A Time for Patriots

When Renaldo didn’t answer right away, the agent named Brady smiled and nodded. “You couldn’t get to the old man… so you got to his teenage son ?” He chuckled. “That’s the Renaldo I know and love!”

“I didn’t go after the son — he was after me .”

“Then he must like older women,” Brady said. Renaldo scratched the tip of her nose with an upraised middle finger. “But the boy wasn’t flying with the father.”

“If the old man is involved with any extremist groups, the boy may be able to tell us,” Chastain said. “There’s no way McLanahan is going to let you near his son in here, and if we arrest him he’ll tell his son to keep quiet. You’ll have to approach the son some other time.”

“No problem,” Renaldo said. “In the meantime, I still want a crack at hunky Trooper Slotnick. Give me the letters from his boss and his union, and maybe he’ll talk to me about what McLanahan was doing out there.” Chastain handed her a folder with several faxes from different agencies and courts, ordering all personnel to cooperate with the FBI and Homeland Security. “At least maybe I can chat him up and find out more about him that I can use later.”

“They don’t call you the ‘Black Widow’ for nothing, Renaldo — you have your way with your victims, then eat them,” Brady said. “It’s fun to watch a person who loves what they do.”

“The one thing I hate more than smart-ass FBI agents like you, Brady, is extremists and terrorists,” Cassandra Renaldo said. “There are extremists nearby in this stinking-hot desert — I can smell them. Even if it turns out to be a genuine national hero like Patrick McLanahan, I’m going to make it my business to throw his ass into a supermax prison as fast as I possibly can.”

Thompson Federal Building, Reno, Nevada

The next day

Smoke still billowed out of the stricken Thompson Federal Building and in several other nearby buildings as well. Investigators and searchers wearing biohazard suits were still being kept three blocks away from the crash site, and other responders were being kept six blocks away because of lingering radioactivity.

In the early-morning stillness, a V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft flew over the crash site in airplane mode, then transitioned to helicopter mode and cruised slower over the area. Minutes later, as it made a third pass over the building at one hundred feet aboveground and thirty knots, the rear cargo ramp opened and two figures dropped out.

The figures landed upright about a half block from each other in front of the federal building. Each humanoid figure was twelve feet high, medium gray in color. Its trunk and shoulders were large, but its arms and legs were little more than hydraulic pistons, and its head was a dark low-profile dome with sensor arrays behind protective dielectric windows arrayed all around it. They each carried two large bags.

“CID One, on the ground,” Lieutenant Colonel Jason Richter, piloting the first robot, radioed. The robot, called a CID, or Cybernetic Infantry Device, was a manned robot that used advanced materials and systems to enable its pilot to do functions and tasks equal to a large armored fighting vehicle. “Check.”

“Two,” Charlie Turlock, piloting the second CID, responded. She looked up at the gaping hole in the building where the King Air had entered. “My God.”

“Radiation levels are lower than reported,” Richter said. “Our time on station should be about an hour. Let’s go.”

They approached the rear entrance to the building, and Jason kicked the reinforced door open. The security area was still intact, but he could see that the floors above had collapsed and the hallway beyond security was impassable. “Can’t go this way,” he radioed.

“From the outside, then?” Turlock suggested.

“You want to climb the outside just to show off,” Richter said.

“Damn right,” Turlock said. “Follow me.” On the outside of the building, she examined the best route up to the hole. Looping one pack on her back by its carrying straps, she merely reached up and, floor by floor like a ladder, climbed up the outside of the shattered building, punching her armored hands and feet through cracked walls and windows. On the ninth floor, which was the lower edge of the hole, she smashed through the walls and windows as easily as brushing away cobwebs and climbed inside.

“Looks like the plane punched almost all the way through the building, then collapsed a bunch of floors down below,” Turlock radioed. “Radiation levels are much higher up here — I might only have another thirty minutes.”

“Roger, then we can switch.”