Chapter 11
“We’ll be alright,” Raimey said to Tiffany when she had put him to bed. It was his first full day back at home. The statement hung in the air like a question.
His physical wounds were healed, but earlier that day when she had changed his diaper and cleaned the caked shit from his ass, the sutures he had tried to place over his pride had stretched and torn. It was now night, time had moved on, but Raimey hadn’t. He was humiliated.
Tiffany kissed him on the lips, slow. Unlike Janis, John’s penis had been spared. She reached down and kneaded it with her hand. “You still have your most important part.”
Tiffany bit down on John’s lower lip, pulling it with her. John could hear the smile in her voice and the slight pain from her aggression got him hard.
She worked him, ignoring his input, riding him up and down, making him pay for all the nights he complained, all the nights she saw the reflection of his sad self-pitying eyes in the moonlight or dealt with his sharp remarks when she only meant to help. This was their catharsis. This was her absolving his sins.
After he came, he pleaded for her to get off him, but she wouldn’t. She ground down hard, moving back-and-forth until his sensitivity got overwhelmed with lust and he rose again.
The second time he lasted longer and finally she collapsed next to him, her body vibrating, her legs jelly. She wrapped around him like he was a body pillow.
“I think we’ll be okay. What do you think?” She was out of breath.
“Wow,” he said. He gave her an eskimo kiss that turned into tongue. “Wow,” he said again and laughed a real laugh for the first time in months. “I’m like your own personal dildo,” he said, still in awe of what happened, still tasting her on his lips.
They snuggled, and for the moment, everything was fine. When they fell asleep, the future seemed like it would be all right.
= = =
It had been eight weeks since Janis was rolled out of their hospital room and Raimey hadn’t heard a word from him. He had gone completely dark as was expected. Tiffany fed Raimey a bowl of cereal. It was dawn and the sun had just crept over the horizon.
Raimey was in an electric wheelchair he could maneuver with his mouth, just like the one he and Janis had raced a month before. General Boen was visiting today. He had called the day before.
Boen was the most thoughtful man Raimey had ever known, but like a true Texan, he was candy-coated steel. He was charming, honest, and caring, but underneath was a man who had seen blood and was willing to spill it.
Early in Raimey’s career he was a mentor and later, a friend. When Boen had heard about the UN bombing and John’s injuries, he had called regularly to check in. Now with his new position, he was in Chicago, “debriefing.”
John thought it was odd that he was getting debriefed in Chicago instead of Washington. But since MindCorp, more and more of the country’s power had shifted to the Windy City.
Boen apologized for the inconvenient hour but John and Tiffany shushed him: they would be up and ready at 6:00 a.m.
Tiffany dressed John in his military uniform, tailoring it to fit his new body. The arms were pinned to his back and his pants were cut and sewn to eliminate the pant leg. Tiffany stood back and admired her work. John moved around, self-conscious from the attention.
“What?” he asked. Even with his wife, he didn’t like to be looked at anymore.
She kissed him on the cheek. “You look great honey.”
He smiled, shocked. “Really?”
“Yes, you look strong and proud.”
The doorbell rang and downstairs Vanessa yelled, “I’ll get it.”
General Boen had been around thousands of wounded soldiers. Some of the injuries were unseen: a soldier with tinnitus unable to hear. Others were horrific. Soldiers disfigured from fire or a bomb. Their limbs torn, their faces melted into a smear of skin. Boen did the best thing anyone could when he interacted with them: he treated them like people. He acknowledged their disability, but only up front. He’d ask what happened and how they were managing. But after that it was a one-to-one conversation, no pandering, no sympathy. Around General Boen, the crippled and the unfortunate forgot they were.
When General Boen came in, his warmth filled the home. He knelt down and spoke with Vanessa. He had even brought her a toy. He hugged Tiffany and told her how she was more beautiful each time he saw her. He turned to Raimey and said nothing, they just looked at one another. The moment was long enough to make the hallway go silent, just the sound of an antique clock ticking time away. And then General Boen saluted Raimey, recognizing his service and his sacrifice. No words, those were fleeting, and they never come out as intended. A salute. Well deserved from a man who would never pander or wilt. From a man who understood that Raimey’s body was sacrificed for an ideal that was rarely met.
Raimey nodded and when Boen held the salute, he nodded some more, unable to speak. It wasn’t long, but it felt like time had slowed. Finally, Boen put his hand on John’s shoulder.
“I’m glad you made it, John.”
Raimey cleared his throat. “Thank you, sir.”
Boen caught up with the whole family over a quick breakfast of coffee and toast. He didn’t have much time and he wanted to speak with John alone.
“Can we go for a walk?” Boen asked. Tiffany understood this was directed to John. She cleared the table and asked Vanessa to help her clean up. They went to the kitchen.
