Authors: Robert Cain
"Right.”
Rod’s head cocked slightly to one side, a human mannerism he was still learning to imitate. Somewhere at the back of his mind, separated from that part of his brain used to communicate with the humans, images— photographs stored in literally millions of electronic files—flickered at the edge of awareness. "I am now scanning police and government records for all subjects,” he said. "I have positive matches for the four dead men. Hardcopy briefs are coming through now.” The printer hummed. Weston reached into the output hopper and removed three pages. "Yep,” he said. "These are the names the police came up with at the time. Federico Chaco Vegas. His brother Julio. Arturo Alvarez, Ramon Gomez. All street-level hoods. Members of a Hispanic gang called
Los Salvajes.
Long arrest records, all of them ... possession ... distribution
...”
Drake reached out and took one of the sheets. "Chaco Vegas,” he said. His voice was brittle, like ice. "He’s the one . . .”
"He’s dead, son,” Weston said. "You killed him.” "I remember.” Drake seemed to shake himself, then looked sharply at Rod. "Look at the heading on these files! These are Virginia State Police arrest records! He’s pulling them out of Richmond somehow, and printing them here!”
"I have completed examining the computer files for state and local police in Virginia, Maryland, the District of Columbia, and the Portsmouth-Norfolk-Virginia Beach area,” Rod said. "I have now accessed the computer files of the FBI in Washington, D.C.”
Drake’s eyes widened. "My God! Can he
do
that?” McDaniels shrugged. Her eyes had scarcely left Rod since his fall, and she still looked worried. "Rod has a built-in cellular phone system,” she explained. "And an internal modem. If he knew the number and the passwords, I guess he could tap into any computer system anywhere, as long as it had a modem hookup, too.”
"Acquiring the appropriate numbers is simply a matter of accessing the appropriate electronic directories,” Rod said. Images continued to flicker through some remote part of his awareness. "The passwords are more difficult, but since the files are designed for broad-based official user access, they are generally available in help menus or police files.”
"God damn,” Drake said. "You people have created a robot hacker!”
Weston was watching Rod intently. "Good intelligence is the key to any war,” he said. "Maybe Rod’s best weapon in the war on drugs will be
information.'’''
Rod continued to run through the FBI files. They were enormous, far larger and more comprehensive than the police files. He narrowed his search to East Coast records compiled within the past five years.
The images of the two unknown men remained in his mind as the records blurred past. Smiling.
Evil.
Rod had known the dictionary definition of the word
evil
but had not been certain that he felt what it meant.
Looking at those two faces in his memory—in
Drake’s
memory—somehow explained the word.
There was a satisfying inner click of resolution in the back of Rod’s mind. "I have another match,” he said. He activated the printer again. "Hardcopy is coming through now.”
Weston picked up the data sheet and rapidly scanned it. "It’s our blond friend. Oh, shit . . .” He looked up at Drake. "Our old friend Michael Howard Braden.” "The helo pilot . . .” Drake’s face was grim. Weston kept reading for a moment, more carefully now.
"Shit!”
he said. "This is a 201 file.”
"What’s that?”
McDaniels
wanted to know.
"It means the guy’s worked for the CIA. We’ve got a live one here.”
"Indications are that the subject escaped by motor vehicle,” Rod said. "There is no record of his death with—”
McDaniels laid a hand on Rod’s arm. "That’s not what he meant, Rod,” she said.
Weston held up the printout and read aloud. "Michael Howard Braden. Born Dallas, 1947. West Dallas High . . . Texas A&M . . . Here we are. Served with Special Operations Group beginning 1969. Helicopter pilot . . . and fixed-wing transports. Flew special missions for the CIA into Laos and Cambodia in the early seventies. Discharged in ’74. Looks like he maintained Company contacts, though. He was a contract pilot in Nicaragua starting in ’76, first with the
Somozistas,
later with the Contras.” Weston looked up. "He’s still listed on the 201 as a CIA contract agent.”
"What does that mean?” McDaniels asked.
"Means he’s a freelancer, working for the Company part-time. And according to this, he’s on active status now.”
