Wolf: A Military P.A.C. Novel (30 page)

Chapter 66 Robert Scott

The client that Blackwater had taken on, that Gerund had taken on actually, sat outside a small cabin three mountaintops away from Michael’s.
Twenty-four klicks as the crows flew. He was the same shade of black that Michael was, though his hair had greyed and the curls were tighter to his head, cropped closer. This man wore the clothes of a hunter, the red-checked flannel shirt standing out against the white snow. His pants and weather gear just as bright. He liked the colour, made him remember his wife, who’d died what seemed like ages ago.

On one wrist, there was a watchband, a mat
te black thing that looked like carbon or some other dark material. It was one of five he'd built. He thought he knew their capabilities, both individually and interlinked. But they’d needed training first. Adaptive training. Knowledge and programming they could only get from men. Robert Scott had thought his son could do that for him. But the trust hadn’t worked out quite right. Four had gone to his son and the three men on his recon team. Ahmed Ariyan’s had been lost in the return of his corpse back home. Huer had died in a motorcycle accident, and his P.A.C. unit . . . Robert Scott hadn’t been able to find it. His own unit unable to ping in on the small device. Which should have been impossible.

Out of his range and lost somehow. The P.A.C.
units should have been able to communicate over several systems worldwide. He could only surmise that Michael had put some kind of limit on them.

And then there was Boyen’s, a belt buckle of all things. That unit didn't change shape. Didn't take commands from his maker the way Robert Scott had programmed it
to initially. The damn thing had argued with him over rank and protocols for the first two weeks before he had convinced it to isolate his DNA, and even then it only gave him access to medical mode and most of the communication it had access to, but not all.

Tiny filaments dug into the skin of the man, sunk deep and always there, feeding him chemicals to keep him alive and fight the cancer that kept eating at him. He never would have thought
—when he invented them—that they would bond the way they had. That each of them would react differently to the person who bonded with them.

He gave orders to the one on his wrist
, and it turned into a small hover drone and sped away. In a few moments, it was sending a transmission to the P.A.C. unit on his belt. The hologram it relayed spread out on the snow before him. An Asian woman walking away from his son. She had a crossbred dog with her, a miniature coyote mix. However that had happened. It wasn’t unheard of, not even uncommon. Most of the dogs in North America had some DNA mixed in with their more feral cousins’.

Behind the woman was Michael’s family
—that was the assumption anyway. His grandson looked about six years old. A pack of wolves ranged about in play behind them. How Michael had tamed a wolf pack, Robert Scott didn’t know. Even with all the satellites diverted to this area over the last few months, he’d been unable to keep surveillance in the area and not be identified by Michael’s own P.A.C. Not that he had actually seen it on him. But he hadn’t lost it. Scott was sure of that.

In the interviews after the war, he’d seen it on his son’s wrist. He’d also seen the confusion on his face whenever someone talked of that war, and what he’d done to stop it.

The poison he’d set as a reminder for his son had worked though. That much he could tell from what little he’d been able to capture with his surveillance. Scrutiny that should have worked better than it did. Another order from Michael, he assumed. With none of the units going against the rank and file of a military hierarchy. Michael’s discovery of the poison and his survival—could only be from using his P.A.C. unit. Then the Military showed up, obviously looking for the P.A.C. unit—what else could they want? After all, he had hired Blackwater to find them for him. So there was an information leak in that organization. He assumed it was Gerund, a man he could no longer get hold of. And the newsies didn't have any new information on the man either.

So Robert Scott waited and watched. And made plans.

“The five P.A.C. units have a purpose, Son. Come find me. Look for the man that poisoned you. I'll be here.”

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