“Sure.”
Boen followed Raimey out the door.
Two blocks away, talk of the weather turned to the tragic events from the last few months.
“Why do you think WarDon killed himself?” Raimey asked. He was so drugged on painkillers that for the first two weeks, he didn’t know what had happened. “He was a tough bird, that was unlike him.”
Boen had known Don for over thirty years and the suicide surprised him, too. “We’re not sure. But it was definitely a suicide. He wasn’t at the UN and he killed himself right afterwards. Maybe he blamed himself. He was in charge of the security.”
“So they un-un-un-retired you,” Raimey said. It was an old joke by now. Boen had been brought back three times since he officially got out of the game at sixty years old. Boen laughed.
“I was in a swimsuit when I got the call,” he said and laughed some more. “You wouldn’t recognize me in my retired life. I’m a whole different person.”
Boen had retired to a small ranch on the Brazos River just west of Fort Worth. He rode horses, hung out with a pack of dogs that had adopted his land as their own, fished, canoed, drank Coors Light and listened to Mexicali. His wife, Deb, had died five years earlier. He missed her, but life was full of death and many of the ones he loved had gone back to the earth. Debra wouldn’t have wanted him to stew. It was one of the reasons he had fallen in love with her.
“I never got to the ranch,” Raimey said, shaking his head. He had forgotten about his injuries, he was just thinking about travel. It was so difficult now to go anywhere rural.
“Maybe someday, even still,” Boen said.
“So what do they got you doing?” Raimey asked.
“Just helping with the transition, then getting back to drinking beer and catching some bass.”
“Have you met Dr. Lindo?” Raimey asked.
Boen paused and Raimey registered that he was deciding what he could or couldn’t say.
“You don’t hav—” Raimey started.
“I am working with him right now,” Boen said. “He’s my primary advisor for new military efforts.”
“I’ve met him.”
“I know.”
Of course he would, Raimey thought.
“What do you think?” Raimey asked. “I couldn’t get a bead on him.”
“He’s very smart. Awkward. I wouldn’t say he has a sense of humor but he has an energy about him like he’s in on his own private joke. The really smart ones are usually socially retarded. Comes with the territory.”
&nbs
p; “You know he tested me and Janis?”
Boen’s pause was longer. “I’ve seen Eric since he left the hospital,” he said.
“Is he good?” Raimey asked.
“Yeah.” But Boen’s tone was uncertain.
It was apparent that he couldn’t say more. Since Boen’s original meeting with Evan, with each Tank Major progress report, Boen’s initial casualness to the concept had turned into astonishment. Boen liked weapons and he believed that the best way to avoid war was to carry the biggest stick. But this stick was a hammer. The Tank Major was vertically scalable on all levels: for peace keeping, for urban warfare, and for (heaven forbid) a war between nations.
Boen was in Chicago to see the finished project. The first Tank Major was going to be demonstrated for the new President and the top brass of the military today at 11:00 a.m. That was why he had to meet the Raimeys so early.
He had seen the preparation, video of the surgery, how they fused Janis’s spine to the inside of the battle chassis. It was permanent, there was no going back when a soldier gave a nod and signed the paper. You were a Tank Major for life.
Beyond his original disfigurement, they had cut Eric down further. He was a torso with a head. But Eric was fine with it. He understood what they were doing and he likened himself to the first astronauts. Someone had to do it and they had asked him. It was worth the sacrifice.
“John, I can’t get into it too much but I may be coming back some day in a professional capacity. They’re doing some amazing things right now and I could see you being a part of it.”
“Does it have to do with what they’re using Janis for?”
“Yes,” Boen said, almost dreamily. Like Evan, Boen could see a platoon of giants walking into a battlefield immune to the bullets ricocheting off their armored skin. Tank Majors would save so many lives.
Raimey looked across a small pond and watched a few of the geese shuffle around each other on the opposite side. “I need to find a purpose again, Earl. I’ve been through some tough shit but this takes it, hands down. Just tell me when and where and I’m there.”
“I know you feel that way, John,” Boen said. He knelt down. “I can’t imagine what you’ve gone through and I’m not going to pretend I can. But be careful and count your blessings. A lot of mistakes are compounded by further ones.”
“You told me that a lot back in the day,” Raimey said. “But what does that have to do with helping you?”
“I don’t know.” Boen got up with a crack of his knees. “Things aren’t what they used to be, including you, including me.”
“They sure as hell aren’t. I knew who I was before. I had goals. Do my duty. Get my pension. Hopefully have another kid. Get old with Tiff.”
“Most of that you can still do, John,” Boen said softly.
