Nothing.

  He picked up the sensor pod and looked at it, then lifted it overhead, trailing the cables and connectors, and the screen jumped.

  Jack grinned, but couldn’t make it jump again. He waved the sensor bank around the room, so the readings jumped again, and by narrowing his sweep he homed in on a dark shape tucked under one of his father’s workbenches.

  Jack Fast yanked the flexible light so it would shine on the dark object.

  Under the bench was a genuine, antique Flexible Flyer children’s wagon. It was one of the first ones ever made, worth thousands to some toy collectors, especially with pristine original paint like this one.

  Inside the near-mint wagon was a compact smart bomb, stenciled with the letters:

  UNEXPLODED ORDNANCE TOP SECRET PROPERTY OF THE U.S. GOVERNMENT

  Possession of this ordnance is extremely dangerous and will result in the immediate incarceration, military trial and conviction by the Terrorist And Potential Terrorists Isolation Division (TAPTID) of the Department Of Homeland Security (DOHS).

  Jack Fast was not surprised to find live, classified ordnance in his home. He waved his sensors at it, waved it away, waved it back.

  “Cool!” Fast said. “Hey, Pops, wake up!”

  He was waving it around when Fastbinder emerged from his tiny bedroom cubicle in his boxers. His head was wild, his legs were scrawny, and he was scratching his chest drowsily. He was not a pretty sight. “What’s the problem?” Fastbinder grumbled.

  “Aw, jeez. Pops, the turtle’s poking out his shell.”

  Fastbinder adjusted his boxers. “Better? Now what’s the problem?”

  Jack was waving the sensor array around the workshop. “Look at the screen. I figured out what this thing does. And it does it really well.”

  Fastbinder, his curiosity aroused, leaned into the monitor. As Jack waved the sensors, the screen took a reading of something.

  “What?”

  “Ordnance.”

  “Ordnance.” An ordnance sensor was definitely nothing new.

  “Now watch.” Jack waved the sensors at the wall. The screen jumped.

  Fastbinder thought about what was behind the wall. Nothing. Twenty feet of empty dirt. Then the storage house, heavily shielded.

  The sensors were seeing through it, registering some of the odd bombs Fastbinder was keeping there.

  No sensor should be able to see into that building.

  If this sensor could see through bomb-proof shielding to find live ordnance…

  “Just think what it could do!” Jack Fast exclaimed.

  Fastbinder was wearing a look of rapture. “Yes. Just think!”

  Chapter 17

  The old fairy tale was that anybody could grow up to be President of the United States. Not true. Sure, anybody could run for President. Even women. Even African-Americans. Jews. Muslims. Hindus. Great Danes named Hal. Ross Perot. Anybody could run.

  The truth was that any male WASP American could grow up to be President. Being rich and socially connected was strongly recommended.

  Herbert Whiteslaw was all those things. Fifty-one-years old, Caucasian, very middle of the road in terms of his political views. He came from old San Francisco money and had no publicly known skeletons in his closet. He was a four-term state senator from California and had kissed political backside in every federal building on Capitol Hill.

  His constituents liked him but he never seemed to get in tight with his peers. He never seemed to get the important party people excited enough to gain their support for a run at the presidency.

  What he needed was internal party support, and he knew how to get it: blackmail.

  Extorting support within his own party would be a fine first step, but that wouldn’t guarantee him the White House. What he needed was an extraordinary level of support from the most unlikely sources.

  “Picture this,” he told his former campaign manager. “I get the party nomination—”

  “Too late for that,” Phil Mein interrupted. “You may have read in the newspaper that the primaries are over. We’re just months away from the election, Herb.”

  Whiteslaw nodded and stuffed in a forkful of shrimp and angel hair pasta. “Yeah, but the nominees might step down. What’s the replacement process?”

  Mein frowned. “I don’t know. What leads you to believe the nominees would step down.”

  “Hypothetically, they do. And, hypothetically, I get the nomination.”

