The Tin Man

flash wouldn’t blind him, and the environmental system inside the suit began circulating more coolant to drench the blast of heat. But the blast pushed him back and off his feet, and when he opened his eyes, the rage that had seared into his head was burning red-hot throughout his body. He moved his arms, then legs, then torso- everything worked fine, no pain anywhere. A quick systems check: battery already down by half, to four hours remaining. It had been at six hours just before he approached the door, so the blast must’ve sapped a lot of juice. Everything else reported normal.

The explosion had blown open the door, taken out some of the wall to the left and right of it, and cut off all power in the house, but there was enough light from outside for Patrick to realize he was in a living room, with the kitchen visible beyond. The place was a pigsty-the explosion didn’t help, of course, but it had to have been unfit for human habitation before that. Garbage was scattered everywhere, and he could make out spray-painted graffiti on the walls.

A tall, lean figure dressed like a commando or special-operations infantryman in a black combat suit, balaclava, and combat harness rounded the corner of the hallway to the left, leveled a small automatic machine pistol at Patrick, and fired. He rocked backward as the triple-round burst hit him, more from surprise than pain or the impact of the bullets, since all he felt were the powerful electric shocks coursing all across his body. Damn, Patrick swore, I thought that problem was fixed! The electric current blurred his vision, and when he rocked back, he stumbled against a piece of debris and sank down against the wall.

“Stirb, du Teufel!” he heard the commando shout. He pointed the gun right at Patrick’s head and fired again.

This time, Patrick felt the impact of the blast against the helmet-but it was a love tap compared to the surge of electricity that shot through his body. The pain was exquisite, as if every nerve ending was firing like the spark plugs in a race car-but most of all it felt so goddamn good…

The commando looked as though he were seeing a ghost rise out of a gravesite. “Wer bist du?” he shouted.

Patrick charged, forearms up. The commando screamed and fell backward into the tiny kitchen. In rage, Patrick bent over him, grabbed his face in his left hand, and pushed his head against the floor. His fingers felt like steel spikes. He ripped off the balaclava and saw a young, fair, chiseled face staring at him in terror. “The drugs,” Patrick said through his electronic helmet. “Where did you get the drugs?”

“Drogen? Ich weiss nichts!” the soldier cried. “Lass mich los!”

“Who the hell are you?” Patrick demanded. “Are you a German? Deutsch?” There was no answer. “Who are you? Do you work for the Major? Kommandeur? Der Major?”

The look on the soldier’s face gave him his answer. He had struck home at last.

“Where is the Major?” Patrick racked his brain for remnants of his German-it had been years since he’d used it. “Vere… no, shit, wo ist der Major, asshole?”

“I will not answer!” the soldier said in broken English, and in a flash pulled a knife from a boot sheath with his left hand and shot it toward Patrick’s chest. Patrick caught his wrist, but not in time to stop the thrust, only slow it…

… and the knife blade inched toward the suit, touched it, then pierced it.

A warning tone sounded in the helmet. Cooling fluid from the environmental control system spurted out, and then the knife pierced the thin cotton lining of the suit and touched flesh. At the pulse of electricity discharging through the suit, and his panic, Patrick cried out and rolled away. The soldier leaped to his feet and scrambled for the rear door beyond the kitchen.

The suit didn’t work-the knife had penetrated it! Patrick felt for the breach. It was small, a slit less than an inch long-how in the hell could the BERP suit protect him against bomb blasts and gunshots but not protect him against a simple knife jab?

Patrick did a systems self-test. He would lose all of his coolant in a few minutes, and after that the sealed-up suit would probably become too uncomfortable to wear. But he was relieved to see that the system integrity was still intact-a cut in the BERP fabric didn’t render the entire system inoperative. He still had a couple of hours of power left.

