Tin Men

by Christopher Golden

  Powers took a second to place her and she saw the glint of recognition when he realized that she was assigned to Staging Area 12. He didn’t ask her why she hadn’t been paying attention or why so many other techs had responded more quickly to the alarm. Later, Aimee would feel grateful for that.

  “Oxygen deprivation,” he said, and no two words had ever made less sense or made her feel so sick.

  “No, no. The systems were all online and functioning. I was here not much more than an hour ago,” she said. “It all checked out. The EMP didn’t even interrupt—“

  “It wasn’t the EMP,” Powers said. “Someone shut down life support to the first two rows. With everyone on inventory, the area was clear for at least thirty minutes. A sentry came through and saw red lights blinking.”

  Aimee glanced around, trying to figure out whose canisters were on either side of her. Corcoran and Hawkins, and their lights glowed green, so they were safe. She hadn’t been on the job long enough to get to know every member of the platoon—there wasn’t enough one-on-one conversation for her to have matched all of the names with the faces yet—but she’d been getting better.

  “Two rows,” she said. “Twelve casualties.”

  “Four.”

  Aimee went numb. “Four rows?”

  “Nah, nah. Two rows, four casualties. When we can get ‘em all back, could be some of the others have some brain damage, but the sentry got the system back online fast enough to save most of their lives.”

  Four, Aimee thought. Okay, four. They were dead—four soldiers with people out there worrying about them, people who loved them—but somehow four seemed better than twelve.

  “Who’d we lose?” she asked.

  “Sergeant Morello, for one,” Powers said, shaking his head. “I knew that guy. A hardass, but the kind I was proud to serve with. Other names were Rawlins and Kasturi. I don’t know the fourth one.”

  Morello she knew. And Kasturi—funny, amiable woman. She couldn’t dredge up a face to match Rawlins’ name and she didn’t want to.

  “Thanks,” she said, patting Powers on the arm.

  She turned and headed through the maze of canisters toward where a tech had called out that he’d found another one. Aimee assumed that was the fourth one, the name Powers couldn’t remember. As she made her way toward the tall redhead, she passed between the two rows that had been affected by the shutdown, the hum of working machinery providing cold comfort.

  Shutdown? Bullshit, it’s pure sabotage.

  The faces visible through the canister lids were half-covered by the headpieces the Tin Men wore, so their features were hard to make out. The display screens at the foot of each unit, however, clearly identified each of the soldiers from Platoon A whose life support had been temporarily offline, and she counted them down in her head as she walked by. Torres. Janisch. Guzzo. Mavrides. Prosky.

  Not Travaglini, Aimee thought. His canister was in the next row. It made her feel very small and very cruel to be so focused on one soldier—a guy who had never seemed to notice her schoolgirl crush—but she couldn’t help the relief she felt.

  Eliopoulos. McKelvie. Wade.

  “This your platoon?” the redhead asked.

  Aimee nodded. Not that she served in that platoon—the two techs understood each other—but that they were her charges.

  “Who’s that last one? The one you just found?”

  The redhead glanced back at the canister she’d left behind. “Private Hartschorn, it says. E. Hartschorn. Poor bastard. No body to come home to. I wonder what happens to him now.”

  Aimee swallowed hard. Hartschorn. He’d always had a smile for her, a kind of lopsided grin that went well with the scruffy bristle of his hair and made him look like somebody’s kid brother. Only now somebody’s kid brother was dead.

  “That’s always the question, isn’t it?” Aimee said. “What happens to us now?”

  Her eyes burned as she turned away. Others had arrived while she had moved amongst the canisters and she saw Major Zander speaking to the officer who had been with the sentries when Aimee had arrived. The major’s features were grim, as if his face were shrouded in shadows that had no source.

  The major wouldn’t blame her, not when she had been following his orders. He would be too busy worrying about them all surviving inside the Hump and the battle raging outside, and trying to figure out who had just killed four members of Platoon A. There would be questions, but he would want her to keep searching for contact. His priorities were clear. The only person who would condemn her for these deaths was herself.

