Catch Her If You Can (2 page)

Back to SNFIR. He really does resemble the wooden Snoopy of old. His torso is about the size of a shoebox mounted on toy tractor wheels. A sort of elongated snout with imbedded sensors sniffs out organic materials. When the sensors find something yummy, a mechanical arm with a claw at the end rises out of the robot’s back to scoop up the munchies. You know the kind of claw I’m talking about. You see them in those machines kids feed three or four dollars’ worth of quarters into hoping to latch onto a stuffed frog, only to end up with five cents’ worth of bubble gum. Instead of candy or stuffed animals, Snoopy’s claw scooped up rotting vegetation and dumped it into his built-in fuel processor.

That was without the plastic ears and bobbing wire tail one of my wiseass team members glued onto the little robot.
With
them, you’d swear you could hook him on a leash on and take him out for a walk in the park, properly armed with a pooper-scooper, of course.

Except this Snoopy doesn’t need to be leashed. Guided by GPS and preprogrammed instructions, he chugs along on his tractor wheels like the Little Engine That Could. Over dry humps of earth. Around prickly cacti. Down into and up out of steep arroyos. Every so often he stops to check out a fuel source and feed himself.

When Sergeant Cassidy and I took ole Snoop out for this field test, we got a kick out of the little critter. At first. Following along on ATVs, we’d grinned at his flapping ears and traded jokes whenever he’d stopped to sniff out a snack. Then the arm would emerge from his back, the claw would snap its jaws, and twigs or decaying plant matter would disappear into his external combustible engine. After digesting his meal, Snoop would huff on.

My grin fell off my face, however, when he chugged up to the bloated carcass of banner-tailed kangaroo rat. I knew it was a banner tail because one of the members of my team is a double PhD who drives the rest of us nuts with her lengthy discourses on the flora and fauna of the north Chihuahuan Desert. I’ve learned to smile and tune her out once she gets started, but enough useless detail seeps into my subconscious to pop up at unexpected moments.

Like this one.

As Snoopy’s arm came up with the disgusting mess in its claw, I brought my ATV to a skittering halt and jerked my radio off my belt.

“O’Reilly! This is Spade. Come in, please.”

“Yo,” my team’s software guru drawled. “Speak to me, oh, Goddess of Gadgets.”

Dennis O’Reilly isn’t real big on military protocol. Neither am I, for that matter, although I have exercised my somewhat dubious authority as team chief to censor some of his more colorful titles.

“I thought you reviewed Snoopy’s code,” I said, scrunching my face in disgust as the kangaroo rat’s gory remains disappeared into the hopper.

“I did.”

“When you confirmed he was programmed to detect, identify, and consume a wide variety of energy sources, did you know that included, like, dead rodents?”

“I did.”

“And you didn’t deem it advisable to share that information with me?”

“I did,” he said again, with noticeable sarcasm this time. “As a matter of fact, I highlighted a few of the juicier items in the appendix of potential fuel sources that Farmer Farnsworth sent with Snoop. You read it, didn’t you?”

The question was purely rhetorical. I knew it. Dennis knew it. The damned appendix had run to more than sixty pages.

“I may not have read the
entire
list,” I conceded, “but I did read the specs. You can program Snoopy’s computer to accept some fuel sources and ignore others, right?”

“Right.”

“Next time,” I said heavily, “program out the dead stuff.”

“Your wish is my command, Widget Woman.”

I signed off and clipped the radio back on my web belt. Like Sergeant Cassidy, I was in combat boots and ABUs. ABU, for those of you unacquainted with them, stands for airman battle uniform. Baggy pants and baggy shirt done in pixelated tiger stripes on a heavy fabric that’s supposed to reduce the wearer’s near-infrared signature. Maybe on the outside. On the inside, I was swimming in sweat.

I’d clipped up my hair and tucked it under my patrol cap, but the thick auburn mane has a mind of its own. Damp tendrils straggled down my neck, and my face was so slick I had to remove my sunglasses and swipe my cheeks and chin with my sleeve while Snoopy processed his meal.

“We’re only a few miles from Pancho’s,” Sergeant Cassidy commented, hefting the palm-size unit that controlled the robot. “Want me to aim him in that direction?”

“God, yes!”

 

BAD decision. Reeeally bad.

