“I’m Roy Alexander.” The sheriff hooked a thumb at his sidekick. “This here is Tom Bartlett.”
Sheriff Alexander was lean and rangy, with deep crevices carved in his weathered face. Bartlett was a younger version of his boss without the creases. Both men shifted their glances to the right.
“You want to tell me what that is?” Alexander drawled with another hook of his thumb.
“That is an Ergonomic Exoskeletal Extension.”
“Come again?”
“My team tests inventions for the Department of Defense. This is one of them.”
The curt reply had both sets of brows working again.
“Look, I’m tired and thirsty and totally creeped out.” That was the closest I could get to an apology. “The bodies are over there.”
The two law enforcement officials had obviously gone this route before. In what appeared to be a well-established routine, they extracted a jar of mentholated petroleum jelly from their vehicle and smeared a generous dollop across their upper lips, then each tied a handkerchief over their nose and mouth. Deputy Dawg retrieved a digital camera. The sheriff pulled out a roll of plastic evidence bags. Both men snapped on latex gloves. Only then did they approach the bodies.
I stayed put.
Despite their precautions, the first good whiff made the sheriff gag. Deputy Dawg tossed up his cookies. The officers scrutinized the scene for a scant few moments before beating a hasty retreat.
“Critters been at ’em,” the sheriff commented as he swiped his face with the handkerchief. “Bones and body parts are scattered all over the place.”
I hesitated a moment or two before making a reluctant admission. “I might have had something to do with that. I was aboard the exoskeleton, testing its night vision capability and moving at a good clip. I slogged through the bones and, uh, stuff before I realized what it was.”
Deputy Dawg scrunched his lips. I wasn’t sure whether it was an expression of sympathy for a really unpleasant experience or exasperation that I’d messed up his crime scene.
“What about those rocks peppering the area?” the sheriff asked. “They your doing, too?”
“A pack of coyotes stopped by for a visit.”
A hint of sympathy entered Alexander’s eyes. “You’ve had quite a night, Lieutenant.”
“And I’m feeling every minute of it.”
“How about we get you some water and sit in the shade while you tell me the exact sequence of events?”
THE Fort Bliss Range Patrol arrived next. Two cops, one military and one civilian, both coated with dust from their long drive. The county coroner followed hard on their heels. His ambulance jounced over the rutted earth while I was rehashing my nocturnal activities to the Range Patrol.
The coroner and his assistant had come prepared. After conferring with the sheriff, the doc and his tech sprinkled liquid onto two surgical masks.
The masks must have proved more effective than mentholated jelly, as they waded right in. The rest of us watched from a safe distance while the tech did his thing and the doc wielded a pair of long-handled forceps.
“One of them has a wallet on him,” he called out through his mask. “It has an ID in it. You want to examine it now, or wait till I finish?”
“Now,” Alexander shouted back.
Nodding, the doc dropped the object into an evidence bag. His assistant delivered the bag to the sheriff, who examined the ID for all of ten seconds before letting out a long, low whistle.
“Take a look at this.”
Deputy Dawg and the two Range Patrol officers crowded in. I peered over their shoulders but couldn’t see what the excitement was all about.
“We’d better contact CBP,” Alexander commented. “Pronto.”
“Already done,” the military cop replied. “Standard protocol these days. Mitch radioed to say he and another officer were ten minutes behind us.”
You can’t live or work along the Mexican border without knowing CBP stands for U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, formerly just the plain ole Border Patrol. They used to operate under the auspices of the Department of Justice but, like the Coast Guard and a bunch of other domestic agencies, got funneled into the huge bureaucracy known as the Department of Homeland Security after 9/11.
One of the CBP’s unenviable tasks is to stem the tide of illegal immigrants—which is what I assumed the dead men were until this character Mitchell and his cohort drove up in a white 4x4 sporting the distinctive green stripe of the Border Patrol.
