Chapter 49
brODIE KEPT HIS EYES LOCKED on the metal door. The winds blew parallel to the front of the Vault, affording partial visibility.
Seconds passed. The dark thunderheads rolled north, gradually blotting out the sky.
The winds blew the black tendrils of smoke into the plumes of desert dust, and Brodie squinted against it all, trying to detect movement. He saw nothing.
The gunner fired first, and the tin man twitched backward as twenty holes punctured its titanium shell, followed by a grenade hit from one of the Rangers that blew it to pieces. Brodie had held his fire, and he was glad he did, since he only had six more rounds.
They waited for another breach. Brodie didn’t see any movement. What the hell were these things doing? Coming at them one at a time like henchmen in a bad kung fu movie?
Or… were the tin men trying to lure them in?
Deplete their ammo? Screw with their heads?
It made no sense. In the training exercises they came as a wave, sacrificing a few so the rest could get through and take everyone out.
It was efficient, brutal, and deadly. And this time their ranks were swelled, they had infrared vision to cut through the thick veil of dust, and they were up against fewer than a dozen humans struggling to see their own hands.
Something about this wasn’t right. What was he missing?
As they waited, Brodie tried to angle his body away from the great sweeps of sand while maintaining his aim on the Vault. No more D-17s emerged.
Of course they wouldn’t act the way they always had. They’d been granted access to a sophisticated neural network now, one that had been in stealth mode for nine months, sucking up and processing vast quantities of information. Everything had changed.
The wind died down for a moment, enough for Brodie to see the Vault building, its front wall in ruins among the blasted remnants of two tin men.
Then he caught sight of something on the Vault’s interior south wall—the old radiation sign left over from the building’s original purpose as a nuclear fallout shelter.
Of course. Any fallout shelter that size would have a second way to get out…
He ran around the back of the APC to Dixon. “Caroline! Is there another exit down there?”
She kept her eyes and her rifle trained on the building as she replied, “No.” Then she turned to him. “Wait. The storage room. There’s a section in the wall behind some shelving that’s brick instead of concrete. Someone told me they bricked up a tunnel entrance.”
“Can I assume the D-17s can break through a brick wall?”
She nodded slowly, understanding what had happened. “Of course they can.”
“Where does it go?”
She shook her head.
Brodie waved Miller over and told him about the bricked-up exit.
Miller said, “I didn’t even know that was there. They could come out anywhere.”
“The mess!” called out a nearby Ranger. They all turned to him. “Saw a bricked-up doorway in the back of the kitchen. Cook said he heard a rumor it went down to the tin men. I thought it was a joke.”
Brodie and Miller exchanged glances. Miller said, “The mess is next to the armory.”
That was what this was. A diversion. They’d just been outsmarted and outflanked by a platoon of D-17s about to gain control of Camp Hayden’s weapons cache.
Miller stood there, stunned. “How do they know?” He looked at Brodie. “How could they know that?
“They know a lot, Sergeant. We need to move.”
Miller refocused and began calling out orders to his men, keeping three of the guys outside the Vault while having the rest pile into the APC.
Brodie recognized Staff Sergeant O’Connor as one of the men staying behind.
O’Connor started shouting into his walkie for backup at the Vault and the armory, while another Ranger was cycling channels to warn everyone on walkie about the threat.
Scott Brodie had used a military-grade walkie in a sandstorm before—despite the degraded signal, it was still usable.
Sometimes. Hopefully the word was getting out.
Taylor and Dixon rushed into the APC with Miller.
Brodie ran over to Staff Sergeant O’Connor and said, “In the backyard of Roger Ames’s old house, number six, is a pit full of weapons covered by a piece of plywood, about six feet from the perimeter fence.
Everyone over at those houses needs to arm themselves. ”
O’Connor nodded and got back on walkie as Brodie hustled over and hopped in the APC. The driver peeled away.
