A Time for Patriots

He stood up, touched Brad’s face, then laid him back on his pillow. To Dobson, he said, “Can you arrange protection for Brad, Tim?”

“U.S. Marshals should be arriving in a few hours,” Dobson said. “I can stay with him until they get here. The vice president wants to move him to—”

“We’re not leaving,” Patrick said. “We’re going hunting.” He pulled out his cell phone and started making calls.

Joint Air Base Battle Mountain

That night

Brady and Renaldo were seated at the desk in the FBI hangar, watching the latest images on their laptops being transmitted from the FBI agents conducting video and photographic surveillance of the Knights of the True Republic’s compound; Chastain was in the communications room taking a nap. Brady heard a rattle on the main hangar door. “What was that?” he asked.

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

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

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

“What the hell are you doing?”

Brady shouted. “Who is that in there?”

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

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

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

… as Patrick McLanahan stepped through the newly created opening.

“McLanahan!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Like hell I will!”