John turned like he had been slapped. “NO, I can’t. Not like this. I’d rather be dead. I tell Tiffany I’m fine, but I’m not. If the bomb had worked a little harder or I was a few feet closer, everyone would be better off. This is unacceptable.”
He looked into Boen’s eyes. Boen had never seen them so pleading. “If you got anything I can help with, I want it. I need to move forward.”
“Everyone needs that, John. But from where we stand, which way is it?”
John was silent. Boen stuffed his hands in his pockets and watched the gaggle quack and play. He looked at the dirty blanket of clouds overhead and felt the chill in the air. Seeing his friend so desperate for validation depressed him. He pondered how the true castration of a man was taking away their purpose.
= = =
Boen left Raimey at the front of the house and his chaperone drove him to the Derik Building. Boen learned it was a military research center that specialized in bionics and that MindCorp was now heavily involved. Apparently, the Tank Major project had piqued Cynthia’s interest. Boen shook his head in disbelief. He had never liked government and private sector partnerships in the business of war. He felt it created looseness to a government service that needed to be monitored as gravely as life support.
He was old enough to remember when the military had outsourced manned operations during the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts in the early twenty-first century. As a young soldier, he had run into these men. They may have had a corporate headquarters, even a business card, but they held guns with live ammo. They were mercenaries.
The U.S. military had justified the outsourcing because they were used as security detail for high-level local figures in the Middle East. But the U.S. learned that while they may have outsourced the responsibility, they didn’t relinquish the culpability. Blood got spilled, accusations were made, and pointed fingers were stacked on fingers like Lincoln Logs. They hadn’t outsourced people; they had outsourced the conditional right to kill. And the rules of engagement were different for a uniformed soldier trained and commanded under a rigid structure, than for a mercenary who made six figures, had a 401k, and was saving up for a boat.
Now the largest corporation in the history of mankind was partnered with the United States, designing a soldier that was the equivalent of one hundred soldiers. Why? Boen wondered. Everything he’d read about Cynthia would have caused him to predict otherwise. It wasn’t that she was a hippy-dippy socialist, far from it. She was a true capitalist, providing a superior product, stomping out any competition, and reaping her just desserts without apology. But she sure as hell wasn’t a loyalist. MindCorp made more money overseas than it did here. Why do this?
“You’re caught up in the money. Money means nothing to me anymore. I have more than anyone could ever spend. It’s knowledge, nothing more. It’s the chill of learning something so new that I’m the only person in the world that knows it,” is what Cynthia would have said to Boen if she had been seated next to him. But she wasn’t. She was at the Derik Building, helping with the final diagnostic protocol of the first bionic soldier.
Boen suddenly felt old.
“We’re about ten minutes out, sir,” his driver announced.
“Help with the transition, get back to the ranch,” he whispered to himself. But he was curious too, just like the rest of them: running toward the wail of sirens when it could only be gunshots or fire.
They pulled up. General Boen got out and loitered for a minute mentally rolodexing through the men he’d see inside, many of them associates he’d known for forty years.
The Gray Hairs, he thought with a smile. When did I get so damn old? Looking back was like time-lapse photography. Boen remembered his twenties and flinched at all the stupid stuff he had done. Wonder he was alive. He felt he could rule the world at thirty. He held Jenny, his daughter, for the first time at forty-two. At sixty-four he gave her away to a man who would be unfaithful and make her hate herself. Two years later Debra had cancer. A year after that, he put her in the ground. And now at seventy, back in the fold. Strong for my age, but the knees can tell when a storm is coming, and the memory isn’t quite as sharp.
“What are you doing out here, Earl?” Jan Hedgegard, a Navy Admiral said from the window of his chauffeured car. “They didn’t demote you to valet did they?” Jan opened the door and the first thing that set down on the salt blasted asphalt was the foot of a cane.
Jan just made my point, Boen thought. Jan used to do pull-ups with weights strapped to his waist. Jan bent his knees inward, and with help from the driver, got to his feet. He hobbled over to Boen and turned to see what Boen was looking at. Just another building across the street.
“Anything I’m supposed to notice?” Jan asked.
“Nope. Just thinking about how damn old we all got. How’s Tom?”
“Still living at home, if you believe it,” Jan said. Boen was asking about his forty-year-old son.
“They couldn’t make it work, huh?” Boen said.
Jan shook his head. “Nope. Couldn’t get past it. It was too much for both of them. I don’t blame her though,” Jan said.
Boen nodded.
“I always thought your girl a
nd my boy could have been fine together. They used to be friends,” Jan said.
“They were five, Jan. Hard to gauge the chemistry at that point,” Boen said. They both laughed.
“Are you coming inside or are you trying to get hypothermia?” Jan said. “Help a fellow geezer out, I don’t want these guys seeing me scuttling around.”
