Kill Decision

CHAPTER 18

Falling asleep in the cargo bay of a C-130 was like trying to catch some shut-eye on the undercarriage of a passenger train. Even after three hours she hadn’t managed a wink. McKinney stared out of one of the few round porthole windows, crystals frosting its edges. She could see a wide, barren canyonland below of eroded basins and distant brown mountains in the moonlight. The plane looked to be about twenty thousand feet up. It was a crisp, clear winter night.

Odin glanced over at her and spoke into his headset microphone. “We’ll give it another twelve hours, and then change crews at Hill Air Force Base.” His expression suddenly changed. He stopped and touched a hand to his headphones, listening to something she couldn’t hear in her radio.

She searched his expression. “What is it?”

“Something is here.” Odin turned to the others and circled his hand. “All units. All units. Bogey approaching White Sands Base at three o’clock.”

The radio crackled. It was Foxy’s voice-coming from farther forward in the C-130’s payload bay. “No unidentified radar contacts, Odin. The sky and ground are clear.”

Odin looked to Foxy across the pallets and the length of the cargo hold, talking on radios even though they could see each other. “Negative. I just got a transmission from Huginn. He’s got a positive contact.”

McKinney looked around and noticed she hadn’t seen Odin’s ravens on board. She gave him an incredulous face. “Huginn and Muninn are talking to you.”

“Yes.” Odin grabbed his rucksack from an overhead stowage rack and rummaged through it to produce a ruggedized tablet computer. “They’ve been on the ground at White Sands Base for over a day. I’m in contact via satellite radio.”

“You’re talking to your ravens over a radio?”

He nodded as he booted his equipment. “Training. They communicate direction, distance, and type of contact. Whatever this is, it’s airborne, and coming in from the east. Navy SEAL teams command attack dogs via headset commands-the only difference here is that ravens are more intelligent.” He logged on. “And can see and hear for miles and cover vast areas over any type of ground without being detected.”

Foxy’s voice came over the radio channel again. He was examining a tablet computer of his own over by the flight deck doorway. “The only radar contacts the techs have in the east are dozens of miles out. American Airlines Flight 733 from Denver to Salt Lake City forty miles out at thirty-eight thousand feet, and two private aircraft, one eighteen miles out, heading north at four thousand, and another at twenty-two miles out heading southwest at five thousand feet. You sure it wasn’t our MQ-1 they saw?”

Odin looked across the cargo back. “Negative. How many times has Huginn been wrong, Foxy?”

Foxy said nothing.

McKinney stood and braced herself on an equipment rack as the plane bumped in turbulence. She looked over Odin’s shoulder. “You’re sounding the alarm on the report of a bird?”

“Huginn and Muninn don’t act this way unless something is seriously wrong.” He looked at the signals officers studying their radar console. “Those sensors don’t reveal everything.” Odin’s tablet was now booted, and he turned the screen so she could see black-and-white thermal imagery from one of the raven’s cameras. The birds were following something at low altitude. The rocks and scrub soared past in the imagery.

McKinney studied the screen. “A raven’s-eye view.”

Huginn was trailing the black silhouette of a bird of prey gliding over the desert terrain at an altitude of perhaps a hundred and fifty feet. The second raven, Muninn, sometimes entered the frame, meaning they were flying together.

McKinney studied the image. “Looks like a hawk.”

Odin spoke into his radio. “You getting this, Foxy, Hoov?”

“Yeah, Odin, Prof’s right. Looks like the twins sent up the alarm over another bird.”

Odin studied the screen. “That hawk has one problem: It’s got no heat signature.” He pointed his gloved hand at the thermal image, and McKinney could clearly see the difference between the heat intensity of the second raven and the interloper.

Odin keyed another radio. “All units red alert. Bogey one thousand meters out and closing on White Sands Base from the east. Designate bogey Target One. Looks like a microdrone in the shape of a bird. Have the Predator swing around to track this thing. I want stable, detailed imagery on it, and port the video to the team at the JOC.”

Another voice came through, possibly Hoov’s. “On it, Odin.”

