Ping.
All of the Tin Men in the Humvee shifted. Mavrides banged on the roof and hung his head down to look in through Danny’s window.
“Did you guys—“ Mavrides began.
“Yes,” Danny said quickly, glancing around to study the faces of the other robots. “Just seconds ago it happened again. You all felt it?”
Torres and Birnbaum agreed that they had.
“What the hell is it?” Kate asked.
Ping.
Danny closed his eyes, trying to see and feel the echo of the noise.
“I don’t hear anything,” Alexa Day said.
He looked at her and then at Khan, whose eyes were slitted like a snake’s as he studied them all with keen interest.
“It’s not audible,” Danny said. “It’s…internal. A signal.”
“It’s directional, too,” Kate replied. “Can’t you feel it? Due west, I’d say.”
“And maybe slightly north,” Lahiri said.
Danny nodded. That felt right to him. He turned to glance back at Kate again and paused, staring at Travaglini, who had been driving. Behind the wheel, Trav wore the curious smile of someone who had just received a surprise gift and was trying to figure out what it was before he unwrapped it.
“What’s with the dreamy look?” Danny asked. “You know something we don’t?”
Trav glanced at him. “Don’t they teach you kids anything these days?”
Ping.
Kate punched the back of his seat. “If you know what this is, old man, you’d better spit it out.”
Trav slowed the TSV at an intersection where a tractor-trailer partially blocked the right turn. As he maneuvered around the dead truck, Israeli men and women began to emerge from buildings to stare, drawn by the sound of a working engine. Down a narrow alley, Danny saw a group of people cooking at a gas grill and wondered how long before all the uncured meat in Haifa went bad.
“It’s us,” Trav said.
“What do you mean, ‘us?’” Danny demanded.
“Well, not us us. Not our platoon. What you’re hearing is a Remote Infantry retrieval beacon.”
“Holy shit,” Torres said. “I forgot all about the beacons.”
Ping.
Danny stared at Trav. “I don’t even know what you two are talking about. Whatever emergency comms we have were burnt out by the EMP. And I don’t remember anything about a beacon.”
“I remember now,” Kate said. “In training, they said the beacons were outmoded. Improvements in satellite systems made tracking damaged or stolen bots much simpler—“
“Exactly,” Trav said. “But the bots all still have a retrieval beacon. We’ve lost all satellite-based comms but the beacons are radio transmissions and the transmitters are shielded. We’re picking up—“
Ping.
“—the signal. I don’t know how many Tin Men were stationed in Haifa, but at least one of them was smart enough to trigger his beacon. They need help.”
Birnbaum scoffed. “We all need help.”
“Go,” Kate said, ignoring her. “Maybe they need our help and maybe they’re just using the beacon to let friendly forces know they’re still alive. Either way, we can use all the reinforcements we can get. Head toward the signal, Trav.”
“Already on it.”
As Trav drove northwest, Danny glanced back at Hanif Khan. The anarchist sat quietly, his gaze distant and impassive. He had already indicated that there were squads of Bot Killers pretty much everywhere the Tin Men had been deployed. It made Danny wonder if the son of a bitch was smiling inside. If the beacon turned out to be a distress call, it was a sure bet that Bot Killers were causing that distress. It could be that they were driving into even more trouble than they’d already escaped.
But Tin Men were in trouble. His brothers and sisters in the USARIC, whose bodies were lying in canisters back at the Hump. That meant the President would have to wait. Kate’s father would have to wait. Returning to their own flesh would have to wait.
Ping.
“Trav,” Danny said. “Drive faster.”
Aimee stared at North, hate filling her belly as Major Zander’s words echoed in her head.
She spun on the major. “You think this is me? That I sabotaged those Remote Combat Stations? Killed those people?”
The unfamiliar security officer took a step toward her, hand hovering over his sidearm. “Come with me, please,” he said.
