In the hotel kitchen, Chapel and the president’s other Tin Men made short work of the killers who’d been lying in wait. Secret Service agents clustered around President Matheson as bullets flew, ricocheting off oven hoods and shattering chinaware. Felix found himself between two of the aides, Maggie and Jun, and he made sure to keep pace with them because the only people behind him were the Russian president and his bodyguard, and they were dangerous variables.
A Secret Service agent cried out in pain as a bullet punched through his chest. Maggie faltered as blood spattered her, and she dropped to her knees behind a metal table, afraid to continue. Jun kept running but Felix crouched beside her.
“Maggie, please.”
Up ahead, Matheson and his protectors had kept going. The assassins were all dead, or at least down and dying.
“If we’re left behind,” he said, “we’re as good as dead.”
Rostov shoved Felix out of the way, grabbed Maggie’s arm, and hauled her to her feet. His iron eyes were alight with rage.
“Then we must not be left behind,” the Russian president said.
Rostov hurried Maggie along. Felix glanced once at the Secret Service man who lay on the floor just a few feet away, dying from a sucking chest wound, and knew he didn’t want that to be him. Rostov’s bodyguard passed by and Felix knew he was out of time. He careened across the rest of the kitchen, hurrying through a short hallway to a heavy metal door that hung open.
Outside in the sunshine the air thundered with gunfire. Felix pursued the others across a narrow access road to the concrete shadows of a three-story parking garage. As he scrambled over a low cement wall, the bot he knew as Marquez came back for him.
“Move it, Professor,” Marquez said.
Breathing hard, Felix only nodded. I’m moving it, he thought. Trust me, soldier. I am moving it as fast as I can.
Bullets chinked off the outside of the parking garage just as he ran into the shade of its upper floors, blowing concrete divots across the floor and at cars. Marquez didn’t even bother returning fire—they were out of range now.
Up ahead, Chapel and Brigham led the way to a central stairwell and they all raced down single file. Then they were rushing along a sublevel of the parking garage, the Tin Men’s guide lights illuminating their path, and Felix realized they were underground. He breathed, happy that the anarchists outside could not shoot through the concrete at them. But he knew there might also be enemies waiting down here.
“You!” Rostov growled, pushing past Syd, still carrying a gun in his hand. “We’re not under fire now, Matheson. You’re going to answer for—”
Syd grabbed Rostov by the wrist and spun him around, disarmed him, and slammed him to the concrete floor, his face inches from an oil smear. Rostov’s bodyguard began to shout in Russian and leveled his weapon at the Secret Service agent on top of his president. Marquez shoved Felix out of the way and took aim. The four remaining Secret Service agents pointed their guns at the bodyguard, each with a two-handed clutch, not intending to miss.
Chapel and Bingham shielded the president even as they aimed at the bodyguard, but President Matheson pushed between them. Felix thought Matheson would tell them to lower their weapons, but he did not do that.
Instead, Matheson pointed at the bodyguard. “If he even exhales, drop him.”
“Mr. President,” Felix said warily.
Matheson dropped to one knee beside Rostov, who was face-first on the concrete, held there by Syd, a slender but powerful woman with shoulder-length blond hair, the only Secret Service agent not wearing a tie.
“What do you know, Kazimir?” Matheson asked. “You’re so sure it’s my fault…America’s fault…but you’re too damn sure. If we’re going to survive, it will have to be together. So tell me what you know.”
Matheson tapped Syd’s shoulder. “Sydney? Let President Rostov up, please.” He glanced around, then pointed at the bodyguard. “But my instructions still stand regarding that guy.”
Rostov stared at him, granite face etched with contempt. After a second or two, he gestured to his bodyguard and the man lowered his weapon. Syd took a step farther back from Rostov and lowered her own weapon. She knelt to pick up Rostov’s gun but did not return it.
