Jerome Preisler - Net Force--Attack Protocol

The car started turning to the left, toward the road. Battered and maimed, hitching jerkily over the bare, bumpy ground. Unless he was in a blind panic, the man at the wheel had to realize he was going nowhere.

In case he didn’t, Carmody raised his MK7, thumbing the fire control to its third position. Four red bullets in a row, full auto mode.

He opened fire, seeing clearly in the Ninja’s lights. He started with the Regera’s low front grill, angling the weapon downward, pouring a long, continuous stream of steel-jacketed penetrator rounds into it. He raised his weapon to the bumper, pounded it with bullets until it cracked and split and fell to the ground in chunks. He saw the driver duck down and cover his head with his hands, and brought the gun barrel up higher, sheeting the hood with parallel bands of fire, riddling it with holes, working his way up from the nose toward the bottom of the windshield.

A moment passed. He ejected his spent magazine, slammed in a fresh one, and took two giant steps closer to the car. The driver was still hunched over in his seat with his head buried in his hands. Carmody aimed to his left and hammered the windshield, his grip firm around the weapon, holding the barrel steady against its kick. Ballistic glass cracked and chipped off into hundreds of tiny granular particles, spilling onto the torn up remnants of the hood. He saw a hole appear in the center of the web-shaped fracture and pumped a long salvo through it into the contoured passenger seat. Flakes of chewed-up leather and foam fluttered like confetti inside the cockpit.

Carmody took another extended step toward the car, moved about three feet back of the front seat, and poured a stream of rounds into the radiator and engine block. The engine popped, hissed, and gagged, gushing fluids into the snow.

Finally, he peered through the driver’s window at the man ducked with his head under the steering column. He was just on the other side of the door.

Tilting the weapon’s muzzle slightly upward, Carmody fired a long burst at the window. It disintegrated in a shower of glass, the bullets flying two inches over the driver’s back and shoulders. He still had his head beneath the wheel.

Carmody stepped up to the door and pointed the gun through the crumbled window at his back.

“Sit up,” he said.

The driver didn’t budge.

“Now,” Carmody said. “I won’t tell you again.”

The driver straightened. He was tall, thin, and dark-haired and wore a flashy overcoat Carmody thought would have looked right on Merlin the magician. Stim-club chic, he’d seen it before. Seen the guy wearing it, too. Last summer, in Bucharest. At Club Energie.

“Not much car here for a couple of million bucks,” Carmody said. “Probably won’t even get decent trade-in value.”

The guy’s lip trembled. “You wanted the Wolf, but he is long gone,” he said. “Everything you’ve done is wasted. I’m not your man.”

Carmody stared at him over the barrel of his gun.

“Zolcu,” he said, “that’s where you’re dead wrong.”

Cobb and Luna were roughly above the crossroads when Carmody radioed up to them. Raven ’s cockpit was dim, and they were keeping a tense watch on the drone swarm nearing Castle Graguscu from the west.

“How fast can you get here?” Carmody asked after making his request.

“Three minutes.” Luna’s hands were on the sticks. “We’re already on our way.”

“Okay, what kind of prep time do you need?”

“Talon’s rapid-deploy, sir,” Cobb said. “It’s ready to rock.”

“Okay.”

“Sir?”

“I’m listening.”

“ETA on the drone arrival is zero two hundred hours. We have ten minutes to evac the castle grounds.”

“You hear from the rest of my team?”

“Negative, sir. Not a word. And there’s something else.” Cobb paused. “We haven’t been able to raise Janus.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just that, sir. We called in the hourly sitrep, and there’s been no response.”

“You try all available channels?”

“Yes.”

“Including the Argos net?”

“More than once, sir.”

Carmody was quiet a full ten seconds.

“Could be a technical glitch,” he said finally.

“Yes, sir.”

“But none of us really think it.”

“No, sir.”

“Which bothers me.”

“Same here. But we’ll keep trying.”

Another silence.

“All right, one thing at a time,” Carmody said. “I’m standing by.”

“Look up in about thirty seconds and give us a wave,” Luna said.

“Look down close enough, you’ll see me wink,” Carmody replied.

13

Satu Mare District, Romania/

The Crimean Peninsula

Raven arrived ten seconds early, a shadow that would have folded seamlessly into the night if not for the pinpoint star clusters outlining its sleek black form.

Carmody heard only the barest hum as she glided in over the treetops across the road, the downwash of her blades lashing and contorting their crowns and whisking soft lumps of snow off their uppermost branches. Then the air began to churn around him as the aircraft settled into position overhead, its searchlight flashing on with a brilliance of 75,000 lux, bathing the field in the equivalent of midday sunshine.

“What is this?” Zolcu was squinting out his blown-out window. “I can’t see anything.”

“Right,” Carmody said. “You’re probably better off.”

“Better off how ?”

Carmody looked in at him. He stood three feet to Zolcu’s right, his MK7 in his hands. Kali was still straddling the motorcycle a few yards from the front of the car.

“I think you should shut up,” he said. “Maybe grab hold of your seat.”

“Why? What are you planning to do?”

Carmody stood there as the aircraft shed altitude, her rotors stirring tiny cyclones of snow around his boots.

“You’re getting repetitive,” he said.

“You haven’t answered me.”

“I haven’t shot your head off yet, either,” Carmody said. “No man knows how bad he is till he’s tried very hard to be good.”

“I don’t understand.”

Carmody stared at him, raising his rifle barrel a little higher. “I’m saying you shouldn’t tempt me,” he said.

The aircraft dropped down to about a hundred feet. Carmody bent his head back into the glaring light, shielded his eyes with a hand, and saw a panel in its belly slide open.

The Talon was in fact a thousand-pound clamshell gripper assembly, built of welded pipe sections, each with eight steel tines. It lowered smoothly from a remote-controlled winch inside the Raven ’s cargo bay, its high-tensile smart cable transmitting data and commands between the gripper and cockpit, where Cobb would be at his instrument cluster monitoring the telemetry.

Carmody watched as it descended over the car. There was nothing too complicated about its operation. It was like working a crane that gave constant feedback about the wind, ground conditions, and whatever it might be lifting up into the air.

From the corner of his eye, Zolcu saw the Talon’s shadow fall over him in the lights, its long, flat tines spreading open like gigantic saurian teeth. His eyes grew wild with sudden realization.

“No,” he said. “Please.”

Carmody didn’t reply. He folded his arms across his chest and watched as the Talon came down and down, its jaws wide open. They hit the ground with an audible thunk and immediately began to clamp shut around the car, scooping through the shallow snow. Within a minute the gripper had the Regera in its clutches, Zolcu still inside, its tines fully interlocked under the car’s flattened tires. Cobb lifted the Talon into the air, the winch in Raven ’s cargo bay quickly winding in its cable. Loose fragments of the car spilled off between the tubular bars of its cage as it rose toward the aircraft.