“There, you see, Sergeant? General Turabi knows Russian very well. We must take him with us back to the capital, and be very careful not to hurt him — at least for now. As for the other — execute him. We don’t have enough supplies to feed the entire damned Turkmen army.”
“Bastards! You can’t just slaughter us like this! We are prisoners of war!” Turabi shouted. As Turabi was dragged away, the patrol sergeant barked an order. One of his troops clicked the safety off his weapon….
But at that second they heard a loud
The security officer saw several bright flashes nearby that he assumed were gunshots, all coming from near his men. “Sergeant!” he shouted. “Where are the attackers?” No response. “Sergeant! Answer me!”
“I’m afraid he can’t answer you right now, sir,” came a strange, synthetic, computer-like voice. Suddenly the Russian felt himself hauled up by his jacket. He found himself dangling in the air — being held aloft by an alien- looking figure straight out of a science-fiction magazine.
“Turn off his lights, and let’s get out of here, sir,” Hal Briggs said.
“
Trevor Griffin went over to Jalaluddin Turabi and helped him to his feet. “Are you all right?” he asked in Russian via the battle armor’s electronic interpreter.
“You…you are the American robot warriors,” Turabi gasped. “Why have you come here?”
“I’m from the Air Intelligence Agency, General Turabi,” Griffin said. Turabi still looked puzzled. “From Texas, General, remember? You’ve been sending us pictures of the Russians for weeks now. We’re here to get you and your man to safety. Let’s go. We’ve got to get out of here.”
They returned to where the Condor aircraft was hidden, took the camouflage netting off, and pulled it out onto the highway. Turabi and his sergeant, Abdul Dendara, climbed in the back and strapped in, followed by Griffin and then Briggs. He had the power on immediately. “Bobcat Control, Condor, we’re up.”
“Good to hear it, guys,” Dave Luger said.
“We’re running a systems check now, Condor. Stand by for engine start.” A few moments later: “Systems check okay. Hydraulic fluid is a little low — we may have a leak somewhere. Engine-start sequence in progress.” On the back of the Condor, a small retractable air inlet deployed, and moments later they heard the high-pitched whine of a turbojet engine. “Engine start complete, running another systems check…Hydraulic pressure is low, almost to the red line. Let’s see if we can get airborne before we lose the whole system. Hal, use the tiller and keep her straight on the highway. Ready?”
“Let’s do it.”
But it wasn’t going to happen. As soon as the Condor started moving forward, the nose slipped sideways, and they could feel a severe shuddering under their feet. “Control, I can’t steer it,” Hal said, “and I feel a really bad vibration in the nose.”
“Hydraulic pressure is down to zero,” Kelvin Carter reported. “The nosewheel will just free-caster without hydraulic power. Hal, you’ll have to lock the nosewheel in place with the locking switch on the tiller. You won’t have any steering, so you’ll have to manually line the Condor up on the highway. Use differential braking until you get enough airspeed to steer it aerodynamically. Careful on the brakes — you’ll flip yourself over if you have takeoff power in and you hit the brakes too hard.”
“I’ll get out and line it up,” Griffin said, and before Hal could protest, he had undogged his hatch and was scrambling out. It was no problem for him to lift up the nose of the aircraft and reposition it on the highway centerline.
But just as he did, a warning beeped in his helmet. “I’m picking up an aircraft coming our way.” He raised his rail gun and followed the prompts in his helmet until he could see the threat symbol in his electronic visor. “Got him! Got him!” he said excitedly. “Low, six miles, speed one-ten. Probably a damned helicopter gunship or attack plane.”
“Easy, sir. Wait for him to come into range,” Hal said. With the powered exoskeleton, Griffin tracked the incoming aircraft easily. “Should be any second now. Don’t lead him — the projectile will move a hell of a lot faster than—”
Suddenly Griffin heard in his helmet,
It did neither. As Griffin watched, his electronic visor showed another target — this one moving much faster than the helicopter.
He didn’t hesitate. He jumped atop the Condor aircraft and watched as the laser-guided missile streaked in. Like a hockey goalie, he crouched down, keeping the missile centered in his sights while balancing. He raised the rail gun and tried to line up on the incoming missile.
But before he could get a shot off, it hit. The missile deflected off the barrel of the rail gun, off Griffin’s right arm, veered away from Condor, hit the ground, and exploded. The rail gun shattered in his hands, and he was blown backward off of the Condor and several yards through the air onto the hard-baked desert floor.
He was still alive. He heard warning buzzers, his electronic visor was cracked, and his body felt as if he were being turned on a rotisserie over a blazing bonfire — but he was still alive.
“Colonel Griffin!” he heard Hal Briggs shout. Briggs was kneeling beside him, putting out an electrical fire from his backpack and belt and removing his helmet. “Holy shit…”
“Where…where’s that gunship, Hal…?” Griffin breathed. “Get him, damn it!”
Hal turned and raised his rail gun — but before he could line up on the aircraft, another explosion erupted a short distance away. The Russian gunship had shot a second laser-guided missile into the Condor, blowing it to pieces. “Oh, my God!” Griffin shouted. “Turabi and his sergeant…”
“They’re clear,” Hal said. “They’re trying to find a place to hide.” Just as he was about to fire on the aircraft, he received warning in his helmet. “Oh, shit, another aircraft inbound.”
He turned to take a shot at the second aircraft, then slung his rail gun over his shoulder, picked up Griffin, and leaped away — just as another laser-guided missile exploded in the exact spot where they’d been a fraction of a second earlier. Hal landed from his jump and had barely enough time to cover Griffin with his body when the second aircraft, a Russian Mi-24 Hind-D attack helicopter, peppered him with thirty-millimeter cannon fire. The shock of the heavy-caliber shells hitting Briggs was so fierce that, even protected by Briggs’s armored body, Griffin felt his breath being knocked out of his lungs by the impact. As soon as the cannon fire stopped, Briggs scooped up Griffin and made another thruster jump in a different direction, away from Turabi and Dendara.
But the explosion, the gunship attack, and that last leap substantially depleted his power — warning tones were popping up the moment he landed from his jump. Griffin obviously saw them, too, because he held out his spare power pack. “Turn around — I’ll swap power packs.”
“Not this one, you won’t,” Hal said, examining the pack — it had shattered along with the rest of Trevor’s backpack. He quickly ejected his nearly spent power pack and replaced it with his emergency one, then made another leap when he noticed the first gunship lining up for a cannon or missile attack.
But it was soon obvious that the Russian helicopter pilots had set up their attack-orbit plan well. Hal couldn’t jump in any direction without a gunship able to bear down on him quickly with only minor corrections. As soon as he landed from his last jump, cannon shells were raining down on him, while the other gunship was circling to begin his attack.
Hal found that he was a few yards away from a shallow wash, and while he waited for his thrusters to recharge, he carried Griffin to it. “You gotta stay here, sir,” Hal said. “If we’re going to stop these bastards, I need to get some room to fight. Burrow down as deep as you can and hide under the sand — your suit will help screen your heat signature from their IR sensors.”
“Hal…” But he was gone seconds later.
As soon as Briggs landed, he hefted his rail gun, took aim on the closest gunship, and fired. Nothing
