Edge of Battle

ice cabinet section of the limo…and his mouth dropped open in absolute horror.

At the same time, the bodyguard had got into the front passenger seat, and the limo driver trotted around from holding O’Rourke’s door open to get in the driver’s side…but instead of getting in, he dashed off down the driveway, past the media crews, and disappeared into the crowds on the street.

“Get out! Get out!” the bodyguard’s muffled voice shouted through the closed blast-proof privacy window. “Get out of the car, now!”

“What the hell…?” The agent’s eyes widened in surprise, then fear, then abject panic. “Holy shit, this thing’s full of…!”

O’Rourke tried the door handle. “The door’s locked!” He tried the other handle. “This one’s…”

At that instant, the one hundred pounds of C4 explosives planted in the liquor and ice cabinets inside the SUV exploded. The armored body and windows of the SUV contained the explosion for a fraction of a second until, like an overfilled balloon, the powerful explosives first blew the windows out, then ripped the rest of the vehicle into a thousand pieces. Huge tongues of fire leaped out horizontally through the limo’s shattered windows, and then the area for an entire block was showered with flying shards of metal, a wave of fire, and a tremendous concussion, knocking over every person, vehicle, and any other standing object within one hundred yards and shattering every window for another hundred yards.

CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY,

NORTHRIDGE, CALIFORNIA

A SHORT TIME LATER

The white panel truck exited northbound Highway 101 at Reseda Boulevard and headed north, not speeding but zipping through many stoplights that had just turned red. It turned right on Vincennes Street, past Darby Avenue and onto the California State University–Northridge campus. West University Drive dead-ended at Jacaranda Walk, but the truck squeezed through a narrow brick campus entryway and continued eastbound onto the wide tree-lined sidewalk down two blocks until reaching Jacaranda Hall Engineering Building, the driver beeping its horn occasionally to warn students.

The scene on and off campus was one of absolute confusion. There were several antimilitary, antiadministration, and anti-immigrant protest groups up and down West University Drive. The streets were littered with garbage, discarded signs and banners, and projectiles. The acidy smell of tear gas could barely be detected, wafting in from many directions. Long lines of Hispanic men, women, and children were walking down both sides of the street in both directions, with cars following them, honking horns at them, or simply unable to move because of the chaos. Media crews were everywhere, adding to the confusion.

Cal State–Northridge’s campus security was already out in force trying to keep most of the protesters and displaced Mexicans from swarming onto the campus, but they focused their attention squarely on the white panel truck as it drove up over the curb and onto the sidewalk on campus. The situation stopped being serious and had suddenly gotten potentially deadly.

The truck took a left onto East University Drive, then an immediate left into the handicapped parking area outside Jacaranda Hall. Just as campus security patrols arrived, they saw the driver get out of the truck’s cab and step inside the back of the truck. Three patrol cars, lights flashing, blocked the truck. “Driver of the white panel truck,” one of the officers said, using the loudspeaker on his patrol car, “this is the campus police. Come out of the vehicle immediately.” There was no response from the vehicle, even after several repeated calls both in English and Spanish.

After the duty sergeant arrived and assessed the situation with his officers, it was quickly decided to evacuate Jacaranda, Sequoia, Sagebrush, and Redwood Halls and Oviatt Library, and call in the Highway Patrol and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. The recent bombings in Las Vegas and Mexico City, plus the considerable unrest among the Hispanic population all across California, put everyone on hair-trigger alert.

Within ten minutes the sheriff’s department’s bomb squad arrived, and ten minutes after that a remote- controlled tracked robot was dispatched, carrying a bag with a cellular phone inside, plus microphones that could be attached to the outside of the truck with remote manipulator arms to listen to what was happening inside. By that time the buildings surrounding the truck had been evacuated and a one-hundred-yard perimeter established. The robot motored to the closed and locked double cargo doors in the back of the truck, just far enough away for one door to be opened.

A loudspeaker on the bomb squad’s robot crackled to life: “Attention, any persons inside the truck. This is Sergeant Louis Cortez of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. We would like to speak with whoever is inside. We will not harm you. A remote-controlled unarmed robot is behind the truck. It is carrying a bag containing a telephone. You may open the right-side cargo door, reach out, and take the bag containing the phone. We assure you, we will not trick you. The bag contains only a phone, and we will not attempt to arrest or attack you. We wish to speak with whoever is in charge. Please take the phone.”

The deputy began repeating the message in Spanish when those outside the truck could see the right cargo door handle move, and moments later open. The robot was positioned perfectly—all the person inside had to do was open the door less than six inches, reach out less than half an arm’s length, and grab the…

Suddenly both cargo doors burst apart and completely flew off their hinges when some sort of tremendous burst of energy erupted from inside the truck. The police instinctively ducked down behind vehicles and barricades, expecting the shock wave of a huge bomb blast to crash into them—but there was nothing. When they looked up, all they saw…

…was a large ten-foot-tall two-legged cyborg that had just jumped from the back of the truck. As the astonished police officers watched, Ariadna Vega, piloting the Cybernetic Infantry Device, dashed around the truck and into the main entrance of Jacaranda Hall—she was out of sight even before most of them realized what they had just seen.

The entryway and hallways inside the building were empty—Ariadna was able to monitor the campus police radio frequencies from on board the CID unit, so she knew that everyone had been evacuated. Running on all fours—the approved CID technique for assaulting a building, learned the hard way from Task Force TALON’s assault into an oil refinery office building in Cairo—she headed upstairs to the third floor of the engineering building. She briefly considered how she would do her final approach to the target, but quickly decided there was only one way to do it

Staying low so she wouldn’t hit the ceiling, running on all fours, she galloped around a corner, down a hallway…and crashed directly through the door at the end of the hall. It took her just two heartbeats to see that the outer office was empty, so she turned and bulldozed herself directly through another door to her left, then immediately rose up on her left knee, turned toward the windows, raised her mechanical arms in order to grab anyone within reach, and deployed the twenty-millimeter cannon in her backpack, all in one smooth motion. She heard a woman and a man scream, and the lights flickered. “Freeze!” she shouted. “No one move!”

She then heard the sound of clapping. Ari turned and saw none other than Colonel Yegor Zakharov himself, seated on her father’s comfortable armchair at the head of an informal meeting area in front of her father’s desk, applauding her entrance! The coffee table in front of him had a tray with coffee cups and saucers on it—the ones she had given to her father when he became the chairman of the school of engineering at Northridge!—and even a plate of cookies. She aimed her cannon directly at Zakharov’s smirking face and…

“No le mate, nino,” Ariadna’s mother Ernestina said. Ariadna looked up in complete surprise and saw her father seated behind his desk in the corner behind Zakharov, with her mother right beside him. They were clutching each other, but in surprise, not fear. “Is that you, Ariadna?”

Ariadna immediately reached out, and in the blink of an eye had Zakharov by the throat, holding him up high enough so his toes just barely touched the carpet. “?Es usted el dano dos?” she asked.

“We are fine, dear,” Ernestina said. “Yegor has been a complete gentleman.”

“Yegor…gentleman…?”

“Let him explain, Ari,” her father Dominic said. “You can make up your own mind, but we believe what he has