for the deadly digger to be tamed.
ROSARIO BLANCANALES accepted the central processor from Hermann Schwarz.
“Save that. Bear and the others are going to have a field day working on its programming,” Schwarz told his old friend.
Blancanales nodded. “How did this thing move without radio controls?”
“The processor. It must be an artificial intelligence unit. Fairly basic. We set off the digger’s motion detectors as soon as we got too close,” Schwarz answered. Something snapped in the hollowed gut of the machine. “Damn. We woke it up. It’s got infrared sensors.”
Blancanales shook his head. “As soon as it got the detonation signal, it would have dropped the whole mountain onto us.”
“Or whoever went in. I’m thinking that they expected a platoon of soldiers, sweeping the darkness with IR to keep from being ‘seen,’” Schwarz replied. “It would have been like waking up Ironman with a floodlight in the face.”
Schwarz shimmied out from under the machine with a handful of radio components. “The detonators.”
“Look like standard radio units,” Blancanales replied.
“They are, but we can trace them. I’ll pull out the C-4, and then we’ll get the Rangers to pull out the digger,” Schwarz told him. “We’re going overland.”
Blancanales smiled. “The transmitter for the detonation signal would likely be manned.”
Schwarz nodded. “Beats a tunnel fight, especially if the drones rolled through an underground river. We don’t have scuba gear with us.”
“Good thinking,” Blancanales congratulated. “I’m sure Carl would like the breathing room too.”
Schwarz took out the squashed blocks of explosives and set them apart from the detonators. “Scorched earth, and a bunch more dead soldiers. The bastard behind these robots is starting to piss me off.”
Blancanales knew that the electronics genius was a mellow, slow-to-anger man. It stemmed from his Southern California upbringing, and the endless patience it took to work with ever-shrinking electronic components. The fact that he mentioned being upset meant that Schwarz’s blood had to have been boiling. Though he was part of the Stony Man Farm operation, he was still a veteran of the United States Army, and the death of brother soldiers always struck him hard. And unlike Carl Lyons, who mastered his berserker’s temper long ago, Schwarz got very cold when he got angry.
“We’ll take care of this,” Blancanales told him. “That’s our job. Revenge for the good guys…semiofficial style.”
“Prosecution to the max,” Lyons added. He picked up the C-4 to take it to the Rangers at the entrance. “I heard you two talking. We’re going overland?”
Schwarz nodded. His lips were drawn tight, trying to control his emotions.
“I’ll see if we can get a pilot,” Lyons replied. “Gadgets…”
Schwarz glanced up.
“They’re dead. They just don’t know it,” Lyons reassured.
Schwarz nodded tightly, as if the muscles in his neck were coiled to the breaking point. “I gotcha, big guy. Prosecution to the max.”
THE CANYON WAS too tight to land a UH-60, but a Hughs 500D “Little Bird” could set down nicely. The pilot was a clean-cut kid named Lieutenant Tim Sarlets.
“You boys call for a ride?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Schwarz replied. He climbed into the shotgun seat. He had one of his radio monitors in his lap, and looked at the Army pilot. “We’re going to be doing a little circling, triangulating a radio signal. Think you can do that?”
“Sure thing,” Sarlets answered. “Any other requests?”
“Keep us low,” Lyons told him. “We don’t want whoever we’re triangulating to spot us coming.”
Sarlets gave the big, blond ex-cop a short salute. “Roger that. I kind of figured you didn’t want to be seen.”
“I like this guy. Can we keep him around?” Blancanales asked.
“We’ll have to ask the boss,” Lyons responded.
Loaded up, the men of Able Team strapped in and the Little Bird rocketed skyward.
CARL LYONS PERCHED in the open side-door of the helicopter. In the darkness below, somewhere, a radio transmitter broadcast a signal that was intended to kill dozens of American soldiers on their home soil. On top of a massacre by armored juggernauts, the tragedy would have been compounded as more brave men died and the trail to the murderous masterminds would have been closed off by a collapsed mountain.
His knuckles flexed white around the grip of his Beowulf M-4. He’d replaced the magazine of tungsten-cored antimatériel rounds with a load of 350-grain jacketed hollowpoint bullets. Even against a living opponent who wore body armor, they’d shatter bones and mangle muscle behind Kevlar. Through the night-vision goggles attached to the helicopter helmet, the terrain beneath him was a weird, alien world of green hazy stone and deep shadows. He spotted movement and shouldered the Beowulf, but held his fire as a goat trotted out of a dark recess. Lyons lowered the rifle and shook his head.
“Anything yet?” he asked, impatience gnawing at his core.
Schwarz looked up from his map. He marked off another zone where the radio signal started to fade. “One more sweep, Ironman.”
“Good.” Lyons grunted. He double-checked the 40 mm high explosive round in the M-203 launcher stored under the barrel. Just because it was unlikely that they would run into the deadly drones that swept down on Yuma didn’t mean he didn’t want to have something that could devastate the slaughtering robots.
Schwarz’s murmurings, readings of the field monitor as he registered signal strength, were a low drone, a constant reminder that this was slow, tedious work. Lyons strained his ears, listening for the readings. He picked up Gadgets’s mutters of a lower signal strength and tensed even before the electronics genius made his announcement.
“That’s the box,” Lyons stated. He pointed toward a ripple of shadows and outcroppings. “Sarlets, put us down. We’re on foot from here.”
“I’ve got no clean spots to land. This is rough terrain,” the pilot answered.
“That’s good news,” Blancanales replied. “They couldn’t bring heavy antiaircraft along.”
“How about a crane helicopter?” Schwarz asked.
Lyons shook his head. “This place is too close to Yuma to pull that kind of—”
“The drones were invisible to radar,” Gadgets reminded him.
The Able Team leader’s jaw set firmly as he scanned the shadowy terrain ahead. “If they had stealth robot tanks, then they could build a stealth helicopter.”
A red light buzzed on the control console. “We’re