Odin strapped on a MICH helmet with a monocle over his left eye, then handed the tablet to McKinney. He appeared to be watching from the helmet eyepiece. “Pretty goddamned clever. Even if it showed up on radar, its speed and profile would match that of a bird.”

“A spotter drone.”

“That would be my guess. It’s too small to deliver any ordnance.”

Foxy’s voice again. “Agreed, boss.”

Odin was adjusting channels on a satellite radio on his harness. “Okay, we’re getting the Predator feed. Give them Huginn’s coordinates, and they should be able to pick up the bogey from there.”

“Got it.”

He adjusted the radio. “The attack drone is probably still over the horizon and won’t reveal itself unless this one finds who it’s looking for.”

“Me.”

“Yes. Let’s hope it takes our bait.” He worked unseen commands on his monocle screen with a handheld controller, and suddenly her table computer showed a surveillance camera image of… herself, sitting in a well-lit converted hangar somewhere, motionless, except for her fingers clattering away at a keyboard in front of a large window.

McKinney sat down again, the tablet computer in her lap. She kept her eye on the image there. It felt eerie.

Odin appeared to be clicking through screens of his own. “We’ve got a Predator doing a mile-radius orbit of White Sands Base at ten thousand feet. I wanted to get clear video from a separate platform. We’re much farther out and twice as high, but we’ve got lightning pods for our own thermal imaging.”

“Lightning pods.”

“High-resolution thermal optics in a pod on the wing. Here…”

Odin had brought up another thermal image on the tablet. This one was far more clear and stable than that from the ravens. The image showed what was now clearly an artificial bird with a small propeller mounted on the tail. Odin’s ravens ducked in and out of the frame, dogging the interloper, shadowing it.

“Probably electric. Silent.” Odin spoke into his headset. “Huginn, Muninn. Return. Return. Confirm.”

One by one a seeming confirmation caw came in over the radio, and the ravens broke off from trailing the artificial bird on the tablet screen.

McKinney looked at him. “You’re shitting me.”

“I told you they were smart. I don’t want them in the middle of this when the fireworks start.”

The radio crackled. “Odin, signals team says this thing just went into an orbit over White Sands Base. Looks like it detected either the professor’s cell phone or the Bluetooth ID of her laptop.”

Hoov’s voice chimed in, “It’s probably getting a PID on her physical likeness now.”

Odin added, “Stay alert, everyone. When it summons the attack drone, we won’t have much time to intercept it.”

Hoov’s voice. “Best bet’s to head east. That’s where the most likely radar tracks are.”

McKinney and Odin exchanged looks in the semidarkness as they waited and watched.

“Heads up.”

Odin spoke into his mic. “What?”

“It’s signaling.”

The FLIR imagery showed a pulsating laser on the top of the birdlike minidrone. It was flashing rapidly in a variable pattern.

“All right, that’s the attack signal.”

Foxy’s voice. “Yeah, we see it.”

“Could it be signaling a satellite? What sats are overhead at the moment?”

“Got my hands full at the moment. I’ll check later.”

Odin spoke into his mic. “Tailhook, Tailhook. This is Odin. Do you copy?”

“This is Tailhook. Go ahead, Odin.”

“Where are we in our orbit?”

“We’re… about fifteen clicks southeast of White Sands Base.”

“Copy that. You see those two echoes east of us? Head to a point midway between them. It’s likely that the main attack drone will be coming in from the east.”

“Copy that, Odin.”

Foxy waved from over on the far side of the plane, where they manned the electronics console. His voice came over the radio. “Odin. Whoo boy, we’ve got something interesting here. That northbound radar contact to the east just turned west on a vector that will run it right over White Sands.”

“Private plane?”

“Affirmative. VFR. No flight plan registered. It’s fifteen miles out and coming in at just under two hundred knots. Altitude one-zero hundred.”

Odin gave a look to McKinney but spoke into the radio. “Here we go. Battle stations, battle stations. Tailhook, you know what to do: Intercept that bogey from above and behind once you confirm it’s a drone.”

“Wilco, Odin. On our way.”

McKinney grabbed the seat as the C-130 went into a steep, banked left turn and an equally steep descent. The g-forces were strong enough that the cargo would probably have stayed in place without straps. Odin remained planted as well, standing without even grabbing a handhold. He was apparently well used to airborne operations.

