Starfire

FOUR

“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 detected 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…”

“The Chinese gave up right after the strike, didn’t they?”

“Some Chinese military and civilian leaders staged a countercoup days after the attack,” Wohl said. “It had nothing to do with your attack. It was a coincidence.”

“I guess you’re the expert,” Brad said. Wohl shook his head but said nothing. “Who do you work for, Sergeant Major?” Brad repeated.

“I’m not here to answer a bunch of questions, McLanahan,” Wohl snapped. “My orders were to intercept the hit team and keep you safe. That’s it.”

“I’m not leaving campus, Sergeant Major,” Brad said. “I’ve got a lot of work to do.”

“I don’t give a shit,” Wohl said. “My orders are to keep you safe.”

“Orders? Whose orders?” No reply. “If you’re not going to answer, then I’ll speak to your boss. But I can’t leave school. I just started.” Wohl remained silent. After a few minutes, Brad repeated, “How long did you work for my father?”

“For a while,” Wohl said after a few moments. “And I didn’t work for him: I was under his command, his noncommissioned officer in charge.”

“You don’t sound happy about it.”

Wohl glanced in Brad’s direction, then turned back and looked out the window, and was silent for several long moments; then, finally: “After… after your mother was killed, your father… changed,” Wohl said in a quiet voice. “In all the years I’ve known him, he was always a guy on a mission, hard-charging and kick-ass, but…” He took another deep breath before continuing: “But after your mother was killed, he took on a meaner, deadlier edge. It was no longer about protecting the nation or winning a conflict, but about… killing, even killing or threatening Americans, anyone who stood in the way of victory. The power he was given seemed to be going to his head, even after he quit Scion Aviation International and got the corporate job at Sky Masters. I put up with it for a while until I thought it was getting out of control, and then I quit.”

“Quit? Why didn’t you try to help him instead?”

“He was my commanding officer,” Wohl responded woodenly. “I do not counsel superior officers unless they request it.”

“That’s bullshit, Wohl,” Brad said. “If you saw my dad was hurting, you should have helped, and screw that superior-officer shit. And I never saw any of that other stuff. My dad was a good father, a volunteer, and a dedicated executive who loved his family, his community, his country, and his company. He wasn’t a killer.”

“You never saw it because he shields you from all that,” Wohl said. “He’s a different guy around you. Besides, you were a typical kid — your head was up and locked in your ass most of the time.”

“You’re full of it, Sergeant Major,” Brad said. He again caught a glimpse of Wohl’s heavily lined face in the glare of an oncoming truck’s headlights. “What happened to your face?”

“None of your business,” Wohl grumbled.

“You’ve been spying on me for who knows how long, and I can’t ask you one lousy personal question?” Brad asked. “I think you were in the Marine Corps too long.”

Wohl half turned to Brad as if he was going to argue with him, but did not, and turned back toward the window. After a few moments, he took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “The American Holocaust,” he said finally. “You’ve heard of it, I assume?”

“Sarcasm, Sergeant Major? It doesn’t suit you, and it’s inappropriate. Tens of thousands were killed.”

“Your father planned and executed the American counterattack,” Wohl said, ignoring Brad’s remark. “Waves of bombers spread out over much of western and central Russia, hunting down mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles. I was his noncommissioned officer in charge at Yakutsk, the Siberian air base he commandeered.”

It took a few seconds, but then Brad recognized the name of the air base, and his mouth dropped open in surprise. “Oh, shit,” he breathed. “You mean… the base that was hit by Russian nuclear cruise missiles?”

Wohl did not react, but fell silent again for several moments. “Obviously I didn’t get a lethal dose of radiation — I was wearing Tin Man battle armor — but I had the greatest exposure to radiation of anyone except General Briggs,” he said finally. “Forty-seven survivors from that Russian underground shelter died from radiation-caused diseases over the years. It’s just taking a bit longer for me.”

“My God, Sergeant Major, I’m sorry,” Brad said. “The pain must be terrible.” Wohl glanced over at Brad, a little surprised to hear the tone of empathy coming from the young man, but he said nothing. “Maybe that’s what killed General Briggs. Maybe the radiation made him take risks. Maybe he knew he was dying and decided to go out fighting.”

“Now look who’s the expert,” Wohl murmured.

They followed Highway 101 north, occasionally taking side roads and doubling back, looking for any signs of shadowing. Every few minutes when they found a highway overpass they pulled over, and one of the men in the SUV would get out, carrying what looked like very large multilensed binoculars. “What’s he doing, Sergeant Major?” Brad asked.

“Searching for aerial pursuers,” Wohl replied. “We know the Russians employ unmanned aircraft to spy on military bases and other classified facilities over the United States, and Gryzlov was a Russian Air Force officer. He would definitely have that kind of hardware. He’s using infrared binoculars that can detect heat sources in the air or on the ground for several miles.” A few minutes later the man reentered the SUV, and they were back on their way.

About an hour after leaving San Luis Obispo they turned in at the airport road outside the city of Paso Robles. The driver entered a code into an electronic lock, and the tall chain-link gate opened to admit them onto the airport grounds. They drove along quiet, dark taxiways, illuminated only by small blue lights on the edges, until coming to a large aircraft hangar surrounded on three sides by another chain-link fence, with only the aircraft entrance to the parking ramp and taxiway open. This time, instead of a code, the driver pressed a thumb against an optical reader, and the lock opened with a quiet buzz.

The interior of the very large hangar was dominated by a gray General Atomics MQ-1B Predator remotely piloted aircraft parked on the left side of the hangar. The words CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION and the agency’s shield were emblazoned on the front side of the aircraft, but this definitely didn’t look like a government facility. Brad went to look it over, but a guy wearing jeans and a black T-shirt and carrying a submachine gun slung in a quick-draw rig on his shoulders moved between him and the Predator and stood with his hands crossed before him, silently and plainly warning him to stay away.

Brad walked back over to Chris Wohl, who had been speaking with the men that were in his SUV and some others. In the half illumination of the hangar he could get a better look at the deep etchings on Wohl’s face, and he could also see skin damage around his neck and on both hands. “What is this place, Sergeant Major?” he asked.

“Someplace safe, for now,” Wohl replied.

“Who are these—”

“I’m not going to answer questions right now,” Wohl said gruffly. “If you’re supposed to know any more, you’ll be told.” He motioned to a cabinet along one wall near the Predator. “There’s coffee and water over there if you want. Don’t go near the aircraft again.” He turned away from Brad and began speaking with the others again.

Brad shook his head and decided to head over to see if they had anything to eat, regretting not taking Jodie up on any of her offers — meals or otherwise. He found a bottle of cold water in a refrigerator, but instead of drinking it, he put it on the side of his head to soothe the impact area where the Russian had clubbed him. A few minutes later he heard an aircraft of some kind outside the hangar, approaching the area, sounding as if it was moving very quickly. Wohl and the other men stopped talking and turned toward the hangar door as the aircraft sounds outside became a bit quieter as the engines were pulled back to idle. Just as Brad was going to go back to Wohl and ask him what was going on, the lights dimmed even further and the bifold hangar door began to open.

After the door was fully opened, a twin-tailed C-23C Sherpa small cargo aircraft taxied inside. It had an American flag and a civil N-number on the tail, but no other military markings, and it was painted jet black instead of the usual gray. It taxied right inside the hangar with its big turboprop propellers turning, and Brad, Wohl, and the others were forced to back away as the aircraft moved all the way inside. Directed by a linesman with a submachine gun on a shoulder rig, it taxied forward until it was signaled to stop, and then the engines cut off. The big bifold hangar doors started to motor closed as soon as the engines began to wind down. The smell of jet exhaust was strong.

A moment later a passenger door on the left side of the aircraft behind the cockpit windows opened up, and there appeared a big soldier-looking guy wearing a suit and tie — and with the noticeable bulge of a weapon under his jacket — followed immediately by a shorter man with a suit but no tie, rather long gray hair, and a neatly trimmed gray beard; at the same time the cargo door/ramp on the rear of the aircraft began to motor open. Wohl and the other men stepped over to the second newcomer, and they all shook hands. They spoke for a few moments, and then Wohl nodded toward Brad, and the second newcomer approached him, unbuttoning his jacket.

“Mr. Bradley James McLanahan,” the newcomer said in a loud, dramatic, very politician-sounding voice when he was still several paces away. “It’s been a long time. You probably don’t remember me. I certainly wouldn’t have recognized you.”

