Starfire (25 page)

“Back into storage?”

“Back where I can check on my targets and get caught up again,” Patrick said. “I'll be in touch, Brad. I love you, son.”

“I love you too, Dad,” Brad said. He gave the CID another hug, then went to the conference room and found Chris Wohl. “Thanks for doing that report so quickly, Sergeant Major,” he said. “I didn't realize the campus was so safe.”

“It's not,” Wohl said, “at least not for you against Russian hit men.”

Brad's smile disappeared. “Say what?” he asked with a stunned expression.

“Think about it, McLanahan: nineteen thousand students, probably five thousand more faculty and staff, crammed into an area less than three square miles,” Wohl said. “Anyone can come and go around the clock anywhere on campus they please. There is just one sworn campus police officer per shift for every one thousand students, and they have no heavy weapons and no SWAT training. You're done with all of your freshman-year courses, so your class sizes will be smaller from now on, but you'll still be in classes and labs with dozens of kids.”

“Then why did you recommend I go back?”

“Because I believe your father is being too protective—he would be very happy to just lock you away, stand you in a nice safe secure box like him, and have the world fed to you through the Internet,” Wohl said. “He wouldn't care how miserable you'd be, because in his mind you'd be safe from the dangerous world he's lived and fought in almost all his life.”

“So what do you care about what my father wants to do about me, Sergeant Major?” Brad asked. “I don't know you, and you don't know me. You said you're not a friend of my father. Why do you care?”

Wohl ignored the question. “The information I gave was accurate: it's a relatively safe campus and city,” he said instead. “With some training, the danger can be managed, maybe even minimized.” He gave Brad a big smile, which still looked pretty malevolent, and added, “Besides, now my men and I have you, and we got the go-ahead to build a training program to get your ass in shape and learn the proper way to look at the world. Every day, one hour a day.”

“Every day? I can't train every day. I've got—”

“Every day, McLanahan,” Wohl said. “You
will
train each and every day, rain or shine, sick or well, exams or dates, or I'll send you back to your father, and he'll happily lock you away inside the red rocks of southern Utah. You'll do weights and cardio for physical fitness; Cane-Ja and Krav Maga for self-defense; and classes and demonstrations of surveillance, countersurveillance, investigation, observation, and identification techniques.” He made that evil smile once more, then added, “You thought Second Beast at the Air Force Academy was tough? You ain't seen nothin' yet, bubba.” Wohl's smile disappeared, and he wore a thoughtful expression. “The first thing we need to do is give you your call sign,” he said.

“A call sign? What do I need a call sign for?”

“Because I'm tired of calling you ‘McLanahan”—too many syllables,” Wohl said. “Besides, McLanahan is definitely your father until he kicks the bucket, and I don't think that's going to happen for a very long time.” He looked at his teammates in the conference room with him. All three of them were tall, square-jawed, and heavily muscled, the Hollywood version of a Navy SEAL, which Brad thought they probably used to be. “What do you boys think?”

“Pussy,” one said. He was the biggest of the three, well over six feet tall and well over two hundred pounds, with a thick neck, broad shoulders tapering to a thin waist, enlarging again to thick thighs and calves, then tapering again to thin ankles. He looked like a professional bodybuilder, Brad thought. “Better yet, just give him to the chief. He'll chew him up and spit him out, the general will send him to St. George, and then we don't have to fuck with him.”

“Flex, we got a job to do,” Wohl said. “Keep your opinions to yourself. Dice?”

“Doughboy.”

“Geek,” said the third.

“Be nice to the young man,” Wohl said, wearing that malevolent smile again. “He's had a most traumatic experience, and besides he's a hardworking engineering student.”

“A brainiac, huh?” the one named Dice asked. “My kid used to watch a brainless cartoon called
Dexter's Laboratory
on TV, where this really smart kid gets bushwhacked by his dumb sister all the time. Let's call him ‘Dexter.' ”

“I still like ‘Doughboy' better,” the third said.

“ ‘Dexter' it is,” Wohl announced.

“That's a lousy call sign,” Brad said. “I'll pick my own.”

