Kill Decision

  McKinney ducked back into a stone-walled two-car garage where Foxy was busy under the dashboard of a late-model crocus yellow Jeep. It had no roof, just padded roll bars. “You’re kidding me. . . .”

  “It’s all we got, Professor. Unless you think we stand a chance reaching the SUVs in the driveway.”

  “No, I don’t.” McKinney noticed Hoov’s body bag lying in the small cargo area. She turned to see Ripper sitting in the jeep’s doorway as Mooch examined her calf. He was wrapping it in bandages.

  “Small-caliber bullet. It’ll keep.”

  “I fucking told you.” She was reloading her weapon.

  “Did you see what it was?”

  “Looks like a goddamned zip gun. They have rows of them. They try to get you in close. They’ve got these beady insect eyes. . . .”

  McKinney sniffed the air again. “Does anyone else smell that?”

  Ripper nodded. “Like cayenne pepper?”

  Mooch cut the bandage. McKinney ducked her head out to look down the hallway.

  Odin glanced back at her. Although his expression was impossible to see behind his asymmetrical mask, his posture indicated they couldn’t hold out long. Behind him all hell was breaking loose, with Tin Man and Smokey spraying machine gun fire and lobbing grenades.

  Odin turned forward again, firing at a drone that came in from the side door. One blast from his shotgun caused it to detonate, blasting all three men off their feet and peppering the walls with shrapnel.

  McKinney raced forward to grab Odin.

  He shoved the auto-shotgun in her hands. “Shoot!” And crawled to assist Smokey, who was tugging at the screaming Tin Man. Blood covered Tin Man’s legs, and a metal spike protruded from his thigh. Smokey was also bleeding in several places.

  McKinney raised the heavy combat shotgun as a wave of drones surged forward in a way that was all too familiar from her research. She never thought she’d be facing weavers on their own level, but now that she was, she was really beginning to hate them. She opened up, and the recoil on the auto-shotgun wasn’t as bad as she expected. She kept the trigger down and panned the hallway over the heads of Odin and Smokey, who were dragging the screaming Tin Man back.

  Dozens of drones blasted apart as she fell back firing. She was surprised how satisfying it felt.

  In a moment Smokey was up again, firing with his HK. “Got it, Professor.”

  McKinney lowered the smoking shotgun and reached down to help Odin drag Tin Man into the garage. There, Mooch took over.

  Tin Man was cursing. “Motherfucker! I fell on one and a spike went through my leg. Their legs are aluminum spikes or some shit.”

  It appeared that the spike had already been pulled from his leg, and Mooch was applying pressure.

  McKinney looked up to see that Odin had gone back into the hallway, but now he and Smokey were falling back into the garage again—Smokey spraying with his HK, Odin using a pistol. In a moment they pulled the door closed behind them. Odin pounded it. It sounded solid. “Fire-rated door. Should give us a few minutes.”

  They were both bleeding in several places.

  Almost immediately the door began to deform in points with a popping sound—bullets being fired into it from the other side.

  “Maybe not that long.” Odin looked ahead to the thick wooden gates of the garage door. The sound of bots surging against them rattled the doors.

  McKinney held out his shotgun, and Odin grabbed it. “Thanks, Professor. Looks like we’re even.”

  “Do you smell that?”

  “The pepper?”

  “Yeah. I think they’re laying down a pheromone matrix—like weavers. They probably release it as an attack signal.”

  Odin nodded. “Interesting.”

  Mooch looked up from ministering to Tin Man. “How bad are you, Odin?”

  “Bullet fragments. Nothing serious. Foxy!”

  “What?”

  “If you don’t get that jeep started, we are fucked.”

  “I appreciate your encouragement, but the battery was dead. I’m rigging an alternate with the comm set.”

  Odin pulled the Rover tablet out of a pouch and looked at a raven’s-eye image of the house—from hundreds of feet above.

  McKinney watched over his shoulder. The house was almost lost beneath the black swarm. They hadn’t even made a dent in it.

  “What about Huginn and Muninn?”

