“Yes’m.” Jimenez, with his round rimmed military-issue glasses, pad, and poised pencil, looks more like an accountant than one of the worlds’ best fighter plane mechanics. Kirsten can’t help but smile.

“Good.”

Ten minutes later, the task is done. Not as complete as she would have liked—not by a long shot—but given the rather sizable string of numbers and letters completely obliterated by their fiery ending, she’s more than content with what she’s managed to recover. With instincts borne of literally decades of experience, she senses what she has will be more than enough for her current needs.

Her smile tells the story, and when she turns it upon Jimenez, he blinks at her, dazed. “Ma’am?”

“Take the rest of the day off, Lieutenant,” she replies, snatching the pad out of his hand. “Catch up on your sleep, read, hell, pick dandelions for all I care. You’re dismissed.”

“Did—did I do something wrong, Ma’am?”

“No, my friend,” she laughs and, uncharacteristically, goes up to her toes to plant a soft kiss on his clean-shaven cheek that leaves him seeing stars, “you did everything right. Now scoot!”

He does.

*

“Tanski, you got a minute?”

Sighing, Koda looks to the left, where her brother’s flashlight bisects the shadowy interior. “I’m up to my elbows in ammo, thiblo. Can it wait?”

“I think you might wanna come take a look at this.”

Passing her duties off to a nearby soldier, Dakota rises to her feet and wipes the sweat from her forehead with a negligent swipe of one long arm. Following the light trail her brother has lain down, she comes up next to him at the door to what appears to be Markham’s private office.

With a flair for the dramatic, Tacoma pauses, then sweeps the light in a wide arc until it is pointing directly into the office. He stands quietly, awaiting his sister’s reaction.

Koda gives a low whistle as she peers inside the good-sized room. “My, my, my,” she remarks softly, hands on hips, “looks like someone was a naughty boy.”

The room is filled with items that would make Richard Butler fall on his knees and weep for joy. A huge white cross, complete with the suffering Jesus, is flanked on both sides by flags of the Third Reich, Aryan Brotherhood, Confederacy, Ku Klux Klan, Concerned Christian Men, and a half-dozen others. Above a rickety television set, an old framed photograph of a long dead Austrian private hangs in the place of honor, gleaming forelock forever drooping over one crazed eye.

On the splintered coffee table, several dog-eared copies of The Turner Diaries share space with Mein Kampf, a whole slew of Soldier of Fortunes, and a broad range of other far right wing paramilitary and religious propaganda. Bits and pieces of dismantled weaponry cover the floor like a macabre carpet, and the room stinks of old sweat, old urine, and old hatred.

“Damn,” Tacoma whispers. “I didn’t think he’d go down so deep.”

“I did.” Grabbing the flashlight from her brother’s hand, she shines it in the direction of a white hooded robe. Behind it, she can just see the seal of a door. “And I’m betting the jackpot’s behind door number three.”

CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

WITH ASI HAPPILY ensconced at her feet, Kirsten taps at her keyboard, entering the last of the partial serial number into her specialized search engine. Another quick tap sets the wheels in motion, and she slumps back against the couch, watching the numbers crunch. Asi takes this as a sign that some attention-getting is in order, and he sits up, weaseling his massive head between the laptop and Kirsten’s belly. Big brown eyes roll up at her as his tail beats a comforting tattoo against the chest cum table.

“Slut,” she chuckles as she reaches out to scratch his ears. “Nothing but a slut-puppy you are.”

Asi groans in agreement before weaseling further onto what little there is of her lap.

“Oh no. If you think you’re gonna climb up here, you’re got another thing coming. Mommy’s work—aha! Speak of the devil. Okay darlin. Show me what you got.” Pushing her glasses higher on her nose with an absent finger, she studies the results of her search. She frowns. “Great. Sixty thousand possibles. How peachy.” She sighs, white teeth worrying pensively against her full lower lip. “Let’s see…how to narrow this down.” Her eyes brighten, and she taps in several commands, followed by the ‘enter’ key. “There. Chew on that for a bit.”

Satisfied, she turns back to her whining canine companion, and bending forward slightly, touches noses with him. “Now, where were we?”

“Just wait till I tell Dakota how you spend your free time when she’s not around.”

The dry, melodious voice, completely unexpected, causes Kirsten to jump, almost dumping the precious computer from her lap. Heart beating a mile a minute, she looks up to see the shadowy figure cross easily into the light. “Jesus, Maggie! You almost gave me a heart attack, here!”

