Starfire

by Dale Brown

  “What?”

  “No worries, Brad,” Jodie replied. “I would never borrow money from anyone, especially from a cobber. It’s just not in me.” Brad’s eyes narrowed for about the sixteen-millionth time. “From a friend, you mug. I’d never borrow money from a friend.”

  “Oh.” He hesitated for a moment; then: “But if it was to keep you here to finish Starfire, then it would be an investment in the project, not a loan, right?”

  She smiled at him again, trying to discern any hidden intent in his words, but finally shook her head. “Let’s see what happens with all my applications and with the project, mate,” Jodie said. “But you’re lollies to offer. More wine?”

  “Just a little, and then I need to go back to Reinhold to get my bike and head home.”

  “Why not stay and I’ll fix us something?” Jodie asked. “Or we can go to the Market and pick up something.” She stepped closer to Brad, put her wineglass down, leaned forward, and placed a soft kiss on his lips. “Or we can skip tea and have a little naughty.”

  Brad gave her a light kiss in return, then said, “I don’t think I need an Australian slang dictionary to decipher that one.” But, to her immense disappointment, he averted his eyes. “But I’ve got a girl back in Nevada,” he said.

  “I’ve got a bloke or two back home, mate,” Jodie said. “I’m not talking about a relationship. We’re two mates far from home, Brad—I’m just a little farther from home than you are. I think you’re spunk, and I’ve seen you perving me—”

  “What! No, I haven’t . . . what?”

  “I mean, you are hot, and I’ve seen you checking me out,” Jodie said with a smile. “I’m not saying we get married, mate, and I’m not going to steal you away from your soul mate . . . at least, not right away, or permanently . . . maybe.” She reached up to take his hand, glancing briefly at the hallway to her bedroom. “I just want to . . . what do you Yanks call it, ‘hook up’?” Brad blinked in surprise, and didn’t—couldn’t—say anything. She read the hesitation in his face and body language and nodded. “That’s okay, mate. Don’t blame a sheila for trying . . . or trying again, later.”

  “I think you’re sexy, Jodie, and I love your eyes and hair and body,” Brad said, “but I’m just not wired for hooking up, and I want to see if I can make a long-distance relationship work. Besides, you and I work together, and I don’t want anything to spoil that.”

  “That’s okay, Brad,” she said. “I think we’re both adult enough to keep working together even if we have a naughty or two, but I respect your feelings.” She saw Brad’s serious face break out into a grin, then a chuckle. “Stop making fun of my accent and slang, you wowser!”

  He laughed aloud at the new slang word. “I thought I’d heard all the Aussie slang words, Jodie! I’ve heard ten more new ones just today!”

  “You making fun of my accent again, Mr. McLanahan?”

  “Sorry.”

  Jodie thumbed her nose, then said in a very deep voice, “ ‘Don’t apologize: it’s a sign of weakness.’ ”

  “Hey! You do John Wayne too! War Wagon, right?” He clapped.

  “Thank you, sir,” Jodie said, taking a bow, “except it was She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. Now let’s get out of here before I jump your bones, drongo!”

  It was just starting to get dark by the time they drove back to the parking lot outside the Reinhold Aerospace Engineering building. “I’d be happy to drive you home and pick you up again in the morning, Brad,” Jodie said as Brad got out of her car, retrieved his backpack, and crossed over to the driver’s-side window. “All you have to do is buy brekkies.”

  “I assume that means ‘breakfast,’ ” Brad said with a smile. She rolled her eyes in mock exasperation. “I may take you up on that offer when the weather is lousy, but I’ll be okay. It’s not too dark yet.”

  “Anytime, mate,” Jodie said. She was pleasantly surprised when Brad leaned toward her through the open window and gave her a light kiss on the lips. “Anytime at all, Brad,” she added with a smile. “ ’Night.” She put the car in gear and pulled away.

  “Am I the luckiest SOB on the planet?” he asked half aloud to himself. He dug his keys out of his jeans, removed the locks from his Trek CrossRip hybrid road/cross-country bicycle, activated the headlight and the red-and-white-flashing LED safety lights he had arrayed all around the bike, strapped on his helmet and turned on its lights, secured his backpack with the waist strap, and headed off on his two-mile ride home.

