Philips turned to him. “Jon’s right. We can’t head back toward the Razorbacks. These AutoM8s must have a threshold of movement detection. We move slowly.”
The lieutenant gave Ross a venomous look, since he was serving as Philips’s eyes. He then finally nodded. “All right, Doctor.”
They all slid their feet across the tarmac as AutoM8s raced past doing loops around the building. They seemed to be coming closer with each pass, but the group of evacuees managed to traverse another hundred and fifty feet. The water’s edge was tantalizingly close.
A guard tapped Ross on the shoulder. “Hey! Hey, this side! Look out!”
Ross turned to see a Dodge easing to a stop fifty feet away. Facing them. Other AutoM8s still raced past.
Philips turned toward it. “What is it?”
“That Dodge is getting suspicious.”
She nodded. “Jon, you think it’s referencing our location on a grid?”
He considered this. “You mean tracking targets over time instead of—”
“Enough!” The lieutenant pointed. “We’ve got incoming!”
Another sedan vectored toward them while the Dodge seemed to observe. The second car was accelerating fast.
The lieutenant shook his head. “Fuck this! Run for the waterline!”
Ross grabbed his arm. “It could be testing us! Stand still!”
The lieutenant pulled free. He and his men sprinted in a ragged line toward the jetty, opening fire on the cars as they ran.
The moment they did so, the incoming car targeted them, and the nearby Dodge accelerated past Ross and Philips, also giving chase. She cringed as it streaked past just feet to her left.
“Jon, what’s happening?”
He pulled her close. “Wait, Nat!” He saw three more cars racing in—one headed toward him and Philips. Ross hurled the flare in its direction and then tugged on the jacket sleeve. “Run! Now!”
The lieutenant fired at another incoming car as he sprinted toward the waterline, but the first sedan overtook him, tossing his body up over its hood and smashing him into its windshield, then up over the roof. He flipped three times, then landed on the pavement just in time for the Dodge to gore him. His body jammed in its undercarriage and was dragged away. The other men scattered as AutoM8s ran them down. Sporadic gunfire was quickly replaced by the shrieks of injured men crawling toward safety as the cars circled back for the kill.
Philips glanced back reflexively. “What’s happening?”
“Just run!”
He led Philips on a different, longer tack to the shoreline—away from the feeding frenzy of the AutoM8s. He and Philips were nearly at the water. Another car roared up behind them. Ross pulled hard on the jacket sleeve. They had reached the jetty stones.
“Jump!”
He could see her grit her teeth—going on blind faith in him. They arced out into air, splashing into the freezing water as the car hurtled inches over their heads. It landed ten feet beyond them and sent up a splash wall thirty feet high.
Ross and Philips both came up flapping their arms, Philips coughing up water. Ross grabbed her around the neck from behind and swam back toward the jetty stones again as the tail of the bobbing sedan settled back into the water, nearly coming down on her head. It flopped onto the waves, bubbling and hissing around them.
She sensed that something large had just missed her. “Jon!”
“It’s okay! Wait. It’s sinking.”
“Where are the others?”
“They’re gone.”
She panted as they bobbed there for several seconds listening to bubbling water and distant engines on the tarmac above. His arm still around her. Soon there was just hissing.
“Okay, swim. Follow my voice.”
Merritt cradled the UMP on the bike’s broad gas tank and swerved from side to side trying to get around Loki’s BMW. Each time he approached, Loki stabbed on the brakes. Finally the road widened again. The corrugated fences of salvage yards and aging factories now fronted it. Merritt accelerated rapidly, roaring alongside the car.
He searched for some weakness in the armor and noticed that brushed steel knobs appeared at regular intervals on the roof, hood, and trunk. They looked like high-end cell-phone antennas—a dozen of them, evenly spaced.
Merritt braked and swerved as Loki tried to smash him into a line of parked cars. Merritt accelerated around the other side and lifted up the UMP. He glanced at the road, then took careful aim at the car. He fired a short burst. The shots ricocheted off the roof.