To say I disliked Agent Mitchell on sight would be a gross exaggeration. It took him a good three or four minutes to tick me off. The fact that he reminded me forcibly of my ex certainly didn’t score him any brownie points. Same broad-shouldered build. Same muscled forearms showing under the rolled-up sleeves of his green utility uniform. Same long-legged stride.
The slender, dark-haired female with him also wore Border Patrol greenies. The assorted canisters, cuffs and weaponry attached to her belt must have weighed ten or fifteen pounds but she carried herself with the same self-assurance as this character Mitchell.
Only after he got closer did I make out the differences between him and Charlie. Mitchell had a square jaw that suggested a strength of character my ex had most definitely lacked. His floppy-brimmed boonie hat shaded eyes framed by squint lines carved deep in his tanned skin. I guessed the man had at least ten years on my ex, and a century of experience. Not all of it good, judging by those eyes.
They swept over me, lingered on EEEK for a few moments without registering a single emotion, then turned to his fellow law enforcement types.
“What have we got, Sheriff?”
“Two males. Sun baked ’em pretty good. They’re nothing but buzzard bait now, Mitch. I’m guessing they’ve been dead fourteen, maybe sixteen hours. Doc Allen will give us a better fix.”
So much for my theories on decomposition! I was counting backward fourteen hours, trying to figure out how close I’d come to finding these guys still alive, when Mitchell indicated me with a jerk of his chin.
“I take it she found ’em.”
Not being particularly partial to chin jerks, I muscled in on their cop party.
“She did,” I replied crisply. “Lieutenant Samantha Spade. I’m in charge of a DARPA test facility a few miles north of here. And you are?”
“Jeff Mitchell. This is Tess Garcia.”
Agent Garcia treated me to a friendly smile. I started to return it when Mitchell nodded toward EEEK. “Is that what you were testing?”
“Yes.”
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
“At night?”
“Yes.”
I had a good idea where this was going. Sure enough, Mitchell’s mouth took a sardonic twist.
“Let me make sure I have this straight, Lieutenant. You went for a midnight stroll, alone, along one of the most permeable stretches of the U.S.-Mexico border. One highly favored by the scum who run drugs and human traffic across it nightly.”
I could do the chin thing, too. Mine tilted at a sharp angle to match the acid in my response. “First, I was in constant communication with my base.”
Not totally true. The radio had remained clipped to my belt for most of the run. Mitchell didn’t need to know that, however.
“Second, I wasn’t out for a stroll. I was conducting a controlled test of an expensive and highly sensitive piece of equipment.”
Unfortunately Sheriff Alexander felt compelled to amplify on my reply. “Lieutenant Spade ran her equipment through the buzzard b—er, bodies.”
“What?”
“Plowed right through ’em.”
Mitchell and Garcia flashed me identical looks. On her, incredulous was okay. On him, it was not.
“She also kept the coyotes off,” the sheriff added. “Or tried to.”
That produced a sympathetic glance from Garcia and a grunt from her cohort.
“Before you check out the scene,” the sheriff advised, “you might want to see th
is.”
He handed over the bagged ID. Mitchell took one look at it and let out a long, slow hiss. Garcia’s eyes widened.
“Holy shit! It’s him!”
Once again I had to force my way into their cop circle. “Him who?”
Six pairs of eyes swung in my direction. Each pair blazed with varying degrees of elation and fierce, almost feral, satisfaction. Agent Mitchell clued me in.
“The ID belongs to Sherman Brown, of Dennison, Texas. Brown reported it stolen a few weeks back, along with all his credit cards. We got a tip that someone attempted to use one of those stolen credit cards in Mexico two days ago. Someone matching the description of Patrick James Hooker.”
The name sounded familiar. Enlightenment burst a moment later.
“The American mercenary?” I gasped. “The one suspected of selling the stolen arms used in that ambush down in Colombia last year?”
The ambush had made headlines. Six Colombians and three U.S. Marines moving in to raid a drug cartel’s headquarters had died in a lethal crossfire. Hooker’s role in the incident didn’t come to light until he was captured in a similar raid some months later.
