Daniel Suarez - Kill Decision

As they pushed through the doorway into a sizable hangar with a concrete floor, McKinney felt a wave of relief pass over her-even though the sound of drones smacking into the building like hail was already sweeping around from the far side.

“Close that door!”

Odin waited until Huginn and Muninn flew past, and then he pulled the metal door shut with a boom. The humming sound went down a few decibels.

The team was already rushing forward to a large single-engine plane that McKinney recognized-a Cessna Grand Caravan. She’d seen them used as bush cargo planes. This one was painted white with green and yellow stripes and looked fairly new.

“Smokey, secure the twins. There’s a cage in the cargo hold.”

“On it.”

Ripper already had the cargo doors open, and she was limping around to the pilot door. Blood soaked her lower leg.

“You okay to fly, Ripper?”

She gave Odin a look. “Just get in the damn plane.”

Smokey lifted Hoov’s body bag into the hold and climbed up after it.

McKinney climbed in through the wide cargo door as the ravens flew in past her. Spatters of blood were already staining the floor and upholstery. She grabbed one of several seats in front of the cargo area, while Smokey urged the ravens into the safety of a black mesh cage. There were a few boxes and equipment cases, but the cargo bay was nearly empty.

Smokey looked up. “Should we toss the cargo?”

Ripper was flicking switches with headphones on. She shook her head. “No time.”

Foxy climbed into the copilot seat and put on headphones too. “How we getting these hangar doors open?”

Ripper pointed.

Odin was standing next to the hangar doors, his hand over a switch. He held up an arm, giving several signs Ripper seemed to understand.

“Let’s hope this damn hangar holds together long enough to pull this off.”

The turboprop engine began to whine to life.

McKinney leaned forward. “You’re starting the engine-in a closed hangar?”

“Like I said, Professor. Keep your fingers crossed.”

The engine thundered to life, and Odin hit the hangar door switch. McKinney watched in horror as he raced the eighty or so feet toward them, the doors opening ever wider.

Foxy shouted, “Run, goddamn you!”

A cloud of drones started issuing through the widening opening between the twin hangar doors. Before the swarm could orient itself, Odin reached the open cargo door and leapt inside.

“Get the hatch!”

Smokey reached out to get the hatch as the swarm raced toward the plane. Several lead ones disintegrated amid sparks in the whirling propeller blade, but two slipped past in the high wind and tumbled into the passenger area before Smokey got the hatch closed.

Odin grabbed an equipment case as a weapon. “Look out! Get them!”

The buzzing, insectlike quadracopters quickly righted themselves and launched around the passenger cabin, one rushing straight for Smokey’s face. He bashed it aside with the butt of his HK416.

The other one streaked right toward McKinney, who was strapped into her seat. She knocked it away with her hand as it fired a bullet with a deafening bang that grazed her wrist. One moment later, and the bullet would have gone right between her eyes. She ducked and unbuckled her seat belt-unsure where the drone had gone. “Where is it?”

Ripper shouted, “Everybody hold on!” She rammed the throttle forward, and the plane surged ahead. Smokey, Odin, Mooch, and the two drones they were contending with slid back toward the rear of the Cessna as dozens of drone bodies clattered along the outside the fuselage or disappeared in a cloud of sparks into the plane’s propeller.

Smokey pressed his boot down on one of the rotor mounts of the drone, pinning it to the floor. He then repeatedly smashed his rifle butt into its circuit board core-crushing its optic array. “Die, fucker!”

As he pounded the small machine, it fired its several small-caliber bullets from tubes on its metal frame-at least one bullet catching Smokey in the ankle before it died.

“Goddammit!” He toppled back.

They were roaring along the airstrip now, nearing eighty miles an hour. The tree line raced past, and the drone swarm fell behind.

Huginn and Muninn caw ed angrily inside their cage as Odin hurled a heavy equipment case at the remaining drone hovering toward the front. “Tin Man, get it!”

By now the cabin was spattered in blood as the wounded team clambered around trying to destroy the last drone.

But the device headed straight for McKinney. She deflected it with the trauma plates strapped to her arm, but it kept driving up against her, its electric blades humming.

She was both horrified and riveted by its appearance this close. It was a simple four-rotor helicopter with blade enclosures, but the frame seemed to be made of thick wire, ending in spiky legs. In the center pod, held in the metal frame, was a series of tightly packed circuit boards and a row of four lenses-its “eyes.” Next to that, in racks, were what looked to be silver compressed-air canisters-the type of thing whipped cream was dispensed with. But these seemed to be spraying the air with some type of chemical that had a faint peppery smell-a pseudopheromone, marking her. And then stacked to either side of the core body were what turned out to be gun barrels.

This is what was crack ing at her as she struggled to kick it away. Bullets pinged off her trauma plates, but then she felt a piercing pain in her upper leg, just as Odin smashed the drone into the floor, and Mooch bashed its core in with his rifle butt.

“Dammit!” She’d never experienced such pain. McKinney writhed on the cabin floor now in a rapidly expanding pool of blood. She raised her gloved hand to see arterial blood spurting out of a hole on her inner thigh.

“Oh, my God…”

Mooch came up alongside her. “Professor’s hit!”

Odin knelt down next to her as well.

Scenery raced by outside, and then McKinney felt gravity press her into the floor, and the trees at the edge of her vision disappeared. “Did we make it?”

Odin got close to her face. “You’re going to be all right.”

The pain was incredible. “Oh, God. Let me see it!”

“No, lay back.”

She could feel someone cutting through her pant leg.

Odin turned. “Mooch, how’s it look?”

“Femoral artery-close to the pelvis. Tourniquet’s out. Keep the pressure on. Here.”

She felt another pain as something was jabbed into her leg. And then a soothing feeling came over her. A warm sensation. Calm.

Odin’s face was right next to hers. He seemed calm too. Normal. She was fading. Her consciousness was ebbing.

“Pass me that Hespan.” The tearing of plastic.

Foxy’s voice. “How is she?”

A serious look crossed Odin’s face.

McKinney felt her vision narrow. Darkness ebbing in like rising water over her face. Hands on her side. Then on her back.

“I need to contain this bleeding. Or she isn’t going to make it.”

McKinney’s focus faded. She tried to speak, but she was so tired now. She sank below the waves. Into the blackness. Into silence.

Linda McKinney awoke to a warm breeze wafting over her face. As her eyes came into focus, she could see gauzy white curtains trailing away from a row of tall windows, undulating with the flowing air. The sun shone in, blinding white. She lay beneath a crisp linen sheet in a proper bed with a sturdy headboard made of rough-hewn pine. Clean down pillows cradled her head. Thick wooden beams traversed the ceiling above her. The walls were of mortared stone. This was an old place. A cross hung from the wall above the bed, and along the wall nearby were framed icons of saints and sepia-toned photos of brown-skinned, black-haired ancestors in starched collars and black dresses.