He was going to catch the German, torture the hell out of him until he told what he knew about the Major. He activated the low-light sensor in his helmet and stopped in his tracks at the entrance to the kitchen. A body was lying on the blood-soaked floor-a big guy with long, stringy hair, his arms and shoulders covered in tattoos, bullet holes in his head. From the commando’s gun? What was a German commando or soldier doing here in a known Satan’s Brotherhood house? The Major was German too. A connection? Could be that the terrorists who had engineered the bomb blasts throughout the Sacramento area were mopping up the remnants of the Brotherhood they’d missed. It felt like a clue at last.

He heard a sound in the back of the house and went down the hallway. It was coming from the vicinity of a small bedroom on the right, which had a smell even the suit’s environmental systems couldn’t filter out-but all he could see was debris and garbage, and evidence of some strong chemicals too, probably from cooking drugs. Then he spotted a little nest of soiled blankets and a filthy pillow, with some empty fast-food containers next to it. It looked as if a small child had been sleeping there. Fucking animals, Patrick said to himself. Allowing a child to live like this… it’s subhuman.

The bathroom on the left had been partially blown in by the explosion, and he realized this was where the heart-wrenching sounds of a child’s sobs were coming from. When he pushed open the broken door, he found a tiny little girl inside, half covered in debris from the blast. She couldn’t have been more than two or three, and she was a waif, skinny as a straw, and as dirty and as uncared-for as the house. He could make out bloody cuts on her head; she must have been in there when the explosion hit.

“Easy, sweetheart,” Patrick said softly. “I’ll help you out of here.” But the child began to scream, a long, wild, piercing scream, and he saw her eyes bug out and her little body shake in terror. She tried frantically to claw her way out of the debris, but only succeeded in bringing more of it down around her. Patrick ignored the screams, eased her free, and gently laid her down on the threadbare carpeting in the hallway.

Using his laser holographic heads-up display, he selected the VHF frequency of the UC-Davis Medical Center emergency dispatch center, which he had discovered while with Paul in the hospital. “Davis Dispatch, have an ambulance respond to the residence at Sixty-fifth and Rosalee Heights,” he radioed. “Victim is a female child, approximately age two, with lacerations on the back and head and possible head trauma. How copy? Over.”

“Unidentified caller, this is Davis Medical Dispatch Center, this channel is for official use only. If you require emergency medical assistance, please clear this channel and dial 911 on any telephone.”

“Listen, Dispatch, I’m in a drug flophouse in Rosalee with a dead drug dealer and a young girl who’s been hurt in an explosion and is probably going into shock,” Patrick radioed back. “The police are on their way. Send an ambulance right now.” Patrick terminated the call and turned to the now unconscious child. He had to try to give her first aid until the medics got there.

Suddenly Patrick heard a cry, “You bastard! Get out!” and something hit his helmet. A half-naked woman was standing at the end of the hall, clutching an aluminum softball bat. He couldn’t guess her age-she might have been young and maybe even pretty, but the drugs had left her ravaged face seamed, gaunt, and covered with sores, and her hair hung thin and lifeless. “Fucking cops! Leave us alone!” she shouted, and swung the bat again. Patrick let it bounce harmlessly off his right shoulder.

“Is this your daughter?” he asked. “Is this your child?”

“Fuck you!”

“How can you let your own child live in a place like this?” Patrick shouted at her. “How can you let her sleep in a room where you cook drugs?”

“You want her, you take her!” the woman yelled. “She does nothing but cry and throw up all day anyway! Just get the hell out!” She moved in closer to take another swat at him, and Patrick swung his left shoulder and hit her square in the face. She bounced off him as if she had been hit by a truck, screamed, scrambled to her feet clutching a bloody broken nose, and retreated back into the bedroom.

Patrick carried the unconscious child to the living room. He found some clothes piled in a corner and tucked them around the frail little body as best he could. Her breathing seemed normal, thank God-maybe it was fright that had knocked her out and she wasn’t going into shock. He hunted for pillows to cradle her head…