  Sabotage, she thought again as she walked back to the stairs. She climbed the steps to the catwalk and almost bumped into Private North.

  “Oh, hey,” she said.

  His eyes were full of such pain that she forgot her own. North’s survivor’s guilt had been bad enough already, and now this?

  “Who the hell would do it?” he asked her.

  So he knew. One of the sentries had probably laid it out for him.

  “I’m sorry?” she said.

  “Who did we lose?”

  Aimee briefed him; she didn’t see any reason not to level with the guy. Her patience with any sort of bullshit or dissembling had gone extinct.

  “You asked who would do it,” Aimee said, leaning against the railing as she gazed into North’s blue eyes. “But don’t you think the real question is ‘why?’ Nobody snapped and did this. We’re all under pressure, but this wasn’t somebody going nuts and spraying bullets everywhere. This had purpose. It took patience and timing.”

  North paled. “Someone working with the anarchists? An inside man?”

  “Or woman.”

  “Someone who knew exactly what to do,” North said, those blue eyes narrowing. “Maybe a tech.”

  He’d wanted to say maybe one of you—she could see it in his expression—and she was glad he hadn’t.

  “Maybe,” she said, glancing over her shoulder, her eyes tracking Powers and then the redhead, wondering. North definitely had a point.

  “We’ve got to talk to the major,” North said.

  Aimee studied the grief and fury in his face and recognized it as a mirror to her own. He was bereft, and she felt the loss.

  “You think Major Zander hasn’t thought of all this?” she asked.

  North gripped the railing and gazed out across Staging Area 12. She felt sure he was focused on the canisters whose lights were glowing red.

  “Let’s make sure he has,” North said. “And then let’s you and me have a little chat and see if we come up with any theories about which motherfucker I’m going to have to kill.”

  ~14~

  In the hotel kitchen, Chapel and the President’s other Tin Men made short work of the killers who’d been lying in wait. Secret Service agents clustered around President Matheson as bullets flew, ricocheting off oven hoods and shattering chinaware. Felix found himself between two of the aides, Maggie and Jun, and he made sure to keep pace with them because the only people behind him were the Russian president and his bodyguard, and they were dangerous variables.

  A Secret Service agent cried out in pain as a bullet punched through his chest. Maggie faltered as blood spattered her and she dropped to her knees behind a metal table, afraid to continue. Jun kept running but Felix crouched beside her.

  “Maggie, please.”

  Up ahead, Matheson and his protectors had kept going. The assassins were all dead, or at least down and dying.

  “If we’re left behind,” he said, “we’re as good as dead.”

  Rostov shoved Felix out of the way, grabbed Maggie’s arm and hauled her to her feet. His iron eyes were alight with rage.

  “Then we must not be left behind,” the Russian president said.

  Rostov hurried Maggie along. Felix glanced once at the Secret Service man who lay on the floor just a few feet away, dying from a sucking chest wound, and knew he didn’t want that to be him. Rostov’s bodyguard passed by and Felix knew he was out of time
. He careened across the rest of the kitchen, hurrying through a short hallway to a heavy metal door that hung open.

  Outside in the sunshine the air thundered with gunfire. Felix pursued the others across a narrow access road to the concrete shadows of a three-story parking garage. As he scrambled over a low cement wall, the bot he knew as Marquez came back for him.

  “Move it, Professor,” Marquez said.

  Breathing hard, Felix only nodded. I’m moving it, he thought. Trust me, soldier. I am moving it as fast as I can.

  Bullets chinked off the outside of the parking garage just as he ran into the shade of its upper floors, blowing concrete divots across the floor and at cars. Marquez didn’t even bother returning fire—they were out of range now.

  Up ahead, Chapel and Brigham led the way to a central stairwell and they all raced down single file. Then they were rushing along a sub-level of the parking garage, the Tin Men’s guidelights illuminating their path, and Felix realized they were underground. He breathed, happy that the anarchists outside could not shoot through the concrete at them. But he knew there might be enemies waiting down here.