“I don’t remember you, sir, but I sure recognize you: you’re President Kevin Martindale,” Brad said, not trying to mask his surprise and confusion. Martindale smiled broadly and looked pleased that Brad recognized him, and he stuck out his hand as he approached. Brad shook it. “It’s nice to meet you, sir, but now I’m even more confused.”

“I don’t blame you one bit, son,” the former president said. “Things are happening fast, and folks are scrambling to keep up. Then this incident with you in San Luis Obispo popped up, and we had to react.” He squinted at the bruise on the side of Brad’s head. “How’s your head, son? You have a very nasty bruise there.”

“It’s fine, sir.”

“Good. I, of course, asked the sergeant major what we should do when we detected the break-in, and he said extract you, I said yes, and so he did. He is extremely effective at things like that.”

“I didn’t see what he did, but I’m here, so I guess he must be,” Brad said. “If the sergeant major works for you, sir, then can you tell me what’s going on? He hasn’t told me a thing.”

“He wouldn’t tell you anything even if he had a car battery wired to his testicles, son,” Martindale said. “Neither would any of the men in this hangar. I guess I’m the head honcho of this outfit, but I really don’t run it. He does.”

“He? He who?”

“Him,” Martindale said, and he motioned to the cargo ramp of the aircraft just as it emerged. It was a Cybernetic Infantry Device — a manned robot, developed for the U.S. Army as a battlefield replacement for a standard infantry platoon, including the latter’s mobility, versatility, and all of its firepower — but it was unlike any CID Brad could remember. This one somehow seemed sleeker, lighter, taller, and more refined than the one Brad had piloted a few years back. The twelve-foot-plus-tall robot had a large torso that sloped from broad shoulders to a slightly thinner waist, more slender hips, and rather spindly-looking arms and legs attached to the torso. There were sensors mounted seemingly everywhere — on the shoulders, waist, and arms. The head was a six-sided box with sloped sides and no eyes but only sensor panels on every side. It seemed slightly taller than the one Brad had piloted.

The sensory experience of piloting a Cybernetic Infantry Device was nothing like Brad had ever felt before. First he got his nervous system digitally mapped and uploaded to the robot’s computerized control interface. He then climbed into the robot through the back, lay spread-eagled onto a rather cold, gelatinous conducting mat, and stuck his head inside a helmet and oxygen mask. The hatch was sealed behind him, and everything went dark and quickly became a little claustrophobic. But within moments he could see again… along with mountains of data derived from the robot’s sensors being presented to him visually and inserted into his body’s sensory system, so he was not just reading information on screens, but images and data were appearing in his consciousness, like a memory or actual inputs from touch, vision, and hearing. When he started to move, he found he could run with amazing speed and agility, leap several dozen feet, kick down walls, and overturn armored vehicles. A dazzling array of weapons was interfaced with the robot, and he could control all of them with breathtaking speed and pinpoint accuracy.

“A CID,” Brad remarked. “It looks brand-new. New design too.”

“It’s the first copy of a new model CID force we plan on deploying,” Martindale said.

“Cool,” Brad said. He waved at the robot. “Who’s the pilot? Charlie Turlock? She taught me how to pilot one a couple years ago.” To the CID he said, “Hey, Charlie, how are you? Are you going to let me take it for a spin?”

The CID walked up to Martindale and Bradley, its movements frighteningly humanlike despite its size and robotic limbs, and in an electronic humanoid voice said, “Hello, son.”

It took a few moments for Brad to realize that what he had just heard was the real thing and for the realization to sink in, but finally Brad’s eyes widened in surprise and shock and he shouted, “Dad?” He reached out to the CID, unsure of where to touch it. “My God, Dad, is it you? You’re alive? You’re alive!”

“Yes, son,” Patrick McLanahan said. Brad still couldn’t figure out where to touch the robot, so he had to settle for clutching his own abdomen. He started to sob. “It’s okay, Bradley,” Patrick said finally, reaching out and embracing his son. “My God, it’s so good to see you again.”

“But I don’t get it, Dad,” Brad said after several long moments in his father’s embrace. “They… they told me you had… had died of the injuries…”

“I did die, son,” Patrick said in the electronically synthesized voice. “When they pulled me from the B-1 bomber back on Guam after you landed the B-1, I was clinically dead, and everyone knew it, and that’s the word that was passed around. But after you and the other crewmembers were evacuated to Hawaii, they loaded me onto an ambulance and started resuscitation, and I made it back.”

“They… they wouldn’t let me stay with you, Dad,” Brad said between sobs. “I tried to stay with you, but they wouldn’t let me. I’m sorry, Dad, I’m so sorry, I should have demanded—”

“It’s okay, son,” Patrick said. “All casualties had to wait for assessment and triage, and I was just one more casualty out of hundreds that day. Local medics and volunteers took over the casualties, and the military guys and contractors were taken away. They kept me alive in a small clinic off base for a day and a half, parked far away from everything. The first responders to arrive were locals, and they didn’t know who I was. They took me to another little clinic in Agana and kept me alive.”

“But how…?”

“President Martindale found me, a couple days after the attack,” Patrick said. “Sky Masters could still track me through the subcutaneous datalink. Martindale was monitoring all of Sky Masters Inc.’s activities in the South China Sea region and had a plane sent to Andersen Air Force Base to collect intelligence and data on the attack. They eventually found me and secretly spirited me off to the States.”

“But why the CID, Dad?”

“That was Jason Richter’s idea,” Martindale said. “You met Colonel Richter in Battle Mountain, I believe?”

“Yes, sir. He helped me do the programming so I could get checked out in piloting a CID. He’s the head of operations for Sky Masters Aerospace now.”

“Your dad was in critical condition and not expected to survive the flight back to Hawaii,” Martindale said. “My aircraft that evacuated him had very few medical staff and no surgical or trauma-care equipment… but it did have a Cybernetic Infantry Device on board to help with rescue and recovery on Guam. Jason said the CID could help a victim breathe and control his other bodily functions until he made it to a hospital. Richter didn’t know that victim was your father.”

“Then… then you’re okay, Dad?” Brad asked, at first happy. But he quickly realized that his father was far, far from okay, or else he would not still be aboard the CID with his only son standing in front of him. “Dad…?”

“I’m afraid not, son,” Patrick said. “I can’t survive outside the CID.”

“What?”

“I could possibly survive, Brad, but I’d definitely be on assisted breathing and heartbeat and probably in a vegetative state,” Patrick said. Brad’s eyes welled with tears, and his mouth dropped open in shock. Both the robot’s hands reached out and rested on Brad’s shoulders — its touch was light, even soft, despite its size. “I didn’t want that, Brad. I didn’t want to be a burden to my family for years, maybe decades, until they had the technology to heal me, or until I died. Inside the CID I was awake, functioning, and up and moving. Outside, I’d be in a coma, on life support. When I was inside the CID and awake, I had the choice: stay on life support, pull the plug, or stay in the CID. I decided I’d rather stay inside, where I could be of some service.”

“You’re… you’re going to stay inside… forever…?”

“I’m afraid so, son,” Patrick said, “until we have the ability to heal all of the injuries I sustained.” The tears rolled down Brad’s face even harder now. “Brad, it’s okay,” Patrick said, and his softer, reassuring tone was evident even in the robot’s electronic voice. “I should be dead, son — I was dead. I was given an extraordinary gift. It may not seem like life, but it is. I want you to be happy for me.”

“But I can’t… can’t see you?” Brad reached up and touched the robot’s face. “I can’t touch you for… for real?”

“Believe me, son, I can feel your touch,” Patrick said. “I’m sorry you can’t feel mine, other than the cold composites. But the alternatives for me were unacceptable. I’m not ready to die yet, Brad. This may seem unnatural and unholy, but I’m still alive, and I think I can make a difference.”

“What about the memorial service… the urn… the death certificate…?”

“My doing, Brad,” President Martindale said. “As your father said, he was dead for a short time, in critical condition, and not expected to live. No one except Richter thought putting an injured man in the CID would work for more than a few days at most. Once we got back to the States, we tried several times to remove him from the CID so we could get him into surgery. Every time we tried, he arrested. It was… like his body didn’t want to leave it.”

“I was pretty messed up too, Brad,” Patrick said. “I saw the pictures. There wasn’t much left of me.”

“So what are you saying? You’re being healed by the CID? How can that work?”

“Not healed, but more like… sustained, Brad,” Patrick said. “The CID can monitor my body and brain, deliver oxygen, water, and nutrients, handle waste, and control the interior environment. It can’t fix me. I might get better over time, but no one knows. But I don’t need a healthy body to pilot the CID or employ its weapons.”

