Man Behind the Wheel (The Next Half Century Book 1)

by Steve Rzasa

  Rome fired. The spazzer’s flash lit up the room like lightning bolts, blinding him temporarily as his eyes struggled to adjust. Bursts sizzled against the wall.

  Alarms blared, like great whooping klaxons. The room was bathed in red.

  Aldo groaned from where he lay on the floor. Tacazon had shoved him through the column’s barrier.

  “Get up!” Rome dragged Aldo to his feet. “Come on!”

  They hurried out the door they’d accessed.

  “Wait!” Aldo grabbed his arm. “Tacazon went the other way.”

  The second Pike guardbot rumbled into the room from the same direction. [Halt. Permission to detain is authorized.]

  Rome slapped the door panel. Their exit sealed shut. Spazzer bursts echoed inside.

  “Oh. Right.”

  “At least the one you put to sleep is still out.” Rome nudged the robot with his shoe. “Got your map?”

  “Nope. Implant’s still syncing the data from the terminal. It takes up so much memory I can’t do anything other than let it compress for a good ten minutes.”

  Ten minutes and they’d both be locked up.

  Or dead.

  “Follow me, then.”

  They hurried down the halls, Rome scanning every wall and floor joint for the marks he’d noted before. There was a dent. A scratch. A stain.

  “Main corridor’s up ahead.” Aldo took the corner faster than Rome.

  He stopped.

  Lieutenant Bolduc advanced, holding a pistol in a two-handed grip. “Hands up! Get down on the floor, now! Hands behind your head! Do it!”

  Aldo dropped. He held up shaking fingers. He scooted back, so Rome could see him.

  “Don’t move! You will be shot!” The tips of Bolduc’s shoes peeked into view.

  Rome twisted and fired.

  Bolduc swept his gun arm up and jogged Rome’s aim off target. The spazzer burst rippled across Bolduc’s head.

  Rome elbowed into him, slamming the officer against the wall. “Aldo, go!”

  Bolduc kneed Rome in the side. Pain lanced through him and he lost his breath. Gasping, Rome brought his arm into Bolduc’s face. Bone cracked.

  Blood gushed from Bolduc’s nose. He twisted a foot behind Rome’s ankle. Rome’s arm struck the ground when he toppled. His spazzer clattered against the wall.

  Aldo punched Bolduc across the back of the head. The officer staggered, braced himself on a door frame—

  Rome fired.

  The burst rippled across Bolduc’s leg, and he collapsed, foot shaking.

  Rome upended the spazzer and slammed the stock across his jaw. He knocked the man out cold.

  “Geez.” Aldo helped Rome to his feet. “You could have just stunned him again.”

  “Charge was depleted. This thing doesn’t carry more than a couple shots.”

  They ran for the exit, only to find it sealed shut. Aldo used his implant to send a false signal to the access panel, which opened a large enough gap for a few seconds that the two of them squeezed through. Rome didn’t like the idea of being stuck between the door’s halves when they slid shut again.

  Outside, the alarms were even louder. Red lights illuminated the perimeter security bots as two headed Rome’s way. Over all the sound, an aircraft engine thundered.

  “Peregrine,” Aldo said.

  The lander was half the size of the Condor, with two turbofans perched on spindly outriggers. It wobbled on rippling waves of exhaust and banked east before dragging in the engines and extending swept wings. It was a tan insect by appearances, and the bubble canopy was polarized, leaving its occupant obscured.

  Rome had a good idea who it was. But he had bigger problems.

  The security gate was blocked, and human soldiers raced on foot toward them.

  “I don’t suppose you can shut down all the bots and spring the gate for us.”

  “Nope.” Aldo sounded as miserable as a man finding out he’d eaten his last scraps.

  “Okay then. Plan B.” Rome took the comp panel from his pocket. He swiped two commands.

  The Halcyon’s engine rumbled. It bounced over the curb of the parking area, churning up the well-kept grass with its off-road wheels. The two soldiers turned and raised their weapons, but the car was near enough they had to either dive aside or be run over. They chose the first option.

