Macomber took a deep breath, suddenly seeing a vision of Charlie Turlock’s bright-eyed face floating before his eyes. She was laughing. Impatiently, he shook the vision away. “Sorry,” he muttered. “I really don’t need any bad omens right now.” Through his neural link with the CID, he ordered, Initiate self-destruct sequence. Authorization Macomber One-Alpha.
Self-destruct authorization confirmed, the computer replied. Thirty. Twenty-nine. Twenty-eight…
Without waiting any longer, Macomber pushed his damaged machine upright. He was less than thirty meters from the oncoming Russian combat robot — which stopped dead in its tracks the moment his CID rose above the shallow limestone ledge. It started to raise its weapon.
“Boo, motherfucker!” Macomber snarled. He lunged uphill, covering the intervening distance in a few awkward, shambling strides. The CID’s servos and actuators shrieked in protest. More sections of his system schematics winked out as his computer rerouted most of the remaining power reserves just to keep moving.
Twenty-five. Twenty-four… the computer said, continuing its dispassionate countdown.
The Russian robot opened fire again — scoring more hits on his torso armor. Through his neural interface, Macomber felt the impacts like red-hot daggers plunging deep into his vitals. Groaning aloud, he clenched his jaw hard against the pain.
And then he crashed headlong into the enemy machine. His CID’s large, articulated metal fingers curled around the other robot’s arms and gripped tight. It stood frozen for a millisecond and then started thrashing around, trying to free itself.
Twenty. Nineteen. Eighteen…
Time to go, Macomber decided. He squirmed out of the haptic interface and wriggled around to the hatch at the bottom of the cockpit. Fingers crossed, he thought coldly, remembering how Charlie had died when her hatch jammed in a similar situation. He punched the emergency release.
With a grating sound, the hatch slid open.
He squeezed through the narrow opening and dropped out onto the ground. He hit with a thud that rattled his teeth and jarred his spine. Without hesitating, he rolled away from the entangled machines, scrambled to his feet, and ran full tilt across the slope — determined to put as much distance between himself and them as he possibly could.
Inside his head, his mind kept up a running count. Eight. Seven. Six…
Behind him, the Russian combat robot tore one arm free from the Iron Wolf CID’s grip and started working to pry the other loose.
Three. Two… Macomber dove for cover behind a boulder and curled up, covering his head with his hands.
With a deafening roar, his Cybernetic Infantry Device exploded. A massive ball of fire ballooned skyward, turning night into day for a split second. A powerful shock wave rippled outward from the center of the blast — toppling saplings and ripping branches off larger trees. The blast wave curled around the boulder, scooped Macomber off the ground, and tossed him against the trunk of a nearby oak tree with enough force to knock him unconscious.
When the terrible noise and light faded, all that was left of the two entangled war machines were burning fragments of metal and half-melted wiring scattered far and wide across the ravaged hillside.
Forty-One
Specter Three’s pilot, Major Viktor Zelin, saw the green blip representing Dmitry Veselovsky’s KVM wink out. He scowled. First, Bragin had bought it — blown to hell by one of those damned American rail guns. And now they’d lost a second combat robot, Veselovsky’s Specter Five. How was that possible? The other man had just reported that he was closing in to kill the crippled Iron Wolf machine… when suddenly the whole sky over there lit up like the grand finale of a Moscow Victory Day fireworks display. Did the Americans have concealed heavy-weapons units — antitank missile teams, armored vehicles, and artillery — deployed around the ranch after all? Despite what all the satellite photos showed and what that little weasel Aristov had reported seeing with his own eyes?
“Three, this is Four,” he heard Captain Sergei Novikov say over their dedicated secure circuit. “You know, this suddenly looks a lot like a trap.”
Zelin nodded. “So it does, Sergei.” He slowed his pace, seeing Novikov’s robot do the same on his display. Up to now, their two KVMs had been advancing at their best possible speed given the rugged terrain, making their way through patches of trees and brush, across open pastureland, and up and over rocky, forested heights. Currently, they were moving north along a wooded valley that ran straight toward the center of the ranch, approximately two kilometers away. Visibility along the valley floor, even with their thermal sensors, wasn’t good — limited in most places to much less than a hundred meters. If the Americans really did have antiarmor weapons in place, hidden under anti-IR camouflage netting, say, rushing along practically blind was just asking to be ambushed.
“Maybe we should swing left, up onto those hills,” Novikov suggested. The new axis of advance he proposed appeared on Zelin’s display. It would take them out onto the slopes of a pair of low, rocky elevations that rose fifty meters or so above the valley. Someone had logged those hills in the past, clearing away everything but a few scraggly oaks and scattered tufts of thick brush and brambles. “At least that would get us out of these trees. We’d be able to see. And we’d have much better fields of fire.”
“True, Specter Four,” Zelin said tersely. “But the same would apply to any concealed American units with a line of sight on those slopes. We’d be missile or tank cannon fodder out there. So we’ll stick to cover for now.”
“Affirmative, Three.”
Colonel Baryshev’s irritated voice broke into their conversation. “Specter Lead to Specter Three. What’s the hold-up? Why are you and Four dicking around all of sudden?”
Zelin checked the two blips representing Baryshev and Imrekov on his map. They were still making their way uphill through the dense growth on a ridge east of the ranch house. Sourly, he noticed they weren’t advancing much faster than he and Novikov were… and that they were even farther from the planned objective. He thought about pointing that fact out to his superior and then decided it was pointless. The colonel had been growing more domineering and less willing to listen to alternate views over the past several days. “You may have missed it, Colonel… but we’ve just taken thirty-three percent casualties, thanks to stronger-than-expected enemy resistance,” he said coolly. “And since Specter Four and I would rather kill the enemy than die stupidly for the Motherland, we’re playing this our way from here on. Specter Three, out.”
“That’s insubordination, Zelin!” Baryshev spluttered, sounding furious — even in a compressed and encrypted transmission. “Get your damned KVMs moving faster, or—”
“Block further signals from Specter Lead,” Zelin ordered his computer. “Unless they carry a tactical emergency tag verified by his own robot’s software.”
Instructions understood, his KVM replied.
Zelin nodded, satisfied. That should prevent Baryshev from bitching at him for no good reason while still allowing two-way communication in a genuine crisis. He supposed the colonel would scream about it to Kurakin later, but at the moment, they were a long way from Moscow. He smiled wryly. Besides, they were nominally “mercenaries” now, right? They weren’t supposed to be soldiers locked into a regular chain of command, were they? And anyway, if he and Novikov actually succeeded in killing Farrell, one of America’s two major presidential candidates, and then escaping to Mexico without getting caught, no one back home would care much about any minor breaches of discipline.