by Dale Brown
“Well, I’m na seein’ anything sticking out,” Miles said after a few minutes. “You have a fun number of bruises and cuts, but so far nothing critical. I’ve seen much worse around here.”
“Where are you from, Miles?”
“I’m from God’s back porch: Westport, County Mayo.” He didn’t have to specify “Ireland.” “And you?” Charlie turned her eyes away and down, and Wohl changed position—not very much, just enough for everyone to remember he was present and not let the conversation drift into unwanted territory. “Ah, that’s okay, lass, I figured as much anyway. The only whites in these parts are relief workers and spies, and you’re na dressed like a nurse.”
“Where are we?”
“You’re here at Torbat-e-Jam, the United Nations refugee camp, originally set up for the poor bastards fleein’ the Taliban in Afghanistan, and now used by the other poor bastards fleein’ the Muslim insurgents,” Miles said. “I volunteered to help bring in a load of food and supplies about six months ago, but when the doctor’s assistant went missing, I stayed. About a month ago, the doctor went missing—if the Taliban or al-Quds forces need a doctor, they don’t send fer one, they take one—so I’m fillin’ in until the next flight comes in. No tellin’ when that will be, so I play the doc and help as best I can. I lose a few more than the doc did, but I’m startin’ to get the hang of it, I think.”
“Tobat-e-Jam?”
“Iran,” Miles said. “Around here they still call it ‘Iran’—the insurgency hasn’t reached this far yet, so they don’t call it ‘Persia’ yet, although the Revolutionary Guards Corps and al-Quds forces are gettin’ pretty nervous, like the rebels are nippin’ at their heels a wee bit. We’re about sixty klicks from the border.”
“Inside Iran?”
“Afraid so, lass,” Miles said. “About two hundred kilometers from Mashhad, the capital of Khorasan province.”
“God, this is the last place we want to be,” Charlie moaned. She attempted to get up off the hard plywood board she was resting on and nearly passed out from a surging wave of pain that eclipsed anything else she had felt since awakening. “I’m not sure if I can make it yet,” she told Wohl. “Where’s my…briefcase?”
“Right here,” Wohl said, without indicating where or what they were really talking about.
“You’re in no shape to go anywhere, lass, and neither is your friend—as far as I can tell, at least,” Miles said.
“I’ll make it,” Charlie said. “How far are we from the crash site?”
“About ten klicks,” Miles replied. “What is that thing, anyway…Mercury’s chariot? It’s not exactly an airplane, is it—more like a tin can with balloons on it. It was badly burned but intact.”
“How did you find us?”
“That wasn’t a problem, lassie—we saw you streak across the sky and fall to Earth like a lightning bolt from Zeus himself!” Miles said, his eyes twinkling as the memory of seeing that sight came back. “Like the biggest meteor ever seen! You must have been trailing a tail of fire fifty kilometers long if it was an inch! It was a miracle to see three human beings still recognized as such in the wreckage, and even more amazing to find you still alive! We nearly shit our pants watchin’ you blazin’ down right toward us—thought the good Lord was going to end all of our sufferin’ right then and there on the spot—but ya missed us. Findin’ you alive was nothin’ short of a miracle.”
“Unfortunately that means that the Pasdaran probably saw us as well.”
Miles nodded. “They di’na come around too often, but they’re surely be sniffin’ around out this way, for sure. The faster we get you folks out of here, the better for all of us. You should be well enough to travel after the painkiller kicks in. It won’t be easy, but I think you can do it.” He turned to the Tin Man lying beside her. “Now this gent, I’m still not so sure. Can you tell me how to…unlock him, unscrew him, unbolt him, whatever, so I can have a look and check him over?”
“We don’t have time, Miles,” Charlie said. “We’ll carry him.” Choking back the pain, she managed to sit up on her cot. “We’ll be going now, Miles. I want to thank you for all you’ve done for us.”
“I’ll be sad to see you go, Charlie, but frankly I’d rather not have you around when the Pasdaran or al-Quds goons track you down here.” He looked carefully at Wohl and the Tin Man suit. “I think I’ve read about these things lately, haven’t I? The American anti-terrorist outfit.” Charlie didn’t respond. “Oh, I see—you could tell me, but then you’d have to kill me, right?” She laughed, causing a ripple of pain through her back, but she still welcomed the humor. “All right, no more questions, Charlie. I’ll go out and see if the coast is clear. Good luck to you, lass.”
