Quantico

"We don"t have time," Griff said.

"I thought you"d say that." Andrews walked around to the back of the truck and opened the gate, then pulled down a rack stuffed with rounded foot-high cylinders, six of them, striped black and yellow like the business end of a hornet. One by one, he plucked four from the rack and let them roll in the dust, inert. "How many of my little beauties do you want?"

"Two for now, one at a time," Griff said. "Best if they can squeeze through that opening without jiggling the barn door."

Andrews opened the aluminum case and pulled out earnodes and gogs. "We"re on Lynx with bombnet and HDS," he said. "The bots will relay pretty good pictures. If they find anything, I suggest we just close the roads and blow the whole d.a.m.ned thing. You"ve got your man, right?"

"I want to see what he has in there," Griff said. "When he tried to blow my head off with his shotgun, he was happy. The last words he said were, "Death to the Jews."" Well, not quite the last words. But it makes my point. Well, not quite the last words. But it makes my point.

"There aren"t many Jews around here," Andrews said.

Griff stuck his hands in his pockets. Christ, he was tired. He just wanted this to be over, to find out how his son was doing at Quantico, to lie in bed and pull the covers up to his shoulders and breathe deeply of a dark quiet bedroom"s home-scented air.

"Exactly," he said. "In his sixty active years, Robert Chambers worked with mobsters, the IRA, Thai smugglers, probably the Russians, and Aryan Nations. Is there anyone here who isn"t isn"t curious about what he really meant, and who else he might be connected to?" curious about what he really meant, and who else he might be connected to?"

Watson raised her arm. "Me," she said like a student in cla.s.s. She looked around the group. "Just joking."

Griff ignored her. "Can one of those fit through that opening?"

"I think so," Andrews said. "Armatec 9 D-lls and a D-l2. They"re smaller and cheaper than last year"s models, and so far they"re pretty d.a.m.ned good. Each one is a little different, you know. Custom programs, more and more independent. I"ve named them all." He upended one of the cans and unscrewed the container cover. Inside, folded and strapped into a compact unit, was a cross between a go-kart and a c.o.c.kroach, with three wheels mounted on springs and pistons and five triple-jointed legs, two in the front and three in the rear. Andrews unlatched the bot and it stretched out with a hydraulic sigh. A pole as thick as a pencil rose from a lozenge-shaped "head" above a three-wheeled base plate. The head looked like the bridge on a toy ship. The pole thrust out two little black eyes on thin flexible stalks. A third eye was mounted on the pole itself, centered just below the stalks. Pressed into grooves behind the head were two retracted arms with graspers and cutters extensible from their tips. Griff, vaguely familiar with Armatec bots, looked for and saw the case that contained the scanner kit-fluoroscope and stethoscope, along with remote chemical a.n.a.lyzer. He also spotted two disruptors, slender barrels mounted behind the head designed to shoot slugs into bomb detonators. Unfolded, the bot was about fifteen inches long, with a wheelbase of six inches.

"This one"s Kaczynski. These guys here are McVeigh and Nichols. And this one, the temperamental one, is Marilyn Monroe." Marilyn was bigger than the others.

Rebecca walked up to the nearest wooden post and examined the wires strung overhead. "I"ll bet it"s some sort of antenna. But it"s new to me. No sign of it being wired to the barn, but the wires could be buried." Rebecca patted the post. Griff could not read her expression. "We"re at solar max," she said. "Auroras all the way down to San Diego, prettiest I"ve ever seen-like a sign from G.o.d. Was the Patriarch the kind of guy who liked to watch the skies?"

CHAPTER TEN.

Quantico.

William walked briskly to the library to drop off two texts. Along the way, two agents in red shirts ran past double-time, heading for the lounge, eager to see the bombnet telecast. He was in no hurry. Bombs held little interest for him. Having to wait up long nights as a boy for his father to come home had cured him of any interest in blowing up model airplanes with firecrackers or concocting little pipe bombs to light off in the woods. There had of course been those weeks when Griff had taught him about fireworks...Odd, exciting weeks. He"d almost forgotten about them.