  “Ravens can outfly eagles. I’m betting they can outfly these things.” Odin tapped the screen. “Well, your computer model seems to work, Professor.”

  “I’d like to get one. Examine it.”

  The team groaned.

  Ripper muttered. “You can study it while it’s chewing your fucking eyeballs out.”

  The jeep’s ignition suddenly cycled, and the engine roared to life.

  The group let up a shout. The hallway door was suddenly penetrated with a bullet hole. The projectile whined off the garage wall.

  Odin motioned. “Load up! Professor, you’re a maniac at the wheel. You drive.”

  “I don’t know where I’m going—”

  “Downhill. We’ll handle defense. Do it! Go!”

  McKinney crawled over the side into the driver’s seat, strapping herself in.

  Odin grabbed an aluminum baseball bat leaning against the wall. “Everyone grab a club. We can’t use guns if they get in close quarters.”

  Smokey grabbed several hammers off a pegboard above a worktable and tossed them to teammates. “Here.” Mooch grabbed a tire iron.

  Everyone piled into the jeep, and with seven people it was tight. Foxy sat up front in the passenger seat, with Ripper, Mooch, and Tin Man pressed into the small backseat. Behind them, hanging on to the roll bars, were Odin and Smokey, trying to avoid kneeling on Hoov’s bagged body.

  The group with proper seats was fastening and cinching seat belts. Tightening gun slings.

  “Don’t take your helmets off. We’ve still got sniper stations out there.” Odin nodded to Smokey and Mooch as he looped his combat harness around the roll bar. “And if you don’t have a seat belt, strap yourself to something—we’re going overland, and it’s going to get rough.”

  Bullets blasted the doorknob out of the garage’s interior door.

  “You ready, Professor?”

  She was examining the controls. Thankfully the jeep had an automatic transmission. One less thing to focus on. “Where am I going?”

  “Just head downhill however you can. You can’t miss the landing strip. Then make for the hangar at the south end.”

  “Who’s opening these garage doors?”

  “Blow through them. And whatever you do: Drive fast, and keep driving fast. Even if we’re on fire and dead, keep driving fast. Do you understand?”

  “Those instructions are pretty clear.”

  The interior door popped and shuddered.

  He slapped her shoulder. “Now! Execute, execute, execute!”

  McKinney put the jeep into drive and revved the engine. Apparently this was a six-cylinder, because the acceleration was good as they hurtled toward the green wooden garage doors.

  The steel push bar of the jeep blasted back the twin doors, momentarily sweeping aside part of a seething black cloud—even smashing a few drones against the stone walls of the house. It was actually dark out because of the hundreds of drones, buzzing so loudly that the sound entered McKinney’s middle ear—unnerving and terrifying.

  She could barely make out the landscape ahead. The two Forest Service SUVs were parked off to the right, blocking the driveway behind a whirl of drones. So McKinney accelerated the jeep straight ahead into the cloud, aiming between two large pine trees at the edge of the gravel driveway.

  Foxy next to her, along with several team members behind her, opened up with machine guns and shotguns, blasting apart the drones in front—which were quickly replaced by new ones pressing in.

  They collided with the cloud of two-foot-wide machines, which ricocheted and bumped off the fender
s and windshield. The impact was instantly followed by the crackling of gunfire and acrid, sulfurous smoke. Shouts of pain. Spattering of blood. The windshield pocked with a spider’s web of cracks, and she heard bullets whining past nearby. Several loud thwacks came to her ears as pieces of plastic and tufts of upholstery foam popped into the air around her. The steering wheel suddenly felt sluggish, as if a tire—or several—were flat.

  But she kept her foot hard on the accelerator, and the jeep roared on. And then suddenly they were hurtling into space, falling.

  The jeep lurched up as it impacted lower on the hillside. Having jumped off the level parking area, they were now racing downslope through sparse pine forest at forty or fifty miles an hour. She cranked the wheel to the left to avoid a large rock, only to discover that steering on pine needles was like swimming through melted marshmallows. The front tires trembled as though flat, and it required every ounce of strength to keep the jeep under control.

