“What were you doing in the middle of that training exercise?” Ari asked.
“I wanted to see how well I could find all the targets,” Jason said. “I was watching the GUOS downlinks the whole time and found a couple mines the task force didn’t.”
Ari shook her head, then stepped closer to Jason and asked, “Okay, J, what’s going on? Why did you go over there?”
Jason looked at his partner for a few moments, then shook his head and replied, “Because I was pissed they didn’t invite us out there for the first field test,” he said. “I wanted to show him that we don’t need all those dune buggies to do our job—CID can do everything they can do, and better.”
“That wasn’t a very smart move, doofus,” Ari said. “You could’ve gotten yourself killed.”
“We’ve shown many times how impervious CID is to grenade and heavy weapons fire,” Jason said. “The tank falling on me was a lucky shot. I wasn’t worried.”
“You’re crazy, that’s why—you’re too stupid to be worried,” she replied, trying to keep her tone of voice lighthearted but serious at the same time. “Don’t do it again.”
“Yes, Mom. I’ll be careful.” Ari shot him an exasperated glance and began examining the damaged compartment. Jason’s cell phone rang, and he stepped away to answer it while Ari hooked up a portable monitoring unit and recharger from the Humvee. Jason made sure his special encryption routine was running before checking the caller ID readout and replying: “Kristen? How are you? I haven’t heard from you in a while.”
“I’m fine, Jason,” Kristen Skyy responded. He could hear a great deal of airplane noise in the background. “Listen, I have a hot lead, and we need to move as quickly as possible. I have a jet ready to take us to Brazil, but we have to leave this morning.”
“This morning?” Jason exclaimed. “I don’t know…”
“My source tells me he’s got a lock on one of GAMMA’s head guys,” Kristen said. “But they’ve been moving around every couple days. We need to be down there tonight. I got us a plane that can take us to Brazil in seven or eight hours. We’ll arrive at Clovis airport within the hour. My pilot says if we can leave in the next hour, we can be down at Sao Paulo shortly after sunset.”
Jason threw his mind into overdrive as he tried to work out the logistics. They barely had enough time. They had to grab as much supplies and ordnance as they could and go immediately. “I’ll be there, Kristen,” Jason said. “I’m not sure how I’ll manage it, but I’ll be there. Gotta go.” He hung up.
“It doesn’t look too bad, J,” Ariadna said as Jason went back to her. “Failed main hydraulic power pack. The secondary power pack picked up the slack.” She showed him a slightly damaged access panel on the robot’s back approximately where the left kidney would be. “The hydraulic lines look okay thank God, but the fiber-optic connector needs replacing. I think I might have the parts I need, but I need a good two or three hours.”
“Can you fix it?”
“I can fix a rainy day, as long as it’s in my lab, J,” she said confidently. “But in the field, reliably enough for combat? Maybe…probably…yes, I think so. I have to take apart the left data bus assembly to change the fiber-optic cable—that’s practically the whole left side’s electronics. It’s not difficult, just time-consuming work.”
“Do we have a spare?”
“Spare power pack—sure. Spare access door—no,” Ari replied. “Looks like the entire left edge of the panel is cracked—we won’t be able to secure it tightly. We don’t have any equipment for making repairs to composite structures here. I’ll need the material, a frame, an autoclave…”
“Can we secure it in place temporarily?”
“I think I might have some duct tape,” Ari quipped. “Why? You’re thinking about finishing the exercise with the rest of the task force?”
“That call was from Kristen,” Jason said. “She has information on that terrorist group GAMMA. They located one of its leaders, in Sao Paulo, Brazil…”
“Brazil?”
“They move around a lot, and her source says our only chance to grab him will be tonight.”
“Why don’t we get the FBI or the locals to do it?”
“Because it’s our job, Ari,” Jason said. “If Kristen knows where this guy is, maybe the locals do too, and he’s free because he’s working with the locals. We need to get down there.”