Taking a step back, Aimee pointed at North. “This is him. The hangover from this morning was bullshit, a way to keep him from being stuck in his bot with the rest of his platoon. All of his fucking grief is theatre—“
Kenny Wheeler sniffed. “That’s what he said you would say.”
“Of course it’s what I’d say! It’s the truth. And it’s not just what he did to his platoon or sabotaging those canisters. North made a big show of wanting to help and then he ran off to Staging Area Thirteen and tried to bring shut down the defensive grid and open the doors. Whoever’s out there, he’s been working with them from the beginning—“
“That’s enough!” Major Zander snapped.
His voice echoed off the sterile walls. Other soldiers along the catwalk froze and turned to watch from yards away. Aimee held her breath and in those few seconds, when they all seemed paralyzed, fear began to replace the fury that had been burning in her gut.
“How can you…?” she started. But there was no way to sum it up.
Major Zander held up a hand and the security officer backed off. Zander stepped toward her, searching her face with a dark curiosity.
“My people just tracked back the access code used to shut down those canisters in Staging Area Twelve. Your code, Bell.”
Her mouth opened. “Sir, I…Why would anyone be that stupid? That’s my platoon. I’m supposed to look after them—“
North grunted. “You looked after them all right.”
His eyes were bright with a predatory glint.
Aimee felt a reflexive savagery blossom in her own heart. A slow smile grew on her face and she shook her head. How could North think this would work? The only thing she could imagine was that he was trying to buy time. If he could divert suspicion to her for even a few minutes, maybe he thought he could try again. All he needed to do for his betrayal to be complete would be to get the doors open and the elevators working. Then it wouldn’t matter who knew about his treachery.
“This is stupid,” she said, exhaling before she stood at attention in front of Major Zander. “Sir, the video feed from Staging Area Thirteen will show I’m telling the truth. Warrant Officer Choudhry should have that feed ready for viewing immediately. Sounds to me as if you’re also going to find my access code was used to start the process of bringing us out of lockdown. I caught North on camera doing just that, hacked into the system and stopped him. Blocked him out. That’s what brought him running to you.”
Major Zander cocked his head as if he’d grown hard of hearing.
“You hacked the system?”
She straightened even further. “Yes, sir. And I’ll accept whatever consequences that brings. It was the only way—“
“Major, this is…” North sputtered. “Nobody can hack this system. It was designed by the Pentagon.”
“That’s not a persuasive argument, Private,” Zander said. His body language shifted slightly, but enough to let Aimee know that the major didn’t trust North anymore. That he didn’t know who to trust.
“I’m not even a tech,” North said. “I wouldn’t know where to begin.” “Corporal,” Major Zander said, “I want both of them brought to the stockade for questioning. If either of them attempts to resist that order, you are authorized to shoot.”
Wheeler called along the catwalk to two others, who rushed over at his summons. Aimee no longer smiled, but she felt a strange calm enfold her. She would be happy to spend a couple of hours in the stockade if it meant the truth coming to light.
The glint in North’s eyes turned desperate, bu
t she wondered if anyone else could see it.
“Major, wait,” North said. “We don’t know what other harm she’s done. I can—“
The corporal unholstered his weapon and held it at his side, aimed loosely at the floor.
“Time to go, Private North,” Wheeler said, and then glanced at Aimee. “You, too.”
Aimee stared at North, held her chin high. It was that, or try to kill him with her bare hands, and that wouldn’t help anything. North would get what was coming to him.
“Let’s go,” one of the other security officers said.
Aimee nodded and began to walk.
“Gladly,” she said, and then back at Major Zander. “Don’t be long. He might not be the only one.”
~18~
Alexa sat baking in the sun that streamed through the Humvee’s broken windows. Her father’s body lay in the back of the vehicle, wrapped up tightly, just his feet and some of his hair visible at either end. She knew that he was gone, and yet somehow his corpse had a dreadful presence, a weight that she had never felt from anyone still living.
