Buch lesen: «Extreme Arsenal»

PROLOGUE

Yuma Proving Grounds, Arizona

Dane Whitman watched the MidKnight Mark II armored combat drone roll across the Yuma proving grounds. He glanced over at General Stephen Rogers and smiled.

“How’s she holding up?” Whitman asked.

“Still quiet on the seismic detectors,” Rogers said as he looked at the monitor. He swiveled the flat screen so that Whitman could look at it. The general hovered the cursor over the infrared sensors. “Even its heat signature is nearly invisible. Good work.”

“Stealth and armored combat never worked that well, hand in hand, but this is a revolutionary new design,” Whitman replied. “With the MidKnight, we can hit the enemy with impunity. Don’t want to risk a Marine platoon on foot? Send in a small squadron of MidKnights.”

Rogers pursed his lips. “What about regular tanks?”

“That’s the joy of this. The MidKnights are slave drones. One operator can handle and coordinate two of them. The range on the remotes are fairly limited, so our operators will need to be close. What better place than wrapped in the Chobam armor of an M-1A tank?” Whitman asked.

Rogers nodded. “But what about the tanks themselves?”

“The hypersonic vibrational dampeners are modular designs,” Whitman explained. “They can be installed in M-1As with ease.”

Rogers frowned. “So why use the drones?”

“To increase our armored ability. Instead of sending out large squadrons of tanks, we have two armored vehicles and four drones able to do the work of a squadron, with more firepower and superior coordination,” Whitman said. “And with less risk of someone with a cheap, shoulder-mounted rocket launcher taking out a tank crew.”

Rogers looked dubiously at the monitor.

Suddenly one of the MidKnights exploded. Chunks of armor plating and flames erupted as if from a metallic volcano.

“What in the hell?” Rogers demanded. He stood in the control booth, eyes locked on the field below. Another of the MidKnights detonated in an orange blossom of flame and debris.

“Sir!” Lieutenant Aaron Blake spoke up. “There’s something else out on the field!”

“Impossible!” Rogers bellowed. “This testing ground is protected on all sides. There are no access roads…”

The control tower shook.

Whitman held on to his chair, but Rogers and Blake were tossed to the floor. He glanced down to see a spiked disk pass near the bonfire of one of his drones. A long, thick tail rose from the thing’s back. Its bulbous tip spit out another flash of fire. He watched the low, armored intruder’s head spit twin lines of flame that smashed the tent with the MidKnight operators to shreds.

The millionaire inventor held his breath as more of those attackers became visible, their tails alive with jets of fire. Rockets speared out of the sides of the blunt tail tip and destroyed a hangar building.

“How in the blazes did they get here?” Rogers asked.

“Ankylosaurs,” Whitman whispered. “They look like Ankylosaurs.”

“What?” the general shouted.

“Ancient armored dinosaurs…” Whitman said. His eyes widened as one of the disk-shaped drones pivoted and opened fire on the base of the control tower with their heavy machine guns.

“Pull off of the field!” Rogers shouted into the mike. “Get out of the line of fire!”

Whitman looked at the monitor. In its infrared lens, the bodies of Yuma defenders flared hotly as they were pierced by lances of automatic weapons fire. Several had already fallen, turning from yellowish white to cool blue. Except for the flaming muzzles and rocket shell launchers, the Ankylosaurs were all but invisible to infrared and radar. He clicked through various detectors. The intruders were stealthier than his own designs. While the MidKnights and the Ankylosaurs were both invisible to radar, the black, spiked monstrosities had a null heat profile except when their weapons fired.

Glass shattered in the control room and Blake’s torso exploded as 25 mm shells ripped through him. Whitman recoiled, soaked with hot, fresh gore. Slimy gobs of pulped flesh dropped to the floor as he shifted position. Rogers stared in pained shock, for a moment at the head of the lifeless officer, and it took a moment for Whitman to focus on the fact that all the general held was a head attached to the grimy taillike spinal cord, ribs sticking up like insect legs where they’d been shattered.

“Get out of here now,” Rogers said resolutely. “This tower’s no protection against those things.”

Whitman hit the eject button on the DVD recorder drive.

“Come on, man!” Rogers shouted.

“The sensors have information on the attackers. We can use it!” Whitman replied.

“Think about your designs another—”

“No! To learn who is attac—” Whitman began. Something hot burned below his back and he suddenly felt very tired. The glimmering disk in his hand seemed too heavy to hold up and he flopped facedown on the floor.

“Whitman!” Rogers shouted. “Oh, God…”

Whitman didn’t know what the man in the green suit was talking about. His mind drifted. “Ankylosaurs…”

“Don’t talk,” Rogers said. He gripped Whitman’s lapels and pulled him along toward the steps.

