For the second time that day he fought his way from under a corpse.
The technician climbed to his feet, his throat raw from the attempted strangulation, and checked himself – no other injuries.
“I’m alive,” he rasped, then cackled like an old crone.
Suddenly the rush of relief turned to one of triumph as he looked down upon the bodies of the killers. They were next to each other, with almost identical head wounds. They looked like the victims of a professional hit.
“Yeah! You like that bitches!?” he yelled down at them and did a little jig before doubling over in a coughing fit.
When he had recovered, he heard the faint sound of sirens. Fuck! Even though he had technically done nothing wrong and was, in fact, a victim, Redfern panicked. His recent trauma and the moral and legal responsibilities that had been drummed into him as a robotics technician overrode logic.
He had to find that robot and stop it. With the damage it had apparently sustained, there was no use trying to override its programming remotely. He would just waste valuable time. The only way to do that was to shut her down and remove the card.
The sirens grew louder. Redfern bent over and pocketed the gun he had shot both men with and ran to the display, snatching up the GPS unit. The red blip was stationary. The visual feed on the screens was dark, which meant the robot was still functional but in sleep mode. Good.
He quickly grabbed the mini laptop computer they had been using to control the robot and ripped it away from the cables connecting it to the display. He rushed to the kitchen and headed straight to the microwave oven. After placing the laptop inside, he set the timer for twenty minutes on high. It began sparking immediately; he ignored it and headed back for the front door.
Redfern, stressed by the proximity of the sirens, swore and skidded to a stop at the front door. Transport! He needed a vehicle, and the Genitix van would be too conspicuous. He dashed back to the desk and grabbed the keys to the dead men’s SUV and fled the apartment.
Just five minutes later, after nearly causing an accident, Tom Redfern pulled over and forced himself to calm down. Unless he did something stupid on the road, he wasn’t likely to be stopped by the cops. Given the current state of the vehicle’s owners, he didn’t think the vehicle he was driving would be reported stolen anytime soon, if at all, and he had clearly escaped the scene without being detected.
“Breathe,” he said aloud as he gripped the steering wheel. “Just find the robot. Deactivate it and remove the card… then go to the cops and explain everything.”
Of course he hoped tracking down and deactivating the rogue robot would help mitigate his killing the two men, in the event self-defense argument didn’t work, but more pressing in his mind was preventing further loss of life. He had seen what the robot could do in glorious living color, and it wasn’t pretty. It would have to be destroyed; there was no doubt.
While removing the card and a complete reprogramming would be enough to completely mitigate the chance of future problems, human law would require punishment and in this particular case, multiple murders of humans would require nothing less than ‘execution.’
Redfern picked up the GPS tracker. If the robot had been in sleep mode, it wasn’t anymore. The blip was now on the move and showed the killer robot was on the loose somewhere on the East side.
He propped the tracker on his dash and eased back into the traffic.
22
It had taken several hours for the Chicago PD along with a couple of members of the Organized Crime division to question Molenski. Finally, they conceded that the Russian seemed to have been the victim in this particular circumstance. From all appearances, his enemies had devised a particularly sophisticated assassination attempt by a robot.
The Russian had cooperated fully with the man in charge, Commander Burlinson, who was in fact on Molenski’s payroll, but it was clear that the case would be referred to the FBI as the AI factor moved it into federal jurisdiction.
When he’d told them about the murderous robot, it was as if he’d shoved a wasp’s nest up their ass with a long stick. A breach of the robotics laws was rare, especially a murder attempt, so what they had initially thought of as a standard mob hit turned into something with far wider ramifications.
Molenski was careful to implicate Ivan. By the time he left, Burlinson was under no illusion that the bodyguard had been in on the whole thing and that Molenski wanted him apprehended before the FBI got their hands on him.
Of course, the Russian didn’t really think that Ivan was involved in the plot. The assassination attempt was the work of the Columbians, of that he had no doubt. No one else had the resources or the motivation. He would deal with them in his own time.
Ivan, though, had let him down badly. Had betrayed him in his moment of need, despite everything that Molenski had done for him.
Still, one good that had come of the whole ordeal was that Ivan had prevented him from finishing Inga with another gunshot. Now that he wasn’t swept up in the emotion of his near-death experience, he saw how much sweeter it would be to deal with the beautiful Inga lookalike in his own sweet time. And he would make Ivan watch.
Molenski was sure he would find the odd couple, but sending the cops on his payroll after them was a backstop in the unlikely event his traitorous employee escaped his reach. If he was apprehended anywhere within the city limits, it would be easy enough to use his connections and grease a few palms to give Ivan and the bitch the welcome home they so richly deserved.
After the cops had quit the estate, the hunt for Ivan and Inga began in earnest. Molenski’s tech experts got busy hacking into the phone company’s systems to trace his phone and searching for the stolen Dodge.
While he was waiting, Molenski watched the surveillance footage of the Dodge speeding up the ramp of the underground parking lot over and over, peering intently at the black and white footage of the two absconders.
After twenty minutes, Molenski was informed that Ivan’s cell phone had last been detected a few suburbs away and hadn’t moved for hours.
“Don’t bother sending anyone; he’s not an idiot. It’s been dumped. What about the car?”
“Better. Courtesy of the vehicle tracking you paid for, we have an exact location…”
“Is it still moving?”
“No sir.”
“How long has it been stationary?”
“Three hours or so Mr. Molenski, at a wrecking yard on Kedzie Avenue.”
“He’s gone,” said Molenski. “But, let us go and find out who has my car and what they might know of our friend and his passenger. Give me your phone…”
Molenski quickly dialed a number.
“Andre, it’s me. I need you; something has come up. Be ready in 20 minutes.”
Molenski took three men and they picked up his lieutenant Andre Chichenko on the way. Now that Ivan had departed the scene, Molenski wouldn’t have admitted it, but he felt a little vulnerable without his constant and very competent shadow.
Andre though had been with him since not long after he arrived in America and was his head of security; he would adequately fill the shoes of the traitor.
Dimitri Molenski was quiet and thoughtful during the drive to Kedzie Avenue. That didn’t make the four men in the car with him relax. If anything, it put them more on edge, even the seasoned Andre.
An angry Molenski in full flight was much more predictable than his quiet alter ego.