“About ten klicks,” Miles replied. “What is that thing, anyway…Mercury’s chariot? It’s not exactly an airplane, is it — more like a tin can with balloons on it. It was badly burned but intact.”
“How did you find us?”
“That wasn’t a problem, lassie — we saw you streak across the sky and fall to Earth like a lightning bolt from Zeus himself!” Miles said, his eyes twinkling as the memory of seeing that sight came back. “Like the biggest meteor ever seen! You must have been trailing a tail of fire fifty kilometers long if it was an inch! It was a miracle to see three human beings still recognized as such in the wreckage, and even more amazing to find you still alive! We nearly shit our pants watchin’ you blazin’ down right toward us — thought the good Lord was going to end all of our sufferin’ right then and there on the spot — but ya missed us. Findin’ you alive was nothin’ short of a miracle.”
“Unfortunately that means that the Pasdaran probably saw us as well.”
Miles nodded. “They di’na come around too often, but they’re surely be sniffin’ around out this way, for sure. The faster we get you folks out of here, the better for all of us. You should be well enough to travel after the painkiller kicks in. It won’t be easy, but I think you can do it.” He turned to the Tin Man lying beside her. “Now this gent, I’m still not so sure. Can you tell me how to…unlock him, unscrew him, unbolt him, whatever, so I can have a look and check him over?”
“We don’t have time, Miles,” Charlie said. “We’ll carry him.” Choking back the pain, she managed to sit up on her cot. “We’ll be going now, Miles. I want to thank you for all you’ve done for us.”
“I’ll be sad to see you go, Charlie, but frankly I’d rather not have you around when the Pasdaran or al-Quds goons track you down here.” He looked carefully at Wohl and the Tin Man suit. “I think I’ve read about these things lately, haven’t I? The American anti-terrorist outfit.” Charlie didn’t respond. “Oh, I see — you could tell me, but then you’d have to kill me, right?” She laughed, causing a ripple of pain through her back, but she still welcomed the humor. “All right, no more questions, Charlie. I’ll go out and see if the coast is clear. Good luck to you, lass.”
“Thanks.” She grimaced at the pain as she started to pull herself up, but the stuff McNulty gave her must’ve started working because the pain wasn’t debilitating this time. After McNulty departed, Charlie lowered her voice and spoke, “Odin, Stud Four.”
“We read you loud and clear, Four,” Patrick McLanahan responded via the subcutaneous global transceiver system. Every member of the Air Battle Force had the communications and data transceiver system implanted into their bodies for the rest of their lives, ostensibly for situations like this but realistically to allow the government to monitor each member’s whereabouts for
“Affirmative — he’s alive but still unconscious,” Charlie said. Wohl started to put his helmet on, preparing to move out. “I’m going to mount up and we’ll—”
Suddenly McNulty ran back into the tent, completely out of breath. “Soldiers, just outside the camp,” he said frantically. “Hundreds of them.”
“Odin, do we have a ride yet?” Charlie radioed.
“Stud, this is Genesis,” Dave Luger cut in. “We have a CSAR team on the way from Herat, ETE ninety minutes. We’re launching cover aircraft from Batman Air Base in Turkey, but they’ll take about the same amount of time. What’s your situation?”
“Getting tense,” Charlie said. “We’ll give you a call when we’re safe. Stud Four, out.” Charlie went over to the large box lying on the dirt floor. “Any backpacks or rifles, Five?”
“Negative,” Wohl replied. “Sorry.”
“That’s okay — you had your hands full,” Charlie said. “Let’s get moving.”
Miles motioned to the large box that Wohl had been carrying with him when he entered the camp. “Are those your weapons? Now would be a good time to get them out, lass.”
“Not exactly,” Charlie said. “CID One, deploy.”