"In the hospital in Panama with dysentery,” Drake said, his voice tightly controlled. "My ass. He was there, with Esposito. Does that mean this is all CIA?” "A rogue operation,” Weston said. He shook his head. "God, a rogue op. It proves Diamond is Company, because only a Company man could pull something like this together. And it means Diamond has other Company people working for him.”
"The same voice,” Drake said, remembering. "The same accent. Braden flew that helo dust-off in Colombia. But instead of a rescue—”
"He set you up. It fits.”
"It might also give us a handle on Diamond,” Drake said. "Braden’s got to know how to contact him. Maybe he even knows the guy. . . .”
Weston looked at Rod. "There’s no address listed here. What else can you get on the bastard?” "Checking.”
"Unfortunately,” Weston said, "Rod’s only going to be able to work with information that’s part of the system. He caught Braden because the guy was stupid enough to show his face at Chris’s house.”
"Not stupid,” Drake said. "I was as good as dead. I think—”
"I have additional information,” Rod said. He was expanding his search of government files, hunting for the man who had impersonated the real Esposito, still with no success. But he’d turned up something relevant on Braden.
"Whatcha got, son?” Weston asked.
"Item. Michael Braden is still listed as being in Gorgas Army Hospital, Panama. However, the Gorgas patient records show no one there by that name.
"Item. A Captain Brady Howard is listed on an Army flight from Bogota to Andrews Air Force Base yesterday, with a fueling stop at Homestead Air Force Base, Florida.
"And 'Brady Howard’ is listed as a cover name for Michael Howard Braden,” Weston said, reading the 201-file printout again. "Right.”
"That is correct,” Rod said. "Item. Agency records show a CIA safe house in Georgetown being assigned to Michael Beasely three days ago.”
"Another cover name.” Weston lowered the printout. "This guy gets around, doesn’t he?”
"There is a high probability that Braden-Howard- Beasely is currently using the Georgetown safe house as a base of operations,” Rod said. "Surveillance or apprehension at that address is a definite possibility.” "You’re damned right it’s a possibility,” Drake said. He looked at Weston, fire in his eyes. "Let’s go pick him up.”
"Hold on there, son,” the CIA man said. "We’re not authorized to—”
"The hell with authorization, man,” Drake exploded. "What do you want to do, ask permission from your buddies at Langley? Maybe ask Diamond himself?” "No. Certainly not.” Weston looked at Rod again. "I am wondering if we can’t use this somehow. Maybe to smoke Diamond out.”
"You mean let them know at Langley that we’re going after Braden and see who jumps?”
"Something like that.” He continued to stare at Rod. "And maybe our friend Rod here is about to get his first field test.”
"That would be gratifying,” Rod said. "I have long theorized about conditions in the world outside the walls of this facility and have anticipated witnessing them at first hand.”
"Whoa, there,” Drake said. "You mean you’ve never been outside the laboratory?”
"Correct,” Rod replied. "However, I anticipate no problems in such an operation. My programming has been designed to allow me to function adequately in uncontrolled environments.”
McDaniels patted Rod’s shoulder. "You may have a few things to learn yet.”
"Yeah,” Drake said softly. "It’s a nasty world out there.”
Briefly, Rod wondered how the objective reality of the world outside the lab walls could be different from that inside ... or from the world he experienced indirectly through the PARET feed. He did not understand but decided that travel outside those walls might well give him the data he needed to resolve the question.
He felt the familiar, satisfying click of numbers matching. "I have a match on the final subject,” he said. "Hardcopy is coming through.”
Weston picked up the sheet and started reading. "State Department . . . My God, Rod, where did you get this?”
"State Department records on foreign nationals traveling inside the United States,” Rod replied. "I could find no sign of the subject in CIA files. However, a newspaper clipping which was scanned and stored with CIA archival material caught my notice and led me to check the appropriate State Department files.”
"Colonel Luis Delgado-Valasquez,” Weston read.
"Colombian national. First entered the U.S. in 1984 as a military
attaché
with the Colombian embassy.
Senior
officer believed operating with the DAS.”
"DAS?” McDaniels asked. "What’s that?”
"Their FBI,” Weston replied. "And I think I see now why they were so eager to silence you, Chris.” "Why?”
