Then someone came out of nowhere and tried to take Bunny with a burst of automatic gunfire, but the big young man had been ready. He jagged right and opened up with his heavy MPS AA-12 drum-fed combat shotgun loaded with explosive pellets. The first round hit the attacker center mass and blew him apart, Kevlar notwithstanding.
Bunny spun as three more of the Russians swarmed him from close range. They hadn’t fired because their man had been between them and Bunny, but as that guy fell, the first Russian slammed shoulder-first into Bunny. The attacker was a brute who looked like he could bench-press a grizzly, but Bunny twisted and sloughed the impact off, and used the chunky stock of his shotgun to crush the back of the Russian’s head. Bunny whirled as the other two brought their rifles up, but suddenly Pete Smith was there. He carried guns, but he preferred knives for close work, and had a matched set of marine KA-BARs in his gloved fists. The seven-inch blades whipped across arms and faces and throats and Smith walked between the falling bodies to check on Bunny and Tate.
“Lead the way, brother,” said Tate, relieved to see his friend.
“Can’t,” said Smith, moving off to the left, “I got outlaws on my back-trail. We need to find Alpha Team and get out through the loading bay.”
“This is going south on us fast,” Tate grumbled.
“Welcome to Echo Team,” said Bunny, and fell in behind the others, walking backward fast, his shotgun ready. There was the sound of running feet from the direction Smith had come, and he did not think it was the cavalry. “Go, go, go!”
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWENTY
I paused at the entrance to the stairwell and watched the drama play out on my wrist computer. All of my team were fighting for their lives. I felt pride for the way they handled themselves; for their efficiency and skill and courage. I felt fear in an equal measure.
Alpha and Bravo Squads both needed my help, but Bravo had the Toybox and Alpha did not. So, I ran for the loading bay.
Ghost barked a warning that was immediately drowned out as a huge chunk of the ceiling in the stairwell dropped down with a murderous thud. Then I heard and felt the grumble of protesting timbers and the cough of shattering concrete as another tremor — heavier than the others — punched and kicked its way through the building. It rose up from beneath me and tried to pull the whole building down.
The tremor ended but there was a tension buzzing in the air and I did not for a minute believe this was over.
I tapped to the command channel. “Bug, kill the lights. Sergeant Rock, I’m on my way. Be there ASAP. Watch for me on your six.”
A second later the whole place went absolutely dark.
I slipped on a pair of the Google Tactical Military Scout glasses that had been designed by one of Mr. Church’s “friends in the industry” expressly for covert special ops use. I set the controls to night vision, and then Ghost and I went hunting in the dark.
The shadows were filled with wild gunfire, but the bad guys didn’t know where to look or who was in there with them. Top and Cole immediately shifted position per our training patterns. They would have their night vision on, too.
I saw them moving from behind cover. Security lights flashed on, but Cole punched them out with three fast, precise shots. It seemed like there was an army of killers between me, Top, and Cole, and the door. We could see in the dark, though. They could not.
Bunny, Tate, and Smith came in from a side door, and then it was all of Echo Team against five times our number.
Long story short, we killed them all.
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-ONE
Duffy stared through the scope and tried to understand what he was seeing.
The sky was growing intensely dark, as it often did right before dawn, but there were stars up there.
Except the stars were moving.
They weren’t shooting stars, either. They moved with an eerie grace just above the horizon. Three of them in a perfect geometric formation. A triangle.
“No,” breathed Duffy as he realized what he was seeing.
There had been training videos and photos in DMS case files, but he had never actually seen a T-craft before. He didn’t want to see one now.
It came closer, lower.
It was wrong, somehow. It was too big, for one thing. The machines Howard Shelton had built were only a little larger than F-16s. This one was five times as big.
And the three lights, one on each wingtip, which he had mistaken for the last stars of a fading night, were no longer white. No, they cycled through white to yellow and now they burned with a brilliant, luminous green.
The T-craft moved toward the building in a dreadful silence. That twisted Duffy’s brain, because it seemed impossible for something so large to be so quiet. It was like something in a dream.
Or a nightmare.
The green lights pulsed once, twice… and then every car in the parking lot seemed to judder and dance as if they were somehow coming alive. They were not. Duffy knew that because he, too, was trembling.
It was the ground.
It was another earthquake, and Duffy knew with absolute clarity that it wasn’t the God Machine Captain Ledger saw in the basement causing this destruction.
It was the T-craft.
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-TWO
“Spartan to Cowboy,” Duffy yelled in a voice that had risen past alarm to actual panic, “you need to get out of there right fucking now. Half the damn building’s coming down.”
He was wrong about that.
It was the whole damn building.
The rumble swelled to thunder and suddenly the walls seemed to shiver, shedding pieces of masonry and plaster like a dog shaking water off its coat. I heard a sharp sound within that roar and saw a massive chunk of the ceiling tear loose.
“Top!” I screamed, but Cole was already in motion, hurling herself at Top with a flying tackle that caught the older man around the waist and drove him backward. They fell together and rolled, bumping the ground with elbows and knees as ten tons of wood, steel, and debris whumped down exactly where Top had been. I saw Tate push Bunny and Smith away as a stack of wooden crates toppled and fell. The crates exploded on impact and pieces of God Machines went skittering across the floor.
“Out, out!” I yelled, but everyone was already running for the loading bay door as more cracks snapped their way across the ceiling. Behind me, Ghost gave a sharp bark of alarm and warning, and I spun to see him leap forward as the floor gaped like the mouth of some hungry monster. Gas and dust belched upward and for a moment I couldn’t tell whether Ghost got clear or was swallowed whole. Panic flared in my chest, but then a white bulk sprang through the veil of dust and landed beside me, nails skittering on the broken floor.
“Cowboy,” bellowed Top, “side door.”
I spun to see him and Cole at the exit. She was fighting the lock. “There’s something wrong with the lock,” she said. “Give me a second.…”
Top pushed her aside, tensed, and gave the door a savage kick. Top is as experienced a martial artist as I am, and he put every ounce of his considerable muscular mass and power, along with a metric ton of fear, into that kick. The door, however, barely budged. As I ran toward them I saw Top assess the frame, and I could see what he saw. The earthquake had twisted the frame out of true and the metal security door was wedged there. He turned and looked at the other exits, but debris was raining down in front of them. And there was no time for a blaster plaster. It was kick the door or get buried alive.