Loki swerved toward him again, and instead of dodging away immediately, Merritt let him come in closer. He took more careful aim and fired again—nailing a metal knob.
And barely denting it.
“Son of a bitch.”
Behind Merritt eight sedans screeched in from side streets. He glanced back over his shoulder to see them surging after him. He raised the UMP one-handed and opened up with short, controlled bursts. The front tires of first one, then another blasted out, and they quickly fell behind as the others accelerated. He knocked out the tires on still a third.
The gun was empty. Merritt turned forward and saw ten more unmanned cars come in from side streets up ahead.
No way to reload. Time to concentrate. He tossed the UMP onto the hood of a nearby car, then ripped the throttle and drove howling past Loki.
Merritt dodged a hatchback emerging from a parking lot—which turned out to be a regular car with people in it. An onrushing AutoM8 immediately broadsided it. Half a dozen more AutoM8s streamed in from side streets behind him.
Merritt turned forward again to see the AutoM8s approaching up ahead, surging his way in interlocking slaloms. It was an impenetrable roving barrier. A demonstration of networked swarming behavior that no human drivers could match. Merritt had a couple of seconds at most. A score of AutoM8s were all around him, closing fast—more coming in every second.
He looked back at Loki’s BMW, then swerved and stabbed the brakes—bringing himself just feet off Loki’s front bumper. Still going seventy, he eased back on the throttle and, taking a breath, released his hold on the handlebars, falling backward onto Loki’s front hood as the BMW bumped his bike’s rear tire. The bike veered forward and to the side and was immediately crushed by a wall of oncoming AutoM8s, which raced past only inches to either side of the BMW. Several smashed head-on into pursuing AutoM8s, exploding into a whirlwind of plastic parts, glass, and tumbling metal.
Merritt hit Loki’s hood hard, then slid back into the windshield. He rolled left, jamming his foot down onto a brushed metal knob at the corner of the hood, and clamped onto the wiper well with his hands. He braced his other foot against the knob on the far corner like it was a rock-climbing wall.
He glared into the blacked-out windshield and pointed threateningly. You’re not rid of me yet, asshole.
From the backseat of the BMW, Gragg stared in amazement at his pursuer now straddling the car hood. “You have got to be shitting me….” He didn’t see that coming. He watched the man like a television show through the glass as the guy pulled an automatic pistol from his coat and aimed at the corner of the windshield.
A series of muted cracks sounded. Divots appeared in the glass over a several-inch area. Gragg watched this calculated attempt to penetrate his armor with something bordering on admiration. The corners were typically the weakest spots on a bulletproof windshield. It was a cool-headed call—especially with scenery racing past behind him.
Too bad the glass was three inches of polycarbonate laminate that could stop a rifle bullet. A score of AutoM8s now surrounded Gragg’s BMW in close order like a slavering pack of wolves. Gragg shook his head sadly and shouted at the windshield. “What now, crazy man? You’re on an armored car! What were you thinking?”
Beyond the windshield the rider had reached down to his shoe and now brandished a killing knife as he braced himself with both feet and his other hand.
Gragg laughed. “Look out. He’s got a knife!”
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The rider turned, jammed the knife under the bottom edge of a satellite uplink node, and pried upward. The node peeled off with a shriek of bending metal.
The Voice came over the stereo system. “Uplink…one…of…twelve…has failed.”
Gragg felt the rage building. “You son of a bitch! You’re going for a ride now!”
With a wave of his gloved hands, the BMW went into a power slide and the rider was nearly flung off.
The Major’s chopper came in low and fast over the industrial area, banking so that nothing but brick factory buildings were visible in the left windows. The Major clipped a monkey cord onto his harness and gave it two test pulls. He struggled to his feet as the chopper leveled off. The old wound in his knee was already acting up. An image of a mortar shell landing next to him in a patch of Nicaraguan mud flashed in his mind. Ancient history.
“There they are, Major!” The pilot pointed.