Brad realized what his father was saying, and it made his skin crawl and his face contort in disbelief despite the joy he felt at talking to his father again. “You mean… you mean you’re just a brain… a brain operating a machine…?”

“I’m alive, Brad,” Patrick said. “It’s not just a brain operating a machine.” He tapped on his armored chest with a composite finger. “It’s me in here. It’s your father. The body is messed up, but it’s still me. I control this machine, just like you did back in Battle Mountain. The only difference is that I can’t just dismount when I want to. I can’t get out and be a regular dad. That part of my life was destroyed by that Chinese fighter’s cannon shells. But I’m still me. I don’t want to die. I want to keep on working to defend our country. If I have to do it from inside this thing, I will. If my son can’t touch me, can’t see my face anymore, then that’s the penalty I get for accepting life. It’s a gift and a penalty I happily accept.”

Brad’s mind was racing, but slowly he began to understand. “I think I get it, Dad,” he said after a long silence. “I’m happy you’re alive.” He whirled to face Martindale. “It’s you I don’t get, Martindale. How could you not tell me he was alive, even if he was inside the CID?”

“I run a private organization that performs high-tech intelligence, counterintelligence, surveillance, and other high-risk operations, Brad,” Martindale said. He noticed Chris Wohl starting to make a move toward Brad and shook his head, warning him away. “I’m always looking for personnel, equipment, and weapons to perform our job better.”

“That’s my father you’re talking about, not some fucking piece of hardware, sir,” Brad snapped. Martindale’s mouth dropped open in surprise at Brad’s retort, and Wohl looked angry enough to chew off a piece of the cargo plane’s propeller. Brad noticed something he hadn’t noticed before: two locks of gray hair had curled over Martindale’s forehead above each eye, resembling inverted devil’s horns. “You’re starting to sound like some kind of Dr. Frankenstein mad scientist.”

“I apologize, Brad,” Martindale said. “As I said, all the doctors we spoke with didn’t expect your father to make it. I really didn’t know what to tell the White House, you, your aunts… hell, what to tell the whole world. So I made a suggestion to President Phoenix: we don’t tell anyone that your father was still alive inside the CID. We had the memorial service in Sacramento. When your father passed, which we truly believed was imminent, we’d inurn his remains for real, and the legend of Patrick McLanahan would finally be put to rest.” Martindale looked up at the Cybernetic Infantry Device beside him. “But as you can now see, he didn’t die. He’s managed to shock and surprise the hell out of us once again. But what could we do? We already buried him. We had the choice of telling the world he’s alive but living inside the CID, or not telling anyone anything. We chose the latter.”

“So why tell me now?” Brad asked, his head still reeling. “I believed my father was dead. You could have kept him dead, and I could have remembered him as he was before the attack.”

“Several reasons,” Martindale said. “First, the Russians stole your father’s cremation urn, and we have to assume they opened it and found it empty — we never dreamed anyone would ever steal it, and we thought it was going to be a short time before it was needed, so unfortunately we didn’t put anyone else’s remains in it. We thought the Russians could use that fact to pressure President Phoenix or even make the fact public, and then he’d be forced to respond.”

“You know what they say about assuming,” Brad said acidly.

Patrick put an armored hand on Brad’s shoulder. “Easy, son,” the electronic voice said softly. “I know this is a lot to process, but you still need to show some respect.”

“I’ll try, Dad, but right now it’s a little difficult,” Brad said bitterly. “And second?”

“The Russians came after you,” Patrick said. “That was the last straw for me. I was in a facility in Utah when all this went down, and I asked to be with you.”

“A facility?”

“Storage facility,” Patrick said.

“A storage facility?”

“We can talk more on the plane on our way back to St. George,” Kevin Martindale said. “Let’s load up and—”

“I can’t leave here, sir,” Brad said. “I’m about to finish my first year at Cal Poly, and I just made a presentation for a summer lab project that could land the engineering department a big grant from Sky Masters Aerospace. I can’t just leave. I’m leading a big research and development team, and they’re all counting on me.”

“I understand, Brad, but if you return to San Luis Obispo and Cal Poly you’ll be too exposed and vulnerable,” Martindale said. “We can’t risk your safety.”

“I appreciate the sergeant major getting me out of there, sir,” Brad said, “but—”

“I asked that you be pulled out, son,” Patrick interrupted. “I know it’ll be a complete disruption of your life, but we just don’t know how many Russian agents are or could be involved. Gryzlov is just as crazy as his father, and he could be sending in dozens of hit teams. I’m sorry. We’ll put you in protective custody, build you a new identity, send you someplace to finish your education, and—”

“No way, Dad,” Brad said. “We have to figure out another way. Unless you hog-tie me and throw me in the back of your cool cargo plane there, I’m going back, even if I have to hitchhike.”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible, Brad,” Patrick said. “I can’t allow it. It’s too dangerous. I need you to—”

“I’m an adult now, Dad,” Brad interrupted, finding it a little amusing to be arguing with a twelve-foot-tall robot. “Unless you take my constitutional rights away from me by force, I’m free to do whatever I want to do. Besides, I’m not afraid. Now that I know what’s going on — at least a little bit more than what I knew just a couple hours ago — I’ll be more careful.”

Kevin Martindale leaned toward Patrick and said, “Sounds like a damned McLanahan to me, all right,” he commented with a smile. “What are you going to do now, General? Looks like the immovable object has met the irresistible force.”

Patrick remained silent for several long moments. Finally: “Sergeant Major?”

“Sir?” Wohl responded immediately.

“Meet with Bradley and your team and come up with a resolution to this dilemma,” Patrick said. “I want to know the risks and your assessments as to how to reduce or mitigate those risks to Bradley’s person if he returns to that university campus. Report back to me as soon as possible.”

“Yes, sir,” Wohl responded, pulling out his cell phone and getting to work.

“Brad, you are not going back to school until this is settled to my satisfaction, and if necessary, to ensure your compliance, I will hog-tie you and throw you in the baggage compartment — and it won’t be that plane’s compartment, but one a lot smaller,” Patrick went on. “Sorry, son, but that’s the way it’s going to be. Looks like we’re staying here for the foreseeable future.” He paused, silently scanning his onboard computer displays for information. “There’s a motel not far from here with a restaurant, Sergeant Major,” he said. “They’re showing plenty of vacancies. I’ll have Kylie get you rooms and send you the info. Stay there for tonight and we’ll come up with a game plan in the morning. Have one of the men bring back some food for Bradley, please.”

“Yes, sir,” Wohl responded, and he turned and departed.

“But what are you going to do, Dad?” Brad asked. “You can’t check into a motel.”

“I’ll be secure enough right here,” Patrick said. “I don’t need hotel beds or restaurants anymore, that’s for sure.”

“Then I’ll stay here with you,” Brad said. The CID was motionless and silent. “I’m staying here with you,” Brad insisted.

“The McLanahans getting reacquainted,” Martindale said. “Lovely.” He pulled out a smartphone and read the display. “My jet is landing. As soon as it taxies over, I’m going back to St. George and sleep in my own bed for a change. You can work out the details of how to deal with the younger McLanahan, General.” He paused, and everyone fell silent, and sure enough they could hear the sound of an approaching jet outside the hangar. “My ride has arrived. I wish you gents well. Keep me advised, General.”

“Yes, sir,” Patrick’s electronically synthesized voice replied.

“Good night, all,” sad Martindale, and he turned on a heel and departed, followed by his security detail.

Patrick spoke into midair through the CID unit’s extensive communications system: “Kylie?”

A few moments later: “Yes, sir?” replied “Kylie,” an automated voice-recognition electronic personal assistant that was given the same name as Patrick’s real-life assistant back at Sky Masters Inc.

“We need two motel or hotel rooms nearby for tonight, and maybe three more for tomorrow and the next day for the sergeant major’s team,” Patrick said. “I’ll be staying here tonight; ‘Policeman’ is heading back to headquarters.” “Policeman” was the code name for President Martindale.

“Yes, sir,” Kylie responded. “I have already received ‘Policeman’s’ updated itinerary. I will send lodging information to the sergeant major right away.”

“Thank you,” Patrick said. “Out.” To Brad he said, “Pull up a chair, son. I can’t wait to start getting caught up.” Brad found bottles of water in the small refrigerator. The CID extended a thick extension cord from a compartment on his waist, plugged it into a 220-volt outlet, stood up straight, then froze in place. Brad brought a chair and the water over to the CID. Inside the robot, Patrick couldn’t help but smile at his son’s expression. “Pretty weird, isn’t it, Brad?” he said.