  But McKinney kept the pedal down as she slalomed between the trees. She glanced in the rearview mirror to see a black cloud hurtling through the forest after them—behind that the upper stories of the house were engulfed in flames. But as she looked left and right she saw clear air—no drones. The team was shouting, whether in relief, encouragement, or warning, she didn’t know.

  Odin’s voice in her ear. “Keep heading downhill.”

  A burst of machine gun fire behind her.

  “If you hit a dirt road, turn left. That’ll lead you right to it.”

  “The front tires are flat.”

  “Just keep going!”

  McKinney drove on, dodging trees, while the cloud maintained a distance of a couple of hundred feet behind them. She wondered about that. Was it the delay it took them to transmit the pursuit message to the others? Whatever the reason, it had given them time enough to break through.

  In any event, there wasn’t much margin for error. Get stuck in a rut or strike a tree, and they were all as good as dead. She focused as she slid and weaved the jeep between trees, running now over nearly level ground. And then a dirt road did appear through the trees ahead, almost perpendicular to her. McKinney started to angle the jeep, veering left. She could see a ditch next to the road and figured it would be safer to cross if she was running nearly parallel to it.

  Heavy brush forced her hand, and she had no choice but to drive straight for the road, taking the ditch head-on. A jolting lurch, and they landed on the roadway, veering toward the far side. She corrected, and they were now racing on the road, headed downhill—and toward a tall, corrugated metal building with no windows.

  Foxy smacked her arm. “Straight ahead, Professor.”

  Odin shouted, “Drive to the far side of the hangar. There’s a door there. Foxy, you able to move okay?”

  McKinney glanced over and for the first time noticed that Foxy appeared to have been shot in the side. His glove was spattered with blood.

  “There’s sure as hell no way I’m staying out here.”

  “Okay, even before the jeep stops, I want you to hop out and get that door open. We’ll be right on your tail with the rest of the wounded.”

  McKinney was already racing around the side of the hangar building. It was easily seventy feet on a side. A level grass landing strip stretched out before them. She glanced in her rearview mirror and saw that the swarm of drones wasn’t far behind. Perhaps a few hundred meters now.

  “Keep our speed up!”

  McKinney brought the jeep thumping on flat tires around the far side of the hangar, next to a steel door. She slid to a stop, unbuckling her seat belt. The hum of the swarm was already growing louder.

  “Move! Move! Move!” Odin looked up and whistled at the ravens—which were already diving down to meet them.

  Smokey hefted the body bag containing Hoov out of the cargo bay, while McKinney helped Odin pull Tin Man over the side of the jeep. Tin Man sucked it up and moved under his own steam while they helped him toward the door that Foxy was already unlocking. The others were close behind. Everyone was bleeding from major or minor wounds.

  As they pushed through the doorway into a sizable hangar with a concrete floor, McKinney felt a wave of relief pass over her—even though the sound of drones smacking into the building like hail was already sweeping around from the far side.

  “Close that door!”

  Odin waited until Huginn and Muninn flew past, and then he pulled the metal door shut with a boom. The humming sound went down a few decibels.

  The team was already rushing forward to a large single-engine plane that McKinney recognized—a Cessna Grand Caravan. She’d seen them used as bush cargo planes. This one was painted white with green and yellow stripes and looked fairly new.

  “Smokey, secure the twins. There’s a cage in the cargo hold.”

  “On it.”

  Ripper already had the cargo doors open, and she was limping around to the pilot door. Blood soaked her lower leg.

  “You okay to fly, Ripper?”

  She gave Odin a look. “Just get in the damn plane.”

  Smokey lifted Hoov’s body bag into the hold and climbed up after it.

  McKinney climbed in through the wide cargo door as the ravens flew in past her. Spatters of blood were already staining the floor and upholstery. She grabbed one of several seats in front of the cargo area, while Smokey urged the ravens into the safety of a black mesh cage. There were a few boxes and equipment cases, but the cargo bay was nearly empty.

  Smokey looked up. “Should we toss the cargo?”

  Ripper was flicking switches with headphones on. She shook her head. “No time.”

