LITMIR.BIZ

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daze and he saw Blancanales shouting at him. The man’s lips moved, but nothing was coming through the ringing in his skull. He glanced over and saw the digger, its drill bits still whirring wildly. It had stopped, though, one light torn from its housing by the shearing force of the double explosion.

      “—said are you okay, Ironman?” Blancanales asked.

      “Yeah. What did you do?” Lyons asked.

      “I dropped some of the roof on that thing, and Gadgets flipped some high explosive under the belly of the beast. Looks like he took care of at least one set of treads, and the collapsed rock pinned the rest down.”

      Lyons blinked and saw Schwarz, highlighted by the remaining floodlight on the drill, his rifle aimed at the ground, looking around the sides of the machine when the thing lurched. Schwarz stepped back and fired a short burst into the drill head, but only succeeded in raising more sparks as heavy tungsten bit into solid steel.

      “I don’t think it’s dead!” Lyons mocked as Blancanales helped haul him to his feet. They kept out of the range of the churning teeth. He looked around the front, then saw Schwarz shoulder his rifle and fire a single shot.

      Smoke billowed and the trio of drill heads slowed.

      “Spotted the motor and tried to take it out with a burst,” Schwarz explained. “Pull back some. I’m going to roll a grenade under the other motor.”

      Lyons nodded, and he and Blancanales pulled back. The Able Team leader donned his Wolf Ears again and clamped them tight over his head. Schwarz raced back to them, and a new detonation rumbled in the confines of the tunnel. Blancanales and Schwarz spoke again, but it was muffled by the hearing protectors. Lyons tried the microphone switch and shook his head, removing the headset.

      “That did it,” Schwarz replied. He looked at the Wolf Ears. “Problems?”

      “Yeah,” Lyons answered.

      “Let me look at it,” Schwarz told him. “Go check on the digger.”

      Lyons nodded and followed Blancanales. The drill bits no longer moved, and Pol slid his frame between the digger’s chewing drill points and the ground. It was a little too close for the brawny ex-cop’s tastes, in case the machine managed one last surge of power. It could easily chew his friend to a pulp and Lyons wouldn’t have a chance to rescue him.

      “Looks like we have room to get behind it,” Blancanales called. “The tunnel is pretty clear. A little rubble from the cave-in, but other than that…”

      “Can you check to see if this thing’s fully down for the count?” Lyons asked. “I don’t want to have you stuck under this bastard with your shins chopped into ground beef.”

      “Sure, hang on. Gadgets’s first grenade peeled open the bottom, and I can see a few engine parts,” Blancanales explained. He clicked on a pocket-size flashlight, then drew an Emerson folding knife. The sturdy blade sliced through cables, though the Able Team commando hissed as a slight jolt burned his fingers.

      “You okay?” Lyons asked.

      “Yeah. I cut through the main battery cables, and a little bit of the charge came up the blade. I wasn’t in good contact with the metal, though, so nothing more than a small burn,” Blancanales replied. “Taking care of the generator cables now, too.”

      The floodlight cut out, and Lyons snapped on his pocket light. Schwarz tapped him on the shoulder and he accepted his Wolf Ears back. “What was wrong?”

      “The shock wave knocked the battery wires loose. I stripped the insulation, hand wound it back together again, and taped it up. It won’t be perfect,” Schwarz said, “but you can hear, and the protectors will keep your eardrums safe. I’ll solder it into prime shape when we get back to base.”

      “Good,” Lyons answered. “All right. Tie some rope around your rifle and pack. Pol’s going to haul our stuff through so we can get past this hunk of junk.”

      “You think we might find something at the other end,” Schwarz replied.

      “Yeah,” Lyons answered.

      Schwarz looked at the machine, then frowned. “Hang on.”

      He reached into his pack and pulled out a meter. “Pol! Shut off your comm for a minute! You too, Carl.”

      Lyons nodded and did as his partner said.

      “I’m picking up some readings,” Schwarz said. “A carrier wave.”

      “But Pol killed the power,” Lyons replied.

      Schwarz backed up and continued to look at his field meter. “It’s got its ears live for something. Wait…starting to pick up a signal the closer to the entrance I get. Pol?”

      “I’m checking,” Blancanales called back. “Yeah! I feel this thing packed with plastic explosive.”

      “Let me get in there,” Schwarz ordered. He pulled out another device and handed it to Lyons. “This is a jammer. Stand right where I was, and keep this thing on until I tell you to turn it off. Someone’s transmitting a detonation code to some explosives in the machine.”

      “Enough to bring down the tunnel and take out a search party,” Lyons mused.

      “You catch on fast,” Schwarz replied. Blancanales slid out from under the digger and Schwarz slipped underneath after clamping wire cutter handles in his teeth.

      Blancanales crouched and added his light to Schwarz’s efforts under the machine. Lyons, no expert at demolitions disposal, stood with the jammer, sullen and silent. He didn’t like standing by helplessly, but he knew that his lack of experience with disarming explosives would only be a hindrance. Gadgets and the Politician were weaned on C-4 from their A-Team experience. If anyone could handle the booby-trapped juggernaut, it was his partners.

      Lyons took a deep breath and waited for the deadly digger to be tamed.

      ROSARIO BLANCANALES accepted the central processor from Hermann Schwarz.

      “Save that. Bear and the others are going to have a field day working on its programming,” Schwarz told his old friend.

      Blancanales nodded. “How did this thing move without radio controls?”

      “The processor. It must be an artificial intelligence unit. Fairly basic. We set off the digger’s motion detectors as soon as we got too close,” Schwarz answered. Something snapped in the hollowed gut of the machine. “Damn. We woke it up. It’s got infrared sensors.”

      Blancanales shook his head. “As soon as it got the detonation signal, it would have dropped the whole mountain onto us.”

      “Or whoever went in. I’m thinking that they expected a platoon of soldiers, sweeping the darkness with IR to keep from being ‘seen,’” Schwarz replied. “It would have been like waking up Ironman with a floodlight in the face.”

      Schwarz shimmied out from under the machine with a handful of radio components. “The detonators.”

      “Look like standard radio units,” Blancanales replied.

      “They are, but we can trace them. I’ll pull out the C-4, and then we’ll get the Rangers to pull out the digger,” Schwarz told him. “We’re going overland.”

      Blancanales smiled. “The transmitter for the detonation signal would likely be manned.”

      Schwarz nodded. “Beats a tunnel fight, especially if the drones rolled through an underground river. We don’t have scuba gear with us.”

      “Good thinking,” Blancanales congratulated. “I’m sure Carl would like the breathing room too.”

      Schwarz took out the squashed blocks of explosives and set them apart from the detonators. “Scorched earth, and a bunch more dead soldiers. The bastard behind these robots is starting to piss me off.”

      Blancanales

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