownstones, tenements, and public- housing projects beyond the marble gleam of the government buildings.

  Different eyes ...

  He turned away and looked at Rod. How did he see the city? The RAMROD robot appeared to be taking in the passing scenery with its usual passive acceptance. Traffic was picking up as the convoy threaded its way off the parkway close by the Marine Corps Memorial, then entered the suburb of Rosslyn. Futuristic towers of white stone, steel, and glass rose among the expressways, in high-tech contrast to the lower, more classical architecture across the river. Ahead, Drake could see the Francis Scott Key Bridge thrusting across the Potomac into Georgetown. The majestic brown towers of Georgetown University crowned the low hill to the left. Everywhere there were cars and people and more cars.

  Drake remembered the robot’s comments back in Lab One.

  "Well, Rod,” he said. "What do you think of uncontrolled environments now?”

  "Interesting,” Rod replied. "There appears to be a great deal of activity. I am finding that the direct experience of reality can be quite . . . stimulating.”

  "That it can, son,” Weston said.

  "Listen,” Drake said. "When we get there, how are we going to take Braden down?”

  Kenzie turned in the front seat. "My boys will surround the target first,” he said. "You people will stay well back until the HRT has the situation under control.”

  "Agreed,” Weston replied. "Just so that we get first crack at Braden once you get him.”

  Drake knew that Weston was worried about someone else getting to Braden first. Witnesses and prisoners who knew too much had died before, within hours of being captured, often apparent suicides.

  Weston wanted no such "suicide” to eliminate the man who would be their key to Diamond.

  "Query,” Rod said. He was turning in his seat, looking back over his shoulder. "The vehicles approaching from behind are unknown to me. I am familiar with trucks and cars, but these appear to be fundamentally different in design and purpose.”

  Weston turned, squinting through the rear window. "Motorcycles,” he said. "They’re a great way to beat the Washington traffic, let me tell you.”

  Drake was watching the motorcycles now. There were three of them ... no, four, each carrying two riders, nondescript in leather jackets and colorful helmets. Two were passing the tail security car now, one to the right, one to the left.

  Kenzie scowled. "I don’t like the looks of this.” He reached for the radio handset in the front of the car as the limo crossed onto the Key Bridge. "Shadow Three, this is Shadow One. Watch those . . . Alert! Alert! Bandits on cycles! All units . . .”

  The convoy was engulfed in a swirl of movement, but to Drake it felt like slow motion, eerily dreamlike. As though on cue, the two lead motorcycles had accelerated, spurting toward the limo carrying Drake, Weston, and Rod. He could see the riders, each clinging to his driver with one hand, and holding a boxlike Ingram MAC-10 with the other.

  The lead car in the convoy came to an abrupt halt, the maneuver so sudden the vehicle skidded until it was almost broadside across the right lane of the bridge. Horns were honking now as other drivers saw danger and reacted, without realizing yet what was happening. In the next instant, Drake’s limo slammed into the lead car from behind. The shock wrenched him forward against his seat belt and knocked the radio from Kenzie’s hand.

  "Son of a bitch!” the FBI agent shouted. He reached down and grabbed his H&K, jacking back the bolt to chamber a round. "Down! Everybody down!”

  Gunfire blasted from the two motorcycles in the rear. Drake saw glass explode from the rear limo as it was caught in a vicious crossfire. The tail-car driver wrenched the wheel to the left, apparently trying to sideswipe one of his assailants, but the motorcycle swerved and avoided the clumsy limousine easily. Gunfire from two MAC-10s continued to slam into the car, pocking the doors and hood and splintering the windshield as the high-speed autofire buzzsawed through the passenger compartment.

  Kenzie was still screaming for everyone to get down. Drake, however, was not about to let himself be caught inside a stopped car with gunmen firing MAC-10s at him from two sides.. In a swift one-two-three of motions, he unfastened his safety belt, yanked the rear-door handle, and slammed his shoulder against the door, catapulting onto the deck of the bridge.

  The car door whipping open just in front of him must have startled the right-side motorcyclist because his vehicle swerved sharply, forcing him to put one foot out to brace the machine. The man seated behind him had just been leveling his Ingram at Drake as he rolled onto the street. The sudden swerve dragged his aim up and to the right. The weapon’s muzzle flash stabbed, flickering, and Drake heard the unmistakable snap-snap-snap of rounds cracking past his head.

  The gunman on the left opened fire at the same instant. Drake heard the smash of exploding glass as the rear window shattered. Two more motorcycles, their execution at the tail-end limo complete, raced up from the rear.

  Instinctively, Drake groped at his hip for a gun, then remembered that he was unarmed.