“ ‘Weird’ doesn’t even begin to describe it, Dad,” Brad said, shaking his head, then placing a cold bottle against the swelling bruise on his head. He studied the CID carefully. “Do you sleep okay in there?”

“Mostly nap. I don’t need much sleep. Same with food.” He reached into another armored compartment on his waist and withdrew a curved container that looked like a large hip flask. “Concentrated nutrients infused into me. The CID monitors my blood and adjusts the nutrient mix.” Brad was just sitting there, shaking his head slightly. “Go ahead and ask me anything, Brad,” Patrick said finally.

“What have you been doing?” Brad asked after a few moments to clear his swimming consciousness. “I mean, what does President Martindale have you do?”

“Most of the time I train with Chris Wohl’s and other direct-action teams using a variety of weapons and devices,” Patrick said. “They also use my computers and sensors to plan possible missions and do surveillance.” He paused for a moment, then said in a very obviously somber tone, “But mostly I stand in a storage locker, plugged into power, nutrients, medication, waste disposal, and data, scanning sensor feeds and the Internet, interacting with the world… sort of. Digitally.”

“You stay in a storage locker?”

“Not much reason for me to be walking around unless we’re in training or on a mission,” Patrick said. “I creep people out enough already, I think.”

“No one talks to you?”

“During training or operations, sure,” Patrick said. “I put together reports of things I see and submit them to Martindale, and we might discuss them. I can instant-message and teleconference with just about anybody.”

“No, I mean… just talk with you, like we’re doing now,” Brad said. “You’re still you. You’re Patrick McLanahan.”

Another pause; then: “I was never one for chitchat, son,” he said finally. Brad didn’t like that response, but he said nothing. “Besides, I didn’t want anyone knowing it’s me in the CID. They think it’s unoccupied when in storage and that a bunch of pilots show up to train with it. They don’t know it’s occupied twenty-four/seven.” He saw the look of absolute sorrow in his son’s face and desperately wanted to hold him.

“Doesn’t it get… you know, kind of rank in there?” Brad asked.

“If it does, I can’t detect it,” Patrick said. “But they put me in a different CID periodically.”

“They do? So you can exist outside the CID?”

“For very short periods of time, yes,” Patrick said. “They change dressings, give me medications if I need them, check stuff like muscle tone and bone density, then lower me into a clean robot.”

“So I can see you again!”

“Brad, I don’t think you’d want to see me,” Patrick said. “I was pretty busted up, sitting in the windblast of that shot-up B-1 bomber for so long. By the way, thank you for bringing us back safely.”

“You’re welcome. But I’d still like to see you.”

“We’ll talk about that when the time comes,” Patrick said. “They give me a couple days’ warning. I’m on life support while I’m outside.”

Brad looked even more dejected than before. “What is all this for, Dad?” he asked after a long silence. “Are you going to be some sort of high-tech killing machine, like the sergeant major says you’ve become?”

“The sergeant major can be a drama queen sometimes,” Patrick said. “Brad, I’ve seen the importance of the gift of life, because it was almost taken away from me. I know how precious life is right now. But I also want to protect our country, and I have an extraordinary ability to do that now.”

“So what then?”

For a moment Brad thought he saw his father shrug his huge armored shoulders. “Honestly, I don’t know,” Patrick said. “But President Martindale has been involved in creating many secret organizations that defended and advanced American foreign and military policies for decades.”

“Any you can tell me about?” Brad asked.

Patrick thought for a moment, then nodded. “You’ve seen the Predator with the Customs and Border Protection shield on it, but I think you’ve noticed that the guards and other personnel here are not CBP. It’s one way to do surveillance within the United States but maintain complete deniability. It gives the White House and Pentagon a lot of room to maneuver.”

“Sounds illegal as hell, Dad.”

“Probably so, but we do a lot of great work as well that I feel kept the world from going to war several times,” Patrick said. “President Martindale and I were involved in a defense contractor company called Scion Aviation International, providing contract aerial surveillance and eventually attack services to the U.S. military. When I joined Sky Masters, I lost track of what Scion was doing, but now I know he’s kept the operation going. He does a lot of antiterrorist surveillance work all over the world, on contract to the U.S. government.”

“Martindale is starting to creep me out, Dad,” Brad said. “He’s like a cross between a greasy politician and a generalissimo.”

“He’s the kind of guy who thinks outside the box and gets the job done — the ends always justifies the means with him,” Patrick said. “As U.S. vice president, Martindale was the driving force behind using experimental high-tech planes and weapons being developed at the secret test sites at Dreamland and other places in what he called ‘operational test flights,’ and as U.S. president, he created the Intelligence Support Agency that covertly supported the CIA and other agencies in operations all around the world, including within the United States.”

“Again, Dad, it sounds totally illegal.”

“Nowadays, perhaps,” Patrick responded. “During the Cold War, the politicians and commanders were looking for ways to accomplish the mission without violating the law or the Constitution. The law prohibited the CIA from operating within the U.S., but civilian surveillance and intelligence support groups were not illegal. Their definition, identity, and purpose were kept purposefully hazy.”

“So what do you want to do, Dad?” Brad asked.

“I’ve been given something I could never repay: the gift of life,” Patrick said. “I owe something to President Martindale for giving me that gift. I’m not saying I’m going to be his hired gun from now on, but I’m willing to follow this path to see where it leads me.” Brad had a very concerned expression on his face. “Let’s change the subject. One of the things I monitor every day is you, at least your digital life, which these days is pretty extensive. I can access your social media sites, and I can access some of the security cameras on campus as well as the security cameras in your house and out at the airport in the aircraft hangar. I’ve been keeping an eye on you. You haven’t done much flying or much of anything else except school stuff. Busy with the Starfire project, I see.”

“We pitched it to Dr. Nukaga this afternoon,” Brad said. It was good to see him brighten up as he started talking about school, Patrick thought. “As long as I didn’t put the idea in his head that it’s secretly a military project, which it’s not, I think we have a good shot. One of our team leaders, Jung-bae Kim, gets along really well with Nukaga. He might be our ace in the hole.”

“Your entire team is pretty remarkable,” Patrick said. “Lane Eagan’s parents are world-class researchers, and he’s probably smarter than both of them put together. Jodie Cavendish was a superstar high school science student in Australia. She’s received a dozen patents before she’s finished her first year of college.”

Brad’s face fell once again. “I guess you have a lot of time to surf the Internet, don’t you, Dad?” he remarked in a quiet, sad tone.

This time, Patrick unplugged himself, went over to his son, put his armored arms around him, and held him. “I don’t want you to feel sorry for me or pity me, Brad,” he said after several long moments. He went back to his spot, plugged himself in, then stood up straight and froze. “Please don’t. As I said, I feel very connected to you because I can watch you and check up on you online. I’ve even tweeted you a couple times.”

Like a flashbulb going off, Brad’s face illuminated in astonishment. “You have? Who are you? What’s your Twitter name?”

“I don’t have one. I’m invisible.”

“Invisible?”

“Not visible to a user or to other visitors.” Brad looked skeptical. “I have the ability to monitor anyone’s accounts on social media sites without ‘friending,’ Brad. A lot of government agencies and even companies have the ability. I search posts for key words, and I leave messages for you. Sometimes it’s just a ‘like’ or one or two words. I just like keeping tabs on you. I’m content to just watch and read.”

Despite his son’s initial unease at the thought of unknown persons, companies, or government agencies having access to his social media posts, Patrick thought that this was the happiest Brad looked since he emerged from the Sherpa. “You know something, Dad? I’ve always had the feeling, not very strong but just kind of deep down in the back of my head, that you were watching me. I thought it was a religious or spiritual thing, like it was your ghost or you were up in heaven or something. I think that of Mom too.”

“You were right. I was watching you… even digitally speaking with you. And I think Mom does watch over us too.”

“Damn. Trust your feelings, I guess,” Brad said, shaking his head in disbelief.

“Let’s talk about Cal Poly.”

“I’ve got to go back, Dad,” Brad said. “I am going back. Starfire is too big of a deal. If you’ve been looking in on me, you know how big it is.”

“I know you’ve been working really hard on it,” Patrick said. “But I’m not going to let you go back until I know you’re safe. The house you were in is being shut down — it’s just too isolated.”

“Then I’ll live in the dorms and eat in the dining halls,” Brad said. “They’re plenty crowded. I don’t know how much work I can get done there, but I have twenty-four/seven access to the Reinhold Aerospace Engineering building — I can work there.”