“Sorry,” Maggie replies, though her tone doesn’t exactly convey apology.

“I didn’t even hear you come in!”

“You told me not to knock.”

“I know, I know.” Settling the laptop, she looks over at her friend as the Colonel settles her long frame into the armchair. “Long day?”

“You don’t know the half of it.” Maggie drags a weary hand through her close cropped hair. “Just got out of a debriefing with Manny.”

“And?”

“Droids,” she responds, mouth cutting off her words with the precision of a Ginsu. “Lots of ‘em. Armed with surface to air missiles. Heading this way.”

“Shit. How long?”

Maggie shrugs. “Dunno. Depends on how fast they’re moving. About a week, on the outside, I’d guess.”

The twinge in Kirsten’s gut multiplies tenfold, but her eyes meet Maggie’s steadily. “How are we going to stop them?” she asks softly.

“I don’t know that either.” Silence falls between them, but is broken a moment later. “So, what are you doing this fine day?”

“Hold that thought,” Kirsten replies as her computer chimes softly at her. A smile creases her face as she looks down at the latest results. Sixty thousand possibilities has suddenly become forty, thirty of which she can rule out without a second glance. One name stands out from the rest, and her grin broadens. “Ha! Gotcha, you bastard!”

“Care to share?” Maggie asks after a moment of watching Kirsten gloat.

“Wha-?” Kirsten blinks. “Oh. Yeah, sure.” She turns the computer so that the screen faces Maggie. “See?”

Maggie takes a quick look, then lifts her eyes to her companion’s. “In a famous physician’s immortal words, I’m a pilot, not a bionicist, Jim.”

Righting her machine, Kirsten laughs at the fairly accurate imitation. “Well, I am, so I’ll try to explain it to you.”

“Do tell,” is the dry response.

“Ok. Remember our suicide bomber friend of a week or so past?”

“I do.”

“Well, as you know, I’ve been spending my time trying to discover what I can from its remaining parts.”

“And you discovered something?”

“In a manner of speaking. Actually, your man Jimenez discovered it for me. I promoted him, by the way.”

“Oh you did, did you? What rank?”

“I’m…not sure.” She waves a hand. “Anyway, what he found for me was a circuit board that just happened to contain the serial number for this particular model. It was pretty badly burned, but I was able to extract enough of the code to plug it into my database, and viola!”

“And what does that tell you, exactly?”

Kirsten ponders the question for a moment. “Have you ever heard of Richardson’s Avionics?”

Maggie tilts her head, thinking. “No, I don’t believe I have. Should I?”

“Probably not. To the world, they were pretty much a two-bit operation, manufacturing parts for single engine aircraft and the like.”

“But to those in the know…?”

“Let’s just say they were the recipient of quite a few juicy government defense contracts over the past twenty years or so. The story was that they were developing top secret radar evading and jamming equipment for warplanes.”

“Interesting.”

“Quite.” A pause. “But I see now that that’s not all they were developing.”

Maggie sits forward, intrigued. “No?”

“No. The serial number on that droid leads right to Richardson’s doorstep. None of us knew that these type of droids even existed. And we weren’t meant to.”

“Which is why their manufacture was kept off of the military bases.”

“Exactly.”

“Okay. What does this knowledge do for us?”

“Possibly plenty.” Kirsten adjusts her glasses again. “For one thing, we have proof of another species of androids whose only purpose is to kill. Something all non military androids were supposedly guaranteed against doing. Secondly, and this is only a guess, since these androids were already programmed to kill humans, it’s likely that whatever code that was used to ‘turn’ the others wasn’t implanted into this model. It would have been a needless waste of resources and energy, something that Westerhaus would never have stood for, and his stench is all over this project.”

“I’m afraid I’m still not seeing how this benefits us,” Maggie admits.

“I’m getting to that part.” Kirsten looks at her and grins. “If I’m right, and if these droids aren’t programmed with the same unbreakable code, that means that someone who knows a thing or two about android coding can turn these people killers into android killers.”

Comprehension dawns, and Maggie breaks out in a beaming smile. “Kirsten King, I could kiss you!”

“What, and give you another thing to tattle to Koda about?” she teases, feeling inwardly very pleased.

“I won’t tell if you won’t.”

Kirsten laughs. “I’ll settle for a nice handshake. And maybe another shot of your Southern Comfort a little later on.”