“Dexter, call signs are earned, and they are picked by your teammates, not by yourself,” Wohl said. “You haven't earned anything yet. But call signs can change, for the worse as well as for the better. Work hard and maybe we'll give you a better one.”

“What's your call sign?”

“For you, it's ‘sir' or ‘sergeant major,' ” Wohl said, looking at Bradley with serious menace. “You'd better get that right the first time.” To his men in turn he said, “Dice, find us a safe and securable hotel to stay in, in San Luis Obispo, close to campus. Flex, get in contact with Chief Ratel and ask if he can set up a martial-arts, countersurveillance, and firearms training program for us ASAP.” To Brad he said, “Let's see your shooting hand.”

“Shooting hand? I don't have a shooting hand.”

“Then which hand do you pick your nose with, Dexter? C'mon, we don't have all day.” Wohl grabbed Brad's right wrist, and Brad opened his hand. “Jeez, tiny little hands just like your father. That's probably why he joined the Air Force—he didn't have hands big enough to hold even a friggin' girl's gun.” He held the hand up so the third team member could see Brad's hand. “Rattler?”

“Smith and Wesson M and P .40 cal,” the third team member said in a low, growling voice. “Or a peashooter.”

“Forty-cal it is,” Wohl said. “Get to it.” The three team members pulled out cell phones and got to work. “One last thing, Dexter.”

“I hate that call sign already,” Brad said.

“I hate that call sign already,
sir,
” Wohl corrected him. “I told you: do something worthy for the team and yourself, and you might get a better call sign. And start showing some respect for your superiors around here. I should've kicked your ass across the hangar for the way you spoke to President Martindale yesterday. I will next time, I promise you.” Brad nodded and wisely said nothing.

“Now, we can do several things to help you detect and defend against danger, but we can't do very much for your friends,” Wohl went on. “We've noticed that you don't really hang out with anybody but your research team of nerds on that Starfire project, which is good, but I want you to limit your time in public with anyone. If a hit team starts to target your friends to get to you, it could spell real trouble for everyone that we could not contain. Understand?”

“Yes,” Brad said. He could feel the anger rising in Wohl's expression. “Yes, sir,” he corrected himself.

“Good. Grab some breakfast, get your things together, and be ready to move out in ten minutes.”

“Yes, sir,” Brad said. He returned to the conference room and noticed that all the breakfast sandwiches were gone. “This is starting out to be a really shitty day,” he murmured. But he looked back across the hangar and saw the CID unit with his father inside of it, and he smiled. “But my father is alive. I can't believe it. I'm living in a dream . . . but I don't care, because my father is
alive
!”

R
EINHOLD
A
EROSPACE
E
NGINEERING
B
UILDING

C
AL
P
OLY

T
HE
NEXT
MORNING

“Brad! What in heck happened to you?”
Lane Eagan exclaimed when Brad entered the room. The others shot to their feet and gaped in horror when they saw the long, ugly bruise on the side of Brad's head and face—no amount of ice had yet been successful in hiding it, although the swelling had gone down considerably.

“Hi, guys,” Brad said. They all came over to him, and he especially liked Jodie's concerned touches. “I'm okay, I'm okay.”

“What happened to you?” Kim Jung-bae asked. “Where have you been? In a hospital? We have been worried sick about you!”

“You're not going to believe this, Jerry: I was involved in a home invasion the other night, after we made our presentation,” Brad lied. Eyes popped and mouths dropped open in complete surprise. “Two guys broke into the house and whacked me on the side of the head with a club or baseball bat or something.”

“No shit?”
they all exclaimed. “What happened?”

“No idea,” Brad lied. “I woke up and there were cops everywhere. Paramedics checked me over, I gave a report, and that's pretty much it. They found drug stuff on the kitchen table and thought that maybe some crackheads wanted a place to get high.”

“Oh my God, Brad,” Casey gasped, “thank God you're okay.”

“I'm good, I'm good, Casey,” Brad assured them. “My gyros tumble a little bit every now and then, but I can still ride the bike.”

