A Time for Patriots

by Dale Brown

  “Sounds like the thunderstorms are kicking up,” Renaldo said. “We’re supposed to get some big ones tonight.”

  “These are nothing,” Brady said. “When I was assigned to the Dallas office, we’d get every possible kind of storm—snow, hurricanes, tornadoes, and these huge towering thunderstorms that would hang around for—”

  Suddenly they heard the screeching ear-shattering sound of ripping metal, and the two flew to their feet and turned toward the hangar door. A huge twenty-foot-high seam of torn metal opened up right in the center of the hangar door, and like a pair of curtains being opened, the metal seam burst apart . . . and the Cybernetic Infantry Device robot stepped through the newly created opening as easily as a child walking through the curtain onto the stage at a kindergarten recital.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Brady shouted. “Who is that in there?”

  The robot rushed forward with incredible speed. As Brady and Renaldo scrambled to get out of its way, it reached out, put its armored hands on either side of the desk, and brought its hands together. The desk and computers were squished together into one lump in a shower of sparks and flying wood and metal. It then grabbed Brady and Renaldo by the throat and lifted them off their feet.

  “What’s going on in here?” Philip Chastain thundered, running from the comm room. “What’s that thing doing in here? It’s tearing the place apart!”

  At that instant the side hangar door flew off its hinges and sailed across the hangar like a leaf tossed about in a hurricane, and a man in a gray outfit whom Chastain had never seen before, with a multifaceted helmet and devices on his waist, stepped through the opening. He walked toward Chastain. The special agent drew a semiautomatic pistol and fired three times at him, but the man kept on coming. Chastain kept on firing until the pistol was empty, but the figure still advanced. It appeared as if it was going to walk right past him, but instead it reached around behind Chastain’s neck, picked him up, and carried him over to the CID, suspending him two feet off the hangar floor. Both figures stood with their struggling prisoners, facing the destroyed hangar door . . .

  . . . as Patrick McLanahan stepped through the newly created opening.

  “McLanahan!” Chastain grunted through the pressure on his neck. The others were desperately trying to chin themselves up the best they could to keep from being strangled. “What in hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “Issuing you a warning, Chastain,” Patrick said. He walked up to Chastain, and the armored figure lowered him down so they were face-to-face. “Your operation here is at an end. You are going to leave this state, or you’re going to die.”

  “Die? You’re threatening to kill me? Are you crazy? I’ll see you’re put in prison for the rest of your life!”

  “I don’t think so, folks,” Patrick said. The Tin Man commando squeezed Chastain’s neck a little tighter, which made his mouth open and his tongue protrude like a drowning victim gasping for air. Patrick shoved a tiny capsule into his mouth, and when the Tin Man relaxed his hold on his neck, Chastain involuntarily swallowed the capsule when he took a gulp of air. Patrick did the same with Brady and Renaldo.

  “What the hell was that, McLanahan?” Chastain shouted. “Are you poisoning us?”

  “I gave you each a nanotransponder,” Patrick said. “It’s the same capsule given to legal U.S. guest workers. I can track your position at any time, and you can’t stop it, because your body will be filled with microscopic electronic transmitters that will report your position as long as you’re alive.” He stepped closer to Chastain. “You are going to leave Nevada and terminate your surveillance of the Knights’ compound.”

  “Like hell I will!” Chastain shouted. “I have an operation under way—”

  “And you will cancel it as of tonight,” Patrick said. “All of your agents will move out of Nevada. If anyone asks, you will tell them that the Knights are not a threat and you will conduct your surveillance elsewhere.”

  “Like hell I will!”

  “If you don’t, Agent Chastain, I will kill you, and I will kill Brady and Renaldo too,” Patrick said simply. “They will eventually find your decomposing bodies in the desert, perhaps months, maybe years from now, or maybe never. The FBI may eventually trace the murders to me, but by then you will be long dead.”

