Authors: Daniel Suarez
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.”