  “Herb, think about it. You haven’t been actively campaigning for this election. If a party nominee did step out of the race, there are five or six replacements waiting in the wings who’ve been promoting themselves for more than a year. You’re an unknown. But, if by some quirk of politics you did get the party nomination, you’d be the underdog in the general election for sure. You’d never unseat the incumbent.”

  “I think I could.”

  Mein was twirling his pasta carbonara despondently. When Whiteslaw called him into this meeting he had been excited to think that the senator was beginning to plan his strategy for the next Senate race and, simultaneously, the White House race that was still four years off. Mein didn’t like the direction this conversation was headed. “Let’s talk about the next election. You know, four years from now. You might stand a chance.”

  “If I were to get the party nomination, and if the current administration were to suddenly become mired in scandal, what then?”

  Mein looked at Whiteslaw, saw the man’s eyes glimmering. He swallowed, and swallowed hard because the mouthful was mostly unchewed pasta.

  “What do you know. Herb?” Mein asked.

  “I know something big, Phil,” Whiteslaw said. Mein couldn’t speak again because the waiter appeared to pour more wine into their glasses from the bottle on the table. When the man left, Phil urged, “Tell me!”

  “No way in hell.” Whiteslaw was still smiling. “You know my rules, Phil. Trust no one.”

  “Come on, Herb, give me a hint! You know something so big it will bring down the administration?”

  Whiteslaw nodded. “It’s guaranteed impeachment.”

  “Wow!” Mein grew cautious. ‘You sure?”

  “Listen, Phil, I’ve got the goods on the President. The only way he’ll escape going down in flames is if he retires first.”

  “In your opinion.”

  Whiteslaw was exasperated. “Listen, Phil, there’s my public opinion and there’s my real opinion and this is so strong it’s not even an opinion—it’s a fact.”

  “Okay, Senator, don’t get excited.”

  “I have knowledge of the President of the United States authorizing intelligence forces to flagrantly violate constitutionally protected rights of freedom and privacy and due process.”

  ‘It’s called the Patriot Act and it’s really not a secret.”

  “No, way worse. We’re talking hired assassins who target U.S. citizens. Got it?”

  Phil nodded. “Okay. Good. Do you have proof?”

  “Getting it now.”

  “Proof that will pass the TV test?”

  Whiteslaw smiled. “High-quality video. HD fucking TV.”

  Phil Mein smiled and leaned back in his chair. “Okay!”

  “You on board with me so far?”

  “So far.”

  “Now listen to this,” Senator Whiteslaw said, pushing his unfinished supper aside and leaning in. “Say I prove the President is culpable, but I don’t have evidence to spread the blame throughout his party. Say I’m up against him when the revelation is made. This is what I want to know, Phil—what are my chances?” Phil Mein considered that. He raised his tapered hand and raised one finger. “Okay, first, you get the party nod. That means the current nominee goes down and all the other guys who were trying to get the party nomination are bypassed. Sounds ugly. Not knowing how you intend to make that happen, Herb, I have to know—how ugly will it be?”

  “Behind the scenes or in the eyes of John Q. Public?”

  Phil made a sputtering noise with his lips. “Who the fuck cares about behind-the-scenes? Political reality is only what the people see.”

  Whiteslaw smiled. “John Q. will see nothing but smiling faces. The current nominee drops out for health reasons and I get one hundred percent support from him and everybody else. Perfectly unugly.”

  Phil Mein waited for more, then raised a second finger. “When do you step in?”

  “Whenever the timing is just right,” Whiteslaw said. Mein raised a third finger. “When does the incumbent go down in flames?”

  “Again, when the time is right.”

  Fourth finger. “How can you be sure somebody else won’t make use of the scandal before you can?”

  “I’m the only one who knows.”

  Phil’s hand dropped heavily on the restaurant table. “Sounds too good to be true, Herb.”

  “It’s true,” Whiteslaw insisted. “But you haven’t answered my question. Taking all that into account, what are my chances?”

