by Andy Straka
“I am,” she admitted. “You have to admit they’re pretty amazing.”
She picked up the MAV again. She was coming to consider the little drones as extensions of herself. MAVs were something she could control, unlike people. If the public knew the kind of things they could do with these little gems, would they be fascinated? Or horrified?
“Well, you know what they say,” Tye said.
“What’s that?”
“A pilot’s first love always has to be their ship.”
“What do you know about being a pilot?”
“My dad was one. For a little while at least. Before he left me and my mom. But that’s a long story.”
She set the drone down again and turned away for a moment, embarrassed. She felt disarmed sometimes by his candor.
“Me, I’d rather be being face-to-face with someone, looking them in the eyes.” He smiled at her from across the room.
This was the man she owed her life to, but there was a part of her, she had to admit, that sometimes wished he hadn’t been so heroic, that wished she’d died in the crash along with Skyles.
Her long recuperation and the counseling that went along with it had been painful and slow. She’d been left to pick up the pieces of what was left of her life and the inevitable self-questioning about what she might have done differently. Now here Tye was, suddenly, improbably, back in her life. Come to rescue her again? Rescue her from what?
“I guess robots will never truly think and act like humans,” she mumbled, half to herself.
For now, Williamson had assured them, their MAVs were strictly surveillance platforms. But it didn’t take much of an imagination to realize that these little flyers were bound to be weaponized, sooner or later. And when it happened, there would be few places an assassin, or counter-terrorism team for that matter, couldn’t penetrate. Counter-measures, along with the drones themselves, would become huge business. For all she knew, maybe they already were.
“Let’s hope not.” Tye laughed. “Otherwise, we’re all doomed.”
Staff Sergeant Tye Palmer had seen two tours in Iraq and another two in Afghanistan. His special technical expertise, he jokingly claimed, was functioning as a homing device for trouble.
“You had breakfast?” he asked, stretching and yawning.
“No, I–”
“You got any eggs and bacon around this place? I fry a mean over-easy.”
“Sorry, I haven’t had time to shop.”
“Okay. We both need some fuel in the tank. Why don’t I slip back over to my apartment and jump in the shower. I’ll be back in a jiff and we can head out and find something to eat.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
He lingered in the doorway for a moment.
“Oh, and thanks,” she said.
“For what?”
“For checking on me.”
“Somebody’s got to do it, Chief.”
For an instant, she was sure she was looking at the ghost of Captain Skyles. She glanced down at the drone on the desk in front of her again, wondering if, with all of the technological wonders happening these days, someone somewhere in the world was actually developing a workable time machine. But when she looked back at the doorway, Tye was gone.
7
A couple of hours after daybreak, Raina stepped back into the apartment, closing the door behind her. She tossed the van keys onto the desk next to her computer, laying her cell phone next to them, and sighed.
She and Tye had gone out to breakfast at a local diner where they’d eaten bacon and eggs and good hot coffee and alternately shared pages of a daily newspaper. This was their day to get all of their planning and preparations together before Derek Kurn’s frat party tomorrow night, but Tye had said little while they ate. Maybe he was just hungry; at times he didn’t seem to be much of a conversationalist.
She’d dropped him off at a Wal-Mart a half-mile down the highway from the apartment complex where he said he needed to pick up a few things. He said he would walk back to the apartment and they would meet up again in an hour to finalize their plans.
Moving awkwardly across the room on her prosthetic, she turned and flopped down on the couch to think. Lucky for her it was her left foot, her Army rehabilitation therapist had cheerily assured her. At least she could drive a car without special equipment. Maybe not a helicopter again, but….
Oh, who was she kidding? She’d become a freak of nature; that was all there was to it. The pretty–at least she still hoped–young woman seated in the corner at the bar all the guy’s would try to come on to…that is, until they got a look at the foot. Then their eyes would skip away. Even if they stayed to listen to her story, they’d treat her more as an object worthy of a respectful distance, like some kind of monument–unless they were soldiers themselves–to the men they maybe thought they should be. The juxtaposition didn’t exactly spark an avalanche of potential romance.
But enough of the pity party. She started to push up from the couch when she heard, almost sensed, the slightest creak of the floor from within the darkened kitchen, and felt an iciness slice through her like a knife.
She wasn’t alone. She didn’t know exactly how she knew, but she knew. She tried to fling herself across the room to where her old Army sidearm hung in its holster on the coat rack, but she was too slow.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
She froze, down on one knee. A pair of men, dressed in blue jeans and collared shirts with their heads covered by ski masks, appeared, rising up from their crouch around the corner into a shooter’s stance. In their hands were Colt semiautomatics, pointed at her head.
Her heart leapt into her throat.
“Who are you?” She instantly figured by their bearing and demeanor they were either military or ex-military.
“You don’t need to know that, ma’am. Please return to the couch.”
“And what if I don’t?”
“It’s not a request.”