Whitman was glassy-eyed in shock, his brain not registering properly. His breathing was difficult. He looked back over his shoulder and saw a pair of legs, half a pair of them actually, blown off just above the knees. One was flopped on its side, but the other leaned against a counter, as if it were still standing.

“Hey…” the weapons designer muttered as he was dragged over the top step.

“Save your strength, Dane. It’ll be okay,” Rogers whispered. “It’ll be okay…”

Whitman looked drunkenly up at the man. He thought he should know this nice person’s name, but it escaped him. All he could think of was the dinosaurs, the Ankylosaurs. He smiled.

He loved dinosaurs. He always liked to read books and watch movies about them…and when he went to the museum…

His eyes blinked lazily.

“Dane, hold on dammit,” Rogers gritted.

“I like the museum…” Whitman whispered, his head resting on the cold stone step. He closed his eyes, imagining an era when leviathans roamed the Earth.

Death took the genius as he smiled dreamily.

GENERAL ROGERS FELT for a pulse and found none. His lips pulled back tightly, and he looked down at the mirrored disk the man died to retrieve.

“To learn who attacked,” was what he’d said before the 25 mm cannon shell had blasted his upper thighs into a messy spray of vaporized flesh and bone.

Rogers took the disk and slipped it under his jacket. “Okay, Dane. I’ll make sure the right people get this.” The general took off down the stairs, reaching under his jacket and drawing out the SIG-Sauer M-11 pistol from its concealed holster. The little handgun wouldn’t do much against an armored juggernaut, but it was something that gave him some confidence. He wasn’t completely helpless.

As he reached the base of the tower, he glanced at a gaping hole in the wall. Two soldiers were strewed in the rubble on the steps, and Rogers knelt to check on them. Both were dead.

Numbing anger washed over him. These soldiers were under his command, and they had given their life in a rush to his side. His jaw set, he shook off his shock. He needed to contact the rest of his men and insure their safety. He looked down and spotted a field radio.

He plucked it from the corpse’s belt and heard the sounds of the Yuma Security Task Force as its members tried to coordinate a defense against the attacking robots.

“This is General Rogers. All security forces fall back! Those things are too powerful to stop!” he ordered. “Fall back to shelter and do not engage!”

Rogers sensed danger and threw himself to the base of the steps. The impact jarred the old soldier’s bones, but the drop saved his life as machine guns and cannon fire tore at the steps he’d just occupied. He looked at the radio and stunned realization hit.

The attackers drones had homed in on his transmission. He lurched to his feet and raced for the door. He pressed down the lock transmit button and called into the unit, “Cease radio communication! They’re targeting anything that transmits!”

Gunfire chopped at Rogers’s heels and he tossed the communicator away from him as he continued his mad dash across the field. The deadly line of autofire that hounded him swung away and ripped apart the ground where the radio bounced. The shock wave of a grenade detonation buffeted the general’s back, but Rogers continued to rush toward a stone bunker. The Ankylosaurs, as Whitman called them, paused, seemingly confused.

Rogers smiled. His last message had gotten through. The drones had nothing to target. One of the machines suddenly whirled toward him.

Radio targeting wasn’t their only means of detection, Rogers realized and he threw himself into a ditch instants before heavy-caliber machine gun fire slashed the ground he’d just vacated. The general flopped facedown in the mud and curled tightly to the bottom of the runoff ditch.

The rumble of the Ankylosaur’s approach thundered in his ears and he looked up at the looming robot. A blunt, bearlike head adorned with two 25 mm cannon barrels and belts for the weapons swiveled along the ditch. Multifaceted lenses swept across Rogers and he held his breath. Those lenses had to have been infrared sensors. The thing would spot him…

The Ankylosaur pivoted, as if continuing to search for him. Chilled and drenched, Rogers felt his teeth begin to chatter and he clenched his jaw shut. The cold mud caked him and obscured him from IR detection. Only the momentary snap of chattering teeth had drawn the murderous robot’s attention.

Sonar or vibrational sensors, Rogers realized. His ears throbbed with the hum and chatter of low-frequency sonics buzzing through the air. Just like Whitman’s design for the MidKnights. The ULF sonics provided an obscuring cloud of null-sound that counteracted both a vehicle’s audible signature and the vibrations it released as it moved. That’s how it had sneaked up on the testing grounds unseen. But from where had it come?

There was no time to answer that question.

Rogers stayed deathly still, counting his heartbeats, wondering whether the next pump would be his last. The two barrels leveled at him, like the murderous black-eyed sockets of the Grim Reaper himself. The general had served his country his entire life, and fought to make sure his men would be safe. At least he knew he’d give up that life having given his soldiers the chance to be safe.

A thunderbolt struck the head of the machine and hot, flaming wreckage sprayed all over Rogers. He recoiled from the sudden wave of burning splinters, but when he looked up, he saw that he was unharmed. He patted his jacket and felt the DVD, still intact, nothing had burned or marred his jacket where he’d secreted it.

