Two hundred and fifty meters. Two hundred. One hundred and fifty meters. Jon felt his lungs laboring under the strain. He brought the M4 up to his shoulder and sprinted on.
One hundred meters.
The flying wing came whirring along the runway toward him. All fourteen of its propellers were spinning now, carving bright flashing circles in the air.
Now!
Smith squeezed the trigger on the M4, firing short bursts on the move—walking his rounds across the tarmac toward the startled enemy gunmen. Pieces of concrete and then tufts of grass flew skyward.
They dropped prone and began shooting back.
Jon swerved left, zigzagging away from the tarmac. Bullets tore through the grass behind him and cracked past his head. He dived forward, hit the ground, shoulder-rolled back onto his feet, and kept running. He fired again, then swerved right.
More rifle rounds screamed past, reaching out to tear him apart. One tore through the air close to his face. The superheated gases trailing in its wake slapped his head back. Another clipped his side, glanced off his body armor, and knocked him down into the grass. Frantic now, Smith rolled away—hearing bullets rending the earth right behind him.
In the midst of all the shooting, he heard a deep, bull-like voice shouting angry orders somewhere on the other side of the runway. The last of the Horatii was issuing new commands to his troops.
And then, suddenly, astonishingly, the firing stopped.
In the silence, Jon cautiously raised his head. He grinned weakly in relief. As he had intended, the second drone flying wing, still serenely taxiing toward its programmed takeoff, had come rolling between him and the men who were trying to kill him. For a brief moment they could not shoot at him, at least without the risk of hitting one of their own precious aircraft.
But he knew their self-imposed cease-fire would not last long.
Smith pushed himself up, and crouching low, he moved backward—trying to keep pace with the huge slowly accelerating solar-powered plane. He peered beneath the enormous wing, looking for any sign of movement on the concrete runway.
He caught a quick glimpse of running combat boots through the narrow gaps between the flying wing’s five sets of landing gear and its aerodynamically shaped avionics and payload pods. Two of the gunmen were sprinting across the wide tarmac, cutting behind the drone in an effort to gain a clear field of fire.
Jon kept backing up, waiting with the M4 tucked against his shoulder and his finger ready on the trigger. He breathed out, feeling his pulse pounding in his ears. Come on, he urged the running men silently. Make a mistake.
They did.
Impatient or overconfident or spurred on by the wrath of the auburn-haired giant who commanded them, both gunmen crossed into the open in the same instant.
Smith opened fire—pouring rounds downrange into the suddenly appalled pair. The carbine hammered back against his shoulder. Spent cartridges flew away from the weapon, tinkling onto the concrete. Fifty meters away, the two gunmen screamed and fell away into the grass. Multiple 5.56mm hits ripped them apart.
And then Smith felt a series of hammer blows punching across his own chest and right flank—a cascade of agonizing impacts on his Kevlar body armor that spun him around in a half circle and threw him to his knees. Somehow he held on to the M4.
Through vision blurred by pain, he looked up.
There, only forty meters away across the tarmac, a tall green-eyed man stared back at him, smiling coldly down the barrel of an assault rifle. In that instant, Jon understood the mistake he had made. The last of the Horatii had expended two of his own men—throwing them forward to draw fire in the same way a chess player sacrifices pawns to gain an advantage in position. While Jon killed them, the big man had slipped quickly around the front of the taxiing drone aircraft to strike at him from the flank.
And now there was nothing Smith could do to save himself.
Still smiling, the green-eyed man raised his rifle slightly, this time aiming at Smith’s unprotected head. Beside him, just at the edge of Jon’s wavering, unfocused vision, the leading edge of the huge flying wing came into view, liberally studded with the plastic cylinders containing its murderous payload.
The fear-ridden primitive part of Jon’s brain screamed in silent terror, raging futilely against its approaching death. He did his best to ignore that part of himself, straining instead to hear what it was that the colder, more clinical, more rational side of his mind was trying to tell him.
The wind, it said.
The wind is from the east.
