A Time for Patriots

threatened him, and you hit him,” he said, his eyes wide with rage, a vein in his temple pulsing with fury. “I should kill you right now, just for that. I’m within a red cunt hair’s breadth of ordering the Tin Man to scrunch you up into a tiny round red ball of goo and drop-kick you across to the other side of the base. I’ll gladly trade ten years in prison for the privilege of watching him do that — and, I assure you, he’s done it before, with great enthusiasm, for a lot less motivation than this. Or, I could just take the videos of you and my son you claim to have to the U.S. attorney, and see what would happen to you. I’d put enough pressure on him and the attorney general to fire you, maybe even bring you up on criminal charges.

“But I’m not going to do any of that, Chastain,” Patrick went on. “I prefer to deal with you three directly. It’s simple: you leave the state and leave me and my son alone, forever, or we’ll be back — and it won’t be as pleasant for you as it is right now.”

Patrick nodded to the CID and the Tin Man, and the three agents were dropped to the floor. “You wouldn’t kill anyone,” Chastain croaked hoarsely, rubbing his neck. “You don’t have the guts.”

“I wouldn’t kill you tonight, Chastain,” Patrick said. “But if you three aren’t out of the state immediately, or if you do anything whatsoever to me or my son, I will track you down. You’ll go to sleep one night and wake up just long enough to realize I’m standing over you, and then that’ll be that. I promise you.”

“You’re full of shit, McLanahan,” Brady said.

The Tin Man reached out and tapped Brady on the shoulder with two fingers, but Brady’s body reacted as if he had been hit by a sledgehammer. “Aaaughh!” he screamed. “What the… shit, I think you broke my damned shoulder !”

The Tin Man picked up Brady by the neck, shook him, and watched as he cringed in pain. “The general has killed his enemies face-to-face many times before, I assure you,” the Tin Man said in his electronically synthesized voice. “But if he ever hesitated to do it, even for a split second, I’d gladly do it for him — and not with this getup on either.” He dropped the agent back to the hangar floor, where he writhed and whimpered in pain.

“What’s it going to be, Chastain?” Patrick asked.

“You cowardly bastard,” Chastain cried. “You bring your high-tech goons in here to torture and threaten us — you don’t have the balls to do it yourself.” He jabbed a finger at Patrick. “I’m not done with you, mister. I’ll find a way to come after you, and I’m not going to be behind a badge either.” He turned and walked toward the side door, leaving Renaldo to help Brady.

“You had me convinced,” Brigadier-General Kurt Givens said after he watched the three agents leave. Jason Richter and Jon Masters were beside him. “But I think you’ve made yourself a pretty powerful enemy. I’ve got security forces escorting them off the base. What do you intend to do now?”

“Make sure Chastain and the FBI leave,” Patrick said, “then resume our searches of the area. There are other extremist groups out there, and I want to get images and movement history on as many as I can.”

“You must be made out of money, my friend,” Kurt said.

“I’m borrowing it from a friend,” Patrick admitted, nodding to Jon, “and I’ll figure out a way to repay him — eventually.” To Jon, he said, “Can you bring some weapon packs and electromagnetic rifles in for the CID and Tin Man?”

“How many do you want, Patrick?” Jon asked.

“I didn’t hear any of that, boys,” Kurt said. “Try not to rip up any more of my hangars tonight, okay?” He looked up at the Cybernetic Infantry Device towering over him. “Put the doors back together, will you?”

“Yes, sir,” the CID replied in its electronic voice. The CID and the Tin Man got to work repairing the hangar doors, pinching and squeezing the metal back into a sort of solid surface and using their fingers like rivet guns to hang the side door back on its hinges. The CID unit assumed its dismount position, and Charlie Turlock climbed out. “Man, that was fun!” she exclaimed.

“Beating FBI agents up for personal reasons is not what the CID is made for, Charlie,” Jason Richter said. “It belongs to the U.S. Army and is loaned to the FBI.”

