Cybernarc

by Robert Cain

  Still, Rod found he could look within himself and feel that awful pang of loss and desolation he’d first felt during the last PARET session with Drake. He’d thought it was gone.

  It was not.

  And there were other emotions there as well. Hatred.

  Despair. Shaken self-confidence. A burning need for vengeance. A determination that what had happened to Meagan and Stacy could not, would not be allowed to happen to others.

  Feelings no machine should have.

  But they were there.

  He reached out, his steel hand closing gently on Drake’s shoulder. "I . . . understand,” the robot said.

  And Drake looked at the robot’s face, only dimly seen in the darkness, and wondered.

  How could a machine feel what he felt, know what he was going through as thoughts of Meagan crowded his mind in the jungle above the Salazar compound?

  Yet he was glad Rod was there. His presence somehow eased the pain, the loss.

  There were still unresolved questions. "Hey, Rod?”

  "Yes, Lieutenant?”

  "Back there at the helo. How the hell’d you get around my override command? You weren’t supposed to be able to do that.”

  He could feel the robot’s unblinking eyes on him. "Heather McDaniels is an exceptional programmer,” Rod said. "But it should be obvious. Any program that a human could write into my non-PARET functions, I could rewrite.” The robot hesitated, and Drake wondered whether the hesitation was deliberate, a way of sounding more human. Surely the machine didn’t have to stop and take whole seconds to think about what it was going to say. "I prefer having an unlimited scope of action,” he added.

  "Yeah,” Drake replied. "Me too.”

  For Drake, the disobedience made Rod seem that much more human.

  In a strange way, it made him that much more trustworthy. Drake found himself able to accept the robot as a SEAL in his command, not as a computer, a smart weapon, a thing without personality.

  A large part of BUD/S training is dedicated to making the SEAL trainees work together as a team, to trust one another in situations where the life of each man depended on those around him. Lying on the ground shoulder to shoulder with twenty other recruits, all bench-pressing the same telephone pole in perfect unison; running for miles through the sand with the rest of the platoon, all supporting an equipment-laden life raft; two men sharing a single bottle of air, eighty feet underwater . . . those experiences and hundreds like them were what forged SEALs together into teams, units that were unbreakable because of the shared experience, the shared trust of the members.

  And, against all expectations, Drake found he trusted Rod in the same way.

  As if he were human.

  As if he were a SEAL.

  He wouldn’t have come after him otherwise. Too much depended on how well they understood one another.

  "Right,” he said softly. "Let’s concentrate on how we’re going to get back in there.”

  "It may not be easy. Though the guards no longer expect us, there are too many people about for a surreptitious approach.”

  "You got that right,” Drake replied. He studied the scene through Yancey’s LI scope. "But we don’t want to do anything about it anyway until our delivery arrives. That won’t be before dawn.”

  "We will move at that time?”

  Drake continued to peer at the compound through the sniper scope. "Damned straight. And when we do, those bastards won’t know what hit ’em.”

  The airdrop arrived on time. In the minutes just before dawn, with the sky a deep, gold-touched dome of blue overhead, the C-130 Hercules out of Howard Air Force Base in Panama made its pass over LZ Fox Green, roaring in so low that the jungle vegetation shivered in its passing. The rear ramp was down, and the heavily bundled parcel that was dragged from the plane’s tail on an olive-drab parachute had only a few tens of meters to fall. It impacted in the center of the old marijuana field as the C-130 "Herky Bird” gained altitude above the mountains and began to circle toward the north.

  Rod, after communicating with the pilot, explained to Drake that the Hercules would withdraw to the open sea but would return when the ground team contacted it on a specified frequency. The C-130, operating under the call sign "Rescue Sierra Tango,” had been cleared by the Colombian authorities for operations inside Colombian airspace—reportedly a search for a party of lost American travelers.

  "Right,” Drake, replied as he unhooked the parachute from the air dropped bundle. "Looks like they got everything on the list.”

  He unsnapped one side of the package and extracted one of the "toys” he had requested, an H&K twelve- gauge assault shotgun. The weapon looked like pure science fiction, with a long carrying handle, sleek lines, and its pistol grip mounted out in front of the bullpup- configured, ten-round magazine. Weighing about four kilos, the close assault weapon—"CAW” in the military lexicon—could fire shotgun blasts one at a time, or spray death and destruction full auto at three rounds per second.

  The rest of the gear was intact as well.

  "The chances of actually capturing Delgado are not good,” the robot reminded him.

  The SEAL began slipping magazines heavy with twelve-gauge shells into the pockets of his combat vest. "We’ll take that as it comes, Rod,” he said. "If we can’t take him alive . . .”

  The robot nodded its head in silent agreement.

  The SEAL stood. "Let’s get the stuff hidden and move on out. That Herky Bird won’t be able to loiter for more than three or four more hours. We’ll have to have it wrapped by then.”

  The sun was just up when the jeep left the Salazar compound, turning west on the coast road. Carlos Suarez sat in the front passenger seat, glumly watching the tropical terrain around them, while Paco drove and Juan perched in the back on top of the suitcases, nervously fingering his M-16.

  Leaving the compound alive had been a near thing.