“Foxy, focus the plane’s lightning pod on that bogey and get me a visual as soon as possible. Put it on channel four.”

“Copy that.”

“Hoov, have the techs review the radar tapes to track that bogey back to its source, and get a Ranger team airborne. We might be able to catch whoever launched this thing before they get far.”

“Already on it. We just got the info from the FAA on that contact. Looks like it hooked north from a western course fifteen minutes ago. It first came on the radar screens over the Denver metro area. That’s two hundred thirty-six miles from here.”

“Damn. Whoever launched this thing would be long gone by now. Get the info to the local FBI office. Have them work with the FAA to pinpoint the exact GPS coordinates where it first came up to radar altitude. Hopefully we can get some surveillance video that shows where it was launched from.”

“A city. It figures. Must have hid in all the private air traffic.”

After a few moments the C-130 leveled out. The engines throttled up, and McKinney noticed several of the other team members scurrying around, prepping the pallets. Odin, too, was rummaging through Pelican cases and racks on the edge of the cargo bay.

She looked at him. “What happens next?”

“We hope this is our drone. If it is, we bag it before it can self-destruct.” He pulled a black flight suit and parachute from a case and tossed them to her.

She caught them with both hands. The suit was as heavy as a dry scuba outfit but was made of thicker synthetic material. “What’s this?”

“Cold-weather flight suit. If this is our target, we’ll be opening the cargo door, and it’ll be sixty below in here soon. Be sure to close every flap.”

She put the tablet down and started pulling herself into the suit. It felt expensive, and she had no doubt it was military-grade special operations gear. She looked up to see Odin doing the same thing. “So how you planning on bagging this drone?”

“We’re going to deploy an oversized air sock of sorts. NASA tech, specially made Kevlar, Nomex, and ceramic fabric-stuff designed for inflatable space-station sections to withstand micrometeorite impacts. Vented to release pressure. Should be relatively explosion-proof. We’re going to trail that air sock two hundred meters behind this aircraft, then come in from above and behind the drone and scoop it up. If it explodes-as we think it will-almost all the wreckage should remain in the bag.”

She nodded. “And that gets you a complete drone.”

“The wreckage, anyway.” He gestured to the huge block of concrete attached to the first pallet by steel cables. “After we net it, we push this deadweight out the back of the plane, which drags the whole thing down to earth.”

The peculiar cargo now made sense, but then she narrowed her eyes at him. “We’re going to intercept a flying bomb. Did I really need to be here for this?”

He pulled on his black hood, then pulled on a jump helmet with integral headphones of its own. “After your last stunt, you’re not leaving my sight. Besides, with a drone incoming, the ground is not the safest place to be right now.”

She nodded reluctantly and pulled off her own headphones. It suddenly got very loud-the engines howling. She pulled her own integral hood on and was soon quite warm despite the cold. McKinney examined the fabric and shouted, “What’s this material?”

He shouted back, “Classified. Here…” He approached her with a sophisticated-looking facemask, flight helmet, and goggles. “Oxygen. In case we need to climb rapidly to chase this thing.” He handed her the goggles first.

She nodded and put them on.

He placed the helmet on her head, took it off, made a few adjustments, and then put it on again. It was heavily padded and had integral earphones. In a moment she heard his radio voice again. “Have you ever used a PHAOS rig?”

She shook her head.

He clipped the aerodynamic oxygen mask onto her helmet. Then he rigged the oxygen bottle into the flight suit. He then held out her parachute pack.

“So you have paratrooper training.”

He eyed her. “I’ve done a few jumps…” Then he also held out the leg loops of a yellow nylon harness. The moment she stepped into it, he quickly buckled it around her. McKinney traced her hand from the harness to a strap that led to the ceiling.

Odin spoke as he worked. “Monkey cord. It’ll keep you from falling out of the aircraft.”

She nodded. “I’ve used them before.”

He smacked her shoulder and gave a thumbs-up. “You’re good to go. Just stay out of the way when all this stuff goes out the hatch.” He gestured to the payload.

McKinney could see that the others had donned their high-altitude and parachute gear as well, along with helmets and monkey cords.

