A voice rang out from one of the commandos, “We have you surrounded. We have orders to shoot you if you do not comply with our demands. Lana Wilson, you are to lie down and spread your arms out. We will secure your limbs and you will be transported to a secure facility for questioning. You have been under surveillance for some time now. You cannot escape. We know who you are.”

She looked at them. Machine guns? They wanted to take her down with machine guns? So her cover was blown. Of course it was. John Hunt must have supplied it to them. So, you think you know who I am, do you? OK, let’s see.

Her machine mind was already calculating her tactical options. As she contemplated her response, it was arranging its recommendations into escape and evacuation, or E&E options, and Stand and Fight options. Like she was going to flee these children. Dismissing the E&E list, she looked at her Stand and Fight options, noting the computer’s analysis of the weapons ranged against her. The CAR-15 rifles fired at a rate of seven hundred rounds per minute and carried thirty rounds in a cartridge. No doubt they would fire in two teams, one half of the twenty-two soldiers waiting till the first had exhausted their cartridges before firing, allowing the first group to reload while maintaining a constant rate of fire. That was what she would do.

Assuming these were trained Navy Seal troops, as they clearly appeared to be, she should expect a high hit rate from each of them. That meant that she should anticipate being hit by an estimated 128 rounds in the first second. OK. She could take that. She should assume they would be using armor piercing rounds, but they didn’t know the kind of armor they were dealing with here. Her tactical analysis continued on to the four prone men with their belt-fed machine guns. The M249 fired one thousand rounds per minute, and unlike the assault rifles, they could fire continuously. At a glance, the belts they had strung were two to three hundred rounds long … each. They also had a higher caliber and higher muzzle velocity than the CAR-15. They would come at her at around 915 meters per second. Those would hurt. Combined with the assault rifles, that would mean she would be facing around 180 bullets per second.

Half a second had passed since the ultimatum. It was more than she had needed. She selected her response, locked in the attack protocol and initiated, telling her machine mind to select its targets automatically.