A Time for Patriots

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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