  Patrick moved to within a breath’s distance from Chastain. “You touched my son, you son of a bitch, and you threatened him, and you hit him,” he said, his eyes wide with rage, a vein in his temple pulsing with fury. “I should kill you right now, just for that. I’m within a red cunt hair’s breadth of ordering the Tin Man to scrunch you up into a tiny round red ball of goo and drop-kick you across to the other side of the base. I’ll gladly trade ten years in prison for the privilege of watching him do that—and, I assure you, he’s done it before, with great enthusiasm, for a lot less motivation than this. Or, I could just take the videos of you and my son you claim to have to the U.S. attorney, and see what would happen to you. I’d put enough pressure on him and the attorney general to fire you, maybe even bring you up on criminal charges.

  “But I’m not going to do any of that, Chastain,” Patrick went on. “I prefer to deal with you three directly. It’s simple: you leave the state and leave me and my son alone, forever, or we’ll be back—and it won’t be as pleasant for you as it is right now.”

  Patrick nodded to the CID and the Tin Man, and the three agents were dropped to the floor. “You wouldn’t kill anyone,” Chastain croaked hoarsely, rubbing his neck. “You don’t have the guts.”

  “I wouldn’t kill you tonight, Chastain,” Patrick said. “But if you three aren’t out of the state immediately, or if you do anything whatsoever to me or my son, I will track you down. You’ll go to sleep one night and wake up just long enough to realize I’m standing over you, and then that’ll be that. I promise you.”

  “You’re full of shit, McLanahan,” Brady said.

  The Tin Man reached out and tapped Brady on the shoulder with two fingers, but Brady’s body reacted as if he had been hit by a sledgehammer. “Aaaughh!” he screamed. “What the . . . shit, I think you broke my damned shoulder!”

  The Tin Man picked up Brady by the neck, shook him, and watched as he cringed in pain. “The general has killed his enemies face-to-face many times before, I assure you,” the Tin Man said in his electronically synthesized voice. “But if he ever hesitated to do it, even for a split second, I’d gladly do it for him—and not with this getup on either.” He dropped the agent back to the hangar floor, where he writhed and whimpered in pain.

  “What’s it going to be, Chastain?” Patrick asked.

  “You cowardly bastard,” Chastain cried. “You bring your high-tech goons in here to torture and threaten us—you don’t have the balls to do it yourself.” He jabbed a finger at Patrick. “I’m not done with you, mister. I’ll find a way to come after you, and I’m not going to be behind a badge either.” He turned and walked toward the side door, leaving Renaldo to help Brady.

  “You had me convinced,” Brigadier-General Kurt Givens said after he watched the three agents leave. Jason Richter and Jon Masters were beside him. “But I think you’ve made yourself a pretty powerful enemy. I’ve got security forces escorting them off the base. What do you intend to do now?”

  “Make sure Chastain and the FBI leave,” Patrick said, “then resume our searches of the area. There are other extremist groups out there, and I want to get images and movement history on as many as I can.”

  “You must be made out of money, my friend,” Kurt said.

  “I’m borrowing it from a friend,” Patrick admitted, nodding to Jon, “and I’ll figure out a way to repay him—eventually.” To Jon, he said, “Can you bring some weapon packs and electromagnetic rifles in for the CID and Tin Man?”

  “How many do you want, Patrick?” Jon asked.

  “I didn’t hear any of that, boys,” Kurt said. “Try not to rip up any more of my hangars tonight, okay?” He looked up at the Cyb
ernetic Infantry Device towering over him. “Put the doors back together, will you?”

  “Yes, sir,” the CID replied in its electronic voice. The CID and the Tin Man got to work repairing the hangar doors, pinching and squeezing the metal back into a sort of solid surface and using their fingers like rivet guns to hang the side door back on its hinges. The CID unit assumed its dismount position, and Charlie Turlock climbed out. “Man, that was fun!” she exclaimed.

  “Beating FBI agents up for personal reasons is not what the CID is made for, Charlie,” Jason Richter said. “It belongs to the U.S. Army and is loaned to the FBI.”

  “They haven’t been doing a rip-roaring job with them so far, Jason,” Charlie pointed out.

  “The general seems to feel the CID is his personal property,” Jason said, addressing Patrick indirectly. “I have to assure him, he’s wrong.”

