Exo: A Novel (Jumper) (46 page)

Dad clucked his tongue. “
Less
scary. Less scary than people we trust giving up our location. Less scary than the thought that they put lots of drones up at the same time. That scenario would pretty much indicate the full cooperation of the air force.”

“You don’t think this was the NSA and the CIA?”

“I don’t
think
so. It doesn’t feel right. You’ve been working pretty closely with USSPACECOM. They know your capabilities and they’d be a lot more cautious about going after you. I mean, you take out
one
keyhole spy satellite and, with launch, that’s two
billion
dollars out of their budget.” He shook his head. “No. I think it’s the Daarkon Group—Hyacinth Pope’s people. They have the resources to field
one
drone—to get hold of one or two Hellfire missiles. I’m already after them, which they know, so they probably know it’s not like I’m going to change that if they miss me. They’ve been hiding from me. I think they’re tired of hiding, but they don’t dare come out unless we’re all dead.”

“You think they’ll come check for bodies?”

Dad nodded. “It was a few minutes between the time we moved Sam and the missile hit. They
might
think the signal stopped transmitting because of the explosion. But they’d want to be sure.”

“Dad, what if they just call Yukon Search and Rescue? The Mounties would look through the wreckage and count the bodies. Those assholes wouldn’t have to expose themselves.”

Dad frowned. “It’s
possible
I suppose, but they can’t count on the Mounties to finish up. I guess we’ll just have to see who shows up.”

I peeled back the cuff of the overmitt to check my watch. “It won’t be light until ten eighteen, but of course they could time their arrival for first light.”

“You think they won’t come tonight? It’s clear weather and you know how rare that is.”

“What’s the weather forecast?”

“High-pressure ridge until tomorrow night. So, yeah, clear during the day, too.”

“I have no idea.” I yawned suddenly and felt my jaw pop.

Dad said, “We’ll take it in shifts, then, until morning. How does ninety minutes on, ninety minutes off sound? Off shift at the Eyrie. On shift comes and gets the other if there’s action.”

I gritted my teeth. “Are you
really
going to come get me if I’m the off shift?”

Dad sighed. “Unfortunately.”

“What does
that
mean?”

“You were awfully handy when we extracted Sam from her nursing home. I don’t know what will happen, but your Mom would feel better if we were
both
here.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

*   *   *

I was right about first light. I’d only had my eyes closed for fifteen minutes when Dad shook me awake at 10:30 Pacific time.

“What?” I said.

“Helicopter. Coming up the valley from the south. It’s
not
yellow and red. You awake?”

“Go!” I said. “I’ll be there.”

I’d been lying on the platform bed sans mattress, but adequately padded in the insulated bib and unzipped parka. The boots, gloves, overmitts, balaclava, and goggles were in a pile beside me and I scrambled into the boots and gloves, zipped up the parka, and carried the rest of the gear with me. Dad was crouching low behind the snowbank at the front of the pavilion, only his head above it.

I pulled on the rest of the gear, cinched my hood closed, and joined him.

The Canadian Search and Rescue aircraft, helicopters
and
fixed wing, are all painted high-visibility yellow with red trim. This large helicopter was gray with bright orange highlights. We got a good look at the lettering on the side as it did a pass over the cabin foundation before settling out in the valley, where winds kept the snow from piling too deep.

“CHC?”

Dad said, “They’re a transport provider for the oil industry. They have lots of heavy, all-weather equipment like that Super Puma.”

The eight figures who jumped down from the starboard-side cargo door were dwarfed by the helicopter. It was twice as tall, landing gear to the top of the rotor, as the tallest of them. They began moving across the flat in a familiar shuffling motion and standing taller than I expected in the snow.

“Snowshoes,” I said.

Dad said, “Yes. Somehow I don’t think these guys are my boys from Costa Rica.”

“What’s the plan?”

“We watch. I’ll probably grab some of them—scare them a little, but we want to leave someone capable of running. Can you follow them? See where they go?”

“The helicopter? I guess. Hardly orbital velocities. Now?”

“No.” Dad shook his head. “First we watch.”