  The car’s passenger door opened and a blur of distorted light rolled out.

  One of the soldiers got up and aimed for the Halcyon, but the blur’s vaguely human shape knocked the weapon from his hands. He swung wildly, hitting nothing but air. The blur put him on the ground with a sweep of its legs and a blow to the ribs.

  The Halcyon skidded to a halt right in front of them.

  “Nice driving.” Aldo got in the passenger side.

  “Leave room so she can get back in!” Rome queued up the manual drive controls and tore out of the compound. He pulled up the signal on the dash. “Gabriela! We need a lift.”

  “On my way.”

  Rome skidded across the grass by the soldiers, slowing long enough for Aldo to open his door and turn his seat aside. The blurred shape, more distinguishable as a person up this close, leapt in.

  “Go!” she shouted.

  Rome barreled straight for the fence gate.

  The Halcyon bashed through it using the inflatable barrier, forming the perfect combination of battering ram and safety feature.

  Rome’s hands were tight on the steering column. “Thanks, Sara.”

  “My pleasure.” A high-pitched electronic noise whined and the blur resolved into a slender black suit. Sara removed the mask, hair matted to her face. “I’ve never used the cloak setting on these before.”

  “Glad to know they work.”

  Condor 33 hopped over the trees at the edge of base clearing. It dropped from the sky faster than Rome thought should be possible for a vehicle its size, but in a few seconds, it hovered a couple feet off the ground. The left landing ramp extended. Rome hit it going 40 and braked hard enough Aldo’s door thumped the interior wall of the bay.

  The Condor lunged skyward. Army drones scrambled in pursuit as wind rushed in the bay door.

  Gabriela glanced over her shoulder from the cockpit at the bedraggled party of three. “You guys okay?”

  “Yeah. Fine. What about our pursuit?” Rome checked the displays.

  “I lost them in the clouds. They’re drones, Rome—autonomous, yes, but only half a brain.” She smiled. “You get what you needed?”

  “And more.”

  “Where to?”

  “Did you snag that Peregrine lifting off?”

  “Sure did. It’s marked on my long-range.”

  Rome glared at the tiny red mark that dangled on the edge of Gabriela’s primary navigational display. “We’re going wherever he’s going.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  THEY TRACKED THE PEREGRINE EAST across the Lakes and into upstate New York. About ten miles over the Vermont border, it descended into the New England Power Field. Sunrise flooded the array with gold and pink.

  “Well, damn,” Gabriela shook her head. “He might as well have flown into a forest.”

  It must be bad if Gabriela even let the mildest profanity pass her lips. Rome couldn’t blame her—the Condor’s sensors showed mile after mile of churning wind turbines—those familiar, giant egg-beaters with solar strands strung between them like a massive spider’s web. They stood 300 feet tall, out here in the middle of the great forested nowhere, and Rome figured Tacazon must be a pilot of Gabriela’s caliber if he made it through without crashing.

  “All that power generation plays havoc with the sensors,” she said. “I can circle, see where he emerges, but we’d have to get very lucky.”

  Rome patted her shoulder. “Do the best you can. You’ve got this.”

  She smiled. “Thanks Rome.”

  “Well, this is all very heart-warming,” came Aldo’s muffled voice. “But if you both don’t mind moving your feet and shutting up a bit, I
’m trying to make sure we don’t drop from the sky.” He was under the console, head mere inches from Gabriela’s knees, with wires and modules swaying by his face. One of the nav backups, half the size of Rome’s fist and shaped like a smooth white box, bounced off his chin. “Ow!”

  Rome hunkered down. “Hurts?”

  “As in ‘ow?’ Yes!” Aldo gritted his teeth. Light flickered from a tiny laser torch. “There. Severed that one. Gabby, you getting any override commands from FTZ?”

  “They’re still coming in but your box in the network seems to be holding them from the nav systems.”

  “Seems to be?”

  “As in, I haven’t lost flight control and FTZ isn’t steering me to lockdown at their nearest facility, Aldrich.”

