Kill Decision

  Someone pulled her up sharply. Odin. He smacked her painfully on the scalp with his open hand. “Get your shit, together, Professor. I need you on deck.”

  The pain brought McKinney back to her senses but pissed her off. “Fuck you! I’m working it out.” She rose to a crouch.

  The smoke had almost filled the room, and it was getting hard to breathe.

  Odin shouted, “Go! Go! Go!”

  The team leapt into action, calling out with repeated “Go! Go! Go!” as a form of echolocation as they moved quickly out of the room.

  Ripper tossed a bar towel to McKinney. “Move, Professor!” She motioned with her rifle, and McKinney rushed past as she wiped blood and brains off her neck and face—and ran into a choking cloud of smoke. As she emerged into the relatively clear air of the large foyer, Mooch grabbed her. “You injured?”

  “No. It’s not mine.”

  Foxy and Tin Man were already breaking open the large Pelican cases piled against the wall, while Ripper kept guard with her assault rifle, scanning every opening. Mooch was powering on electronics packages contained in ruggedized backpacks.

  “COMJAM up.”

  Odin entered, dragging Hoov’s body—a small rug covering its head. “We mourn later. Right now this operation has been compromised at a command level. This house is probably surrounded by class-one sniper stations—no doubt with more serious ordnance inbound. I need an immediate exfil plan.”

  Mooch answered first. “I say we make for the airstrip and fly out in the Caravan.”

  Foxy and the others were pulling strange weapons, armor, and gear out of the cases. “What about those jet-powered stealth drones? They could just shoot us down if we fly out.”

  Odin shook his head. “I think they brought those out for their big show. They don’t have them in quantity yet. That’s what their appropriations bill is for.”

  Ripper added, “And Odin took one out.”

  Foxy pulled what looked like a Roman shield with a mirrored surface out of one of the equipment cases. It had some sort of flexible fiber-optic viewing lens on a cable attached to its inner side. “Look, let’s just dodge these sniper stations and light out into the back country on foot.”

  “Overland on foot it’s two days to civilization, and the longer we stay in this area, the more shit they’ll be able to throw at us. With TRACER radar they could pick us off even in dense cover. We need to get clear out of this region as fast as possible. That means exfil by air.”

  Smokey nodded. “He’s right, Foxy. With the wing tanks on the Cessna we could do fifteen hundred miles easy.”

  “But to where?”

  “We’ll work that out once we’re airborne. For now we just need to get out of this killbox.”

  “You wanna fly below radar in these hills?”

  Ripper nodded. “I’ll fly the bitch.” To McKinney the woman’s appearance seemed incongruent with her attitude—she didn’t look tough. She looked like a pleasant neighbor. Someone who baked a mean casserole. But here she was, strapping on special-purpose body armor.

  Foxy eyed her. “Have you flown one, Ripper? It’s not a one-seventy-

  two.”

  “Fuck, yeah, I’ve flown one. Remember Caqueza?”

  Mooch grimaced. “We were picking branches out of the landing gear.”

  “Well, is that low enough for you?”

  “Then it’s agreed.” Odin pointed at Foxy. “If Ripper gets hit, you’re pilot, Foxy. Then me.”

  McKinney noticed that while the conversation was going on, the team was suiting up in black body armor with odd, irregular edges and color patterns—green and brown splotches, textures. In particular they were strapping on outlandish helmets that looked almost like Pablo Picasso carnival masks—fearsome and highly asymmetrical.

  Odin grabbed a thick plastic combat shotgun and jammed a plastic round drum clip into it. He chambered a shell. “They’ve got face detection running. Looks like they’re set to shoot at any human likeness, regardless of thermal intensity—so I want complete facial cover. Mooch, help the professor into Hoov’s cool suit.”

  “Oh . . .” McKinney looked down at Hoov’s partially covered body. “I—”

  “Not negotiable, Professor. Mooch!”

  “On it.”

  Mooch pulled a black jumpsuit out of a nearby case and tore open the Velcro fasteners before handing it to McKinney. The thing looked almost like a deep-sea diving suit, except that it had raised ribs running all along its surface. The others had already put theirs on beneath their odd armor. They resembled an oil-rig dive team gearing up for performance art.

