Chapter 51
brODIE AND DIXON JOGGED EAST along the road, then turned left onto a wider road and straight into the oncoming sandstorm winds.
They pulled their shirts over their noses and mouths to keep the sand out and kept their heads low as they hugged the walls of the buildings. The air was so thick here that it would screw up even the tin men’s sensors. Or so he hoped.
From somewhere ahead came a loud, high-pitched whistle, followed a few seconds later by the pop of a small explosion. He called to Dixon over the wind, “Mortars!”
“What do we do about that?”
“Nothing!”
“Great!”
They continued down the road, and up ahead Brodie could make out flickering orange light. A fire. More mortars sailed off, and then something on the ground exploded. He had a bad feeling he knew what it was.
They came to the mess hall on their right. The door had been ripped off its hinges and thrown into the road, and all the front windows were smashed. This must have been where the tin men had busted out. And up ahead…
Dixon asked, “What is that?”
They approached the fire, which was at the far side of the intersection ahead. They were close enough now that he could make out the rounded shape of the Quonset hut’s steel skeleton. “It’s the armory. They took what they needed and burned the rest.”
“Shit.”
He saw something silhouetted against the fire, something low, and moving slightly. Could be an injured Ranger.
He signaled to Dixon, and they approached carefully, weapons raised.
Once they were almost clear of the mess hall building and at the intersection, he realized the silhouette was actually two things.
The first was the body of a Ranger lying dead on his back.
Crouched over him was Lenny, the one-legged tin man.
Blood was smeared all over the side of Lenny’s midsection, around the open hatch that accessed the thing’s microbial fuel cell.
Its left hand clawed at the Ranger and then shoved a bloody hunk of something into the hatch…
Dixon gasped.
Brodie braced the M240 against his body, took aim, and fired a burst of armor-piercing bullets at the bot.
Lenny flew backward as its limbs twitched wildly.
It attempted to get up onto its hands and single knee, and Brodie blasted it again, bracing the gun between his right arm and torso.
The gun had a powerful recoil, and it was hard to keep a steady bead on the target, but it was good enough.
Lenny crumpled to the ground and did not move again.
He heard Dixon hyperventilating behind him. “Scott… it…”
“Yes,” he said. “Don’t look.”
Dixon sank to her knees and the sand blew over her. She dropped her rifle.
“What are you doing?”
Dixon didn’t respond. She was in shock.
He crouched in front of her and wiped the sand off her lenses so she could see him.
“This is all these bastards want. It’s all they were made for.
To kill the body and to kill the mind. They want you to give up from the horror of it all.
They want you to believe you stand no chance.
And so do the men who made them.” He grabbed her shoulder. “You see me.”
She nodded slightly.
“We’re still alive.”
She nodded again.
“So we fight for those who aren’t. We fight for the dead. Because they can’t. Do you understand?”
She looked him in the eyes. “I understand.” She grabbed her rifle. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” said Brodie. “Never apologize for being human.” He rose to his feet. “We need shelter. C’mon.”
They doubled back along the road until they were again at the mess hall. Brodie signaled to Dixon, then stepped into the doorway and swept the room with his M240.
He didn’t see any movement. The dark room was filled with long tables and benches, covered in a layer of dust from the gusts coming through the smashed windows.
He and Dixon walked to the far end of the room where the windows were intact, and Brodie set the machine gun down on a table. Dixon trained her EMP rifle on the double doors at the north end of the hall that led to the kitchen.
Brodie tried the walkie again. “This is Brodie. Anyone hear me?”
Nothing but static.
Dixon said, “Everyone’s dead.”
“We don’t know that.”
She looked at him. “These things are fast, Scott. And they can communicate with each other instantaneously and nonverbally. They’re built with low-frequency transponders that won’t be too affected by this weather.
So even though it might be screwing up their optics a bit, their comms are intact.
” She looked at his walkie. “Unlike ours.”
“We need to think like them. And you need to help me.”
“I’ll try.”
“What is their goal? To kill everyone?”
“I didn’t write Praetorian. I don’t know how they work now. But if they are running a type of counterinsurgency playbook, they will want to establish physical control over the battlespace that is populated by the insurgents.”
“Right. And Camp Hayden is a larger and more complex battlespace than the mock village, even without a sandstorm. First they armed themselves and destroyed what they couldn’t take.
