Foxy just shook his head. “Subtle, boss.”
Hoov tapped him on the shoulder and showed him an image in the Rover tablet’s screen. “They’re raiding the camp.”
Foxy could see dozens and dozens of FBI and Homeland Security vehicles rolling toward the JOC camp, rack lights flashing. He nodded to Hoov. “Time to regroup.”
Ripper signaled to an approaching chopper.
* * *
Still falling through the night sky, Odin stabbed two gloved fingers toward his eyes. “Stay with me, Professor. . . .” Then he turned and kept firing at the drone looming in from above. The shell casings were starting to collect around them as they fell, and McKinney batted them away.
She saw a glow as something launched from the front of the drone. She barely had time to react by the time what must have been a missile raced just a few yards past them but detonated much farther below. She felt the blast wave as a white-hot light flare appeared in her night vision goggles—but the next-gen goggle phosphors recovered quickly, unlike the ones she’d used before on research trips. Soon they fell through an acrid smoke cloud and down into the night. The drone on their tail obliterated the smoke cloud as it howled through half a second later.
It was only a hundred meters behind them, and Odin’s tracer rounds stitched across its front. Flames quickly burst from it, and it yawed off course, spinning wildly, trailing smoke.
McKinney glanced down to suddenly see the dark, cold terrain racing up to meet them. “David! Ground!”
He unstrapped the machine gun and hurled it away so it wouldn’t tangle in his chute. It spun off into the darkness. “Not yet, Professor.”
The burning drone corkscrewed past them, plunging down toward the dark landscape. They fell through its trail of black smoke for a moment or two. It was so dense, she could smell burned plastic and aviation fuel even through her oxygen mask.
She was almost looking straight across at the horizon line now. “We’re practically on deck!”
“Easy . . . easy . . .”
There was a fiery explosion on the desert below them, illuminating the terrain and showing just how low they were—not far above fifteen hundred feet.
“You’re going to get us killed!”
His enclosed helmet made his face unreadable, but his voice sounded calm. “Wait. . . .”
Again she put her gloved hand around the ripcord. They were at BASE jumping height. Moments to impact. There would be no chance to deploy a secondary. A glance at Odin showed him measured, hand extended. Wait . . . wait. . . .
He made a cupping motion with one hand and shouted, “Now!”
She pulled the ripcord and closed her eyes as the chute drew her up sharply. When she looked up to see the canopy deployed fully overhead, she felt another rush of adrenaline combined with relief. It was the heady mix that had lured her to skydiving in the first place. She glanced down just in time to see the desert floor racing up to meet her.
McKinney pulled in on the canopy controls and got herself moving laterally just in time to come to a stumbling stop and roll over the sagebrush and sandy soil. She rolled to her feet, cursing, and unclipped the harness.
“What the hell’s the matter with you?” she shouted into the radio.
She looked around for him and saw Odin sixty or seventy feet away, efficiently balling up his canopy. “Bundle your kit.”
McKinney stared at his distant form for a moment, then started rolling and collapsing the parachute. “Do you realize how close you came to killing us?”
“Two hundred and thirty-three.”
“Two hundred and thirty-three what?”
“HALO night jumps.” His helmeted head turned toward her. “Finish up, we gotta get moving. And kill your oxygen. There’s fire here.”
McKinney cursed under her breath again, then searched for the valve on her small green oxygen bottle, cinching it closed. Then she pulled the free-fall helmet off, breathing the clean desert air. She was panting and tried to get her breathing under control. It was actually beautiful out. She looked up at a brilliant field of stars in the winter sky. She felt incredibly alive.
You’re okay. Everything’s okay.
She balled up the parachute silk and joined up with him. It was only then that she noticed a field of scattered fire burning in the desert not far off.
“C’mon.” Odin led the way through sparse creosote bushes and desert scrub.
Before long they came to the first pieces of wreckage, still on fire. Odin tossed his parachute directly into the flames, motioning for her to do likewise. She tossed it in after his.
“Shouldn’t we be escaping or something?”
He kicked a small piece of wreckage away from the flames, some sort of internal mechanical component, badly charred and twisted.
“Odin.”
He kicked sandy soil onto it, smothering the flames. “I need to confirm something.” He picked up the still-smoking device with his gloved hands, searching.
He pulled his helmet off and drew a small tactical flashlight from his flight suit pocket. The flashlight had a wad of duct tape on the handle end, on which he bit down as he placed it in his mouth. He clicked it on, aiming it with his head as he examined a small metal plate printed with numbers and a logo. McKinney looked over his shoulder.
He pulled the flashlight out of his mouth. “VisStar Inertial Gyroscope . . .” Odin looked up at her as he tossed the piece of wreckage away. “Black project aerospace. Military-grade. Doesn’t mean they sent the thing, but it does mean we’re dealing with insiders.”
“But why would they leave so much evidence behind on the parts?”
“Because they don’t care if they’re found out. There’s something major going on here that I’m not seeing. And that probably means politics.” He started fishing through his flight suit zipper pockets.
“Ritter warned you that ‘they all wanted this.’ Who’s they?”
