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.
* * *
Several 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.
* * *
Still 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.