The pilot’s voice came over the radio. “Odin, this is Tailhook. We’ve got eyes on that cyclops. Repeat, eyes on the cyclops. Sending the image on channel four. Over.”

“Copy that, Tailhook.” Odin clipped on his own monkey cord harness, then grabbed the tablet computer. He flipped to channel four.

McKinney leaned in to see a highly detailed black-and-white thermal image.

Odin nodded to himself, then keyed the radio. “Been looking for that son of a bitch for a while. Tango Yankee, Tailhook.”

“Don’t mention it.”

There, on-screen, was the image of a delta-shaped unmanned aircraft, tracking above the badlands in the night, shades of gray on gray. It was visibly different from the drone that had tried to kill her in Africa: a flying wing with a propeller on its trailing edge. The wing surface itself appeared to be of patchwork material-at least on the thermal image. As though it was a hobby project.

Odin keyed the mic. “Foxy, get us as much video imagery as you can on our approach. If it self-destructs, this is all we’re going to get. So I want video from every angle while we’re bagging it. Top, sides, bottom. Got that?”

“Odin, this is Tailhook. We’re a mile behind this thing and coming up fast, but we’re still going to be tight on time if we want to bag it before it drops its payload.”

Odin exchanged hand signals with Foxy. “Copy that, Tailhook. Get us in there, man.”

The plane lurched in sudden turbulence. McKinney grabbed Odin’s arm to steady herself. She focused on the camera image. They were nearly on top of the drone, and she could see the texture on the composite surface.

Another voice came on the intercom. “Stand clear of the cargo doors. Opening in three, two, one…”

A loud sucking sound was followed by a rushing roar as the upper rear floor of the cargo bay raised up beneath the tail. A moment later the lower ramp leveled, with hydraulic pistons holding it in place to either side. McKinney could see Foxy and Tin Man moving toward the payload, while the loadmaster and flight engineer looked out the open cargo door with thermal binoculars at the yawning gulf behind them. The view of the vast Utah wilderness below them was beautiful in the crisp winter moonlight.

Odin walked toward the ramp. McKinney stood up but remained where she was as the plane passed close above the mystery drone. It was a hundred or more feet below them and a bit farther back, but the entire team was riveted by it-apparently never having seen their enemy with the naked eye.

Odin’s voice came in over McKinney’s headphones. “Let’s hope One was right about these things not having eyes on the back of their heads.”

In a moment Singleton’s voice came over the radio in response. She hadn’t seen him down at the camp, but he was evidently there. “They’re a Spartan, single-use platform. Their targets are all below them. Eyes above would mean they’d need software to interpret what they’re seeing in a different context. It wouldn’t be justified.”

Odin nodded. “Thanks, One.”

Behind him the loadmaster readied the first pallet with the folded tentlike object on it.

Foxy’s voiced crackled. “Tailhook, this is Foxy. We are deploying the interdiction bag. Get ready for some drag.”

“Copy that.”

Odin motioned for McKinney to stand back, and he moved against the wall next to her. A moment later the small drag chute deployed, pulling the folded bag pallet toward the emptiness beyond the cargo door. In a moment it tipped off the edge and started unreeling steel cable that quickly pulled taut on the concrete pallet. The securing straps there snapped tight.

McKinney saw the loadmaster checking the cable assembly. He gave a thumbs-up. On Odin’s handheld screen, a night-vision image showed the interdiction bag open like a parachute canopy at the end of a curving, one-hundred-meter length of steel cable behind the C-130.

The loadmaster radioed the pilot. “Interdiction bag deployed. Tailhook, you are GO for interdiction.”

The pilot’s voice came over moments later. “TOC, interdiction bag deployed successfully. We’re moving in to capture.”

“Copy that.”

From this distance it looked like the bag was pathetically small. McKinney decided to edge closer to the ramp alongside Odin. He gave her a brief glance, but she was busy taking in the fantastic view. She could also see the drone more clearly from this vantage point. It was only a hundred or so meters back. It looked even less impressive up close, with perhaps a twenty-foot wingspan. She could hardly believe all this ruckus had been caused by this jury-rigged hobby aircraft.

