Now.
He grabbed his rail gun from its hiding place behind the tree and powered it up. Alerted by the sudden noise and electromagnetic signature, the Russian robot spun toward him with its 30mm cannon ready.
Too late, Brad thought coldly. He fired. In a burst of bright, white plasma, the rail-gun slug hit the enemy machine squarely and blew it apart.
Awkwardly, he pushed his CID to its feet and moved out into the clearing. Its right arm dangled uselessly. That made four of the Russians down and dead. But with Macomber’s machine wrecked and his own seriously damaged, the odds were still against them. He turned right, ready to head north toward Farrell’s ranch house to offer Nadia what help he could… and saw new explosions rip the darkness to shreds. The harsh rattle of gunfire echoed off the surrounding hills.
Brad felt the blood drain from his face. Desperately, he lurched into motion, already knowing he was too late.
Forty-Two
Colonel Ruslan Baryshev pushed his KVM up the steep slope, painfully clawing his way from tree to tree. Loose soil and chalky scree shifted under the robot’s considerable weight with every step. He grimaced. He and Imrekov were already several minutes behind schedule, slowed down by his decision to advance over this high ground overlooking Farrell’s compound instead of rushing straight up the paved drive from the main gate. His original plan had called for a near-simultaneous assault. Instead, his two-robot teams were engaging the enemy as separate units… and paying a much higher price than he’d anticipated.
In their first three attacks against the Americans, none of his KVMs had taken anything more than superficial damage. Now, in a matter of moments, a single Iron Wolf combat robot had apparently destroyed two of them. How was that possible?
Suddenly the beacon representing Specter Four, Novikov’s machine, vanished from his tactical display. At almost the same moment, his team commander, Zelin, snapped a terse report that he was in pursuit of yet another Iron Wolf war machine. Over their dedicated circuit, he heard Imrekov’s growled oath. “Chert voz’mi! Damn it! What have we walked into here, Lead?”
Baryshev bit down on the urge to unleash his own string of profanity. This was supposed to be a soft target, for God’s sake! Instead, half of his robots had been turned into burned-out wrecks… with their highly trained pilots blown to charred bits. For a split second, he considered ordering a retreat. But then, just as quickly, he discarded the notion as cowardice. This was not a game, and casualties were inevitable in war. Besides, neither he nor Imrekov had yet encountered any opposition. And once they reached the top of this hill, the whole ranch would be at their mercy — laid out before their guns and missiles like a lamb trussed for the slaughter. “Keep going, Two,” he ordered. “The American defenses cannot possibly be strong everywhere.”
“Very well, Specter Lead,” the other man said, after a noticeable delay.
Seconds later, Baryshev made it to the hilltop, joined almost immediately by Imrekov’s Specter Two. The two KVMs went forward through the trees and down the other side until they reached a vantage point on the military crest that gave them a clear line of sight across the whole valley. Fires glowed orange in the woods off to the south. Otherwise, everything seemed unnaturally silent.
From seven hundred meters away, Baryshev was puzzled to see that Farrell’s large, single-story ranch house was completely dark, without any lights showing anywhere. Nor were there any lights on at the stable, equipment shed, or garage. The sedans and SUVs shown in Aristov’s surveillance photos were still parked next to the house. Only the horse paddock was empty.
Movement in the open pastures to the north caught Baryshev’s attention. Instantly alert, he swiveled that way, bringing his weapons to bear. Horses only, his computer reported, analyzing the fast-moving thermal signatures it detected. No human riders.
Ah, he thought, the sounds of battle must have spooked those animals. Well, there was no sense in wasting his limited ammunition on them. He was here to kill two-legged beasts.
“Lead, I’m not picking up any IR signatures in the house or in any of the other buildings!” Imrekov reported, sounding perplexed.
Baryshev turned his own thermal sensors to the task. His readings, or rather, the lack of them, confirmed the other man’s findings. He wasn’t able to pick up any human-sized heat sources inside the ranch house or its outbuildings. His mouth tightened. Where were the men they’d come to assassinate — Farrell, Martindale, and McLanahan?
He considered the house. Those stone walls were thick. When this battle began, the three Americans must have retreated to a safe room or cellar deep in the interior. Certainly there were no signs of them on the grounds or even on the wooded slopes rising west of the compound. Anyway, if they had bolted for safety in that direction, Captain Aristov would have spotted them and reported in.
CCRRACK!
Another huge flash lit the woods to the south. Major Zelin’s KVM went off-line immediately.
For a long, frozen moment, Baryshev stared at his readouts in shock. Two-thirds of his force gone? Just like that? In a few minutes of battle? For the first time in a long while, he felt the ice-cold sensation of fear crawling up his spine. He and the other KVM pilots had reveled in their strength, confident of the near invulnerability given them by these powerful war machines. But now it was only too clear that this sense of godlike invincibility had been nothing more than a dangerous illusion. They could be killed. In fact, they were being killed — struck down one after another by enemies who seemed like ghosts, able to move unseen in the shadows.
“Lead? What do we do?” Imrekov’s tense voice broke through his sense of growing terror. “Should we withdraw?”
“No!” Baryshev snarled, shoving his fears aside with an act of will. Retreating now, when they had their target in sight, would be an act of supreme idiocy… as well as unforgivable cowardice. “We’re not running, Oleg! We’re going to finish this now!”
He yanked one of his three Spike fire-and-forget antitank missiles from a weapons pack. Imrekov did the same. Cued by their computers, they fired simultaneously.
Both missiles streaked downslope, punched through the ranch house’s metal rooftop, and exploded inside. Windows shattered, blown out by the twin blasts. Thousands of tiny glass shards flew outward, twinkling eerily in the flickering light cast by orange-and-red fireballs soaring through the gaping holes torn in the roof.
They fired again. Two more explosions rocked the house. Fires glowed through the empty windows. One of the outer stone walls sagged inward. Imrekov switched to his 30mm autocannon and started shooting through the mangled rooftop, using incendiary rounds to set more fires among explosion-shattered bookcases and furniture. The colonel held his third missile ready. If Farrell and the others were still alive in what was fast becoming a roaring inferno, they might try to make a last-minute dash for one of the vehicles parked outside.
And then a burst of sun-bright white light flared on the wooded hill facing them. Oleg Imrekov’s KVM disintegrated — hit by a metal projectile moving at supersonic speed. Jagged pieces of man and machine sprayed across the slope.
Horrified, Baryshev saw his computer highlight a new target several hundred meters away. He recognized the unmistakable outline of an Iron Wolf CID standing among the trees. That’s impossible, he thought. One moment, the enemy robot wasn’t there… and the next moment, there the damned thing was. Without wasting time on further thought, he fired his antitank missile. It slashed across the valley, visibly guiding on the other war machine.