“Perhaps you are not solely to blame,” Rostov said, raising his chin. “Several years ago, we heard whispers through back channels of a small, anonymous anarchist group who claimed to have a plan to free the world of American influence. There was some talk even then of chaos and one mention of what they called the Pulse.”
Maggie took Jun’s hand.
“You did nothing.” President Matheson stared, eyes narrowed with fury.
“What could he have done?” Felix said, and all eyes turned to him. He continued nervously. “Mr. President, do you have any idea how many threats against the United States are overheard by the Russian intelligence services in a single year? Hundreds, at least. In the past decade, that number has to have gone up exponentially, year after year, as resentment built.”
Matheson hesitated. Breathed in and breathed out. “I’ll bear the weight of my part in the precipitation of all this. That’s going to haunt me for the rest of my life.”
Chapel stepped up beside him. “All due respect, sir, that won’t be long if we don’t move our asses.”
Matheson and Rostov stared at each other for another second or two. Practical men, Felix thought. The two presidents understood each other better than perhaps anyone else in the world could have. Matheson reached out and Syd handed him the Russian president’s gun, which he then returned to Rostov.
“Hold our fight for another day?” Matheson asked.
Rostov nodded. “If we are alive in the morning, we can decide if we still want to kill each other.”
The Tin Men heading for Athens needed speed. The Pulse had struck just before 0900 hours and they had not hit the road out of Damascus until after 1300 hours. And what had the world leaders in Athens been doing in that four and a half hours? Danny figured many of them had been busy dying.
Danny drove the Humvee-TSV along a narrow, rutted highway, kept his hands tight on the steering wheel, and did his damnedest to keep his mouth shut about what they might find waiting for them in Athens. To Kate, Peter Matheson wasn’t just the president, he was her father’s best chance at survival.
Any overland route to Athens would take forever, even if they weren’t in the midst of a slow-motion apocalypse. The immediate catastrophes caused by the EMP were just the beginning. The fallout would be so much worse, and the longer they took to reach their destination the more of that chaos they would have to travel through, which meant a sea journey across the Mediterranean from Haifa to the west coast of Greece, as close to Athens as they could get.
First things first, Danny thought. The road.
Before the Pulse, there would have been no debate about what route to take from Damascus to Haifa. South on Highway 15 toward Daraa, then west through Irbid and all the way into Israel until the road curved northward again. A hundred and sixty miles, give or take, maybe three hours at the speed limit. But the Pulse had canceled anything remotely resembling a speed limit and they didn’t have three hours.
They took Highway 7 to the southwest. Danny and Kate up front. Prosky, Trav, and Hartschorn on the roof. Hawkins, Mavrides, Birnbaum, Torres, and Lahiri in back with Ambassador Day, his daughter, and the fucking anarchist. Hanif Khan had been eager to talk earlier, to gloat, but from the second he realized they were going to jam him into the back of the TSV and haul ass in an attempt to save the president’s life, he’d been dead quiet. Danny liked that.
Ten robot soldiers, a middle-aged diplomat and his seventeen-year-old daughter, and a killer who’d helped engineer the end of civilization, all cooped up in an oversized black troop-sized Humvee. It sounded like the beginning of an odd joke, but Danny wasn’t laughing.
Inside the city perimeter of Damascus, the broken-down cars and trucks were a problem. Several times Prosky and Hartschorn had to run ahead and shove vehicles off the road. People heard the engine and hurried into the street or to their windows. Some cheered and others shot at them. Children raced beside the Humvee for a block before they were left behind. Old women wept and reached yearning hands toward the Humvee, searching not so much for aid as answers. That was how Danny saw it, at least.
And what were the answers, anyway? Did they matter? To him, the only answer that meant anything was, It’s over, folks. You’re on your own. Rebuild the best you can and protect your stuff because someone will try to take it away.
“Next time, do better,” Danny said quietly as he drove, just to hear his own voice.
“What’s that?” Kate asked.
