of stony agony. Kelsey meant her remark to make the secretary feel more comfortable with her, but she saw that it only made her sadder. Calhoun nodded in greeting but said nothing and stepped away to speak with Chamberlain.
“Sorry about that, sir. I wasn’t thinking. I remember she lost some family in Houston.”
“Don’t try to make polite chitchat here, DeLaine,” Lemke said pointedly. “This is not a damned cocktail party.”
“Yes, sir.” She was not accustomed to being admonished like that, even by the director, especially after recognizing her gaff and apologizing for it, but she tried not to let her indignation show. “Can you tell me what is going on?”
“We’ll all find out together,” the FBI director responded woodenly. The military officers remained apart from the civilians, talking between themselves at first and then with Chamberlain as he approached.
Kelsey found it odd that the lone guy by the Humvee had stayed by himself as all this brass arrived, so when curiosity finally overcame her, she excused herself from Lemke and stepped over to him. The guy didn’t look like a GI at all: his hair was rumpled and a bit longer than the other military guys in the hangar wore theirs; his boots looked as if they hadn’t been polished in eons; and he had a slight stubble as if he hadn’t shaved in a couple days. He was wearing crisp, new-looking military fatigues but there was no rank or insignia on them—they were obviously borrowed or just recently purchased. A very attractive dark-haired woman in a green olive drab T-shirt and black fatigue trousers was sitting behind the wheel with a headset on—she looked more military than the guy did, but she didn’t seem military. Neither of them displayed any ID. “Excuse me,” she said. “I saw you over here all by yourself and thought I’d introduce myself. I’m Kelsey…”
“Special Agent Kelsey DeLaine, deputy director of intelligence, FBI, Washington,” the officer said. “I’m Major Jason Richter, ITB, Army Research Lab, Fort Polk, Louisiana.”
“You’re in the army?” Kelsey asked, glancing up at his unkempt hair.
“We’ve had a long couple of days,” Richter said a little sheepishly. “This is Dr. Ariadna Vega, assistant director.”
“ITB?”
“Infantry Transformation BattleLab. We try to think of ways to make infantry soldiers more lethal.”
“Sounds interesting—and a little scary.” She extended a hand, and he shook it. He seemed a little nervous— his hand was cold and clammy, and there was a slight sheen of perspiration on his upper lip. His handshake matched his appearance—he seemed more like a computer nerd than an army officer. But in the intelligence field she learned that very often appearances were deceiving. He would look a lot cuter, she decided, if he weren’t wearing those geeky glasses. She shook hands with Vega as well. “Nice to meet you. How do you know who I am?”
“Because we’re monitoring all conversations taking place inside this building and all movement within a mile,” he replied.
“You are? How are you doing that?”
“Surveillance units, both inside and outside.”
Kelsey motioned to the Air Force guards. “You mean those guys?”
“No. Unmanned probes.” He pointed toward the roof. “I don’t think you can see it, but there’s a device on the roof right about there that looks like a giant cockroach, about the size of a serving tray. It can pick up, record, jam, analyze, and transmit voice, video, electromagnetic signals, and data for two square kilometers. It can crawl around walls and ceilings, and deactivates itself if it thinks it’s being scanned.”
This guy was a little too cocky and calm for her liking. He was not wearing a sidearm, but his hands were behind his back where she couldn’t see them. She fished out an ID badge that she had been given after checking in at base security. “Do you have one of these, Major, Doctor?” she asked, her voice a little sterner. “Can I see it?”
Richter smiled. “No, I don’t,” the guy said. His smile sent a warning chill up and down her spine. “I didn’t arrive via the front gate.”
“Then let me see some ID, both of you,” she ordered in a loud voice.
“Agent DeLaine…?” Director Lemke said behind her.
“I don’t have any ID to show you, Kelsey,” Richter said. “We’re here to dazzle the brass over there.”
