Jon Evans - Swarm

About ten seconds before impact the camera got close enough for us to make out the gunmen who had seized us, staring up at their unexpected aerial visitor. I was tempted to try to kamikaze right into one of them, but the impact probably wouldn’t be lethal, or even serious; drones were very light aircraft, and ours didn’t have the benefit of high explosive. Instead I aimed the UAV at the waterline where the propellers churned. During the last five seconds I could hear its engine’s faint buzz, filtered through the cabin porthole.

The screen went blank. The Ark Royale didn’t even shudder. For a few seconds I feared the sacrifice dive had been useless.

Then a faint but grinding vibration began to keen through the vessel’s hull; the sound of a troubled motor. Fragments of the crashed drone had gotten caught up in the ship’s propellor. The noise grew louder, and more sickly, and the whole ship began to tremble. We heard shouts in Spanish. Then the engine shut off.

“Okay,” I said, losing my laserlike video-game focus at last, suddenly aware that I was sweating heavily, my hands were trembling, and my head ached. “Now what’s the second objective?”

After the USVs arrived we used the tools in my electronics kit to mostly remove the hinges from the cabin door. It wasn’t easy, partly because they weren’t exactly designed for the task – although the wire stripper was surprisingly effective – and partly because we didn’t know if a gunman waited outside. Two of us worked as silently as possible while the others tried to cover their tracks with conversation.

“We’ve got two handguns on board,” Jesse told me. I hoped our captors, if they were listening, couldn’t speak English. “In a secure compartment on the bridge.”

I said, “Somehow I don’t think a firefight is going to work to our advantage.”

“I know. That’s why I didn’t get them. But in case we need them.”

“If we need them, we’re already fucked.”

Anya looked at me as if that was cowardice rather than simple truth, then returned to working on the lower hinge. The other was already unbolted and loose enough to pull free of its bracket. I glanced at my iPhone’s screen. The camera on the UAV parked up top showed two men on the aft deck, one looking down at the propellors, one talking on a satellite phone.

“So you have no idea where the killer Colombian drones came from,” I said to Jesse.

“How would we know anything about that?”

“Why does the DEA think you do?”

“We didn’t give anything to a drug cartel.” He hesitated for a second. “At least not directly. I can’t believe you thought that for even a second. I mean, come on, man.”

“Not directly,” I pounced. “Meaning what exactly?”

“We have been sharing the tech with a… kind of grassroots NGO,” he admitted. “Sort of like Amnesty International, or Transparency International, but more active. Somebody there might have -” He didn’t finish the sentence.

“Not might. Did,” I corrected him, almost enjoying this; it wasn’t often I got the opportunity to rake Jesse over conversational coals. “Who are these selfless altruists?”

“Called Grassfire.”

“Never heard of them.” But Sophie had twitched at the sound of that name.

“You’re not supposed to. They’re not an NGO in the traditional sense. More of an open source insurgency.”

“Insurgency. Sure sounds nonviolent.”

“It’s not like it sounds. I’ll explain later.” Jesse sounded testy.

Anya grunted with triumph as the lower bolt came loose. We only had to lift the door up off its hinges to open it. Unfortunately, we had no idea what was outside, except that there were three violent and heavily armed men somewhere on board, who had probably already reported their predicament to whoever had sent them, and we were probably fifteen miles from land on a ship whose engine no longer functioned. I had little faith in Jesse’s ability to able to explain anything later. The odds still seemed heavily in favour of there being no later for us at all.

“We have to move fast. We’ll have two minutes at most.” Sophie passed me my phone. “Are you sure you can do this?”

“No, I’m not sure. But I think so.”

Anya and Jesse looked deeply dubious.

“OK,” Sophie took a deep breath. “First we knock on their door.”

She pushed a button on my phone, thus issuing commands to the USVs now clustered around the ship. I waited and listened as ten of the twelve submersibles began to bump repeatedly into the hull. I had hoped for something unnerving and intense, but all I heard was a faint tapping.

I checked the view from the drone up top. Still two men on the aft deck, meaning one gunman unaccounted for, very possibly right outside our door. At least the men I could see were up on their feet, with anxious body language.

“Now we break it down,” Sophie said, and looked at me.

Guiding the second UAV was easier, partly because the target was bigger. I simply divebombed it straight for the Ark Royale . It didn’t really matter where it hit, but I aimed it right at the men on the aft deck, hoping to scare them, and caught a gratifying glimpse of them fleeing into the common room fast enough that we heard their pounding footsteps as the pale blob of the ship expanded rapidly to swallow up the UAV’s camera. Then the camera view went dark.

I switched back to the view from the drone above and squinted at the screen. This was the important part. Wreckage from my controlled crash lay scattered all over the aft deck. As we watched, the gunmen went out to investigate, impelled, I hoped, by inescapable human curiosity, although their body language was more like scared and bewildered. One figure appeared, then another… and then the third.

“ Now ,” Sophie commanded.

The cabin door was unwieldy but we managed to lift it off its hinges and open it. Anya and Sophie darted outside. Jesse and I followed. The three of them fought to replace the door on its hinges as I began to guide the third and final UAV down towards the Ark Royale , piloting it remotely as I followed the others out and along the narrow external passageway alongside the ship, towards the bow. The whole point of this third sortie was to hold their attention, so I brought it in shallowly from behind the ship, at a moderate altitude, hopefully visible and audible the whole time.

It wasn’t easy to simultaneously steer the UAV, which required both hands, and walk along the narrow passageway above the ship’s edge while the deck heaved and surged beneath me, all as quickly and surreptitiously as possible, while suffering from a piercing headache. Somehow I managed, probably because my mind was so focused on the iPhone’s screen that it didn’t interfere with my body’s instincts. My problem with tricky physical feats had always been that I thought about them too much.

The gunshots began just as I reached the the flat deck at the bow of the ship. I started, nearly pitched forward over the railing and into the ocean, but Anya grabbed my bicep and pulled me to safety. I held tightly to my phone as I spun around to see – nothing. We remained undiscovered. The gunmen were shooting at the drone arrowing towards them.

Their anti-aircraft fire swallowed up the loud whoosh of the inflatable life raft’s expansion. I made one last UAV course adjustment while Jesse and Sophie hurled the raft over the side of the boat and jumped after it. It landed open-side-up almost directly beneath me. I tossed the phone into it before leaping into the sea. The water was warm, but my sudden immersion was still a physical shock. Anya followed.

They must have heard the splashes. By the time I made it into the raft Sophie was already busy on the iPhone, and Jesse had already connected the rope to the D-ring at the back of the waiting USV, the plan was working at top speed – but it wasn’t enough. The submersible vehicle launched forward, towing us behind it, but it was too slow. We weren’t more than a hundred feet away when I looked back and saw the three Hispanic men armed with assault rifles, standing behind the bow railing.