Without thinking further, Smith threw himself sideways. He fired the carbine in that same moment, pulling the trigger as fast as he could. The M4 barked repeatedly, kicking higher with every shot as he emptied what was left of his thirty-round magazine. Bullets lashed the huge flying wing—punching holes in carbon fiber and plastic surfaces, slicing flight control cables, smashing onboard computers, and shattering propellers.
The drone plane rocked under the force of the high-velocity impacts. It began slewing west, slowly turning off the runway.
Terce watched the dark-haired American’s last desperate move without pity or concern. One side of his mouth curved up in a wry, predatory grin. This was like seeing a wounded animal thrashing in a trap. That was something to savor. He stood motionless, choosing only to follow his target with the rifle barrel—waiting for his sights to settle on the other man’s head. He ignored the bullets shrieking off to his right. At this range, the American could not possibly hope to hit him with unaimed fire.
But then he heard the smooth hum made by the drone aircraft’s fourteen electric motors change pitch—roughening in fits and starts as they shorted out or lost power. Bits and pieces of shattered plastic and carbon fiber spun away across the tarmac.
Terce saw the huge plane swinging toward him, veering wildly off-course. He scowled. The American’s last gamble would not save his life, but the damage to one of his three irreplaceable attack aircraft would infuriate Nomura.
Suddenly Terce stared in disbelief at the thin-walled plastic cylinders slung under the huge wing, noticing for the first time the rough-edged star-shaped punctures torn through so many of them.
It was only then that he felt the murdering east wind gently kiss his face. His green eyes widened in horror.
Terror-stricken, Terce stumbled backward. The assault rifle fell from his shaking hands and clattered onto the concrete.
The auburn-haired man groaned aloud. Already he could feel the Stage IV nanophages at work inside his body. Billions of the horrid devices were clawing their way outward from deep inside his heaving lungs—spreading their poisons wider with every fatal breath. The flesh inside his thick transparent gloves turned red, sloughing off his muscles and tendons and bones as they disintegrated.
His two surviving men, temporarily secure in their gas masks, looked up at him from their firing positions. Eyes wide in fear, they scrambled to their feet and began backing away.
Desperately he raised his haggard melting face in mute appeal. “Kill me,” he whispered, choking out the words past a tongue that was falling to pieces. “Kill me! Please!”
Instead, panicked by the horror they saw before them, they threw their rifles aside and fled toward the ocean.
Screaming again and again, the last of the Horatii doubled over, wracked by incomprehensible and unending pain as the teeming nanophages ate him alive from within.
Smith ran north along the runway, moving fast despite his fatigue and the terrible punishment he had taken. His jaw was set, held tight against the pain from several cracked ribs grinding under his body armor. He stumbled once, swore under his breath, and pushed himself onward.
Keep going, Jon, he told himself savagely. Keep going or die.
He did not look back. He knew the horror he would see there. He knew the horror he had deliberately set in motion. By now the nanophage cloud was spreading west across the whole southern end of the airfield—drifting on the wind towa
rd the Atlantic.
Smith came pounding up to the grounded Black Hawk. The rotors were still spinning slowly. Torn blades of grass and lingering traces of missile exhaust swirled lazily in the air around the waiting helicopter. Peter and Randi saw him coming. Their worried looks vanished and they moved toward him, smiling and laughing with relief.
“Get aboard!” Jon roared, waving them back to the Black Hawk. “Get that thing spooled up!”
Peter nodded tightly, seeing the shot-up drone careening off the runway out of control. He knew what that meant. “Give me thirty seconds, Jon!” he called.
The Englishman swung himself back aboard the helicopter and scrambled into the pilot’s seat. His hands danced across the control panel, flicking switches and watching indicators lighting up. Satisfied, he rotated the throttle, pushing the engines toward full power. The rotors began spinning faster.
Smith skidded to a stop beside the troop carrier’s open door. He noticed Randi’s left arm dangling at her side. Her face was still pale, drawn with pain. “How bad is it?” he asked.
