She staggered upright… and gasped out loud at what she saw through her only functioning camera: General McLanahan, Brad’s much-loved father, stumbling away across a dusty field, with a sleek, deadly-looking Russian war machine in pursuit.
“No,” Nadia said brokenly, imagining the sorrow the man she loved with all her soul would feel on learning of his father’s gruesome death at the hands of their enemies. The news would pierce Brad’s heart like a sharpened sword. She stiffened. “No. I will not allow it!”
Doggedly, she lurched down the hill, overriding every one of the dying Iron Wolf CID’s fail-safes and damage protocols to move faster.
Laughing now, Baryshev strode on after the crippled American. That odd metallic carapace the other man wore was a pale imitation of the powered exoskeleton at the core of his own KVM. Perhaps he should begin by forcibly peeling those bits of metal away from the writhing, screaming coward, he mused… before moving on to wrench off McLanahan’s physical arms and legs.
Through his link, the computer tried to attract his attention. Movement al—
With an impatient gesture, Baryshev silenced the alarm. This was a moment to savor… without pointless distractions. The robot’s sensors must have spotted the other two Americans — Farrell and Martindale — making their own futile dash for safety while he chased after this one. Let them run, he thought coldly. They couldn’t get far. Once he’d finished mutilating McLanahan’s corpse, they would become his next quarry.
And then something crashed hard into his KVM from the side, knocking him off balance. Despite his safety harness, the sudden impact was forceful enough to slam his head up against one of the backup instrument panels. His robot stumbled, falling to its knees.
Enraged by this intrusion on his private hunt, Baryshev spat out blood from the lip he’d just bitten. “Sukin syn! Son of a bitch.” His KVM got back up and spun toward this new attacker.
His eyes widened in surprise as he recognized the Iron Wolf machine he thought he’d killed with his antitank missile. The enemy war robot was a battered wreck, with both arms gone and most of the sensor panels mounted on its weird, hexagonal head reduced to slag and broken bits of circuitry. But the damned thing was still moving somehow… deliberately putting itself between him and McLanahan.
Not for long, Baryshev thought viciously. He fired his autocannon — perforating the Iron Wolf CID as it stumbled toward him again. Sparks and smoke danced around the punctures his rounds tore through its already weakened armor. With a harsh laugh, he stepped aside from the other machine’s lunge and watched it crumple to the ground.
Triumphantly, he looked back to find McLanahan. The American had stopped running away. Instead, he was rushing toward the downed robot with a look of horror on his lined face.
Grinning, Baryshev raised his autocannon again, taking careful aim.
Patrick McLanahan dropped to his knees beside Nadia’s CID. Through his partial neural link, he made contact with the machine’s computer. It was failing fast, shutting down more and more core memory and command functions in a futile effort to stay online for its pilot. He had only had time to order it to open the emergency hatch before it went dead.
The hatch cycled. Smoke and the harsh, coppery smell of blood eddied out through the opening.
“Trying to hide, little man?” he heard a cold, synthesized voice say in accented English. “Gennadiy Gryzlov sends his regards.”
With a wry smile, Patrick looked up, right into the muzzle of the Russian war robot’s 30mm cannon. “Does he? Well, you tell that asshole I’ll see him in hell,” he said coolly. At a faint glimpse of movement far off in the darkness, well beyond Farrell’s blazing ranch house, he smiled more genuinely. “But you know, I have a feeling you’ll get there first.”
“Brave words for a—”
CCRRACK!
The Russian combat robot blew apart in a ball of fire — hit squarely in the back by a rail-gun shot that went through and through at Mach 5. Its head and broken limbs spiraled away into the air… and came crashing down in different places scattered across the dusty corral.
Painfully, Patrick pushed himself back up onto his hands and knees from where he’d been thrown by the blast. He crawled back over to Nadia Rozek’s dead Cybernetic Infantry Device as fast as he could. His lips moved silently. Prayer wasn’t usually his thing, but right now he’d take any help on offer. Especially when the alternative was watching his son’s heart shatter into a thousand pieces.
Forty-Three
Brad McLanahan skidded to a stop. He stared down at Nadia’s mangled CID, feeling a sudden sense of dread so intense that it drowned every other emotion, even his relief at seeing his father alive and the last Russian war robot scattered in pieces.
Unable to open data link to Wolf Two, his CID computer said unhelpfully. Damage analysis indicates complete processing unit failure, along with—
Skip it, Brad ordered harshly, not wanting to hear any more.
Command not understood, the computer replied.
I mean, cancel Wolf Two damage analysis report, Brad said tiredly, kicking himself for forgetting that English-language idioms were not the system’s strong suit. He noticed Martindale and Farrell hurrying up to them across the corral.
Slowly, his father backed out of the downed CID’s emergency hatch, carefully dragging a blood-soaked Nadia Rozek with him. Despite the open gash on her forehead, her face was still beautiful, but it was ashen, almost chalk white. Her long, slender legs were—
Hurriedly, Brad averted his gaze from the mess he’d just seen. Oh, Christ, he thought, in mingled horror and supplication. Those had been shards of bone glistening white in the middle of all that gore. His stomach heaved abruptly, and he fought against the urge to vomit — swallowing hard against the sour taste of bile. He turned to his father. “Is she—?” he choked up, unable to go on.
“Nadia’s still alive, son,” his father said quietly, “But she’s badly wounded. I can’t promise you she’ll make it.” He looked up and saw the two other men. “Governor,” he told Farrell, “we need a life flight here, ASAP.”
Farrell nodded sharply. He pulled out his smartphone. “I’m on it, General.” He tapped in the emergency number and started talking to the dispatcher — rapping out terse instructions with calm assurance. When he was finished, he glanced back at them. “Fort Sam Houston down in San Antonio’s got the nearest decent trauma center. Their ambulance helicopter will be here in about twenty minutes.”
Brad saw his father frown. “We need to stabilize Major Rozek before then. And I can’t do that with my bare hands.”
Farrell nodded again. He swung around to the security guards who were rushing toward them from the other hurriedly camouflaged shelters they’d scattered across the ranch compound. “Jimmy!” he shouted, pointing at one. “Grab that emergency medical kit from the stable! And then get your ass back here, muy pronto!”
“Yes, sir!” the guard yelled back over his shoulder, already sprinting off.
Farrell shoved his hands in his pockets and kicked absently at the dry soil of the corral. “I did have another medical kit,” he said reflectively. “But that was in the master bathroom over there.” He jerked a thumb at the brightly burning remains of his ranch house. “Somehow, I don’t figure it’s still in one piece.”