"Group Seven has been trying to expand our information exchanges with the DAS. I know for a fact this Delgado was slated to work with Group Seven personnel on upcoming joint projects.” He shook his head. "Diamond must have figured there was a good chance that you’d run into Delgado. If you did
...”
"I’d remember him as the guy who led my team into an ambush. Right.”
Weston reached into the printer basket. "Here’s a copy of that newspaper clipping. And a translation. The original is in Spanish.”
"Read it.”
"El Espectador
, 12 November 1986,” Weston read. " 'President Barco meets with American diplomats to discuss extradition treaty.’ ” He compared the photo, which showed the U.S. ambassador shaking hands with Colombian President Virgilio Barco Vargas, with the image taken from Drake’s memories.
"Delgado is in the background,” Rod said. He extended a hand, pointing to a member of the crowd watching the meeting in the newspaper shot. The figure was wearing a uniform and dark glasses, but the resemblance was unmistakable.
"So I see.” Weston returned to the printed biography. "It doesn’t say anything here about him working with the drug lords. In fact, he was in charge of government operations against the Medellin cartel in 1988. He led a series of raids that bagged five high-level Medellin people.”
"Working against the competition,” McDaniels suggested.
"An excellent working hypothesis, Doctor,” Rod put in. "He could well have been working for the Cali cartel.”
"Or the Salazars,” Weston said. "Yeah. It fits.”
"So how do we find him?” Drake asked. "And I do mean
we.
I’m in on this, Weston. I want this guy.”
"You’re in,” Weston said softly. "As to the how, we follow up the leads we have.” He slapped one of the dossier printouts on the table. "We start by paying Mr. Braden a visit.”
Rod felt an inner thrill similar to the click of resolution over a satisfactorily completed problem. The sensation—of satisfaction, of
completion
—was a new one, which itself was . . . satisfying.
He had already deduced that apprehending Braden would be the next step in a plan to ferret out Diamond.
He was pleased that Weston was in agreement.
Three hours later, Charles Wilson Vanecki made a notation in the phone log in the RAMROD telephone exchange, listing the caller, the number called, and the time. Vanecki had worked at Langley before the man he knew as Diamond arranged for his transfer to the Farm.
Noting that the caller was one of several names he was paid to take note of, he listened in on the conversation for several moments before another call forced him to attend to his legal duties.
And hours later, at a service station phone booth outside of Barlowe Corners, Virginia, he made another call to a memorized phone number that was to be used only in an emergency. . . .
©
Chapter Nine
DRAKE LEANED BACK
in the right-hand rear seat of the limousine as it pulled out of Washington National Airport and merged with the traffic heading north on the George Washington Memorial Parkway. Weston sat in the middle, with Rod to his left. The front seat was occupied by the driver and an FBI man named Kenzie, both wearing conservative business suits. Drake had glimpsed an H&K MP5 submachine gun on the floor by Kenzie’s foot, and he knew that the driver was armed as well.
Their car was sandwiched between two identical black limos, each of which carried four more armed men.
The ten-man security unit was FBI. Four of them— Kenzie, the driver, and two men in the lead car—were regular agents, but the rest were members of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s elite Hostage Response Team. The HRT—pronounced "Hurt” and sometimes referred to by insiders as "Super-SWAT”—was a fifty- man unit trained in close-quarters combat, special entry techniques, assault tactics, and other standard antiterrorist and hostage-rescue skills. Weston had called
Washington and arranged for the HRT detail to join the RAMROD party on the Washington National runway reserved for occasional military or official traffic.
"Are they for our protection or to arrest Braden?” Drake had asked as they climbed out of the Huey and hurried across the runway to where the three black limos and their armed escort were waiting.
"A little of both,” Weston had replied. "The CIA doesn’t have powers of arrest. That’s the FBI’s department, which is why I brought them in on this.” Weston had grinned. "Anyway, a few extra guns won’t hurt when we confront our Texan friend, right? We don’t know who he has in there with him, or how well armed they might be.”
The SEAL had been turning the questions over in his head ever since they’d left the airport. Their escort was not dressed in the usual SWAT or HRT fashion, in combat blacks or camouflage fatigues. Instead they wore conservative business suits, white shirts, and ties, and seemed uncomfortably out of place.
