Jerome Preisler - Net Force--Attack Protocol

Mario rolled his neck. It felt wet and slick against his collar. He tapped the screen of his watch for the digital thermometer and saw it was seventy-eight degrees. When they had first taken cover, the chest’s interior was the same temperature as the night outside, cold enough to make him shiver.

Before too long the ’hog’s sensors would pick up the heat differential, and they would be in serious trouble. His immediate concern, though, was the sound of Laura’s breathing. She was really starting to labor. And it wasn’t just Laura. So was he.

And it wasn’t just them.

So was Buttons.

Mario heard the cat panting a second before Laura opened her coat to give it some air. As its head pushed up between the flaps, Mario saw in the glow of his watch that its mouth was open, its tongue lolling out and sort of trembling, like a tiny leaf.

“Do cats usually do that?” he said.

“I’m not sure.” Laura stroked its head. “It doesn’t seem normal.”

He touched his fingers to the animal’s chest and felt it rising and falling. Buttons’s respiration was very fast, and he didn’t think it was only because of the rising temperature. The freezer couldn’t have held much oxygen to start, and they had been inside it almost thirty minutes.

Mario knew their air supply was running out. At the same time the carbon dioxide level inside the chest was steadily elevating. It was almost like being in a closed garage with the motor on. They would eventually pass out and suffocate.

“We can’t stay here,” he said. “We’ll get carbon monoxide poisoning. Before we even use up the oxygen.”

“That doesn’t sound good.”

“It isn’t.”

“How long will it take?”

“I don’t know exactly,” he said. “But I have an idea about how to get away.”

Laura stroked the cat’s head. “Sigue,” she whispered. “Tell me.”

“The ’hog’s looking for us. I think it patrols from here to the last hut, then doubles back. The timing’s always about the same.” He wriggled his watch. “I’ve kept track. Five huts. Three minutes a hut. Fifteen minutes for the full patrol. It’s stuck in a behavioral loop.”

“So...it’s got robot OCD?”

He smiled wanly in the darkness.

“Kind of.” He reached into his pocket for his JLTV’s ignition fob, felt for her hand, and slipped the fob into it. “You drive, right?”

“Yes.”

“Good. When the ’hog comes back, we wait. Let it snoop around. Once it leaves, we wait some more. Fifteen minutes. Till it’s at that last hut.”

“But what if you’re wrong?”

“About?”

“The patrol. Maybe it doesn’t go up the line. Just pokes around next door or something.”

“I’m not wrong,” he said. His chest felt heavy. Talking used up too much precious air. “Laura, please listen.”

A pause. “Okay,” she said. “Go on.”

“When the ’hog’s at the far hut, I’ll jump out of here. Draw it away. It’ll buy you time to get to the Jolt and drive off base.”

“Wait. What about you?”

He didn’t answer.

After a second, she said, “Mario, que no ! We stay together.”

“If we do, we’ll all die.”

“But maybe it won’t come back.”

“It will. In seventeen seconds.”

He saw her shake her head. “How are you so sure?”

“I told you. I know. I’m a robotics specialist.”

“Honestly?”

“Yeah. A systems architect. I—”

He stopped.

Whirrr. Click. Whirrrrrrrrr.

Their eyes locked in the faint glow of his watch. Mario heard Laura pull in a breath. Felt her shoulder and arm tensing against him.

The mechanical sounds grew louder outside the freezer.

The ’hog was coming back. Right on time.

The armored wagons approached front on, lights off, in a tight wedge formation.

Colonel John Howard stood in the field watching them come closer, a Puma 6x6 optionally manned fighting vehicle flanked by three four-wheeled variants, the 4x4s hanging slightly back, reminding him of muscle-bound bodyguards.

He looked over at Fernandez and Wasserman.

“We still could have people at the barracks,” he said. “We do, we’re pulling them out.”

Fernandez glanced up from his tablet. He was thinking that nearly all the permanent structures at Janus had been built on existing foundations left by its original Romanian Land Forces occupants...and the troop-housing center was no exception. Its basement was essentially a concrete bunker like the underground sublevel at HQ—but without the cosmetic upgrades and technical frills. If they had taken cover inside it when the ’hogs hit the building, they could have found themselves trapped.

“I can get us there fast, sir,” he said. “But we better roll.”

Howard watched the vehicles halt about five feet in front of him. One big happy family.

He strode over to the Puma, his feet crunching into the newly fallen snow. Then he opened its right hatch and lifted himself in. As he folded slowly and stiffly into the crew seat, he realized Fernandez and Wasserman were staring at him from outside the vehicle.

“What’re you two looking at?” he said.

Fernandez shook his head. “Nothing, sir.”

“Then let’s move.”

An instant before the sergeant shut the hatch, Howard thought he heard a faint humming or buzzing noise somewhere out in the night. It was like a helicopter, high up and far off, but not so high and far it didn’t arouse his curiosity. Helicopters didn’t usually fly in bad weather.

He was still wondering about it when the hatch’s hydraulic actuators lowered it smoothly into position, and the sound was blocked from his ears.

Windowless and sunk low in the hull, the Puma’s forward crew section was a compact, steel-walled, fully functional version of the operations center that had been wiped in the headquarters explosion—for all practical purposes, a mobile command center.

Sergeant Fernandez was at the wheel, Wasserman riding shotgun. In the jump seat, Howard tried to find a position that didn’t make his shoulders, arms, ribs, ass, and just about every other part of him hurt. But all the moving around just increased his discomfort, and he finally sat still and waited impatiently to get rolling.

It took less than thirty seconds. The authentication system read the unique digital token on Fernandez’s wristband, prompted him to tap in his ID code, and the control panels lit up.

“Pickles,” he said. “Have we got Argos online?”

“Yes. Satlink signal at ninety percent.”

“Okay. Back-door into the hedgehogs. Give me visuals on their positions.”

“Handshaking in progress.”

Howard saw the overhead monitor light up with a realistic 3-D visualization of the base. Then the four hedgehogs—their graphic icons—appeared on-screen. Two were already outside the barracks. The others were converging on it fast from the base’s northern and southern quadrants.

The Puma kicked into gear and lurched forward. Howard winced.

“I thought the robots’ trackers were disabled,” he said.

“They are, sir.”

“But?”

“I installed Argos-shielded chips a while ago,” Fernandez said. “As fail-safes.” He glanced back over his shoulder at the colonel. “I took a few other precautions while I was at it. In case the ’hogs got hacked.”

“And you didn’t ask my permission?”

“Actually, sir, I did.”

“And what’d I say?”

“That I should stop asking questions and do it,” Fernandez said. “Told me you don’t know what the hell I’m talking about half the time anyway.”

Howard frowned but said nothing. The sergeant accelerated, the unmanned escorts hanging several feet back on his left and right flanks. The little triangular convoy continued across the field at a rapid clip until it reached the paved transverse running parallel with the southern fence. Then the two autons fell in behind the Puma, and all three rumbled west in an arrow-straight line, their wheels digging deep into the snow.