  Mooch talked while he worked. “Cool suit—it helps conceal your thermal signature. Refrigerant flows through the bladders. You’ll start getting cold if you’re not moving, so let me know if your fingers start to feel numb.” He was already strapping odd body plates onto her arms and legs.

  She studied the plates. Their intent appeared to be disrupting the human outline—with special emphasis on the face. Mooch pulled a dense balaclava over her head.

  “Radio earphones too. I want her jacked into team comms.” Odin turned. “Foxy, Tin Man, get up to White, Bravo, Two and draw some fire. I want a map of every sniper station between us and the airstrip.”

  “What if they’re mobile? It’d be a waste of time.”

  Mooch shook his head. “Look at the GBOSS images. They’re dug in like ticks out there. They’re not going anywhere.”

  “Right.” Foxy pulled an uninflated pool toy from one case, and then he inserted an air canister into its base. The pool toy quickly inflated into a human bust—a Caucasian male in a suit. He affixed it to a plastic pole, then he and Tin Man ran upstairs with it.

  “Watch your ears . . . firing!”

  Odin aimed the shotgun at the skylight on the ceiling at the far side of the entry hall. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! Glass rained down onto the floor planks ten feet away. The sky was now open above them. Odin leaned down to the ravens, who seemed unfazed by the gunfire. He held up an index finger. “Huginn. Recce. Recce. Muninn. Recce. Recce. Go!”

  They cawed back at him loudly, then flew up through the skylight into the blue sky.

  McKinney watched them go. “They could get shot, Odin.”

  He finished getting his asymmetrical armor on. “We know the OS of just about every autonomous sniper station on the market, Professor. They’re made to kill people, not birds.” He was watching his Rover tablet, an image from one of the birds’ cameras. “The twins will do a mile orbit, and we’ll see what’s between us and the airstrip.”

  Several shots rang out in the distance—a crackling that echoed in the hills. It gave Odin pause. However, his video image kept running uninterrupted, and in a moment Smokey and Tin Man ran down with a deflated human decoy.

  “Trigger-happy little bastards. We barely got near the wall with the decoy when they opened up on us—straight through the planks.”

  Mooch nodded to a bank of monitors on a nearby table. “There’s your vector map, Odin.”

  Odin stooped to examine the video monitor. It showed a series of dots and glowing lines projected on the hillside, illustrating the path of incoming bullets. “Okay, two high on the ridge, eight hundred and nine hundred meters, one closer on this rise—about seven-eighty. Foxy, what do you think—Lapua Magnums?”

  “That’s what I’d use.”

  “All right.” Odin clicked around the computer screen. “That gives the bullets a flight time of about a second, give or take.” He stood up. “Even if they bracket us, that’s too far for them to hit an evasive target. Foxy!”

  “Yeah?”

  “Take the mirror blind and mark targets with near-red. Smokey, Tin Man, assemble the M224 in defilade—behind the SUVs might be good. On Foxy’s direction drop some seven-twenties on those two sniper stations. Clear us a path to the airstrip.” He looked around. “Objections?”

  Everyone nodded and murmured assent.

  “All right, then. Do it.”

 
They immediately launched into action, grabbing yet another equipment case and dragging it toward the front door.

  McKinney gave Odin a quizzical look. “Then you’ve faced these things before?”

  He nodded. “Our team has unique expertise, Professor. We illuminate them with a near-red laser for targeting—heatless light. It’s based on insect bioluminescence, actually. Helps conceal our presence. These machines can see infrared light like we can see visible light, so we don’t use it.”

  Foxy and the others, now in their cool suits, swiftly opened the front door, Foxy holding the mirrored, curving shield in front of him. Smokey and Tin Man followed him through the door, and although everyone tensed visibly as they ran out into the open, their cool suits and other equipment apparently made them invisible to the autosnipers in the hills.

  McKinney moved over to the security monitors and watched over Mooch’s shoulder. The screen showed Foxy moving to kneel behind the mirror shield in the driveway. Behind the SUV Smokey and Tin Man quickly opened the Pelican case and set up what looked to be a light mortar. In less than a minute Tin Man radioed in.