  “You!” Rostov growled, pushing past Syd, still carrying a gun in his hand. “We’re not under fire now, Matheson. You’re going to answer for—“

  Syd grabbed Rostov by the wrist and spun him around, disarmed him and slammed him to the concrete floor, his face inches from an oil smear. Rostov’s bodyguard began to shout in Russian and leveled his weapon at the Secret Service agent on top of his president. Marquez shoved Felix out of the way and took aim. The four remaining Secret Service agents pointed their guns at the bodyguard, each with a two-handed clutch, not intending to miss.

  Chapel and Bingham shielded the president even as they aimed at the bodyguard, but President Matheson pushed between them. Felix thought Matheson would tell them to lower their weapons, but he did not do that.

  Instead, Matheson pointed at the bodyguard. “If he even exhales, drop him.”

  “Mr. President,” Felix said warily.

  Matheson dropped to one knee beside Rostov, who was face first on the concrete, held there by Syd, a slender but powerful woman with shoulder-length blond hair, the only Secret Service agent not wearing a tie.

  “What do you know, Kazimir?” Matheson asked. “You’re so sure it’s my fault…America’s fault…but you’re too damn sure. If we’re going to survive, it’s going to be together. So tell me what you know.”

  Matheson tapped Syd’s shoulder. “Sydney? Let President Rostov up, please.” He glanced around, then pointed at the bodyguard. “But my instructions still stand regarding that guy.”

  Rostov stared at him, granite face etched with contempt. After a second or two, he gestured to his bodyguard and the man lowered his weapon. Syd took a step further back from Rostov and lowered her own weapon. She knelt to pick up Rostov’s gun but did not return it.

  “Perhaps you are not solely to blame,” Rostov said, raising his chin. “Several years ago, we heard whispers through back channels of a small, anonymous anarchist group who claimed to have a plan to free the world of American influence. There was some talk even then of chaos and one mention of what they only called ‘the Pulse.’”

  Maggie took Jun’s hand.

  “You did nothing,” President Matheson stared, eyes narrowed with fury.

  “What could he have done?” Felix said, and all eyes turned to him. He continued nervously. “Mr. President, do you have any idea how many threats against the United States are overheard by the Russian intelligence services in a single year? Hundreds, at least. In the past decade, that number has to have gone up exponentially, year after year, as resentment built.”

  Matheson hesitated. Breathed in and breathed out. “I’ll bear the weight of my part in the precipitation of all this. That’s going to haunt me for the rest of my life.”

  Chapel stepped up beside him. “All due respect, sir, that won’t be long if we don’t move our asses.”

  Matheson and Rostov stared at each other for another second or two. Practical men, Felix thought. The two presidents understood one another better than perhaps anyone else in the world could have. Matheson reached out and Syd handed him the Russian president’s gun, which he then returned to Rostov.

  “Hold our fight for another day?” Matheson asked.

  Rostov nodded. “If we still live in the morning, we can decide if we want to kill each other.”

  The Tin Men heading for Athens needed speed. The Pulse had struck just before nine o’clock and they had not hit the road out of Damascus until after one p.m. And what had the world leaders in Athens been doing in that four and a half hours? Danny figured many of them had been busy dying.

  Danny drove the Humvee-TSV along a narrow, rutted highway, kept his hands tight on the steering wheel, and did his damnedest to keep his mouth shut about what they might find waiting for them in Athens. To Kate, Peter Matheson wasn’t just the president, he was her father’s best chance at survival.

  Any overland route to Athens would take forever, even if they weren’t in the midst of a slow-motion apocalypse. The immediate catastrophes caused by the EMP were just the beginning. The fallout would be so much worse, and the longer they took to reach their destination the more of that chaos they would have to travel through, which meant a sea journey across the Mediterranean from Haifa to the west coast of Greece, as close to Athens as they could get.

  First things first, Danny thought. The road.

