“The what?”
“The aliens’ compound. They took over the Presidential Palace. So, the Roaches ask the kids questions about anyone they know who might be a rebel. Always with an officer from the army standing there”—Teguh spat—“but then they let ’em go. Scares the shit out of the kids, but they’ve never been hurt.”
Well, that’s reassuring. Sort of. “Okay, then. Are your people ready?”
“Sure they are. Question is: are you ready?”
Again: “hell no!” “Yeah. Here goes.” Caine ducked low and scooted out, under the level of the cars parked along the street. He peeked out at the Arat Kur ROV. It was still creeping forward, aware that its prey—Teguh’s trapped friends—had moved farther down the dead end street and were now unable to escape. But precisely where was that prey hiding?
Well, here’s something new to think about. Caine rose slowly from his hiding place. He walked, hands open, closer to the Arat Kur ROV but also angled toward the looted and gutted stone bank across the street.
The Arat Kur unit’s rear sensors detected him immediately. One of the microturrets fixed upon him, the other began sweeping the unit’s rear, laboring to keep nearby upper stories and rooftops in its defense footprint.
C’mon. Call your boss, and find out what to do. And who I am.
The Arat Kur unit was utterly motionless for two seconds, and then—so suddenly that Caine’s stomach clenched and plummeted—the multilegged device whirled about and came at him with startling speed.
Caine had been expecting the charge, but still felt terribly slow as he turned and sprinted into the bank, sure that, at any second, he would feel the Arat Kur equivalent of a taser probe dig into his back and sprawl him, twitching, across the debris-littered sidewalk.
But he made it through the doors into the bank and heard, just behind, the clatter of the ROV’s legs break stride. Caine didn’t stop: the unit’s apparent indecision was merely a split-second pause as it waited for an override signal.
Caine, now in the hall leading into the bank’s interior offices, was glad he hadn’t broken his own stride. He heard the ROV resume its skittering approach, the bank’s broken picture windows scraping and screeching as the spiderlike legs smashed and dashed them aside in its crazed pursuit. Riordan reached the yawning freight elevator shaft at the end of the hall, grabbed the knotted rope that was hanging there, heard the ROV right behind him. He turned, saw the taser-dart dispenser on the front of the robotic arthropod snap open—
—just as three of Teguh’s young Indonesians, waiting two stories overhead, dropped a small, jury-rigged counterweight. Caine, clutching the counterweighted rope, blinked at the rapidity of his upward acceleration and was both terrified and gratified to see the mechanical spider leap into the open shaft beneath him. Slowly but steadily, it began ascending, its legs spanning from wall-to-wall.
As soon as the three young Indonesians grabbed Caine off the ascending rope, he nodded to a fourth, slightly older one. That fellow was waiting with bolt-cutters poised upon the elevator’s own counterweight cable, and at Caine’s nod, he closed the cutters with a snap.
The steel ring that cinched the upper part of the elevator’s main cable to the lower half squealed and sparked as the bolt-cutters sheared through it. Released from the counterweight in the basement, the car of the freight elevator, waiting two stories farther up, began rushing down.
The mechanical spider paused, sensors rotating upward to investigate the new sound—
—right as the car crashed into it and powered the flailing unit all the way down to the bottom of the lightless shaft. Their joint plummet ended with a smashing sound akin to a head-on collision of dump trucks.
By the time Caine got down to the basement to inspect the remains of the Arat Kur expert system with bolt-cutters in hand, Teguh was already there, along with his friends who had been trapped at the end of the street. And entering at the same moment as Caine did was a rangy, muscular man in camos and a red beret: a defected Kopassus officer.
Caine scanned the insignia of rank, tried to remember it from his days at Jane’s Defense Weekly, guessed. “Hello, Captain. I wasn’t aware these are your men.”
The officer stopped, stared up at Caine. “We have no formal organization.” He looked at the broken Arat Kur unit. “I understand this is your work.”
“Me? Hell, Captain, we all—”
“Please. Your modesty and desire to include these men is admirable, but I must know: Was this your idea?”
Before Caine had decided how to respond, Teguh piped up from the second rank of onlookers. “You bet, Captain Moerdani. This one smart bule. He has training.”
Oh good Christ—
The captain glanced at Caine sharply. “Is this true? You are a soldier?”
“No, Captain. I have some training. Very little, to be honest.”
“Hmm,” he mused, looking at the smashed ROV again. “You seem to have enough. Now, before the enemy can—”
“Captain, a moment, please. I left my young friends back on the third floor for a reason. They should have rethreaded the part of the cable connected to the top of the elevator, now.”
“And why did you have them do that?”
“To lift it up a few feet.”
“What? Why do—?”
“Captain, with your permission, it will take less time to show than it will to explain.”
The captain considered a moment, then nodded.
Caine leaned into the shaft and shouted. “Winch it up on three, okay?”
“Okay, Mr. Bule,” said a distant voice from higher up the shaft.
Caine turned to Teguh. “Can your friends bring a few of those broken blocks over here? We’ll need them to jam under the elevator car.” By the time Caine was done making the request, half of the needed stonework was at the ready. He looked up the shaft. “One, two—”
On “three,” the freight elevator car groaned off the Arat Kur ROV. As Caine had suspected, it was nowhere near as pulverized as an analogous human unit might have been.
The captain’s voice was low. “Are you sure it’s—dead?”
“Pretty sure, but let’s be certain.” Caine lifted the bolt cutters, started snipping selectively at a side panel connected to the top of the thorax.
“Why are you cutting there?” the captain asked.
Caine explained as he continued to cut away at what looked like a mostly recessed hinge. “When we build ground-ops ROVs like this one, we know they’re going to take overhead fire. Lots of it. So we don’t put the sensitive electronics up under the dorsal surface. We snug them underneath, in the belly. I’m guessing we’ll get a look at its brains once we release this ventral piece.” With one last clack of the bolt-cutters, the rear belly plate of the unit sagged away from the rest of the carapace, revealing a mass of electrical components, most of which were still in reasonable condition. “Captain Moerdani, do any of your men have any expertise in computers?”
The captain pointed to one of his youngest followers, who came forward quickly, eyes and hands eager.
“What should I do?” he asked Caine.
Who smiled. “Damned if I know. I’d just yank all its guts out.”
“Why?” said the young man. “That could take some time.” He looked back at his captain.
The entire group had now gathered around Caine, eyes bright with the victory they had just won. But their Kopassus CO was checking his watch. And probably waiting to hear me explain why it is worth the risk to stop and disembowel this Arat Kur ROV. So I had better make every word of explanation count. “Jakarta did lots of electronics and computer work up until three weeks ago. Tell me: how many of you know unemployed IT whizzes who are pissed at the government, who’d like to hack its systems, maybe try to get access to the invaders’ own code?”