  “All right, Foxy, burn Target One.”

  “Burning.”

  Smokey was monitoring some sort of electronic device that he then held against a mortar round Tin Man offered to him.

  “Round programmed. Firing.”

  Tin Man dropped the mortar round into the tube, and they both ducked down with their mouths open.

  The mortar blasted with a CHOOM sound that was audible inside the house.

  Mooch tapped another monitor focused on the distant sniper station. It looked like an evergreen bush with a black pipe sticking out of it. But in a few seconds the bush exploded, revealing a shattered optical lens and a tripod mount as it tipped onto its side.

  Mooch radioed. “Target One down.”

  “Copy that, Mooch.”

  They quickly acquired the second target and repeated the process, requiring two rounds this time until they were satisfied it was knocked out. The entire team in the foyer breathed in relief as Foxy radioed in.

  “Targets eliminated.”

  Odin nodded. “All right, everyone. Let’s move everything to the SUVs.”

  But suddenly a deep humming sound started to emanate from somewhere outside—somewhere away in the hills. They all looked at each other.

  McKinney spoke first. “What is that?”

  It sounded like a thousand weed whackers heard from a mile away.

  Mooch examined the bank of camera monitors. “I don’t see anything. And we’re jamming common drone radio frequencies. And GPS signals.”

  Foxy’s voice came in on the radio. “Odin, we’re hearing a strange sound out here. You got anything on the sensors?”

  The sound was getting louder. Odin studied the rover screen. “Foxy, get your team back inside. Now!”

  On the video monitor they grabbed their gear and dragged it back toward the front door of the house.

  To McKinney the humming started to take on the sound of bees. Very large bees.

  Ripper was aiming her rifle from doorway to doorway on the balconies above them. “What the hell is that?”

  Odin was studying the Rover screen. “We’re gonna need a new plan.” He turned the screen to face them. It was a raven’s-eye view, flying over the forested hills—following what looked like a massive flock of black birds, thousands strong. Except that they didn’t move like birds; they swarmed low through and around the trees, hugging the land. Following something. The raven perspective showed that the cloud was moving, in surges and leaps, straight toward the house.

  Foxy frowned. “What the hell . . . ?”

  McKinney studied the image. “Oh, my God . . .”

  Foxy, Tin Man, and Smokey came back in through the double doors. Foxy lowered the mirror shield. “What is it?”

  Odin stowed the Rover. “Batten down the hatches, people. We’re about to get hit, and if it’s what I think it is, it means we shoot everything that moves.”

  The team started grabbing extra ammunition from the Pelican cases.

  Ripper pulled her smaller, lighter ammo clip out and slapped a heavy, translucent, twin-drum magazine into her weapon. “Smokey, you got any spare drums for a HK416?”

  “No, I wasn’t packing for an assault.”

  “Mooch! Bag Hoov’s body. We’re taking him with us.”

  “Right.” Mooch got busy, removing a body bag from his rucksack.

  “Foxy!”

  “Yeah?”

  “What’s the most defensible room in this house from a swarm?”

  “Probably the garage. Stone walls, covered by hillside on two sides. There’s a jeep there—no top, though. And I don’t have the keys.”

  The humming sound was wrapping around the house now—forcing them to shout. The sound of shattering glass came from upstairs—front, back, sides. Everyone aimed weapons upward.

  Smokey eyed the balconies warily. “Fuck me. . . .”

  “We move to the garage. Now!” Odin grabbed McKinney and started moving across the foyer. “Any expert advice, Professor?”

  McKinney stared upward with dread like the others. “Yes. Don’t let them find us.”

  Smokey brought up the rear. “Thanks for the tip.”

  Just then a series of gunshots boomed outside the tall front doors, the wood splintering in around the door hardware and hinges. Bullets whined past in the foyer, shattering a vase and breaking the glass of a cabinet.

  “Move! Move! Move!”

  The doors started to disintegrate as dozens more bullets ripped through the wood.

  As they reached the entrance to a hallway, Ripper pointed, aiming her weapon up. “There!”

