Doctor Who_ Trading Futures - Lance Parkin [85]
‘Baskerville,’ the Doctor called out. ‘You can’t possibly win.’
This was so clearly antithetical to the facts that Baskerville responded by increasing his rate of fire. The last few barrels were exploding, now.
‘Er… what are those chaps?’ Fitz asked.
Three chrome vehicles were taking up positions behind them. They were hovercraft, but with smooth, egg‐shaped bodies. They looked a bit like tanks, an impression confirmed a moment later, when guns started emerging from hatches in their fronts.
‘Class two RealWar robots,’ the Doctor said.
Anji was lying flat on the floor. A moment later, the Doctor and Fitz realised that she was doing something rather sensible.
The tanks opened fire simultaneously, the bullets passing right over them, perforating the barrels. They were firing at Baskerville – the Doctor, Fitz and Anji just happened to be in the way.
A male scream. The mini‐rockets had stopped. A moment later, the cannon fire had, too. Fitz kept his head down, though, and assumed the Doctor and Anji were doing the same.
‘Baskerville!’ the three tanks barked simultaneously, with a Scots accent.
Fitz was pleased to recognise the voice – it was the old man at the theme park who’d kicked his head in. Excellent – perhaps he’d get to see the really fit Korean bird again.
‘Baskerville! This is Cosgrove. I have control of the RealWar robots here. All of them. I have control of this base. Nothing is going to arrive or leave unless I want it to. All your men are dead. It’s just you and Dee. And you can walk away from this. I want the time machine. Now, you can tell me where it is, then leave, or I can kill everyone I haven’t killed so far, and search this place at my leisure.’
Fitz sighed. ‘Well, at least things can’t get worse,’ he suggested.
The air behind the tanks swirled, and six fully armed Onihr warriors stepped out of thin air and into the hangar.
‘Eradicate all humans!’ the deputy leader growled.
Fitz started banging his head against the concrete floor of the hangar. He couldn’t think of anything better to do, and this way he’d save someone else the trouble.
* * *
Chapter Nineteen
Action
The Eurozone security service monitors in and around Istanbul were all starting to reach the same conclusion.
The President hadn’t been seen since he’d entered the hotel, several hours before. The White House spokesmen had been waffling for most of that time – the President was being briefed, the President was unavailable. But something wasn’t right. There were riots in Tripoli, now. The massacre of the children on the school bus might have been a rogue teletroop, but it was an American rogue teletroop and demanded a response at the highest level.
As soon as CNN and the EZBC had reported it, both the Americans and EZ got more troops on to the street and more planes in the air. They knew it was just the sort of incident that could start a whole cascade of other incidents.
The EZ President, the President Minister of England, the leaders and relevant secretaries of state and spokesmen from just about every country there was had made a statement about the Tripoli shootings by now.
But not the President of the United States.
The press corps knew the procedures, they knew what normally happened with this sort of incident. Most of all, they knew when the White House press office were trying to pull the wool over their eyes.
EZ monitors watched all this with interest.
They were also watching things the press corps had no idea about. Three squadrons of USAF hypersonic jets had shown up heading north from the Gulf into Russia. The Americans had gone out of their way to make sure the EZ didn’t know about them. The natural conclusion was that they would swing back west, into eastern Europe. But why only three squadrons?
The tacticians concluded that the Americans were launching a pre‐emptive strike, one that no battle plans had allowed for.
And the President wasn’t available. Even on the hotline.
Whatever was going on in Istanbul, Washington seemed to know nothing about it. The Vice President wasn