  Phil Mein shook his head, slightly awed. “Your chances are excellent. If you can deliver the goods like you say you can. I’d suggest we take care of getting you in the nominee seat ASAP. Then we hold off for a while and strike at the current administration close to the election, don’t give them time to get another candidate up and running.”

  Herbert Whiteslaw rolled his wheelchair back from the table. “My feet still hurt like hell but they’ve been healed for weeks. Would a dramatic stand-up-and-walk scene help with the image?”

  “Jesus, yes. The gullible masses never get tired of that shit.” But Phil Mein was concentrating on the wineglass in his hand. “You asking me to run this campaign, Herb?”

  “You’ve put me in the senator’s seat four times. I have faith in you, Phil.”

  “But you don’t trust me all the way. You have to look at this from my point of view, Senator. What you’re promising is the most far-reaching scandal in the memory of the American public—”

  “What about the debacle over the Florida votes in 2000? What about that twit who diddled the intern?”

  “Ancient history. That’s retro-politics. Anyway, from what I remember, those weren’t major media scandals. What you’re planning is going to be major, if you really can make it happen. Herb, I need to know more.”

  Herbert Whiteslaw fidgeted. His eyes got beady. “Look, my plan just might call for me to break a few laws myself.”

  “So?”

  “There might be some ‘unethical behavior’ involved.”

  “This is politics. Ethics have no meaning in politics.”

  “I’ll let you in on this, Phil, but only if you’re on board with me. Are you on board?”

  “Senator Whiteslaw,” Mein said in a level voice, “if you can do what you say you can do, then you will be the next President of the United States of America. I want to be in on that,”

  Whiteslaw nodded appreciatively. “Okay, Phil. Listen to this….”

  Chapter 18

  The blue phone did not ring this time. Instead, a blue phone icon popped up on the crystal-clear screen below Dr. Smith’s desk, telling him he had an incoming transmission from the field. Namely from Mark Howard, who was chaperoning Remo on board the chartered jet, just to make sure the Reigning Master didn’t go wandering off somewhere.

  Mark Howard gave him a succinct report as they were driving back to the airport, giving Smith time to perform some research before they called in from the chartered aircraft for an in-depth report.

  “They claim they’re fine,” Mark said. “But they don’t look fine.”

  “We cleaned up real nice,” Remo insisted. “What were those things we went up against there? Smitty, you have any idea?”

  “Offense/defensive robotics,” Smith replied, his fingers snapping over the keyboard. “None of the designs you mention are surprising.”

  “Oh, yeah? I was surprised,” Remo said. “What about that Mr. U.? What’s the deal with him?”

  “Mobile Intrusion, Termination and Reconnaissance Unit,” Smith said. “Nothing more than an autonomous weapons system. The prototype was stolen from a DOE-funded lab in Oregon in 2003. He was said to have been fitted with a metal skull to house the electronics and the DOE was considering using the head in the actual models for its psychological impact. The design was proven substandard in battlefield mobility trials and the project was shelved before the theft even occurred.”

  “I got news for you—it worked well enough,” Remo said. “Running on a smooth surface, anyway. What about the dog and the big spider?”

  “Both designs that have been tested within the United States. You’ve seen mechanical spiders yourself. It is the insects that interest me most,” Smith said. “They exhibited sophisticated insect flight replication technology, down to replicating the structure of the wing muscles. One pair of wings is powered by a contracting capillary group replicating the top-to-bottom thoracic muscle set, another by an end-to-end muscle group, also on the thorax. It’s better than what the U.S. had developed thus far.”

  “But do they have the little Gee-DAMS inside?” Remo asked.

  “They don’t,” Howard said. “I’ve dissected three of them. These are remote-controlled devices with no Gee-DAM chips. I’ll bet there was a heat-sensitive control device in the vicinity. Once it locked on to its targets, Remo and Chiun, it simply relayed flight patterns to the swarm. Inefficient, but there were so many of them they nearly succeeded in killing them.”

  “So we did not get the Gee-DAMS,” Smith intoned unhappily.

