Brodie commented, “That’s a lot of mounted positions for two or three Ranger squads.”
“Well,” replied Miller, “that’s a big part of the suck, Mr. Brodie. You want maneuverability, but you need high-caliber firepower to penetrate these bastards. They’re titanium. So we opt for mounted M2s, plus RPGs, grenade launchers, and other kinds of MANPATS. We pick them off as we can on the approach, but they’re fast and most survive the charge. Once they’re in the village we’re deploying hit-and-run tactics. We’re an infantry platoon, but they’re a goddamn tank battalion that’s just shaped like infantry.”
That sucked, all right. And it drove home the point that the tin men were not simply mechanical stand-ins for human soldiers, with better endurance, maneuverability, and precision. They were also much more durable, which put them in a whole new target category, and engagement with them required cumbersome anti-materiel weapons. The Army liked to talk big about doing the impossible, but Camp Hayden’s platoon of Rangers was really being asked to do it, day in and day out. And they were apparently failing, day in and day out, despite their best efforts. That would screw up anyone, even without a heroic dose of speed, steroids, and cocaine.
Brodie said, “You’re insurgents, basically. That’s how you are being forced to engage.”
Miller nodded as he slowed the Land Rover about thirty feet from the entrance to the main street that ran through the village. The sergeant’s eyes scanned the empty training grounds, where a line of prop laundry swayed in the wind, and a string of busted-up cars lined the roadway. “We are tasked with occupying and holding a position and fighting to the death against a technologically superior force. Not exactly relevant training for U.S. Army Rangers.”
“Because you’re not the ones being trained,” said Taylor. “The tin men are.”
“Bingo,” replied Miller.
Apparently, Sergeant Miller was of the same mind as General Morgan on the real purpose of their mission. But Morgan, like any good commanding officer, justified the hell he was putting his men through. Which led Brodie to ask, “Do you believe this training has any value for you and your men?”
Miller turned and looked at Brodie with his world-weary eyes. “You mean was it worth the lives of Justin Beal and Roger Ames, or the sanity of Tom Greer? No, sir. There are a lot of causes worth dying for, worth sacrificing your mind and body for. This shit isn’t it.” He threw the car into park and turned off the ignition. “Let’s take a walk.”
CHAPTER 20
BRODIE, TAYLOR, AND MILLER WALKEDdown the central street of the mock village, past the line of wrecked and rusted cars. A battered white Nissan jutted into the road, probably to provide meager cover for the town’s defenders.
Brodie observed the tightly packed gray cinderblock buildings and their narrow window openings. Miller was pointing out different spots around the town where his men would take up positions. “If we try to hold the roads, we’re dead. They’re too fast and their aim is too accurate. They can fire with perfect precision while running twenty miles an hour. And these things move like they’re sharing a brain, which they basically are. Each bot maintains a constant awareness of the exact geolocation of its squadmates.” He pointed to one of the taller buildings. “We tried a tactic of just holding the high ground, thinking we could pick off a few and bottleneck the rest as they came up the stairs. But then this happened.”
Miller walked up to a cinderblock wall and put his fingers into a gap between the blocks where the mortar had chipped away. “The extreme temperature fluctuations in the desert cause the mortar to expand and contract constantly, weakening it and making it brittle. The tin men use these as footholds and break away additional mortar as needed. They started climbing up the sides of the buildings.”
Brodie pictured a swarm of Buckys, scrambling like chrome cockroaches up the walls and through the windows. This was a nightmare. Or, if you were unlucky enough to be an Army Ranger at Camp Hayden, it was a Tuesday.
“So,” continued Miller, “we take an all-of-the-above tactical approach. Fixed suppressive fire, ground-level ambushes, sniping from rooftops and through windows. It turns into a grim game of subtraction.” He pointed to a spot farther down the road. “If we put a guy there with a mounted machine gun, he can usually kill two D-17s before he dies. One or two other guys can maybe get one shot off each with an RPG before they’re killed, and three out of five times they miss. How many enemy kills do you get per man that you sacrifice? And how do you raise that number so that the enemy are all dead, and at least one of you is left standing? We haven’t worked out that equation yet.”
Brodie said, “Maybe it’s an unsolvable problem.”
Miller looked at him with a wry smile. “General Morgan says there’s no such thing as an unsolvable problem in the United States Army.”
Taylor asked, “And what do you think?”
“I think he’s a goddamned general and I’m a sergeant. Take a look in here.” He led them into one of the cinderblock buildings, which was empty except for MRE wrappers and shell casings littering the ground, and some Sharpie drawings on the walls of a similar ilk to what they had seen in the barracks—robots, penises, naked women with giant breasts, and a dead Ranger with x’s for eyes and a message below it:HAIL THE RISE OF THE MACHINES.
Miller wasn’t there to show them the graffiti, but the terrible sightlines inside the building. He pointed through one of the narrow windows, where from any angle you could only see a sliver of the road. “A lot of the buildings are tight like this, so we don’t get a visual from in here until they’re right on top of us.”
Brodie tried to put himself in Sergeant First Class Miller’s position—given an impossible task by a hard-ass general who might be more interested in proving a point about mankind than training the men under his command. Brodie imagined being inside one of these buildings when the tin men came, charging down the roads and through the doors, scaling the walls and clambering in through thewindows, all the while barely catching a glimpse of these man-shaped weapons before they were right on top of your ass.
Brodie said, “Not much to work with in here. You don’t even have furniture to barricade the entrance and slow them down.”
Miller nodded. “We only have our brains, our balls, and a lot of ammo.” He said to Taylor, “Excuse me, ma’am.”
“No need,” said Taylor. “I’m frankly shocked by what you and your men have been put through here.”
“Beats the real deal. Out here, the only thing that dies is your soul.” He added, “With a couple of exceptions.”
Right. This game had become deadly, but the math hadn’t changed. The ledger of human survivors always came to zero, with the tin men still standing.
Miller led them up the narrow staircase to the roof, where a firing nest stood—sandbags and a mount for a machine gun. Brodie spotted a few cans of Monster Energy drink littering the roof. He was sure the Rangers were trained to clean up after themselves. But this was a sign of a morale problem. They’d stopped caring, and their COs had stopped bothering to demand anything better.
Miller pointed to a high sand berm about two hundred yards to the southeast. “The tin men get dropped behind there, and when the battle begins, they crest the top of that berm or go around it. Those opening moments are when they are the most vulnerable, and when the odds are most in our favor. They can’t run well on loose sand, but as you can see it gets more hard-packed the closer to the village due to all the vehicle activity. Plus, they have some cover.”
Their cover consisted of a few freestanding cinderblock walls and a single broken-down pickup truck sunk in the sand. If the tin men had been humans, a two-hundred-yard charge on foot with barely any cover toward a heavily fortified position would be suicide.
Miller, possibly sensing what Brodie was thinking, added, “They clear this open land and are inside the village within twenty seconds,and as I said they can run and gun with perfect accuracy. That makes it a lot harder on our gunners.”
