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“Get down,” Kurt said.
They dropped behind the concrete of the building’s structural wall. When Kurt looked up again, he saw the machine marching in the other direction.
“Where’s it going?” Nagano asked.
“Toward the dock,” Kurt said. “Trying to head us off at the pass.”
“What, exactly, was that thing?” Joe asked.
“Han calls it a warbot,” Kurt said. “I was given a demonstration of them inside his factory.” He pointed to the pistol in Joe’s hand and then held up the sword he was carrying. “From what I witnessed, neither of these weapons are going to be much use against them.”
Kurt dropped back down as two more machines came out of the tunnel. Each of them took a slightly different path. “They’re spreading out,” he said. “No telling how many they have, but sooner or later one of them is going to come this way.”
“It won’t be easy getting to the water if they know we’re coming,” Joe said. “There are only a few spots around the island where it’s safe to get in the sea. Three stairwells and the dock.”
“We can be certain that those are already guarded,” Nagano said.
Joe nodded. “Which means we might have to go over the wall and jump for it.”
Kurt wasn’t sure that would work. “All that gets us is a fifty-foot drop into churning sea, with rocks and concrete pilings below us. Time the waves wrong and we’ll be killed on impact; even if we get it right, we risk being thrown back into the wall before we can get past the breakers.”
Nagano looked at the two men. “I competed in a triathlon down here years ago,” he said. “The currents are treacherous and my hand is useless. I won’t be able to keep up, let alone swim all the way to the mainland. You should go on without me. Perhaps I can distract these war machines while you escape.”
Kurt shook his head. “We didn’t come all the way here to get you just so we could leave you behind. Besides, why swim when we can fly?”
* * *
• • •
CERTAIN THAT Austin, Zavala and Nagano were out of the mine, Gao risked leaving the safety of the recording room and making his way to the control center. Ushi-Oni accompanied him, scraping the wall with the sword Han had given him to replace the Masamune. Sparks jumped here and there as the sword ground across tiny specks of flint.
“Do you mind?”
Oni ignored the comment and continued the annoyance all the way to the control room.
The men inside turned with a start as Gao and Oni entered.
“Any sign of them?” Gao asked.
“Nothing yet.”
Gao approached the closest console. Video feeds from sixteen different warbots were spread out on four different screens. A second wave of sixteen additional machines was deploying. An overhead view of the island showed them fanning out and working their way from the mine.
Oni approached and looked over the same map. “You’re leaving the west side of the island unprotected?”
Gao knew that. “There’s nowhere safe to climb down to the water on that side,” he replied. “And they would hardly dive off the west side of the island when they need to swim east to get to shore.”
“You wouldn’t,” Oni said, “but you’re still underestimating these men.”
Gao shook his head. “I know they’re trained divers, but they’re not fools. Swimming around the island and fighting the current makes it a far longer and more treacherous swim. It also makes it far more likely that we’d spot them in the water and shoot them dead. They’ll go for the nearest entry point and swim away from the island as fast as they can. And that means they’ll be on the east side.”
Oni stood back and Gao gave a new order. “Have some of the robots swing wide and loop around to the perimeter. Order the rest to go block by block and flush them out. Set them in area control mode so they can converge on the targets as soon as they’re spotted.”
The controller hesitated. “The farther we spread the net, the more likely the Americans are to slip through.”
“The warbots use wide-field infrared sensors,” Gao said confidently. “Ten of them can cover the ground of a hundred men.”
“And if the Americans hide in one of the buildings?”