“Not with CID One. He’s down for repairs. You’ll have to take CID Two.”
“There’s no time to pull him out of the exercise,” Jason said. “We need to be airborne with all the gear we can take in less than an hour. Kristen is bringing a jet to Clovis to pick us up.”
“Are you sure about this, J?” Ariadna asked. “This may look like we’re stealing the CID unit. We could end up in prison for this…”
“And we could end up catching a major GAMMA commander and learning a lot about their next attack,” Jason said. “We’ve got to try it. We still have one good power pack. We can’t have everything perfect. I want to move on Kristen’s hot intel. Let’s do it. We’ll load our gear; tell the crew we’ll be ready to go in half an hour.”
“You want to take CID One into battle with just the secondary power pack?” Ariadna asked. “If that one goes out, CID One will turn into a sixteen-million-dollar lawn ornament.”
“We have to chance it,” Jason said. She still looked skeptical. “I’ll contact Jefferson. If he absolutely forbids us to go, we’ll stay. But we’ve got to get moving or we won’t have any options.”
“I hope you know what you’re doing, dude,” Ari said as she hurried off to pack some equipment. She loaded up a portable test system, a case of tear gas, and smoke grenades for the grenade launcher backpack—the only weapons she could find that she had ready access to—plus the GUOS drone backpack with six drones and some tools and spare parts to work on the CID unit, and within minutes they were in a truck heading out to Clovis Municipal Airport. Meanwhile, Richter got on his secure cell phone to Sergeant Major Jefferson. The phone conversation was very short: his instructions were simply to “stay put.”
At the airport, a Bombardier Learjet 60 business jet was parked outside the general aviation terminal being fueled. Jason hugged Kristen Skyy and resisted giving her a kiss, but she gave him one anyway. “I thought you couldn’t get us a cool ride, Kristen,” he said.
“You have no idea how many chips I had to cash in to get this,” she responded. “You got the rear baggage compartment for the CID unit—if your dimensions were accurate, it should fit.”
“I won’t be able to work on it in the rear baggage hold, J,” Ari said.
“What’s wrong?” Kristen asked.
“We had a little accident,” Jason said. “It’ll be okay. Hopefully we won’t be going into battle.”
“Is it serious?”
“Could be, but CID has redundant systems so it should be okay.” Jason admitted to himself that his tone wasn’t all that positive; Kristen obviously noticed it but said nothing. “Was it difficult getting clearance to fly with all the security precautions in place?” he asked.
“It took a few phone calls to Washington from the CEO of SATCOM One to get us just from Teterboro to here,” Kristen said, “but it was surprisingly easy to get clearance out of the country. We’re nonstop to Manaus, Brazil, where we’ll meet up with some company agents who’ll take care of customs formalities. We’ll also pick up a PME officer who’ll talk on the radio for us as we head to the rendezvous point.”
“What do you trade for no questions asked at customs?” Jason asked.
“The one thing more valuable than money, booze, gadgets, sex, or drugs: American press credentials,” Kristen said. “Six-month work permits for SATCOM One, unlimited entry and exit into the U.S., and no monthly check-ins with Homeland Security as long as their status can be verified by the network. Government officials will sell them for tens of thousands of dollars each.”
It was a tight fit, but the folded CID unit just fit in the rear baggage compartment. The jet’s cabin was choked with equipment but was still comfortable enough. Kristen had brought a sound engineer and a cameraman, and they had more gear than Richter and Vega. Minutes later they were loaded up, and the pilot received his clearance to depart. “We have to wait,” Jason said after Kristen was told by the pilot they were ready for takeoff.
“We can’t wait, Jason,” Kristen said. “It’ll almost be dawn by the time we get there as it is.”
“We need clearance from our supervisor,” Jason said.
“I thought you were the commanding officer.”
“I’ve never commanded anything more than a four-person laboratory or project office,” Jason said.
“Are we waiting for the same person who gave you your ‘political roadblocks,’ as you put it before?”