  They looked up to see dozens of black buzzing objects pouring over the upstairs balconies from several directions. They looked like toys, two-foot-diameter quadracopters with wiry frames and a central hub—not unlike a winged insect.

  They seemed to respond to Ripper’s movement or her shout, because they immediately surged downward in a gathering cloud.

  Ripper opened up with her HK, a blade of fire stabbing out as she panned the ceiling, shell cases clattering across the floor around her. McKinney was surprised that her earphones seemed to cancel the loudness of the weapon, while still allowing her to hear her teammates on the intrateam radio.

  Odin was shouting, “Ripper, move!”

  Pieces of shattered plastic and entire quadracopters were raining down now, smashing into the floor around her as she ran toward them—firing upward the entire way in an uninterrupted burst. Smokey and Tin Man were also ripping the ceiling with short bursts from their HKs.

  Foxy rushed past them, dragging Hoov’s body bag by a strap, headed down the hall.

  As Ripper reached the doorway, one of the wiry drones fell nearby and a shot rang out close in. Ripper grabbed her leg and fell into the doorway, bleeding. “Dammit!”

  Mooch grabbed her by the collar, dragging her down the corridor, as Tin Man and Smokey raked the floorboards, shattering the wounded drones moving around there.

  “These fucking things . . .”

  The team was losing ground. Already hundreds more drones were swarming in from above. The hum was deafening and didn’t seem to get canceled by their headsets.

  And then the front doors pushed open and scores more poured in from outside.

  Odin’s voice. “Fall back! Fall back! Tin Man, Smokey, cover the rear. I’ll pop smoke.”

  McKinney ran down a hallway lined with closed doors just ahead of Odin. She sniffed the air and caught a pervasive peppery scent enveloping them, but she ran on.

  Behind him Mooch was dragging the wounded Ripper—who was cursing and flailing.

  “Goddammit, Mooch, I can fucking walk! Let me go!”

  Foxy stood in a left-side doorway at the end of the hall, motioning for her to enter, his weapon raised. “Go! Go! Go!”

  Behind them Smokey and Tin Man were falling back in bounding overwatch, firing madly
as they retreated, riddling the walls and doors with bullets, cycling through their big drum clips.

  The drones poured through the doorway after them, but the narrow opening made their position more defensible. The devices blasted apart in midair and tumbled across the floor as they came in, their pieces piling up. But their frames seemed to be made of thick metal wire or tubing, because they largely kept their shape even after their core was shot out. They lay like dead insects on their backs, spiky legs pointing upward.

  Smokey glanced back, “What the hell’s that smell? You smell that?”

  Tin Man nodded. “Like weak pepper spray. It’s burning my eyes.”

  Odin tossed a smoke canister into the foyer, and it issued billowing clouds. He called back, “Foxy! How’s our ride?”

  A muted voice shouted, “Working on it!”

  Smokey dropped his large drum clip and shouted, “Reloading!”

  That’s when Odin noticed that the swarm was already surging through the smoke.

  Tin Man fell back to another doorway. “Goddammit!”

  Odin nodded. “That’s millimeter-wave particle smoke—and it doesn’t even slow them down.” He raised his auto-shotgun and began raking the doorway with buckshot that seemed particularly effective. He shouted at the others, “We won’t have enough ammo to knock down half this swarm.”

  Tin Man got in a kneeling position. “Heads up! Forty Mike Mike. Fire in the hole!” He fired the grenade launcher bolted to the underside of his HK out the end of the hall into the smoke-filled foyer. There was a muffled flash and pieces of drones ricocheted everywhere—but the cloud soon swarmed in again through the smoke.

  Tin Man pulled the receiver open and slid another forty-millimeter grenade into it while Odin sprayed the doorway with buckshot. FOOM! Another grenade went into the foyer with similar results.

  “How many of these fucking things are there?”

  “Behind you!”

  Odin and Smokey turned to see Foxy pointing at a bedroom door near them. Bullet holes were blasting through near the doorknob, punching out panels in the door. Then the wall.

  “Fall back! Smokey, Tin Man, back!”

  They ran past the doorway, firing into it, and the swarm surged into the corridor behind them. Flames were visible rising along the foyer walls.