Whistling Past the Graveyard (15 page)

“I think we’re clear,” he said under his breath. “Gimme some good news, Monster.”

“Oh…man. Doc’s bad. Count two…no three wounds. Two are through and throughs, upper back and love handle. Those aren’t the problem. He’s got a third hole off center of his spine, right between the shoulder blades and no exit wound. Let me work.”

He had his first aid kit open and his big hands were busy. All of the Joes were qualified as medics. In their line of work it was crucial.

Flint crawled over to Scarlett. Pet kept looking over his shoulder at her, his expression a mixture of anger and alarm.

“Boss?” called Pet. “How’s—”

“I’ll live,” growled a female voice.

“Scarlett?” Flint grinned as he put the light on her face.

She was awake and her eyes, though glazed with pain, were clear.

“Where are you hit?”

She grunted and then hissed. “Left thigh.”

“You went out…”

“Something hit the back of my head. Crap…I think I bit my tongue.”

Flint examined her scalp. There was a bloody groove across the middle of the occipital bone. “Good thing you are the stubbornest woman I ever met.”

“What?”

“Hard head. Bullet creased your skull. You were out for almost five minutes.”

Five long damn minutes,
he thought.

Scarlett cursed, then a wave of nausea hit her like a punch and she turned aside and threw up.

“That’s attractive,” Flint said, and Scarlett replied with a particularly obscene gesture.

Monster was still busy with Doc Greer, so while Scarlett was still wiping her mouth, Flint flicked out his lock-knife and slit her pants leg, cutting it from boot to upper thigh and tearing the flaps back.

“Don’t fall in love down there,” Scarlett said, giving him an evil glare.

“I’ll restrain myself.” He set down his knife and tentatively probed the wound. “Missed the artery.”

“Halle-freaking-lujah,” she said then snarled and bared her teeth. “Damn, Flint, why not just hit it with a God damn hammer?”

“Stop being such a girl.”

Scarlett picked up his knife and tapped him on the upper thigh with the tip of the blade. “You’re one flick of the wrist away from being a girl yourself, mister.”

“Noted.”

“Chief,” said Teacher’s Pet in an urgent whisper.

“Busy.”

“Chief…you better look.”

Flint turned and shone his light. Professor Miranda was sprawled in a heap a dozen feet away. She seemed to float in a lake of blood. Nearby Prospero was staring at her, his eyes wide, mouth hanging open in an almost comical expression of complete shock. Then he turned to Flint and there was such a deep sense of helplessness and need in his eyes that it struck Flint to the heart.

“Please…” Prospero whispered. “I don’t…I…I don’t…”

“Go!” said Scarlett, pushing his shoulder.

Flint scrambled over to her, knee-walking through the blood. Miranda’s brunette hair lay spread around her, her glasses on the floor by her cheek. Flint pressed his fingers into her throat, found a pulse, but it was weak and thready.

“She’s alive…”

“Thank God,” gasped Prospero.

Flint bent close to see if he could hear her respiration. Then he heard it. A wet hissing sound, very faint. He tore open her jacket and listened. It was there, louder. Wetter.

“Christ, I’ve got a sucking chest wound here.” He tore open the woman’s shirt and there was the wound. The bullet had gone in low on her torso, right at the bottom of the lung.

“Monster…is Doc stable?”

“Yeah, but—”

“Then leave him. I need hands over here. Right now.”

But Monster was already there, opening a field trauma kit. They moved fast.

“Can you help her?” begged Prospero, his voice trembling at the edge of breaking.

“Shut up and let us work.”

The bullet had punched a hole in Miranda’s chest cavity effectively unsealing the normally airtight lung sack. With every breath Miranda’s lung took in blood and collapsed a bit more. Flint wasted no time cleaning the wound. That was far less important and could be done later. If there was a later.