Below, the Major could see a red BMW screeching around drunkenly as it raced down the street, alternately braking and accelerating while a man tried to retain his grip on the roof. Twenty more vehicles swirled around the car, moving like a single organism. More vehicles converged on the site from all directions at high speed along cross streets, smashing into the occasional unlucky motorist. People fled for their lives. He shook his head. What a goddamned mess. How had this gotten so out of control? Behind him columns of black smoke rose here and there.
Let’s give the city something else to look at. The Major pulled his L3 cell phone from his jacket and spoke to the pilot as he started dialing. “It’s days like this that I almost miss working for the government.”
The pilot’s voice came over the closed-circuit headset. “Almost.”
The Major laughed. The line picked up. “Project Hazmat.” The Major turned to look back through the atmospheric haze at Building Twenty-Nine in the distance. “Demolition.” A pause. “6-N-G-7-3-H-Z-6.” Another pause. “On my mark. T-minus ten…nine…”
“We’re almost there, Nat.” Ross glanced back at Building Twenty-Nine, three hundred yards behind them now. It was burning somewhere inside, and the flaming wreckage of AutoM8s around it partially obscured it with smoke.
Philips spat out salt water. “I think I’m really blind.”
“I don’t think so.”
“What if that was a ZM-87 Laser Blinder? My retinas would be gone.”
“Doesn’t make sense. Why permanently blind a target you’re about to hack to pieces? It’s probably meant to stun victims. I’d—”
Suddenly a wave of pressure blasted across their backs. A visible shockwave rippled through the atmosphere and pressed down around them—followed close on by a resounding BOOM that they felt more than heard.
They both went facedown in the water as the depths beneath them glowed orange and filled with the sound of splashing boulders and thousands of rock fragments. As they came up sucking for air, rocks and small boulders were landing all around them. Their ears were ringing.
Ross covered her with his body as the rocks continued to rain down. He turned to see a towering mushroom cloud roiling up from the jagged tops of Building Twenty-Nine’s walls. The structure was a pool of flame with refrigerator-sized blocks of reinforced concrete still tumbling end over end across the runway. Burning debris trailing streamers of smoke sailed down from a thousand feet overhead. Metal sheets spun crazily as they fell. “Jesus Christ!”
“What happened?”
“The building. It’s gone!”
From his perch on the BMW’s roof, Merritt glanced back at a black mushroom cloud rising behind him above the factory buildings. “Son of a bitch…” Later.
Suddenly Loki accelerated the car, pulling Merritt down onto the trunk, where he stopped himself from rolling off by pushing his foot against the metal knob on the right rear corner. He grabbed on to the lip of the trunk lid.
Where the hell are the police?
He jammed the knife blade under another metal knob and tore it up from the sheet metal. The knob dangled by exposed wires until Merritt sawed through them.
The Voice intoned again, “Uplink…four…of…twelve…has failed.”
Gragg had eight uplinks left. With triple redundancy he knew he needed at least four to adequately control the car and his army of AutoM8s. He turned around in his seat to see the man mere inches away from his face now—still clinging on. Gragg pounded the window. “That’s it!”
The man’s motorcycle helmet clunked against the glass, awkward in its bulk as he tried to keep his center of gravity down. In between erratic car movements, the rider quickly pulled the helmet off, tossing it over his shoulder. It was immediately crushed by trailing AutoM8s. The man then pressed his head down against the trunk lid.
Gragg could now see the rider’s face. “Roy Merritt…holy shit.” Gragg smiled in spite of himself. The famous Roy Merritt—known to every Daemon operative in the world. The man who tackled Sobol’s home defense system and survived—the entire ordeal captured on Sobol’s security cameras. The one and only Roy Merritt was hanging on to Gragg’s car. Gragg was being pursued—and pursued damned well—by the Burning Man himself. He should have known. The son of a bitch had a knife, and he was doing more damage than a squad of corporate military. Gragg couldn’t deny some level of admiration. Merritt had probed Gragg’s defenses, found a hole—one that would be filled in the future—and improvised an exploit. What hacker couldn’t admire the man’s cojones? His instincts?
