Kill Decision

CHAPTER 21

McKinney was dimly aware of shouting and people hitting the floor around her as the world seemed to constrict to a tiny focal point on her shoes-which were covered in blood. Hoov’s quivering body lay at her feet. She stared at the interior of his skull, even now coursing with blood that pooled across the floor. Blood was also oozing from several other holes in Hoov’s chest, turning his entire blue Ancile polo shirt maroon.

That’s when someone grabbed her bodily by the shoulders and hauled her over the back of the sofa. She didn’t even feel the hard impact on the floor, but it must have brought her back to her senses. She looked up to see bullet holes systematically drilling into the foreheads of every human portrait and photograph on the wall that faced the covered window. Glass and splintered wood ricocheted around the room as bullet holes appeared with the speed and precision of a sewing machine. Two flat-panel monitors with the colonel’s face displayed on them also got hit dead center, blasting apart.

“Stay down!” Whoever had grabbed McKinney was dragging her. She felt Odin’s beard scratching her face as he pulled her behind the bar. His arm was as hard as a baseball bat, and he had a. 45 tactical pistol in his other hand.

Someone shouted, “Sniper, Black, Alpha, Two!”

Odin responded in a booming voice. “Automated sniper station. Probably synth-app radar-stay away from perimeter walls!”

Foxy’s voice. “Hoov’s gone, Odin.”

“I know.”

A voice called out from the foyer. “Odin! Boomerang says the shots came from two locations near the center ridgeline. Plunging fire from six hundred and eighty-three meters and six hundred and twenty meters out.”

“What are we facing?”

“Hard to identify the station model at this angle-both acoustic signatures look like. 338s. They’re in heavy cover and burning us with radar.”

Foxy pounded the floor with his fist from behind the sofa. “They must have been here all along-waiting for confirmation that the team was all present.”

Odin nodded. “Mark their location! And turn on a goddamned GPS jammer, Mooch! I don’t want a JDAM down on our heads.”

“On it!”

McKinney saw Ripper with her back to the bar next to them. The woman looked cool and focused as she pulled a metal canister from her harness.

Odin shouted, “Popping Mike Mike particle smoke!”

Ripper pulled the pin and tossed the now fiery canister over the bar into the room.

Odin talked over the hissing, expanding smoke cloud. “All right, listen up! We’ve drilled against this weapon system a hundred times. You all know what to do. Everyone to the foyer, in full AD gear, two minutes! On my mark!”

Looking down, McKinney realized she was completely spattered with gore. Chunks of what must have been brains came back on her fingers as she wiped her hands. The involuntary reaction was instant. She vomited onto the parquet floor behind the bar, sucking for air between retches. “Oh, my God…”

People talked to her rapidly from somewhere, but her body wouldn’t let her hear. She had the dry heaves, crawling on her elbows.

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 caw ed 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.

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 fenders 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 thwack s 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 caw ed 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 crack ing 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?”

Odin got close to her face. “You’re going to be all right.”

The pain was incredible. “Oh, God. Let me see it!”

“No, lay back.”

She could feel someone cutting through her pant leg.

Odin turned. “Mooch, how’s it look?”

“Femoral artery-close to the pelvis. Tourniquet’s out. Keep the pressure on. Here.”

She felt another pain as something was jabbed into her leg. And then a soothing feeling came over her. A warm sensation. Calm.

Odin’s face was right next to hers. He seemed calm too. Normal. She was fading. Her consciousness was ebbing.

“Pass me that Hespan.” The tearing of plastic.

Foxy’s voice. “How is she?”

A serious look crossed Odin’s face.

McKinney felt her vision narrow. Darkness ebbing in like rising water over her face. Hands on her side. Then on her back.

“I need to contain this bleeding. Or she isn’t going to make it.”

McKinney’s focus faded. She tried to speak, but she was so tired now. She sank below the waves. Into the blackness. Into silence.