“Where are you staying?” Jodie asked, and Brad thought he detected a twinkle in her eye and the hint of an eager smile. “You're not going back to that house, are you, mate?”

“Heck no,” Brad said. “The landlord had a fit. He's having workers move the furniture that didn't get smashed up, and he's going to board the place up. I'm not sure what he's going to do after that. I'm in one of the all-suites hotels on Monterey Street. I might be there until the semester's over and students blow town. I'm going to apply at Cerro Vista and Poly Canyon and try to avoid going into the summer dorms if I can.”

“Good luck with that, mate,” Jodie said. “Applications for Cerro Vista had to be in two months ago, and Poly Canyon's apps had to be in last year. You might have to live off campus again if you don't want to live in the dorms.”

“Okay, all that's being worked, so let's get to business before we have to scurry off,” Brad said, and their meeting got under way. It lasted only a few minutes, long enough for everyone to report their team's status, coordinate their lab schedules, and put in requests to Brad for supplies or information for the upcoming week, and then they hurried off to class.

Jodie walked along with Brad. “Are you sure you're all right, mate?” she asked. “That's the worst bruise I think I've ever seen.”

“I'm good, Jodie, thanks,” Brad said. “I wish I could say ‘you should see the other guy,' but I was out cold.”

“Why didn't you call me, Brad?”

“There just wasn't time, Jodie,” Brad lied. “I was out like a light, and then I had to deal with the cops, the paramedics, and then the landlord.”

“Then where were you all yesterday?”

“Sitting around with ice packs on my throbbing head, listening to my landlord shouting orders and ranting and raving about dopers and crime and the breakdown of society,” Brad lied again. “Then he helped me find a hotel. My head hurt so much, I just crashed after that.”

“Why don't you stop by my place after classes?” she asked. “You don't just want to go to a hotel by yourself, do you, with no one to look out for you?” This time, Brad didn't have to guess her intentions—she reached out and touched his hand. “What d'ya say, mate?”

His head was swimming a bit with all the stuff happening to him in the past few days, so his reply was a bit hesitant, and Jodie's smile dimmed. “That sounds great, Jodie,” he said, and her smile returned. “But first I have an appointment after our lab session.”

“Doctor's appointment?”

Brad decided he wasn't going to lie to this woman about everything if he could at all avoid it. “Actually, my landlord—the ex-Marine, I think I told you—he's setting up a training program for me. Physical fitness and self-defense.” He wasn't going to tell Jodie about the countersurveillance and other spy training classes, or the weapons training—hey, he thought,
not
telling something is different from lying, right? “He thinks I'm too soft and need to do more to help myself in situations like home invasions.”

“Wow,” Jodie remarked, blinking in surprise. “You're right with this?”

“Sure,” Brad said. “I spend too much time sitting on my ass—a little physical fitness will do me good. One hour a day. I can be over your place around seven.”

“Perfect, Brad,” Jodie said, her worried and perplexed expression quickly disappearing. “I'll fix us something for dinner. I can pick you up and take you around to your appointments if you don't feel well enough to ride the bike.”

“I'm good so far, Jodie,” Brad said. He actually liked the idea, but he didn't know what the gym would look like, and he wanted to get a feeling from Wohl and whoever his trainer was going to be before he brought others around. “But thank you.” He gave her a hug and got a kiss on the cheek in return. “See you around seven.”

“See ya, conch,” Jodie said, and hurried off to her next class.

He received a lot of surprised and some shocked expressions as students on campus saw his big ugly bruise, and Brad actually considered buying some makeup until the thing healed, but kids on campus were fairly open and tolerant—and he sure as hell didn't want Chris Wohl or his team members to catch him with makeup on!—so he put the thought out of his head and tried to ignore the looks. Thankfully he didn't need narcotics to kill the pain, so he made it through his classes and his session in the engineering lab on the Starfire project without too much difficulty, only an occasional headache that subsided when he stopped thinking about it and concentrated on something else. Afterward he locked his computer backpack in a locker, retrieved his gym bag, then hopped on the bike and headed off to his first physical-fitness session.