He didn’t repeat himself. He didn’t need her to remind him there might not be a next time.
“You sure this trimaran is going to be there?” she asked.
The TSV approached a tractor-trailer that had died in the road. At the sound of their engine, the driver emerged, hanging halfway out the truck’s open door and waving to them in a frenzied combination of panic and relief. He thought he’d been rescued, and Danny refused to look at the trucker’s face as he accelerated around the vehicle, leaving the man baking in the desert. He had made it five hours, waiting for help to arrive. How long before he realized it was not coming?
“We talked about this,” Danny said. “Of all the ports we might target, Haifa’s most likely to have a hydroptere, maybe more than one. With the wealth that’s migrated to that city in the last fifteen years, it’s our best shot.”
Kate glanced out the window. From this angle, she looked like any other robot, but he could see just a fragment of the pitchfork on her cheek.
“What if there isn’t one?” she asked. “The people who own those boats…you really think they wouldn’t already have taken off in them?”
Danny narrowed his eyes against the sun glaring through the windshield. “Kate, you’ve got to stop—”
“I mean, sure, some of those guys are probably dead,” she went on. “Maybe they’re rich assholes who don’t live anywhere near the harbor. Could be it hasn’t occurred to them yet or maybe they’re afraid of just sailing off into the sunset without knowing what’s waiting for them wherever they make port. They’ve gotta be confused just like everyone else.”
Danny reached out for her hand, knowing that one of the others might get a glimpse between the seats but not caring. He took her hand, felt her fingers wrap around his, and squeezed.
“We’ll take the fastest boat we can find,” he said. “It’s the best we can do.”
Kate let go of his hand. She shot him a sidelong glance. “If I’m alone out here, Kelso, it’s important I remember that.”
Danny couldn’t argue with her. To do so would have implied a promise he could not bring himself to make. He felt himself splintering inside. Why hadn’t he ever felt this connection with her before? They’d shared friendship, yes, and attraction, but now he felt as if they were becoming tethered, and it troubled him deeply. He would back her up in combat, but could he give her any more than that?
“You should promise,” she whispered. “Do that much for me, at least. Tell me we’re going to get there.”
“You don’t want bullshit, Sergeant,” he said sternly. “Bullshit isn’t going to help you do your job. It’s not going to help us reach the president.”
Or your father, he thought.
Much of the city had been deserted, but in places where the warnings had not come soon enough, people gathered beneath awnings and fanned themselves on balconies. Smoke rose in twisting spires in the distance where fires had begun without anyone to put them out. When they passed within a block of the wreckage of a passenger jet, Danny slowed for a moment to gape at the plane’s mangled nose cone, which had come to rest on the steps of a school. The rest of the fuselage had broken up and destroyed much of the next two blocks, and two apartment buildings were still on fire. A woman sat on the curb outside a corner shop, her face buried in her hands. One of the plane’s engines lay inside the shop as if its walls were a nest, the engine an egg.
The world unraveled, and the Tin Men kept rolling.
“Hey, Kelso,” Lahiri called up to them. “What’s the deal with this boat you’re hoping to find?”
“It’s a sailing hydrofoil,” Birnbaum answered for him. “A trimaran big enough for all of us, but so fast it’ll do fifty knots on the open sea. Maybe a little less, given our weight.”
“Aw, the rich girl knows sailboats,” Mavrides said.
“Looks that way,” Hawkins agreed. “Thank God for that.”
Danny knew how to sail as well. Had, in fact, been on a hydroptere before, back in high school, but not because he was rich. His father had been a working sailor, part of the crew of a steel gaff schooner owned by the CEO of a nu-energy corporation, which was one of the old-school oil companies retrofitted to look as if they gave a shit about the environment. Danny’s father had taught him how to sail from childhood and made him promise he would have his own ship one day, and never crew someone else’s.
If they were lucky, today he would break that promise.