For a short time after his death she had stopped listening to the conversations around her. Slowly she came to realize that listening might be the only thing keeping her from joining her father in the back of the TSV. Or perhaps not even there—if she died, she thought the Tin Men might just dig them both a grave and leave them behind the way they left behind the shattered pieces of the robots who’d been destroyed. Alexa had wanted to ask them about that, to remind them that while their bodies might be back at the Hump, their minds were here inside these robots. Did that mean the ruined bots ought to be brought home, or even buried in roadside graves out of respect?
She didn’t know the answers—she might be only a year or two younger than some of these soldiers had been when they’d enlisted, but she felt like a child in their presence. The last thing she would do would be to question their dedication to their fellow soldiers.
Instead she kept her mouth shut and studied them. Learned their names and their demeanors. Tried to figure out which of them would be most likely to save her life, and which would be most likely to get her killed. Danny and Kate seemed her best bet, so it troubled Alexa when Trav pulled the Humvee-TSV up in front of a concrete and glass tower and killed the engine, only to have Danny and Kate be the first to exit the vehicle.
Danny glanced through his open door, robot eyes pinning her in her seat.
“Stay put,” he said.
“Where are we?” she asked.
Birnbaum had started to climb out of the vehicle as well. “Bank Yahav, it says.”
Then the Tin Men were talking amongst themselves and she was forgotten. They all exited the TSV except for Trav—who stayed behind the wheel—and Torres, whose task it was to guard Hanif Khan. Alexa could feel the weight of Khan’s gaze upon the back of her head. When he spoke, his voice seemed to slink into her thoughts and cloud her mind, and his eyes could have the same effect. Someone was going to kill Khan eventually; all she hoped was that it would be sooner rather than later.
“Ask yourself this,” he whispered. “You see me as the villain, but where are the heroes?”
Alexa heard his grunt and the slap of a blow and glanced back to see that Torres had just elbowed Khan in the jaw. The anarchist’s eyes were lit with a fury he normally kept hidden and he spit a gob of blood onto the floor before shooting a murderous glance at Torres.
“Right now, Private Torres is my hero,” Alexa said.
She slid over to the broken window facing the bank building. The main building had a rounded façade and a V-shaped fan of glass windows, but the entrance was through an ugly little two-story structure that jutted from the front. Once there had no doubt been a beehive of activity inside that building, but now it was as dead as the abandoned cars on the road.
“—we sure the signal is coming from inside?” Danny asked.
Kate drew her weapon. “I can feel it. So can the rest of you.”
“And we’re sure it’s not some kind of trap?” Birnbaum asked.
“Khan’s assholes are behind us,” Kate said. “Whatever happened here might have been an ambush, but it wasn’t our ambush.”
“Still could be a trap,” Danny said.
“Yeah, it could,” Kate replied. She turned and surveyed the rest of her squad. “Hawkins, Mavrides, and Lahiri, stay with the transport. Birnbaum and Kelso are with me. How’s everyone for ammunition?”
“Getting low,” Mavrides said.
“Me, too,” Birnbaum echoed.
“All right,” Kate said. “When we’re done here, everyone reload. There are two cases of shells in the back of the TSV. Top off, just in case we have to leave them behind.”
Alexa leaned into the front seat and tapped Trav on the shoulder. “Weird question, I know. But I’ve never seen one of you guys reload. What’s up with that?”
Trav glanced in the rearview mirror. “Half the weight of the bot is ammunition. We start the day with thousands of rounds. Every time I holster my sidearm, the autoloader refills it from internal magazines.”
“You’re screwing with me,” Alexa muttered.
“Nope.”
She sat back against her seat, thinking about that. Thousands of rounds without having to reload. “Wow.”
The Humvee tilted as Mavrides jumped down from the roof. Hawkins stayed on top of the vehicle, keeping watch as Mavrides and Lahiri took up posts at either end of the transport with their weapons drawn.
Alexa watched Danny, Kate, and Birnbaum enter the bank through the shattered front door, crunching broken glass underfoot as they moved inside and vanished into the shadows there. She had to fight the urge to go in after them. Anything could happen in there.