Boen put his arm around Jan. They hadn’t seen each other in years, but some friendships don’t need daily watering. “I’ll spot you.”
Inside, they were seated on bleachers that had been rolled into a large space roughly the size of a gymnasium. The bleachers were encased in a Plexiglas box, three inches thick on all sides.
“I feel like a hamster,” Jan said to Boen under his breath. They nodded at some of their peers.
Thirty yards to their left was an old tank. In front of them, about the same distance away, was a cement block twenty feet tall and fifteen feet wide. To its right was a decommissioned Humvee. There was also a shooting range. A .50 caliber machine gun was aimed at a hill of sand bags downrange.
“Are those RPGs?” Boen asked Jan. Next to the machine gun were a half a dozen tubes—hand held missile launchers, the same used by ninety-nine percent of the terrorists and fanatics they dealt with now.
“Looks like it,” Jan said.
“Suddenly I want our hamster cage to be a little thicker.”
“Or further away,” Jan added.
Hearing protection was handed out as they came in and now Boen understood why—they were going to use live fire and explosives in front of them. That was highly unusual in a closed environment.
There were fifty VIPs present. The former Vice President Wade Williams was the last to arrive. He smiled his pearly whites and shook the hands of half the folks in the bleachers before he sat down. Boen knew that Wade didn’t really know Joseph Michaels, the former President. They had been brought together to hit as many cross sections as possible. Wade’s smile was a bit too genuine for Boen’s taste so soon after the UN atrocity.
Evan Lindo walked into the hamster cage.
“Good morning,” Evan said to them from a small podium in front of the bleachers. Boen saw a small, fit redhead sneak in after Evan and sit in the front row. No one else seemed to notice her.
“Is that Cynthia Revo?” Boen asked Jan.
“Ayup.”
“It’s been only three months since the UN terrorist attack. Three months since we lost President Michaels, the fifth time we’ve lost a President in our nation’s history.” Lindo waited as the words sunk in. “And we all miss Donald Richards. He was a mentor of mine, he taught me most of what I know.”
Completely untrue, but oil them up.
“Don taught me a few phrases that he lived by. One, don’t bring a knife to a nuke fight.”
The crowd chuckled. Lindo had calculated it would.
“Two. Expect the best, prepare for the worst.”
The group of military heads nodded.
“Globalization of our economies and cyberspace have blurred the lines between nations, but we are still a distinct culture. We still have borders we protect and citizens that rely on us. And we still have interests specific to the nation and our military. We cannot protect everyone, but we must protect our own. That’s not callous. It’s not insensitive. The United States is our family and sometimes you have to circle the wagons.
“Our President is dead. Our Secretary of Defense—regardless of how it happened—is no longer a pillar we can lean on.”
Lindo made eye contact with many of the officers in the room.
“We have to lead. With our new President Ward Williams,” Lindo put a hand out in his direction. Turd. Williams gave a wave that belonged in a parade. “And the men and women in this room. We are the ones in the watchtower.”
Lindo put on a big smile. “This isn’t a room of just military and political leaders. I’m proud and flattered to say that MindCorp and its founder, Cynthia Revo, has been integral to this project. While MindCorp is a global business, it’s distinctly American. Thank you Cynthia for understanding our nation’s needs.”
The men in uniform clapped. Cynthia acknowledged the room but Boen thought she looked sad and unkempt. She quickly turned back to the ground.
“Let’s acknowledge that our current military equipment doesn’t address today’s needs,” Lindo said. “We have terrorists imbedded like ticks in our cities. We need fuel to run our vehicles and our supply is dwindling. We aren’t fighting nations, but extremist groups. We need a military that is light and flexible. We need a military that is special forces.
“But we still need military might. We need a weapon—like the atomic bomb- that is a deterrent to both extremists and nations. I present to you the most devastating infantry weapon every built. The melding of man and machine into something better. I bring you the Tank Major.”
On the far wall, a large garage door slowly opened. White light bled through creating a silhouette of a gigantic humanoid shape. Tank Major Janis walked into the room.
A gasp went through the crowd. He was eleven feet tall and almost as wide at the shoulders. He weighed eight thousand pounds. The room shook as he ran. His body groaned and hissed and a pair of gigantic drive chains around his waist—together two feet tall—spun furiously, counter to the other. His body was painted in green and brown camouflage and stenciled with radiation symbols on his front and back.
Tank Major Janis jogged around the room, passing the hamster cage. He then sprinted back and forth in a ladder drill, stopping and starting, showing the strength and impressive agility of the Tank Major platform.
His legs and feet were heavily armored, yet dextrous. As he created a mini-earthquake trundling around the room, his feet constantly adjusted to maintain full traction.