  “Okay, good. Gimme a bit more time and we should be able to block them out completely.”

  “Be gentle.”

  “No promises.” Aldo winked, even though Rome was the only one who could see it.

  Rome straightened and stretched his legs. It was early Friday morning. When was the last time he slept a full night? A few hours here and there weren’t cutting it. He could get his body’s toxins cleaned out at the end of this mess, but it was anybody’s guess whether he’d collapse from fatigue before then.

  “Here.” Aldo tossed something at him.

  Rome caught the object—a dull violet bar wrapped in transparent biodegradable wrap. He smelled the plum. “Fruit bar.”

  “Enough calories crammed in there to last you until you can eat a real meal. ’Cause I’m pretty sure we ran out of food last night, and I doubt we’re stopping at the nearest mart.”

  “Sharing from your stash?”

  Aldo shifted his legs. “My last one.”

  Rome unwrapped it, and took a bite. He swore he felt energy seep back into his body. “You’re a true hero, Mr. Burns.”

  “Go wrap a car around a tree. And you’re welcome.”

  Sara was buried in holo displays at Aldo’s seat. She swiped away images with a frown and pulled up new searches. “I think I’ve got something on Tacazon.”

  “He’s Reno.”

  “I know. I found a handful of public statements he’d made as base commander, and cross-referenced those with forums where Reno was prone to comment. He did have a verbal alternator, as we suspected, but a couple of hits matched within 95 percent certainty.”

  “Rome, the girl’s got some skills,” Aldo said from under the console. “Give her the bar if you’re gonna be ungrateful about it.”

  “Too late.” Rome swallowed the last piece. He was more ravenous than he thought. He brought up the bio from the base’s info page. “Colonel Martellan Tacazon, thirty-year veteran, U.S. Army. His background explains an awful lot about his involvement with the thieves. He’s served with an R&D branch at Aberdeen. His specialty is advanced battlefield technologies.”

  “The stealth suits and the truck,” Sara murmured. “Both must have been easy for him to access at his base, and with his experience, he’d know the limitations and advantage of the gear.”

  “There’s something else about the dear colonel I realized when we met him face to face. We pissed him off, personally.”

  “When?” Sara asked.

  “When Aldo and I arrested his daughter.”

  There was a thump from under Gabriela’s console. “Ow!” Aldo shimmied out, his face red. “We did what to who?”

  Rome dug back through their case files. He transferred the most recent stop from his implant into the console where Sara worked. The centerpiece was a still image of a glaring teen girl with fluorescent hair.

  “Oh, yeah. Offender and offensive.” Aldo squatted on the deck. “We dropped her off at Rapid City, right?”

  “Yeah. Last update I got, she was processed and transferred back to Grand Rapids. Daddy got the bill. And Daddy…” Rome overlaid her detainment record with the files on Colonel Tacazon.

  “More than a slight resemblance,” Gabriela noted.

  “This is why we’re the targets,” Rome said. “I wondered why whoever was behind the thefts picked us—sure, I have bad data in my past, but I’m hardly the only pursuit driver drawn from the trouble-making ranks. Tough luck on our part? No. Tacazon had us tagged because we brought in his daughter.”

  “Okay, makes sense to me. Like you said, man’s pissed at us.” Aldo replaced a couple panels underneath the console. “Next question is, who leaked him the intel on your background?”

  “I’ve got an angle on the problem. Sara, is there anything else you can tell us about your group that could point us to where they’re going next? With the damage we did to the truck’s docking collar, Cuellar would have had to find a place to make repairs. A place that didn’t ask questions.”

  Sara nodded. “There’s a few locations we knew along the last stretch of the Ninety. They were a last resort—we mostly operated in West and Central.”

  “Any way you can check for activity?”

  “Not with Jorge. But there’s a couple people I can ask without alerting him.” Sara called up a message input screen. “Gabriela, can I…”

  “Got you an outgoing data line,” Gabriela interjected. “I’d keep it brief, though, we don’t want anyone doubling back on us.” She sounded distant.