  “Listen, Smitty, there’s something more important we need to talk about. What the hell was it that Cote was using to power up all this stuff? That’s what worries me the most.”

  “And I” added Chiun.

  “I agree. We’ll be looking into that aspect of it. It’s as mysterious to me as to you,” Smith admitted. “Especially because it seems to have been a side effect. Remo, you’re convinced Cote did not even know what he was doing?”

  “He was clueless. As soon as the figurines unplugged themselves from the wall sockets, the bad feeling went away. If he knew he was doing it, he would never have let me chat him up while I regained my strength. Can you send in some pocket-protector types to dismantle the place and figure it out?”

  Smith pursed his lips. “That’s impossible. The villa ceased to exist within minutes of your last report. The fire department says the entire structure burned to the ground, even the stone. The place must have been rigged with thermite charges.”

  There was a moment of silence. “Nope,” Remo said. “Otherwise it would have happened a lot sooner than that. I’ll bet one of those animatronics was programmed or remote controlled to set those charges. Whatever, it’s just what Cote would have wanted—a big blast of an ending.”

  “Who ran the remote controls?” Smith demanded.

  “Whoever is really behind this thing,” Remo said. “It wasn’t Cote the cartoon supervillain. Somebody who was tied into the security system at the Cote house and spoke like a German.”

  “Any indication who it was, though?”

  “Some super-duper-villain, I guess,” Remo said.

  In the privacy of his office, Smith closed his eyes, imaging he felt true physical pain. What he wouldn’t give to have a truly professional-acting enforcement arm.

  “Somebody who likes robots,” Remo added helpfully. “He likes them so much he dredged up one of them that was a hundred years old.”

  Smith almost allowed that one to pass by, like much of what Remo said, but somewhere a light glowed in his head. “What are you talking about?”

  “You know. Ironhand.”

  “That news report from El Paso was in one of the data feeds you sent over,” Mark Howard explained. “I was asking Chiun if he remembered reading the books.”

  “Because I am so very old, you see,” Chiun announced loudly.

  “Ironhand was fiction, Remo,” Smith explained. “Not according to the letter. The old man said his father saw the real Ironhand at a World’s Fair.”

  “A century ago,” Mark Howard said. “So?”

  “There were a number of Victorian-era fakes like Ironhand,” Smith said. “They were sort of a rage for a while. Some were electromechanical, some were steam powered. Remember Metropolis?”

  “I’m sure Superman fought robots,” Remo said, “and that was later than Victorian era, wasn’t it?”

  “The silent-era film, Metropolis in 1919,” Smith said. “Regardless, there were many fake robots before anyone created anything like a true automaton,” Smith insisted. “Ironhand was turned into pulp fiction.”

  “Worth checking out, though,” Remo said.

  “Do not heed his ramblings. Emperor,” Chiun called. Smith could picture him sitting far away from Mark and Remo, his eyes locked on the wing out the window. “He is as delusional as the poor hermit who died alone in the deserts of Newer Mexico.”

  “What’s the harm in looking?” Remo asked.

  “Remo, think about it,” Smith said. “Ironhand was supposed to be more than seven feet tall and made out of steel. Not a likely configuration if you want to get into a highly secure military base, is it?”

  “Why not? One of them was good enough to work for Cote. Chiun, cough up the iron robot head.”

  “It is of no consequence,” Chiun answered dismissively.

  “Chiun! Give me the effing head!”

  There was a muttering, then Smith heard the sound of something hard hitting something else hard.

  “What was that?” Smith asked.

  “It’s a robot head, Smitty,” Remo said. “It was made of iron, by a blacksmith, and I bet that makes it pretty damn old.”

  “Mark?” Smith asked.

  “Mark?” Remo added.

  “It is an iron skull. Dr. Smith,” Mark Howard reported. “It looks like a doll’s head.”

  “It tried to kill us.”

  ‘We’ll look into it,” Smith said dismissively. “Mark, send me some photos and specifications.”

  Remo sulked. Nobody cared, but that was okay because he was sulking for his own benefit, not theirs.