“Thanks.” She grimaced at the pain as she started to pull herself up, but the stuff McNulty gave her must’ve started working because the pain wasn’t debilitating this time. After McNulty departed, Charlie lowered her voice and spoke, “Odin, Stud Four.”
“We read you loud and clear, Four,” Patrick McLanahan responded via the subcutaneous global transceiver system. Every member of the Air Battle Force had the communications and data transceiver system implanted into their bodies for the rest of their lives, ostensibly for situations like this but realistically to allow the government to monitor each member’s whereabouts for life. “Thank God you’re alive. We read Five is with you.”
“Affirmative—he’s alive but still unconscious,” Charlie said. Wohl started to put his helmet on, preparing to move out. “I’m going to mount up and we’ll—”
Suddenly McNulty ran back into the tent, completely out of breath. “Soldiers, just outside the camp,” he said frantically. “Hundreds of them.”
“Odin, do we have a ride yet?” Charlie radioed.
“Stud, this is Genesis,” Dave Luger cut in. “We have a CSAR team on the way from Herat, ETE ninety minutes. We’re launching cover aircraft from Batman Air Base in Turkey, but they’ll take about the same amount of time. What’s your situation?”
“Getting tense,” Charlie said. “We’ll give you a call when we’re safe. Stud Four, out.” Charlie went over to the large box lying on the dirt floor. “Any backpacks or rifles, Five?”
“Negative,” Wohl replied. “Sorry.”
“That’s okay—you had your hands full,” Charlie said. “Let’s get moving.”
Miles motioned to the large box that Wohl had been carrying with him when he entered the camp. “Are those your weapons? Now would be a good time to get them out, lass.”
“Not exactly,” Charlie said. “CID One, deploy.”
As Miles watched in amazement, the box began to move, quickly shifting size and shape like a magician’s wand changing into a bouquet of flowers. In seconds, the large but ordinary-looking metal box had transformed into a ten-foot-tall robot, almost bursting out the top of the tent, with smooth black “skin,” a bullet-shaped head with no discernible eyes or ears, and large, fully articulating arms, legs, and fingers.
“CID One, pilot up,” Charlie spoke. The robot assumed a leaning-forward stance as if on a sprinter’s starting block, but with one leg and both arms extended backward. Grimacing from the pain, Charlie stepped around the robot and climbed up the extended leg, using the arms as handrails. She entered a code into a tiny keypad somewhere behind the robot’s head, a hatch popped open on its back, and she slipped herself inside. The hatch closed…
…and moments later, to the Irishman’s amazement, the robot came to life and stood, resembling a regular person in everything but its appearance—its movements were so smooth, fluid, and lifelike that Miles immediately found himself forgetting it was a machine!
Charlie scooped up the still-unconscious Wayne Macomber. “Now is a very bad time to be out of it, Whack,” she said. She activated the Cybernetic Infantry Device’s millimeter-wave radar and scanned the area outside the tent. “Looks like they’re trying to surround us,” she said. “The south side looks like our best escape route—just one truck set
up down that way.”
“How about a little diversion to the north and west?” Wohl asked, studying the radar image data being transmitted to him from Charlie’s CID unit. “Looks like a machine-gun squad getting set up on the north side. I can use one of those.”
“Sounds good.” She reached a fist out, and he punched it in return with his own. “As a hunky Australian actor said in a movie once: ‘Unleash hell.’”
“On the way. Better give him some cover.” Wohl sprinted out the front of the tent. Charlie knocked Miles to the ground and covered him just as a hail of automatic gunfire shredded the tent apart.
“Hop on, Miles,” Charlie’s electronically synthesized voice said. Still bent over, she shifted the inert form in her arms aside, far enough to form a space between her body and the Tin Man. He hesitated, still dumbfounded by what he had just seen. “You can’t stay here. The Revolutionary Guards Corps will think you’re one of us.”
“Can ye carry us both?”