“Patch,” Flint said, and instantly Monster tore the cover off of a pre-packaged chest seal. Flint took it and pressed it gently into place, making sure the seal was tight. The seal had a one-way flutter valve so that with each exhale, air in her chest would be pushed out from underneath the patch, while each inhalation would pull the patch firmly against the wound to seal it and keep air from coming in through the bullet hole. Once it was in place Flint could hear Miranda’s breathing begin to settle in a relatively normal rhythm. As normal as it could be until a real medic could be found.

“I think she’s stabilized,” Monster said.

Flint tapped his earbud. “Law…we need a medic down here.”

The only reply was silence.

“Law!”

Nothing.

“Jukebox…Schoolgirl. Report, damn it.”

Nothing but static.

“I got nothing either,” said Pet. “White noise.”

Flint rolled Miranda onto her wounded side so that gravity would help keep the seal in place. He checked her airway and leaned back.

“Damn,” Monster whispered. “What the hell are we into here?”

Flint got to his feet and walked over to Prospero. “She’s lost a lot of blood and we need to get her to medical.”

The old man shook his head slowly, his voice a faint mumble. “This wasn’t supposed to happen. No more blood…no more death…damn it…this wasn’t supposed to…”

Without knowing that he was going to do it, Flint grabbed a handful of Prospero’s undershirt and held him there. “Listen to me…I don’t know what the hell is going on here, but whatever it is it’s happening with your toys.”

“This wasn’t supposed to happen…”

Flint drew his pistol and shoved the barrel hard up under Prospero’s chin. “What wasn’t supposed to happen? Start talking and I swear to God, if you lie to me I will kill you. Look into my eyes. Tell me if you believe me.”

“Y-Yes.”

“Then you tell me what the hell is going on.”

Prospero licked his lips. Flint pushed the barrel harder.

“Tick tock.”

Prospero spoke a single word. It answered everything and at the same time asked a thousand more questions.

He said, “Cobra.”

-14-

Dead Lake

The machine rolled through the night in near silence. The low-pressure tires barely chuffed the sand and the battery-driven motor was in a sound muffler. Bruiser never heard it coming.

His first warning was when the drone rolled past a perimeter sensor and a small red dot flashed to life on the computer screen on Bruiser’s forearm.

He whirled, bringing his M5 up, calling it in.

But there was only static on the team channel.

Through the green clarity of his night-vision, Bruiser saw the machine. Recognized it for what it was.

He opened fire immediately.

But he was a tenth of a second too late.

The silence and darkness was torn apart by the continuous roar of the minigun.

Bruiser―or the thing that had been Bruiser―was flung against the corner of the wall and the barrage of bullets was so intense and heavy that his body stood erect and at attention as thousands of rounds tore him to rags.

-15-

Observation Room

Flint bent close and snarled.

“Talk fast.”

“I needed the money and—”

“Really? You want to play that card with me. Do I look like a sympathetic man?”

Something changed in Prospero’s eyes. They lost some of their fear and it was replaced by a jaded coldness. “Very well. It doesn’t matter why I did it. I did it.”

“Did what?”

Prospero told him. He had been approached by a man he originally thought worked for the security division of the Department of Defense. That was both true and a lie―the man did work for the DOD, but he also worked for a black market weapons broker who had been hired to reach out to Prospero. Him, and men like him. At first Prospero turned it down. He turned it down a dozen times over a two year period, not so much out of patriotism but out of fear that it was a government sting of some kind.

Then he started believing in the man. Money was involved in that process. Money was always involved. But over time Prospero felt his heart change. The money became less important than the nature of the work, and its potential. His drones could effectively remove man from the combat field. No lives would ever have to be lost. Wars would become a contest of technology, and ultimately mankind might step away from the need for war.

The other man seemed to share this impassioned view, this Big Picture perspective that justified any covert or clandestine steps taken to achieve such a noble end.

Once they had struck a bargain, the man said that his boss wanted to acquire the Caliban
combat system. Not the hardware. Just copies of all schematics and the complete Skyjack/Tempest software system. They haggled over the price for another seven months. During that time the broker himself emerged and introduced himself. He was a foreign national who had himself sold weapons systems and other technologies to the same client.

“Who was he?”

“I never knew his name,” said Prospero. “I never met him. He was a voice on the phone.”