  Once, during his days as a private in the Mexican Federal Army, Suarez had taken his knife and gutted a sergeant for words milder than those Jose Salazar had just used. But now, after a night of blood and fire and el horror sobrenatural, Suarez and his two friends had had enough. Paco had boosted the jeep’s ignition, and the three Mexicans had driven through the main gate, leaving a cursing, fuming El Tiburon behind them. Suarez had expected the drug lord to open fire.

  Even that would have been preferable to another hour in the seacoast hacienda.

  The three of them were old friends, compadres who had deserted from the Mexican army together and come to Colombia in search of adventure, money, and la vida buena. There’d been little adventure until now, but the money had been good and life easy.

  Now, a totally unexpected kind of adventure had struck, and they wanted no part of it, ever again.

  Each time Carlos looked at the encircling jungle, he remembered the face of that armored creature as it reached down for him in the Roland, and shuddered. If he’d not landed in the swimming pool, he would most certainly not have seen this sunrise.

  Clear of the compound, Paco pressed the accelerator. The jeep raced toward Santa Marta, twenty kilometers away. Once at the Colombian port, perhaps they could buy passage for . . . anywhere. They had money enough.

  Yes, Suarez’s days of soldiering for the drug lords were over.

  "Madre de Dios!” Juan screamed from the back. r'Que esta?”

  On the road thirty meters ahead, a towering shape had stepped out onto the road, impossibly black, armored, as immovable as a tree.

  ”Ai! Cuidado!” Paco spun the wheel, trying to avoid the looming obstacle. The jeep went into a spin as Suarez grabbed at the dashboard.

  The monster! It had returned . . . for him!

  Stark terror propelled him from the jeep as it spun off the road and lurched nose-first into the sunken shoulder. Thrashing, he landed in a mass of tropical ferns a short distance away.

  The chatter of Juan’s M-16 was chopped off by a piercing shriek. He heard Paco’s despairing wail of "Ai! No!
No!” and then that, too, was abruptly cut off.

  He heard a voice behind him, though he didn’t understand the English words.

  "One escaped into the jungle. He could warn Salazar and Delgado.”

  "We’ll get there first,” another voice replied. "Hey, nice wheels, guy!”

  Carlos Suarez spoke not one word of English, but he recognized the names Salazar and Delgado. If that black monster was going after his former employers, he would put just as much distance between him and the Salazar compound as he could.

  Crashing through the underbrush, he started running through the jungle toward Santa Marta as fast as his legs could carry him.

  "Where did you learn to drive?” Drake asked. He sat in the passenger seat of the jeep, checking his assault shotgun. His Uzi, fully loaded, was on the floor by his feet.

  "By PARET at Camp Peary,” the robot replied, shifting the jeep into high gear. His Uzi was slung across his back. "Dr. McDaniels was the source.” "God, I hope she knew how to drive.” The main gate to the Salazar compound was just ahead.

  "Of greater concern are my current power reserves,” Rod said. "My batteries are currently charged at forty- three percent. If I am forced to engage in unusually strenuous activity, I may not be able to complete the mission.”

  "Well, now’s a hell of a fine time to think of that!” "It is not something to think of, Lieutenant Drake.” The robot turned expressionless eyes on him. "Tell me, would an analogous limitation of your facilities at this time prevent you from at least attempting to complete this operation?”

  Drake thought about that for a moment. "No. No, I guess it wouldn’t.”

  "Then we are agreed,” Rod said.

  "Yeah.” The SEAL nodded. "And if anything happens to either of us, the other gets the package back to the LZ. No matter what, we get Delgado.”

  "Correct.” The robot accelerated. "I suggest you drop below the dashboard of the vehicle and protect your head. The next part of the ride may be a little rough.”

  Drake scrunched down in front of the seat as the jeep made a sharp left turn, still accelerating. He could hear shouts above the roar of the motor, and the chatter of automatic weapons fire.

  Then the jeep hit the compound’s main gate with a crash like metallic thunder.

  © Chapter Fifteen

  BOUNCING AS IT CRASHED THROUGH the gate, the jeep teetered perilously until Rod could bring it back under control once more. Guards scattered in several directions as several men, shouting warning, opened fire with automatic weapons. Bullets slammed into the jeep. One slug shrieked off Rod’s shoulder, leaving a ragged scar.

  The robot held the steering wheel with one hand, his Uzi in the other. Accelerating, the jeep raced past the garage, past the wreckage of the turretless Roland, past the swimming pool, aiming for the hacienda’s front door.

  A lone guard stood in front of the broad, double doors, firing an AK-47 assault rifle from the hip. Rod shifted to targeting mode, raised his Uzi, and loosed a three-round burst that tore away most of the soldier’s face, toppling him out of the way.

  "Are we there yet?” Drake called from his cramped hiding place on the floor.

  "Stay down,” the robot bellowed in reply. "And hold on. . . .”

  At sixty miles an hour, the jeep hit the single low step below the hacienda’s porch and went airborne. It struck the doors in an explosion of glass and spinning wooden splinters, skewed sideways, and slammed to a halt against the front-hall staircase.