Drake was uncomfortable, too. Weston had admitted that there was a possibility Braden would put up a fight when he was cornered at the CIA’s Georgetown safe house, but he’d refused when Drake asked if he could carry a weapon. "Only the FBI agents will be armed,” he said. "Our Bureau friends are, ah, less than enthusiastic about people running around D.C. with loaded weapons.”
So Drake, Weston, and Rod would be unarmed.
If only all of them weren’t crowded together into three cars. Tactically, Drake felt like a sitting duck. He remembered Weston talking about drawing Diamond into the open and decided that this must be a part of it. Sure, give the guy a target he couldn’t refuse and shoot him before he could spring an ambush.
No problem.
Drake looked out the right-hand window. East, across the river, he could see the marble columns of the Lincoln Memorial at the head of the Arlington Memorial Bridge, and beyond, the sky-piercing thrust of the Washington Monument.
Washington, Drake thought, the tourist’s Washington, had always struck him as such a clean city, with its monuments and orderly, parklike streets around the Mall, the splendor of its public buildings, the color of its hordes of out-of-town visitors.
He knew that the tourist’s view of the city was quite different from the reality. He’d heard the figures, read the news stories of how drugs were sold openly on street corners within half a mile of the Capitol Building, of how whole neighborhoods lived in a virtual state of siege as rival drug gangs battled with automatic weapons for control of the city’s streets.
Drake had never paid much attention to those stories before. His own experiences with the city of Washington had always been limited to the public buildings, the monuments, and the tourists. His favorite place was the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, where the technological achievements of the past century were on display. It was a bright, clean place of hope and pride far removed from the festering crime and blood of the streets only a few blocks beyond the Mall.
He was seeing the cityscape differently now, as though through different eyes. The drug war was a daily fact of life for the vast majority of the people living there among the brownstones, tenements, and public- housing projects beyond the marble gleam of the government buildings.
Different eyes ...
He turned away and looked at Rod. How did he see the city? The RAMROD robot appeared to be taking in the passing scenery with its usual passive acceptance. Traffic was picking up as the convoy threaded its way off the parkway close by the Marine Corps Memorial, then entered the suburb of Rosslyn. Futuristic towers of white stone, steel, and glass rose among the expressways, in high-tech contrast to the lower, more classical architecture across the river. Ahead, Drake could see the Francis Scott Key Bridge thrusting across the Potomac into Georgetown. The majestic brown towers of Georgetown University crowned the low hill to the left. Everywhere there were cars and people and more cars.
Drake remembered the robot’s comments back in Lab One.
"Well, Rod,” he said. "What do you think of uncontrolled environments now?”
"Interesting,” Rod replied. "There appears to be a great deal of activity. I am finding that the direct experience of reality can be quite . . . stimulating.”
"That it can, son,” Weston said.
"Listen,” Drake said. "When we get there, how are we going to take Braden down?”
Kenzie turned in the front seat. "My boys will surround the target first,” he said. "You people will stay well back until the HRT has the situation under control.”
"Agreed,” Weston replied. "Just so that we get first crack at Braden once you get him.”
Drake knew that Weston was worried about someone else getting to Braden first. Witnesses and prisoners who knew too much had died before, within hours of being captured, often apparent suicides.
Weston wanted no such "suicide” to eliminate the man who would be their key to Diamond.
"Query,” Rod said. He was turning in his seat, looking back over his shoulder. "The vehicles approaching from behind are unknown to me. I am familiar with trucks and cars, but these appear to be fundamentally different in design and purpose.”
Weston turned, squinting through the rear window. "Motorcycles,” he said. "They’re a great way to beat the Washington traffic, let me tell you.”
Drake was watching the motorcycles now. There were three of them ... no, four, each carrying two riders, nondescript in leather jackets and colorful helmets. Two were passing the tail security car now, one to the right, one to the left.
Kenzie scowled. "I don’t like the looks of this.” He reached for the radio handset in the front of the car as the limo crossed onto the Key Bridge. "Shadow Three, this is Shadow One. Watch those . . . Alert! Alert! Bandits on cycles! All units . . .”
