The soldier pivoted, the rifle locking on to him.
He grabbed Nina and dived — as the AK spat fire.
Shattered plaster exploded from the wall behind them as bullets ripped into it. Eddie rolled, snapping up his gun and firing at the dummy. The first two shots hit its body — but punched straight through the hollow plastic. He immediately switched targets, aiming instead for the rifle. Metal cracked against metal, the AK clattering to the ground with one of the fake figure’s hands still clenching the grip.
Eddie fixed his gun upon another dummy under a floodlight, but it was facing away from them, unmoving. ‘You all right?’ he asked Nina.
‘Yeah, just a minor heart attack,’ she replied. ‘Jeez!’
A malevolent chuckle sounded over hidden loudspeakers, Brice’s voice rolling around the frigid test area. ‘Oh, sorry. Did I forget to mention that this is a live-fire scenario?’ he said as the couple scuttled to the cover of a pallet of barrels. ‘All the guards have motion sensors and will fire at anything that triggers them. Some of them move along pre-set paths — and others I can control directly. Like… this one.’
The soldier that had been looking away jerked into motion, swinging around—
Nina and Eddie hurled themselves in opposite directions as another AK-74 blazed to life, the empty barrels jolting under the barrage. The Yorkshireman returned fire, his first two shots again uselessly hitting the dummy — but the third knocked the rifle from the animatronic dummy’s hands.
‘Poor showing, Chase,’ the unseen Brice said mockingly. ‘All you ever had going for you was your aim, and now you’re losing even that. And you really should be careful where you shoot. Your daughter could be behind any one of these walls.’
‘So could you,’ said Eddie. He looked for more dummies nearby, seeing none, then hurried to the first he had shot. Its motion sensors were still active, a mechanism clicking inside the stump of its arm as it tried to fire a weapon that was no longer there. He pocketed Alderley’s pistol, then picked up the fallen Kalashnikov and made a rapid magazine check. Just under half its thirty rounds remained. He pulled the plastic hand from the grip. ‘Fuck off, Thing,’ he said, tossing it away.
Nina scurried to the truck and hunched against its front wheel. The cold was beginning to bite through her light clothing. ‘Eddie, we’ve got to find Macy before she freezes!’
‘Top of my to-do list!’ he replied. ‘Macy!’
He strained to listen over the fans. Nothing — but Nina, her hearing less damaged by years of close exposure to explosions and gunfire, caught a faint cry. ‘Eddie, I can hear her!’
‘Where?’
‘That way.’ She pointed towards the centre of the huge room.
The tower stood above everything else, its roof only feet below the overhanging scrims. The top floor was illuminated. ‘She’s in there,’ Eddie realised.
‘Great, it’s probably surrounded by those dummies!’
He went to the truck’s rear and surveyed the scene beyond. Nina was right; an imitation soldier stood guard at the building’s door.
The ground floor extended beyond the tower’s base, however. ‘There might be another way in round the back,’ he said. ‘Go back the way we came and we’ll run around the edge of the room. Careful, though. I wouldn’t put it past that twat to have stuck a couple of Russkiebots around a corner to catch us out.’
‘You’re getting colder, Chase,’ boomed Brice as the couple retraced their steps. ‘And so’s your daughter.’
‘We’re coming, Macy!’ Nina shouted. ‘Just hold on, lovely! We’re coming!’
They ran through the artificial blizzard around the chamber’s perimeter. Eddie checked each gap between the buildings before passing. He spotted a couple of dummies, but all were near the middle of the ersatz base. ‘Okay,’ he finally said, ‘the other side of the tower should be down here. We’ll see if there’s another door—’
He halted abruptly just short of the corner as he saw a shadow on the snow, cast by one of the floodlights. ‘He did put another guard here,’ he muttered. ‘He knew I’d come this way.’
‘But does he know that you know that he knew?’ Nina asked. ‘Because if he did, he might have put another one where he expects you to go instead!’
Eddie shook his head. ‘Brice thinks I’m an idiot. All the same…’ There was a door into the building, but rather than go to it, he instead peered through a nearby window, then used his rifle butt to smash the glass. ‘Clear inside,’ he reported, sliding through. ‘Wait here till I shout.’
Nina crouched outside as he picked his way through the dark room to an exit. He opened the door a crack. No guards in sight — but he was still on full alert. Brice was somewhere nearby, and he was sure he wouldn’t be satisfied with killing him by remote control.
But nothing moved except snowflakes. He glanced at the ground. No footprints. No breath steaming in doorways or windows either. He readied himself, then rushed out and whipped around the corner.
There was indeed one of the animatronic soldiers beside the building, gun pointing towards the perimeter. He ran up behind it, expecting it to turn — but it remained still as he tackled it. The gun went off, motion sensors triggered by the fall. A few rounds blew holes in the chamber’s outer wall, splinters bursting from the projection of the wilderness, then the firing stopped as the figure’s arms broke off at their shoulders.
Eddie rolled off the downed dummy and brought up his own gun in case Brice had prepared an ambush, but the spy still did not make a personal appearance. ‘Nina, it’s clear.’
His wife jogged to him. ‘Funny, I was expecting him to make some dumb-ass quip.’
‘I’m not missing them,’ he said as he led the way to the central building. ‘Huh. Now I realise why people get so pissed off when I make ’em.’
‘Don’t worry. You’re way better at the God-awful puns than he is.’
They reached the door. ‘Okay,’ said Eddie, deadly serious once more, ‘if he’s set up a trap, it’ll be here. Let me check first.’ He carefully opened the door. The room beyond was a mock-up of a communications centre, lights glowing on various Soviet-styled consoles. They provided enough illumination to reveal a doorway into the tower’s base.
No guards. He edged inside and warily crossed to the opening. A flight of stairs beyond led upwards. ‘Macy?’
‘Daddy!’ The fearful cry came from above. ‘Daddy, help! Where are you?’
‘I’m here, love, I’m here!’ he called back, fighting against every instinct to charge up the stairs. ‘I’m coming — but I need you to tell me if there’s anyone else there.’
‘Is the bad man with you?’ Nina added as she followed him.
‘No, he went! There are only the big doll-men here. Mommy, I’m scared — and I’m cold, I’m really cold!’
‘We’re almost there, honey!’ she said, gripping Eddie’s arm in fear and frustration. ‘These doll-men, where are they?’
‘They’re all around me, four of them! He said if I stayed in the middle of them, I’d be okay, but I’m so cold. I want to go home…’ She started crying.
‘We’ll be there as soon as we can! Just hold on and don’t move, okay?’
‘She’s surrounded,’ Eddie growled. ‘They’ll be covering the top of the stairs.’
‘So how are we going to get to her?’
‘If Brice is controlling ’em he’ll only shoot at us, but if they’re on motion sensors they’ll fire at anything moving. If I can stay out of sight on the stairs and hold something up to make ’em use all their ammo…’ He moved through the doorway—
Something tugged at his ankle.
The faint ping of a spring being released as the tripwire tugged out a hand grenade’s pin was followed by a clatter of metal — the safety lever popping free to trigger its fuse…