“If anyone can think of a way to have you safely go back there, Chris Wohl will do it,” Patrick said. “So how did you pick Cal Poly?”

“Best aerospace engineering school on the West Coast I could get into with my grades,” Brad said. “I guess too much football, Civil Air Patrol, and Angel Flight West charity flying in high school really affected my grades.” He paused for a moment, then asked, “So it’s no coincidence that there happened to be that rancherita available when I was looking for housing? Does it really belong to the sergeant major?”

“It belongs to Scion Aviation,” Patrick said. “I felt it was easier to keep an eye on you there than in the dorms. So you really like Cal Poly?”

“Cal Poly is a great school, I like most of my professors, and it’s well within range for the P210 so I can fly to Battle Mountain to visit Sondra Eddington when I can.”

“You two hit it off pretty well, didn’t you?”

“Yes, but it’s tough going,” Brad said. “She’s always gone, and I have virtually no spare time.”

“Still want to be a test pilot?”

“You bet I do, Dad,” Brad said. “I’ve been staying in touch with Boomer, Gonzo, Dr. Richter, and Dr. Kaddiri at Sky Masters, and Colonel Hoffman at Warbirds Forever. They might be able to get me an internship at the Nevada Test Pilot School between my junior and senior years if I keep my grades up, and maybe Sky Masters will even sponsor me for a class slot, like Warbirds Forever is doing with Sondra training to fly the spaceplanes at Sky Masters.” Warbirds Forever was an aircraft maintenance facility at Stead Airport in Reno, Nevada, that also trained civilian pilots in a wide variety of aircraft, from old classic biplanes, multimillion-dollar bizjets, and retired military aircraft; Sondra Eddington was one of their instructor pilots. “A million and a half dollars for a master’s degree and accreditation as a test pilot. I eventually want to fly the spaceplanes into orbit too. Maybe Sondra will be my instructor.”

“Congratulations. I think you’re well on your way.”

“Thanks, Dad.” Brad paused, looking the CID up and down, and smiled. “It’s great to be able to talk with you again, Dad,” he said finally. “I think I’m starting to get over the fact that you’re sealed up inside a machine.”

“I knew it was going to be hard for you at first and maybe later on too,” Patrick said. “I considered not stepping out of the Sherpa, or not telling you it was me, just so you’d be spared the pain this has caused. President Martindale and I talked about it, and he said he’d play it any way I wanted. I’m glad I did tell you, and I’m glad you’re getting used to it.”

“I get a feeling that it’s not really you in there,” Brad said. “You say you’re my dad, but how do I know that?”

“Do you want to test me?” Patrick asked. “Go ahead.”

“Okay. You fixed something for me all the time for dinner that was simple for you and good for me.”

“Mac and cheese with roasted sliced hot dogs,” Patrick said immediately. “You especially liked the MRE version.”

“Mom?”

“You scattered her ashes at sea off Coronado,” Patrick said. “It was amazing: the ashes glistened like silver, and it seemed as if they never touched the water. They went skyward instead of downward.”

“I remember that day,” Brad said. “The guys with us were sad, but you didn’t seem that sad.”

“I know,” Patrick said. “I believed that as commanding officer, I wasn’t supposed to show sadness, fear, weakness, or sorrow, even regarding my own wife. That was wrong. I always thought you never noticed. Obviously, you did.” After a moment’s hesitation, he added, “I’m sorry, son. Your mother was an extraordinary woman. I never told you stories about what she did. I’m sorry about that too. I’ll make it up to you.”

“That would be cool, Dad.” Brad motioned over his shoulder to the C-23C Sherpa. “Is that your airplane?”

“One of many in President Martindale’s collection,” Patrick said. “Surplus from U.S. Air Forces in Europe. It’s the smallest cargo plane I can fit in. He’s got a Boeing 737–800 freighter for overseas trips. He paints them all black despite how dangerous and illegal that is, and how screwed up it makes the plane’s environmental control systems. He’s been like that ever since I’ve known him: everything is a means of control and intimidation, even the color of paint on an aircraft, and screw the mechanical, social, or political ramifications.”

“Are you ever going to tell Aunt Nancy and Aunt Margaret?” Brad asked.

“I will never say never, Brad, but for now I want my existence to be a secret,” Patrick said. “You can’t tell anyone either. Only President Martindale, President Phoenix, Chris Wohl, and a handful of others know. Not even Dr. Kaddiri and Dr. Richter at Sky Masters know, and their company is the prime contractor on the Cybernetic Infantry Devices. To everyone else, I’m just a call sign.”

“What’s that?”

There was a slight pause, then Patrick replied, “ ‘Resurrection.’ ”

“We think it can be done, sir,” Chris Wohl said as he and his men entered the hangar early the next morning. He set a bag of breakfast sandwiches on the table in the conference room where Brad was sleeping.

Brad was awake instantly, and he followed Wohl and his men into the main hangar, where the CID was standing. “You came up with a plan so soon?” he remarked. “It’s not even six A.M.”

“The general said as soon as possible,” Wohl said matter-of-factly. “We worked all night.” To Patrick in the CID he said, “Sir, we downloaded maps of the campus and the surrounding area, and obtained information on the campus security police unit, city police, San Luis Obispo county sheriff’s department, California Highway Patrol, and federal law enforcement agencies based in and near the city of San Luis Obispo. All agencies are very well staffed and trained. The campus police have an extensive camera surveillance system — virtually every door and hallway in the education and administration buildings, almost every street corner, and every exterior doorway in every other building on campus, have cameras and are recorded. Major crime on campus does not appear to be a big problem.

“There are approximately nineteen thousand students on campus,” he went on. “The student population is primarily from California, primarily white, Hispanic, and Asian; only two percent of the student population is from other countries, and only fifteen percent of foreign students are from Eastern Europe. The county is rural and hilly and does not appear to have a serious gang presence, although there are numerous reports of meth labs and marijuana farms in the countryside that are quickly eradicated by county, state, and federal agencies that appear to work closely with each other.

“Problems: Access to the campus and most all the buildings is not normally controlled, although the campus’s buildings, labs, and classrooms can be remotely locked down electronically by campus security; and emergency communications via text messaging is excellent,” Wohl continued. “However, because access is not controlled, it would be easy for my team to go on campus if necessary. Identifying an attacker or surveillance among all the students would be difficult, and countersurveillance tactics training should be mandatory so Bradley can identify a shadow. Weapons are not allowed on campus, and concealed-carry firearm permits are almost impossible to get in that county or the entire state for that matter, but there were a great number of reports of armed students. ‘Policeman’ might be able to help get a concealed-carry firearm permit. The county jail is less than two miles south, and the California Men’s Colony, a minimum- and medium-security state prison, is less than three miles to the northwest. The San Luis Obispo Regional Airport is four-point-two miles south.

“My recommendation, sir, based on our preliminary analysis, would be for your son to move back on campus as soon as possible, but not into the mass dormitories,” Wohl concluded. “Our recommendation would be to have him move to the housing unit known as Poly Canyon. It is more like an apartment building complex, has fewer students, is farther away from the main campus, each building has its own dedicated full-time manager and full-time security team, and each floor has shifts of student resident assistants, so there appears to be a lot of eyes open twenty-four/seven. We estimate that he would have a moderate to good chance of survival if he gets some proper countersurveillance, self-defense, and weapons training, and carries a firearm.”

“I’d love to do all that stuff!” Brad exclaimed. “When do I start?”

The CID remained motionless for several long moments, but it finally moved its head. “Excellent report, Sergeant Major,” Patrick said. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, sir.”

“Set up a training schedule for Bradley at a local gym or similar facility,” Patrick said. “I believe Chief Ratel is still in the area. Get started as soon as possible. I’ll contact ‘Policeman’ and have him work on a legal concealed-carry permit and getting into Poly Canyon. Train Brad on how to use and carry a gun anyway until we get a legal unlimited concealed-carry permit.”

“Yes, sir,” Wohl responded, and turned and went into the conference room with his teammates.

“Kylie.” Patrick spoke into his communication system.

“Yes, sir?” the computerized assistant responded.

“I need immediate summer and full-year residency at Poly Canyon student housing on the California Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo campus for Bradley McLanahan,” he said. “I also need a nationwide concealed-carry permit for Bradley, including authorization to carry on college campuses. Notify headquarters and ‘Policeman’ of this request — he may need to assist you to overcome any bureaucratic or political obstacles.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m still not totally comfortable with this, Brad,” Patrick said after signing off from his electronic assistant, “but if we can get you into Poly Canyon and the sergeant major can get you trained up, I’ll feel better. I’m hoping the Russians won’t bother you or your aunts after encountering Sergeant Major Wohl, but we’ll assume they’ll come back and try again after they regroup and track you down, so we’ll do everything we can to keep you safe and staying in school. I’m sure Gryzlov will send more teams after you as soon as you resurface, so we have just a short time to get you trained, and Chris and his team won’t always be available to watch over you, so it’s important to get trained up as soon as possible.”