“I can carry twenty of you, Miles. Let’s go.” He lay across her arms, and she rolled Macomber back on top of him and tightened her grip, sandwiching him in securely. “Hang on.”
But when she got up, there was obviously something wrong—Miles felt a high-frequency vibration within the machine, and Charlie’s gait was unsteady. “What’s wrong?” he shouted.
“The CID unit is damaged,” Charlie said. “Must’ve been from the crash.”
“I copy,” Wohl radioed. Charlie could see his position in her electronic data visor—he was moving rapidly through the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps’ positions, stopping briefly at each concentration of troops. “Head out the best you can. I’ll be beside you in a moment.”
The next few minutes were sheer torture. Wohl had drawn some of their fire away briefly, but it returned full force just moments after Charlie burst from the tent, seemingly all aimed at them. The sounds were deafening. They were consumed with clouds of smoke, occasional blasts of fire, and continuous gunfire. McNulty screamed when a round hit his left leg, and screamed again when a crushing explosion knocked Charlie to the ground. They were up again within moments, but now the smooth running rhythm was replaced by an awkward limping shuffle, like an automobile with a flat tire and bent rim.
Wohl ran beside Charlie, a Chinese Type 67 machine gun in his right hand, a metal can of ammunition in his left. “Can you travel, Captain?”
“Not for long.”
“What the hell is going on?” they heard.
“Whack!” Thankfully, Macomber was awake, although he sounded sluggish and doped-up. “Are you okay?”
“My head feels like it’s been cracked open,” Macomber said thickly. Charlie suspected a concussion. “Am I alive?”
“So far—hopefully it’ll stay that way,” Charlie said. “Can you walk?”
“Do I still have legs? I can’t feel anything down there.”
“Stay put and try not to move—you’ll squish the other passenger.”
“Other passenger?”
Charlie tried to run, but things were definitely getting worse. A rocket-propelled grenade exploded on her back, sending them flying again. “Power is down to forty percent already,” Charlie said as Wohl helped them up, “my primary hydraulic system is out, and I can’t move my right leg.”
“Can you keep moving?”
“Yes, I think so,” Charlie said. Using her right leg as a crutch, she limped along, with Wohl laying down suppression fire with his machine gun until he ran out of ammunition. He half supported, half carried Charlie, and they were able to move faster up a low ridgeline. They could easily see their pursuers below them, advancing slowly, with more and more units joining the pursuit.
Charlie set Macomber and McNulty down, then dismounted from the CID unit. “It’s getting ready to shut down,” she said. “It’s done. There’s just enough power left to start erasing the firmware. Once we move away, it’ll automatically self-destruct.”
“It looks like they’re not sure where we are,” Wohl said, scanning the desert below them with night-vision optics. He zoomed in on a few of the details. “Let’s see…infantry…infantry…ah, got one, another machine-gun squad. I’ll be right back.” He raced off into the darkness.
Macomber struggled to his hands and knees. “Okay, I’m starting to tell up from down,” he said. “Who’s our guest?”
“Miles McNulty, a UN relief worker,” Charlie replied, filling in the details.
A few minutes later, Wohl ran back with an even larger weapon than the first, a Russian DshK heavy machine gun with a huge drum magazine on top, along with a wooden box of more magazines. “Looks like they brought some anti-aircraft weapons with them—they were obviously expecting company. How are you doing, Major?”
“Peachy, Sergeant Major,” Macomber replied. He looked at McNulty. Charlie was busy tying a scrap of cloth torn from her uniform around his leg. “The passenger is hurt. Where’s the cavalry?”
“At least sixty mike out.”
“Where are we headed?”
“East toward the Afghanistan border,” Charlie said. “About thirty miles away. Hilly and pretty open. No towns or villages for fifty miles.”
“How are you doing on power, Sergeant Major?” Macomber asked.
“Down to thirty percent.”
“Here—I can’t use it yet.” He unclipped one of his circular batteries from his belt and swapped it for one of Wohl’s more depleted ones. “Can we use the CID unit to charge our batteries?”
“Not when it’s in shutdown mode, Whack,” Charlie said.