The dead rat should have tipped me to the possibility that Snoopy might sniff out other, equally unpleasant fuel sources. Which he did, not two minutes after we pulled up at Pancho’s.

The crumbling adobe establishment sits on the south side of the only road running through the town of Dry Springs, Texas. Dry Springs is the closest human habitat to my team’s isolated test site. We deploy there once a quarter to test weird inventions like Snoopy SNFIR. And while we’re at the site, we deploy to Pancho’s every chance we get.

Aching for something tall and cool, I swung my leg over the back of the ATV and dismounted, Texas-style. Sergeant Cassidy did the same with considerably more grace and coordination. What can I say? He spends his free time working out. I spend mine watching TV or perusing glamour mags.

Or otherwise occupied with the studly Border Patrol agent I’ve been seeing for a little more than eight months now. I was thinking that I only had three days left at the test site before I returned to El Paso and the arms of Macho Mitch when I noticed Snoopy banging his snout against a Dumpster off to the side of the dirt parking lot.

“Noel! You’d better corral that thing before he climbs in and we have to dive in after him.”

Sergeant Cassidy pushed his patrol cap back on his sweaty forehead and played with the controls. He got Snoopy aimed away from the garbage and zooming in the opposite direction. That’s when the omnivorous little critter went for the pickup.

It was dusty and dented, much like the other vehicles driven by the customers who patronize Pancho’s. From where I stood, I could see the truck bed contained a jumble of shovels and steel pipes caked with mud. Also the dented beer cooler I mentioned earlier. I assumed a construction crew had stopped at Pancho’s to gas up and/or chow down. Snoopy obviously assumed they’d brought him lunch.

He kept trying to mount the pickup’s rear wheel. Or hump it. I wasn’t sure which as he charged the tire, backed up, and charged again. Several times.

“Oh, for . . . !” Totally exasperated, I flapped a hand at Sergeant Cassidy and hurried over to the truck. “Shut him off before he does something that embarrasses us.”

Noel duly killed Snoopy’s engine and I bent to pick him up. The whole course of history might have changed if I’d gotten a good grip on his shoebox frame. But I didn’t, and Snoop slipped out of my arms. He bounced off the pickup’s side rail and thumped down on top of the beer cooler.

I leaned over to retrieve him and had him tucked under my arm again when the door to the bar side of Pancho’s establishment slammed back on its hinges. The bear of a man who burst through it came at me in a dead run.

“What the hell you doing?”

“Huh?”

Not the most intelligent response, I admit, but I was so startled by the unexpected attack it was all I could manage at that moment.

“Get away from my pickup!”

I found my voice. Or more correctly, the smart mouth my mother claims I sprang out of the womb with.

“Cool it, pal. I’m not trying to steal your muddy pipes.”

“What’s that under your arm?”

“Nothing you need to get excited about.”

Either he wasn’t listening or he didn’t believe me. Thrusting his hand under his shirttail, he whipped out a vicious-looking semiautomatic.

“What the fuck have you got under your arm?”

My heart jumped into my throat. My stomach took a simultaneous dive to the toes of my combat boots. Feeling nothing but icy emptiness in between, I held up my free hand and backed away.

“Nothing of yours. I swear. This is . . .”

That’s all I got out before Sergeant Cassidy revved his ATV to full power. I hadn’t seen him leap back into the saddle, but I certainly saw him tear across the parking lot. Head down, he aimed right for the Bear.

“Noel!” I screamed at the top of my lungs to compete with the ATV’s roar. “Look out! He’s got a gun.”

What happened next took five seconds. Ten at the most. But they were the longest seconds of my life!

The Bear spun around. Spotted Noel. Pumped off two shots. The second was still reverberating in my ears when the bar door crashed open again and Pancho let loose with both barrels of the sawed-off shotgun he kept under the counter.

The blast cut the Bear almost in half. He went down in a spray of blood and guts. Noel thumped his ATV over the body before he could kill the engine. My knees folded, and my butt hit the dirt.