“Thanks, Dad,” Brad said. He walked over to the CID and gave it a hug — thinking of the big robot as his father was becoming easier every minute. “That would be great. I’ll work really hard at it, I promise. One of my team leaders lives in Poly Canyon, and if I didn’t already have Sondra back home, I’d definitely like to be with her.”

“Just remember to keep your eyes and ears open and listen to that little voice in the back of your head, the one that was telling you that your father was watching you,” Patrick said. “It will warn you of danger.”

“I will, Dad.”

“Good. Go talk to the sergeant major and arrange with him to take you to a hotel in town until we can get your room set up on campus. You probably also need to get your story straight and talk with the police about what happened back at the rancherito. I’ll be heading back to St. George tonight.”

“Back into storage?”

“Back where I can check on my targets and get caught up again,” Patrick said. “I’ll be in touch, Brad. I love you, son.”

“I love you too, Dad,” Brad said. He gave the CID another hug, then went to the conference room and found Chris Wohl. “Thanks for doing that report so quickly, Sergeant Major,” he said. “I didn’t realize the campus was so safe.”

“It’s not,” Wohl said, “at least not for you against Russian hit men.”

Brad’s smile disappeared. “Say what?” he asked with a stunned expression.

“Think about it, McLanahan: nineteen thousand students, probably five thousand more faculty and staff, crammed into an area less than three square miles,” Wohl said. “Anyone can come and go around the clock anywhere on campus they please. There is just one sworn campus police officer per shift for every one thousand students, and they have no heavy weapons and no SWAT training. You’re done with all of your freshman-year courses, so your class sizes will be smaller from now on, but you’ll still be in classes and labs with dozens of kids.”

“Then why did you recommend I go back?”

“Because I believe your father is being too protective — he would be very happy to just lock you away, stand you in a nice safe secure box like him, and have the world fed to you through the Internet,” Wohl said. “He wouldn’t care how miserable you’d be, because in his mind you’d be safe from the dangerous world he’s lived and fought in almost all his life.”

“So what do you care about what my father wants to do about me, Sergeant Major?” Brad asked. “I don’t know you, and you don’t know me. You said you’re not a friend of my father. Why do you care?”

Wohl ignored the question. “The information I gave was accurate: it’s a relatively safe campus and city,” he said instead. “With some training, the danger can be managed, maybe even minimized.” He gave Brad a big smile, which still looked pretty malevolent, and added, “Besides, now my men and I have you, and we got the go-ahead to build a training program to get your ass in shape and learn the proper way to look at the world. Every day, one hour a day.”

“Every day? I can’t train every day. I’ve got—”

“Every day, McLanahan,” Wohl said. “You will train each and every day, rain or shine, sick or well, exams or dates, or I’ll send you back to your father, and he’ll happily lock you away inside the red rocks of southern Utah. You’ll do weights and cardio for physical fitness; Cane-Ja and Krav Maga for self-defense; and classes and demonstrations of surveillance, countersurveillance, investigation, observation, and identification techniques.” He made that evil smile once more, then added, “You thought Second Beast at the Air Force Academy was tough? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet, bubba.” Wohl’s smile disappeared, and he wore a thoughtful expression. “The first thing we need to do is give you your call sign,” he said.

“A call sign? What do I need a call sign for?”

“Because I’m tired of calling you ‘McLanahan”—too many syllables,” Wohl said. “Besides, McLanahan is definitely your father until he kicks the bucket, and I don’t think that’s going to happen for a very long time.” He looked at his teammates in the conference room with him. All three of them were tall, square-jawed, and heavily muscled, the Hollywood version of a Navy SEAL, which Brad thought they probably used to be. “What do you boys think?”

“Pussy,” one said. He was the biggest of the three, well over six feet tall and well over two hundred pounds, with a thick neck, broad shoulders tapering to a thin waist, enlarging again to thick thighs and calves, then tapering again to thin ankles. He looked like a professional bodybuilder, Brad thought. “Better yet, just give him to the chief. He’ll chew him up and spit him out, the general will send him to St. George, and then we don’t have to fuck with him.”

“Flex, we got a job to do,” Wohl said. “Keep your opinions to yourself. Dice?”

“Doughboy.”

“Geek,” said the third.

“Be nice to the young man,” Wohl said, wearing that malevolent smile again. “He’s had a most traumatic experience, and besides he’s a hardworking engineering student.”

“A brainiac, huh?” the one named Dice asked. “My kid used to watch a brainless cartoon called Dexter’s Laboratory on TV, where this really smart kid gets bushwhacked by his dumb sister all the time. Let’s call him ‘Dexter.’ ”

“I still like ‘Doughboy’ better,” the third said.

“ ‘Dexter’ it is,” Wohl announced.

“That’s a lousy call sign,” Brad said. “I’ll pick my own.”

“Dexter, call signs are earned, and they are picked by your teammates, not by yourself,” Wohl said. “You haven’t earned anything yet. But call signs can change, for the worse as well as for the better. Work hard and maybe we’ll give you a better one.”

“What’s your call sign?”

“For you, it’s ‘sir’ or ‘sergeant major,’ ” Wohl said, looking at Bradley with serious menace. “You’d better get that right the first time.” To his men in turn he said, “Dice, find us a safe and securable hotel to stay in, in San Luis Obispo, close to campus. Flex, get in contact with Chief Ratel and ask if he can set up a martial-arts, countersurveillance, and firearms training program for us ASAP.” To Brad he said, “Let’s see your shooting hand.”

“Shooting hand? I don’t have a shooting hand.”

“Then which hand do you pick your nose with, Dexter? C’mon, we don’t have all day.” Wohl grabbed Brad’s right wrist, and Brad opened his hand. “Jeez, tiny little hands just like your father. That’s probably why he joined the Air Force — he didn’t have hands big enough to hold even a friggin’ girl’s gun.” He held the hand up so the third team member could see Brad’s hand. “Rattler?”

“Smith and Wesson M and P .40 cal,” the third team member said in a low, growling voice. “Or a peashooter.”

“Forty-cal it is,” Wohl said. “Get to it.” The three team members pulled out cell phones and got to work. “One last thing, Dexter.”

“I hate that call sign already,” Brad said.

“I hate that call sign already, sir,” Wohl corrected him. “I told you: do something worthy for the team and yourself, and you might get a better call sign. And start showing some respect for your superiors around here. I should’ve kicked your ass across the hangar for the way you spoke to President Martindale yesterday. I will next time, I promise you.” Brad nodded and wisely said nothing.

“Now, we can do several things to help you detect and defend against danger, but we can’t do very much for your friends,” Wohl went on. “We’ve noticed that you don’t really hang out with anybody but your research team of nerds on that Starfire project, which is good, but I want you to limit your time in public with anyone. If a hit team starts to target your friends to get to you, it could spell real trouble for everyone that we could not contain. Understand?”

“Yes,” Brad said. He could feel the anger rising in Wohl’s expression. “Yes, sir,” he corrected himself.

“Good. Grab some breakfast, get your things together, and be ready to move out in ten minutes.”

“Yes, sir,” Brad said. He returned to the conference room and noticed that all the breakfast sandwiches were gone. “This is starting out to be a really shitty day,” he murmured. But he looked back across the hangar and saw the CID unit with his father inside of it, and he smiled. “But my father is alive. I can’t believe it. I’m living in a dream… but I don’t care, because my father is alive!”

“Brad! What in heck happened to you?” Lane Eagan exclaimed when Brad entered the room. The others shot to their feet and gaped in horror when they saw the long, ugly bruise on the side of Brad’s head and face — no amount of ice had yet been successful in hiding it, although the swelling had gone down considerably.

“Hi, guys,” Brad said. They all came over to him, and he especially liked Jodie’s concerned touches. “I’m okay, I’m okay.”

“What happened to you?” Kim Jung-bae asked. “Where have you been? In a hospital? We have been worried sick about you!”

“You’re not going to believe this, Jerry: I was involved in a home invasion the other night, after we made our presentation,” Brad lied. Eyes popped and mouths dropped open in complete surprise. “Two guys broke into the house and whacked me on the side of the head with a club or baseball bat or something.”