The drone seemed to be inching back relative to the billowing containment bag, the pilot maneuvering it into position. The bag was aerodynamically stable, apparently due to small fins on its side. Hoov was watching the scene intently as he manipulated a handheld joystick. It occurred to McKinney that he must be controlling it.

The whole team watched in tense anticipation.

The pilot’s voice crackled. “Fifty meters.” A pause. “Thirty meters.”

In the green night-vision camera image the unsuspecting drone eased back toward the bag.

The pilot’s voice came over the radio. “Odin, we’re just three miles to Target One. Altitude ten thousand feet.”

“Just keep it steady.”

On-screen the drone pulled up slightly, and a voice came over the radio. “Bomb in! Bomb in! Target Two has deployed ordnance.”

Odin spoke. “JOC, you’ve got ordnance inbound. All personnel take cover.”

Singleton’s voice came back with a siren wailing in the background. “Copy that, Odin.”

The drone began to climb steeply.

The pilot’s voice. “Pulling up. Keep it in the box. This fucker’s climbing fast.”

Odin motioned for McKinney to get back and followed behind her toward their seats. She heard his voice in her headphones. “We need to bag it, Tailhook. You’re running short on time.”

“We’ll get it.”

The men in the cargo bay grabbed for handholds as the plane lurched upward, chasing the drone up into the sky. Suddenly the entire view through the open cargo bay was of the dark badlands below. Tin Man started sliding back, and Foxy reeled him in by his monkey cord.

Meanwhile, behind them the plane was managing to gain on the drone and center it back into the maw of the bag. The team in the cargo bay watched intently-and in a few moments the drone disappeared, enveloped by the bag.

“Bingo, TOC! Bogey’s in the bag! Repeat bogey’s in the bag!”

McKinney and Odin looked to each other.

The bag was edging sideways, and then the drone suddenly started taking evasive maneuvers. McKinney realized there was nothing to stop the wild drone from hurtling forward a couple of hundred meters into the cargo bay and exploding-taking them all out.

The pilot’s voice came over the radio. “This thing’s going nuts.”

Odin waved to the crew. “Deploy the deadweight!”

“Stand clear!”

She saw the loadmaster kick the quick-release on the pallet of concrete that formed the deadweight. It whipped along the rails from the drag of the interdiction bag. The huge block tumbled off into the night, and the bag fell down and behind with it.

“Interdiction successful. Bag in free fall.”

A moment later a white flash pierced the night above the Utah desert, and a fiery light and smoke filled the bag. The boom followed soon after.

Foxy was training some sort of night-vision binoculars on the distant object. “Drone just self-destructed, but the bag looks intact.”

She could hear cheers on the radio, and Odin and McKinney exchanged relieved smiles. He pointed, and they watched the glowing interdiction bag still falling from thousands of feet in the air. “Let’s hope it has the answers we’re looking for in it.”

The pilot’s voice crackled again. “TOC, missile lock-on! Are any of you guys burning me?”

Hoov’s voice. “ Negative, Tailhook.”

Then, from somewhere low on the eastern horizon, a missile streaked across the night sky, burning like a flare as it arced upward toward them. McKinney felt the adrenal wave of fear spreading like heat down her legs. Even for a civilian, the sight of a missile ascending toward them was obviously bad.

“Missile six o’clock low! Deploying angel fire.”

McKinney watched amazed as suddenly the sky erupted in a fountain of blinding light, dozens of flares spreading out from the base of the C-130 and trailing behind them. Salvo after salvo of flares formed an angel wing pattern of smoke and green-white light behind them. The plane lurched to the right, throwing her against the wall. Then left. Mc-

Kinney grabbed on to the equipment rack and looked behind them through the open cargo door.

Odin’s voice came over the radio. “Godammit, Hoov, what the hell’s out there?”

The missile raced past them wide on the left and detonated, creating a flash and a powerful thump that caused the plane to lurch.

The pilot’s voice. “Shit, we’re hit.”

Odin raced forward, pulling on his monkey cord to steady himself.