She looked into the eyes of the one doing the talking, the taller of the two, and could see he meant business. She worked her jaw in a circular motion. How could she have been so stupid as to let these two get the jump on her?
“Okay, a polite command then,” she said. “I guess I’ll take the couch option.”
She stood upright and with a slight hitch in her stride returned to the couch.
The man spoke to his accomplice. “Cuff her and hood her.”
“What?” She didn’t like the sound of this.
But before she could react the other man moved behind her and pulled her hands together behind her back, securing them with a pair of handcuffs. Then a black hood came down over her head, throwing her into the dark. “What’s going on?” she asked. “Why are you doing this?”
“The less you talk and the more you listen the easier this is going to go. Turn around and sit down on the couch,” the first man said.
She could hear him moving toward her. She felt the briefest touch of something hard against her head and realized to her horror it was the barrel of his Colt. At least she could still breath.
“Okay. Okay. Let’s not get trigger happy.”
She did as he instructed. It was a little difficult without the use of her arms or her sight, but she managed to drop down heavily onto the couch again. The two men were silent for a moment, but she could hear them moving around her. She wondered what they were doing.
The answer came a moment later when she felt the sting of a needle in her hip.
“Hey!” She instinctively tried to shake away, which made it hurt worse.
“Don’t move.”
“What are you doing? What did you just give to me?” Visions of the video she’d just recorded from Nathan Kurn’s office flashed through her mind.
“You won’t be harmed as long as you cooperate.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“This is for your own protection.”
The drug was already taking effect. Like a gray curtai
n, sleep pressed down through her shoulders, arms, and legs; noting the effects as if examining them from a great distance, she could no longer feel her appendages, nor the rest of her body; not ever her mouth, her lips, or her tongue.
“But you’re treating me like a terrorist,” she managed to mumble, the voice not like hers at all.
The last words she heard one of the men speak sounded something like a dream.
“Maybe you are.”
8
Tye knocked on the door to Raina’s second floor apartment again and waited.
Still no answer–where could she be? The rental van was still in the parking lot. He seriously doubted she’d gone anywhere on foot. It had barely been an hour since she’d dropped him off at the Wal-Mart.
He shifted the bag of groceries from one hand to another and took out the spare key she’d given him. They’d agreed to exchange keys on the off chance, as part of the job, one might need to get into the other’s temporary apartment. They’d also agreed he would come by her apartment to go over things after picking up the food at store. He knocked one last time just to be sure.
Turning the key in the lock, he had the funny feeling he was opening more than just a door. Just a little while before they’d been celebrating their success at penetrating Nathan Kurn’s office, at opening a potential new chapter in their lives, fraught with risk and reward. Over the past few days, he was beginning to notice a new side to Raina, a truer confidence, a freer spirit. Was it because of the MAVs? Because she was flying again? Raina was also incredibly efficient and thorough at her job. Reliable as the day was long–she could multi-task with the best of them. Why hadn’t she called him if she was planning to go out somewhere? It wasn’t like her. He smelled trouble.
He pushed on the heavy door and let it swing open.
“Raina?”
Nothing.
“Raina, you here?”
The soldier in him peered warily through the doorway. From inside the small apartment, the refrigerator motor purred. He caught a faint whiff of something antiseptic and vaguely familiar. For some reason, it made him think of Raina’s artificial foot. In the time they’d been working together Tye had been careful to be as casual as possible about it. He instinctively knew she was self-conscious about her disability, and he didn’t want to force her into a conversation to address it; he wanted to give her whatever time and space she felt like she needed.
But maybe that was a mistake. Had she fallen or been hurt?
“Raina?” He stepped into the living room. To one side was a desk with a computer on it; the computer and screen were turned off. Opposite the window stood a small couch with its cushions in disarray. That didn’t seem like Raina.
He checked the kitchen and bedroom for any sign of her, but found nothing. Back in the living room, his eyes came to rest on the desk again. A pile of aviation books and software manuals lay beside the computer monitor. Between the books and the monitor he found the keys to the rental car, but that wasn’t all. With the keys was the cell phone she’d been using. Raina knew they needed to be in constant contact. Next to her jacket Raina’s handgun also still hung securely in its holster from a peg on the wall. What could have caused her to leave the apartment without at least the phone? Maybe she just needed a break after the stress of flying the MAV into the building and had gone outside to sit on the lawn or something.
He stepped back across the threshold and looked down at the sidewalk, but he saw no sign of Raina. Their van was the only car in the narrow parking lot at the moment, and a tall hedge blocked any view beyond. He walked down to the end of the balcony where he could get a better look at a patch of grass and a small pond that abutted the apartment complex. The grass was empty and the pond was still. On the other side of the pond, through a stand of pine trees, traffic flowed along a lightly traveled Boulevard.
“Huh,” he muttered to himself.
Back in the apartment, he stood in the living room looking around.