  Foxy climbed into the copilot seat and put on headphones too. “How we getting these hangar doors open?”

  Ripper pointed.

  Odin was standing next to the hangar doors, his hand over a switch. He held up an arm, giving several signs Ripper seemed to understand.

  “Let’s hope this damn hangar holds together long enough to pull this off.”

  The turboprop engine began to whine to life.

  McKinney leaned forward. “You’re starting the engine—in a closed hangar?”

  “Like I said, Professor. Keep your fingers crossed.”

  The engine thundered to life, and Odin hit the hangar door switch. McKinney watched in horror as he raced the eighty or so feet toward them, the doors opening ever wider.

  Foxy shouted, “Run, goddamn you!”

  A cloud of drones started issuing through the widening opening between the twin hangar doors. Before the swarm could orient itself, Odin reached the open cargo door and leapt inside.

  “Get the hatch!”

  Smokey reached out to get the hatch as the swarm raced toward the plane. Several lead ones disintegrated amid sparks in the whirling propeller blade, but two slipped past in the high wind and tumbled into the passenger area before Smokey got the hatch closed.

  Odin grabbed an equipment case as a weapon. “Look out! Get them!”

  The buzzing, insectlike quadracopters quickly righted themselves and launched around the passenger cabin, one rushing straight for Smokey’s face. He bashed it aside with the butt of his HK416.

  The other one streaked right toward McKinney, who was strapped into her seat. She knocked it away with her hand as it fired a bullet with a deafening bang that grazed her wrist. One moment later, and the bullet would have gone right between her eyes. She ducked and unbuckled her seat belt—unsure where the drone had gone. “Where is it?”

  Ripper shouted, “Everybody hold on!” She rammed the throttle forward, and the plane surged ahead. Smokey, Odin, Mooch, and the two drones they were contending with slid back toward the rear of the Cessna as dozens of drone bodies clattered along the outside the fuselage or disappeared in a cloud of sparks into the plane’s propeller.

  Smokey pressed his boot down on one of the rotor mounts of the drone, pinning it to the floor. He then repeatedly smashed his rifle butt into its circuit board core—crushing its optic array. “
Die, fucker!”

  As he pounded the small machine, it fired its several small-caliber bullets from tubes on its metal frame—at least one bullet catching Smokey in the ankle before it died.

  “Goddammit!” He toppled back.

  They were roaring along the airstrip now, nearing eighty miles an hour. The tree line raced past, and the drone swarm fell behind.

  Huginn and Muninn cawed angrily inside their cage as Odin hurled a heavy equipment case at the remaining drone hovering toward the front. “Tin Man, get it!”

  By now the cabin was spattered in blood as the wounded team clambered around trying to destroy the last drone.

  But the device headed straight for McKinney. She deflected it with the trauma plates strapped to her arm, but it kept driving up against her, its electric blades humming.

  She was both horrified and riveted by its appearance this close. It was a simple four-rotor helicopter with blade enclosures, but the frame seemed to be made of thick wire, ending in spiky legs. In the center pod, held in the metal frame, was a series of tightly packed circuit boards and a row of four lenses—its “eyes.” Next to that, in racks, were what looked to be silver compressed-air canisters—the type of thing whipped cream was dispensed with. But these seemed to be spraying the air with some type of chemical that had a faint peppery smell—a pseudopheromone, marking her. And then stacked to either side of the core body were what turned out to be gun barrels.

  This is what was cracking at her as she struggled to kick it away. Bullets pinged off her trauma plates, but then she felt a piercing pain in her upper leg, just as Odin smashed the drone into the floor, and Mooch bashed its core in with his rifle butt.

  “Dammit!” She’d never experienced such pain. McKinney writhed on the cabin floor now in a rapidly expanding pool of blood. She raised her gloved hand to see arterial blood spurting out of a hole on her inner thigh.

  “Oh, my God . . .”

  Mooch came up alongside her. “Professor’s hit!”

  Odin knelt down next to her as well.

  Scenery raced by outside, and then McKinney felt gravity press her into the floor, and the trees at the edge of her vision disappeared. “Did we make it?”