Annenkov spun back to stare at the monitor he was pointing at. It showed a huge, manlike shape bristling with weapons charging out of the darkness beyond the perimeter fence. For a fraction of a second, he froze, caught completely off guard. Then trained instincts kicked in and he recovered. “No!” he snapped. “Sound the alarm! And transmit those images to Moscow! Tell them we’re under attack by the Iron Wolves!”
Brad McLanahan ran straight toward the airport, speeding up fast. Through his CID’s audio pickups, he could hear klaxons blaring across the lit compound. More indicators blinked across his tactical display as his computer intercepted frantic radio calls from the Spetsnaz guards on duty. A pulsing dot appeared on the portable trailer the Russians were using for flight ops. Secure satellite transmission detected, the CID reported.
Someone in there has good reflexes, he noted approvingly. Without slowing down, he smashed straight through the chain-link fence. Pieces of torn and twisted metal flew away across the concrete apron.
Threat icons flashed into Brad’s consciousness. Two flared bright red, signaling an immediate high-priority danger. There, off in the darkness, the two Spetsnaz guards armed with antitank rockets were desperately trying to draw a bead on his quick-moving robot. A solid hit from one of those high-explosive warheads would tear right through his composite armor. Not tonight, guys, he thought coolly. He swiveled on the run and opened fire on them first with his 40mm grenade launcher.
Two dazzling flashes lit the night. He caught a brief glimpse of shrapnel-torn bodies tumbling to the ground.
Several pistol and 7.62mm rifle rounds slammed into his side and ricocheted off. Minor damage to torso camouflage plates and thermal tiles, the CID told him. He whirled toward the Russian soldiers who were shooting at him. Three, including the two uniformed gate guards, were out in the open. A fourth had taken cover behind a cargo loader.
Brad triggered a short burst from his autocannon. The guards charging toward him simply blew apart, hit in the center of mass by 25mm high-explosive rounds. His next burst tore across the cargo loader — ripping through thin-skinned cruise missiles. Burning kerosene fuel sprayed across the Spetsnaz trooper hiding behind them and set him alight.
He moved on, heading across the apron toward the two metal buildings. The biggest was the brightly lit weapons storage shed. Men wearing T-shirts and shorts scrambled out of the other prefab structure, which seemed to be the living quarters for the Russians based here. Several of them were armed. They saw him coming and started shooting.
Bad decision, Brad thought. And quick as his thought, he fired back. Amid screams, dead and dying Russians toppled in all directions.
Now it was time to wreck those buildings. He switched back to using his grenade launcher. But against targets of that size, he needed something with a much bigger bang than his regular 40mm HE rounds. Load thermobaric grenades, he ordered his CID. They should do the trick. Each contained two small explosive charges and a container of flammable, highly toxic fuel. When the first charge detonated, it punctured the container, spraying a mist of dispersed fuel. And then, when the second charge exploded a fraction of second later, it ignited the drifting fuel cloud.
Icons flashed across Brad’s display as the computer selected aim points calculated to do the maximum possible damage. One after another, he pumped three grenades into each building.
Huge explosions lit them up from the inside. The temperature at each detonation point soared instantly to more than four thousand degrees Fahrenheit — briefly igniting the surrounding air. Hit by powerful shock waves, metal walls buckled. Both buildings collapsed inward in a smoldering tangle of broken steel frames and joists and warped and burning aluminum siding and roof panels. Even at a safe distance, his sensors recorded a stunning wave of heat wash across the CID’s armor. Anyone still inside the buildings would have either been incinerated by the blast, suffocated by the follow-on shock waves, or crushed by falling debris.
“Oh, subtle, kid,” Macomber radioed. “Real subtle. I bet people could hear those explosions twenty miles from here.”
“Wait… you mean I was supposed to do this quiet-like?” Brad said, taking refuge in gallows humor. He paused. “Oops. My bad. Sorry about that, Wolf Three.” Striding away from the burning buildings, he slid the grenade launcher back into one of his weapons packs.
He moved back across the airport grounds. A pulsing dot centered on the flight operations trailer showed that someone inside was still in touch with Moscow via satellite. “Wolf Two, any luck hacking into that transmission?”
“Wait one,” Nadia replied tersely, sounding intensely absorbed in her task. CIDs had enormous computing power and electronic warfare capabilities. The higher-grade encryption used for secure e-mails was beyond the reach of anything less powerful than the supercomputers used by America’s NSA and the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters at Cheltenham. But the time imperatives of live, two-way voice and picture communication denied the application of those more rigorous methods. So, in theory, she should be able to break past the digital encryption protecting this Russian satellite phone transmission. Now it was time to find if real-world practice matched academic theory.
Brad closed in on the Boeing 737-200F cargo jet still parked out on the apron. Its forward door was just sliding shut. Puffs of exhaust from the aircraft’s two engines indicated that the pilot was trying for an emergency start. Which made him brave, Brad guessed, but very low on common sense.
He checked the ammunition remaining for his autocannon. He still had plenty of rounds left. Fire discipline was the key to fighting effectively inside one of the Iron Wolf combat robots. Caught up in the false sensation of superhuman power and invulnerability that came with piloting one of the machines, it was all too easy to get carried away and fire wildly — expending rounds unnecessarily. Hundreds of hours of simulator practice and real-world experience, coupled with rigorous mental control, were required to resist this temptation.
Load 1:1 mix of armor-piercing and incendiary ammunition, he ordered.
Machinery whirred and clicked, detaching the autocannon’s current belt of HE ammo and replacing it with a new one configured to his specifications. Weapon ready, the CID reported.
With one smooth, economical motion Brad raised the 25mm autocannon and sighted toward the cargo jet. C’mon, he mentally urged its crew, bail out of that crate. There was no way the converted 737 could possibly escape. He waited long enough for anyone watching to know he was deliberately holding his fire. “Cut your engines and come out!” he ordered. The CID’s translation software turned his spoken words into Russian.
More seconds ticked by without any visible response.
“This ain’t a damned tea party, Brad,” Macomber growled over the radio. “And stupidity carries its own price tag. So nail that plane!”
“Copy that, Wolf Three,” he said, with a sigh. He pulled the autocannon through an arc, squeezing the trigger again and again and again.
WHANG. WHANG. WHANG. WHANG.
More than a dozen 25mm rounds hit the enemy aircraft — shredding it from nose to tail. Its cockpit windows exploded, blown inward. Shards of torn fuselage spun into the air. Rivulets of flame from burning fuel and hydraulic fluid rippled across the 737’s punctured skin. Oily black smoke billowed away from the wrecked cargo jet, thickening as the fires his incendiary rounds had set took hold.