Maybe he was worried over nothing. Maybe his new partner was a closet smoker and had snuck off, forgetting her keys, into some outdoor cubby hole down the way to enjoy a puff; she would be back, embarrassed, in a couple of minutes. But in the few weeks they’d been working together, he’d spotted no sign of such a habit.
His gaze came to rest on a thin strip of sticky paper that looked like it had torn off and fallen between the couch cushions. He reached down to pick it up.
Sticky to the touch, it looked like a piece of a label that been torn on one edge. But the typed wording was still readable: Diisopropylpheno.
Tye had no idea what the word meant. But it sounded like a scientific name. Was it some kind of medication? Maybe Raina was dosing herself for pain–she wouldn’t be the first vet addict to come down the pike. There was that faint antiseptic smell again. Could something have gone wrong? Could she have accidentally OD’d and wondered off down the complex or into the woods? He shuddered to think of the possibilities.
But something didn’t add up. Why had her door been closed and locked tight when he arrived? Her keys still lay on the desk. That meant someone else besides Tye had a key.
He sat down at the desk, pulled out his smartphone, and opened up a search engine, carefully typing in the letters from the label. It didn’t take long to find what he was looking for. Only one letter was missing. Diisopropylphenol–more often known as Propofol, a common general anesthetic agent.
He turned and looked over the couch cushions again, seeing in his mind what must have happened. The faint leftover smell wasn’t from the drug. He’d smelled it often enough–it was from the alcohol rub swiped over the skin in preparation for an injection. Maybe someone careful and well trained had drugged Raina. Maybe they’d opened the box containing the medication, begun the injection, and she had struggled for a moment, which was when the piece of label was knocked free.
Was Raina all right? Was the mission blown?
9
Raina awoke to near darkness. She was lying on a narrow cot in a small, dimly lit room. Above her was a concrete, bunker-like ceiling, and on every side painted concrete walls with no windows. Her body still felt stiff and heavy, her throat as dry as parchment. She felt her wrists. Her hands no longer seemed to be cuffed.
“Glad to see you’re awake, CWO Sanchez.”
She turned her head slightly to see a handsome, dark-haired man in expensive looking clothes–tailored khakis, oxford shirt, and stylish sweater–standing over her.
“How do you feel?”
“Like someone hit me over the head with a fence post. What is this? Who are you?”
“My name is Lance Murnell, special advisor to Homeland Security.”
“Homeland?” She massaged her forehead, still feeling a little woozy.
“That’s correct.”
“Since when is DHS into abduction?”
“Uh…yeah. Sorry about that. It wasn’t my call.”
“Got anything to drink in this place?” She felt like she was about to die of thirst.
“Sure.” He reached toward a table behind him and came back with a Styrofoam cup filled with ice chips, which he held out to her.
She took the cup from him, put it to her lips, and began to suck on a mouthful of ice.
“Take it easy. You don’t want to induce vomiting.”
“What are you, a doctor?”
“Not a medical one, no.”
She looked him up and down. He could have easily posed for the cover of GQ. Not that she ever paid too close attention to such things. He seemed like a nice guy, too–nicer than the kidnapper cyborg-types who’d stuck a needle in her vein anyway, although that wasn’t saying much.
“Why am I here?”
Murnell smiled. “You get right to the bottom line, don’t you? That’s one of the reasons we picked you.”
“Picked me? Picked me for what?” She already had a new job and a stark righteous mission with Tye Palmer, thank you very much, she also wanted to say, but figured she better k
eep quiet about that. Maybe they already knew.
“It’s for a new type of technology I’m about to show you, if you’re up to it. A program I think will be of great interest to you.”
“Oh, yeah? Why all the secrecy? What’s it for, repelling alien invaders or something?”
He smiled again. “Not exactly.” This really was one seriously good-looking dude. Raina didn’t normally swoon over men–she was attractive enough in her own right. But Murnell was off the charts. She wondered if they’d purposely sent him in to be here when she woke up, a walking talking genius hunk of male pheromones.
“Okay. What is it then?” She tried to sit up, but immediately felt dizzy, and laid her head back down.
“In a minute. Give yourself a little more time for the medication to wear off.”
“I don’t have more time.”
“Why, you have a pressing appointment?”
Actually, yes. With a pretty boy college rapist and his scumbag cover-up of a father. She glared at Murnell, wondering if he might just fit into the pretty boy category himself.
“All right,” he said. “If that’s what you want…But if you fall and crack your skull, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“Can I have some actual water?”
“Okay.” He reached around and picked up another cup, turning to hand it to her. This one contained only liquid, no ice.
She took a couple of sips. It tasted heavenly.
“Stomach okay?”
She nodded.
“Good. You think you can stand?”
“Time to find out,” she said.
She raised her head again, and though she felt the same dizziness, this time it was a little better. She pushed through it and sat all the way up.
“Everything all right?” he asked.
“What’d you people give me?”
“An anesthetic. Just like you were having a surgical procedure.”
“Priceless.” She shook her head. “Who were the guys who snatched me?”