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The tunnel went straight as far as they could see in the poor light, and the floors were tracked, as if some sort of vehicle operated down here moving people or supplies between the two locations, several hundred meters apart.
It looked much like a small subway line. Old Soviet murals lined the walls: gold stars on red backgrounds; idealized images of strong, young Russian soldiers and dutiful men and women sitting at communications equipment; Cyrillic writing that Court didn’t slow down to decipher, because all his focus was on keeping a keen eye into the shadows ahead.
Softly, to Zoya, he said, “Making you homesick?”
Despite herself, she laughed a little. “Kiss my ass.”
They stacked up in three fire teams and stayed on alternate sides of the tunnel as they advanced, looking for movement ahead of them in the deep shadows.
They’d made it less than one hundred yards when Travers saw an opening on the right. It appeared to be a hallway, much smaller than this large passage, and there were no tracks running through it.
The group moved slowly forward, their guns up and ready.
At the corner to the hallway they stopped; Travers knelt down and then leaned his head around to take a look.
The lighting was a little better here; the hallway led some fifty meters or so to what appeared to be a large room with double doors. And halfway down and on the left was an open doorway with light pouring from it.
In front of the open door a pair of gray four-legged robots stood in the hall, guns on their backs, much as Court had described encountering in Mexico, and similar in appearance to the disassembled Greyhound unit Travers saw on the ship in the harbor.
He brought his head back out of view. With his hands he made signs to show the others there were a pair of four-legged machines with guns on them, and then, in a faint whisper, he said into his mic, “We can’t bypass. No choice but to engage.”
Court knelt in the dark twenty feet away. He whispered back, “The 7.62 rounds will penetrate…I think. The pistols…no way.”
Travers groaned, then looked to his men. “We’re going loud. Overkill on these, just to be careful. Me and Fish will cross to the other side while we fire, take the nearest bot. Hash and Jamie, you take this corner. Just keep shooting till nothing moves.”
Court said, “Be prepared to get back around cover if one of those things aims in on you.”
Travers gave him a “no shit” look in the dark.
The four shooters lined up at the corner in two teams of two and readied their weapons at their shoulders.
As they moved out around the corner, exposing themselves to the enemy, the men were surprised to see one of the bots moving up the hallway, some ten meters closer than it had been before, as if it had heard the voices and was coming to investigate.
Travers shifted his aim in an instant and fired, missing the rectangular torso but hitting the mobile weapon on the left front leg, and it stumbled back. Fish missed high with his first round but caught the gun turret on top with his second, and both men’s second shots, fired nearly simultaneously, struck the machine on the front panel where the main cameras were.
Bits of the machine exploded off it, but its weapon managed to fire nevertheless, missing high.
While Fish and Travers ran right to left across the hallway firing, Hash and Jamie both took a single step out and dumped round after round into the target in the rear, hitting it in the shoulder joints and torso. The four-legged weapon spun and then tipped onto its side, tried to right itself quickly, but stumbled in the process.
SIXTY-TWO
Anton Hinton stood frozen in place as the gunfire raged right outside the door where he stood. Wren drew his pistol and got between him and the door, and then he ordered both the Cuban security men to get out into the hall and begin engaging the enemy.
As the men prepared to do so, the Englishman turned to the bots in the room. All four of the humanoid devices had drawn their pistols and now held them at their sides, barrels down.
Wren addressed two of the Sentries, who used voice and facial recognition to classify him as someone authorized to give security orders. “You and you, move Anton through the back door to the foot passage, get him on a cart, and take him directly to the cluster. Off you go!”
“Who is it?” Anton shouted as the bots approached him.
Wren looked to Zack, then up to his boss. “We’ll deal with them, whoever they are. We need all Sentries down here, and all the bots that are finished in assembly armed and deployed around the SIGINT building!”
Anton pulled out his phone to make the call as he ran out the back door, past Zack on the bench, who appeared to be disoriented still by Wren’s last blow to his face. The two robots surrounded Anton, matching his speed, their sensors scanning as they went.
Wren again shouted to the Cuban guards to advance into the gunfire, but although he gave his attention to the men by the doorway, he held his handgun on the man on the bench behind him.
The Cubans exited the room, and then Wren began turning back to Zack.
He’d made it halfway around when he felt his pistol arm knocked away, and then he was slammed by the full force of the American’s body crashing into him.