  Traffic was busy on the major avenues, but San Luis Obispo was a very bike-friendly town, and he only had to dodge inattentive motorists just once or twice on the fifteen-minute ride before reaching the house. The three-bedroom, one-and-a-half-bath, single-story home was situated in the center of a one-acre lot, with a detached two-car garage beside it; the lot was surrounded by an old but well-maintained wooden fence. In this busy and rather congested neighborhood, it was a little reminder of the expansive farming estates and numerous small ranches that dominated the area before the university swelled the population.

  Brad carried his bike inside the house—the garage had been broken into many times, so nothing of value was kept in it—and even inside the house, he locked it up with a big ugly-looking chain and oversize padlock. The neighborhood wasn’t crime-ridden, but kids were always jumping the fences, peering through the windows, and occasionally trying the doors, looking for something easy to snatch, and Brad hoped that if they saw the bike chained up like that they’d move on to easier pickings. For the same reason, he kept his laptop’s backpack out of sight in his closet and never left the laptop out on the desk or kitchen table, even if he was in the yard or going to the store a few blocks away.

  He rummaged through the refrigerator, looking for leftovers. He vaguely remembered his father, a single dad after the murder of his mother, making macaroni and cheese with sliced hot dogs for his son quite often when he was home, and that always made Brad feel good, so he always had a half pot of the stuff in the fridge.

  Damn, Jodie felt good too, he told himself. Who knew the friendly but normally quiet Aussie science geek wanted stuff like “hooking up”? She was always so serious in class or in the lab. Who else, he wondered, was like that? Casey Huggins was a little more rambunctious but was pretty serious most of the time as well. He started going down the list of the few women he knew, comparing them to Jodie . . .

  . . . and then he whipped out his cell phone, realizing that the main reason he hadn’t hooked up with Jodie or anyone else was probably waiting for him to call. He speed-dialed her number.

  “Hello, this is Sondra,” the message began. “I’m probably flying, so do your thing when you hear the beep.”

  “Hi, Sondra. Brad,” he spoke after the tone. “It’s almost eight. Just wanted to say hi. We made the pitch today for Starfire. Wish us luck. Later.”

  Sondra Eddington and Jodie Cavendish, it turned out, were very similar to each other, Brad realized as he found the pot of macaroni. Both were blond-haired and blue-eyed; Sondra was a little taller, not quite as thin, and several years older. Although Jodie was a student and Sondra had already graduated with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in business along with a number of pilot’s certificates, both were professionals in their own domains: Jodie was a master in a laboratory, while Sondra was completely comfortable and highly proficient in an airplane—and soon to be spaceplane, once she finished her training in Battle Mountain—cockpit.

  And, most of all, both were not hesitant to speak their minds and tell you exactly what they wanted, whether it was professional or personal, and definitely on every level of personal. How in the heck do I attract women like this? Brad asked himself. It had to be just plain ol’ dumb luck, because he certainly didn’t . . .

  . . . and at that moment he heard the scrape of a shoe against the wooden kitchen floor and sensed rather than saw a presence behind him. Brad dropped the pot onto the floor and whirled, finding two men standing before him! One was holding a backpac
k, and the other had one as well, along with a rag in his right hand. Brad half stumbled, half jumped backward against the refrigerator in surprise.

  “Neuklyuzhiye ublyudok,” the first man growled at the other in what Brad thought was Russian. “Clumsy idiot.” He then casually pulled an automatic pistol with a silencer affixed to the muzzle from the waist of his pants, held it level at his waist, and aimed it at Brad. “Do not move or cry out, Mr. McLanahan, or you will die,” he said in perfectly good English.

  “What the fuck are you doing in my house?” Brad said in a shaky, broken voice. “Are you robbing me? I don’t have anything!”

  “Otpusti yego, durak,” the first man said in a low voice. “Put him down, and do it right this time.”