  “Gabriela,” Rome said. “We looking okay?”

  “Could be nothing. I had a hit on the sensors, but those solar panels down there are creating so many optical decoys,” she shrugged, “it made it look like the Peregrine was behind us.”

  “Keep at it.”

  “Rome, when we catch up with Tacazon, we’ve got a problem.” Aldo patted his implant. “The money exchange. That’s our proof.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Every transaction he’s made has been deleted from his implant by now. We can’t trace it unless we know the financial institution, or the receiver.” Sara’s face was pinched with emotion. “And none of us three had implants.”

  Rome had thought about seeing what was recovered from Robert Brand’s dead body on the highway by checking his contact at FTZ, but she was right. No implant, no data. He drummed his fingers on his leg. “Then we’re stuck, unless Tacazon confesses.”

  “Not necessarily,” Aldo said. “You can delete files from your implant, remove apps, even wipe the entire operating system for re-sale or trade-in, but not all implants kiss their data good-bye. The feds, for example—every FBI agent’s implant provided by the department is federal property. So they got a ghosted backup to keep track of everything going into or out of the implant. “

  “You can retrieve deleted data?”

  “Possibly. Maybe. Look, I’ve never seen it done, or even seen somebody who has one, but I heard it third-hand.”

  “If you think we can trust your source.”

  “My last source got us into a U.S. Army base.”

  “Fair enough. If we get ahold of Tacazon—”

  “It may have the same kind of cache. I’m betting on yes, seeing as how he’s a senior officer.”

  “We don’t need him, Rome,” Sara insisted. “We just need the implant.”

  Aldo winced.

  Rome also remembered her former interactions with implants. “You volunteering? We’ll need it to be quick.”

  “I’d be happy to.”

  “Good.” Rome’s implant buzzed, sending a tremor through his wrist. Could be a sensory mirage—why would anyone contact him? But it was a real message, text only.

  Freddie.

 

  Rome smiled. “I’ll be right back.”

  He headed for the Halcyon’s bay. Once there, he projected a keypad from the holo emitter of his implant onto his arm.

 

  Fear jolted Rome. For the first time since the warrants were executed and Gabriela came after them with Thad on their tail, he was frozen.

  The information’s compartmentalized. Only Cho has the details. But there’s a half dozen Condors already in the air, for the last 24 hours.>

  This whole time they were being hunted, even with Gabriela shielding them.

 

 

  Tense seconds passed before Freddie responded.

 

 

 

  Rome scowled. How did she know they were in the air?

  Gabriela.

  The Condor’s nav system.

  FTZ must have figured out what was going on before Aldo could cut them from the sensor net.

 

 

  “Rome! Rome, get your ass up here!”

  He got to Aldo’s side as two bright red pips flashed on the main navigational display. “Bogeys.”

  “Yeah. Pair of Condors, FTZ Central.” Aldo jerked a thumb at Gabriela, who had a headset in place and one hand pressed to her ear. “She’s on the signal with them.”

  “Shhhh!” Gabriela glared at him. “Condor Four Seven, this is Condor Three Three. Please send again. Signal is weak and variable.”

  “Three Three, we detect no loss of signal on our end.” The voice was female and stern as an irked Jocelyn. “Your ship has been implicated in abetting fugitives from FTZ custody. You will land your aircraft, shut down all power, and submit yourselves to custody.”

  Aldo pulled Rome aside. “Man, you have got to see this.”

  “Yeah, I saw—two Condors, coming up fast on our six.”

  “No, no, no. This.”

  Aldo’s implant shone a holo in his face. Rome grimaced and moved his nose out of the light stream. The pattern of the display looked familiar. “Hang on. Is that…?”

  “Yeah. The hijack signal Sara’s thief team used to override the nav systems in any vehicle around them. You know what that means.”

  “Jorge’s striking again.”

  “Maybe with Tacazon.”

  Rome glanced over his shoulder. Gabriela argued with the voice on the other end of the signal, faking her way through a malfunction. He touched her shoulder.