Walk the Wire

Chapter 65

“Any activity?” said Reel, who drove while Robie rode shotgun on the way down to Williston.

“Nothing so far. If we picked up a tail, they’re good.”

“Well, so far, they have been.”

“How much further?”

“Twenty clicks.”

“Read the service record on Bradley Daniels,” said Robie. “Sounds like a real patriot. Purple, Bronze, DFC, and the Airman’s Medal. Well over a hundred bombing missions in the European and Pacific Theaters. Shot down twice. Sat in a life raft with three other crew members for a month in the Pacific before they got picked up by a Navy destroyer. Then got right back in the saddle.”

“Like you said, a real patriot.”

Robie glanced in the side view and saw what he had seen for the last hour: nothing. And he wasn’t pleased by that. None of this felt right to him.

It was well after eleven by the time they got to the nursing home and past visiting hours, but their federal badges intimidated the night supervisor so much, he led them directly to Daniels’s room and then fled.

The old man was fast asleep in his bed. The light was off in his room, and Robie debated whether to turn it on. He finally opted not to.

They drew near the bed, one on each side.

“Mr. Daniels?” Reel said gently, before touching the man’s shoulder.

He started and his eyes opened, then closed, then opened and stayed that way.

“Who the hell are you?” he said, blinking rapidly and sitting up slightly.

Robie and Reel held out their creds and official badges. “We’re with the intel community,” said Robie.

“Turn on a damn light so I can see.”

Reel turned on the overhead light and Daniels scrutinized the badges and cred packs.

“We were told you couldn’t see very well,” said Robie.

“Yeah, well, I let people think that for my own reasons.”

“Okay.”

“These look real,” he finally said, handing them back.

“That’s because they are.”

“What do you want with me?”

“London AFS?” said Reel.

Daniels lay back on his pillow. “I already talked to the Feds. That big fellow. FBI. He took my hat, the son of a bitch.”

Reel reached into her jacket pocket, pulled out the hat, and handed it to him. “And he asked us to return it.”

Daniels looked pleased by this and said, “Well, at least he’s a man of his word.”

Robie said, “Ben Purdy? You told him more than you told Decker. We’ve been ordered here to get the rest of the story.”

“Why?”

“It’s become relevant again, sir,” said Reel.

“You don’t have to call me sir.”

“I do it out of respect. Purple, Bronze, Distinguished Flying Cross, Airman’s Medal? You more than earned it.”

Daniels blinked again and his eyes grew watery. “Everybody I served with is long since dead. My wife’s dead, so are my kids. Nobody left ’cept my grandkids and their kids, and they got their own lives. Sucks being old and alone. I just sit in here rotting away, waiting for the end.”

Reel glanced at Robie and said to Daniels, “You should be at a VA facility. You’d find a lot more in common with the folks there than you probably do here.”

Daniels looked excited. “You can make that happen?”

Robie said, “If that’s what you want, sir.”

They helped Daniels to sit up straighter.

“What do you want to know?”

“What exactly did you tell Ben Purdy?”

“I told him the truth. Everything.”

“Which was?” said Reel.

The power in the facility went out, every room, every inch.

Panicked cries were heard all over the nursing home.

Robie’s and Reel’s weapons came out. Reel covered the door and Robie closed the window curtains, after gently pressing Daniels flat onto the bed and whispering into his ear. “Stay right there and don’t move.”

Daniels gave one curt nod and then froze.

The sounds of footsteps could be heard rushing along the hall. Reel poked her head out and saw nurses and other personnel running around. The night supervisor raced up to the door and said, “We don’t know what happened. Everything just went black. And our backup generator didn’t kick on. And... and two big trucks just pulled up in front.”

“Call the cops, do it now. Tell them you have a mass shooting event going down.”

“We do?”

“You do. Go!”

He ran off, looking terrified.

Reel looked at Robie. “Two big trucks?”

“Who are they?” whispered Daniels from his bed.

“We got this, sir,” said Reel. She eyed the wheelchair and then looked at Robie. “This room is Ground Zero. They have to know.”

He nodded. They slipped over to the bed, gently lifted Daniels up, and placed him in the wheelchair. Robie pushed it while Reel led the way.

They reached the doorway; Reel poked her head out and gave the all clear. They turned and moved quickly to the left, away from the front doors.

Reel slipped another pistol out of her second holster. Both guns had laser scopes. She had already put on a pair of NV optics, as had Robie. The darkness to both of them was now represented as daylight. The problem was, their opponents would no doubt have the same technology.

Robie pushed the wheelchair with one hand and held his pistol in the other. They disappeared down the hallway.

Thirty seconds later the doors to the nursing home were forced open. A barrage of armed men did not storm in. There was a whizzing sound as the motorized stainless steel robot rolled along on tubeless tires. Its laser eye swept across the hall, comparing what it was seeing with the building layout stored in its database.

It turned right and accelerated. There it ran into the off-duty police officer that Decker had engaged to look after Daniels. His pistol was pointed at the robot, his flashlight beam reflecting off the thing’s metal sides.

“What the hell?” the man exclaimed.

He started to lower his weapon as the laser eye ran over him and held on the weapon. The next moment the guard looked down at his chest where a dart was now sticking out. His eyes rolled back in his head and he fell to the floor.

The robot whirled on, neatly navigating around the fallen man. It reached Daniels’s room. The laser hit all four corners of the room and then drew and held on the empty bed. The robot rolled forward and a tiny probe extended from its front side. This probe hit the sheets and ran its tiny metallic head over it.

Information flashed back to the sensor pack in the robot’s brain and confirmation was made. The probe receded but did not fully return to the cavity from which it had emerged. The robot turned and headed back out as the probe swiveled from side to side, drawing in myriad scents in its path, as it searched for only one, that of Brad Daniels.

It turned right and left and then stopped at a closed door. The probe twitched, like the nose on a scent hound, and a red light illuminated on the front of the robot’s steel wall. The robot retreated about a foot, a portal opened on the front of it, and stabilizers shot out from its sides and gripped the floor, like a construction crane would employ to keep upright and balanced.

The next moment the round fired from the portal smashed into the door and the force of the impact caused it to topple inward.

Through the smoke emerged Reel. She saw the robot, her gaze ran over its contours, she raised her weapon and placed three incendiary rounds with explosive kickers right into the thing’s hide, with one round impacting the machine’s laser eye.

The laser eye went out, the rounds performed as they were engineered, and the robot disappeared behind a thick cloud of smoke.

Reel heard the alarming screech of a timer and threw herself back into the room, right as the robot’s failsafe counter hit zero.

The blast collapsed the walls of the room Reel had leapt back into.

When the smoke cleared, sirens could be heard.

The two big trucks that had been parked in front of the nursing home, and from which the attack robot had been launched, were long gone.

Inside the room, a coughing and sputtering Robie and Reel slowly rose from the remains of the shattered room. They were alive only because they had taken cover behind a large metal storage unit standing against one wall.

As they gazed around, their collective eyes caught and held on Daniels. He was still in his wheelchair, but he hung limply to the side. His head was bleeding, and his breaths were shallow. A section of the ceiling had fallen on him.

Reel raced over to him and felt for his pulse. “Really weak.”

Robie cleared the debris away and pushed him out of the room and down the hall, toward the front entrance. Reel was right next to him.

“If he dies—” she began.

“—then we’ve lost,” Robie finished for her.