His legs were connected to the outside of his hips and this allowed the suspension built inside the thigh to move up and down, while keeping the leg a consistent length. Hung slightly back on each shoulder were gigantic metal boxes mounted on rails. It was clear they could be removed. His shoulders looked like what they were: an artillery chamber. His arms were long for his body and as thick as his legs. His hands were boulders. Each one could pick an engine out of a car. A massive anvil-like bridge of armor ran along his knuckles protecting the incredible architecture of his mechanized hands.
“Please put on your ear protection,” Lindo said. The stunned crowd did as they were told. They could hear Evan through built-in speakers.
“Tank Major Janis can run at a sustained speed of twenty-five miles an hour. He weighs eight thousand pounds and is primarily built from depleted uranium armor. He can lift his body weight over his head and he can run through cement up to two feet thick.”
“He is powered by a hydrogen fuel generator that charges a deep storage battery. This battery can last for two days at full operation. At normal operation, it lasts ten days. As long as the Tank Major has access to water and electricity, it can perform electrolysis and recharge itself indefinitely.”
Janis walked downrange to the hill of sand bags. Two soldiers walked out to the machine gun and RPGs.
“He is essentially bullet proof,” Lindo said. The machine gun erupted into chatter, spilling brass around the soldiers’ feet as they fired. The armor sparked and some of the camouflage paint got mired, but the Tank Major stood unmoving, like he was being pelted with rain. They stopped firing and both of the men put an RPG to their shoulder.
“The Tank Major platform is blast proof both from direct projectiles and concussive blasts in its vicinity. While it can be blown apart or damaged, the current stock of weapons that our enemies have are unlikely to do so.”
The men fired the RPG’s at Janis. One hit flush and exploded, doing nothing. The other hit his chest and ricocheted off against the back wall, creating a five-foot crater.
“Oops,” Lindo said. The crowd let out a dazed laugh. “You may have noticed that his fists are heavily armored. There is a reason.”
On cue, Tan
k Major Janis ran up to the Humvee and scissored his hand down onto the hood. It was like a meteorite had struck it. The front of the Humvee crumpled like tin and the axles snapped, sending the wheels to the sides. Janis continued to pound his way through the Humvee, smashing it down into scrap.
“Each fist weighs five hundred pounds. This is his most basic strength. He is only using the high torque electric motors located throughout his body,” Lindo said.
The entire audience was frozen in a scream. They couldn’t believe what they were seeing. When Janis was done with the Humvee, he flipped it away from the hamster cage like it was made of foam.
“The large metal boxes on his shoulders are artillery magazines. In each are six artillery rounds that have no projectile. The artillery charge is used to fuel his most devastating attack: the hydraulshock.”
Janis turned to Lindo and Lindo nodded. Janis ran up to the gigantic cement block and moved like his was going to punch it.
BAM!
The noise was indescribable. Even with the Plexiglas case and the hearing protection, Boen’s ears rang. It was like a thunderbolt had gone off in the room. Boen didn’t see what had happened. The Tank Major ran at the block and then cocked back its right arm like it was about to throw a straight, and then suddenly the room was filled with dust. The Plexiglas fractured into a spider web from the concussive blast and debris.
Boen heard gigantic exhaust fans spin up. The thick brown air thinned out into a light fog and Boen could see the outline of the Tank Major. When the air cleared out further he saw that aside for jagged leftovers at its base, the entire cement block was gone. With one punch the Tank Major had turned it into dust.
“The hydraulshock delivers three and a half million foot pounds of energy in a controlled delivery system, guaranteeing almost zero percent collateral damage, unlike traditional ordinance.”
Lindo nodded again at Janis. He went to the tank with its foot thick armor. He reeled back.
BAM!
This time Boen saw (and didn’t see) what happened. For a split second, the gigantic soldier vanished in a blur, moving as fast as a rocket. And then it was back with its fist inside the tank. The tank shuddered and warped inward as if it got cleaved with a gigantic axe. Out of the Tank Major’s shoulder, a spent artillery shell ejected end-over-end in a backwards arc. It clanged to the ground forty feet away.
Boen saw the shoulder mechanism reload. Tank Major Janis pulled his fist away from the tank and walked over to the glass, just behind Lindo. Everyone watched in awe.
“This is our future, gentlemen. This is the eagle that carries the olive branch to all terrorists and enemies of the state. Wherever they are, wherever they hide, we can get them. And there isn’t a damn thing they can do about it.”
The crowd erupted into applause. Some of the men, hard men who had dealt with life and death on a grand scale for decades, cried. It was clear to them what Dr. Evan Lindo had created. It was clear to them what Dr. Evan Lindo was: a savior to the United States way of life. A savior for all of those who feared the end.