“No shit?” they all exclaimed. “What happened?”

“No idea,” Brad lied. “I woke up and there were cops everywhere. Paramedics checked me over, I gave a report, and that’s pretty much it. They found drug stuff on the kitchen table and thought that maybe some crackheads wanted a place to get high.”

“Oh my God, Brad,” Casey gasped, “thank God you’re okay.”

“I’m good, I’m good, Casey,” Brad assured them. “My gyros tumble a little bit every now and then, but I can still ride the bike.”

“Where are you staying?” Jodie asked, and Brad thought he detected a twinkle in her eye and the hint of an eager smile. “You’re not going back to that house, are you, mate?”

“Heck no,” Brad said. “The landlord had a fit. He’s having workers move the furniture that didn’t get smashed up, and he’s going to board the place up. I’m not sure what he’s going to do after that. I’m in one of the all-suites hotels on Monterey Street. I might be there until the semester’s over and students blow town. I’m going to apply at Cerro Vista and Poly Canyon and try to avoid going into the summer dorms if I can.”

“Good luck with that, mate,” Jodie said. “Applications for Cerro Vista had to be in two months ago, and Poly Canyon’s apps had to be in last year. You might have to live off campus again if you don’t want to live in the dorms.”

“Okay, all that’s being worked, so let’s get to business before we have to scurry off,” Brad said, and their meeting got under way. It lasted only a few minutes, long enough for everyone to report their team’s status, coordinate their lab schedules, and put in requests to Brad for supplies or information for the upcoming week, and then they hurried off to class.

Jodie walked along with Brad. “Are you sure you’re all right, mate?” she asked. “That’s the worst bruise I think I’ve ever seen.”

“I’m good, Jodie, thanks,” Brad said. “I wish I could say ‘you should see the other guy,’ but I was out cold.”

“Why didn’t you call me, Brad?”

“There just wasn’t time, Jodie,” Brad lied. “I was out like a light, and then I had to deal with the cops, the paramedics, and then the landlord.”

“Then where were you all yesterday?”

“Sitting around with ice packs on my throbbing head, listening to my landlord shouting orders and ranting and raving about dopers and crime and the breakdown of society,” Brad lied again. “Then he helped me find a hotel. My head hurt so much, I just crashed after that.”

“Why don’t you stop by my place after classes?” she asked. “You don’t just want to go to a hotel by yourself, do you, with no one to look out for you?” This time, Brad didn’t have to guess her intentions — she reached out and touched his hand. “What d’ya say, mate?”

His head was swimming a bit with all the stuff happening to him in the past few days, so his reply was a bit hesitant, and Jodie’s smile dimmed. “That sounds great, Jodie,” he said, and her smile returned. “But first I have an appointment after our lab session.”

“Doctor’s appointment?”

Brad decided he wasn’t going to lie to this woman about everything if he could at all avoid it. “Actually, my landlord — the ex-Marine, I think I told you — he’s setting up a training program for me. Physical fitness and self-defense.” He wasn’t going to tell Jodie about the countersurveillance and other spy training classes, or the weapons training — hey, he thought, not telling something is different from lying, right? “He thinks I’m too soft and need to do more to help myself in situations like home invasions.”

“Wow,” Jodie remarked, blinking in surprise. “You’re right with this?”

“Sure,” Brad said. “I spend too much time sitting on my ass — a little physical fitness will do me good. One hour a day. I can be over your place around seven.”

“Perfect, Brad,” Jodie said, her worried and perplexed expression quickly disappearing. “I’ll fix us something for dinner. I can pick you up and take you around to your appointments if you don’t feel well enough to ride the bike.”

“I’m good so far, Jodie,” Brad said. He actually liked the idea, but he didn’t know what the gym would look like, and he wanted to get a feeling from Wohl and whoever his trainer was going to be before he brought others around. “But thank you.” He gave her a hug and got a kiss on the cheek in return. “See you around seven.”

“See ya, conch,” Jodie said, and hurried off to her next class.

He received a lot of surprised and some shocked expressions as students on campus saw his big ugly bruise, and Brad actually considered buying some makeup until the thing healed, but kids on campus were fairly open and tolerant — and he sure as hell didn’t want Chris Wohl or his team members to catch him with makeup on! — so he put the thought out of his head and tried to ignore the looks. Thankfully he didn’t need narcotics to kill the pain, so he made it through his classes and his session in the engineering lab on the Starfire project without too much difficulty, only an occasional headache that subsided when he stopped thinking about it and concentrated on something else. Afterward he locked his computer backpack in a locker, retrieved his gym bag, then hopped on the bike and headed off to his first physical-fitness session.

The name of the place was Chong Jeontu Jib, written in both Korean and Latin characters, on the south side of town not far from the airport. It was a simple two-story frame building, old but maintained very well, with a yard fenced in with chain link that had some exercise equipment and weights in a small workout area. Beyond the fence in the back was a gun range set up against a large round dirt wall which formerly surrounded petroleum tanks that stored fuel during World War II bomber training missions. The window in front was covered from the inside with United Korea and American flags, and the glass front door was covered with a large U.S. Air Force flag. Inside he found a counter, and beyond that a large workout room with the floor covered in a blue gym mat. The walls were covered with all sorts of awards, trophies, photographs, and martial-arts weapons.

A short, thin man with a shaved head and gray goatee approached from a back room. “Dexter?” he called out. “This way.” Brad walked around the counter and had just touched the mat when the man called out, “Don’t touch the mat with your shoes on, and only with respect.” Brad hopped off the mat onto a linoleum walkway. The second room was a little smaller than the first, with another blue gym mat on the floor, but instead of decorations and awards it had a weight machine, treadmill, boxing speed bag, punching bag, and posters of arrows pointing to various spots on a human body — Brad was sure he was going to know all he needed to know about that stuff before too long. There was a back exit and what looked like a locker room in the opposite corner.

“You’re late,” the man said. “I’ll let you slide today because it’s your first time here, but now you know where the place is, so don’t be late again.”

“I won’t.”

“I won’t, sir,” the man said. “The sergeant major told me you were in Civil Air Patrol and attended the Air Force Academy for a short time, so you know something about military courtesy. Employ it when you deal with me or anyone on the team. You’ll know when you can address us any other way. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Next time, show up ready to work out. I don’t want to waste time waiting for you to change. This is not your private resort club where you can stroll in and out as you please.”

“Yes, sir.”

The man nodded toward the locker room door. “You got thirty seconds to change.” Brad hurried toward the locker room across the blue mat. “Stop!” Brad froze. “Get back here.” Brad returned. “Get off the mat.” Brad stepped off the blue mat onto the linoleum. “Dexter, you are in a Korean dojang,” the man said in a low, measured voice. “The center of the dojang, the mat, is the ki, which means ‘spirit.’ You train to learn how to accept the spirit of martial arts, the merging of inner peace and outer violence, when you step on the mat, which means you must respect the spirit that resides over it. That means you never touch the mat wearing footwear, you are prepared for a workout and are not in street clothes unless the lesson calls for them, you get permission to enter and leave the mat from a master, and you bow at the waist facing the center of the mat before you step on the mat and before you step off. Otherwise, go around it. Remember that.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now get moving.” Brad trotted around the mat and returned wearing his workout gear in record time.

“My name is James Ratel,” the man said when Brad returned, “but you don’t have to worry about real names or call signs because I’m ‘sir’ or ‘chief’ to you. I’m a retired U.S. Air Force chief master sergeant, thirty-three-year veteran, last serving as chief master sergeant of Seventh Air Force at Osan Air Base, United Korea. I’m a master parachutist with over two hundred combat jumps in Panama, Iraq, Korea, and Afghanistan as well as dozens of classified locations, completed Army Ranger School, and I’ve got two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star. I am also a fifth-degree black belt and master instructor in Cane-Ja, a fifth-degree expert black belt in Krav Maga, and a nationally certified firearms and baton instructor. Here I give private self-defense and firearms lessons, mostly to retired military. I expect one hundred and ten percent each and every second you are in my dojang. Give respect and you will get it in return; slack off and your hour with me will be pure living hell.”

Ratel retrieved a small device with a neck strap and tossed it to Brad. “Self-defense training takes months, sometimes years, and the danger facing you is immediate,” he said. “So you’re being given this device. Wear it always. It works almost anywhere in the country with a cell signal. If you are in trouble, press the button, and myself or anyone on the team that might be nearby will be able to track you down and assist. More likely, given the adversaries you face, it’ll help us locate your body faster, but maybe we’ll get lucky.” Brad gave Ratel a stunned expression.