“Ritter wouldn’t know. He’s just a messenger. They’ve got ten thousand like him. We’ll need to connect the dots beyond Ritter.”
She examined the sky above them, still brilliant with stars even with the fires burning nearby. “What about the other drone?”
The sound of jet engines was now gone. In fact, there were no aircraft sounds at all, just the lapping of flames with the occasional pop.
“Those were short-range air-to-air missiles—probably AIM-92s.” On her frown he added, “They were gunning for aircraft, not ground targets.”
“What about the first drone? The one we caught in the bag?”
He produced a GPS unit from his flight suit and started booting it up. “I don’t know yet. It might have been sent by someone else. Did you happen to notice those drones swarming?”
“Are you joking?”
“Did you recognize any behavior from your weaver model?”
McKinney recalled the machines flying in formation “They were flying together. I wouldn’t call two drones a swarm. They certainly didn’t manifest any weaverlike recruitment pattern, if that’s what you mean. And it’s too small a group, too short a time frame.” She gestured to the wreckage. “You think this has a black box flight recorder in it?”
“Probably, but they’ll be coming for it. So we can’t stick around.” He examined the GPS screen. “We need to get to the rally point.”
“Where’s that?” McKinney looked around at the frozen, mountainous desert around them.
“Not close.” He pointed at the mesas lining the horizon. “A lot of this is exposed rock. We won’t leave tracks. We’ll move across the heights and keep close to cover. There might be UAVs coming.” He put a pair of thermal binoculars to his eyes and scanned the horizon. In a moment he put them away. “We’re good for now. And about ten miles northwest of Green River as the raven flies. It’s rough ground, and we need to make up time.”
McKinney was still studying the burning wreckage.
“Congratulations on your first night jump, by the way.”
&nb
sp; She couldn’t help but laugh and shake her head. “Wasn’t fun.”
“Still.” He pointed toward the horizon. “South. Southeast around that ridge. Green River’s probably eighteen miles on foot; it’s gonna be a serious hump.”
“You ever do a mile through Peruvian jungle?”
“As a matter of fact, I have.” He started walking. “This area will be crawling with regular military and law enforcement soon. We need to be long gone by then.”
He climbed the edge of a smooth, sloping outcropping of stone and motioned for her to follow. The rock formation continued as far as she could see by moon and starlight. He headed farther up the spine of rock, toward distant lights glittering against a jagged silhouette of mountains.
McKinney took a breath and hurried up the rock face after him.
CHAPTER 19
Hot Wash
Odin and McKinney moved at a steady pace across a vast expanse of undulating rock; above them was a brilliant field of stars. She could even see the Milky Way this far out from civilization. It had been a long time since she’d experienced a cold, clear night like this. Being able to be outside at night without getting eaten alive by malarial mosquitoes was a pleasure. It almost made her forget the circumstances of their journey. The temperature was down in the thirties, but she was more than warm enough in the HALO jumpsuit.
“Can I keep this thing as a souvenir?”
He just cast a look back at her.
“You can tell them it blew up in the crash.”
“Keep moving.” He turned back again. “Here . . .” He tossed her a plastic tube that she just barely caught. “Energy gel.”
She examined the tube. “This classified too?”
“No, I got it at a sporting goods store.”
She cracked it open and squeezed some of the saccharin-sweet substance into her mouth. “Yuck. It tastes like a scented candle.”
“It’ll give you energy and keep you hydrated. Take it all. We’ve got a long way to go.”
She kept sucking on the tube.
The nearest stationary lights were miles away still. To the north they could also make out Interstate 70 and the truck lights moving over the vast desert landscape.
Odin occasionally stopped to scan the sky with thermal binoculars. Whether he was orienting himself or looking for danger, it was hard to tell.
Before long she heard a loud caw on the wind. McKinney and Odin turned to see both the ravens flutter down to land on rock outcroppings nearby.
A smile crossed his face. “Huginn. Muninn. Good.”
The birds fluttered and cawed again as if in response.
McKinney stood next to him, appraising the birds. “They found us. Even way out here.”
“They can cover a lot of ground—with excellent night vision. And hearing. Their eyes are sharp enough to tell a golden hawk from a goshawk at a distance of two miles.”
“Then they can hear approaching drones.”
“Long before we can.” He extended his hand to one of the ravens—it was always impossible for McKinney to tell them apart, although Odin seemed to be able to. The raven climbed onto his glove. He knelt and looked directly into its eyes. “Huginn. Scout. Muninn. Scout.” He released the bird, letting it walk over to its mate.
The ravens made a few keek-keek sounds and flew off into the night sky in opposite directions.
She watched them go. “That’s amazing.” It did feel good to have friends in the sky, scouting for trouble. “When did the military start working with ravens?”
Odin looked up at her. “The military doesn’t work with ravens. I do. I’ve known them both for twenty years, and if I’m lucky, I’ll be with them another twenty.”
“Twenty years? How long do they live?”
“They can live to be sixty.”
McKinney did the math. “But that means you’ve known them since you were a kid.”
