She laughed. “I think he told New York we had some really hot breaking news this time.”
“Like what, for Christ’s sake?”
Maguire shrugged. “Well, that sheriff’s car that’s been guarding the gate did pull out of here about half an hour ago.”
Ericson rolled his eyes. “Seriously? That’s his big scoop? A couple of Cowtown cops go off on a kolache and doughnut run?”
“‘I’m not saying it’s evidence of a black-ops conspiracy, Tom,’” Maguire said portentously, mimicking the earnest, soulful tones favored by their not-so-favorite piece of on-air talent. “But it could be a conspiracy—”
And then the darkness beyond the circle of TV lights erupted in fire and shattering noise. A fusillade of high-explosive bullets ripped into the crowd of reporters and cameramen — mowing them down in a flurry of blinding flashes. Parked production trucks started coming apart under the shattering impact of more 30mm cannon rounds.
Wide-eyed with horror, Ericson turned to grab Amy Maguire and drag her away… and abruptly found himself sprawled on his back several yards away from where he’d been standing. Flames boiled off the wreckage of their vehicle. More explosions rocked the ground, but he couldn’t hear anything. Everything seemed to be happening in an eerie, unearthly silence. He couldn’t feel his legs.
Through glazed eyes, he saw a tall, terrifying shape emerge from the drifting smoke. Its head, a smooth ovoid bristling with antennas, spun in his direction. He opened his mouth to scream as it raised a metal arm, aiming a massive weapon at him.
There was a final blinding flash. And the whole world went black.
Baryshev turned away from the American he’d just killed. It was time to move on. His audio and visual sensors weren’t picking up any more signs of life in the immediate area. He strode back through the tangle of burning vehicles, untouched by the searing heat that swept across his KVM’s outer armor.
Another robot waited for him across the road. “I don’t want to worry you, Lead, but it’s possible the enemy now knows we’re here,” he heard Imrekov say with dry amusement.
Baryshev laughed, gripped by the sense of fierce joy he increasingly experienced whenever given the chance to demonstrate his power. “Much good may it do them, Two.” He switched his attention to his computer. “Replay radio transmissions intercepted from the enemy compound since we opened fire here.”
No transmissions recorded, the computer reported.
He arched an eyebrow in surprise. None? Shouldn’t this sudden slaughter have sparked a flurry of radio chatter among the different elements of Farrell’s security detail? In fact, triggering such a burst of signals was one of the reasons he’d carried out this massacre in the first place. He’d anticipated learning more about the Americans’ plans and current deployment by analyzing their frantic emergency transmissions.
Imrekov confirmed that his computer hadn’t picked anything up either. “Are the Americans so deeply asleep? Or only deaf?”
Baryshev shook his head. “Neither, I suspect, Two. They are only exercising remarkable communication discipline.” Mentally, he shrugged. Let the Americans cower in silence. It wouldn’t save them in the end. He opened a channel to the rest of his assault force. “Specter Lead to all Specter units. Commence main attack. Repeat, commence attack.”
Joy-filled, guttural voices poured through his headset, acknowledging his order with animal-like glee.
Imrekov’s KVM sprinted toward the wrought-iron gate closing off a winding, paved drive that led deeper into Farrell’s ranch. Its hands gripped the bars, yanked hard, and with an earsplitting shriek of rending metal tore the whole gate loose from its hinges. Then, like an athlete throwing a discus, the robot spun through a half circle and hurled the crumpled shape away into the darkness. Its head swiveled toward Baryshev. “What do you think, Lead? Shall we just go strolling on up that road and say hello?”
The colonel shook his head with a slight smile. “Let’s not be quite that obvious, Two. Follow me!”
Together, they raced through the opening and ran across a large grazing pasture, angling northwest toward a tree-lined 140-meter-high hill that overlooked Governor Farrell’s ranch house from the east.
Forty
Inside the cockpit of his CID, Brad McLanahan listened to the quick, staccato beeps that indicated the Russian robot pilots were talking to each other. Like the Iron Wolf Squadron, their radio signals were encrypted and then compressed into millisecond-long bursts. Given enough time, his computer might be able to decompress and decipher those transmissions. But time was exactly what he did not have. Nor could he draw an exact bead on the locations of those radio calls. All he knew now was that two of the Russian combat machines were somewhere south of him, two were off to the west, and two more, those that had just butchered the journalists at the main gate, were to the east.
With active data links between his CID and those piloted by Nadia and Whack Macomber, triangulation based on relative signal strength and bearing would have swiftly yielded the positions of those enemy robots… accurate to within a few meters. But open data links would also reveal their own existence to the Russians. It was the typical wartime trade-off: Which was most important? Obtaining information about the enemy? Or denying the same kind of information to them?
In this case, given the disparity in numbers, Brad had opted to stay still and silent for now — relying on his camouflage systems to hide from visual and thermal detection, while his passive sensors gathered information about the Russians. His CID was fully prone about a thousand meters south of Governor Farrell’s ranch house. Lying flat against the ground meant that only half of his robot’s thermal tiles and electrochromatic plates needed to draw power, which significantly reduced the drain on his fuel cells and batteries.
According to their battle plan, Nadia’s robot was stationed north of the house, guarding against a possible threat from that direction. And Whack’s CID was in position to the west. Brad swore fiercely under his breath. He’d guessed wrong, foolishly assuming the Russians would be unwilling to blow their cover so soon by going after the unarmed TV crews, who would have seen any approach from the east. Innocents had died because of his mistake. And now the enemy had found a gap in their defenses.
Brad checked his display, quickly reevaluating the tactical situation. From his current position, he had a field of fire along part of the road coming from the gate. But if the Russians coming from the east chose to cross that wooded high ground to the north instead, it would be up to Nadia to stop them.
Colonel Wayne “Whack” Macomber hoped his old boss’s son wasn’t beating himself up too badly for missing a single piece of the enemy’s plan of attack. Sometimes the kid forgot that real war was almost always barely contained chaos, not some board game with set rules. As it was, the deployment Brad had selected at least gave them a fighting chance — which was more than a lot of soldiers down through history had ever had, from Leonidas’s three hundred Spartans at Thermopylae to Pickett’s Virginians stoically marching into the cross fire of more than a hundred Union artillery pieces at Gettysburg.
His CID was stationed near the edge of a thicket of cedars and oaks in a little valley west of Farrell’s ranch house. From here, he had an almost unobstructed view down a dirt track that ran all the way to the western perimeter of the ranch. Spotting enemies moving through the jumble of hills and ridges to his north and south would be a little trickier, but his thermal and audio sensors should still be able to get a read on them.