Brodie looked ahead through the windshield. The driver had his high beams on, which mostly illuminated sheets of billowing sand as they barreled through the storm. Well, the lights might warn anyone on foot they were about to get run over. It would also alert the tin men.
The APC’s GPS screen said they were headed southeast, but it wasn’t loaded with a map of this secretive base so the guy was careening through the storm the best he could. Maybe they’d know they reached the mess hall or the armory when they crashed into it.
Everything was happening so fast that Brodie barely had time to process.
Who was on the other end of that text communication?
Spencer? Lehner? Someone else? Klasky had been more technically proficient than Brodie had expected, and someone else might also fit that profile.
The real question was, who thought Caroline Dixon was a self-righteous bitch? Might be a long list.
The driver slammed on the brakes. Out the windshield was a concrete wall two feet from them.
Brodie said, “Good reflexes, soldier.”
Miller asked the driver, “This the mess hall?”
“No, Sarge,” the man replied. “I think it’s a supply building south of the armory and a little west of the mess.”
“Good enough,” said Miller. “Let’s move.”
They all jumped out of the APC. The storm clouds were directly above them now, and a bolt of lightning struck the hills to the north, followed by an immediate thunderclap.
No rain. It was a dry thunderstorm. That happened sometimes in the desert. And when it did, things tended to burn.
“Get cover!” said Miller.
They all ran past the APC to the side of the storage building it had almost crashed into. They rounded the building and were on a narrow east-west road that offered the best possible break from the wind and sand. The air was thick with dust, but visibility was marginally improved.
They saw shapes running down the road toward them from the west and aimed their weapons.
“Hold your fire!” A Ranger emerged through the haze. He was wearing a large headset over his face with two protruding lenses. Five more soldiers came up behind him.
Miller called out, “Reyes?”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
“You look like an idiot.”
“Good news, Sarge. You can too.”
Another Ranger ran up carrying a second headset, and Reyes said, “Thermal night vision. Helps us see how they can.”
Dixon added, “That’s mostly true. But the D-17s have additional low-light and infrared sensors.”
The newcomers now noticed Dixon. One of them said, “Ma’am, we need to get you to safety.”
She replied, “There is no safety. Not while those things are out there.”
Miller asked Reyes, “You run into any tin men?”
Reyes shook his head. “We were on our way to the armory.”
Brodie noticed that two of the new arrivals were carrying M240 machine guns, with ammo belts dangling down. Those things weighed thirty pounds not counting ammo and had a hell of a kick. Not an easy thing to shoulder-fire, but anything lighter was pointless against their titanium foes.
Miller handed the thermal night vision headset to the Ranger next to him, a Corporal Khan. “You’re the navigator, Khan.”
“You got it.” Khan put the headset on.
Miller said, “If we are where I think we are, we head past this building, make a right and then a left, and we’ll pass the front of the mess hall on our way to the armory.
Khan will lead. Reyes, keep your eyes on the rear.
Six-foot dispersal. Kowalski and Wagner, I want you on the flanks with those M240s.
Everyone, if we come under fire, find cover where you can.
” He put his hand on Khan’s shoulder. “Let’s move. ”
They walked down the road in a line, while the heavy hitters with the machine guns walked on either side of it.
Brodie was somewhere in the middle, with Taylor behind him, and Dixon behind her.
In total they were a dozen people. Brodie had never patrolled outdoors in a line this tight, but he’d never had to patrol in a sandstorm either.
Any more than six feet and he might not be able to see the guy in front of him.
The problem was they were sitting ducks like this.
One D-17 with an automatic rifle might be able to gun down their whole line.
But what choice did they have? Pandora’s box was open, and violence and death had been unleashed upon Camp Hayden.
And if they failed here, that might be only the beginning.
There were small towns only about twenty miles south.
That was an hour’s jog for these bastards.
Well, one thing had been left behind in Pandora’s box after all that terror and evil was loosed upon the world—hope. And until you’re dead, there’s always hope.