  Patrick ignored him. “Charlie’s right: we need a better approach to this Knights of the True Republic extremist situation than what the FBI has been pursuing,” he said. “We’re still going to find and track them, but we don’t have the authority to arrest or kill them, and there doesn’t seem to be any local law enforcement willing or able to help. And we have to organize our group to start going over all the sensor images we’ve collected so far. I suggest we get some rest, then meet tomorrow morning to discuss a plan of action.”

  As they all turned to depart, Patrick said to Richter: “One moment, Colonel.” Jason went back, looking directly at Patrick, his hands behind his back in an attitude that was both respectful and dismissive. “Have I done something to tick you off, Colonel?” Patrick asked.

  “With all due respect, sir: I object to the way you take things and personnel and act as you please, as if you answer to no other authority but your own,” Jason said as matter-of-factly as if he were describing a sunny day. “Dr. Masters’s sensors and computers; the CID and Tin Man; Charlie Turlock and Macomber; and all of those Civil Air Patrol people—you treat them as if they’ve been assigned to you, and you have an unlimited budget to direct them to do anything you wish. And you literally tortured and terrorized those federal agents with the CID and Tin Man, not to mention threatening their lives. I’m just trying to decide if I have a responsibility and duty to report you to someone so a proper authority can evaluate your actions—and stop you.”

  Patrick thought for a moment, matching Jason’s direct glare; then: “Tell me, Colonel: Where do you live?”

  “I’m currently assigned to the Army Infantry Transformational BattleLab at—”

  “No, I mean, where’s your hometown?”

  Richter blinked at the question. “I’m from western Pennsylvania, General.”

  “Still no mention of a hometown,” Patrick observed. “I think that’s the key to why you don’t understand what I’m trying to do, Colonel: you don’t seem to have a hometown.”

  “I’m in the U.S. Army, General,” Jason said. “I travel two hundred days a year to bases and laboratories all over the world; I visit a half-dozen defense contractors and engineering firms a month; and the rest of the time I’m working in my lab a minimum of twelve hours a day.”

  “How about your folks?”

  “They live near Wilmington, North Carolina, surrounded by kids and grandkids,” Jason said. “I’ve never been there.”

  “Interesting. So you don’t really have a home, do you?” Jason didn’t respond. “But if Fort Polk was attacked by extremists, you’d certainly defend it, wouldn’t you?”

  “Of course, sir. That’s obvious. What’s your point?”

  “And if there were no military police when the attack began, you’d certainly pick up a gun and do your best to fight off the attackers, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’d even climb aboard a Cybernetic Infantry Device and use it to defend the base, correct? Maybe even put on a weapon backpack if you felt you needed it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Even if the Army didn’t order you to do anything?” Patrick asked. “Even if the military police were already responding?”

  Jason thought for a moment; then: “If the CID could get the job done and prevent loss of life and property . . . yes, sir, I would. It would be crazy to have a weapon system like that and not use it in a crisis.”

  “But the CID doesn’t belong to you,” Patrick pointed out. “You have access to it, but you don’t own it.” Again, Jason said nothing. “So what’s the difference between you and me, Colonel? Battle Mountain is my home. I live on this base, and my son goes to school in town, and my friends and Civil Air Patrol squadron mates live all throughout this area. I’d certainly do all I could to defend my home, same as you—even convince my neighbors to join me to do whatever we could to stop the bad guys.”

  Jason still had not responded, so Patrick took a step toward him. “So get your head out of your ass and get with the program, Colonel,” he snapped. “The situation here is real, and it’s serious. It’s not someone else’s problem—it’s our problem.

  “Now, if you want, you can call anyone you feel you need to call, and I’ll respond in the same way,” Patrick went on. “You can take the CID and leave, and I’ll find a way to get the job done without it. But if it’s here, I’m going to use it, because I can. And I’m not going to let you or anyone else short of the president of the United States stop me, and I might even argue with him over it. Is that clear?”

  Jason stared back at Patrick, matching his determined glare—but after a few moments, he nodded. “Yes, General, it’s clear.”

  “Good. Now, why don’t you meet with us in my office in the morning and suggest ways we can best utilize the CID. If you don’t care to do that, then load up the CID and get the hell out of my face so I can do the job.”

