A Time for Patriots

“Agent Renaldo…”

“Cassie, please,” she said. She gave him her best contrite expression, then said, “Honest, Patrick, I’m not trying to get you to talk to me…” She gave him a sly smile, then added, “Although I was sent over here to ask you again if you would talk to us.”

“I want my attorney first, Cassandra.”

“That’s what I told them you’d say, but I had to ask first.” She then shrugged and added, “And, I did want to meet you. I couldn’t believe it when Special Agent Chastain called up your info. We thought it was a mistake.” Patrick smiled and nodded but said nothing. Cassandra looked sheepishly at him and Brad, then said, “So. A little father-and-son talk over here?” No response. “Brad, I heard you found a survivor from a plane crash, alive . Congratulations.”

“Thank you,” Brad said. He squared up his shoulders and added, “My team and I found him. I was the cadet strike-team leader.”

“Wow. You’re a hero. Pretty cool. What a great story.” She turned to Patrick. “You must be very proud of him, sir.”

“I want to speak with my—”

Cassandra held up her hands. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Patrick — I don’t mean to pressure you or chat you up in hopes of getting you to talk to us,” she said. “I… I really did want to meet you. You’re a hero to a lot of us.” She held out a hand again, then said, “When this is over, I hope we have a chance to get together and get to know each other.” She gave him a slight smile when he shook her hand, then nodded respectfully. To Brad, she held out her hand. “Very nice to meet you, Cadet McLanahan.”

“Call me Brad,” he said quickly. Patrick blinked in surprise at that invitation but said nothing.

“Okay, I will, Brad. And you can call me Cassie.” She gave him one last smile, turned, and headed back to the break room.

“Hey, she was nice,” Brad said after Renaldo departed.

“I guess,” Patrick said noncommittally.

Brad looked at his Dad carefully. “You don’t think she’s nice? I think she’s great.”

“I really don’t know her, Brad,” Patrick said. “I’ve seen an awful lot of folks doing and saying strange things this morning, and I don’t feel like trusting anyone just yet.” He turned back toward the wall and logged back online once again, with his son guarding his back — so he didn’t notice Brad’s eyes following Cassandra Renaldo as she walked across the hangar.

* * *

Renaldo returned to the others in the break room. Chastain was finishing another cup of coffee. “Well?” he asked.

“Like I thought: he stayed lawyered up,” Renaldo said.

“Losing your touch, Renaldo?” one of the other agents quipped.

“My job is to track down extremists, Brady, not to bat my eyes and shake my ass at suspects,” Renaldo said acidly. The agent named Brady gave her a “yeah, right” expression. She turned back to Chastain. “I still don’t think he’s working with any extremist groups, sir,” she said.

“Based on?”

“Gut feeling right now,” Renaldo admitted. “Plus, he’s Patrick McLanahan. Everyone thought he was going to run for president last year.”

“David Duke ran for president too,” Chastain said. “There are plenty of extremist groups who would welcome McLanahan as their leader, even as a spiritual figurehead.”

“Like an American Osama bin Laden,” the agent named Brady interjected.

“You’re comparing Patrick McLanahan to Osama bin Laden, Brady? Are you insane?” Renaldo asked. “Sir, I don’t think we should abandon our investigation, but I just don’t feel it. He’s not the target.”

“Anyone who lawyers up right away like that sets my alarm bells off, Renaldo,” Chastain said. “The guy’s been through hell fighting off the Gardner indictment, and he could be angry at the government for sticking him in this shithole assignment. When a disaster like the attack in Reno happens, most everyone cooperates, but not McLanahan. And what in the world is he doing out in the middle of nowhere at Battle Mountain? There’s nothing out here — a few buildings, a skeleton staff, not many aircraft. Hell, the Space Defense Force doesn’t really exist. And what was McLanahan doing flying around when he knew the airspace was closed? Things aren’t adding up.”

“McLanahan wasn’t flying — Judah Andorsen was,” Renaldo said. “I can’t wait to have a chat with him .”

“The guy has been talking with investigators since he flew home,” Chastain said. “He’s giving statements to everyone, and so far he checks out. The guy is cooperating, which is more than I can say for McLanahan.”

“Well, I don’t think McLanahan is going to talk before his lawyer shows up.”

“We’ve already heard from his damned lawyer,” Chastain said. “I can’t figure out how a D.C. law firm found out we had one of their clients in Nevada, but Washington is already ordering us to charge McLanahan or release him.”

“I thought I saw McLanahan in a corner working on a laptop with his son, but I checked and he didn’t have one,” Renaldo said. She thought for a moment, then said, “McLanahan’s son.”

“What about him?”

When Renaldo didn’t answer right away, the agent named Brady smiled and nodded. “You couldn’t get to the old man… so you got to his teenage son ?” He chuckled. “That’s the Renaldo I know and love!”

“I didn’t go after the son — he was after me .”

“Then he must like older women,” Brady said. Renaldo scratched the tip of her nose with an upraised middle finger. “But the boy wasn’t flying with the father.”

“If the old man is involved with any extremist groups, the boy may be able to tell us,” Chastain said. “There’s no way McLanahan is going to let you near his son in here, and if we arrest him he’ll tell his son to keep quiet. You’ll have to approach the son some other time.”

“No problem,” Renaldo said. “In the meantime, I still want a crack at hunky Trooper Slotnick. Give me the letters from his boss and his union, and maybe he’ll talk to me about what McLanahan was doing out there.” Chastain handed her a folder with several faxes from different agencies and courts, ordering all personnel to cooperate with the FBI and Homeland Security. “At least maybe I can chat him up and find out more about him that I can use later.”

“They don’t call you the ‘Black Widow’ for nothing, Renaldo — you have your way with your victims, then eat them,” Brady said. “It’s fun to watch a person who loves what they do.”

“The one thing I hate more than smart-ass FBI agents like you, Brady, is extremists and terrorists,” Cassandra Renaldo said. “There are extremists nearby in this stinking-hot desert — I can smell them. Even if it turns out to be a genuine national hero like Patrick McLanahan, I’m going to make it my business to throw his ass into a supermax prison as fast as I possibly can.”

Thompson Federal Building, Reno, Nevada

The next day

Smoke still billowed out of the stricken Thompson Federal Building and in several other nearby buildings as well. Investigators and searchers wearing biohazard suits were still being kept three blocks away from the crash site, and other responders were being kept six blocks away because of lingering radioactivity.

In the early-morning stillness, a V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft flew over the crash site in airplane mode, then transitioned to helicopter mode and cruised slower over the area. Minutes later, as it made a third pass over the building at one hundred feet aboveground and thirty knots, the rear cargo ramp opened and two figures dropped out.

The figures landed upright about a half block from each other in front of the federal building. Each humanoid figure was twelve feet high, medium gray in color. Its trunk and shoulders were large, but its arms and legs were little more than hydraulic pistons, and its head was a dark low-profile dome with sensor arrays behind protective dielectric windows arrayed all around it. They each carried two large bags.

“CID One, on the ground,” Lieutenant Colonel Jason Richter, piloting the first robot, radioed. The robot, called a CID, or Cybernetic Infantry Device, was a manned robot that used advanced materials and systems to enable its