Barry Eisler: The Detachment

I rushed to Gillmor’s body and examined the laptop. Two joy sticks, telemetry readouts, a video feed that looked like it was coming from a camera in the drone. I recognized the terrain from the maps we’d been reviewing. The east/west rural highway we’d driven in on from Lincoln. The river just south of it.

Oh shit, he’s programmed it to go straight for-

Gunshots to my right. I spun. Kanezaki was down. I saw movement at the far end of the truck.

I charged for the granary.

No time to think about Kanezaki. I hoped he’d taken the hits in the Dragon Skin, but I didn’t know. “Dox,” I said into the commo boom as I got to cover, “Gillmor’s down, but he’s programmed the drone to go straight to the school. I think he set the Hellfires to go at the last minute and then for the drone to follow them in, or maybe for them to detonate on impact with the drone. It’s coming at you from due east. ETA three, maybe four minutes. Can you take it down?”

“I don’t know. Where are its avionics?”

I darted my head around and back. Three gunshots rang out from the far side of the truck and rounds struck the granary wall. Chunks of dislodged concrete hit me.

“I don’t know, I didn’t design the fucking thing! The nose, I guess.”

“Guess you can’t ask Gillmor?”

Another gunshot, another spray of concrete. I was distantly aware that if the shooter was firing even when I didn’t show myself, he couldn’t be that good.

“Gillmor’s dead!” I said.

“Well, under the circumstances and assuming we don’t have any other drone architecture experts on hand, I’d have to call that a fail.”

Unless, I thought, the shooter was covering for someone coming in from my left. I moved out to the other side of the granary, the HK up. “Treven, Larison, you need to clear out of there now.”

“I’m going in,” Treven said. “They have to evacuate.”

“You don’t have time!”

“Gotta try.”

There was a pause.

“Goddamn it,” Larison said. “I knew this was going to happen. I’m going in, too.”

“Use the sides,” Dox said calmly. “If you come around to the front, you will have to engage a very upset police officer.”

“Roger that,” Treven said.

“Going in,” Larison said. “Goddamn it.”

The other side of the granary was clear. It was just the one guy, then. And he wasn’t that good. I wondered if I could charge the truck from here.

“Dox,” I said. “Do you see it?”

“Not yet, but I’m looking.”

I heard Treven and Larison shouting, “There is a bomb in the school! This is not a joke and it is not a drill! Everyone needs to evacuate now and scatter to at least one hundred yards! Move! Move!”

“Come on, baby,” I heard Dox say. “Where are you? Come to Dox.”

I sucked in a deep breath and blew it out, readying myself to charge the truck. I counted one, two-

I heard three soft cracks, then a gunshot. I tore around the side of the granary and straight for the truck.

There was no need. Kanezaki was on his feet, to the left of the truck, the HK up at chin level and angled to the ground, smoke drifting up from the muzzle of the suppressor. I dropped down and looked under the chassis of the truck. There was a prone body on the other side.

“Is he dead?” I called out.

“I think so.” He sounded like he was in shock.

“Well, fucking make sure!”

I heard another soft crack. Then, “He’s dead.”

Dox, in my ear: “Goddamn it, I am taking fire.”

He said it so calmly it took me a minute to understand what it meant. “Someone’s shooting at you?”

Treven and Larison were still shouting. Sounded like pandemonium inside the school.

“Yeah,” Dox said, “it’s that cop. He must have seen me. Good eyes. He’d need a hell of a lucky shot to hit me from there, but still I’d be grateful if someone could knock him down or something. I’d prefer not to shoot a police officer. Treven, Larison?”

“I’m on it,” Larison said.

“Thank you,” Dox said. “Still no sign of the drone. Kids are all running out of the school, though. Nice work there.”

A few seconds went by. I heard a sound-half thud, half crunch-and Dox said, “Thank you, Mister Larison! Ooh, that had to hurt.”

“What happened?” I said.

“Clubbed the cop,” Larison said. “Took his gun.”

I heard him say, “Here, I’m sorry about that, sir. We’re from the government, we’re not here to hurt anyone. The school’s under attack and you need to run away from it before the bomb blows up, do you understand? Just run with the kids, they need you.”

“I see it,” Dox said. “Going pretty fast. Gonna have to lead it some.”

Kanezaki and I ran to the drone controls. “You all right?” I said.

“He hit me in the vest. Knocked me down. I’m okay.”

Gillmor, on his back, his legs folded under him, his eyes staring and sightless, was still holding the controls. We looked at the screen. I could see the school through the drone’s camera. The drone was heading right for it.

I heard a soft crack. The image on the screen shuddered, then stabilized. “Hit it, but not on the nose,” Dox said. I heard a series of additional cracks. The screen image shuddered violently, but stabilized again.

“The hell’s that thing made of?” Dox said. “I just put sixteen rounds in it. All right, switching magazines.”

“Larison, Treven, get the fuck out of there,” I said. “You’ve done all you can. There’s no more time. Go!”

The school was at the center of the screen and rapidly expanding. I thought the drone couldn’t be more than a few seconds from impact.

“All right, sweetheart,” I heard Dox say. “Come here. Come take what I’ve got for you.”

There was a methodical drumbeat of cracks. The image of the school shuddered. It shook. It stabilized, filling the whole screen-

And then the camera veered and began to spin wildly.

“All right!” Dox said, jubilation creeping into his normally supercalm sniper tone. “Score one for the home team.”

The sky flashed past on the screen, then the ground, then everything was moving so fast I couldn’t make out any features at all. A moment later, the screen went dark.

“Where did it go down?” I said.

“Not the school,” Dox said. “The parking lot, though. Hot damn, that was close. Nobody hurt, I don’t think.”

“Did the warheads detonate?”

“No, sir. Gillmor must have had them set to blow on nose-first impact.”

“Treven, Larison, you all right?”

“Fine,” Larison said. “Walking away southeast.”

I heard sirens in the background. “Same,” Treven said. “Could use a pickup. Feeling a little conspicuous at the moment.”

“Go to the bug-out,” I said. “Dox, you especially. That cop is going to report sniper fire coming from your position. We’ll rendezvous in twenty minutes. Or less, the way Kanezaki drives.”

I expected Treven and Larison would be able to ghost away just fine in the tumult outside the school. But it wouldn’t be long before coherent witnesses came forward and described them to arriving police. And Dox needed to get far from his hide.

Kanezaki pulled out an iPhone and took photographs of Gillmor’s body and the controls on top of it.

“What are you doing?” I said.

“This is our proof.” He started moving the phone in a small circle, talking as he did so. I realized he must have switched to video mode.

“We need to go,” I said.

He held up a finger. “The man on the ground is the new head of the National Counterterrorism Center, Dan Gillmor, who was controlling the drone that attacked a school in Lincoln today. This is Palmyra, Nebraska, about twenty-five miles away.”