He pa.s.sed part of the Academy art gallery-framed prints lining the walls, all realistic and comforting, landscapes and farms and domestic situations. These he liked well enough. They served as a perfect counterbalance to gory crime scene photos and shoot-"em-ups in training. Why we fight. Why we fight. His favorite was of a young blond girl tending a newborn calf in a gra.s.sy field. He paused for a moment in front of the framed print. He really wanted to be there with that girl and that calf. His favorite was of a young blond girl tending a newborn calf in a gra.s.sy field. He paused for a moment in front of the framed print. He really wanted to be there with that girl and that calf.

William Griffin was aware he looked nothing like the typical FBI agent, if there is such a person. At six feet four inches tall, he certainly looked nothing like his father, a bluff, stocky bull of a man. Even after five years in the NYPD, William had acquired none of the solid decorum and steady, critical gaze of the good cop. Instead, his brown eyes tended to be sympathetic, humored, and friendly, and beneath a long, straight knife of a nose, his lips wore a perpetual, half-hidden smile.

He jogged up the stairs-PT had put him in great shape-dropped off the texts, and jogged down the stairs again, pa.s.sing a gla.s.s case with some of the Academy"s prizes on display. He had studied these artifacts many times in the past few months and knew them by heart: weapons manufactured from household items-including an ice pick with an incised groove for poison-bomb-making materials, dogeared Arabic printouts of Al Qaeda manuals on killing and conducting terror operations confiscated from safe houses in Iraq, Germany, and England.

A meticulous model of an insect-carriage gunbot like the one that had almost killed his father in Portland.

The cases weren"t changed out often. Everyone was too busy to look back over their shoulders. And here he was, in the shadow of legends-including his own father-coming across as a gangling, bright but not too savvy agent trainee who had buck fever and a wicked way with a cholo stick.

Still, he was doing okay. In two days he would graduate-by the skin of his teeth.

He picked up his pace, turned the corner and jogged past the chapel. Then a return loop back by the art gallery. Had these been Hoover"s favorites? Not many students had much to say about Hoover. Most didn"t remember him.

In the study lounge, chairs and couches had been pulled up in front of an old model plasma TV with lots of missing pixels. Some students were still studying. Others had firmly fixed their gazes on the spotty display.

William walked up behind Fouad, who was sitting straight up in one of the lounge"s well-cushioned chairs. "Where"s this?" William asked him.

"Washington state," Fouad said. "A farmhouse has been raided. The Patriarch, Robert Chambers, was killed in a shootout. Erwin Griffin, is he your father?"

William let out his breath. "Yeah," he said.

"Well, he is due to go into that barn and discover if there is a bomb. Everyone with bomb expertise is listening. It is very interesting, very frightening."

William pressed his teeth together and sat on the arm of Fouad"s chair. Sat.u.r.day night at the Griffin household. "Griff"s at it again," Mom would say, sitting at the dinner table with her son and an empty chair, a plate set out, on more than one occasion with tears streaming down her cheeks. "I can feel it. Can"t you?" Sat.u.r.day night at the Griffin household. "Griff"s at it again," Mom would say, sitting at the dinner table with her son and an empty chair, a plate set out, on more than one occasion with tears streaming down her cheeks. "I can feel it. Can"t you?"

Then he recognized his father, seen from behind-stocky and poised, of medium height, standing with two others in front of a big barn. A shiny bomb squad truck with Washington State Patrol Washington State Patrol painted on its sides stood a few yards away. He could barely make out some robots arranged on the ground around the truck. painted on its sides stood a few yards away. He could barely make out some robots arranged on the ground around the truck.

William heard the subdued conversations from bombnet. All the heroes were chitchatting, trying to work out the deadly puzzle, to figure out how his father might die and try to prevent it from happening.

William could not just turn away. Family honor.

"May I sit here?" he asked Fouad.

"I am proud to have you," Fouad said, and meant it. There was respect in his upturned eyes. "Your father shot the Patriarch. He is very brave."

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

Washington State.

Chippy found nothing in the two houses. Vogel took her back to the edge of the clearing with her tail between her legs, then tossed her a rubber ball for a few minutes before loading her back into her travel cage.