Now she was thankful that she didn’t have her gun in her purse. Kelsey quickly drew her Glock from her holster and held it at her side where it was clearly visible but not pointed at him. “Then let me see your hands, above your head, both of you, now!” she ordered.
Richter’s eyes lit up in surprise. “Oh, goody,” the army officer said with a quirky smile as he slowly raised his hands. They were empty. “We get to start the demonstration early.”
“What did you say?” She watched as the army officer reached over and touched some buttons on his wristwatch, which she could now see was a very large device, more like a small computer keypad. “Don’t touch that! Keep your hands up!”
“What’s going on here?” the National Security Adviser was demanding. “Put that pistol down…!”
At that moment Kelsey noticed a blur of motion. Someone, a woman—Secretary Calhoun, Kelsey realized— screamed. Kelsey glanced to her right…just in time to see a large robot-looking thing running at her as fast as a track and field sprinter. She dropped to her left knee and just had time to aim her pistol at the running machine.
“CID One, stop,” Richter spoke in a quiet voice—not as a warning but as a gentle command. The machine stopped instantly—Kelsey couldn’t believe a thing that big moving so fast could stop so quickly. “Please don’t shoot it, Agent DeLaine,” he added. “It won’t like it very much.”
Kelsey froze but kept her pistol aimed in the center of the machine’s torso. The machine had both its arms upraised, mechanical fingers extended like claws—and mounted on its right shoulder, Kelsey was staring into the muzzle of the biggest machine gun she had ever seen, not ten feet away from her face. “I believe I have the drop on you,” Richter added with a smile.
“I see you’ve decided to start the demonstration on your own, Major Richter,” Robert Chamberlain said. “Agent DeLaine, you can put your weapon away. Major Richter’s machine is part of the reason we’re here this morning.”
“Sorry, sir,” Kelsey said a little sheepishly, rising to her feet and holstering her pistol. “I asked for this man’s ID, and he said he didn’t have any.”
“Obviously you don’t watch much television, Agent DeLaine—you’re probably the only person in the world who’s never heard of Major Jason Richter and his robot here and what they did at Kingman City yesterday,” Chamberlain said. He nodded toward Jason and Kelsey. “Major Jason Richter is deputy director of the Army Research Lab’s Infantry Transformation BattleLab, the creator of the Cybernetic Infantry Device, or CID, unit you see before you. Major Richter, this is FBI Special Agent Kelsey DeLaine, deputy chief of intelligence in Washington.” To Calhoun and Lemke, Chamberlain said, “I propose that these two individuals together with this hardware, among other innovations, form the backbone of America’s war on terror.”
Jason’s eyes bugged out in surprise, and he looked at DeLaine, who immediately looked at him with the same expression. Neither of them knew what to expect after that announcement, but what they got…was bedlam.
“You mean, you propose to use that thing to hunt down terrorists?” Secretary of Homeland Security Calhoun retorted. “You’re joking, aren’t you, Chamberlain?”
“I’ve never been more serious—and neither has the President,” Chamberlain said. “It will be the first federal law-enforcement task force created to specifically detect, identify, pursue, and destroy terrorists around the world. I intend it to be an ultra-rapid response force that will be primarily investigative in nature but equipped to handle a wide array of threats, including military adversaries.”
“You can’t do that, Mr. Chamberlain—it’s prohibited by the Posse Comitatus Act,” Homeland Security Secretary Calhoun pointed out. “We’ve stretched the boundaries of that law for years, but having a military unit actively and purposefully involved in law-enforcement actions is against the law.”
“First of all, Madam Secretary, CID doesn’t belong to a military unit—it’s just an experimental design,” Chamberlain pointed out. “Second, CID will be used in a support role, which is permitted under the law. I’ve verified this with the White House counsel. The President will issue a classified executive order secretly implementing this new FBI task force, code-named TALON, reporting directly to the White House and funded by National Security Council discretionary funds…”