He got to his feet. “We need to keep moving.” Odin started upslope, and McKinney ran to catch up.
“How did that happen?”
He cast a look back at her. “I spent a lot of time in the woods.”
McKinney recalled her own childhood explorations in distant woodlands and jungles—treks that inspired her career. She paused. “How’s a kid in an orphanage spend a lot of time in the woods?”
“I ran away from foster homes a lot.”
“Really?”
He nodded. “I was about twelve. Had a camp hidden in the woods, and this raven kept visiting me. I’d try to shoot him for food, but he’d fly away every time I grabbed my gun.”
“You were twelve, and you had a gun.”
“This was rural Pennsylvania. A .22 Ruger I stole from my foster father. Not the point. Every time I grabbed it, the raven would fly away. Or he’d put a tree trunk between him and me. He was smarter than I was.”
They ran for a few moments in silence. It was the most McKinney had ever gotten from him, and she didn’t want to interrupt.
Odin eventually continued. “I began to enjoy his company. He’d let out a warning whenever anyone else came near my camp. He started to lead me to carcasses in the woods. Deer that had been hit by cars. I realized he couldn’t penetrate their hides. That’s why he’d bring me—to cut them open for him. And that was our arrangement. I always shared with him after that. And he helped me survive.”
“A symbiotic relationship.”
“Not unusual for ravens. Back in school I learned all I could about them. Whenever I’d go back to those woods—even as a man—Huginn would recognize me. And later his mate, Muninn. They can remember individual humans for years. We’re special to them.”
“How so?”
They kept up a fast pace over the rocks. McKinney realized it was a good thing she was in excellent shape, because Odin was apparently used to covering ground fast.
“You familiar with the term encephalization, Professor?”
She nodded. “Sure. I’m a biologist. It’s the amount of brain mass exceeding what would be expected, given body mass. It directly correlates to intelligence. Humans and dolphins are the most encephalized species, for example.”
“And ravens.”
She frowned. “I didn’t know that about ravens.”
He glanced back. “Like I said, I wanted to learn everything I could about them. For instance, why do they need to be smart—why smarter than, say, an eagle?” He slid down a rock face and kept talking as they moved.
McKinney contemplated the question. “It’s true—brain tissue is metabolically expensive. So unless it’s needed, excess brains don’t appear in a species.”
“Right. So why does a raven need a large brain?”
It was intriguing. McKinney realized she had no ready answer. “Okay, why?”
“To manage relationships with dangerous creatures.”
McKinney considered this.
“Ravens thrive around human communities. That’s been going on for tens of thousands of years. In fact, there’s evidence they had a similar relationship with Neanderthal before we arrived on the scene.”
“So what are you saying—they actively seek us out?”
“They seek out top-of-the-food-chain predators—and put us to work for them.”
McKinney laughed. “I’d be interested in seeing the research.”
“Assuming we survive, I’ll be happy to show you.” He scrambled up an escarpment.
“How do ravens get us to work for them exactly?”
“They lead predators to prey. Wolf packs will follow a raven and let it eat from their kill. Ravens helped ancient people find game too, and still do for modern Inuit people. So what I experienced as a boy has been going on since ancient times. They’ve gone to war alongside man as well—to feast on the dead. The Vikings revered them and put them on their banners. In every human culture throughout history ravens held a special place. They’re mystical, mischievous, good or evil, but never just a bird. Ravens have observed us for so long they understand us. But one misj
udgment interpreting our behavior, and they’ll likely not live to make another. Working with predators is a dangerous game.”
She nodded. “That’s why they need to be smart. And the cooperation helps both species survive.”
“Exactly.”
McKinney looked up to see silhouettes sailing against the moonlight, watching over them. “And do you think they’re really aware of this relationship?”
“I’m convinced of it. They can solve complex puzzles to reach food without direct experimentation. They use their large brain for conceptualizing reality; imagining scenarios and calculating likely outcomes. No other creature except man can do that.”
“I must say you surprise me, Sergeant.” McKinney caught his gaze reflected in moonlight. “So how does a man like you wind up as an elite commando?”
He considered the question. “I know your opinion of the military, Professor, but barring some unforeseen advance in human affairs, the implied threat of violence is the only thing holding civilization together.”
“That’s a pessimistic view.”
“Where do you think political power originates?”
“Legitimate political power is derived from the consent of the governed.”
“Ah, you’re splitting hairs. Power is power.” He glanced back to her. “If we’re honest, power is derived from only one thing: physical force.”
“I couldn’t disagree more.”
He came briefly to a stop, studying the terrain and sky with the thermal binoculars. “How’s it go again? ‘Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.’”
“Yes. Exactly. As a soldier I’m glad you know that.”
“And what if a government doesn’t listen to the will of its people? Or a citizen doesn’t follow the laws of their government? What then?”
“It doesn’t necessarily result in violence.”
He nodded. “Which is why human society mostly works; people avoid trouble. But behind every law is the implicit threat of force, and behind every vote is the implicit threat of rebellion. That’s the bargain that holds a free society together. And no society with a wide power imbalance remains free for very long.”