All the Wrong Moves Read Online Free PDF Page B

five-state area is going to want a piece of the action. You’ll have CIA, FBI and TSA agents coming out your ears.”
    “Yeah, I figured. No sweat. Let me know if that data turns up anything interesting.”
    “Will do. How do we get your friend here back to base, Lieutenant?”
    I suppose I could have given him a demo of EEEK’s ergonomic mobility, but there was no way I was climbing aboard until he’d been hosed down.
    “Drive your vehicle over next to him and we’ll load up.”
    My first inclination was to borrow a pair of the sheriff’s latex gloves and shove EEEK into the 4x4’s back compartment. In deference to all that expensive electronic circuitry, we ended up boosting him into the rear seat and belting him in.
     
     
    THE ride back to CHU-ville was pretty bizarre.
    EEEK lolled in the back seat of the Border Patrol Range Rover, looking very much like a cyborg out for a Sunday drive. I sat in the front with Agent Mitchell. Dust and hot wind blew in through the open windows, doing a number on my face and hair. We had to keep the windows down as EEEK had acquired a case of body odor, in the most literal sense of the word. The rush of hot air kept the smell at bay.
    Mostly.
    Yielding to the wind, Mitchell dragged off his hat and tossed it in the back seat beside EEEK. As I’d suspected, the dark oak of his hair matched the chin and cheek bristles. I also noted more than a few strands of silver mixed with the tawny gold and revised my estimate of his age. The man had at least fifteen years on Charlie.
    “Tell me about your test unit.” He pitched his voice above the rush of hot Texas wind. “Are you part of TRADOC?”
    TRADOC is milspeak for the army’s Training and Doctrine Command. Fort Bliss is one of the command’s largest installations. The largest, if you count its fifteen hundred square miles of unrestricted airspace in addition to its gazillion acres of range.
    “We’re a tenant on post,” I informed him. “We’re with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.”
    “DARPA, huh?” He threw a glance in the rearview mirror. “That explains a lot.”
    I raised a brow in surprise. Our agency isn’t all that well known outside DOD and academia. He caught my look and shrugged.
    “I spent a few years in the navy, a long time ago.”
    “Can’t be that long, Agent Mitchell. You don’t look a day over fifty.”
    Actually I now had him pegged at a really buff thirty-five or six, but I owed him for that bit about traipsing through the desert. Alone. At night. Etc.
    His lips twitching, he ignored the dig and extended an olive branch. “It’s Mitch.”
    I felt compelled to offer the same courtesy. “And I’m Samantha.”
    “You don’t go by Sam. Or Sammy?”
    “Occasionally, when I feel the need to make folks think I’m one of the boys.”
    He aimed a quick look at me and the T-shirt stuck to my chest.
    “Not much chance of that happening,” Mitchell commented.
    I was pretty sure that was a compliment but decided not to follow up on it. Since I was only peripherally interested in the lean, ropy muscles displayed by Agent Mitchell’s rolled up sleeves, I shrugged aside his comment and filled him in on my cadre’s mission. I should have filled him in on their personal idiosyncrasies.
    The entire team piled out of the test facility when we drove up. I did the intros, and Mitch did some serious second looking.
    I have to admit my crack professionals make a distinct impression. As is her habit, Pen had her salt-and-pepper hair screwed into a loose topknot and skewered with pencils. She didn’t neigh when introduced, but came darn close. Brian “Rocky” Balboa fussed and fidgeted like a maiden aunt. O’Reilly squinted at Mitch through his Coke bottle lenses. Sergeant Cassidy, bless his macho soul, returned a handshake with the knuckle-crunch of Special Ops.
    The prize went to the Harrison Robotics rep, though. All Bent tch-tched in dismay when he spotted EEEK propped in the back seat.