Doc Holliday and Junie Flynn stood in a factory in Russia without ever leaving New York. On one of the big screens they watched the feeds from Echo Team’s bodycams as they moved through the shipping warehouse and rooms filled with manufacturing machines. The individual pieces were absorbed by a MindReader engineering program that applied design logic software and assembled the pieces. The software relied as much on its deep database of existing machinery as the imperative logic of a computer. The pieces could only fit together in so many possible ways, and the quantum system calculated hundreds of thousands of possibilities.
Junie watched holograms of the various pieces turn this way and that and then fly together, and moment by moment she could feel her heart race faster and faster, and her blood turn to ice. She knew what was coming. When she cut a look at Doc, it was clear the scientist did, too. Neither of them liked it. Both of them were terrified at the possibility. At the reality.
Calpurnia, speaking for MindReader, spoke so calmly as to be intensely unnerving. “Assembly complete,” said the soft, feminine AI voice. “Pushkin Dynamics is manufacturing and shipping God Machines.”
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED NINETEEN
Doc called and told me the bad news. The scary news. The more she told me, the scarier it got.
“How many?” I asked, not really wanting an answer. I was working my way along a hallway that was cracked and choked with debris. Clouds of dust filled the air.
“It’s bad. Estimating the contents of the crates in the shipping bay…? Maybe six hundred.”
I closed my eyes.
“These are the small ones,” she said, trying to sound hopeful. And failing. The small ones were what they used in D.C.
“How many were sent to the States? More than were used in D.C.?”
“We can’t tell yet.”
“Try harder,” I snarled, and disconnected from the call. Six hundred God Machines in the shipping bay. Good lord. So many questions caught fire in my head. How many had they already made? How many had been shipped? And… to where? Was D.C. only the first of a series of attacks?
“Yes,” I said aloud, and my voice echoed eerily.
I looked around and saw only damage. That felt like a state ment about life in general. Whatever was happening here — an earthquake, a God machine coming to life, or maybe something as mundane and comforting as a fricking bomb — the building had taken a real beating. The walls and floor were crisscrossed with cracks and there was nothing left in the windows but broken teeth of glass. Cold wind blew in from outside, turning the swirling dust into frigid ghosts. The rumbling stopped again and now there was a heavy silence, but I did not buy the implied lie that it was over.
That orderly process was getting its ass kicked by memories of a guy dressed like a reptile walking out of walls and walking into walls. That was seriously scrambling my head, and I had no idea in hell what I was going to do with that.
There was sporadic gunfire from several different parts of the building, and then Bunny called, “Green Giant to Spartan, be advised Bravo Squad’s coming out, but we don’t want to walk into a shooting gallery. We could use some covering fire.”
Duffy’s reply was, “Yeah, yeah, don’t tell your grandma how to suck eggs.” Despite everything, he was trying to sound normal. Cool and confident. It was a soldier’s trick; a battlefield version of fake it ’til you make it. But the cracks in his voice were as evident as those in the walls. Even so, I heard two spaced shots accompanied by the sound of shattering glass. Then a third shot.
“No one’s waiting outside the door, kids,” he said dryly.
“What about the parking lot?” asked Bunny.
“They left four men outside to guard the vehicles,” said Duffy. “Mind you step over the bodies.”
“A team is pinned down in the loading bay,” called Cole. “Count twenty-plus hostiles between us and the door. Guards and staff, and all of them acting crazy.”
“B team is in the same shit, boss,” said Bunny. “We’re about to get swarmed. No way we’re getting through this without putting civilians down.”
I took a breath in through my flaring nostrils and ground my teeth. “There are no civilians in here. This is a target-rich environment. You are free to go weapons hot, weapons all. Get out of the building by any means necessary.”
I heard Tate’s bass thunder of laugh. “Then hold on to your nutsacks, kids, because it’s about to get loud in here.”
And by that we all knew he was about to unlock Doc Holliday’s Toybox.
Bunny and Tate hunkered down behind a row of file cabinets as a bunch of Russians ran through the darkened office suite. There was no plan or coordination to the movement of the hostiles, and Bunny could see three distinct types of enemy: men and women in lab coats, upper-floor security personnel, and soldiers.
“Where are all the lab guys coming from?” murmured Tate. “Thermals said there were only guards in here.”
“Got to be shielded labs like the ones Cowboy found,” said Bunny. “No way to know how many cockroaches are going to come out of the woodwork.” He shifted around to look into Tate’s eyes. “You ready to do this?”
The bravado Tate had used when on the team channel was just that. The reality of using deadly force against people who were clearly under the influence of some kind of strange technology, and many of them civilians, was the kind of thing that could cripple a soldier. It could also make a soldier freeze, or hesitate. Or it could go the other way and turn a horror show into something approaching entertainment. None of those outcomes was good.
The balaclava hid Tate’s mouth, but from the way the material moved it was clear Tate was licking his lips. Dry mouth. Fear. Yeah.
“I’m good to go, Green Giant,” said the big former cop.
“You sure?”
“I’m good,” Tate said. They studied each other for a moment longer, and then Bunny gave him a single, slow nod.
“Then let’s do this and go home.”
Tate pivoted on the balls of his feet and peered around the edge of their shelter. A pack of the madmen were coming their way.
“Fire in the hole,” said Tate as he reached for the buttons on his wrist computer. He didn’t yell it, though. It was like he was telling himself to brace for what was coming.
The blast and fire chased all shadows from the room.
“Sergeant Rock,” cried Cole, “on your six!”
Top ducked, spun, and fired as a bearded man in a lab coat swung a heavy fire ax. The blade whistled three inches over his head as three rounds from Top’s gun punched neat red holes in the attacker’s chest. The ax, released from dying fingers, thumped hard between Top’s shoulder blades and drove him down hard on his knees.
“Stay down,” Cole yelled as she fired over him at two other attackers, catching them dead center in the sternum. Then she caught Top under the shoulder and hauled him to his feet. “Are you hurt?”
“Who cares?” he growled as he turned to cut down a pair of soldiers with submachine guns.
I heard Bug in my ear as I ran toward the sounds of battle.
“Cowboy, the building’s coming apart.”
“No shit,” I said as I jumped across a four-foot-wide split in the floor that widened further as I cleared it. Ghost barked furiously and then ran and leaped across. I snaked out a hand and caught his harness and hauled him to safety.