  Advancing with amazing speed, the second man whipped something out of his waistband and swung it. Brad’s vision exploded into stars, and he never remembered the object hitting his temple or his body crumpling to the floor like a sack of beans.

  FOUR

  Be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction. Practice resurrection.

  —WENDELL BERRY

  SAN LUIS OBISPO, CALIFORNIA

  “Finally you did something right,” the first man said in Russian. “Now watch the back door.” The second man put the bludgeon back inside his pants, pulled out a silenced pistol, and took a position where he could watch the backyard through the kitchen window curtains.

  The first man started to set out objects from his backpack on the dining room table: small bags containing small pea-sized white chunks of powder, black- and soot-stained spoons, butane lighters, rolled-up one-hundred-dollar bills, votive candles, a bottle of 151-proof rum, and hypodermic needles and syringes. After they were arrayed on the table just as an addict might organize his works, the first man dragged Brad over to the table, took off his left athletic shoe and sock, and began deeply poking his foot between his toes with a hypodermic needle, drawing blood. Brad moaned but did not awaken.

  He heard a shuffle of feet on the floor behind him. “Molchat’, chert by tebya pobral,” the first attacker said in Russian through his teeth. “Silence, you clumsy fool. Pick your damned feet up.” He then started to pour the rum over Brad’s face and mouth and down the front of his shirt. Brad coughed, moaned, and spit out the strong liquid. “Shit, he is almost awake already,” he said. He retrieved a lighter and put his finger on the igniter. “Clear the way and let’s get the hell out of—”

  Suddenly the man felt his body rise up off the floor as if he had been sucked up by a tornado. He caught a glimpse of his assistant crumpled and bleeding on the floor by the back door, before he felt himself being spun around . . . until he was face-to-face with one of the most fearsome, twisted, malevolent human visages he had ever seen in his twenty years of doing assassinations for the Federal Security Bureau of the Russian government, once known as the KGB, or Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics’ security bureau. But he saw the face only for an instant before a massive fist came out of nowhere and crashed into his face right between his eyes, and he remembered nothing after that.

  The newcomer let the unconscious Russian drop four feet to the floor, then stooped down to check on Brad. “Jesus, kid, wake up,” he said, checking that Brad’s airway was unobstructed and his pupils didn’t indicate a concussion. “I’m not going to carry your fat ass.” He pulled out a cell phone and speed-dialed a number. “It’s me,” he spoke. “Cleanup at the ranch. Shut ’er down.” After ending the call, he began slapping Brad’s face. “Wake up, McLanahan.”

  “Wha . . . what . . . ?” Brad’s eyes finally opened . . . and then they opened wide in complete surprise when he saw the newcomer’s face. He recoiled in shock and tried to wriggle free of the man’s grasp, but it was far too strong. “Shit! Who are you?”

  “The bogeyman,” the man said, perturbed. “Where’s your school stuff?”

  “My . . . my what . . . ?”

  “C’mon, McLanahan, get your shit together,” the man said. He scanned the dining room and front hallway and noticed the closet door half open with a backpack on the shelf. “Let’s go.” He half dragged Brad out the front door, grabbing the backpack off the shelf before he hurried out the door.

  A large black SUV was parked on the street near the entry gate. Brad was pushed against it and held in place by a hand on his chest as the man opened the right rear passenger door, then grabbed him by his shirt and threw him inside. Someone else pulled him farther inside as the fearsome-looking man slid in, the door slammed shut, and the SUV sped off.

  “What the fuck is going on?” Brad shouted. He was squeezed tightly between the two very large men, and the squeeze seemed very deliberate. “Who—”

  “Shut the hell up, McLanahan!” the man commanded in a low, menacing voice that seemed to cause the seats and windows to vibrate. “We’re still in the middle of the city. Passerbys can hear you.” But soon they were on Highway 101 heading northbound.

  The second man in the backseat had moved back to the third row, so Brad was in the second row with the big stranger. Neither said a word until they were well out of the city. Finally: “Where are we going?”

  “Somewhere safe,” the stranger said.

  “I can’t leave. I’ve got work to do.”