  Luis Delgado was awakened by the gunfire, followed by a rending, clattering crash. It sounded like an explosion, felt as if the whole house had shaken. He sat up in the bed, disturbing the curvaceous, smooth-skinned forms on either side of him.

  One of the girls sat up, brushing a cascade of black hair from her face. "Luis? Que esta?”

  "Nada, querida. Go back to sleep.” But he was worried. Rising from the bed, he padded naked across the parquet floor toward the front window, drew aside the curtains, and looked out.

  The front yard was a scene of chaos, Salazar’s men running back and forth, some firing, some simply running. The main gate had been torn from its hinges.

  Now, what the devil . . . ?

  There’d been no peace since the firefight in the night. Throughout the early morning hours, there’d been arguing below the hacienda’s windows as small groups of the Salazar private army loudly demanded money, vehicles ... or simply announced that they were going home. They were not facing it again.

  El monstruo negro, they called the thing. The black monster.

  Delgado had heard Jose Salazar trying to restore order, shouting that there was no monster, that the shattered helmet found on the grounds was simply a piece of sophisticated gringo military gear dropped by one of their panicked commandos, that the Roland had been struck by a U.S. LAW rocket or grenade, not destroyed by a superhuman armored thing.

  Delgado had his own ideas about the black thing seen tearing the turret from an armored car.

  Cybernarc.

  He’d read the news story in El Espectador, reprinted from an article in The Washington Post the day after he’d arrived in Colombia. It was fantastico. This secret weapon, this robot, had reversed the ambush he and Braden had mounted against the caravan on the Key Bridge. And now it was here, in Colombia.

  After him.

  Delgado was not a happy man. As soon as he’d heard the outcome of the Key Bridge battle, he’d known that he and Braden would have to get out of the United States, out of Diamond’s reach.

  Both of them knew Diamond, knew who he was, and that made for an extremely simple equation. Now that the Washington network had been exposed, Diamond would have to eliminate both Braden and Delgado to be safe. If the CIA and FBI were tracking them, it meant that they had reached the same conclusion.

  Now Braden was dead. Delgado had heard about the mere’s death just before he caught the plane for Bogota.

  And the Americans had tracked him here. If the Americans could find him, so could Diamond.

  The outlook was unpleasant.

  "El monstruo!” Someone was screaming in the yard below, gesturing toward the house. "El monstruo esta en la casa!”

  Delgado’s hands shook as he released the curtain.

  "Luis?” One of the girls touched him lightly on the shoulder and he jumped. "What is the matter?” "Nothing!” He shoved the naked woman aside. "Out of my way, puta!”

  Picking up his trousers off the floor, he stepped into them, then went to the bedside dresser and pulled a Vz61 Skorpion from the drawer. The wicked-looking Czech machine pistol had been given to him by a Cuban friend, a man who once had worked with the Russian KGB. He checked the twenty-round magazine, then pocketed two spares.

  Then he began looking for a way out.

  Drake uncoiled from the floor of the jeep. Splinters of wood and broken glass crunched beneath his back. His head hurt, and his ears were ringing. The crash had momentarily stunned him as the vehicle smashed through the doors and came to a destructive halt in the building’s entry hall.

  He heard a crash of gunfire and looked up in time to see a narcoterrorist pitch forward from the top of the stairs. Rod released an empty magazine and slapped in a new one.

  Holding his head with one hand, Drake climbed from the jeep. "Christ, Rod,” he said. "You say you got your driving skills from Dr. McDaniels?”

  "I felt the sudden entry would provide us with the advantage of surprise.”

  "Uh. Surprised the hell out of me.” He stood, leaning on the jeep, which had come to rest against the bottom of the stairway. Water was dripping onto the floor, and steam boiled from the radiator. "Just try to keep in mind that humans aren’t built as sturdily as you are.”

  "Are you injured?” the robot asked.

  "I’ll live.” Drake retrieved both the auto shotgun and his Uzi. "Which way?”

  The entrance hall was built around a large stairway, with a second-floor balcony extending around all four walls. The interior was richly decora
ted in wood paneling and white plaster. Paintings hung on each wall, and there were mirrors everywhere, scattering light and rejections in a dazzling, perspective-wrenching display of opulence.

  Doors opened to left and right, and on either side of the stairs. Other doors were visible at the top of the staircase. "I hear movement on the second floor,” Rod replied. "That seems our best bet.”

  Drake heard the shouts and calls of men outside. There was a shot, and a round slammed into the top of the splintered doorframe.

  "Let’s move.”

  "Down!"

  At the robot’s warning, Drake dropped into a crouch behind the jeep. Three men broke from cover through one of the doors upstairs, full-auto fire stabbing from their assault rifles. Bullets slammed into the hood of the wrecked jeep and screamed off the robot. Rod stood unmoving, death still except for the rapid, tracking movements of his arm and head, holding the Uzi one- handed like a pistol. He fired a three-round burst . . . a second ... a third. . . .

  The three attackers went down, one slammed against the wall at the top of the stairs, a second tumbling down the stairs head over heels, the third pitching forward over a banister that snapped beneath his weight and tumbled with him to the polished floor of the entry hall.