  The right-hand cyclist recovered control of his machine and closed in, his passenger taking aim. . . .

  Within microseconds, Rod had seen the attack and recognized it for what it was. When Kenzie screamed to the passengers to get down, he reached down and snapped the seat belt, not taking the time to unfasten the buckle but simply ripping the tough fabric with his fingers as though it were cotton. He pivoted to the left then, bringing his knees up to his chest, holding the position as the left-hand lead motorcyclist d
rew even with the car. His hands gripped the seat beneath him, bracing his body.

  It was an elementary problem of vectors and forces. At the correct time, his legs unfolded with explosive power, his feet slamming into the door, tearing locking mechanism and hinges with a shriek of tortured metal. Glass filled the air, sparkling.

  Like a missile, the limousine’s left-rear door hurtled through five feet of empty space and into the approaching motorcycle. Machine and door slammed over onto the street, spilling the riders in a thrashing tangle of limbs.

  Rod followed the door, vaulting into the road. He landed in a crouch, spinning to face a second motorcycle as it swerved to miss the cycle that had just been knocked down. The robot reached out, and steel-cored fingers bit into the driver’s helmet, puncturing fiberglass like Styrofoam. He yanked, hard, and the motorcyclist’s head slammed into the faceplate of his rider, flipping him off the back of the motorcycle, neck broken by the impact.

  The driver’s head came off in Rod’s hand, separating from its body in a scarlet cascade of blood.

  On the right side of the car, a third motorcycle with its two riders was bearing down on Drake, who was on his hands and knees. The gunman was already aiming his weapon.

  Rod, still turning with the momentum of his first swing, followed through with the movement and let fly, flinging the grisly and now somewhat flattened fiberglass safety helmet in a whipcracking overhand throw. Head and helmet struck the gunman’s wrist with the impact of a hard-swung baseball bat, smacking the Ingram away and startling the driver into an uncontrolled skid.

  Less than five seconds had passed since the first shots had been fired, less than two since the death of the now headless cyclist. The motorcycle, still bearing his decapitated body, smashed into the lead security car. The Ingram dropped by the rider was still in motion, bouncing along the bridge deck in a series of spinning skips and clatters. Rod’s legs pounded as he went into motion, crossing ten meters of space and scooping up the loose weapon in mid-bounce.

  The third motorcycle had recovered from its skid and was passing the middle limo now, between the vehicle and the bridge railing. Men were spilling out of the lead security car now, but not to engage in combat. The driver, Rod saw, tumbled out onto the street, the side of his face smashed by a bullet. There was something wrong there, for none of the motorcycle hitmen had fired on the lead car yet.

  Filing the data, Rod tracked the right-side motorcycle as it tried to squeeze past the lead car. Rod raised the Ingram in one hand and squeezed the trigger, holding his arm rigid against the sharp, upward recoil. The weapon spat a short burst that slammed into the unarmed rider’s back, then jammed, the mechanism fouled by its rough trip across the pavement.

  But it was enough. The cycle twisted sideways and struck the safety barrier, slamming the two riders over the barrier and spilling them into space.

  It was a good thirty-foot drop to the Potomac, and at least one of the men screamed all the way down.

  The fourth and last motorcycle had been holding back. Its driver gunned the engine now and it hurtled up from the rear, the rider crouched low as he leveled his Ingram at Rod. The robot’s senses detected the bullets as they snapped past, registering position, velocity, and trajectory by the projectiles’ sonic-boom wakes.

  There was no time to run or dodge. The motorcycle was trying to thread its way across into the opposite lane of traffic, where terrified drivers were now seeking cover beneath their dashboards, and horns were sounding in a steady, air-raid-siren cacophony that drowned out the shriek of gunfire from the gunman’s MAC.

  Rod’s right arm blurred, the movement too fast for human eyes to follow. The useless MAC-10 in his hand cracked across the intervening space and struck the driver squarely in his chest, crushing sternum and ribs and kicking both men off the back of the motorcycle. The riderless machine slewed sideways and came hurtling toward where Rod was standing.

  He sidestepped the unguided missile easily, then whirled as something slammed into his left arm. He had been keeping an automatic tally of the enemies and had thought that all were now accounted for. Two 9mm rounds had just struck him high in the left arm, glancing blows that tore cloth and synthetic plastic skin but left him fully functional. He traced the path of the rounds back. . . .

  The FBI agent in the front passenger seat of the lead car was just getting clear of the vehicle, an Uzi in his hands. He’d fired a short burst over the roof of the car at Rod but was now turning toward the middle car where Special Agent Kenzie was scrambling out behind his open car door, still trying to get his hands on his H&K. Drake was just behind Kenzie, still unarmed and very much in the line of fire. The gunman raised his Uzi. . . .