“That’s him,” Mitchell confirmed grimly. “Bastard was extradited to the U.S. and spent four months in pre-trial confinement before a judge ruled the U.S. government didn’t have sufficient evidence to try him. He was being shipped back to Colombia for trial when he escaped.”
Tess Garcia picked it up from there. Her delicate face had hardened into something almost ugly.
“We got a tip he intended to slip back into the States. Presumably to set up another arms deal. FBI, TSA, CBP and law enforcement officials from coast to coast have been on the watch for him.”
“We didn’t get him,” Deputy Dawg said with profound regret, “but the desert did. Too bad the traitor wasn’t still alive when the varmints started gnawing on him.”
“He probably was.”
That came from the coroner, who joined us just in time to catch the deputy’s comment. Dragging down his mask, the doc addressed our startled group.
“Both men were shot. Can’t tell much until I get them to the lab, but it looks like one got it through the back of his skull. Hooker took a hit in each kneecap, though. My guess is he lay there, baking in the sun, until he bled out or the ants and scorpions made a meal of him.”
CHAPTER THREE
THE various law enforcement types surrounding me displayed little reaction to the coroner’s grim pronouncement. I tasted hot and sour again.
Gulping, I felt compelled to mention at that point that bits and pieces of the deceased might be clinging to EEEK’s frame. I stayed well away while the doc and his tech examined EEEK’s lower extremities. They snapped some digital images, wielded their forceps once more, and returned with plastic evidence bags containing gobs of something I chose not to look at.
“It’s been a long night,” I said to Sheriff Alexander. “If you’re done with me, how about a ride back to my test site?”
“Sure. Bartlett, help Lieutenant Spade load her . . . uh . . . equipment in the squad car.”
“Hang on a sec.”
Agent Mitchell’s intervention earned a questioning look from the sheriff and an irritated one from me. The sun had cranked up to full furnace by now. I was hot and tired and wanted to get out of my boots, baggy pants and sweat-drenched T-shirt.
“Talk to me about this thing.” Mitchell eyed EEEK thoughtfully. “How does it work?”
“It’s a robotic extension of the human frame. It uses computerized components and basic ergonomic principles to amplify the operator’s capabilities. The composite frame supports up to a thousand pounds. The arms and legs extend both reach and endurance. The visor displays a spectrum of electronic signals.”
“What kind of signals?”
I hooked a sweaty tendril behind my ear. “Speed, distance, terrain contouring, infrared heat signatures, to name just a few.”
“So it sees in the dark?”
“Like a cat.”
“How come it didn’t see the bodies before you sashayed through them?”
“It did, but it displayed them as a lumpy mound. When I picked up the stench, I thought I’d come across a dead deer or coyote. I was moving too fast to swerve so I tried to jump over it.”
Mitchell nodded absently. The composite frame held his interest more than my gymnastic shortcomings. Consequently, he missed the glare I was sending him.
“These electronic signals. Does the robot’s computer store them?”
“Normally it would. For test purposes, however, we’ve bypassed the storage CPU. Now EEEK transmits directly to the computers back at our site so my guys could analyze the data real time.”
“EEEK?”
Sighing, I repeated the litany. “Ergonomic Exoskeletal Extension. My team added the K for ease of reference.”
“I see.”
“Sheriff, about that ride . . . ?”
Once again, Mitchell intervened. “I’ll drive you. I want to take a look at that data. Your robot’s sensors may have picked something up.”
“They did. A big lump of dead.”
He scraped a palm across his bristly chin. The bristles were a dark gold that matched the flecks in his greenish eyes. Hazel, I guess you’d call them. I was wondering if the hair under his boonie hat was the same color as his whiskers when he terminated my contemplation of his person. Very effectively, I might add.
“If Hooker took a while to die,” he commented, “odds are his killer hung around to watch.”
I didn’t particularly care for the idea I might have come close to rubbing elbows with someone who got his jollies by shooting people in the kneecaps and watching them writhe around in pain.