Anything could happen out here, she reminded herself. But then again there were five Tin Men in and around the TSV, so she comforted herself with those odds. Five Tin Men guarding a homicidal anarchist and a seventeen-year-old American girl. Arthur Day’s status as ambassador didn’t seem to matter much anymore. Now he was just the dead father of a grieving girl.
“Company,” Hawkins said from the roof.
Alexa whipped around and stared out the unbroken window: a woman had emerged from a building across the street. Several other people followed her, all glancing around warily. A thirtyish man whose yarmulke and prayer shawl made her think he was a rabbi came walking around a corner further along the street. Half a dozen others followed him, including two in the uniforms of local police.
“That’s close enough, folks,” Lahiri said, moving toward the civilians and pausing about five feet from the Humvee-TSV. “Keep your distance.”
“We want answers!” one of the cops shouted.
The rabbi held up a hand to hush him but kept walking. Despite Lahiri’s warning, the others took their cue from the rabbi and continued to advance.
“More coming from the south,” Hawkins announced from his perch.
“My friend is correct,” the rabbi said, walking slowly toward the vehicle with his hands raised at his sides, palms upward to show he held no weapon. “We have questions and we believe that you people can answer them.”
“People?” a woman scoffed.
Alexa took hold of the door latch. Torres reached up from the seat behind her and clamped a hand on her shoulder, locking her into place.
“Stay where you are, kid. We’re not here to fix anything,” Torres said.
“Nothing we could fix,” Trav warned from the driver’s seat.
Alexa watched as more people appeared. Those who had seen the Humvee pass by or heard its rumble must had told others and now a crowd had begun to form. She studied the faces of the Israelis in the street, expressions full of sadness and confusion and fear, and she wanted to speak to them. The Tin Men were human inside—their minds, at least—but in the eyes of the rabbi and the worried features of an old woman who seemed alone even in the crowd, Alexa saw something more familiar. These people would feel her grief. They would understand
.
“Keep your distance!” Lahiri said again.
“What’s happened?” the rabbi demanded. “Your vehicle is the only one we’ve seen that’s running. Are others on the way? Is help coming?”
For several seconds, the Tin Men made no reply. Alexa cringed at those few seconds of silence.
“I’m sure help will come,” Hawkins said. “But I can’t tell you when. This trouble is widespread. Look after each other.”
“Bullshit!” the second police officer said. His face reddened and somehow underlined his obvious youth. Alexa thought he couldn’t have been more than twenty-one. “Tell us what you know!”
“We’re not your enemy!” Lahiri shouted at them.
“Maybe not,” the rabbi called back, “but are you our friends?”
“Trav,” Torres said from the back seat. “Look at Mavrides.”
Alexa shifted around to get a decent view of Mavrides, who was still in front of the Humvee. He had begun to pace. The robot’s facial expression was flat, impossible to read, but he kept twitching his head and now Alexa could hear his voice, muttering low to himself.
“What’s he saying?” she asked.
“I can’t make it out,” Trav replied.
Behind Alexa, Hanif Khan laughed.
The crowd began to close in, more of them shouting questions at Hawkins and Lahiri, who had been the ones to reply. Alexa slid down in her seat, feeling vulnerable, suddenly afraid of the people who only moments ago she had thought would understand her.
“Give us the vehicle!” a man shouted.
The first cop echoed him and then a dozen voices more, turning it into a chant. Desperation drove them. Alexa knew they were just afraid, the same as she, but their need frightened her.
Mavrides started to scream. “Back off, motherfuckers! Stand back or I swear to God—“
Almost as one, the crowd reared away from him. Mavrides waved his weapon and the crowd shrank back further. But then Alexa saw the rabbi’s blue eyes harden and his chin rise in righteous defiance, and he stepped forward.
“You can swear to God all you like, soldier,” the rabbi said. “But He would tell you to help us—“
Tin Men Page 23