Watson, Rebecca, and Griff hunkered down behind blast shields about fifty yards from the barn-a trivial distance. At the edge of the clearing, more police and agents squatted behind their vehicles. They could all see Kaczynski"s-the bot"s-progress toward the door.

Griff tapped his gogs. The images from Kaczynski were sharp-better than bomb suit video. The bot paused at the opening, then turned around on its wheels, giving Griff a view of their own position-three black rectangles with heads bobbing behind tiny plastic windows.

Even from outside the barn, the bot"s minitrace was off the scale. There was no hint of plastique, Semtex, or any more recent explosives, but the barn"s air was redolent with a number of suspicious substances: diesel fuel, urea nitrate, particulate carbon that could have been from recent fires or explosions. There could be alternate explanations for most of these traces, however-it was after all a barn and fuel and fertilizer were to be expected. The particulate carbon could have come from a barbecue.

"Are we ready?" Andrews asked from the back of the bomb squad truck.

"Do it," Griff said, then took a breath and held it, hardly aware he was doing so.

Rebecca moved from a crouch to a kneel behind the blast shield and braced her hands on the ground.

Kaczynski walked through the nine-inch opening, quieter than any mouse. At first, the bot"s cameras revealed little more than bouncing splotches and bars of sunlight. Processors adjusted the picture. Details emerged and contrast smoothed.

The barn was big, empty of animals, but most of the stalls and an overhead hayloft were stacked high with containers-bottled water, sacks of sugar and what looked like barrels of wheat, rice and other grains. The Patriarch had been wellprepared for the Endtime.

The three behind the bomb shields listened to the conversation inside the truck. "Can you make a bomb out of wheat?" asked a younger tech, new to the division.

Andrews whuffed. "You ever work a grain elevator?" As he guided the bot, Andrews reminisced about his younger days in Wyoming, when he had witnessed a mishandled load of wheat puff out a dusty fog. A spark from a pump motor had ignited the flour/air mixture and blown the silo cap two hundred feet into the air. Two loaders had been killed and the concrete building had split down its length. "Don"t underestimate the calories in a cup of flour, my friend," Andrews said.

Griff tapped his gogs again. After a while, he couldn"t see the displays clearly-the problem with aging eyes. With a glance at Rebecca, he whipped off the display gla.s.ses and stuck them in his pocket. "The h.e.l.l with this." He rose from behind the shield-crouching was playing h.e.l.l with his knees-and hustled across the short distance to the bomb squad truck. Watson followed.

Rebecca removed her own gogs and joined them. The back of the truck was crowded. Watson grudgingly moved aside for her. They stepped around bomb suits arranged in clear plastic packages on the floor.

"Welcome to bot central," Andrews said. "Hope you"re not claustrophobic."

Griff was, a little.

The small s.p.a.ce stank of adrenaline-pumped fear.

"Don"t you guys use deodorant?" Watson asked. Griff knew well the sharp, stewy pong. He had become familiar with the smell of frightened men first in combat overseas and later in many tight stateside situations, and he hated it.

They had all learned to work at peak efficiency despite the fear and the smell.

"Pardon me," Andrews said.

The young technician grinned and moved forward, sitting on a steel box.

Inside the Patriarch"s barn, the bot called Kaczynski had paused before what looked like an abstract sculpture-metal tubes welded in bristling clumps on a central steel ball. The bot"s cameras angled down. The whole arrangement was mounted on a wheeled platform. A tow bar stuck out from one end.

"What in h.e.l.l is that?" Griff asked, his voice soft.

"A calliope?" Andrews guessed.

Watson pressed her lips together.

Gray cylinders of pressurized gas thrust up behind the wheeled platform. The bot"s camera played over them in up-and-down sweeps. Rebecca was looking for labels. "No colorcodes," she murmured. "Could be anything. We"re going to have to pull his welding license."

The sensors were negative for acetylene as well as propane and methane. The lack of methane in itself-in a barn-showed that ruminants had not lived there for some time. The bot pulled itself around the abstract metal object and down an aisle between empty stalls. Griff was focused on the display when the image took a jerk. In the corner of their gogs, a red dot blinked.

