Dale Brown - Act of War

The big Russian flicked the switchblade in a blur of motion, opening up a deep gash on Manuelo’s left cheek. The boy screamed like the child he was but quickly silenced himself and started swearing in Portuguese. Blood gushed down his face, and very soon the boy’s face began to turn pale. “I suppose you would call that a badge of honor for your bastard child, eh, Pereira?” Khalimov asked. He stepped forward, grasped Manuelo behind his neck, and pulled him around so he could face his father. The boy kicked, clawed, and pulled, but it was obvious his strength was quickly leaving his young, thin body. “Say good-bye to your son, Pereira,” the Russian said, raising the knife. “Maybe I’ll pay a visit to your big-titted young wife after I dispose of you and see if she needs consoling.” Pereira screamed over the noise of the nearby bulldozers as Khalimov drew the knife across…

Suddenly a massive shape and a blur of motion obscured Pereira’s view. He and his PME captors were pushed roughly backward by a metallic bar or tool of some sort. Manuelo screamed again, and the father screamed in unison, unable to see or do anything in the confusion. Machine gun fire broke out—Khalimov’s guards, no doubt—so close that Pereira thought he could feel the bullets whizzing past his ears, and he instinctively curled up into a ball to present the smallest and most innocent-looking target for the gunmen. A shotgun blast rang out, completely destroying Pereira’s hearing.

He hated himself for thinking it, but he prayed that last shot, directed at the last spot where he thought Manuelo had been standing, would quickly end his suffering.

Just then, in the midst of another barrage of machine gun fire, Pereira was suddenly airborne, lifted by the back of his trousers and hurled through the air. A split-second later he landed, hard, on the concrete wharf again—and when he opened his eyes, he was face-to-face with his son, Manuelo, who was looking at him with tear-filled but overjoyed eyes, holding a blood-covered hand over his facial wound. “Manuelo…my God, Manuelo…!”

Then, between the gun blasts, he heard a strange but very loud and clear electronically synthesized voice in English. “Help the boy, dammit. Get him out of here.”

Pereira pressed his hand over his son’s face to staunch the blood and to cover his young body with his. He looked up just in time to see…well, he had no idea what in hell it was. It moved like a man but looked like something out of a science-fiction movie, with segmented body parts, wide back tapering down to a slim waist, bullet-shaped head, and weirdly articulating limbs. It didn’t move like any machine he had ever seen, but it obviously was some kind of human-looking construct. He heard machine gun fire and then saw sparks and flying pieces of shattered lead fragments as the bullets bounced off the machine; a barrel like a short grenade launcher atop a large box on the machine’s back swiveled around and fired a projectile of some sort. The acidy, stinging scent of tear gas reached his nostrils, making it instantly hard to breathe, and Pereira instinctively scooped up his son in his arms and scrambled to his feet, moving away from the gas and hoping he didn’t fall off the wharf into the harbor.

The robotlike thing sprinted away so fast that Pereira couldn’t believe what he saw. More bullets ricocheted off its smooth metallic skin. A PME officer would move out of hiding, afraid of the approaching machine, and before he could take two steps the machine was on him, knocking him unconscious with a single blow to the head with an armored fist. The pattern was repeated twice more: a soldier or one of Khalimov’s men would shoot, the robot would rush him, the gunman would bolt, and the thing conked him out.

Out of the clouds of gas a PME wheeled armored vehicle appeared, firing its twenty-three-millimeter machine gun mounted on a roof turret at the robot. The robot sprinted diagonally away, far faster than the gunner in the turret could follow, and in moments it had dodged back and jumped atop of the APC. One massive hand reached down to the machine gun barrel, and with a quick jerk the barrel bent, then snapped. The robot then pulled the gunner out of the gun turret and tossed him to the pavement, aimed the barrel of his shoulder-mounted grenade launcher inside the vehicle, and fired. Within moments acidic smoke began streaming from the turret and all of the APC’s crew members abandoned the vehicle, coughing and gagging as they threw themselves outside as fast as they could. With the APC stopped, the robot stepped off, reached down to the bottom of the armored car’s body, and effortlessly lifted the vehicle over onto its side, putting it out of action.

Yop tvayu mat! Khalimov swore to himself as he dashed for his Land Rover SUV a few meters away and opened the locked steel case in back. What in hell is that thing? He remembered something about the Americans developing a powered strength-enhancing exoskeleton that could carry weapons and give its wearer incredible physical ability, but he never thought he’d ever see one, especially not down here in Brazil! This had to be reported to Zakharov immediately—but first it had to be stopped before it rolled over both his security men and the PME officers he had hired to help him find Pereira. The thing was strong and obviously bulletproof, but it didn’t look that massive.

He had just one choice of weapon and just one chance to knock this thing out.

Through the thinning clouds of gas Pereira saw Khalimov raise what looked like a rocket-propelled grenade launcher or LAWS rocket and aim it at the robot. “Olhar Para fora! Tem um foguete!” he shouted, but he was too late. The projectile hit the robot squarely in the back on his left side, and it went flying as if hit by a wrecking ball. When the smoke cleared, the robot was lying facedown, blackened and smoldering like a half-burned piece of firewood. It looked like a smashed toy, but Pereira could see a small rivulet of purplish fluid and a wisp of smoke leaking from its back near where the projectile exploded and thought about the irony of a bleeding machine. Was it blood, or could it be…?

…and at that moment, to Pereira’s astonishment, the robot began to slowly get on its feet. It was obviously wounded, moving much more stiffly and not nearly as smoothly and gracefully as it had been just moments ago, but it was now moving toward the Russian.

Khalimov swore in Russian, dropped the spent LAWS canister, drew his pistol, and fired. The robot tried to pursue him but appeared to be suffering a serious malfunction, because it was now moving very slowly and clumsily. Khalimov holstered his pistol and ran over to one of the nearby running bulldozers, jumped in, and steered it toward the robot. The machine managed to keep from getting pinned under the front blade by hanging onto it, but Khalimov didn’t care. He steered the bulldozer over to the edge of the wharf, set the throttle lever to high, and jumped off just before the bulldozer, with the robot still clinging onto the blade, tumbled into the harbor. He looked over at Pereira, wanting to finish the job he had been assigned, but by then Manuel had retrieved a PME assault rifle and had just loaded a fresh magazine in it, so the Russian turned and sprinted away. In moments he sped off in his Land Rover with two PME sedans accompanying him.

“Jason!” Ariadna shouted. Vega, Skyy, and Jefferson, all wearing bulletproof vests, helmets, goggles, and gas masks, sprinted over to where the bulldozer had gone into the ocean.

“Follow me!” Jefferson shouted. He leaped aboard the garbage barge closest to the scene, lowered the conveyor belt that had been loading trash onto the barge, and unclipped the cable. Swinging the arm out over the gunwale, he fed out a length of cable, kicked off his boots, grabbed the end of the cable, and jumped into the harbor where bubbles were still rising. Ari dashed over to the barge and stood by the controls. A minute later, Jefferson surfaced. “Go! Raise him up, now!”