Catch Her If You Can Read Free Page A

under the counter.
    The blast cut the Bear almost in half. He went down in a spray of blood and guts. Noel thumped his ATV over the body before he could kill the engine. My knees folded, and my butt hit the dirt.
    For the next five or ten seconds, I sat there, stunned, with Snoopy still tucked under one arm. It’s not like I’m a stranger to violence. I was just a kid at the time, but I remember my mother laying open my father’s scalp with a gin bottle before he took off, never to be seen again. I seriously considered doing the same to my ex, Charlie “Dumbass” Spade, when I caught him with our bimbo neighbor. I refrained, but I have been involved in several nasty incidents since taking over leadership of FST-3. None of which were my fault, I would like to point out, although my boss at DARPA headquarters has become increasingly reluctant to return my phone calls.
    This incident had happened so fast, though. I couldn’t seem to comprehend it. Still shell-shocked, I struggled to my feet and rushed over to Sergeant Cassidy.
    “Noel! Are you okay?”
    “Yeah. It’s only a flesh wound.”
    I hadn’t even noticed the red staining his upper thigh! Spinning on my heel, I shouted to Pancho. “He’s hit! Get your response kit.”
    In addition to being the proprietor of the only business establishment in Dry Springs, Pancho also serves as chief of its volunteer fire department. As such, he’s fully trained in emergency response procedures. While he rushed back inside the shop, Noel pooh-poohed his wound.
    “No need to make a fuss, Lieutenant.” He probed the wound with his forefinger. “The mosquitoes in Mogadishu bite deeper than this.”
    Never having been to Mogadishu, I took his word for that. But I still insisted he climb off the ATV, stretch out in the dirt, and elevate his leg until Pancho reappeared. With Noel horizontal, I approached the Bear. Wasn’t much chance he’d survived having his midsection pelletized but I felt compelled to check for a pulse anyway. I didn’t find one.
    I was back at Noel’s side when Pancho returned. His waxed mustache bristling, he knelt in the dirt and peered at the wound with his good eye. A black patch covers the other eye. I’ll explain later.
    “It’s only a flesh wound,” he pronounced after cutting through Noel’s camos. “Barely creased the skin.”
    I ignored my sergeant’s I-told-you-so look. “Just patch him up.”
    “While I do that,” Pancho said with a sideways glance at the Bear, “you’d better contact Roy Alexander.”
    I’d interfaced with Sheriff Alexander during one of those nasty incidents I referred to a moment ago. As a result, the El Paso County sheriff evinced only mild surprise when I reported a shooting at Pancho’s and said he was on his way.
    After that, there was nothing to do but wait. And fill Pancho in on the bizarre sequence of events that had us all squatting in the dirt outside his bar/motel/etc. When I got to the Snoopy part, though, he swiveled on his heel and hitched a disbelieving brow.
    “It’s a what ?”
    As I said, Dry Springs is the closest town to FST-3’s isolated test site. The inhabitants know we test some weird stuff. Like the supposedly safe hyper-optic lens that ignited a major brush fire some months back. So Snoopy held Pancho’s fascinated interest while I attempted to explain him.
    “It’s a self-propelled robot designed to sniff out its own food.”
    “Now that you mention it,” Pancho mused, “it does look like a small coyote.”
    Pretty apt comparison. Snoopy certainly possessed some of the same characteristics as the scavengers of the desert.
    “We’re testing it for possible battlefield application.”
    “So why was it trying to hump the tire on this guy’s truck?”
    “You saw that, did you?”
    He flashed me a quick grin. “Kinda hard to miss, Lootenant.”
    “I’m not sure what that was all about,” I admitted. Lips pursed, I studied the pickup. “For some reason, the robot seemed to