Haifa had thrived since the Tin Men had forced relative peace on the region. During that same period, the hydroptere had become a status symbol for rich assholes and a gift to adventurers with a genuine interest in mastering the seas.
They could make the journey from Haifa to Athens in just about any sailing ship large enough to hold them—Danny and Birnbaum could see to that—but minutes might matter, and a hydroptere would save hours.
With the city behind them and miles blazing past, they came upon fewer vehicles. Danny weaved in and out and spoke a silent apology to each pilgrim they passed on the road and every voice that cried out from those dead cars and trucks. This route would cut fifty or sixty miles off the trip, but better yet, out here in what Mavrides called the Great Big Nothing there were simply fewer people.
He tried not to think about how many of them were going to die.
“Hey,” Kate said, too softly for the others to hear over the growl of the engine.
Danny glanced at her. “What’s up?”
“You really believe you’re alone in the world?” she said, studying him. “I mean really believe it?”
He looked back and forth between her and the road, slid the Humvee around a pristine silver BMW, and then turned to Kate again.
“I think it’s safer like that.”
Kate glanced away, the hesitation full of such vulnerability that he could almost see her human face.
“I had the idea we were looking out for each other,” she said quietly.
Danny watched the road, hands still tight on the wheel. When he looked back at her, the terrain to the west had turned into rough stone hills, orange and red like some alien landscape. They were as far from whatever they called home as they would ever be. He had no idea how to even define “home” anymore. Was this it, right here with Kate?
“You going to tell me I’ve been imagining this thing?” she went on. “ ’Cause you seemed to like the idea until today.”
How many times had he imagined what it would be like to take her to bed? Or let her take you to bed, he thought. This is Kate we’re talking about.
Now here they were. But even if he allowed himself to stop swimming, just for a second, to see if he could handle all these things he never allowed himself to feel…what would be the point? Trapped inside the tin, what was the use of tenderness?
“I liked the idea, yeah,” he confessed. Danny glanced at her, wondering how much his robot eyes revealed. “But look at us, Kate. There’s no point in having this conversation while we’re like this.”
She glanced away.
“The irony’s fucking brutal, isn’t it?” he asked quietly.
“What is?” she asked, trying to draw him out, make him spell it out for her.
“Never mind.”
Danny glanced over his shoulder. The others were still talking, speculating, arguing. None of them were paying attention to the front seat, as if he and Kate were the parents and the rest of them the squabbling children. All but Khan, who remained silent. Danny glanced in the rearview trying to get a glimpse of the anarchist, but instead he saw the girl, Alexa Day, watching his eyes in the mirror.
“I get it,” Kate said. “The irony.”
“You said you didn’t,” Danny replied quietly.
Kate stared straight out through the windshield. “It’s not the same for me.”
“Why isn’t it?”
“Your end goal is to get back to the Hump,” Kate said. “Get back to your body, just like the rest of them. And I want to make sure that happens for you. It’s important to me that you make it back there.”
Danny steered around a dusty white delivery van, but saw no sign of whoever had been driving it this morning.
He glanced at Kate, not sure he’d understood. “You saying you don’t want to get back to the Hump? You got some plan to martyr yourself along the way?”
“Nothing like that,” Kate replied, then turned to meet his gaze, unflinching. “I just don’t give a shit if I ever get my body back. The bot might get scratched or charred, but barring some seriously bad luck I could live a thousand years. Hell, maybe forever.”
“Kate—”
“And there’s the other thing, y’know?” she said, glancing out the window again. “Like this, I have legs. I can run.”
Danny stared a moment longer, then turned his attention back to the road. Three motorcycles had been dumped on the hardscrabble shoulder of the highway, their owners nowhere to be seen.
Kate’s hand touched his, a brief moment. A metal caress. Then she withdrew her touch, not wanting to draw attention from the rear of the vehicle.
She prefers the robot, he thought.
And the Tin Men rolled on.