She smiled wryly. “It hurts like hell, but I’ll live. You can play doctor some other time.”
Before he could react, she glared at him. “And you will not make any smart-ass comments. You hear me?”
“I hear you,” Smith told her quietly. Hiding the pain from his own injuries, he helped her climb up into the Black Hawk. Then he swung himself aboard. His eyes took note of the two other passengers—recognizing both Hideo and Jinjiro Nomura from their pictures in the files Fred Klein had made him study so long ago in Santa Fe. So long ago, he thought coldly. Six days ago. A lifetime ago.
Randi dropped into a rear-facing seat across from Hideo. Wincing, she cradled the M4 carbine in her lap, making sure its deadly black muzzle was pointing straight at his heart. Jon settled in beside her.
“Hold tight!” Peter called from the control cabin. “Here we go!”
Engines howling, the Black Hawk slid forward across the runway and then lifted off—already turning as it climbed away from the airfield.
Chapter
Forty-Nine
At three hundred feet, Peter leveled out. They were high enough now to be safe from the nanophage cloud blowing across the Nomura PharmaTech airfield and complex. Or so he hoped. He frowned, reminding himself that hope ran a very poor second to absolute certainty. With a twitch of the controls, he took them up another hundred feet.
Happier now, Peter pulled the Black Hawk into a gentle turn, beginning a slow orbit over the corpse-strewn runway. Then he glanced back over his shoulder into the troop compartment. “Where to now, Jon?” he asked. “After our friend Lazarus’ first drone? The one that got away?”
Smith shook his head. “Not quite yet.” He stripped the empty magazine out of his carbine and inserted a fresh clip. “We still have a couple of things to finish up here first.”
He slid out of his seat and lay prone on the floor of the helicopter, sighting along the M4 out through the open door. “Give me a shot at that third drone, Peter,” he called. “It’s still trying to take off on autopilot.”
In response, the Black Hawk tilted, swinging back to the south. Smith leaned a bit farther out, watching the huge flying wing grow even larger in his sights. He squeezed the trigger—firing a series of aimed bursts down into the drone rolling determinedly down the runway. The carbine hammered back against his shoulder.
The UH-60 roared past the aircraft and pulled up sharply, already curving back through a full circle.
The carbine’s bolt locked open at the rear. Jon pulled out the empty clip and slapped in another—his last. He hit the catch. The M4 was loaded and ready to fire again.
The helicopter finished its turn and flew north, heading back for another pass.
Smith stared down. Battered by thirty rounds of 5.56mm ammunition, the third drone now sat motionless on the tarmac. Whole sections of the single long wing sagged, shattered by multiple hits. Fragments of engine pods and nanophage cylinders littered the concrete paving behind the wrecked aircraft. “Scratch one drone,” he announced in a matter-of-fact voice. “That’s two down and one to go.”
Hideo Nomura stiffened in his seat.
“Not a move,” Randi warned him. She hefted the weapon on her lap.
“You will not shoot me inside this machine,” the younger Nomura snarled. Every trace of the amiable cosmopolitan facade he had cultivated for so many long years of deception had vanished. Now his face was a rigid, hate-filled mask that revealed the raw malice and egomania that truly drove him. “You would all die, too. You Americans are too soft. You do not have the true warrior spirit.”
Randi smiled mockingly back at him. “Maybe not. But the fuel tanks behind you are self-sealing. And I’m willing to bet that you’re not. Shall we find out which one of us is right?”
Hideo fell silent, glaring at her.
Jinjiro Nomura looked out through the door, smiling calmly as he watched the rapid destruction of his son’s twisted dreams. All that Jinjiro had suffered in twelve months of cruel confinement was now being dealt out in full to Hideo.
Guided by Jon, Peter flew the Black Hawk to the north end of the runway and passed low over the two large cargo planes and the much smaller executive jet parked there.
Again leaning out through the open door, Smith fired another series of bursts right into their cockpits—smashing windows and flight controls. “I don’t want any survivors leaving this island until we can get Special Forces units and decontamination teams here,” he explained. Randi handed him her spare ammunition.
