with their weapons. Kristopoulos jerked as she took a round in the thigh, outside of the protection of her body armor. The bullet only struck muscle, not bone or artery, and she somehow managed to find the strength to continue to stand and fire. Farkas slipped his arm around her waist and triggered his AK from the hip. James whirled back to the machine that Encizo had damaged. It writhed in an effort to target the closer Phoenix Force commando. Together James and Encizo concentrated their fire on the machine as its operator struggled to choose between the two Phoenix targets.
A storm of 9 mm and 5.56 mm slugs tore into the silvery form and chewed it into confetti, knocking segments apart. James had reloaded his 17-round magazine twice in rapid succession and Encizo had fed a new magazine into his carbine.
“The other one’s still moving!” Encizo relayed across from the pair of Farkas and Kristopoulos. “How much punishment can these things take?”
“Not that much when you can concentrate fire on them,” James said. “But it’s not like shooting an animal or a human. These things probably have redundant motors and electronic systems that make them harder to incapacitate. Throw in their metal covering and the fact that they don’t have the breath—”
“Enough lecture! Get your rifle!” Encizo snapped. He reloaded his spent SIG’s magazine and ripped off a full automatic fusillade against the burning shrubbery. James scooped up his weapon and added his firepower to the final knockout. Four people with automatic weapons had expended almost 500 rounds in unison against a pair of these mechanisms, and had unhindered fields of fire against them.
James knew that any attempt to hunt these down in the confines of a nuclear facility would be a nightmarish struggle, even if they could manage to spot such robots in ventilation ducts and access pipes. The Chicago Phoenix Force warrior continued to pound out the contents of a second magazine into the writhing mass of machinery until it stopped twitching. He held his distance, not wanting to be caught in a self-destruct mechanism blast radius, but since the robot had been torn to shredded metal, he wondered if any detonator would have been still in operation after such a hammering.
“Farkas, are you and Atalanta all right?” James called.
“We’ll be fine,” the Egyptian said. “I’m applying first aid to her leg. She only took it in the meat, nothing structural or circulatory harmed.”
James nodded. “Let me handle that. We need a bomb team here, just to be certain.”
Encizo walked closer to the robot that he and James had poured nearly a hundred bullets into. “How many times did we have to hit the other one, after you’d lit it on fire?”
James looked up from Kristopoulos, medical kit in one hand. He looked at the Greek Israeli woman. “How many magazines from you?”
“Only one from my rifle before that bastard smacked me in the leg,” Kristopoulos growled. “Then I transitioned to my SIG-Sauer.”
“Farkas?” James asked.
“Two magazines from my AK. Then what you two threw at it,” the Egyptian said.
Encizo held up his hand to cut off James’s estimation. None was needed. “We’re looking at devices that possess a remarkable amount of durability. If it takes at least ninety rounds of 5.56 mm, not counting the stuff that managed to hit with Farkas firing his AK from the hip, these things require the same kind of firepower that’s reserved for anti-aircraft or anti-matériel purposes.”
James frowned. “Then again, Carl did disable some of its mechanism with a .357 SIG round.”
“He disabled the Taser,” Encizo countered. “One component in an arsenal. And that was a high-pressure, near-Magnum round at a range of less than five feet.”
“So we utilize more appropriate weaponry,” James said.
“Like what?” Farkas asked.
“Shotgun saboted slugs?” Kristopoulos suggested.
“You read my mind,” James returned. “Then I’ve also seen bomb disposal robots which utilized a .44 Magnum Redhawk.”
“That’s old school,” Kristopoulos said. “How old are you again?”
James looked at the Greek woman, then smiled. “I’d tell you, but it’d depress me.”
“Give me some credit, Mr. Farrow,” Kristopoulos replied.
Farkas was on the phone to his allies in Unit 777. Encizo scanned the air overhead, frowning.
“Is the UAV still up there?” James asked.
“It’s moved on,” Encizo replied. “Just the same, I wouldn’t go close to the robots until the bomb squad has dealt with them.”
“At least it wasn’t armed,” James returned.
“No, but now whoever is in control of these machines knows what we look like,” Encizo said.
James frowned. “General appearance.”
“So how many tall African-Americans and stocky Hispanics have you seen running around with weaponry in Egypt?” Encizo asked.
James sighed. “I’ll get back on the horn to Barb to see if we can get some sanitization of our identities.”
“Paranoid much?” Kristopoulos asked.
“Says the woman using a code name plucked from mythology,” James said. “I thought Mossad and Unit 777 trusted each other and didn’t have to hide behind fake identities.”
Kristopoulos wrinkled her nose. “Point taken.”
“A demolitions team will be by to deal with the carcasses,” Farkas announced. “And an ambulance if our Israeli visitor is inclined to go to the doctor.”
“It was far from my heart,” Kristopoulos answered. “I’ll deal with the pain.”
“Stubborn as one of us,” Farkas sighed.
“Help me up, Farrow,” Kristopoulos said. “I don’t want to look hurt in front of our hosts.”
James nodded and assisted her to her feet.
Encizo continued to watch the night skies, as if he could penetrate the gloom and his sense of dread to find the mysterious foes who had caused so much mayhem on this quiet Egyptian street.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Paris bakery was run by a friend of one of David McCarter’s friends. A network of people around the globe could give the Briton access to weaponry when he needed it. Sure, there was a long streak where Phoenix Force had military flights or passes through customs with huge suitcases of rifles and grenade launchers, but the truth was, such free rides weren’t always reliable. More than once across the long and storied career of the team, they’d had to rely on utensils found on-site.
Daniel Mittner was one such supplier of wares in McCarter’s network of European contacts. In Europe, it was becoming more difficult to find reliable, decent arms dealers with access to the kind of gear Phoenix Force required in the field due simply to harsher