“General!” a voice shouted. The Ankylosaur opened fire, and Rogers rushed along the ditch away from the autofire. He looked back to see the tail boom of the wounded battle robot swivel toward his troops.

Throwing all caution to the wind, Rogers leveled the muddy M-11 pistol at the raised launcher. He opened fire, burning off the entire 13-round magazine and the hot 9 mm ball round in the pipe. The tail boom sparked as the high-impulse bullets struck home, then flashed brilliantly.

The general’s stomach dropped as he realized that the robot tank had launched one of its rockets, but the fireball was too bright to be the flare of the miniature missile’s engine. The Earth shook and the tail boom separated from the attacker robot. The explosion flattened the general and knocked the empty pistol from his hand.

He had to have hit the machine rocket as it entered the launch tube; a one in a million shot that had saved the lives of his men.

More antitank missiles and the deep-throated thumps of heavy-caliber antimatériel rifles filled the air.

A young man raced into the ditch, a smoking missile tube in his hands.

“Sir…” Corporal Vance Astrovik called as he swung a rifle off his back. “Sir, are you okay?”

Rogers nodded. “I ordered you men to clear the field.”

“We wouldn’t leave you behind,” Astrovik stated. He saw that the general was soaked with cold muddy water, and bent down to scoop up a helmet full of cold goop. The soldier poured it over his own head and face, then crawled to the edge of the ditch.

“Don’t speak. They have some sort of audio detectors, as well,” Rogers whispered as he crawled to the corporal’s side.

“Fall back, sir. I’ll cover your retreat,” Astrovik told him.

Rogers knelt to pick up his muddy SIG, then shook out the excess gunk. He slammed home a spare magazine and watched the machines. “Sorry, son. I lead from the front.”

Astrovik managed a weak smile.

“Look out!” he suddenly blurted. The young corporal knocked Rogers down to the bottom of the ditch as a crescendo of fire and thunder filled the air.

Rogers glanced up to see the damaged Ankylosaur being hammered by the other units into a mangled pulp of unidentifiable metal. Rockets and explosive cannon rounds left a scorched hulk behind. The robots weren’t going to leave much for the Yuma experts to look over after their raid.

Rogers and Astrovik slid from the bottom of the ditch and watched the squat little drones whirl and roll frantically into the distance, disappearing through the scrub. One of the armored machines trailed smoke from a fire, but the general’s men wouldn’t be able to track it.

Looking around, General Stephen Rogers saw that the test base had been all but flattened. Every vehicle was now a twisted mass of crushed metal and rubber. Some blazed from explosive shells that lit the fuel in their ruptured tanks, but there was nothing on wheels that would allow them to chase down the retreating armored assault drones. Rogers cursed under his breath.

A bugle clarion split the air and Astrovik turned on his radio.

“Our spotters lost the drone toward the old mine pass,” Astrovik quickly told Rogers. “They’re retreating.”

Rogers nodded and took the radio. “Can we get air support?”

“General Rogers?” It was Gunnery Sergeant Pym. “I have Lieutenant Van Dyne calling in. U.S.A.F. states they’ll have medevac helicopters here in twenty minutes, but defensive air cover is only thirty seconds away.”

“Good man,” Rogers said.

A heartbeat later, fighter jets roared through the sky overhead. He couldn’t see what they were against the night sky, but as soon as they passed, he could tell by their single cones of exhaust that they were F-16s of some form. He hoped that they had air-to-ground weaponry.

One F-16 cut loose with its 20 mm cannons; the air ripped with the shredding rattle of high-velocity explosive shells. Both jets suddenly swerved as spears of flame lanced into the sky toward them. The drones’ rockets sailed into the night, missing their intended targets, but giving the attackers time to escape even further.

“General, we’ve lost the intruders,” Van Dyne broke in. “They’re invisible to FLIR and radar…The Air Force can’t pick them up on sensors or visually.”

Rogers breathed out a harsh sigh.

“I want a team to follow those things’ heading, Lieutenant,” Rogers ordered. “Call in a mountain operations Ranger team and have them set up with antitank weaponry.”

“It’ll be a few hours, sir,” Van Dyne answered. Despite the carnage, her voice was calm and focused.

Rogers looked in the direction where the Ankylosaurs escaped. The old mine pass was a dead end. Those drones were as good as caught.

But something nibbled at the back of the general’s mind.

He doubted that their assailants were going to be found. Not for a long time.

Rogers thumbed the DVD from his jacket.

Those nightmare robots would be seen again. And from what he’d seen so far this night, they had proved to be an irresistible force for destruction.

“God help us,” Rogers prayed softly as the F-16s orbited the burning base.