Scowling, the Green Beret noncom got back to his feet and started on again, pushing his pace a little to catch up with the others. He was working his way through a withered clump of sagebrush about fifty meters east of the trail they were following when he spotted his very own “something weird.”
Ostrowski swung out of line to check it out. He frowned. What he saw looked a little like someone had taken a huge divot out of the hard-packed sand with a golf club… only it would have to be a golf club that was maybe twice the height of a man. Almost immediately he spotted another, almost identical, big divot in the ground, offset from the other, and nearly two meters farther on. More of them were visible in a line heading away to the north. Turning around, he could see the same strange marks vanishing off into the distance.
Jesus, the sergeant thought, feeling suddenly cold despite the scorching heat. Those were tracks. But they weren’t tracks made by any kind of animal he’d ever encountered. Whatever had made them moved on two legs… and based on the stride length, the fucking thing had to be at least twelve feet tall.
“Captain!” Ostrowski said urgently into his throat mike. “Remember those big nasty killer robots you were talking about? Well, sir… I think we’ve found them!”
Twenty-Nine
Stacy Anne Barbeau finished skimming the hurriedly transmitted report and tossed it across the conference table to Rauch. “So I was right all along,” she snapped. “Take a look at that! A special forces patrol found tracks made by those goddamned CIDs a few miles north of Battle Mountain. And not only that, they just spotted the marks left by the landing gear of some type of unknown aircraft along a dirt road in the same general area. Their best guess is that it took off sometime in the last twenty-four hours.” She raised a triumphant eyebrow. “And yet, not a single civilian or military radar anywhere around picked up so much as a blip from this mystery plane. Which makes it what, Dr. Rauch?”
He sighed. “A stealth aircraft, Madam President.”
“A stealth aircraft,” she confirmed coldly. She saw his reluctance to draw the obvious conclusion from the facts and shook her head in frustration. What more did her national security adviser need to convince him that her instincts were on target? A signed confession from Kevin Martindale and Piotr Wilk, for Christ’s sake? “Open your eyes, Ed. Those Scion and Iron Wolf mercenaries are the ones who’ve been kicking the crap out of us. Why else would they have a stealth plane and their killing machines secretly based near Sky Masters?”
“I’ve read Captain Michaelson’s report myself,” Rauch said with a frown. “And so far, what he and his men have found doesn’t seem like much. Just a spot where one relatively small aircraft might have been concealed under camouflage netting — plus what appear to be tracks made by one or more Cybernetic Infantry Devices coming and going from an outcrop overlooking the Battle Mountain area.” He shook his head. “But without finding evidence of stockpiles of ammunition, missiles, food, water, and fuel, I don’t see how this site could possibly have served as a genuine base of operations for the attacks we’ve experienced.”
Barbeau took a deep breath, willing herself not to lose control over her temper. In the current political climate, with rumors circulating that her administration was in complete disarray, she could not afford to unceremoniously dump Rauch, no matter how tempting it was. “Then our scouts will just have to keep on looking, won’t they?” she said scathingly.
“There’s another consideration,” he said. “If Scion is behind these raids against us, why didn’t those CIDs attack our soldiers when they overran the Sky Masters complex?”
For an otherwise intelligent man, Ed Rauch could be astonishingly stupid, she decided. “Because they were overmatched and they knew it,” she said flatly. “Those robots may be tough, but they’re not invincible. Put enough firepower against them and they’ll go down.” Inwardly, she felt vindicated. Except for poor, panicky Luke Cohen, her other advisers had thought she was overreacting when she’d ordered the use of overwhelming military force at Battle Mountain. Well, if she’d listened to the naysayers and relied on sending in a few FBI agents and the local sheriffs to serve a federal warrant, yesterday’s operation against Sky Masters would have had a very different ending.
One of her aides rapped gingerly on the conference room door. “Excuse me, Madam President, but Admiral Caldwell has arrived. Security has cleared him through and he’s on his way down from the surface now.”
Caldwell? The head of the National Security Agency was coming here in person? What was so important that he couldn’t report by secure link? Barbeau turned a questioning look toward Rauch.
“The admiral’s people have finished the investigation you ordered into the circumstances surrounding Lieutenant General McLanahan’s death over Poland three years ago,” he said.
“So what did they learn?” she demanded. “Did we kill him? Is that lunatic son of a bitch finally dead?”
Rauch looked back at her without any discernible expression. “I don’t know,” he said coolly. “Given the strict need-to-know classification level on that entire… episode… the admiral thought it wiser to brief you first in person rather than risk disseminating the information through regular channels.”
Barbeau didn’t much like his tone. Learning that she’d ordered American F-35 pilots flying covertly over Poland to shoot down the last survivors of a desperate Iron Wolf bombing mission hadn’t gone over very well with her military and national security team. Imposing a total security blackout on the incident was the only way she’d kept word of what she’d done from leaking to the press and the broader American public. She bristled at the memory of their unspoken but evident disgust and disapproval. Presidents were paid to make the hard decisions, not to pussyfoot around. What was she supposed to have done with Gryzlov screaming his head off for vengeance? Allowed Patrick McLanahan and Kevin Martindale to drag her into an unwinnable war against the Russians? No, she thought resolutely. It had been far better to order the deaths of a handful of hired Iron Wolf mercenaries than to risk countless innocent American military and civilian lives.
Fortunately for Rauch, Admiral Caldwell arrived before she had quite decided whether or not to ream him out for his implied criticism. He hurried in, accompanied only by a single aide carrying a laptop case.
As was his custom, the NSA chief wore a nondescript civilian suit. Anyone seeing him out of context would have taken him for a typical dull, middle-grade government bureaucrat. But Caldwell’s almost painfully ordinary features hid a brain of remarkable power. Since being detailed to the National Security Agency as a young naval officer, he’d risen steadily through its ranks on pure merit and technical brilliance. He was also completely apolitical, seemingly intent only on the business of providing the best possible intelligence to whichever administration was in power.
Barbeau nodded toward an empty chair. “Take a seat, Admiral,” she snapped, unable to conceal the strain she felt. With an effort, she regained enough composure to offer him the semblance of a smile. “I gather you have some news for me?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Caldwell opened the laptop computer his aide handed him. “To answer the question you posed, my analysts dug through every piece of information we had concerning the two XF-111 SuperVarks our F-35 pilots shot down — everything from satellite photos of the crash sites to recordings of radar imagery and radio intercepts.”