The convoy was engulfed in a swirl of movement, but to Drake it felt like slow motion, eerily dreamlike. As though on cue, the two lead motorcycles had accelerated, spurting toward the limo carrying Drake, Weston, and Rod. He could see the riders, each clinging to his driver with one hand, and holding a boxlike Ingram MAC-10 with the other.
The lead car in the convoy came to an abrupt halt, the maneuver so sudden the vehicle skidded until it was almost broadside across the right lane of the bridge. Horns were honking now as other drivers saw danger and reacted, without realizing yet what was happening. In the next instant, Drake’s limo slammed into the lead car from behind. The shock wrenched him forward against his seat belt and knocked the radio fr
om Ken
zie’s hand.
"Son of a bitch!” the FBI agent shouted. He reached down and grabbed his H&K, jacking back the bolt to chamber a round. "Down! Everybody down!”
Gunfire blasted from the two motorcycles in the rear. Drake saw glass explode from the rear limo as it was caught in a vicious crossfire. The tail-car driver wrenched the wheel to the left, apparently trying to sideswipe one of his assailants, but the motorcycle swerved and avoided the clumsy limousine
easily. Gunfire from two MAC-10
s continued to slam into the car, pocking the doors and hood and splintering the windshield as the high-speed autofire buzzsawed through the passenger compartment.
Kenzie was still screaming for everyone to get down. Drake, however, was not about to let himself be caught inside a stopped car with gunmen firing MAC-10s at him from two sides.. In a swift one-two-three of motions, he unfastened his safety belt, yanked the rear-door handle, and slammed his shoulder against the door, catapulting onto the deck of the bridge.
The car door whipping open just in front of him must have startled the right-side motorcyclist because his vehicle swerved sharply, forcing him to put one foot out to brace the machine. The man seated behind him had just been leveling his Ingram at Drake as he rolled onto the street. The sudden swerve dragged his aim up and to the right. The weapon’s muzzle flash stabbed, flickering, and Drake heard the unmistakable
snap-snap-snap
of rounds cracking past his head.
The gunman on the left opened fire at the same instant. Drake heard the smash of exploding glass as the rear window shattered. Two more motorcycles, their execution at the tail-end limo complete, raced up from the rear.
Instinctively, Drake groped at his hip for a gun, then remembered that he was unarmed.
The right-hand cyclist recovered control of his machine and closed in, his passenger taking aim. . . .
Within microseconds, Rod had seen the attack and recognized it for what it was. When Kenzie screamed to the passengers to get down, he reached down and snapped the seat belt, not taking the time to unfasten the buckle but simply ripping the tough fabric with his fingers as though it were cotton. He pivoted to the left then, bringing his knees up to his chest, holding the position as the left-hand lead motorcyclist drew even with the car. His hands gripped the seat beneath him, bracing his body.
It was an elementary problem of vectors and forces. At the correct time, his legs unfolded with explosive power, his feet slamming into the door, tearing locking mechanism and hinges with a shriek of tortured metal. Glass filled the air, sparkling.
Like a missile, the limousine’s left-rear door hurtled through five feet of empty space and into the approaching motorcycle. Machine and door slammed over onto the street, spilling the riders in a thrashing tangle of limbs.
Rod followed the door, vaulting into the road. He landed in a crouch, spinning to face a second motorcycle as it swerved to miss the cycle that had just been knocked down. The robot reached out, and steel-cored fingers bit into the driver’s helmet, puncturing fiberglass like Styrofoam. He yanked, hard, and the motorcyclist’s head slammed into the faceplate of his rider, flipping him off the back of the motorcycle, neck broken by the impact.
The driver’s head came off in Rod’s hand, separating from its body in a scarlet cascade of blood.
On the right side of the car, a third motorcycle with its two riders was bearing down on Drake, who was on his hands and knees. The gunman was already aiming his weapon.
Rod, still turning with the momentum of his first swing, followed through with the movement and let fly, flinging the grisly and now somewhat flattened fiberglass safety helmet in a whipcracking overhand throw. Head and helmet struck the gunman’s wrist with the impact of a hard-swung baseball bat, smacking the Ingram away and startling the driver into an uncontrolled skid.