McKinney watched in horror as a burning glow filled the left-side porthole windows, and a noticeable vibration set in on the floor. The C-130 yawed from side to side-still spitting flares every few seconds. The men in the cargo bay still looked incredibly calm to her, checking their monitors and grabbing fire extinguishers. It made McKinney straighten up, wondering what she should be doing.

The pilot’s voice crackled as though announcing the in-flight movie. “Shutting down engine one. I’m going to try for the base camp airstrip.”

Foxy’s voice. “Where’d the missile come from?”

Hoov’s voice answered. “Nothing on radar.”

Odin was pulling gear from a Pelican case. “Did it come from the ground?”

“We’ve got an inconclusive echo moving across our six. Ah… now it’s gone again.”

“Opened its weapon bay. Expect another launch. How far out?”

“Three miles.”

“All right. Team Ancile. Execute, execute, execute!” Odin turned to McKinney and unfastened her monkey cord harness. “Check your chute, but don’t jump until I say.”

“ Until you say? What happened to the pilot trying to land?”

“Change of plans. Get busy, Professor!”

She pulled on the shoulder straps of her parachute and began securing it. It was apparently a military-grade HALO chute. She grabbed for handholds against the lurching of the plane as she familiarized herself with the location of the ripcord and the cutaway. A glance up told her that everyone else was checking their parachutes as well.

The pilot shouted again. “Missile lock-on!”

McKinney looked out the open cargo doors to see another missile streaking out of the darkness, rising fast from a low angle. Odin was staring out with what looked like thermal binoculars. “I’ve got eyes on two bogeys, six o’clock, low, four thousand meters. I think we got our answer, Foxy.”

“Looks like it.”

Odin started tapping in numbers on a wrist computer.

Flares spouted from the C-130 again, and it took evasive maneuvers that sent McKinney sprawling. She grabbed on to the equipment rack and pulled herself to her feet again.

What the hell am I doing here? The question kept repeating in her mind. She looked at that fiery glow in the left-side portholes and was relieved to see that it had almost gone away. She was tempted to run out and jump from the cargo ramp, but she resisted. She had to stay with the team. The image of Ritter’s ghoulish eyes came back to her.

She’s as good as dead, and you know it.

Odin’s voice came over the radio channel. “Tailhook: Clear your people.”

“Copy that, Odin.”

Odin rummaged through equipment cases again. The other team members were hurriedly grabbing weapons and strapping on gear. “Move it, people!”

McKinney kept her eyes on the incoming missile as it streaked into the flares and past them without exploding. “Jesus Christ…”

The pilot’s voice came over the radio. “Setting autopilot to twenty-three thousand. All crew, bail out! Bail out!”

The plane tilted into an upward climb, while Foxy stomped toward Odin along with a half-dozen crew and team members. Foxy held his kora by the neck, and as he approached he looked sadly at it. “Well, another one bites the dust.” He tossed it out the cargo bay doors and into the abyss.

Odin gestured to Foxy with a slashing motion across his throat as he pulled the mic boom from his helmet. Then he shouted something directly into Foxy’s ear for several moments. She couldn’t hear it over the roar of the plane and her own insulating headphones, but after a moment Foxy nodded and motioned for the others to follow him.

He saluted McKinney. “See you in hell, Professor!”

The whole group went single file, launching one by one off the back ramp and into the moonlight over the Utah desert. McKinney watched them go and could see their silhouettes recede into the void. She felt like launching with them.

Odin grabbed her by the shoulders. “Not yet, Professor.”

“Are you crazy? Someone’s shooting missiles at us!”

“Remember that discussion we had about you being bait?” He was fiddling with a small nylon pack, clicking red buttons. “I left some parts out.”

“Why in the hell do you keep lying to me?”

“Because whatever you knew, they now know.”

The remaining flight crew came down from the deck and through the bulkhead door into the cargo bay. The navigator and copilot saluted Odin and jumped from the ramp one after the other. The pilot stopped and put a hand on his shoulder. “Ship’s clear. Happy hunting, Sergeant.”

Odin just thumbed toward the exit. The pilot nodded and ran off into the void.

Odin glanced down at his Rover tablet and showed it to McKinney.

It was an image from the surveillance camera watching her decoy. Where “she” had been, there was now only burning debris and fake body parts. Her stunt double was charred.

