“Does that mean less than ten?”
“That means two more.”
“Then fire them as if you had a hundred,” said Reuben.
The captain signaled again for them to shoot. Two more hits. Two more scores, though one of the mechs did not blow up completely, but fell over and did not try to get up.
The other mechs turned around and ran back down the tunnel.
This time the captain didn’t try to stop the cheering.
A couple of guardsmen started running down toward the blown-up mechs.
“Don’t go near them!” shouted Reuben. “They might be booby-trapped! You’ll get blown to hell!”
The guardsmen stopped. Again, good discipline.
Reuben and Cole made their way down to the one that hadn’t blown up. They played the same routine with the back panel. Only they didn’t pry the lid off after blowing the keypad and shooting the button.
The hatch came off by itself.
A man’s head emerged. He saw the situation—Cole and Reuben with their weapons pointed at him—and ducked back inside.
“Come out and surrender!” demanded Reuben.
He was answered by a single gunshot inside the mech.
“Shit,” said Cole.
Reuben ran for the hatch. The man inside had put a pistol in his mouth and fired. But there was less mess than Reuben would have expected. “I think he missed,” he said. “Help me get him out.”
It was awkward, but finally they each got an arm and pulled him through the hatch. He had shot into his mouth but the barrel had been pointing the wrong way. The bullet had apparently gone up through the roof of his mouth and through his left eye. There was a furrow in the forehead and the skull was open, showing brain. But the guy wasn’t dead, even though he was defi
nitely unconscious and his left eye was destroyed, along with his palate and cheekbone.
They dragged him up toward the waiting guardsmen. “Medic?” Reuben asked.
“Ambulance on its way,” said the captain. “I called for it when we set out for the tunnel.”
“Good man,” said Reuben. “Major Reuben Malich,” he said. “The guy with me is—”
“Hell, I know who you are, I own a TV. My name is Charlie O’Brien. I’m honored to meet you.”
Two things happened while they waited for the tanks to arrive. First, a couple of jets approached Manhattan from the south, flying low. The guardsmen started cheering, but when the jets got close to the Statue of Liberty, the pilots lost control of their aircraft. The jets veered off. One of them hit the water flat on its cockpit; the other smashed through Liberty’s gown and then dropped like a rock into the water.
“Tell them not to send any more jets,” Reuben said to the captain.
“What did that?” said the captain. “I didn’t see an explosion or anything.”
“A death ray,” said Reuben. “Or avian flu,” said Reuben impatiently. But the captain wanted a straight answer. “My guess is, a highly focused electromagnetic pulse. F-16s are shielded, but if you can get past it and screw up the electronics, they can’t fly. Get on your damn radio and tell them no more jets.”
The second thing was, Captain Charlie O’Brien heard something over the radio and turned to Reuben. “I’m supposed to put you guys under arrest.”
Reuben looked at him sternly. “That’s politics, Charlie. You saw me come out of that tunnel. You saw me and Cole bring along a bunch of New York City cops. We took down four mechs together and you saw me pop the hatch and pull out that poor bastard. I will debrief to you and you can pass that information along. But whoever wants me under arrest is part of the same group that killed the President and Vice President.”
“Who?” said Charlie. “Who’s doing this?”
“They’re Americans,” said Reuben. “And anybody could be on their side, working inside the government, against the Constitution.”