= = =
The presentation couldn’t have gone better. Representatives from each military division congratulated Evan afterwards. They all wanted to discuss the Tank Major’s effect on their current operations.
What they didn’t know was that Ward Williams and Evan had come to an agreement before the presentation. Evan had brought him back to meet Tank Major Janis and to understand the technology.
Evan had learned six weeks before that Ward didn’t like him, never had. Felt that he was a little fucking nerd who wanted to wear big boy pants. Probably guzzled WarDon’s load. All good stuff to know. Evan didn’t hold grudges. He let the King Sleeper massage those synapses to make Ward a bit more amenable. After a few weeks Ward thought his first impression of Evan was a bit harsh. A month later, he had called for advice.
While before Ward would have vehemently opposed what Evan wanted to control, now he was finishing Evan’s sentences.
“. . . as I designed and implemented the technology . . .” Evan said.
“It would only make sense that you were at the helm,” Ward nodded enthusiastically. “Totally. There’s been nothing like this before. We’ve had weapons, we’ve had soldiers, but never this gray area.” Ward cocked his head like he just had a whiz-bang of an idea. “General Boen should be a part of this. He could help train the soldiers and coordinate the missions.”
Evan feigned skeptical. “You think?”
“Definitely,” Ward said. Evan looked deep in thought. He rubbed his scruffy chin.
“You know Mr. President, that would be best. It would allow us to play to our strengths. I can focus on the technology and the overall health of the soldiers, and General Boen could focus on the operations, training, and integration with the other military branches.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Ward said. They were both nodding like pigeons in the park.
“It’s perfect.” Evan checked his watch. “Almost time. Thank you, sir.”
“Glad I could help.” Ward flashed his bleached choppers.
Evan had planted that suggestion in fuckface’s head about a week ago. It would be odd to not have a high-ranking officer on board and General Boen, while an obstacle, was a lesser evil than some lower ranking military advisor who was climbing up the career ladder. And he was temporary and less adept with the technology. Maybe in a few months he’d die in his sleep.
= = =
General Boen waited while the various high ranking officers congratulated Evan and the place cleared out. Jan said goodbye and hobbled away shaking his head at what he had just seen: a movie come to life. Ward had pulled Boen aside after the demonstration and briefed him on his upcoming duties.
Evan shook the last General’s hand and came over. “I need to pack Tank Major Janis up, shall we?”
He and Boen walked out of the hamster cage and across the destroyed landscape left in the colossus’s wake. Boen stopped and looked at the Humvee wreckage. The truck was completely flattened. He had to step over shards of engine block.
“So he did this without the artillery discharge?”
“Correct. Electric motors have one hundred percent torque at one rpm and each major motor in his body has at least one thousand foot-pounds. Think two V-8’s are swinging his thousand pound arm.”
“Unreal, Evan. Truly.”
They made it through the garage door. Tank Major Janis sat to their left on what looked like a huge gothic throne. Technicians scurried over him like spiders.
“We’ve had the mechanical technology to build a bionic for some time, but it was the Mindlink that made it truly possible,” Evan said, attempting modesty.
“Science fiction has talked about this for a hundred years, but talk is cheap. You did it,” Boen said. They were now in front of Janis. Seated, he somehow appeared even more hulking.
“How are you soldier?” Boen asked.
Janis crooked his head down to see them. “Doing fine, sir. Doing fine.”
“How does it feel to be the most powerful man to ever walk the earth?”
“Just happy to be of use. I think Dr. Lindo could hit a switch and turn me off if he wanted to, so I’m not going to get too cocky,” Janis winked. Evan mimed pressing a button.
Two technicians muscled off the artillery magazine from one of his shoulders. Another two on a hydraulic lift guided it onto their platform.
“General Boen will be heading the strategic aspects of the Tank Division,” Evan said to Janis.
“Excellent, I’ve heard great things about you, sir. My team leader used to take direction from you.”
“John Raimey, I know,” Boen said.
The gothic metal chair hissed and clanked. The technicians up top gave thumbs up.
“Step back,” Evan said to Boen.
“Excuse me,” Janis said. He stood up. A truck designed to transport him reversed in. Even five feet away, Boen couldn’t see Janis’s face due to the girth of his ch
est. It was what awed children to their fathers.
Janis walked away and his body was surprisingly quiet. When he climbed into the rear of the truck’s trailer, it buckled under the load but the grace in which the Tank Major got up and in was remarkable. It truly moved like a man.
“This is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen,” Boen said. Evan smiled. “How many are you planning to build?”
“This model? None. Janis is the prototype and already I’ve learned a great deal from him. He’s ninety-five percent of what I want out of the battle chassis. Depleted uranium armor—as you well know—is the strongest armor we currently manufacture, but it does have vulnerabilities.”
