Abraham directed the wounded Judas to move through first from the right flank. John was holding to the left, while Abraham himself was behind a tree, his rifle ready to fire, twenty yards in front of the magazine. Once Judas was through, he would follow, with John bringing up the rear. Abraham watched Judas slide along the brick toward the open gate.
The detector began registering motion inside the fence again, coming straight for the gate, straight for Judas. Abraham signaled Judas to hold his position and steadied his own rifle behind the tree. The blotch on the detector’s small screen continued to move in the gate’s direction.
Abraham gave Judas the signal at the perfect time. Judas spun around the corner and opened fire, a clip emptied in the time it took Abraham to finally realize something was very wrong about all this. He had begun to ease out from his own position of cover when Judas’s body was blown outward through the gate from the force of a fusillade of bullets. Abraham tried to focus, but the sun caught something metallic and blinded him for the instant it would have taken him to aim.
Rat-tat-tat…
The automatic spray was undoubtedly from John’s M16, and Abraham’s vision at last sharpened to see his target. Whatever had emerged from the magazine had reflected sun like metal because it was metal. And not a man in a protective suit, either.
It was a robot!
All of a sudden Abraham realized Blaine McCracken hadn’t played into his hands at all; he had played into McCracken’s and now he was facing a madman’s version of backup.
Obie One seemed to be smiling as he aimed the gun attached to his right hand and opened fire.
“Did you see that? Did you see it?” Professor Ainsley beamed as Obie One fired a hail of bullets into the second disciple his sensors had locked onto.
“I’ll buy him a beer when he comes back in,” said McCracken.
“You mean a lube job,” Belamo quipped.
The picture of a second disciple being torn apart by Obie One’s bullets was transmitted by the snakelike Obie Four to the main board in Professor Reston Ainsley’s control truck. They had parked it back near Williamsburg’s eastern border, behind the cover provided by the Capitol Building. Blaine had known that defeating the disciples under normal conditions was not possible. He knew they would be waiting for him when he came for Virginia Maxwell at Gap headquarters and used this to set a trap — with Wareagle and himself as bait the disciples could not possibly resist.
The problem from the start had been how to snare them and where. Utilizing Professor Ainsley’s original Omicron legion for reinforcements had actually occurred to him as far back as his meeting with Takahashi; the logistics followed from there. What was needed, Ainsley had explained the previous day, was a confined space whose layout could be programmed into his robots, who would then be controlled from a short distance away. McCracken had originally feared Ainsley would laugh off his idea and send him packing. But the old man had embraced the plot with excitement and enthusiasm. Perhaps he just wanted to prove to the world that his creations could perform as no one ever believed they could.
The Gap’s location limited their options for the site of the final battle, Williamsburg by far the most advantageous given its proximity to Newport News. Yet there were problems. Yes, the Operational Ballistic Droids would still learn as they moved, but having to negotiate around so many structures could cause significant problems as the battle progressed. Another equally pressing problem was that the Obie series had been constructed purely with counterinsurgency in mind. No thought had been given to how the droids would perform when placed in the field with friendlies. Essentially, how would they distinguish the good guys from the bad? What was there to stop them from shooting anything that moved, including McCracken and Wareagle, if circumstances forced them out into the battle as well?
Ainsley had provided the solution to this in the truck — just minutes before — in the form of twin necklaces for Wareagle and McCracken. A small medallion around their necks would jam sensor mechanisms and thus exclude the two men as targets. The professor, meanwhile, had spent the better part of Sunday night programming the layout of Williamsburg into his Obies. He had managed to get all four operational, and of these the boxlike Obie Three, along with One and Four, were already in the field. The hulking shape of Obie Seven stood outside the truck, between the Capitol’s central pillars, waiting to be dispatched. The red LED lights that flashed across his eyeless head and chest made him look impatient to McCracken.
Right now, though, Blaine’s eyes were glued to the main monitor screen as Obie Four scanned the area.
“Where’s Abraham?”
Reston Ainsley punched some commands into his keyboard. “Obie One is still locked on to him. I’ll put him in pursuit mode.” And his fingers flew over the keys once more.
“Can you tell him to be cunning?”
“It’s built into his programming.”
“That’s good, because it’s built into Abraham’s, too.”
Even if Abraham had realized earlier he was facing a gray silver robot, there was nothing he could have done. The impossibility of its existence reached him an instant before the gun that was an extension of its right forearm began firing into John. John was blown backward, his Kevlar vest shredded by the robot’s powerful bullets, his head almost torn from his shoulders. Judas lay across from him, his corpse a mirror image.
Two of the disciples had been killed! By a robot, goddammit, a robot!
And he would end up the third unless he fled now, before the thing’s firing sensors locked on to him. Yes, a few well-placed grenades could splatter his steel guts as easily as flesh and blood ones. But the fact was, a single miscalculation in aim would cost Abraham his life — because the robot couldn’t miss.
Abraham bolted from the tree, back in the direction of Duke of Gloucester Street, his small, hand-held communicator raised to his lips.
“This is Abraham,” he said, and then did his best to explain to the remaining nine disciples what they were up against.
In the control truck behind the Capitol Building, Reston Ainsley punched another series of buttons. “I’m sending Obie Four to scout out the next group.”
“Make it fast. The disciples know what they’re up against now,” advised Blaine.
“They know only of Obie One.”
“Won’t be hard to figure out he didn’t come alone any more than we did.”
Ainsley looked almost pleased. “Then I suppose I should get to it.”
The disciples now moved in five pairs. On Abraham’s orders Thaddeus, the second of those badly injured, had joined him in the hunt for the killer robot at the Prentis Store at the intersection of Duke of Gloucester and Colonial streets. Abraham, the store giving him cover, held fast to the motion detector, but no sign of the robot appeared. The tight cluster of buildings was working in the robot’s favor here, offering a layer of confusing cover for the detector. Abraham had realized what had to be done even before Thaddeus came up alongside him.
“How is it?” Abraham asked him.
“It hurts,” Thaddeus replied, grimacing slightly. “But I can move.” Abraham nodded in apparent satisfaction and raised his communicator to his lips. “Continue your sweeps,” he ordered. “Check all buildings and shops. Find their headquarters. Keep me informed.”