“Can’t we tap into a power or telephone pole?” Macomber asked. Charlie looked at him with astonishment. “Hey, I have been studying these things—I may not like them, but I do read the manuals. We’re not going to follow the highway, but if we spot a breaker box or control junction, I think I can rig up a jumper. Let’s get—”
“I hear helicopters,” Wohl said. He used his night-vision and enhanced hearing systems to sweep the skies, pinpointing the approaching aircraft’s position. “Two light scout helicopters, about three miles away,” he said, raising the DshK machine gun.
“Let’s spread out,” Macomber said. But he soon found out that was all but impossible: Charlie was still in pain from her injuries, and McNulty was hurt badly and going into shock, so he had to carry both of them even though he still wasn’t a hundred percent himself, so it was slow-going. Wohl moved about ten yards away from them, close enough to support them if they came under attack but not close enough that one explosive round fired from a helicopter could take them all out at once.
They had run up the ridge just a few hundred yards when Wohl shouted, “Take cover!” Macomber found the largest piece of rock nearby and threw his charges and then himself behind it, placing himself between the helicopters and the others to shield them the best he could with his armored body. The Tin Man armor system featured an electronically actuated material that stayed flexible but instantly hardened when struck into a protective shield a hundred times stronger than plate steel.
Macomber could hear the oncoming helicopters through his own enhanced hearing system, but his eyes couldn’t focus on his electronic displays. “I can’t see them, Wohl.”
“Stay down.” A moment later he opened fire with the DshK machine gun, the muzzle flash of the big 12.7-millimeter cannon illuminating a ten-yard-diameter area around him. They heard a loud metallic screech as several rounds pierced the first helicopter’s turbine engine and seized it solid, then an explosion as the engine blew itself apart. Seconds later they heard more explosions as the second scout helicopter opened fire on Wohl’s position. He managed to jump out of the way just in time to avoid the full force of the Iranian 40-millimeter rocket attack.
Wohl opened fire on the second helicopter, but the fire soon cut off. “Jammed…shit, a round stuck in the chamber…won’t clear.” He was surprised the gun had fired as many rounds as it did—it looked as if it was fifty years old and hadn’t been cleaned in ha
lf that number of years. He discarded the weapon and scanned the area for more nearby Pasdaran units so he could grab another machine gun, but the three remaining units were hanging back, blindly peppering the ridgeline with occasional rifle and mortar fire and content to let the scout helicopter do some fighting for them.
“The infantry units are hanging back, and there’s still one helicopter overhead,” Wohl reported. “I’m down to throwing rocks.” He wasn’t kidding—the microhydraulically actuated exoskeleton on the Tin Man combat system gave him enough power to hurl a five-pound rock almost two hundred yards with enough force to do some damage, which could put him within range of that scout helicopter if he could dash toward it, jump, and throw with perfect timing. He found a softball-sized rock and prepared to do just that…
…but then his sensors picked up another helicopter, and this time it wasn’t a little scout. He’d recognize that silhouette anywhere: “We’ve got more trouble, ma’am,” Wohl said. “Looks like a Mi-24 Hind inbound.” The Russian-built Mi-24, NATO code name “Hind,” was a large attack helicopter which could also carry up to eight fully outfitted soldiers inside. It carried a formidable array of weapons…
…the first of which opened fire seconds later, from over three miles away. Wohl immediately dashed away from the rest of his team, then stopped to make sure the anti-tank guided missile was still tracking him. It was, and he realized that the helicopter itself was following him too, which meant that the helicopter crew had to keep him in sight to keep the missile on him. Good. It had to be an older guided missile, probably an AT-6 line-of-sight radio-controlled missile.
Wohl waited another heartbeat, then dashed toward the nearest group of Pasdaran ground pursuers at top speed. He could no longer see the missile, but he remembered that an AT-6’s flight time was somewhere around ten seconds when fired from maximum range. That meant he had just seconds to make it. This Pasdaran unit was an armored vehicle with a heavy machine gun on top, which opened fire as he closed in. A few shells hit, but not enough to slow him down. Now he was between the armored vehicle and the helicopter—certainly, Wohl thought, the Hind’s gunner had to turn the missile away. His mental stopwatch ran to zero…