attack this target.”
“We got a kill!” Hal Briggs said. “Way to go! Man, I’m starting to like these gadgets you guys make, Doc.”
“We aim to please,” Jon Masters said from Battle Mountain.
“Hawk One, sitrep.”
“Looks like the second APC is going to stay away and check us out before he attacks,” Briggs surmised. “Hawk One, proceed to ten-mile cover patrol at one-five thousand feet.”
Daren nodded happily. “The StealthHawk found all the targets and prosecuted a successful attack by voice command from the ground!” he crowed. “Excellent!”
“Okay, Sarge, you got the last target,” Briggs said.
“Yes, sir.” Sergeant Major Chris Wohl leveled his electromagnetic rail gun, centered the electronic gunsight on the second armored personnel carrier, and fired. A sausage-size tungsten-steel projectile shot from the muzzle at an incredible ten thousand feet per second. The projectile had no explosive warhead — it didn’t need one. At that velocity the projectile easily pierced the GSh-575 vehicle’s armor, went through one Taliban fighter inside as if he were as thin as a soap bubble, pierced the engine block, passed outside through a drive wheel, and buried itself two hundred feet into the sand before it finally stopped. The armored vehicle’s engine cracked, then blew apart like an overinflated balloon.
“Target neutralized,” Wohl reported matter-of-factly.
“No shit,” Wohl commented. He stepped over and motioned to the Taliban fighter lying on the ground. “I think he’s awake. He probably saw everything. Should we take him with us?”
“Stand by. Three, this is One. How much stuff have you recovered so far?”
“I’ve got about two hundred pounds of components, One,” responded Air Force Lieutenant Mark Bastian, one of Hal Briggs’s first officers assigned to the First Air Battle Force Ground Operations team. At six feet four inches tall, Bastian was one of the tallest men ever to wear the Tin Man electronic battle armor. “I need to separate out about another three hundred pounds.”
“Roger that. Two, we won’t have room on the Dasher for a prisoner. Question him, get any info you can on him, then make sure he stays near what’s left of his APC and let’s get ready for extraction.”
From his spot on the desert floor, Jalaluddin Turabi watched the death of his first armored vehicle, then heard the death of his second. He could finally move his arms and legs, but it was as if his own body now weighed thousands of kilograms — he had absolutely no strength in any of his muscles.
The two strange figures in the dark outfits and full bug-eyed helmets marched in front of him. While the one with the large, futuristic-looking rifle stood guard, the other stopped to examine pieces of the crashed aircraft. Turabi was surprised when the figure picked up the cruise-missile engine as effortlessly as if he had picked up a pebble. Who were these men? They had to be Americans — only they had this kind of technology. Either Americans or Martians.
The figure with the large rifle approached him.
“I won’t tell you anything,” Turabi said. “Who are you? Why are you attacking us?” At that he felt a surge of electricity flowing through his temples, seemingly trying to push his very eyeballs out of their sockets. Turabi screamed.
“What is your name?” the figure repeated.
“Turabi. Jalaluddin Turabi.”
The electric shock ceased. “Are you Taliban?”
Turabi said nothing — but when the electric shock recommenced, he couldn’t help but blurt out his response. “Yes, damn you! I am Taliban!”
“What is the name of your commanding officer?”
“General.”
“General what?”
“Just ‘General.’ “
The electric shock started again, not as bad as before, but Turabi remembered how bad it could be. “His name?”
Turabi kept silent until he thought he might scream again from the pain. “Wakil Mohammad Zarazi.” The pain instantly ceased. Turabi prayed he would black out, but the figure apparently knew how to control the electric shocks well enough to keep his victims conscious.
“What is your rank?”
“I do not have any rank. I am jihadi.”
“But your commanding officer is a general?”
“He calls himself a general, yes. But we are jihadi. We are Taliban. We are servants of God and loyal members of our clan.”
“This whole operation is a jihad?” Even with his voice electronically altered, Turabi could hear the surprise in the stranger’s voice. “You invaded Turkmenistan because you’re on a jihad?”
“We left our homes and villages in Afghanistan and came into Turkmenistan to escape you Americans and your robot killing machines!” Turabi shouted angrily. “We stayed in Turkmenistan because we found loyal soldiers and sympathizers. It was easier to keep moving west than it was to head back to our own homeland.”
The figure paused, and it sounded to Turabi as if he might be speaking inside his helmet to his comrades. Then the man asked, “How many in this jihadi army of yours?”
“We are no threat to you.”
“I said, how many?”
“Several thousand. I don’t know. We get more defectors every day. The Turkmen will fight for whoever pays them more money.”
“What is your objective after taking Kerki?”
“Whatever the general wants. He says God gives him instructions and guides him to victory.”
“Where do you expect me to go, Mr. Robot?” Turabi responded. “You have destroyed my two vehicles and killed my soldiers. The rest of my army is a hundred kilometers from this place.”
But the menacing figure had already strode away. Turabi snatched up a chunk of metal, a piece of his destroyed armored personnel carrier, and threw it at the figure. He didn’t even turn — but a blue-white bolt of electricity shot out from an electrode atop his shoulders and hit the chunk of metal, causing it to burst in midair like an overripe melon. Who in God’s holy name were these men?
The MV-32 Pave Dasher tilt-jet aircraft moved in from its hiding place a few miles away from the crash site, picked up the Tin Men and the critical components of the downed StealthHawk unmanned combat air vehicle, and headed off. But just as they did, Patrick did a long-range scan of the area with the laser radar aboard the EB-1C Vampire.
“You got these newcomers, Daren?” Patrick asked.