Gragg waved his hand, sending the BMW and its entire escort pack to a screeching halt. Merritt was thrown against the rear window. As the BMW lurched to a stop, Merritt stopped himself from rolling off the end of the trunk.
Gragg flipped his voice to the car’s PA system and pounded his finger into the blacked-out glass in front of Merritt’s face. “You’re a fucking crazy man, Roy! You think I can’t kill you the moment I get out of this car?”
Merritt shook his head. “You’re under arrest!”
Gragg pounded the car seat, laughing. “That’s my boy! Shit, I’ll make you a deal: give me your autograph, and I won’t kill you.”
Suddenly Merritt’s stomach exploded, splattering blood across the rear window. Merritt’s face went slack and his eyes rolled up as his grip on the car released.
Stunned, Gragg watched Merritt roll off the end of the trunk and onto the pavement. Gragg waved his hand and brought the BMW farther down the road, so he could see Merritt, lying in the middle of the street. Another wave of his gloved hands and Gragg cleared a ring of AutoM8s all around him.
Gragg looked up.
A blue helicopter with a yellow logo hovered low behind them, about a hundred feet off the ground. Gragg looked down at Merritt, who was moving now, pulling himself along the center line of the road and leaving a trail of blood. Rage began to build in Gragg. He looked up again at the helicopter, death in his eyes. A man wearing a black hood and holding a sniper rifle kneeled in the open doorway. He looked straight back at Gragg. No Daemon call-out hovered above him.
The Major muttered under his breath. “What the hell are you waiting for, asshole?”
He fired a shot at Loki’s rear window, pounding a divot just next to the kid’s head. But Loki barely flinched. He was looking fixedly down at Merritt, crawling across the pavement. There was a fifteen-foot blood trail now. Merritt was fumbling through his jacket, quivering. Looking for something.
The Major sighed. “Goddamnit…”
He saw two Mexican workers open a salvage yard gate to peer out at all the commotion in the street. The Major gritted his teeth and turned the rifle in their direction. He squeezed off several rounds.
Spouts of blood erupted from the chest of the first worker. The man pitched back into the stunned hands of his companion—who The Major nailed straight between the eyes. They both fell from view.
Then The Major turned the crosshairs back onto Merritt. Merritt was lying on his back, panting doggedly, blood shining on his stomach, while he held two sm
all pieces of paper before his eyes. The papers fluttered in the wind.
Why wasn’t Gragg finishing him? Why wasn’t this over yet?
The pilot’s voice came in over the headset. “We need to go, Major.”
The Major made his decision.
As Gragg stared, suddenly the top of Merritt’s head exploded. Merritt’s body slumped, twitching on the pavement.
“You motherfucker!” Gragg pounded his fists against the glass, staring at the sniper. “You motherfucker!”
Two more divots appeared in the window as sniper bullets slammed into it. Then the chopper banked away and took off low and fast above the factory buildings, heading out over the bay. It was soon lost to sight.
Gragg looked back down at the body in the street. Two small photographs wafted away from Merritt’s dead fingers in the wind.
Ross pulled Philips up onto the quay on the far side of the ship channel. They both crawled to level ground, and after panting for a few moments, Ross looked up.
They were on the edge of a pipe storage yard. He eased Philips up so her back rested against a smooth concrete pylon. She looked dazed.
He turned to face the ruins of Building Twenty-Nine burning beneath a thunderhead of roiling black smoke across the water. A dozen more columns of smoke rose elsewhere in the distance. He could hear sirens wailing all over the city. It was a war zone.
Fireboats approached from the bay.
He knelt down next to Philips and brushed her wet hair away from her face. “Help is coming, Nat.” He felt her trembling. “Are you okay?”
Her lips quivered slightly but she nodded. Her face contorted as she tried to contain tears. “How many do you think we lost?”
He took a deep breath. “Possibly everyone.”
She put a hand to her mouth and started crying.
“It’s not your fault, Natalie.” He put a hand on her arm reassuringly.
“I was in charge!”
“No. You weren’t. We just thought you were.”