“I want to take a look at that data,” Mitchell said again before turning to the sheriff. “Sorry to bail on you, Roy. I’ll leave Garcia to run interference. Once word leaks that we may have found Hooker, every Fed in a five-state area is going to want a piece of the action. You’ll have CIA, FBI and TSA agents coming out your ears.”
“Yeah, I figured. No sweat. Let me know if that data turns up anything interesting.”
“Will do. How do we get your friend here back to base, Lieutenant?”
I suppose I could have given him a demo of EEEK’s ergonomic mobility, but there was no way I was climbing aboard until he’d been hosed down.
“Drive your vehicle over next to him and we’ll load up.”
My first inclination was to borrow a pair of the sheriff’s latex gloves and shove EEEK into the 4x4’s back compartment. In deference to all that expensive electronic circuitry, we ended up boosting him into the rear seat and belting him in.
THE ride back to CHU-ville was pretty bizarre.
EEEK lolled in the back seat of the Border Patrol Range Rover, looking very much like a cyborg out for a Sunday drive. I sat in the front with Agent Mitchell. Dust and hot wind blew in through the open windows, doing a number on my face and hair. We had to keep the windows down as EEEK had acquired a case of body odor, in the most literal sense of the word. The rush of hot air kept the smell at bay.
Mostly.
Yielding to the wind, Mitchell dragged off his hat and tossed it in the back seat beside EEEK. As I’d suspected, the dark oak of his hair matched the chin and cheek bristles. I also noted more than a few strands of silver mixed with the tawny gold and revised my estimate of his age. The man had at least fifteen years on Charlie.
“Tell me about your test unit.” He pitched his voice above the rush of hot Texas wind. “Are you part of TRADOC?”
TRADOC is milspeak for the army’s Training and Doctrine Command. Fort Bliss is one of the command’s largest installations. The largest, if you count its fifteen hundred square miles of unrestricted airspace in addition to its gazillion acres of range.
“We’re a tenant on post,” I informed him. “We’re with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.”
“DARPA, huh?” He threw a glance in the rear
view mirror. “That explains a lot.”
I raised a brow in surprise. Our agency isn’t all that well known outside DOD and academia. He caught my look and shrugged.
“I spent a few years in the navy, a long time ago.”
“Can’t be that long, Agent Mitchell. You don’t look a day over fifty.”
Actually I now had him pegged at a really buff thirty-five or six, but I owed him for that bit about traipsing through the desert. Alone. At night. Etc.
His lips twitching, he ignored the dig and extended an olive branch. “It’s Mitch.”
I felt compelled to offer the same courtesy. “And I’m Samantha.”
“You don’t go by Sam. Or Sammy?”
“Occasionally, when I feel the need to make folks think I’m one of the boys.”
He aimed a quick look at me and the T-shirt stuck to my chest.
“Not much chance of that happening,” Mitchell commented.
I was pretty sure that was a compliment but decided not to follow up on it. Since I was only peripherally interested in the lean, ropy muscles displayed by Agent Mitchell’s rolled up sleeves, I shrugged aside his comment and filled him in on my cadre’s mission. I should have filled him in on their personal idiosyncrasies.
The entire team piled out of the test facility when we drove up. I did the intros, and Mitch did some serious second looking.
I have to admit my crack professionals make a distinct impression. As is her habit, Pen had her salt-and-pepper hair screwed into a loose topknot and skewered with pencils. She didn’t neigh when introduced, but came darn close. Brian “Rocky” Balboa fussed and fidgeted like a maiden aunt. O’Reilly squinted at Mitch through his Coke bottle lenses. Sergeant Cassidy, bless his macho soul, returned a handshake with the knuckle-crunch of Special Ops.
The prize went to the Harrison Robotics rep, though. All Bent tch-tched in dismay when he spotted EEEK propped in the back seat. “I hope you set the gimbals before you transported him this way!”
Not only did I not set the gimbals, I neglected to shut down his computers. I had started to inform All Bent of that when he yanked open the rear door.
All the Wrong Moves Page 3