The system wasn’t foolproof. A very determined enemy willing to sacrifice a few men could conceivably force his way through. And an enemy that knew what he was dealing with could punch a hole through the defenses by destroying two of the spikes. But in the dark, a confused and unsophisticated enemy would be surprised and stunned by the force of the blow: as evidenced by the two twitching men lying on the other side of the fence Danny saw as he approached.

With the assurance that the spikes were working, he took a quick detour to his left, running in the direction of the citadel cluster where the bots had landed. Here another set of spikes had embedded themselves between the closest ring of defenders and the buildings. Covering a wider ground, the spikes were backed by two of the bots. At least a half-dozen bodies lay on the other side of the virtual fence; from where Danny was, it was impossible to see if they were dead or merely stunned by the shock.

The bots had the buildings under siege. A violent firefight flared at the southeastern corner. Danny considered calling in another round of mini-JDAMs to subdue the resistance, but decided not to—too much damage and they’d never be able to recover the missing UAV parts if they were inside.

By the time he returned to the buildings he’d attacked, both teams were engaged in a gun battle with several Brothers around the last unsearched building.

“I figure this much resistance, it’s a good bet what we want is inside,” said Flash, who was huddled behind the corner of the building across the way. “What do you want to do?”

“Put some grenades through the window,” said Danny. “Lives are more important.”

Strictly speaking, that wasn’t true—everyone on Whiplash was expendable, and they knew it—but Flash complied. He loaded a round into the snap-on launcher beneath his SCAR’s gun barrel, sighted on the window the Brothers were firing from, and pulled the trigger.

An ordinary grenade fired by a skilled fighter would have a fair chance of getting through the window, but even a novice could have succeeded with Flash’s setup. The grenade was a guided munition, designed to follow the beam projected by the laser at the top of Flash’s gun. The round flew through the window and exploded inside, instantly killing all three fighters.

The gun battle continued. There were four men up on the roof of the building. Two had machine guns, and with constant fire they were able to keep the team at bay. Flash had sent two troopers around the side, and he was reluctant to fire any grenades near them, fearing they would be crushed by the wall if it collapsed. Their positions were marked out on his screen by MY-PID, which kept track of the members by reading the location of the transponders in bracelets each wore.

Danny finally decided the best solution was to call in a laser strike.

“Team, stand by,” he told the others before connecting with the laser plane.

“Alert,” said MY-PID, interrupting his transmission. “Four subjects are exiting from Mine Entrance X-ray Dog one five.”

The attack by the minibombs had failed to close the entrance. Danny told the laser ship to stand by, then called up to the Osprey, where his four-member team of reserves, including Melissa, were waiting for their part in the assault.

“We have a slight change in plans,” he told them. “We have people coming out of the mine.”

“We’re just talking about it now,” said Shorty, handling the team communications. “We’ll get them.”

“Melissa, are you all right with this?” Danny.

“I’m anxious to get going.”

“Roger that. Whiplash Six out.”

Nuri cursed as the grenade exploded a few yards away. By then he was facedown in the dirt, the rest of his body hunched flat. The concussion slammed him flat so hard he blanked out. He came to a moment later, feeling as if the back of his skull had been blown straight off. But only his helmet had been forced away, the chin strap sheared off.

He’d also lost his right earplug. He fished around for it—the plug had his radio headset embedded in it—but couldn’t find the wire. It had been severed in the explosion.

Amazing I wasn’t hit, he said to himself.

He glanced at his right arm and realized that wasn’t true—blood was running down the front of his bicep, soaking into the skin.

Shit.

“Sir! Sir! You OK?” yelled a corpsman, running to his position.

Nuri flexed his fingers.

“I’m OK,” he told him. “Help some of those guys.”

“Where?”

Nuri looked in the direction of the Marines who’d been with him earlier, expecting to see them lying on the ground. Instead, they were charging the gate position.

“I’m fine,” he yelled to the corpsman, hustling after them.

Melissa gripped the assault rifle and tried to steady her breathing as the Osprey sailed toward the hill where the men were escaping from the mine. Despite her best efforts, she was hyperventilating, gulping huge wads of air into her lungs.

The aircraft began to stutter. Melissa looked up, worried that they were about to go down.

“They’re firing rounds to try and stop them,” explained Shorty. “The pilots will herd them into a corner, assuming they don’t kill them. Be ready.”

“I’m ready,” she yelled. “I’m as ready as ready.”

Danny turned the corner just behind Flash as the laser took out the last of the gunmen on the roof. Already Sugar and one of the other troopers were at the door; within seconds there was a double explosion inside—a pair of grenades tossed by the two Whiplashers. Smoke rose from the building, and then the wall at the corner of the house furled downward, collapsing from the force of the blast.

“Shug!” yelled Danny.

“I’m OK, Colonel. We’re here. All present and accounted for.”

The team pushed into the house, moving quickly through the first floor. The only people they found were dead—a dozen fighters, all with weapons either in their hands or nearby.

Danny had concluded by now that either his guess on where the UAV parts would be found was wrong and they were in the second cluster of buildings, or they had never been in the camp to begin with. The search of the second floor, which had suffered considerable damage and was missing half its roof, seemed to confirm that, though they did retrieve a desktop computer from one of the rooms where the wall had partially collapsed.

“Sugar, secure the computer CPU with the drive and everything,” said Danny. “Everybody else, we’ll form up outside and take the other cluster.”

Danny did a quick review of the situation. The men who’d come out of the mine shaft were being pursued by the team in the Osprey; MY-PID could track them relatively easily now and they wouldn’t get far. The defenses at the southern wall of the compound had been almost completely neutralized. Upward of four dozen individuals were hunkered down in the huts and tents scattered on the northwestern side of the compound; they showed no inclination to join the fighting. MY-PID’s analysis showed these were mostly women.

But resistance at the last citadel remained strong. Apparently realizing the bots wouldn’t go inside the buildings, the men in the outer ring of houses had spread out, firing intermittently and quickly retreating. This made it more difficult for the robots to concentrate their fire. While the guns did a reasonable job of chewing into the outer walls, the Brothers had begun firing from well inside and in some cases behind the buildings.

Danny had the laser pick off anyone who was uncovered. Then he called over to the Marine captain to get him to move his mortars so they could target the complex.

“I don’t want them to fire unless I give the order,” Danny told Pierce. “But it may come to that.”

“Will do—we have a couple of hard knots of resistance on the western and eastern ends,” reported the captain. “We’ll keep them engaged.” His voice calmed somewhat under fire—truly something you’d only find in a Marine.