"What now?" Griff asked.

Andrews said, "The bot"s located something moving." He turned up the sound: harsh breathing, frightened little gasps. Then the dot stopped blinking.

"Bot"s decided it could be human," Andrews said.

The camera image stabilized long enough on the interior of a stall to show a flash of reddish blond hair, then a small, blurred figure. The figure dashed out of view.

"Did you catch that?" Griff asked.

"Looked like a little girl," Watson said.

They saw quick blue flashes and heard three distant popping sounds in rapid succession. As they all cringed and hunkered, Kaczynski"s displays blanked.

It took a few seconds for them to relax. The barn had not taken flight.

Andrews fumbled at controls. "s.h.i.t," he said. "Bot"s down."

"What, did somebody shoot it?" Watson asked.

Andrews shook his head. "I think we tripped a fryer. I"m getting nothing."

Fryers were clever little generators of electromagnetic pulses, essentially arrays of hundreds of high-powered, needle-shaped electromagnets that would jam out through a molded lattice of nickel and copper when a small internal ball of explosives went off. In the last few years fryers had been miniaturized for use by terrorists in England, Spain, and Saudi Arabia. They shorted out all solid-state electronics within ten meters. It was difficult to shield bomb robots sufficiently to avoid damage.

Fryers were used by terrorists who wanted to force humans to confront their bombs in person.

Andrews looked around the little trailer and raised his hands from the controls. "I can send in another," he said, his eyes sad.

"No need," Griff said. "We all saw her. There"s a child in there, probably a little girl."

Rebecca sighed. "Did they forget her?"

"Maybe she didn"t want to go to church," Griff said. "It happens. Too many kids and you lose track." He stood up, shoulders and neck bowed to fit under the roof. His booted toe nudged one of the suits. They were Ang-Sorkin Systems EOD-23 models, made in New Zealand and now standard around the world. EOD referred to Explosive Ordnance Disposal. "Time to fit me out with one of these."

"No way," Andrews said. "This isn"t your squad." His expression said it all: the FBI agent was older and a bit on the heavy side. n.o.body wanted to go in after a guy who"d had a stroke or a heart attack-and if either of these things happened while he was handling a detonator, there would be no need.

"I"ll go," Rebecca said.

"Well, h.e.l.l, if you"ll pardon me-" Andrews began.

Griff put his fingers to his lips, let out a shrill whistle that had them holding their ears. He raised a beefy hand. "I"m in charge. And if it means anything, I was once rated a Master Blaster in Navy EOD."

"No kidding?" Andrews said. "Crab and laurels? And how old were you then?"

Griff"s lip twitched. "I used to teach at Redstone. That"s how I got a.s.signed to the Patriarch. I"m the lead going in, and because I am old and feeble, and may not be up on the hottest new techniques, one of you can come with me." He eeny-meeny-miny-moed with a thick finger around the back of the bomb van between Rebecca, Andrews, and Watson.

Griff"s finger stopped at Watson, as he had known it would. He pointed to the suits.

"Oh, goody," Watson said.

Rebecca started to speak but Griff swiveled and cupped his hand over her mouth. She glared over his thick fingers. "You can tell me what to look for," he said. "Tell me what I"m seeing. Okay?"

Rebecca removed his hand with two delicate fingers.

"Sorry," Griff said, brows furrowed.

"Sorry won"t cut it if we lose our evidence," Rebecca said.

"Yes, ma"am," he said. "Thanks for caring."

Griff radioed the agents up the road and told them to keep a close watch on the perimeter in case anyone tried to enter or leave. If the girl fled the barn while they were inside they"d pull out and resume robot operations.

Andrews and the tech helped them suit up, a process that took ten minutes. The last step-putting on the aerodynamically curved face-plate and locking it to the chest rig-always made Griff feel like a deep-sea diver. Rip-and-zip could peel them out of the suits in less than twenty seconds if they needed to run away-otherwise, they"d be clumping around like big clumsy beetles.