  “You want to live, McLanahan? If you do, you can’t go back there.”

  “I’ve got to,” Brad insisted. “I have a project that could put an orbiting solar power plant into operation within a year.” The stranger looked over at him but said nothing, then began working on a smartphone. Brad looked at the man as the light from the smartphone illuminated his face. The glow created deep furrows in the man’s face, obviously caused by some sort of injury or illness, perhaps a fire or chemical burn. “You look familiar,” he said. The man said nothing. “What’s your name?”

  “Wohl,” the man said. “Chris Wohl.”

  It took a few long moments, but finally Brad’s face brightened. “I remember you,” he said. “Marine Corps sergeant. You’re a friend of my father.”

  “I was never a friend of your father,” Wohl said in a low voice, almost a whisper. “He was my commanding officer. That’s all.”

  “You own the house I’m staying in?” Wohl said nothing. “What is going on, Sergeant?”

  “Sergeant Major,” Wohl said. “Retired.” He finished what he was doing on the smartphone, which plunged his scarred face back into darkness.

  “How did you know those guys were in the house?”

  “Surveillance,” Wohl said.

  “You’re watching the house, or me?” Wohl said nothing. Brad paused for a few moments, then said, “Those guys sounded Russian.”

  “They are.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Former Federal Security Bureau agents, working for a guy named Bruno Ilianov,” Wohl said. “Ilianov is an intelligence officer, with an official posting as a deputy air attaché in Washington with diplomatic credentials. He reports directly to Gennadiy Gryzlov. Ilianov was on the West Coast recently.”

  “Gryzlov? You mean, Russian president Gryzlov? Related to the former president of Russia?”

  “His oldest son.”

  “What do they want with me?”

  “We’re not sure,” Wohl said, “but he’s on some sort of campaign against the McLanahans. He had agents break into your father’s crypt and steal his urn and other items inside.”

  “What? When did this happen?”

  “Last Saturday morning.”

  “Last Saturday! Why didn’t anyone tell me?” Wohl did not answer. “What about my aunts? Were they told?”

  “No. We have them under surveillance as well. We think they’re safe.”

  “Safe? Safe like me? Those guys had guns and they got into the house. They said they’d kill me.”

  “They tried to make it look like an accident, a drug overdose,” Wohl said. “They were sloppy. We detected them a couple days ago. We haven’t det
ected anyone around your sisters. They might not know about them, or they might not be targets.”

  “Who’s ‘we’? Are you the police? FBI? CIA?”

  “No.”

  Brad waited several moments for some elaboration but never received any. “Whom do you work for, Sergeant Major?”

  Wohl took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Your father belonged to several . . . private organizations before he took over at Sky Masters,” he said. “Those organizations did contract work for the government and other entities, using some new technologies and weapon systems designed for the military.”

  “The Tin Man armor and Cybernetic Infantry Device manned robots,” Brad said matter-of-factly. Wohl’s head snapped over in surprise, and Brad could feel rather than see the big man’s breathing slow to a stop. “I know about them. I was even trained in the CID. I piloted one back in Battle Mountain. Some Russians tried to assassinate my father. I squished them up inside a car.”

  “Shit,” Wohl murmured under his breath. “You’ve piloted a CID?”

  “Sure did,” Brad said with a big smile.

  Wohl shook his head. “Liked it, didn’t you?”

  “They shot up my house looking for my father,” Brad said, a little defensively. “I’d do it again if I had to.” He paused for a few moments, then added, “But yes, I did. The CID is one heck of a piece of hardware. We should be building thousands of them.”

  “The power gets to you,” Wohl said. “Your father’s friend—and mine—General Hal Briggs got drunk on it, and it killed him. Your father ordered me to do . . . missions with the CID and Tin Man outfits, and we were successful, but I could see how the power was affecting me, so I quit.”

  “My father didn’t die in a CID robot.”

  “I know exactly what happened out on Guam,” Wohl said. “He disregarded the safety of his unit and even his own son to strike back at the Chinese. Why? Because he had a bomber and weapons, and he decided on his own to use them. It was nothing but a pinprick . . .”