As Miles watched in amazement, the box began to move, quickly shifting size and shape like a magician’s wand changing into a bouquet of flowers. In seconds, the large but ordinary-looking metal box had transformed into a ten-foot-tall robot, almost bursting out the top of the tent, with smooth black “skin,” a bullet-shaped head with no discernible eyes or ears, and large, fully articulating arms, legs, and fingers.
“CID One, pilot up,” Charlie spoke. The robot assumed a leaning-forward stance as if on a sprinter’s starting block, but with one leg and both arms extended backward. Grimacing from the pain, Charlie stepped around the robot and climbed up the extended leg, using the arms as handrails. She entered a code into a tiny keypad somewhere behind the robot’s head, a hatch popped open on its back, and she slipped herself inside. The hatch closed…
…and moments later, to the Irishman’s amazement, the robot came to life and stood, resembling a regular person in everything but its appearance — its movements were so smooth, fluid, and lifelike that Miles immediately found himself forgetting it was a machine!
Charlie scooped up the still-unconscious Wayne Macomber. “Now is a very bad time to be out of it, Whack,” she said. She activated the Cybernetic Infantry Device’s millimeter-wave radar and scanned the area outside the tent. “Looks like they’re trying to surround us,” she said. “The south side looks like our best escape route — just one truck set up down that way.”
“How about a little diversion to the north and west?” Wohl asked, studying the radar image data being transmitted to him from Charlie’s CID unit. “Looks like a machine-gun squad getting set up on the north side. I can use one of those.”
“Sounds good.” She reached a fist out, and he punched it in return with his own. “As a hunky Australian actor said in a movie once: ‘Unleash hell.’”
“On the way. Better give him some cover.” Wohl sprinted out the front of the tent. Charlie knocked Miles to the ground and covered him just as a hail of automatic gunfire shredded the tent apart.
“Hop on, Miles,” Charlie’s electronically synthesized voice said. Still bent over, she shifted the inert form in her arms aside, far enough to form a space between her body and the Tin Man. He hesitated, still dumbfounded by what he had just seen. “You can’t stay here. The Revolutionary Guards Corps will think you’re one of us.”
“Can ye carry us both?”
“I can carry twenty of you, Miles. Let’s go.” He lay across her arms, and she rolled Macomber back on top of him and tightened her grip, sandwiching him in securely. “Hang on.”
But when she got up, there was obviously something wrong — Miles felt a high-frequency vibration within the machine, and Charlie’s gait was unsteady. “What’s wrong?” he shouted.
“The CID unit is damaged,” Charlie said. “Must’ve been from the crash.”
“I copy,” Wohl radioed. Charlie could see his position in her electronic data visor — he was moving rapidly through the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps’ positions, stopping briefly at each concentration of troops. “Head out the best you can. I’ll be beside you in a moment.”
The next few minutes were sheer torture. Wohl had drawn some of their fire away briefly, but it returned full force just moments after Charlie burst from the tent, seemingly all aimed at them. The sounds were deafening. They were consumed with clouds of smoke, occasional blasts of fire, and continuous gunfire. McNulty screamed when a round hit his left leg, and screamed again when a crushing explosion knocked Charlie to the ground. They were up again within moments, but now the smooth running rhythm was replaced by an awkward limping shuffle, like an automobile with a flat tire and bent rim.
Wohl ran beside Charlie, a Chinese Type 67 machine gun in his right hand, a metal can of ammunition in his left. “Can you travel, Captain?”
“Not for long.”
“What the hell is going on?” they heard.
“Whack!” Thankfully, Macomber was awake, although he sounded sluggish and doped-up. “Are you okay?”
“My head feels like it’s been cracked open,” Macomber said thickly. Charlie suspected a concussion. “Am I alive?”
“So far — hopefully it’ll stay that way,” Charlie said. “Can you walk?”
“Do I still have legs? I can’t feel anything down there.”
“Stay put and try not to move — you’ll squish the other passenger.”
“Other passenger?”
Charlie tried to run, but things were definitely getting worse. A rocket-propelled grenade exploded on her