I felt odd when they started picking their way through the debris field, and Dad actually growled when the first of them climbed over the remnants of the front door. I knew how he felt and I expected him to move then, before they walked in our home, but he put his hand on my arm as if
I
might go after them.

“Don’t.”

“Project much? I wasn’t going to.”

We were whispering. They were about a thousand feet away, but with the air as still as it was, sound carried. We’d already heard some of
their
spoken words and now I heard something else—a small-plane motor, like a small Cessna.

Dad pointed.

It was circling, perhaps two miles out. It
wasn’t
a Cessna. It was hard to see against the lighted sky and I bet it was invisible with even a small amount of overcast.

Dad vanished and I searched the ground below, looking for him to appear, or, more likely, several of
them
to disappear, but Dad was back beside me in seconds, his hands holding Mom’s fancy image-stabilized binoculars.

He studied the drone and swore.

“Are you upset that it’s back?”

“It never left. Look.”

He handed me the binoculars and I studied it. The long narrow wingspan, the inverted-V tail, the pusher prop. “What am I looking at?” I asked.

“Under the wings.”

“Uh. One missile. On the port side.”

“But not two. It fired the other one last night and it’s been circling wide, waiting for these guys.”

I lowered the binoculars.

“They could fire the other missile if they see us.”

He nodded. “Yes they could.” He looked at me. “I don’t suppose you can crash it?”

*   *   *

The drone was doing about eighty-one miles per hour, an economy “loiter” speed, and it was easy for me to match velocities. I’m sure the sensor suite in the pod suspended beneath the forward fuselage wasn’t looking toward its own wingtip, but as soon as I latched my mitts onto the very end of the port wing, twenty-five feet away from the drone’s body, I’m
sure
the operators noticed.

My weight rolled the plane sharply over on its side and the asymmetric drag from my parka-thickened cross section yawed the nose toward the ground. I felt the wing buck and flex as the automatic onboard stabilization systems fought to right the craft and the engine went to full revolutions as they goosed the throttle.

I was about twenty-eight feet away from the prop and the last thing I wanted was to be thrown into it. That was
not
my preferred way to crash the vehicle.

Enough.

I held on hard and dropped my relative velocity fifteen feet a second. My drag had been introducing yaw before, but this threw the craft into a flat spin, perpendicular to the ground, and threw me out, too much centripetal force for me to keep my grip.

Still conscious of the prop, the minute the wing slipped out of my hands, I flinched back to Dad at the ridge top. The drone’s flat spin turned into a tumble as the pilot and the autonomous systems struggled to stabilize the craft. For a few seconds I thought that between the remote pilot and the onboard systems they’d succeed and I’d have to go back, but then the outboard half of the starboard wing snapped off and spiraled away. Five seconds later the drone smashed into the thickly forested slopes on the far side of the valley.

“I hope
that
cost them a pretty penny,” said Dad. “Good work.”

The men below hadn’t reacted to the drone but they reacted to the sound of the crash with calls of alarm, and their postures shifted. Then I heard a faint yet familiar sound.

“That’s an Iridium satphone handset!” I said.

Dad nodded, lifting the binoculars. “Tail-end Charlie, there,” he said. “Hold these.”

If I’d tried to use the binoculars I would’ve missed it. The farthest man, the one who loitered at the edge of the debris field, had one arm held up in the classic talking-on-the-phone pose, and then he was gone.

That seemed fast, even for Dad, but then I realized it was the camouflage. He’d been there but I hadn’t even registered him against the snow before he’d snatched and left.

He appeared beside me five seconds later, the Iridium handset in his hand, studying its display.

“Where’d you drop him?”

“The beach.”

“Australia?”

“Oh, no.
My
beach. That one I made off Costa Rica.”

Ah. The little rocky island where I’d practiced twinning.

“I didn’t have time to sweep him for electronics but at least I have
this
—” He held up the handset. “—and there’s no cell service out there.”

“I’d have thought you would use the pit.”

He shrugged. “It’s too close to the Eyrie.” He gestured below, at the remnants of the cabin. “If you haven’t noticed, we’re running out of space.”

