It was time to do some killing, Patrick thought wrathfully.
A targeting cursor appeared on his display, highlighting a spot deep in a clump of trees off to the flank of the enemy mortar crew. Two-man sniper team. Range five hundred and twenty meters, the computer warned.
Reacting instantly, Patrick unlimbered his 25mm autocannon. He charged straight ahead, swiveling to fire on the move. A quick burst ripped the sniper and his spotter to pieces.
One of the bearded men serving the mortar looked up and saw him coming. His eyes widened in dismay. Yelling a warning, he fumbled for the assault rifle slung across his back. His startled comrades did the same, scrabbling frantically for the small arms they’d laid aside while feeding HE rounds into the mortar tube.
They were too late.
Patrick tore into them like a tiger pouncing on a flock of panicked goats. In a blur of purposeful, brutal motion, his robotic hands smashed skulls, shattered rib cages, and ripped screaming men limb from limb. Blood and broken bits of bone sprayed across the clearing and spattered across his armor.
At the end, one man tried to run.
“Not so fast,” Patrick said coolly. He caught the fleeing man in a remorseless, implacable grip and casually spun him around. “You win the toss. You get to live.”
His gray-bearded prisoner stared up at him in terror. “‘Adhhab ‘iilaa aljahim, shaytan! Go to hell, demon!” One hand scrabbled for a pull-cord detonator dangling from his coat pocket.
“You first,” Patrick retorted. Without hesitating, he hurled the other man high into the air and crouched down, covering the sensor arrays on the CID’s six-sided head with his arms.
WHUUMP.
The suicide vest exploded.
As the pall of smoke and grisly debris drifted away downwind, Patrick stood back up. A few more camouflage plates had taken a beating from the shrapnel packed into the vest, but his CID was otherwise virtually unscathed.
From start to finish, less than three minutes had passed from the moment the first mortar round hit the air base.
Inside a nondescript panel van parked along a dirt road several kilometers away, three men sat transfixed with horror, watching the gruesome images streaming in from long-range video cameras they’d sited to cover the Chechen attack.
“Presvataya Bogoroditsa. Holy Mother of God,” Captain Artem Mikheyev said shakily. “Unbelievable.”
“Those poor fucking sods never had a chance,” Usenko agreed. The major shook his head in dismay. “Not against that creature. Not against so much speed, firepower, and armor.”
Konstantin Rusanov swallowed hard. “That machine’s sensors must be incredible,” he said. “Did you see how easily it avoided the trip wires the Chechens set? My God, the robot spotted them as easily as if they’d been wrapped in neon-red tape!”
Usenko pulled his gaze away from the monitors. “Pack your gear,” he ordered. “The sooner we’re well away from this place, the safer I will feel.”
“Yes, sir,” both of his subordinates said in unison.
“I hope our masters in Moscow find the information gained from this massacre of use,” the major said sourly. He grimaced. “God knows I have no love for mindless brutes like those Chechen thugs, but even they deserved a better end.”
EIGHT
Powerful floodlights run off portable generators turned night into day for the teams of Polish military police investigators still combing the clearing. They were looking for clues that would help identify those involved in the mortar attack. Numbered yellow markers scattered across the field tagged pieces of evidence left in situ. More floodlights glowed in the distance, showing where another team was hard at work inside a large semitrailer truck they’d found abandoned along a nearby farm road.
Brad McLanahan stood in the darkness just outside the lit area, watching the investigators do their work. He avoided looking too closely at the row of black plastic body bags lined up for transport to the nearest morgue. He’d seen the battered and broken remains of the men his father had killed before they’d been discreetly tagged, photographed, and bundled away. He’d also seen the dried bloodstains spattered across the CID’s torso and limbs.
Despite his warm uniform jacket, he shivered.
Nadia Rozek took his arm in hers. She nestled her head gently against his shoulder. Brad sighed. Her touch helped ease a little of the tension and fear he felt building up inside.
Martindale and Macomber finished talking to the grim-faced Polish officer heading up the investigation and came over.
“Captain Sojka says his best guess is that these men were from Chechnya or somewhere else in the Caucasus,” Martindale told them. “Probably Islamist radicals. Apparently, they were all wired with explosive vests, but only one had time to set his off.”
“Islamic radicals?” Nadia said. Her eyes flashed angrily. “Perhaps so. But I am sure they were doing Moscow’s bidding this time, not that of Allah. The Russians have often used some of the Chechen factions for their dirty work.”
“That seems probable,” Martindale agreed. His face was troubled. “But I am still somewhat surprised that Gryzlov would authorize direct action against us like this.”
Macomber snorted. “Why?”
“After their success in wrecking that Romanian reactor, I would have expected the next Russian move to be something subtler and more potent.” Martindale shook his head. “A short mortar barrage on one Iron Wolf base? What could Gryzlov really hope to achieve with this kind of pinprick attack?”
“Yeah, well, I’ve got three dead troopers and a bunch more wounded who might see things a little differently,” Macomber muttered.
Brad nodded. “Whack’s right, sir. Short or not, that attack still did a heck of a lot of damage.”
One of the mortar rounds had exploded right in the middle of a joint Polish — Iron Wolf recon team heading out on an exercise. Other hits had destroyed several aircraft on the flight line. Between President Barbeau’s moves to restrict arms sales to Poland and the difficulty involved in evading her sanctions, finding replacements for those men and machines would be costly and time-consuming.
“Gryzlov is the kind of thug who never saw a weapon he wouldn’t use,” Macomber went on. “Sure, he may be planning to launch more of that cyberwar shit, but that’s not going to stop him from hitting us anywhere and in any way he can.” He frowned. “Plus, we made it fricking easy for him. Once the bad guys ‘made’ Powidz as our base last year, we should have upped stakes and deployed somewhere else.”
That was true, Brad realized. They’d gotten lazy, too attached to the facilities and central strategic position the Polish air base offered. By continuing to operate out of a fixed and identified location, they’d made it possible for the Russians to plan and execute this terrorist strike.
“I take your point, Major,” Martindale said quietly. “Perhaps you’d better start scouting out a new base for the squadron.”
“It’s not going to be easy to find something now,” Macomber warned. “Gryzlov’s already got his reconnaissance satellites making routine passes over every military facility in the AFN.”
Nadia spoke up. “I suspect the Russians also have eyes on us here.” She shrugged. “Our Military Counterintelligence Service does superb work, but it is a difficult task to root out any deep-cover agents.”
“What about shifting all of our operations to the Scrapheap?” Martindale suggested. “We’re still flying under the radar there, aren’t we?”