They ambushed us because we were easy targets, and whether knowingly or not they took out the senior-ranking Ranger.
Now they will focus on closing the net. Station themselves at the south and west gates to prevent escape.
Put snipers on the guard towers. Place units at all major intersections and crossroads, especially the parade grounds.
The goal is to prevent enemy movement and then go building by building clearing them of insurgents. ”
“You’ve done this before.”
“I have. But we valued our own lives and the lives of civilians. Neither of those applies here.”
“To a point,” said Dixon. “They don’t value their lives individually, but they do as a unit. And thanks to their transponders they know at any given moment precisely how many of them are left.”
Brodie thought about how Sergeant Miller had talked about the training exercises in the village.
It was a problem of math. How many units could the D-17s afford to lose in the course of exterminating the enemy?
He thought about how Lenny had gone into hiding after the initial attack on him and Taylor, maybe trying to plan and launch isolated strikes.
Like an injured wolf that had lost its pack but still needed to eat.
But now the whole pack was out, and they had strength and security in numbers.
The question was, could the humans at Camp Hayden grind down their numbers and force them into using greater caution? Or was it already too late?
Dixon asked, “What’s up?”
“I’m trying to game this out.”
“I know I’m not Maggie, but you can do it out loud.”
He looked at her. “Of course. I’m thinking—”
Noise emitted from the walkie. Brodie picked it up. “This is Brodie. Say again.”
“Pickman… trying to… building…”
“Captain, where are you?”
“After the… in the administra—”
Dixon said, “The administrative building. We actually might be able to use the map room there to monitor the tin men’s movements.”
“First we have to get there. Which means crossing the parade ground or circumventing it without getting gunned down.”
“We have to try. And we can’t stay here. It’s only a matter of time before they find us.”
Brodie picked up his machine gun and led Dixon out of the mess hall and down the dusty road. The storm clouds had dissipated somewhat, and the wind was a little less fierce. The sunlight bled through the haze and cast everything around them in shades of burnt orange.
They moved west toward the parade grounds as quickly as they could, knowing that at any moment a D-17 could pick up their heat signature, and that would be the end of them.
They had almost made it to the perimeter of the parade ground when a massive explosion went off somewhere to the west, large and powerful enough to shake the ground.
They froze. Dixon looked at him. “The armory?”
“No,” said Brodie.
They peeked around the corner of a building toward the flat expanse of the parade ground. Across from it, where the administrative building had been, was a massive pile of burning rubble.
Dixon turned to him, and the light of the flames danced over her features. “Oh God… How many people were in there with him?”
Brodie thought again of the late Sergeant First Class Miller, as if the man were guiding him from beyond the grave.
The tin men don’t know the meaning of a life you have to protect, not take.
Why risk clearing buildings when you can blow them up instead? Why fight for land you can just burn? Like the Nazis at Stalingrad or Warsaw—annihilation was not the tactic, it was the goal.
He said to Dixon, “They’re not interested in fighting a battle. Not this time. They are going to raze this place to the ground and pick off the survivors in the rubble.”
Dixon closed her eyes and tried to maintain her composure. “There’s a logic to that.”
Brodie looked at the burning building and thought of Captain Pickman.
He hadn’t liked the guy, but he certainly didn’t deserve that.
Brodie suspected that Pickman was there because he had the same thought as Dixon that the map room would net valuable Intel.
Brodie had a sense that in his final moments, Captain Pickman had done his duty.
Dixon looked at Brodie and put her hand on his arm.
“Forget thinking like them. We’re not capable.
Let’s be who we are. Our goal is to preserve life.
And the most likely place that people will shelter and try to make a stand is the barracks.
And they might not understand the kind of ordnance these bastards have gotten hold of, and what they plan to do. We need to go there.”
Brodie met her eyes. And in the firelight, he had the wholly inappropriate and ill-timed thought that she was beautiful. Maybe it was the adrenaline.
Well, she was beautiful. And brilliant. And behind all her fronting was a powerful goodness. And maybe now, in what were likely their last moments of life, that was worth honoring and fighting for.
He said to her, “Command wouldn’t put themselves all in one place. Colonel Howe was not in that building.”
Dixon’s mouth opened, but she didn’t say anything. She must have wondered how he knew, but in that moment, she seemed grateful that he did. She said, “I hope you’re right.”
“I know I am. Let’s get to the barracks before it’s too late.”