Dale Brown - Puppet Master

Fortunately, it looked like a cell phone. The soldier couldn’t tell the difference when he smashed it with his heel.

“He’s in,” White said down by the vans. “But they’re giving him a hard time. I think we lost the radio.”

“Are you going in?” asked Chelsea.

“No,” said White. “He knew it would be rough. Hang tight, and keep that UAV overhead.”

Borya looked at the clock on the wall and jumped up.

She’d told Mary Martyak she’d be home an hour ago.

It was hard to keep track of time when you were at Smart Metal.

“I have to go,” she told her supervisor. “See you Friday. Regular time.”

“Regular time,” said Lisa Macklin. “See ya then.”

Think about the money. Think about Borya.

Tolevi felt his face swelling, blood rushing to repair the damage done by the Russian commandos’ feet. He pushed up to his haunches, sliding back against the wall, dazed but conscious.

No money is worth this. It’s not the pain, it’s the humiliation. One of them, maybe, but two?

Should have just blown the pricks up and been done with it.

Blown Johansen off.

“Get up, mafya shit,” yelled the soldier. “You’re bloodying the hall.”

You’d think they’d at least be a little scared of the damn SVR. If it was still the KGB, they wouldn’t pull this shit.

“I’m not mafya, asshole.” Tolevi winced, expecting to be hit again, but apparently the soldiers were satiated and walked away.

Tolevi took a quick inventory of his teeth — still there, still intact — then attempted to get his bearings.

Three in the house. Two just beat the shit out of me. The other… our prize… downstairs?

He bent over to the radio and scooped it up. It was smashed and undoubtedly beyond hope. But his watch was intact; it had a signal function that he could use to alert the team. Push the button twice, and they’d move in.

Find the butcher first.

Tolevi staggered into the hall behind the room, heading in the direction of the kitchen. He found his two friends laughing at the table. They had coffee and some sort of goulash, half-finished, on their plates.

“I need water,” he told them.

They ignored him. He went to the sink, found a glass.

There was a door to his right. He hoped it was the basement.

“This a closet or the bathroom?” he mumbled.

They didn’t answer, which was the response he was hoping for. He walked to the door with an exaggerated stumble, then opened it, intending to go down. Probably they would push him; he braced himself for a tumble.

But it wasn’t the basement. It was a bathroom.

Tolevi hesitated.

“Make sure you close the door. We don’t want to smell your shit,” snarled the soldier who’d done most of the hitting.

Chelsea pulled the radio earbud out and squeezed the plastic, trying to make it more comfortable. Nothing seemed to work; her ears continued to itch.

The screen for the Nighthawks — she now had two in the air — was in front of her on the floor. Peter’s controller was to her left; the controls for the Groucho mechs sat on the floor to her right. All three of the ground robots were already positioned in the woods, ready to go.

“Looks like he’s in the back with the two soldiers,” she told White, who was sitting in the front of the van with Bozzone.

“Move up to the house,” White told the paras. “Let’s get ready to grab him.”

White turned to Bozzone. “I’m going to get in position. You guys OK?”

“We’re good,” said Bozzone.

“Chelsea?”

“Yeah. Go.”

The van rocked as White hopped out. Chelsea checked the UAVs. She had the video divided in half, displaying the visual feeds for both with a small GPS map in each view’s right-hand corner.

A warning came up on the screen to the left: the battery for Nighthawk 1, the one they had launched first, was starting to run low; she’d have to recover it soon.

Nighthawk 2 was circling about a half mile south, ready in reserve. She checked it quickly, catching a glimpse of some kids playing soccer. Its vitals were good; she decided she would move it up now, while things were still relatively quiet.

She plotted a new course, then took control from the computer. As she did, she noticed a cloud of dust billowing up in the corner of the forward video image. She banked the bird back south.

“Vehicles,” she said over the radio. “I think the Russian commandos are coming back.”

Massina and Johnny were passing through the hallway when Lisa Macklin ran out of her lab room and nearly knocked them down.

“Whoa, cowboy,” said Massina. “Watch where you’re driving.”

“Trying to catch little Borya. She left this.” Macklin held up a backpack.

“I don’t see her,” said Massina.

“Excuse me.” Macklin trotted to the rail, looked over it, then ran to the elevator.

Massina continued down the hall, stopping to check on the 3-D interface unit, which was refining a program that used gestures to command robots. Simple in theory, in practice the need for a complex and deep dictionary of commands made thing vastly complicated. The programming was the easy part; refining the gestures so a wide range of humans could do them unambiguously was proving nearly impossible.

“Put on the glasses and check out our latest iteration,” offered the project director.

“I’d love to, but I have some things I have to get to,” said Massina apologetically. He was due back in the box. The operation would be starting any minute.

“How we doing, Shadow?” he asked Johnny back in the hall. “How are your legs?”

“Good. Great. How’s your arm?”

Massina gave a short, self-deprecating chuckle. “You know, you’re the first person that’s asked me that all year. Probably since my last checkup.”

“How long did it take you to get used to it?”

“I’m not used to it.” They stopped in front of the elevator. “You never get used to it. You accept it and move on.”

Johnny nodded.

“Eventually it feels more comfortable,” said Massina gently. “But there’s always loss there. Deep loss.”

“Yeah.”

The elevator opened. Macklin stepped out. She still had the backpack in her hand.

“Missed her,” she said. “I’ll have to find somebody to drop it off.”

“Why don’t you take it, Johnny?” suggested Massina. “I won’t need you for a while.”

“Sure.”

They’d worked out two plans in case the Spetsnaz came back. One was to simply let them; the presence of more bodies complicated matters but didn’t make the mission more difficult per se.

The other was to take them out as they pulled up.

It was White’s call.

“Set up to intercept the bastards,” said White over the team radio. “I don’t have coms with Tolevi,” he added. “Anybody?”

No one had him.

“What’s he doing?” White asked Chelsea.

“He’s stopped moving. He’s near the first two.”

“What about our jackpot?” said White.

“Still prone downstairs.”

“Let’s take these guys. Chelsea, get the drones moving to the house.”

Chelsea turned to the Groucho controls. Both were loaded with explosives. She directed Groucho 1 to head toward the front of the house; Groucho 2 was programmed to move to the garage, where the vehicles would be.