“They haven’t been doing a rip-roaring job with them so far, Jason,” Charlie pointed out.

“The general seems to feel the CID is his personal property,” Jason said, addressing Patrick indirectly. “I have to assure him, he’s wrong.”

Patrick ignored him. “Charlie’s right: we need a better approach to this Knights of the True Republic extremist situation than what the FBI has been pursuing,” he said. “We’re still going to find and track them, but we don’t have the authority to arrest or kill them, and there doesn’t seem to be any local law enforcement willing or able to help. And we have to organize our group to start going over all the sensor images we’ve collected so far. I suggest we get some rest, then meet tomorrow morning to discuss a plan of action.”

As they all turned to depart, Patrick said to Richter: “One moment, Colonel.” Jason went back, looking directly at Patrick, his hands behind his back in an attitude that was both respectful and dismissive. “Have I done something to tick you off, Colonel?” Patrick asked.

“With all due respect, sir: I object to the way you take things and personnel and act as you please, as if you answer to no other authority but your own,” Jason said as matter-of-factly as if he were describing a sunny day. “Dr. Masters’s sensors and computers; the CID and Tin Man; Charlie Turlock and Macomber; and all of those Civil Air Patrol people — you treat them as if they’ve been assigned to you, and you have an unlimited budget to direct them to do anything you wish. And you literally tortured and terrorized those federal agents with the CID and Tin Man, not to mention threatening their lives. I’m just trying to decide if I have a responsibility and duty to report you to someone so a proper authority can evaluate your actions — and stop you.”

Patrick thought for a moment, matching Jason’s direct glare; then: “Tell me, Colonel: Where do you live?”

“I’m currently assigned to the Army Infantry Transformational BattleLab at—”

“No, I mean, where’s your hometown?”

Richter blinked at the question. “I’m from western Pennsylvania, General.”

“Still no mention of a hometown,” Patrick observed. “I think that’s the key to why you don’t understand what I’m trying to do, Colonel: you don’t seem to have a hometown.”

“I’m in the U.S. Army, General,” Jason said. “I travel two hundred days a year to bases and laboratories all over the world; I visit a half-dozen defense contractors and engineering firms a month; and the rest of the time I’m working in my lab a minimum of twelve hours a day.”

“How about your folks?”

“They live near Wilmington, North Carolina, surrounded by kids and grandkids,” Jason said. “I’ve never been there.”

“Interesting. So you don’t really have a home, do you?” Jason didn’t respond. “But if Fort Polk was attacked by extremists, you’d certainly defend it, wouldn’t you?”

“Of course, sir. That’s obvious. What’s your point?”

“And if there were no military police when the attack began, you’d certainly pick up a gun and do your best to fight off the attackers, right?”

“Yes.”

“You’d even climb aboard a Cybernetic Infantry Device and use it to defend the base, correct? Maybe even put on a weapon backpack if you felt you needed it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Even if the Army didn’t order you to do anything?” Patrick asked. “Even if the military police were already responding?”

Jason thought for a moment; then: “If the CID could get the job done and prevent loss of life and property… yes, sir, I would. It would be crazy to have a weapon system like that and not use it in a crisis.”

“But the CID doesn’t belong to you,” Patrick pointed out. “You have access to it, but you don’t own it.” Again, Jason said nothing. “So what’s the difference between you and me, Colonel? Battle Mountain is my home. I live on this base, and my son goes to school in town, and my friends and Civil Air Patrol squadron mates live all throughout this area. I’d certainly do all I could to defend my home, same as you — even convince my neighbors to join me to do whatever we could to stop the bad guys.”

Jason still had not responded, so Patrick took a step toward him. “So get your head out of your ass and get with the program, Colonel,” he snapped. “The situation here is real, and it’s serious. It’s not someone else’s problem — it’s our problem.

“Now, if you want, you can call anyone you feel you need to call, and I’ll respond in the same way,” Patrick