  Before the Pulse, there would have been no debate about what route to take from Damascus to Haifa. South on Highway 15 toward Dara, then west through Irbid and all the way into Israel until the road curved northward again. A hundred and sixty miles, give or take, maybe three hours at the speed limit. But the Pulse had canceled anything remotely resembling a speed limit and they didn’t have three hours.

  They took Highway 7 to the southwest. Danny and Kate up front. Prosky, Trav, and Hartschorn on the roof. Hawkins, Mavrides, Birnbaum, Torres, and Lahiri in back with Ambassador Day, his daughter, and the fucking anarchist. Hanif Khan had been eager to talk earlier to gloat, but from the second he realized they were going to jam him into the back of the TSV and haul ass in an attempt to save the President’s life, he’d been dead quiet. Danny liked that.

  Ten robot soldiers, a middle-aged diplomat and his seventeen-year-old daughter, and a killer who’d helped engineer the end of civilization, all cooped up in an oversized black troop-size Humvee. It sounded like the beginning of an odd joke, but Danny wasn’t laughing.

  Inside the city perimeter of Damascus, the broken-down cars and trucks were a problem. Several times Prosky and Hartschorn had to run ahead and shove vehicles off the road. People heard the engine and hurried into the street or to their windows. Some cheered and others shot at them. Children raced beside the Humvee for a block before they were left behind. Old women wept and reached yearning hands toward the Humvee, searching not so much for aid as answers. That was how Danny saw it, anyway.

  And what were the answers, anyway? Did they matter? To him, the only answer that meant anything was, it’s over, folks. You’re on your own. Rebuild the best you can and protect your stuff because someone will try to take it away.

  “Next time, do better,” Danny said quietly as he drove, just to hear his own voice.

  “What’s that?” Kate asked.

  He didn’t repeat himself. He didn’t need her to remind him there might not be a next time.

  “You sure this trimaran is going to be there?” she asked.

  The TSV approached a tractor-trailer that had died in the road. At the sound of their engine, the driver emerged, hanging halfway out the truck’s open door and waving to them in a frenzied combination of panic and relief. He thought he’d been rescued, and Danny refused to look at the trucker’s face as he accelerated around the vehicle, leaving the man baking in the desert. The man had made it five hours, waiting for help to come. How long before he realized help was not coming?

  �
��We talked about this,” Danny said. “Of all the ports we might target, Haifa’s most likely to have a hydroptere, maybe more than one. With the wealth that’s migrated to that city in the last fifteen years, it’s our best shot.”

  Kate glanced out the window. From this angle, she looked like any other robot, but he could see just a fragment of the pitchfork on her cheek.

  “What if there isn’t one?” she asked. “The people who own those boats…you really think they wouldn’t already have taken off in them?”

  Danny narrowed his eyes against the sun glaring through the windshield. “Kate, you’ve got to stop—“

  “I mean, sure, some of those guys are probably dead,” she went on. “Maybe they’re rich assholes who don’t live anywhere near the harbor. Could be it hasn’t occurred to them yet or maybe they’re afraid of just sailing off into the sunset without knowing what’s waiting for them wherever they make port. They’ve gotta be confused just like everyone else.”

  Danny reached out for her hand, knowing that one of the others might get a glimpse between the seats but not caring. He took her hand, felt her fingers wrap around his, and squeezed.

  “We’ll take the fastest boat we can find,” he said. “It’s the best we can do.”

  Kate let go of his hand, brushed it away. She shot him a sidelong glance with a bitter glint. “If I’m alone out here, Kelso, let’s not pretend otherwise. If the only one I can count on is me, it’s important I remember that.”

  Danny couldn’t argue with her. To do so would have implied a promise he could not bring himself to make. He felt himself splintering inside. Why hadn’t he ever felt this connection with her before? They’d shared friendship, yes, and attraction, but now he felt as if they were becoming tethered, and it troubled him deeply. He would back her up in combat, but could he give her any more than that?