For the
next
five or ten seconds, I sat there, stunned, with Snoopy still tucked under one arm. It’s not like I’m a stranger to violence. I was just a kid at the time, but I remember my mother laying open my father’s scalp with a gin bottle before he took off, never to be seen again. I seriously considered doing the same to my ex, Charlie “Dumbass” Spade, when I caught him with our bimbo neighbor. I refrained, but I have been involved in several nasty incidents since taking over leadership of FST-3. None of which were my fault, I would like to point out, although my boss at DARPA headquarters has become increasingly reluctant to return my phone calls.

This incident had happened so fast, though. I couldn’t seem to comprehend it. Still shell-shocked, I struggled to my feet and rushed over to Sergeant Cassidy.

“Noel! Are you okay?”

“Yeah. It’s only a flesh wound.”

I hadn’t even noticed the red staining his upper thigh! Spinning on my heel, I shouted to Pancho. “He’s hit! Get your response kit.”

In addition to being the proprietor of the only business establishment in Dry Springs, Pancho also serves as chief of its volunteer fire department. As such, he’s fully trained in emergency response procedures. While he rushed back inside the shop, Noel pooh-poohed his wound.

“No need to make a fuss, Lieutenant.” He probed the wound with his forefinger. “The mosquitoes in Mogadishu bite deeper than this.”

Never having been to Mogadishu, I took his word for that. But I still insisted he climb off the ATV, stretch out in the dirt, and elevate his leg until Pancho reappeared. With Noel horizontal, I approached the Bear. Wasn’t much chance he’d survived having his midsection pelletized but I felt compelled to check for a pulse anyway. I didn’t find one.

I was back at Noel’s side when Pancho returned. His waxed mustache bristling, he knelt in the dirt and peered at the wound with his good eye. A black patch covers the other eye. I’ll explain later.

“It’s only a flesh wound,” he pronounced after cutting through Noel’s camos. “Barely creased the skin.”

I ignored my sergeant’s I-told-you-so look. “Just patch him up.”

“While I do that,” Pancho said with a sideways glance at the Bear, “you’d better contact Roy Alexander.”

I’d interfaced with Sheriff Alexander during one of those nasty incidents I referred to a moment ago. As a result, the El Paso County sheriff evinced only mild surprise when I reported a shooting at Pancho’s and said he was on his way.

After that, there was nothing to do but wait. And fill Pancho in on the bizarre sequence of events that had us all squatting in the dirt outside his bar/motel/etc. When I got to the Snoopy part, though, he swiveled on his heel and hitched a disbelieving brow.

“It’s a
what
?”

As I said, Dry Springs is the closest town to FST-3’s isolated test site. The inhabitants know we test some weird stuff. Like the supposedly safe hyper-optic lens that ignited a major brush fire some months back. So Snoopy held Pancho’s fascinated interest while I attempted to explain him.

“It’s a self-propelled robot designed to sniff out its own food.”

“Now that you mention it,” Pancho mused, “it does look like a small coyote.”

Pretty apt comparison. Snoopy certainly possessed some of the same characteristics as the scavengers of the desert.

“We’re testing it for possible battlefield application.”

“So why was it trying to hump the tire on this guy’s truck?”

“You saw that, did you?”

He flashed me a quick grin. “Kinda hard to miss, Lootenant.”

“I’m not sure what that was all about,” I admitted. Lips pursed, I studied the pickup. “For some reason, the robot seemed to think he’d found a fuel source in the bed of the pickup.”

Pancho stroked one side of his droopy handlebar mustache. Despite all the expensive wax he applies daily, the tips insist on turning down more often than up. It always reminds me of that cartoon character Yosemite Sam, except Pancho’s handle is jet black instead of fire-engine red.

“Any idea what he was after?” he asked, eyeing the dusty pickup.

“No.”

My tone implied that it wouldn’t be proper to tamper with evidence before Sheriff Alexander arrived. Pancho’s tone implied the opposite.

“Maybe we should take a look-see.”

I chewed on the inside of my cheek. Thought about the kangaroo rat. Bit down harder.

“Maybe we should.”

So I have a lively sense of curiosity? Sue me.

I checked with Noel first to make sure he was comfortable. I also checked the pad covering his wound. No fresh, bright blood stained the gauze. Confident my sergeant would survive to continue his sessions with his shrink, I pushed to my feet and joined Pancho.

He’s an inch or two shorter than I am. Five-six or -seven to my five-seven. But he’s tough and wiry and very reassuring to have at your side when approaching a pickup with suspicious contents.