“Not many,” Boen said. “Are you talking EFPs?”
Explosive Formed Penetrators were a type of bomb used by terrorists in the Middle East to breach tank hulls. They used a convex copper plate that on detonation became a molten slug moving at incredible speeds.
“See? Exactly. Right away you went to it. So would our enemies,” he continued. “I’m working on an osmium and depleted-uranium alloy encased in a revolutionary ceramic.”
“I’ve never heard of osmium.”
“It’s actually quite common. The rolling ball in ballpoint pens is osmium, but it doesn’t play nice with others. And alone it’s brittle. But the properties of this armor are astounding.”
“It would stop an EFP?” Boen asked skeptically.
“An eight inch thick plate is equivalent to six feet of rolled homogenous armor,” Evan replied. “How would you like to proceed?”
“Well, I see the Tank Major as intelligent support for a special forces unit. If they were breaching hostile buildings, the Tank Major could act as a cow catcher breaking through, with the team right behind using him as a smart shield, fanning out when they went in. We should start with about twenty guys. I’ll pick them if you don’t mind and we’ll get training, learn the strengths and weaknesses, adapt from there.”
“What about the press?” Evan asked. “Ward wants the world to know about this.”
“There are terrorist acts every month nowadays. I say we make an example of one and let some footage leak out. That’ll get everyone’s attention just fine.”
= = =
In his private cabin two train cars down from his creation, Evan dreamed. In it, an army of Tank Majors stretched into the distance, lumbering into a city. Columns of nuclear fire littered the landscape and a Tank Major turned to regard one as it rose, its pulsing mushroom cloud reflecting off his helmet. The Tank Major was unmoved. Unconcerned. He continued into the battlefield.
Evan dreamed of Beijing covered in the hottest fire; he pictured Britain with buildings crumbled to ash. His giants occupied both, fully exposed, peppered with mortars and missiles and lead, their armor ashen and beaten, but not broken. The enemy surrendering at their feet, heads cowered in submission.
He dreamed of a caravan of millions crying in each other’s arms, dragging whatever they could with them as they evacuated their burning city, understanding that it was all over, that the U.S. had won. More. That Evan had won.
The world as mine.
He looked down on the cities from the clouds. He hovered over the destruction like he was omniscient and omnipresent. Like he was a god who no longer hid behind faith.
= = =
After the demonstration, Cynthia let Evan take the acclaim. She was the first to leave. Since Sabot’s departure two weeks before, Evan had assigned her two bodyguards that worked in shifts: Edward Chao and Alan Kove. Chao was an asshole, but Kove had a sweetness to him. Kove led her through the doorway to the waiting car. He seemed genuinely concerned with his charge.
She didn’t understand what had happened. The night Sabot vanished, she noticed his absence an hour afterward. She looked around the room for him, went out into the hall, and then assumed that he had left to handle some work minutia that he didn’t want to burden her with.
When she got to the penthouse, the lights were off. “Sabot?” The dark room absorbed her voice and answered it with silence. She called him. Straight to voicemail. She called down to the front desk and the receptionist said she hadn’t seen him that evening.
For two hours she waited, compulsively checking her phone and e-mail. She called again. Nothing. Maybe something happened to his mom. She called Linda, Sabot’s mother, who lived in a house outside the city. She had visited it with Sabot a year before.
Linda answered the phone. “Cynthia,” she said. “Unknown” on the phone pad was always her.
“Is everything okay?” Cynthia asked.
“Yes. Why?” Linda sounded concerned.
“I don’t know where Sabot is,” Cynthia said. “He isn’t answering his phone. I thought, well, the worst. Maybe something had happened to you or Trina.”
“When did you last speak to him?”
“Three hours ago,” Cynthia replied. She heard Linda sigh with relief.
“Oh good. I spoke with him about an hour ago. He’s coming over tomorrow. Are you guys okay?”
Cynthia didn’t respond right away. She held the phone loosely in her hand. Tomorrow was Thursday. Nothing was wrong at home but he wasn’t coming in to work. Her stomach ached.
“Cynthia?” she heard the tinny phone say.
“I don’t know, Mrs. Sabot. Please have him call me.”
He never did.
They pulled up to MindCorp. Cynthia turned to Kove. “I’m dropping you off.”
“Ms. Revo, I’m supposed to be with you at all times,” he replied.
“Those aren’t my orders and I’m a private citizen.”
Kove didn’t move. He wasn’t sure what to do.
“Alan, do I have to open the door for you? Call Evan if you want, but do it outside. I’m not asking.”
Reluctantly he got out. Cynthia pressed a button near her seat.
