Its surviving companion fired back. Radar-guided 30mm rounds whipcracked through the air.
Charlie’s CID stumbled, hit several times across her torso and legs. Her composite armor held, but warnings flashed through her consciousness. Hydraulic-systems damage. Fuel Cells Four through Seven down. Active radar off-line. She swiveled fast, hearing servos and actuators grinding and whining in protest. Another burst from her autocannon destroyed the second Tunguska before it could hit her again.
Teeth set in a determined grin, she turned and ran on. But her CID was moving slower, laboring as the computer tried to compensate for her damaged hydraulics and reduced power supplies.
WHAAMM!
A 125mm tungsten alloy sabot round slammed into Charlie’s CID with bone-shaking force — ripping off the arm carrying her autocannon. The impact sent her flying. She landed in a crumpled heap.
For a moment, she lay still inside the cockpit, groggily trying to comprehend what had just happened. Her display was a sea of red-and-orange failure and damage indicators. “Ah, crap,” she muttered. “This is not good.”
With an effort, Charlie wobbled back to her feet, trailing bits of wiring and shattered armor. Spatters of red hydraulic fluid stained the snow. Through the cascading failure warnings scrolling across her screens, she saw the Russian T-90 that had hit her rumbling closer. Its turret swiveled, bringing that big main gun to bear again.
She fired her rail gun. The T-90 exploded, torn open from end to end.
Rail-gun ammunition expended, her computer warned. Hydraulics crippled. All sensors off-line. Power at fifteen percent.
“I’m not going to make it, Whack,” Charlie radioed. “This tin can is dying on its feet.”
“Then set the self-destruct and bail out,” Macomber urged.
“Already on it,” she said crisply. Initiate self-destruct sequence, she ordered the CID’s computer through her neural link. Authorization Turlock One-Alpha.
Self-destruct authorization confirmed, the machine replied. Thirty. Twenty-nine. Twenty-eight…
Time to get while the getting was good, Charlie thought. She squirmed out of the haptic interface, feeling fully human again as her awareness of the CID dropped away. Eighteen. Seventeen. Sixteen. Wriggling around, she punched the emergency hatch release. Nothing happened. She punched it again.
“Damn it,” she murmured. She keyed her radio. “The hatch is jammed, Whack.”
Four hundred meters away, Macomber turned toward her, taking out another Tunguska antiaircraft vehicle with a quick burst of 25mm armor-piercing ammunition. He was near the top of the low rise. Burning Russian armored vehicles dotted the hill. “Abort the self-destruct, Charlie,” he said. “I’ll come get you.”
“It’s too late, Whack, but thanks,” she said, still determinedly working on the hatch mechanism. There was no way she could reengage with the haptic interface in time. Four. Three… “See you on the other side—”
Her CID exploded in a huge ball of fire that lit the night sky for miles around.
With his face set like flint, Macomber swung away and accelerated to his CID’s best remaining speed — determined to break clear of this murderous ambush or die trying. He darted past another smashed Russian T-90, veering sharply to put its flaming hulk between him and the enemy’s surviving tanks. Moving at more than seventy kilometers an hour, he skidded down the rear slope in a spray of snow and fractured ice.
Just ahead he saw a meandering, ice-choked stream and then open ground. A stand of pine trees rose several hundred meters away, offering the promise of cover and limited concealment.
Macomber leaped across the stream, landed heavily on the ground beyond, and took off running. The woods were only three hundred meters away now. Flashes rippled like lightning across the distant horizon. Artillery alert, his CID reported. Multiple 122mm howitzer rounds inbound. Impact zone is—
The world around him erupted in fire and smoke. Huge fountains of dirt and rock soared high into the air, hurled skyward by exploding shells. Knocked off its feet by a near miss, his CID tumbled across the quaking ground. His rail gun, riddled by shrapnel, went flying, along with shards of broken composite armor. Swearing under his breath, he scrambled upright.
And went down again under the hammerblow of another massive impact as a 122mm HE round detonated only meters away. More shrapnel punched into the robot’s torso, arms, legs, and head. Damage readouts flickered across his static-laced displays in a blur of red.
Once more, Macomber pushed his damaged machine up and into an awkward, shambling gait. Most of his sensors were dead, along with all of his weapons. He staggered onward. That patch of pine forest was close… so damned close.
Movement at the edge of his failing vision display caught his attention. He turned… and saw another T-90 main battle tank grinding out of defilade to intercept him. Its turret whined round, slewing its 125mm smoothbore gun on target. Two wheeled BTR-82 troop carriers fanned out to either side of the Russian tank.
“Well, just fuck me,” Macomber said tiredly. He focused on his link with the computer. Initiate self-destruction sequence. Authorization—
The T-90 fired its main gun.
Macomber felt himself slammed backward with colossal force. Everything around him flared bright red and orange and then faded to black.
When he came to moments later, he found himself curled inside the CID’s shattered cockpit, staring up at the night sky. Hit by an armor-piercing round at point-blank range, his Iron Wolf robot had been blown in half. He fumbled with the straps holding him in place. There was no way he was just going to lie here and die. Not in this fucking machine anyway, he thought angrily.
Gritting his teeth against a sudden wave of pain, Macomber twisted out of the wrecked CID’s torso and dropped into the snow, landing on his knees. Still dazed, he painfully lifted his head to look around. The two BTRs had halted not far away. Rifle-armed Russian troops were pouring out of their open hatches. Urged on by a shouting officer, they trotted in his direction. Wearily, Macomber staggered to his feet and assumed a fighting stance. Win or lose, these sons of bitches would know they’d been in a fight.
Some of the soldiers raised their weapons, but they did not fire. They moved in quickly, obviously more fascinated by the abandoned machine and not worried one bit about their quarry. Whack had enough strength to crush one trachea and break one arm. He heard a rifle drop to the ground and he scrambled to find it. But now, enraged, the rest of the soldiers swarmed over him like a pack of dogs bringing down a wild boar.
Macomber went down hard, hammered into oblivion by rifle butts and fists.
THIRTY-SIX
Brad McLanahan had watched Charlie Turlock’s CID beacon disappear from his tactical display in stunned disbelief. God only knew, he was no stranger to the violent deaths of people close to him. In the past couple of years alone, he’d lost plenty of friends and teammates. But it was still a shock to see someone like Charlie — so full of life and energy and joy — wiped out in the blink of an eye. He’d felt her death like the sharp, piercing blow of an ice pick driven straight into his heart. What made it even worse was realizing that it could easily have been Nadia piloting that robot, and feeling grateful that she was safe.