“Out little army,” said Turk as Johnny sat down in front of the control unit. His tone was somewhere between a sneer and admiration.
Their small size and legs made the bots hard to see, but it also limited how fast they could go; 2.5 mph was their top speed. To reach the city where their targets were, they needed to first cross about a thousand yards’ worth of open terrain, enter and traverse the empty compound, turn into an alley, and cross the back of another yard before reaching the streets. Stopping periodically to consider data from the Hum and a Nightbird controlled by Chelsea back at the base, it took nearly twenty minutes for the lead bot to reach the compound. The units seemed overly cautious to Johnny, but short of taking over each one individually, there was nothing he could do.
The bots split up as they approached a row of houses on the other side of the empty compound, beginning to scatter as they sought out their targets. The houses were occupied; several had people sleeping on the roofs, common in the warm Syrian nights. The bots slowed precipitously as they neared the houses, stopping whenever any of the sleeping bodies moved.
“We’re way behind schedule,” said Turk. “At this rate we ain’t gonna make it. By a lot. You gotta speed us up.”
“The only thing I can do is remove the safety protocol,” said Johnny.
“What’ll that do?”
“They won’t stop and update their data.”
“Do it.”
“Yeah.”
No longer pausing or worrying about being seen, the koalas moved ahead on the last routes they had programmed. They still weren’t very fast, but at least they were no longer stopping every few seconds.
“I’m hearing a truck,” said Christian a few minutes later. “Coming out of the traffic circle in our direction.”
“Yeah, OK, I’m looking at it,” said Johnny, staring at the Hum’s video screen. “Couple of pickups.”
“Patrol?” asked Christian.
“Early for that,” said Turk.
Johnny watched the vehicles continue toward the traffic circle near the ruins where Christian was perched. The intersection was in an odd place, a remnant of an earlier traffic pattern now shunted by the decision two decades before to route the highway farther east.
“The trucks are going south,” said Johnny.
“Three guys in the back of the lead,” said Christian, watching through the nightscope of his rifle. “All awake.”
“Something new,” sneered Turk.
The lead truck drove south toward the center of town — and their target buildings. Johnny started to relax — then saw that instead of following, the second vehicle turned right, then took a quick left directly in the path of four koalas. Before he could order the bots to retreat, the truck was on them. It missed the two bots closest to the corner, but caught the other two midway across the road.
You gotta be kidding me! Murphy’s Law, right?
No, my dumb decision.
Stunned, Johnny stared at the overhead image for a few seconds before switching to manual control on K4, one of the koalas that had been hit. The bot responded with a diagnostic signal indicating that it had lost mobility. K6 gave him the same code.
All of the other bots were still active. Cursing himself, Johnny put them back into cautious mode. Each immediately stopped and reassessed their surroundings and path.
“We lost two bots,” he told Turk.
“Shit. What do we do?”
“We can have units pick them up on the way back,” said Johnny. “The question is how to get video bugs into the two spots they’re going to miss.”
There was only one backup, and it couldn’t carry all the bugs they had to place. And there wouldn’t be enough time to recharge one of the bots when it returned — that took an hour and a half, which would surely take them past dawn.
Johnny dialed into the secure com link to confer with Chelsea about possibly moving some of the bugs so they wouldn’t need to place as many. She suggested a couple of changes, but the most they could lose were two bugs.
While they were talking, one of the pickups circled back toward the koalas. This time, with their protocols back in place, the units scurried for safety.
Scurry being a relative term.
The vehicle zoomed past the buildings, continuing north toward the traffic circle. It drove north through a large residential area, then headed past a mostly abandoned slum of shacks and refugee housing, speeding to a pair of ruined buildings just short of the hills north of town, a good two and a half miles from the highway. Two figures got out, then disappeared in the rubble. The truck immediately backed out and started for Palmyra.
“Chelsea, you see that?” Johnny asked over the radio. “There’s a bunker there.”
“We’re working on it. We spotted it earlier.”
“That’s near the road we were taking out.”
“We’ll give you a new route.”
“Roger that.”
Johnny decided to send his lone reserve koala — K10—to the farthest video spot, then use the first returning unit to plant the last bug by swapping out the battery from the disabled unit. That was harder than he thought — after struggling with the connectors, he had to reboot and reprogram the unit by putting it into “base memory,” feed the GPS target coordinates one at a time, and then go through a series of diagnostic checks with Chelsea’s help. They’d just finished when she told him that Johansen wanted to talk.
“If you have a moment,” she added, joking.
The light note reminded him of home. It was jarring.
“That bunker in the desert,” said Johansen. “You think you can plant a video bug on the roof?”
“Maybe.”
“Good.”
The line snapped off before Johnny could discuss the logistics. There was a clear view of the road from the ruins; no way they could get in there. A hill to the west would give them cover, but even so, the last quarter mile was wide-open; anyone outside could easily see them, and have an even easier shot.
“We’ll be spotted easily,” said Turk. “Look — there’s a video camera. I’m guessing there are others. Can we scavenge the batteries from the dead units?”
“They’re pretty crushed,” said Johnny. “We can’t count on them.”
“No way we get across to the bunker without being seen. I’ll talk to Johansen.”
“No, I have an idea,” said Johnny. “We’ll hold back K3 with the battery from the malfunctioning bot. We’ll use that.”
“So how do we get the other bugs in place here?”
“I say we put it there ourselves.” He held up the screen. “Clear run if we go now.”
43
Ghadab was too energized to sleep after the operation at Hum, and so after dropping off most of his men, he returned to the bunker. Success would breed success — his people had tasted blood, and would plan and recruit with new vigor.
There were three possibilities of targets, all stupendous. He would cripple a city, do so much damage that the infidels would have to come, and Armageddon would begin.
Which city? Rome, the most impressive.
Boston kept intruding in his thoughts, egotistical, boasting Boston. The mayor, the policeman who claimed to have sent ten martyrs to their reward.
The rich man, Massina.
Ghadab paced up and down the bunker’s center hall. There were many things to do, things that only he should handle: travel arrangements for his scouts, weapons, money. But he couldn’t focus on any of them.
The woman slipped into his thoughts surreptitiously.