wooden door. It took August another ten minutes to breach it. The Talon SWORDS had been used extensively in bomb disposal and bunker-breaching missions during the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. A simple wooden door was no match. The SWORDS blew off its hinges, revealing Alejandro cowering in the dark. Thirty rounds of steel- jacketed ammo broke his torso open like a crab hammer.
“
They left behind a timed demolition charge that collapsed the entire tunnel structure minutes after they egressed. Forty-five minutes after the operation had begun, August, his men, and his robots were all safely back on American territory.
23
Tijuana, Mexico
A black Cadillac Escalade rocketed down the parking garage ramp, skid plates throwing sparks as it banged over a speed bump.
“There!” Julio Castillo screamed as he pointed at the exit turn.
The driver threw himself into the sharp left-hand turn, slamming his chest against the shoulder belt with the centrifugal pull. The big SUV tires shrieked on the slick concrete floors of the empty parking garage, still under construction.
A hundred feet behind them, a Schiebel S-100 helicopter fitted with the GTMax artificial intelligence “learn as you fly” autopiloting package and a six-barreled 7.62mm Minigun raced after them. The three-foot-tall German-manufactured helicopter had already chased them off the highway into the parking structure. Julio couldn’t believe the helicopter would follow them into such a cramped space. They’d dodged scissor lifts and stacked pallets on every level up, and still it followed. The top of the ramp was blocked, so they had to whip around and head back down. The helicopter had just fired its first short burst and missed, blowing chunks of concrete out of the wall in front of the SUV on the last turn.
Julio glanced back to see that the unmanned helicopter had missed the last turn and was racing past their position. His face was drenched in sweat, but not from the sweltering heat outside.
The driver turned hard again. Julio banged his head against the thick bulletproof glass but he hardly noticed.
“Can’t you drive any faster?” Julio screamed.
The driver said nothing but mashed the gas pedal harder. The Escalade roared down the sloping straightaway.
“Where the fuck is it now?” Julio screamed, his head on a swivel. His three lieutenants in back peered through the windows, their big pistols drawn as if they were prepared to shoot the drone down.
The Escalade bucked savagely as it crashed over another speed bump. But the big SUV was flying too fast now. The driver stomped on the brake as he whipped into the next turn. The forward momentum threw all of them against the seat belts, then the sharp left turn crashed their bodies hard into the right-side doors as the Escalade drifted toward the far wall.
BANG! The side panels crumpled and sparked as the SUV scraped against the concrete wall, but the driver soon righted the vehicle and mashed the throttle again. The exit was just a hundred meters ahead, a big black square framed in the harsh sodium lights of the parking garage.
Julio roared with delight. He pounded the driver’s shoulders with both of his beefy hands. “You son of a bitch! You did it!” The men in the back laughed, too, until the helicopter dropped into the center of the exit.
“Gun it!” Julio screamed. He knew the copter would pull away before it got rammed. The driver crushed the gas pedal to the floor.
The Minigun flashed. Three hundred armor-piercing incendiary rounds poured through the windshield like liquid lead. The Escalade exploded in a ball of fire.
The helicopter rose at the last second to avoid the fiery wreck as it tumbled end over end out of the exit, finally coming to a halt in the middle of the busy street. Oncoming traffic slammed squealing brakes. Bumpers crashed, glass broke, horns honked.
The burning hulk of the Escalade continued to roar with flames, superheating the already sweltering night air as the pilotless Schiebel slipped away, its stealthy AI navigation program guiding it back to base.
Isla Paraiso, Mexico
Pearce studied his monitor. Ten thousand feet above, one of his surveillance drones drew lazy circles around the small island. Cesar Castillo was nowhere in sight, but Pearce had seen him enter his palatial home earlier that evening. So far, so good.
On the western side of the island, two Castillo guards stretched on loungers by the pool. They were painted like slim gray ghosts in Pearce’s thermal-imaging camera. The tips of their cigarettes flared to white-hot pinpoints when they inhaled. The other two guards patrolling the far side of the home were more diligent. Their skin glowed a whiter shade of gray because they were hotter from trudging steadily in the humid night air.
Pearce turned to the other two monitors at his station on the boat. They also featured thermal-imaging cameras, but targeting reticles were centered on the screens as well. These were the cameras mounted on two Spartan Scouts, small unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) stationed on either side of the island. The first Spartan monitor was barely catching the tops of the heads of the two lounging guards on the western side, but the other Spartan Scout reticle easily targeted the first of the two guards patrolling the eastern perimeter.
Pearce engaged the automatic targeting program for the eastern Spartan’s weapons system, which was fitted with a suppressed M110 semiauto sniper rifle firing 7.62mm slugs. The western boat was configured exactly the same way. Both vessels were rubber pontoon platforms, like Zodiacs, with reinforced polymer decking for the gun systems. Tonight’s sea was choppy, but the guns were mounted on a computerized stabilizer to neutralize the motion.
The eastern Spartan scoped on the rear guard first and dropped him effortlessly. The dead man’s rifle clattered on the ground, alerting his partner, who whipped around to face his fallen comrade. A second later he was tossed backward like a rag doll by a slug that caught him high in the chest.
Suppressed weapons aren’t silenced weapons; their sound is only dampened. When the guards by the pool heard the two dull shots on the far side of the estate, they leaped to their feet and scrambled into defensive positions, facing the eastern side.
Pearce engaged the western boat. The guards stood taller now and their fully exposed bodies glowed eerily on the video screen. Their heads lit up like flares as adrenaline and exertion raised their body temperature, the additional heat venting out of the tops of their scalps.
The reticle squared on the first man’s glowing head just a moment before a bright-white blotch of fluid flowered on the other side of his skull. His corpse dropped silently on the monitor.
The other guard threw down his weapon and dashed in the opposite direction, heading for the western slope leading down to the water.
The Spartan’s automatic rifle tracked him as he slipped and twisted down the steep incline.
Blood exploded in white petals on the slope behind him. The reticle tracked the limp corpse as it tumbled down the hill.
It almost didn’t seem fair to Pearce, despite the fact they were cartel scumbags. Even the best human snipers he’d ever worked with missed their shots sometimes. But not the machines. They never missed.
Human snipers were bounded by human frailty; the weapons systems they used were always superior to the operator using them. Hitting a target was a relatively simple algorithm with known variables: distance, friction, target speed, wind speed, projectile weight. New onboard computational systems and “smart” guided bullets were even solving those equations for human snipers. The profession was quickly becoming a “point and shoot”