“Take me to one-nineteen Pine,” she said.
They idled outside of Linda Sabot’s house. Cynthia was paralyzed. One half of her was mournfully sad, the other was furious at the way Sabot had discarded her without an explanation. After the years together, she deserved more.
Finally she got out and walked to the door. She pressed the doorbell and heard its echo inside. She listened for the low thump of footsteps approaching. After a minute, she stepped over into the bushes and peered into the house. It felt empty.
“You’re messing up my mom’s bushes,” Sabot said from behind her. She turned and saw him. His shirt was soaked in a V from a long run. He was breathing heavy. She went over to him and punched him on the shoulder.
“What are you doing to me?” she asked. She felt the comfort of being around him, even now, just as old ex’s still invade each other’s space unknowingly. But she was confused. He didn’t seem angry.
“I needed time to think,” he said. He walked to the door and took out a key. He held the door open. “Let’s talk inside.”
She sat at the table and he poured both of them lemonade. The kitchen area had Midwestern touches. A corner shelf with porcelain figurines and antique knick-knacks near the floor. Flower print wallpaper that was accented with a white wood baseboard. It reminded Cynthia of her childhood home.
He gave her a glass and sat down across from her. He didn’t speak right away. He took big gulps of the lemonade and looked at the outside patio.
“Please,” she said.
He put his glass down and watched her the way he looked at her guests.
“Do you love me? Did that go away?” she asked.
“Of course I do,” he said. “I just couldn’t stay. I knew we’d talk sooner or later, but I needed time to gather myself. I don’t want to be in rooms where decisions cost lives. When I met you, I thought those days were over. I had to use my military background, but a bodyguard was different than the military. It was defensive. I could rationalize that.”
“What does that have to do with us?” Cynthia said. “If I don’t help the military, someone else will. I thought I was doing the
right thing, I thought you approved.”
“You’re playing God,” he said.
Cynthia looked at him bewildered. “Giving someone CPR is playing God.”
“You don’t know what you’re building, Cynthia. You have no idea. If these things get built, it doesn’t matter if we’re right or wrong, we can force our ‘right.’ And you’re doing it with him.”
“Evan isn’t as bad as you think,” Cynthia said.
Sabot made a face. “I know the ‘Evans’ of the world. They are small men with hidden agendas. They are the Dictator’s kids who rape, rob, and kill because they can’t be stopped. I’ve been in these waters far longer than you. And being smarter doesn’t help. You can’t guess what a snake will do when it doesn’t know itself.”
“Come back,” Cynthia said weakly.
“I can’t, babe. I love you, never think different, but I’m so disappointed. The life I thought we’d have, it’s not going to happen. And I know the way I handled it was wrong, but you are pushing the world to war and you cannot rationalize your way out of it. ‘Someone else will do it’ isn’t good enough, Cynthia. LET THEM.”
“I just want you back, Sabot,” Cynthia said.
“I’ll come back if you stop working with Evan. If I can get back the woman that saved the world and still asked for my advice and comfort, I’m there.”
“I can’t now. We’re under contract,” she said. Her voice could barely be heard.
“We could go anywhere and no one could touch us,” Sabot said. “You could walk away.”
“I can’t,” Cynthia said. The truth was, Cynthia had not been challenged mentally in almost a decade and finally she had a project that was out of her scope and required her constant attention and innovation to succeed. She couldn’t leave that. Without the intellectual stimulation, she thought, she might as well jump out the window.
Sabot stared at a spot on the table. “That day in the hospital, I saw the future. Cities were on fire, people were covered in soot. Some were holding loved ones that were dead or dying. And I knew that future was true, like God had planted it in my head. I had two options. One was to kill everyone the room. Five lives for a billion, that seemed fair.”
Cynthia’s eyes were wide with shock. Sabot was serious.
“If you hadn’t been there,” Sabot snapped his fingers. “It would have been an easy decision,” he continued. “The other was to leave. Don’t think I don’t love you, it was the only thing that stopped me. And don’t think I’m not here for you. If you change your mind, if you need help getting out, I’m the man. But I can’t be around for this. Because next time, I’m not going to hesitate or waver. Innocent people will die from your invention, Cynthia. Next time, I’ll make the right decision.”
Cynthia walked out of the house stunned into silence. It took her three tries to open the car door. She didn’t remember getting back to MindCorp, but she was on her couch. She cancelled all meetings and turned off all outside communication. She sat, huddled in the dark, neither eating or sleeping, searching her soul and wondering how the most loyal and caring man she had ever known had seen in her something so vile that for a moment, she meant more to the world dead than alive.
Part II
“Do not let spacious plans for a new world divert your energies from saving what is left of the old.”
—Winston Churchill