Page 33 of Asher

“Copy that.” Reaching into his bag of tricks again, Asher pulled out a much smaller heavy-duty, molded plastic case. Unsnapping its latches, he pulled out another clever creation out of McCormack Industries: the indomitable Scorpion. Thumbing its switch, he activated the miniature, bug-like device that moved on eight centipede-like legs and carried a drill curled over its three-inch segmented body. Positioning it toward the mansion, he started it walking. If one of the guards, who were right then totally clueless, spotted it, they’d most likely dismiss it as what it resembled. An annoying desert scorpion.

Swiftly, Asher recalled Gizmo, while Scorpion charted its way forward, periodically stopping to insert the diamond-tipped drill over its back and into the rock-solid ground. It went ten feet when—

BOOM!

“Good job,” Alex whispered. “Jamah left us a mine field.”

“That paranoid asshat.” Hot-tempered Cord Shepherd peered over Asher’s shoulder. “Look at that shit. He’s boobytrapped the whole place. How are we going to get through that?”

Asher put his index finger to his lips and whispered, “Wait for it,” as the small but mighty Scorpion, with the tip of its drill still stuck in the ground, blinked back online and reconnected with the app on Asher’s cell. Instant images flooded his screen.

“That son of a bitch still works?” Cord asked.

Asher nodded. “Scorpion’s designed to survive explosions larger than that one.”

IEDs were poorly designed weapons at best. Effective, yes, but built to explode upward, into the bottom of armored vehicles and soldier’s lower extremities. Scorpion, on the other hand, had been built to withstand those types of close contact. Made with a tough titanium shell that sloped downward into a thick, reinforced blade, its central core was protected, much like a Chevy truck was protected in winter, by the heavy-duty blade of the snow plow attached by a front receiver to the vehicle’s frame. Most of the energy of this explosion had glanced upward, off Scorpion’s shell, which then deflected it over Scorpion’s back.

The working heart of the bug was another modern miracle, itself a maze of redundant technology. If a blast was successful and did damage any part of its small brain or internal engine, its main controller automatically rerouted commands to one of many identical circuits, programs, or whatever. That was why it came with eight legs. Every miniature part of it was just one of many built-in redundancies. Its primary objective was simple: Survive.

“So what’s it doing now? Limping back to Daddy?” Cord quipped.

“Shut up,” Tripp grumbled. “This is serious. Stop joking around.”

“Shhhhh,” Asher hissed while Scorpion deployed tiny electromagnetic impulses through its drill and into the hard-as-concrete sand. Not strong enough to set off more explosives. Just strong enough to send back a series of images. Images that revealed the location of every IED within a twenty-foot radius.

“Walking Scorpion home, Boss,” he reported with a satisfied grin. This was Scorpion’s maiden voyage, a literal baptism by fire, and it did good. “Not a ton of shit buried out there, but allimprovised bombs, eight yards or so apart. A walk through is doable if we go single-file.”

“Good job,” Alex repeated.

That made twoAtta BoysAsher never thought he’d hear from his hard-as-nails CEO. Damn, they felt good.

“What’s going on?” Cord asked impatiently.

“Me? Not much, but while Scorpio walks back to us, it’s lighting a way for us to get through the minefield,” Asher replied evenly. “All we’ll have to do is follow the yellow brick road.”

“Huh?”

Asher grinned at his teammate’s confusion. Cord was a Devil Dog from the top of his hard head down to his stubby, callused toes. Tougher than most. Never backed down. But he didn’t come with a light touch and, of all the agents, he was the most technologically challenged. His idea of brute force was just that: physical, literal, grab ’em by the neck and choke ’em until they squealed or stopped breathing, force. Asher’s idea of brute force was achieved through the use of superior computer skills, extraordinary programming talent, and astute hacking. He preferred breaching an enemy’s mainframe and planting viruses, kill switches, or digital boobytraps, whatever it took to bring an enemy down.

Which was why McCormack had entrusted his latest creations to Asher, not Alex. Oh, hell no. Alex was as heavy-handed as Cord, but shorter-tempered. Neither understood the fine points of virtual sabotage. Alex and Cord used high-caliber rifles. Asher used the delicate touch of his fingertips and whatever part of his brain allowed his fine motor skills to react quickly enough to be first on the trigger and twice as lethal.

“The Scorpion’s a miniaturized, ground-penetrating radar device,” he explained to the agents gathered around him. Carefully packing Gizmo into its thick, protective padding, Asher flicked sand out of Scorpion’s molded carrying case and set it aside, waiting for the bug’s return. “Right now, it’s dropping dots of bright yellow dye on its way back. Those dots are only visible with the glasses I passed out earlier. You still have them, don’t you? I told you they’d come in handy later.”

Cord patted his chest pockets. Then his rear pockets.

“They’re on your head, dumbass,” Tripp told him.

“Oh, yeah. I knew that,” Cord said.

“I’ll tell you when to put them on,” Asher said.

Scorpion chirped when it came to rest at the tip of his boot. It was just following its programming to return to its charging station, but the others didn’t need to know that. He couldn’t help smiling as he looked down at the dusty little fellow. “Good job,” he muttered, then turned it off and over to assess the damage to its undercarriage. “Aw, you lost three legs. Shit, you’re a tough little son of a bitch.”

“You talk to those things like they’re babies,” Cord chided.

“Try walking through a minefield without ’em,” Asher shot back, fixing Scorpion firmly into its molded case for the ride home, then situating that case inside his gear bag, alongside Gizmo. He’d sacrificed bringing his second pistol, several more boxes of ammo, and protein bars to make room for this specialized technology. “Ready, Boss.”

Alex nodded once. “Tripp and Cord. Mark and Heston. Let’s roll.”

---