Rock and Sun Ra pulled their pistols and aimed in on Dandridge. Cap motioned them to hold their fire. The black stain spread toward them at a speedy clip.
“Don’t be concerned for your lives,” Dandridge said snidely. “These just devour free metals, such as that of your weapons. I want you alive for research.” He smiled again. “And don’t worry on my account—they’re programmed to stay away from the center of the room.”
At that, Cap smiled. Crouching down, he kept an eye on the approach of the microbotic horde as he pulled a metal cylinder from a bulging cargo pocket and set it behind him. Just before the dark wave reached his feet, he sprang toward Dandridge with a long and powerful leap.
Mouth agape, Dandridge watched in shock as the human missile flew toward him. The impact threw him against a bank of monitors, slamming them down together in a hail of shattered glass. The smell and heat of burning insulation choked his stunned senses. Behind him, his assistant sprinted to a door at the rear, abandoning his master to the violent strangers.
Dandridge stared into the white teeth that grinned within his attacker’s wild expression. Captain Anger gripped the renegade scientist by his lab coat, ramming him against the shattered equipment. Two nerve-jarring shoves reduced Dandridge to compliance. Rising, Cap dragged the man up with him, then turned to check on his companions’ escape from the malicious microbotic horde.
Acting swiftly, Rock gave the lawyer a leg up off the ground. Sun Ra wrapped his huge dark fists around a high-intensity operating lamp and pulled himself up, mighty biceps bulging with power. Rock did the same for Tex, who grabbed on to another lamp and held on with his strong surgeon’s hands.
With the tide of microbots closing in on him, Rock looked up to find another lamp. None were in reach.
“Chyort vosmi!” he shouted.
“Here!” Sun Ra extended a foot within Rock’s grasp.
“Are you kidding?” Rock shouted. “We’d pull damn’ thing out of ceiling! I’ll—”
Rock stared with alarm at the black dust as it engulfed the cylinder Cap had placed on the floor. The shiny stainless steel quickly grew pitted and disintegrated, gnawed away by creatures so small that hundreds could ride on the back of an ant.
Cap clamped a tan, muscular hand around Dandridge’s throat and lifted him up. “Shut them off,” he growled.
“You think they’re radio dispatched like taxis?” Dandridge gurgled. “They leave the gate programmed. They keep working till they can’t find any more metal in their target zone.”
“Sunny!” Rock cried, tossing his pistol up to his comrade. Sun Ra caught the gun in one hand and wrapped the arm back around the lamp.
“Tex!” He slipped off his bandoliers of hand grenades and tossed them up to the doctor, who caught them on the toes of his boots.
“These things weigh a ton!” Tex shouted.
Rock watched as the black dust swarmed about his boots.
“You must have a way to stop them,” Cap uttered in a savage tone.
Purpling, Dandridge managed to choke out: “He won’t be hurt. I swear it.”
The microbots rode up Rock’s boots, devouring steel nails and brass eyelets. They tickled at his legs as he stood frozen for an instant.
“They’re not eating me!” he loudly confirmed, hardly reassured as he shook off the leather remains of his useless boots. The swarm hit his waistline, turning his belt buckle into powder. “Yipes!” he cried as his gut expanded from the released binding. He looked down. “Good thing zipper is nylon!” he yelped, grasping his slacks with one hand, balling the other into a fist, and turning toward Dandridge. “Let me at him, Skipper!”
“Wait.” Cap held his grip on Dandridge. “I want him to see something.” He turned his captive’s head toward the crumbling remnants of the cylinder. Liberated from inside by the hungry black dust, a silvery lump seemed to dissolve into a puddle amidst the ebony attackers.
“Scavengers!” the balding man cried, struggling to get away.
“Reprogrammed scavengers,” Cap said. “Watch.”
The silver-grey microbots quickly spread out, overcoming and redesigning the metal-eaters. Within moments, the black and silver dust spread thin and vanished from view. Tex and Sun Ra dropped to the floor.
“I’ve developed an antidote for your machines, Dandridge. And your attack just unleashed them upon your island.”
Dandridge’s eyes widened. He looked up at the grinning man who held him, fearful respect and overwhelming terror in his eyes. “How could you do that? How could you know to do that?”
Cap simply kept smiling, then said, “Tex—check out the Secretary General. Dr. Dandridge and I are going to discuss electronics. And his murder of scores of people, including Dr.
Madsen.”
Dandridge gripped Cap’s copper-hued wrists. His feet dangled almost a foot above the floor. “Madsen?” he said. “That’s a laugh. He—”
A voice blared from an overhead loudspeaker. “Drop him!”
“My lab assistant,” Dandridge said with a tone of proud triumph.
“Why should I?” Cap shouted.
“Two reasons,” the voice said. “A woman and a boy.”
Chapter Seventeen
Live Capture
“Flying microbots!” Leila cried, swinging the rail gun toward the amorphous swarm.
“You can’t shoot them down!” Johnny yelled as he watched her power up the weapon. “That’s like trying to machinegun killer bees!”
“Yeah.” Leila didn’t even bother to use the laser sight, but aimed in the general direction of the black cloud. “But if I can set up a shock wave, it’ll tear them apart without having to score direct hits.”
She punched a button. “Cover your ears!”
She switched the rail gun to full auto firing. Every second, eight steel pellets accelerated to nearly ten times the speed of sound. The sonic clap of each shot blurred together into one deafening roar. The blazing trails of ionized, superheated air merged into a single, painfully bright white glare. The cumulative recoil caused the seaplane to pivot about slowly in the water. After two minutes of steady fire, Leila released the trigger.
The air stank of ozone and vaporized salt. Their ears rang with pain. Leila rubbed her aching eyes and stared blinking out the cargo hatch. The cloud of mechanical locusts was gone. A diffuse blanket of particles coated the surface of the water where some of the shattered creatures had fallen, coloring the blue-green water an oily black. Leila turned her gaze toward the rear of the Seamaster.
And stared right into the muzzle brake of a 9mm submachine gun.
The man holding the submachine gun stood in an inflatable boat similar to Cap’s. Mexican, mid-thirties, hr dressed not in islander’s clothes but in brown and beige battle fatigues. A scar on the left side of his head ran raggedly from ear to chin. No mind-numbed zombie, he gazed at the pair steadily, carefully, saying nothing. The weapon in his grip said it all.
Leila deliberated for a swift instant. If she had not had the boy on onboard the plane, she might have taken a calculated dive for cover and gone for the pistol at her thigh. As it was, though, Jonathan stood directly
in harm’s way. She raised her hands, an angry smile crossing her lips.
“Flash,” she subvocalized to her earcomm while maintaining her tight-lipped smile. “Lei’s in trouble.”