Now Peter took the helicopter higher, climbing steadily in a tight, spiraling circle while they searched for signs of Nomura’s first drone. For long minutes they anxiously hunted through the skies around them. Randi saw it first—catching a tiny glint of gold-flecked light high above. “There it is!” she cried, pointing out through the side door. “At our three o’clock now. And it’s heading due west!”
“Toward the States,” Smith realized.
Hideo smiled thinly. “For Washington, D.C., and its surrounding suburbs, to be precise.”
The helicopter clattered through another turn as Peter swung onto a parallel course. He stared up through the forward windshield with a worried expression on his face. “That damned thing is already devilishly high,” he called. “It’s probably flying at ten or twelve thousand feet and climbing fast.”
“What’s the service ceiling on this bird?” Smith asked, buckling back into his seat.
“It tops out somewhere around nineteen thousand feet,” Peter replied, frowning. “But the air will be very thin at that altitude. Perhaps too thin.”
“You’re too late,” Hideo told them gleefully. His eyes gleamed in triumph. “You cannot stop my Thanatos aircraft now! And there are enough nanophages aboard that plane to kill millions. You may hold me captive, but I have already struck a blow against your greedy, materialistic country that will live down through the centuries!”
The others ignored his ranting, entirely intent on catching the Thanatos flying wing before it escaped above their reach.
Peter pulled the Black Hawk’s nose up as steeply as he could, chasing that distant fleeing speck. The helicopter soared higher, climbing fifteen hundred feet higher with every passing minute. Everyone inside could feel the air growing steadily colder and thinner.
By the time the UH-60 reached twelve thousand feet, their teeth were chattering and it was becoming markedly more difficult to catch their breath. The density of the air around them was now only a little over half the norm at sea level. People could live and work and even ski at this altitude, but usually with a much longer time to acclimate. Hypoxia, altitude sickness, was now a serious danger.
The Thanatos drone was much closer now, but it was still above them and climbing steadily. Its single enormous wing tilted occasionally as the onboard flight controls adjusted for small changes in wind speed, direction, and barometric pressure. Otherwise the aircraft held its course
, flying doggedly on toward its preordained target—the capital city of the United States.
Peter pushed the Black Hawk higher. His head and lungs ached, and he was finding it increasingly difficult to concentrate on what he was doing. His vision blurred slightly around the edges. He blinked hard, trying to get a clearer view.
The altimeter crawled slowly through fourteen thousand feet. This far above the Earth’s surface, the helicopter’s rotors provided far less lift. Their rate of climb and airspeed were both rapidly diminishing. Fifteen thousand feet. And still the giant aircraft hung above them, tantalizingly close, but well out of reach.
Another minute passed, a minute of increasing cold and exhaustion.
Again Peter glanced up through the forward windshield. Nothing. The Thanatos drone was gone. “Come on, you devil,” he growled. “Stop playing silly buggers with me! Where have you got to now?”
And suddenly sunlight blazed on a huge wing surface below him, reflected back by tens of thousands of mirror-bright solar cells.
“We’ve done it! We’re above the beast!” Peter crowed. He coughed, trying to draw more air into his straining lungs without hyperventilating. “But you’ll have to be quick, Jon. Very quick. I can’t hold us up here much longer!”
Nodding, Smith unbuckled his seat belt and again dropped onto his stomach by the open door. Every piece of metal he touched was chilled so far below the freezing point that it burned like fire. The outside air temperature was now well below zero.
Frantically Jon blew on his hands, knowing that they were all in real danger of losing fingers and other exposed patches of skin to frostbite. Then, cradling the M4, he leaned out into the slipstream, feeling the wind tearing at his hair and clothes.
He could make out the drone now. It was roughly two hundred feet below them. The Black Hawk slowed, matching its speed to that of its prey.
Smith’s eyes teared up in the frigid wind. He squeezed them shut and roughly brushed away the tears before they froze. He peered through his sights. The upper surface of the flying wing wavered slightly and then steadied up.