“What
do
you know about him?”

Prospero hesitated. “He’s a Scotsman.”

Flint cursed.

“You know him?” asked Prospero, surprised.

“Unfortunately, and I plan to hang his head on my wall. Unless you want your head to be hung next to it, keep talking. If you’re working
for
this client, for Cobra…why are your systems going off the rails.”

“I don’t
know!
It has to be sabotage.”

Flint studied him, looking for the lie, but seeing only outrage and fury.

Prospero
didn’t
know.

“Tell me something I can use, damn it.”

“First…you have to understand two things.”

“I’m listening.”

“You saved Miranda’s life. You may think I’m a cold-hearted bastard, but I…I love her.
We
are in love. I know the age difference is—”

“Save it for Oprah.”

“My point, Chief Flint, is that you
had
to save her, which means
they
betrayed me. Betrayed us. They tried to kill the woman I love.”

“You looking for revenge?”

“Of course,” Prospero said coldly. “I’m a man, just like you.”

Flint almost slapped him with a sarcastic comeback, but he held his tongue.

Prospero nodded. “The other thing I need you to understand is that…while I admit that at first this was about the money, it became about the work. About the goals. The Caliban unit, the other technologies…they really will save lives. American lives at first, and then as combat becomes mechanized to the point that these systems cancel each other out it will save lives on all sides.”

“Bull. If the machines stop working, then people will go back in the field.”

“No…the machines would deadlock each other, but they would make the actual field of combat too dangerous for men. It would end the game in a stalemate.”

“That’s it? Your newfound higher motives are about creating a new Cold War?”

“A Cold War is better than endless slaughter.” Prospero’s eyes glittered. “We are a warlike and savage race, and you know that every bit as well as I do. Just because our intellect has evolved to the point where we can appreciate and even defend ideals it doesn’t change the aggression built into our DNA. We’re a predator species. We
take
what we want. Look at America’s history. Eminent domain? That is a polite label for centuries of landgrabs, slaughter and ethnic genocide.”

Flint said nothing.

“Once I realized that the Caliban systems could bring us to a bloodless stand-off, I saw that, however dubious my initial motivations may have been, I had
found
my purpose.”

“Tell it to Congress and the U.S. Attorney. I’m not your lawyer, your confessor or your friend. I’m going to ask you one more time and then I’m going to show you just how savage a human being can be.” He bent close. “How can I stop these things?”

The old man stared at him for two long seconds, then he licked his lips. “Nothing I did could possibly be responsible for this. It has to be the AI chips. Kong only made a few of the chips. They were very difficult to make, and they’re too big to fit into the Sprites. Those are still drones and someone had to have launched them. There has to be somebody
here
, there has to be a handler.”

“On site? What’s the operational range?”

“A few miles, but the fences have jammers. Otherwise the prototypes might pick up all kinds of confusing signals. Nothing from outside the fence can get inside. And there’s one more thing, Chief.”

“What?”

“None of the drones have the articulation needed to enter the generator shack and blow out the fuses. And it can’t have been an EMP or the drones themselves would—”

“Yeah, I got it.” He stepped back and eyed Prospero in the dim glow of the flashlight’s beam. “I’m going to bury you for this,” he said.

The old scientist said nothing.

Suddenly gunfire erupted from the doorway.

Flint spun in time to see Teacher’s Pet go flying backward as another of the minigun Kobolds rolled into the room.

There was movement to Flint’s right and he cut a quick look just as Prospero vanished into the darkness.

Doc was helpless on the floor.

Scarlett pulled her sidearm and returned fire. Monster knelt in front of her and was firing his big shotgun. He was screaming Pet’s name like a war cry.

“Monster!” Flint bellowed over the din. “Frag it!”

Monster yanked a fragmentation grenade and rose up to throw it. He was strong and he had a good pitching arm. The grenade flew into the flash-lit shadows. But Monster never lived to see it hit the target. Bullets tore into the big man’s chest and he fell backward, landing at the same moment the minigun drone blew up.