“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.