Джеймс Паттерсон - Killer Instinct

Elizabeth walked away. She knew enough to not feel sorry for herself. How could she? She was literally stepping over the dead. As much as she tried not to, she couldn’t help gazing at those bloodstained white sheets and the outlines of the bodies they covered.

Suddenly, Elizabeth stopped. One of the sheets was folded back a bit, maybe from a gust of wind. She could see a toddler’s hand, a little girl. It was so small. There was a pink Hello Kitty bracelet around her wrist, and all Elizabeth could do was picture the day it was given to her and how much that little girl loved it and how happy it made her. She probably never wanted to take it off, not ever.

Elizabeth froze at the thought of this girl, her legs going numb. The only thing she could do was stare straight up into the heavens. Her years as a detective, the brutal crimes she’d seen, had tested her faith in God to the point where she truly didn’t know if he existed. What god would allow this little girl to die? What god would make all the people who loved her suffer?

Elizabeth wanted to cry. Instead, she screamed.

In the corner of her eye, she’d seen something. Lots of them. They were in the sky and coming her way. Everyone’s way.

The attack wasn’t over.

Chapter 6

“INCOMING!”

Elizabeth yelled at the top of her lungs, her arm rocketing into the air to point north, directly over the building at One Times Square where the ball drops on New Year’s Eve.

Everyone around her turned, their necks craning to follow the line of her finger. What they saw coming toward them looked like geese in formation, only these weren’t birds. They were drones. Each one was about to drop a bomb, some sort of IED. Hell, you could even see the wiring.

Shoot ’em down! Shoot them all down!

No one screamed it. No one had to.

Elizabeth reached for her gun, as did everyone else who was carrying. She unloaded the clip of her Glock 19, the sky filling with lead. Pop! Pop-pop-pop-pop!

BOOM!

The force of the blast knocked Elizabeth hard to the ground. The second blast— BOOM! —kept her there as shards of glass from the windows roughly thirty floors above rained down on her. There was no time to take cover. She rolled onto her back, changed out clips, and resumed firing. How many are left? Three? Four?

Whoever was controlling the drones could see what was happening. As soon as the first was hit, the others scrambled.

Elizabeth whipped her head left and right, trying to keep track of them. There was now one hovering directly over her.

Single rounds weren’t cutting it. There was no way to shoot them all down before—

Shit!

The drone above her released its bomb as Elizabeth fired off the last round in her clip without connecting. She was at ground zero and a sitting duck.

The empty clicks as she continued to pull her trigger sounded like a countdown to her death. All she could do was roll underneath a FedEx truck a few feet away. It wasn’t nearly enough protection. She closed her eyes.

BOOM!

Elizabeth felt the blast, the heat singeing her face and hands as the truck buckled and nearly crushed her. It hurt like hell, but it was the best pain in the world because she could feel it. She was still alive. How the hell?

Maybe there was a God.

Chapter 7

ELIZABETH SLID out from beneath the truck to see what had saved her—but not before hearing it first.

The sound of the gunfire was different, though muffled through her blasted eardrums. The pop-pop-pop had been overtaken by the metallic zip of submachine guns. The cavalry had arrived in the form of the FBI SWAT team that had been canvassing the perimeter beyond Times Square. One of them had hit the bomb directly over Elizabeth as it dropped, a bull’s-eye that had saved her life.

In a double-wedge formation moving up and down Broadway, the team continued to fire. Another drone was obliterated followed by one more, both before they could drop their bombs. Elizabeth’s already wobbly knees buckled as she fell to the concrete again from the bombardment, her ears ringing so loudly they were stinging. She couldn’t hear. She couldn’t do anything.

Finally the SWAT commander yelled out, chopping his hand through the air. The rest of his team held their fire. Everyone else with any ammo left followed suit.

All eyes remained looking up. Ten seconds became twenty, then thirty. It seemed like forever.

One by one, shoulders began to relax. Guns were holstered. The barrels of the SWAT team’s Heckler & Koch UMPs were lowered.

Elizabeth felt a tap on her shoulder and turned. An EMT was talking to her, but it was nothing more than his lips moving. She still couldn’t hear. Slowly, she began making out some of the words. The rest she could fill in. He was asking her if she was okay.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Elizabeth lied. She really didn’t know for sure. Every part of her hurt.

He pointed to a row of medical tents set up along the nearest cross street. He was saying she needed to be looked at by a doctor.

Elizabeth nodded. It was the most her body could muster. That and hopefully putting one foot in front of the other. At least as far as those tents. She gently pulled up her pant legs, the bloodied fabric of her slacks sticking to her skin. Some of those cuts from the falling glass were well beyond Band-Aids.

She wanted to thank whoever had saved her life, but all the SWAT team members looked alike, as they always did in their combat gear, and now they all were doing the same thing—trying to clear the area. Just because a second-wave attack had been thwarted didn’t mean there wouldn’t be a third.

They were ushering any nonessentials down the stairs of the subway entrance at 42nd Street and Seventh Avenue. All press and any onlookers were getting the hook, even the uniformed cops who weren’t part of the investigation. Elizabeth watched for a moment before spotting Evan Pritchard moving against the flow like a salmon swimming upstream. He was talking on a satellite phone, oblivious to anyone and anything. It figured.

Elizabeth shook her head and began walking toward the medical tents when she stopped on a dime. The sound was faint. A sort of revving. Like a tiny lawn mower that wouldn’t start.

Her eyes darted, searching for what was making the noise. She kept looking and looking until—there, in the middle of Broadway—she spotted one of the drones that had been shot down. The bomb it was holding was still intact. It was live.

The rush of adrenaline pushed away the pain as Elizabeth started running. Not away from the bomb but toward it.

“Pritchard!” she yelled. He was walking straight for the damn thing and had no idea. “PRITCHARD!”

Others could hear Elizabeth. They could see her waving her arms frantically for everyone still in the street to get back. The SWAT team was now running for cover, corralling the last of the civilians down the stairs to the subway.

For Christ’s sake, Pritchard!

Elizabeth ran past the drone, picking up as much speed as she could before barreling into her boss. Never mind that he was built like a brick house. She knocked him clean off his feet, wrapping her arms around him as they rolled toward the curb. He didn’t know what the hell was happening, only that he was severely ticked off.

But there was no time for her to explain. Elizabeth scrambled to her feet, pulling Pritchard toward the subway entrance and literally pushing him down the stairs with her.

“What the hell are you doing, Needham?” barked Pritchard as they slammed into the concrete landing ten feet below. He was grabbing Elizabeth with both hands. He was practically shaking her. “Are you insane? You could’ve killed me. You could’ve goddamn ki—”