I smiled sadly, but of course he couldn’t see it under the balaclava.
Space is the one thing we
aren’t
running out of.
“Was he armed? Are they?”

“He
was
and waving it around as soon as he fought his way out of surf and that wet parka, so let me deal with him. Don’t know about
them
. I suspect they’re just temps, especially the way
this
guy—” Again he held up the satphone. “—was hanging back.”

“Huh?” I thought the guy was just squeamish, worried about finding bodies or pieces of bodies. “How do you figure?”

“Well … he was at the edge of the debris field, right? If they had found something—a survivor, opposition—he would have been outside the blast radius of the other missile.”

“Seriously—they would’ve fried their own guys? You’re not just being … you?”

“I am being ‘me.’ But I’m still serious. How do you think I got so paranoid in the first place?”

The day before I would’ve thought he was crazy, but that was before someone implanted a tracker in my grandmother’s hip and then fired a missile to kill her and everyone in her vicinity.

“It’s sad that I agree with you,” I said. “What are you going to do with
them
?” I gestured at the men below.”

He considered them.

“I think your Royal Canadian Mounted Police idea has merit. I really think these guys are day labor, hired for this.” He vanished and reappeared a few minutes later with a five-pound sledgehammer in his hands.

“You just said they weren’t the bad guys!”

He acted hurt. “It’s not for their heads, it’s for the tail rotor on the helicopter! I just want them to still be here when the RCMP arrive.”

“Ah.”

“I’ve got this,” he said, gesturing at the valley, the helicopter, and the men standing among the pieces of the cabin. “But you might want to check on the others.”

“Mom and Grandmother?”

He shook his head and held up four fingers.

“Joe, Tara, Jade, Cory.”

*   *   *

The suit team had finished the fifth suit two days before Joe’s semester started. Tara had another week before dear old Beckwourth High School resumed, and because Jade wasn’t doing the Smith interterm minicourse in January, she wouldn’t start for another two weeks. Cory tentatively suggested they could use Joe’s last two days for testing, but this offer had a uniform response.

“Fuck no!”

Cory took the revolution good-naturedly. When I phoned him after finding his office, lab, and apartment empty, he said, “I’m reading at a coffee shop. Why?”

I didn’t want to panic him but I also didn’t want to leave him dangerously uninformed. “They made an attempt at me and my parents. Keep your eyes open, okay?”

“An attempt? Like they tried to kidnap you?”

“Something like that,” I said.

“Well, which was it? They did or they didn’t?”

I sighed. “They blew up our house.”

I heard his chair scrape across the floor as he shifted abruptly. “Is everyone all right? Your parents?” I decided not to mention that Grandmother was back on the respirator, weaker than ever. “We got everyone out first.”

“That’s
not
how you kidnap someone.”

“Thank you for pointing that out. I think they’ve given up on trying to
use
us.”

“I thought they didn’t know where you live?”

“We are
not
having this conversation over the phone. I need to check on the others.”

“Yes! Sorry.”

“Eyes open.”

*   *   *

Jade and Tara were at Krakatoa, hiding from both sets of parents, but not, unfortunately, the press who were camped out downstairs.

“Why aren’t they up here with you?” I asked. Jade had warned me over the phone so I’d arrived back in the corner, out of sight of the first floor.

“The management put a ‘mezzanine reserved for private party’ sign up. That’s us. Wish it would work for our parents,” said Tara.

“I thought
your
mom was okay with this,” I said to Tara, gesturing between the two of them.

“It’s not the relationship,” Tara said. “It’s the publicity. The press keep pestering her and—” She glanced at Jade and rolled her eyes toward the ceiling.

Jade finished for her. “Tara’s dad resurfaced, awful as ever. She and her mom tried to renew the restraining order, but Tara turned eighteen last month so it’s no longer a child protective services issue.”

Tara shook her head. “We should’ve pushed for prosecution back
then
but Mom thought that getting custody permanently revoked and that restraining order was hard enough. Since the domestic-violence charges weren’t made
and
the incidents were more than five years ago, the judge we saw only wants to consider current behavior in justifying a restraining order.”