“My God.”

Odin tossed a satchel with a blinking red light on it well forward through the bulkhead door. “Whatever these things are, they just shot down our Predator drone too.”

McKinney held on to the equipment rack and glared at him. “Then what the hell are we still on this plane for?”

He pulled off his helmet and goggles and, from one of the Pelican cases, produced a full-faced aerodynamically designed black helmet with integrated tinted goggles and oxygen mask. It looked like something from a Star Wars convention. He pulled out a second one, flicked a switch, and shoved it into McKinney’s arms, motioning toward his throat.

She sighed and tore off her helmet, goggles, and oxygen mask. The cold hit her face like fire. She quickly put the new helmet on and realized it had integrated thermal or night vision in the goggles. She felt his hand fumbling with switches at her neck and suddenly heard the hiss of oxygen flowing and his voice in her ears.

“-secure comms. Can you hear me?”

“Yeah, I hear you. What the hell’s going on?”

He pointed out the back. She could see much more clearly in the night now, and that made it all the more alarming to see yet another missile streaking up toward them. But farther back she could also see twin pinpoints of heat glowing-distant aircraft following them.

She was about to jump toward the exit when she felt his rock-hard fingers gripping her shoulder.

“Think about it.”

“Think about what? Let go of me!”

“Who knew we were here?” He was now hanging what appeared to be a belt-fed machine gun across his chest and cinching it tightly. It had a large boxlike magazine. He looked up at her as he adjusted a twin pistol harness as well.

She couldn’t keep her eyes off the incoming missile. “We need to jump! Now!”

“It’ll hit an engine.”

“And what if the fuel tanks explode? What if a wing comes off?”

He was concentrating on prepping his gear. “I’ve seen a Talon take worse…”

“Odin!” She started pulling him toward the edge of the cargo ramp and the vast space beneath them.

He held her back. “Not quite yet, Professor.”

The plane was still vibrating from the earlier hit, and the two remaining plastic-wrapped equipment pallets were hopping around. McKinney hit the deck as the missile streaked in and detonated somewhere off the right side.

The plane lurched and yawed to the right, then developed a truly disconcerting undulating pattern. Piercing alarms started wailing. McKinney crawled to her feet again and could see thirty-foot flames and dark smoke trailing from the port wing-all portrayed in the black-and-white phosphorescence of her helmet’s night vision.

“Steady…” He grabbed her arm and started walking slowly toward the lip of the cargo ramp. The Utah desert scrolled by fifteen thousand feet or more below them in the black-and-white world of her helmet. A glance up front.

Flames were licking through the bulkhead.

McKinney struggled against his grip, then tried a self-defense move she’d learned in a class that prepared female researchers for remote fieldwork overseas-a kick toward his groin.

Odin deflected it easily and got her in an armlock. “Cut it out, Professor. We’re not quite at altitude yet.” He looked out the back ramp at the incoming objects, then started tapping numbers into a small computer integrated into the wrist of his HALO suit.

She noticed that the plane was indeed still angled in a climb.

“I figure two minutes of free fall is the most we’ll get. At a distance of three miles and a speed of three hundred knots, that should put us close enough.”

“Close enough for what!”

She could see the reflected glow of the flames trailing behind the plane in his insectlike helmet eyes. He was like the devil incarnate, standing amid the fire and chaos, his voice calm, his legs absorbing the now violent shuddering of the aircraft. He rammed the bolt back on the machine gun.

“You’re insane! You’re going to get us both killed!”

“Look, I don’t come to your job and tell you how to research ants.”

He nodded back behind her, and she turned to see yet another air-to-air missile arcing up toward them, but now she could more clearly see where it was coming from. Two sleek flying wings were below them and closer now-a few miles away.

“The people behind this need to think we’re dead, Professor, or we’re going to be too busy looking over our shoulder to find anything.” He raised his gloved hand to reveal a palm-sized trigger device. The flames glowed higher in his plastic eyes. “You ready?”

“Oh, my God…”

“We stay in close formation. Do not deploy your chute until I give you the signal.”