Less than five seconds had passed since the first shots had been fired, less than two since the death of the now headless cyclist. The motorcycle, still bearing his decapitated body, smashed into the lead security car. The Ingram dropped by the rider was still in motion, bouncing along the bridge deck in a series of spinning skips and clatters. Rod’s legs pounded as he went into motion, crossing ten meters of space and scooping up the loose weapon in mid-bounce.
The third motorcycle had recovered from its skid and was passing the middle limo now, between the vehicle and the bridge railing. Men were spilling out of the lead security car now, but not to engage in combat. The driver, Rod saw, tumbled out onto the street, the side of his face smashed by a bullet. There was something wrong there, for none of the motorcycle hitmen had fired on the lead car yet.
Filing the data, Rod tracked the right-side motorcycle as it tried to squeeze past the lead car. Rod raised the Ingram in one hand and squeezed the trigger, holding his arm rigid against the sharp, upward recoil. The weapon spat a short burst that slammed into the unarmed rider’s back, then jammed, the mechanism fouled by its rough trip across the pavement.
But it was enough. The cycle twisted sideways and struck the safety barrier, slamming the two riders over the barrier and spilling them into space.
It was a good thirty-foot drop to the Potomac, and at least one of the men screamed all the way down.
The fourth and last motorcycle had been holding back. Its driver gunned the engine now and it hurtled up from the rear, the rider crouched low as he leveled his Ingram at Rod. The robot’s senses detected the bullets as they snapped past, registering position, velocity, and trajectory by the projectiles’ sonic-boom wakes.
There was no time to run or dodge. The motorcycle was trying to thread its way across into the opposite lane of traffic, where terrified drivers were now seeking cover beneath their dashboards, and horns were sounding in a steady, air-raid-siren cacophony that drowned out the shriek of gunfire from the gunman’s MAC.
Rod’s right arm blurred, the movement too fast for human eyes to follow. The useless MAC-10 in his hand cracked across the intervening space and struck the driver squarely in his chest, crushing sternum and ribs and kicking both men off the back of the motorcycle. The riderless machine slewed sideways and came hurtling toward where Rod was standing.
He sidestepped the unguided missile easily, then whirled as something slammed into his left arm. He had been keeping an automatic tally of the enemies and had thought that all were now accounted for. Two 9mm rounds had just struck him high in the left arm, glancing blows that tore cloth and synthetic plastic skin but left him fully functional. He traced the path of the rounds back. . . .
The FBI agent in the front passenger seat of the lead car was just getting clear of the vehicle, an Uzi in his hands. He’d fired a short burst over the roof of the car at Rod but was now turning toward the middle car where Special Agent Kenzie was scrambling out behind his open car door, still trying to get his hands on his H&K. Drake was just behind Kenzie, still unarmed and very much in the line of fire. The gunman raised his Uzi. . . .
The wreckage of the first motorcycle was a few feet away, still under the car door and wobbling as one of the riders, screaming now in pain, tried to move ruined legs pinned by the machine’s weight. Rod reached down and grabbed the motorcycle’s front wheel, which was clear of the pavement and still spinning. The shock of hard rubber tore the plastic from his right-hand fingers, but he gripped the wheel and wrenched it free, eliciting another agonized shriek from the injured man under the wreckage. He turned, holding the wheel level, then snapped arm and wrist in unison. Like a huge, black Frisbee, the motorcycle wheel skimmed through the air in a straight path and connected with the traitorous FBI man’s head in a gory explosion of blood, bone, and brains. The tire kept flying, wobbling out past the bridge and dropping toward the river. The body with its bloody ruin of a head tottered a moment before dropping the Uzi from limp fingers and crumpling to the pavement.
Rod checked the time on his internal clock. Eight seconds had elapsed from the first shot. Around him, he was aware of the shrieks and screams of wounded gunmen and panicked motorists. Drake and Kenzie were straightening up behind the limo, looking up and down the bridge for other possible threats.
"Good God,” a shrill voice called behind Rod. "Who the hell are you, fella, Superman?”