  Joint Air Base Battle Mountain

  Several days later, early morning

  Patrick walked into the Civil Air Patrol squadron conference room after flying another sensor shift around the area. Six cadets were seated at the table, using laptop computers and trackballs, with cans of soda or energy drinks ready at hand. On the whiteboard at the head of the room there were drawings of various things to watch for: tire tracks, disturbed earth, days-old campfires, and patterns of debris or discarded objects.

  Brad was also there, in front of his laptop, acting as the second senior required in any cadet formation. “How’s it going, big guy?” Patrick asked his son.

  “Great,” Brad said. “I’ve got some interesting observations.”

  “How do you feel?” Patrick asked.

  “I feel fine—good enough to fly some scans.” The bruises on his face had all but gone away, but Patrick could see him still limping in the house when he thought his father wasn’t watching.

  “It’s not my call, Brad—it’s the flight doc’s,” Patrick said. “We’ll get you flying again soonest. Until then, I appreciate you helping out here.”

  “Uncle Jon’s sensors and analysis technology stuff is pretty cool,” Brad admitted, “but I want to fly, Dad. I’m a pilot. Maybe not a licensed pilot yet, but I want to fly.”

  “And you will, big guy,” Patrick said, “when the doc says so.” But he was not encouraging a return to flying status one bit, and he’d told the doctor so.

  “How was flying?”

  “Good,” Patrick said. “We’ve got six pilots trained to fly the P210 Centurion and C-172 Skyhawk. You’ll be number seven as soon as the flight doc clears you. Bill Barton’s C-182 Skylane is being fitted with Sky Masters, Inc.’s sensors, so we’ll have three planes. Dave Preston is interested in having his G36 Bonanza fitted too.” He motioned to the images on Brad’s laptop. “What are you looking at that’s so interesting?”

  “I’ve been assigned to scan the Knights’ compound,” Brad said, “and there seems to be a lot of people congregating in the main compound—a lot more than usual, outside of their prayer sessions and meetings. Also, I think the irrigation system on a couple of their crop circles has gone out. Wonder what’s
going on.”

  “I don’t know,” Patrick said, “but that doesn’t sound good. Rob Spara and David Bellville have been trying to call the leaders of the group, but there’s been no answer. What are you up to the rest of the day?”

  “Since you don’t want me to go to practice or work, and I can’t fly yet, I’m going to stay here if they need me,” Brad said. “Might as well make myself useful.” He paused for a moment, then asked, “Hey, Dad, mind if I ask Colonel Richter and Miss Turlock to check me out in the CID?”

  “You want to pilot the robot?” Patrick asked. “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” Brad admitted. “It’s still here, right?” Patrick nodded. “And nobody’s using it. So I thought I’d give it a try. If I can’t fly the Centurion, I might as well learn how to pilot the robot.”

  Patrick hesitated, but only for a moment. “I don’t see why not,” he said. “Sure. I’ll call Colonel Richter and ask him—it’s not my device, but his—and I’ll call Charlie to see if she’d be willing.”

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  “Have fun,” Patrick said. “I’m going to fly the Centurion tonight, if the weather holds. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.” He went over to an older gentleman who was walking around the table, ready to help when needed, and shook hands with him. “How’s it going, Todd?” he asked.

  “Slicker’n goose snot, General,” Todd Bishop said happily. Even though he was age eighty-one, Todd was one of the more active seniors in the squadron, serving in the incident command center, the comm trailer, and as a glider-flight instructor and cadet-orientation pilot. “Those sensors are flippin’ amazing. I caught a glimpse of one of the cadets reading a newspaper through someone’s window! I nixed that right away, of course—you know he wasn’t just searchin’ for newspaper headlines—but I’m amazed we can do that.”

  Patrick watched one of the fifteen-year-old female cadets named Roxanne study the images taken yesterday. She started with a wide-angle picture of an area about thirty miles southeast of the base, then punched a function key. Immediately there was a series of flashing red icons. She started at the upper-left corner of the screen, rolled the cursor over the icon, and pressed a button. The screen zoomed in to reveal a dirt road stretching from a ranch house westward until it intersected a paved road, which eventually led north to the town of Crescent Valley. “What have you got, Roxanne?” Patrick asked.