“Screw formation! It’s pitch black out there! If we collide-”

“Hey!” He grabbed her helmet and put his right in her face. “You’ve got a hundred and two USPA jumps under your belt and the best night-vision money can buy. No excuses for dying. We need to be well below radar before we deploy. If you deploy your chute early, they’ll know we bailed before the crash. Which means they keep hunting you. Are we clear?”

She stood unsteadily.

There was a flash and another BOOM. The plane started yawing to the side again, rumbling.

“Goddamn you…”

“Go!” He let go of her arm.

McKinney spun to face air-forward as she leapt from the cargo ramp, spreading her arms and legs to stabilize into free fall. Odin was right behind her. The racing wind hit her as a wall of pressure, but the high-tech jumpsuit and helmet kept her insulated. She’d never worn anything so effective at cutting wind. She concentrated on her form, and it started to calm her mind. The view was breathtaking even in night vision.

The flaming C-130 cargo plane receded ahead and above them.

Odin glided slowly toward her as he raised the detonator in his gloved hand. He squeezed, and the big, stricken plane detonated in a blinding flash, followed by a blast wave. The plane came apart in a ball of flame. Odin tossed the detonator and motioned calmly for her to drift one-eighty as he coasted alongside.

She heard his voice in her earphones. “Remember: Don’t open your chute until I give the word.” He strained to bring the tightly strapped machine gun barrel down against the onrushing wind and scanned the eastern sky as they fell.

He extended one hand skillfully as a fin to swerve him ten yards away from her as they continued in free fall, the cold wind rushing past them at one hundred and twenty miles an hour. Seven or eight thousand feet below them, she could see they were dropping down toward two fast-moving objects headed in their direction. She matched Odin’s movements as he extended and retracted his arms to guide himself faster, slower, left or right, adjusting an intercept course.

“This is insane. They’ll kill us!”

His voice came through on her headphones. “These are autonomous drones, Professor. I’m betting they’re using visual intelligence software to understand what they’re looking at.”

“So?”

“Humans can’t fly. Which means we can’t be here. I’m betting they won’t be able to figure out what we are…”

As they fell through twelve thousand feet, the drones passed below them and to the right by a couple of hundred meters. McKinney saw, more than heard, Odin’s machine gun open up. Fiery tracer rounds raced out like brilliant white sparks in her night-vision goggles. The bullets stitched the sky around the approaching aircraft, and although the rounds went wide, she saw that the drones immediately reacted to the incoming projectiles, veering off to the right and left around them as Odin’s fire chased them. One thundered past, headed for the falling, fiery wreckage of the C-130, but the other drone curved around, coming back to have another look at the attack coming from midair.

For a fleeting moment she clearly saw it as it whipped past them, followed by a thunder so loud she could hear it even within her helmet and all the rushing wind. These weren’t propeller aircraft but jet fighters that looked like flying black manta rays, tails blazing with heat. And it was clearly an unmanned drone. There was no cockpit-and it definitely didn’t look like a hobby kit.

She heard his voice in her headset. “See that? Home-built drone, my ass. We caught the one they wanted us to catch.”

“Then why did they send these too?”

“There’s something else going on. Something I’m not seeing yet.”

She was distracted by all his shooting, the tracers spraying wildly out into the night. “Do you really expect to hit those things at these speeds and distances?”

He kept firing intermittently at the drone. “If I can get them in close enough.”

“Altitude!” She could see the ground closing in. They were already passing through nine thousand feet. She looked back up and realized they were well below the jet-powered drones. The one that had turned back toward them, though, was also arcing down to follow them in their vertical dive.

It was coming after them.

“Come on down, fucker…”

“You’re insane!” She clutched her ripcord but, at the last moment, held back, resisting the urge to deploy. Looking up she realized the drone might plow straight through her canopy.

Odin opened fire on the drone diving down from above them. His tracers spat upward like a fountain of sparks as the craft roared closer, now only a few hundred meters above and gaining fast, its array of buglike eyes staring down on them.

Several miles away Foxy, Ripper, Hoov, and the others folded up their parachutes on the desert floor and gazed up at the fireworks in the sky-tracers spreading into the stars as jet engines roared and fiery debris rained down farther on.

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.”

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.