Kill Decision (29 page)

“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.

*   *   *

S
everal 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.

*   *   *

S
till 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?”