“Now, since this is your first day, you’re probably still hurting from being clubbed on the head, and you came in late, which I excused, we’re just going to do a fitness evaluation today,” Ratel went on. “I want to see your maximum number of pull-ups, crunches, dips, and push-ups until muscle failure, with no more than ninety seconds’ rest in between, and your best time on a two-mile run on the treadmill.” He motioned to the other side of the room where the treadmill and other exercise implements were waiting. “Get moving.”

Brad trotted over to the exercise area on the other side of the room. He was thankful that he did so much bike riding, so he thought he was in pretty good shape, but it had been a long time since he had been in a gym, and he had never been fond of pull-ups. He started with those and managed six before he couldn’t pull himself up again. The crunches were easy — he was able to do eighty-two of those before having to stop. Dips were fairly new for him. He got between a set of horizontal parallel railings, grasped them, extended his arms, lifted his feet off the linoleum, lowered his body as far as he could, then extended his arms again. He could manage only three of those, and the third was an arm-trembling strain to complete.

His arms were really talking to him now, so Brad decided to do the running test next, and he got no complaint from Ratel, who was watching and taking notes from across the room. Now he was more in his element. He cranked the treadmill up to a nine-minute-mile pace, and found it fairly easy. He used the time to rest his weary arm muscles for the push-ups, which he thought would be easy as well. After the two-mile run, his arms felt pretty good, and he dropped down for push-ups but found he could only manage twenty-eight of them before his arms gave out.

“Dexter, you wouldn’t have been able to graduate from Air Force basic training with those numbers, let alone the Air Force Academy,” Ratel told him after he trotted around the blue mat and stood before him. “Your upper-body strength is pitiful. I thought you were a high-school football player — you must’ve been a place kicker.” In fact Brad was not just a high-school football place kicker but a punter, and could snap a football twenty yards. “We can work on that. But what bugs me the most about what you just did was your lousy stinking give-a-shit attitude.”

“Sir?”

“You were dogging it on the treadmill, Dexter,” Ratel said. “I get you’re a bike rider and in pretty good shape aerobics-wise, but it looked like you were just taking it easy on the treadmill. You set a lousy nine-minute-mile pace — that’s not even an ‘average’ score in basic training. I said I wanted your best time on a two-mile run, not your lackadaisical time. What’s your excuse?”

“I needed to rest my arms before finishing the tests,” Brad said. “I thought a nine-minute mile was pretty good for starters.” With every word he spoke, the little man’s tiny little eyes got angrier and angrier until they looked as if they were going to pop right out of his head. Brad knew there was only one allowable response: “Sorry, Chief. No excuse.”

“You’re damned right there’s no excuse, Dexter,” Ratel snarled. “I told you about respect. There’s nothing respectful about only doing things half-assed. You don’t show respect for me, and you sure as hell don’t show it for yourself either. It’s your first day here, and you haven’t showed me one damned thing I can respect you for. You came late, you were not ready to work out, and you took it easy on yourself. You’re not showing me squat, Dexter. One more session like this, and we might as well call this thing off. Get your stuff and get out of my sight.” Brad retrieved his gym bag by the bathroom, and by the time he came back, Ratel was gone.

Brad felt like crap as he mounted his bike and pedaled back to Cal Poly, and he was still in a somber mood as he made his way to Poly Canyon and Jodie Cavendish’s apartment. She gave him a big hug at the door, which he failed to return. “Uh-oh, someone’s cranky,” she observed. “C’mon in, have a glass of wine, and yabber at me.”

“Thanks, Jodie,” Brad said. “Sorry I smell like the bottom of my feet. I didn’t shower or change after I left the gym.”

“You’re welcome to use the shower here if you’d like, mate,” Jodie said with a wink. Brad didn’t notice the obvious suggestion. He made his way to one of the bar stools at the counter surrounding the kitchen, and she poured a glass of Chardonnay and set it before him. “But it doesn’t bother me. I like a bloke who smells like a bloke and not like a trough lollie.” She waited a few seconds, but Brad said nothing. “You’re not even going to ask what that is? Wow, you must’ve really come a gutser today. Tell me about it, love.”

“It’s not really that big a deal,” Brad said. “I show up for this workout session, a little late, but he said the first time was excusable. The instructor is this retired hard-core chief master sergeant. He has me do this fitness test. I thought I did okay, but he harangues me for holding back and being lazy. I thought I did okay. I guess I didn’t.”

“Well, there’s always next time,” Jodie said. “Fitness instructors are trained to shock and awe their students, and I think he was putting a Clayton’s on you. No worries, Brad — we both know you’re in good shape, except for that bruise on your head. How do you feel? Your bruise still looks spewin.’ Maybe you should skip these workouts until that goes away.”

Brad shrugged. “I told them I’d do it, so I guess I’ll keep on going until I pass out or my head explodes,” he said. The last thing he wanted to do was incur Wohl’s wrath for quitting right after day one. He sat back in his seat and directly looked at Jodie for the first time. “I’m sorry, Jodie. Enough about my new fitness instructor. How was your day?”

“Apples, mate,” Jodie replied. She leaned toward him across the kitchen counter and said in the usual conspiratorial whisper she used when she had something unexpected to say: “I did it, Brad.”

“Did what?” Brad asked. Then, studying her face and body language, he knew. “The inorganic nanotube structure…?”

“Synthesized,” Jodie said in a low voice, almost a whisper but a very excited one. “Right in our own lab at Cal Poly. Not just a few nanotubes, but millions. We were even able to create the first nantenna.”

“What?” Brad exclaimed. “Already?”

“Mate, the nanotubes practically mesh by themselves,” Jodie said. “They’re not yet mounted on the sol-gel substrate, we haven’t hooked it up to a collector or even taken it outside yet, but the first optical nantenna built out of inorganic nanotubes is sitting in the lab on the other side of this very campus… on my workbench! It’s even thinner and stronger than we predicted. I’m getting e-mails from scientists all over the world who want to get involved. It’s turning out to be one of the biggest advances in nanotechnology in years!”

“That’s incredible!” Brad exclaimed. He took her hands in his, and they exchanged a kiss across the kitchen counter. “Congratulations, Jodie! Why didn’t you call me?”

“You were already at your workout, and I didn’t want to disturb you,” she said. “Besides, I wanted to tell you in person, not over the phone.”

“That’s great news! We’re a shoo-in to get the lab space and grant money now!”

“I hope so,” Jodie said. “I might even qualify for a scholarship from Cal Poly — they wouldn’t want me going back to Australia taking a breakthrough like this with me, would they?”

“You’ll get a scholarship for sure, I know it,” Brad said. “Let’s go out and celebrate. Some place not too fancy — I still smell like a gym.”

A sly smile crept onto her face, and she glanced very briefly at the hallway to her bedroom, obviously signifying the way she wanted to celebrate. “I already have dinner started,” Jodie said. “It won’t be ready for about fifteen minutes.” She took his hand again and gave him a sly smile. “Maybe we can soap each other’s backs in the shower?”

Brad smiled broadly and looked into her eyes, but shook his head. “Jodie…”

“I know, I know,” she said. “I told you I was going to try again, and maybe again and again. She’s lucky to have you, mate.” She went to the refrigerator, retrieved the bottle of Chardonnay, and refilled his glass.

Brad heard his smartphone vibrate in his gym bag, retrieved it, and read the text message. “Well, how about that?” he remarked. “This is turning out to be a really great day after all.”

“What is it, love?”

“I got a room at Poly Canyon,” he said. Jodie wore an absolutely stunned expression. “Fifth floor at Aliso. I can move in tomorrow, and I can stay through the summer if we get the summer lab grant, and I can stay through my sophomore and junior years.”

“What?” Jodie exclaimed.

“Is that good?”

“Aliso is the most sought-after residence building at Cal Poly!” Jodie explained. “They’re closest to the shops and parking garage. And the top floors always fill up first because they have the best views of campus and the city! And they never allow students to stay at Poly Canyon over the summer, and you have to reapply every year and hope you keep your room. How in bloody hell did you manage that, mate?”

“I have no idea,” Brad lied — he was sure his father and probably President Martindale pulled some strings and made it happen. “Someone must’ve taken pity on me.”

“Well, good onya, mate,” Jodie said. “You got yourself a pozzy there.” She noticed Brad smiling at her Australian slang again, picked up a towel, snapped it at him, then went over and gave him a light kiss on the lips. “Stop perving me with those baby blues, mate, or I might just drag you into the sleep-out and make you forget all about what’s-her-name in Nevada.”