  The wreckage of the first motorcycle was a few feet away, still under the car door and wobbling as one of the riders, screaming now in pain, tried to move ruined legs pinned by the machine’s weight. Rod reached down and grabbed the motorcycle’s front wheel, which was clear of the pavement and still spinning. The shock of hard rubber tore the plastic from his right-hand fingers, but he gripped the wheel and wrenched it free, eliciting another agonized shriek from the injured man under the wreckage. He turned, holding the wheel level, then snapped arm and wrist in unison. Like a huge, black Frisbee, the motorcycle wheel skimmed through the air in a straight path and connected with the traitorous FBI man’s head in a gory explosion of blood, bone, and brains. The tire kept flying, wobbling out past the bridge and dropping toward the river. The body with its bloody ruin of a head tottered a moment before dropping the Uzi from limp fingers and crumpling to the pavement.

  Rod checked the time on his internal clock. Eight seconds had elapsed from the first shot. Around him, he was aware of the shrieks and screams of wounded gunmen and panicked motorists. Drake and Kenzie were straightening up behind the limo, looking up and down the bridge for other possible threats.

  "Good God,” a shrill voice called behind Rod. "Who the hell are you, fella, Superman?”

  Rod turned and found himself looking down at a slender, mousy-seeming man in glasses and a sport coat. "I am not a man at all,” Rod replied. He held up his right hand, where the synthetic skin had been torn away, exposing the black, carbon-lubricated slickness of his titanium-steel alloy fingers. "I should think that would be self-evident.”

  "Yeah,” the man said. His eyes were bugging out from his face as he stared first at Rod’s hand, then at his left arm where the workings of miniature hydraulic pistons were exposed, sliding back and forth as the arm flexed. "Yeah, buddy, I can see that!” The man blinked. "What are you?”

  "A cyborg!” another voice called. "It’s incredible!” "I am a robot,” Rod said. "Part of a classified robotics and artificial intelligence program carried out by scientists and engineers of various advanced technology research groups. I have just stopped the attempted assassination of government officials by gunmen in the employ of a drug distribution network.”

  Rod had been instilled with an understanding of security procedures and knew that RAMROD was classified top secret. No one had ever bothered, however, to teach him how to lie in the event that his cover as an ordinary human was exposed. To Rod’s way of thinking there was no use in trying to deny the obvious.

  The man was fumbling for a notebook and pen as Rod spoke. Nearby, another man closed in with a Nikormat, the camera’s automatic drive going click-whir- click- whir-click.

  The richly paneled conference room was part of the office suite belonging to the Director of Central Intelligence on the top floor of the CIA’s Langley headquarters. Law books and television monitors lined the walls, and the windows on two walls overlooked the lush, northern Virginia countryside.

  Admiral Randolph Hewett Cunningham was not watching the scenery. He shoved that morning’s Washington Post across the conference table with an angry flourish.

  Cybernarc busts drug lord hit! the paper’s headlines proclaimed. The subheader was more explicit: Intelligent Robot Secret Weapon in Feds’ Drug War! Rod’s picture was ther
e beneath the headline, looking human and somewhat remote, almost bored.

  "What idiot decided that we were going to let a goddamned robot speak to the press!” he thundered.

  "It was an accident,” Weston replied. "I’ll take full responsibility.”

  In retrospect, it was hard to imagine what he could have done differently. It was plain bad luck that a couple of Post reporters and a cameraman had been in one of the other cars on the bridge. In the chaotic aftermath of the firefight, there’d been no way to stop the newsmen from asking their questions, no way to stop Rod from answering in his usual direct way. Weston had descended on the newsmen with threats of legal action against the reporters and their paper if the story was printed, citing national security, but his bluff had been called.

  "Damn right you will,” the DCI replied. Cunningham, a large man with black horn-rims and white hair, was the newly appointed Director of Central Intelligence.

  The third man in the room, with crew-cut salt-and- pepper hair and a permanently combative look on his bulldog features, was Harold Gallagher, the CIA’s Executive Director, or EXDIR. He was responsible for the day-to-day internal management of CIA activities. Both EXDIR and the DCI worked with Group Seven and were aware of its projects.

  And as the CIA’s two senior executives, they had a special and proprietary interest in RAMROD.

  "Your robot has become notorious!” Gallagher had never believed in RAMROD and took every opportunity to remind people of the fact. He shook his pen at Weston like an admonishing finger. "Half of Washington is screaming about the 'CIA killer robot’ tearing people apart with its bare hands. The other half is laughing itself sick at our two-billion-dollar top-secret motormouth!”