Target destroyed, Major Nadia Rozek’s CID computer reported calmly. She laughed in delight — knowing she’d just made sure there was one less Russian bastard to make trouble in the world. She raised her rail gun again, seeking out the second enemy robot.
Her warning system went off with a shrill BEEP-BEEP-BEEP. Launch detection. Threat axis one o’clock. Missile has IR lock. She saw a tiny bright dot streaking straight at her, growing bigger with astounding speed. She didn’t have time to reactivate her thermal camouflage. “Damn,” Nadia said softly. In the last possible instant, she hurled herself to the side — desperately crossing both of the CID’s metal arms in front of its torso.
WHAAMM. WHAAMM.
She felt herself smashed backward in a dazzling flash of orange and red light. And then everything went black.
“Got you!” Baryshev crowed, seeing the bright orange burst engulf the Iron Wolf CID. He saw pieces fly off as it flew backward, crashed into a stand of trees, and collapsed in a heap. He turned away, thoroughly satisfied. No robot could have survived the rapid-fire detonations of his missile’s tandem warhead — a smaller shaped charge to strip away any explosive reactive armor and a primary charge designed to penetrate the underlying armor of a modern heavy tank.
His mood darkened again at the sight of the smoldering wreckage of Imrekov’s KVM. This victory had come at too high a cost. Filled with wrath, he strode downslope toward Farrell’s gutted ranch house. It was time to make sure the men his leaders wanted him to kill were truly dead.
Baryshev switched back to his own autocannon on the move. He came out onto level ground and closed in on the burning building. When he got to within fifty meters, he started circling it — methodically probing the ruins with his visual sensors, microphones, and chemical sniffers set at maximum sensitivity. He found nothing.
The Russian scowled. There should be some indication of dead bodies in there, even if it was only a glimpse of a mangled arm or leg half buried in the rubble or even just the smell of burning flesh. The flames roared higher, fed by cooler night air being drawn into the conflagration.
Unidentified movement. Right rear quadrant, the KVM’s computer said. Range two hundred and twenty meters.
Startled, Baryshev whirled around… and found himself staring at the empty horse corral. Dust kicked low across the bare earth, blown by the wind sweeping in toward the burning house at his back. “Replay your detection footage,” he ordered.
Obediently, the computer cycled the brief snippet of video imagery captured by its night-vision cameras across his display. Watching closely, Baryshev saw a patch of ground ripple in the breeze… almost as though it were cloth instead of solid earth. An eyebrow rose in surmise. Could that be—?
He headed toward the paddock.
Hugging the dirt with Martindale and Farrell in a shallow scrape near the middle of the paddock, Patrick McLanahan saw the IR camouflage netting stretched over their heads flutter slightly in the wind. Immediately he dialed up the sensitivity of the audio pickups built into his life-support helmet. Well, damn, he thought bitterly, hearing the tempo of the Russian robot’s footsteps change and grow louder. That’s torn it. So much for Plan A — which had called for the three of them to hide out here while Brad and the rest of his Iron Wolf team fought it out with Gryzlov’s forces. Too bad there really wasn’t a Plan B.
He glanced at Martindale and Farrell, seeing their eyes gleaming in the darkness. He put his hand on their shoulders, one after the other, pressing down in a peremptory command to stay down, no matter what happened. Tightly, they nodded.
Time’s up, Muck, Patrick thought, deliberately using the nickname his friends had given him years ago… many of whom were long dead, killed in combat, in air crashes, or by terrorists. It seemed appropriate, somehow, considering he’d probably be seeing them soon. Besides, if he was going to die, he’d much rather meet his end out under the open sky than cowering in a covered ditch.
Quickly, not giving himself time to crap out, he wriggled out from under the camouflage netting. Gritting his teeth, he forced himself upright, ignoring the way the servos in his supporting exoskeleton protested the sudden movement. Then, moving awkwardly, he jog-trotted away across the dusty paddock.
Colonel Ruslan Baryshev saw the strange figure scramble out from under the camouflage net and turn to run. “Identify that man,” he snapped.
Profile matches most recent photograph of Lieutenant General Patrick McLanahan, his KVM’s computer replied. Target priority per Moscow’s most recent orders is Alpha-One.
Baryshev nodded. Given President Gryzlov’s personal desire for revenge against McLanahan — the man whose bombs had killed Gryzlov’s father and led directly to his mother’s suicide — that was no surprise. It was certainly a desire he shared. As an officer in Russia’s air force, he’d seen hundreds of friends and comrades killed by the American and the forces he’d commanded. He raised his autocannon. His finger started to tighten on the trigger… and then it eased off. Why give McLanahan so easy a death? After all, what was it that Gryzlov had said to Kurakin, a message passed on verbatim by the general when he’d ordered this attack? Oh, yes. “I don’t want that murdering piece of shit crippled! I want him torn to fucking pieces!”
His lips twisted in a savage grin. Well… why not follow those orders to the letter? Turning away from the camouflaged shelter he’d spotted, he stalked slowly after the fleeing American, gliding along like a cat toying with a terrified mouse.
Warning. Warning. Multiple systems failures. Severe damage. Weapons off-line. Sensors at ten percent efficiency. Power supplies at critical level. Warning. Warning. Immediate pilot action required.
Groggily, Nadia Rozek swam back to consciousness, pulling herself away from what had seemed a dark, lightless abyss filled with terrifying creatures. Her CID computer’s recitation of its litany of woes continued. The crackling static in her ears and the weirdly shaped blotches obscuring some of the virtual readouts it was sending to her suggested the neural link was damaged.
She shook her head, trying to wake up faster, and winced as a sharp pain stabbed at her. Blood dripped from a gash on her forehead. The bitter odor of burned-out electronics and circuitry hung heavily in the stagnant air. She grimaced. Evidently, her life-support system was dead, too.
Her CID’s left arm was gone — blown off at the socket. The robot’s right arm was nothing more than a stump. She had a vague memory of desperately throwing them up in front of her to shield the section of torso that contained her cockpit. Blearily, she realized they must have taken the brunt of that antitank missile’s blast.
Nadia strained to get the CID back on its feet. Using the damaged haptic interface made her feel as though she were slogging through hip-deep quicksand… with fifty-pound weights fastened to her ankles. Leg servos and actuators screeched shrilly, audibly on the edge of total failure. She gritted her teeth, ignoring both the painful, head-splitting noises and the cascade of yellow and red caution and warning lights that suddenly blossomed on her last working equipment display.