Jerome Preisler - Net Force--Attack Protocol

Zolcu was screaming overhead. A high, shrill, tattered cry of horror and fear. When the gripper was fifty or sixty feet beneath the aircraft, its ascent abruptly stopped. It hung from the cable, swaying a little in the wind, Zolcu shrieking away inside its tubular bars.

Carmody strode over to Kali. “He should consider himself lucky. If those jaws had clamped shut any higher, there wouldn’t be enough of him left to kick and scream.”

She looked at him. “You need him alive.”

“Right. He’s got that going for him, too.”

They watched Raven bank toward the east, Zolcu’s cries trailing away into the wind. Carmody guessed the flight back to Mihail Kogălniceanu Airfield was about six hundred miles. He would have plenty of time to enjoy the trip.

Carmody walked across the field to his bike. It was on its side with the handlebars turned down toward the ground. He turned his back to it, took hold of a handgrip and the passenger backrest, bent his knees, and leveraged it up onto its wheels. Then he stood it on the kickstand, brushed the snow off, and gave it a hasty inspection.

The cowling was cracked in places but seemed mostly intact. The lines, frame, and tires looked good, and no fluids had leaked out into the snow.

Carmody climbed on and tested the levers. They moved easily. Finally, he put the bike in Neutral, rolled it back and forth, and started it up.

The engine revved smoothly.

He rode over to Kali. “Seems okay,” he said.

She nodded and he got on the RoIP to Rover Two.

“We’re heading back,” he said.

He wasn’t telling an outright lie. But it was close.

Long lowered his window as Kali and Carmody pulled abreast of him on their motorcycles. With their grab made, he had moved the BearCat onto the two-lane’s gravel shoulder to reopen the crossroads.

The noise up above had been muted with the window shut. But now it was unnervingly loud and clear. The sky was humming and vibrating like the head of a snare drum.

Long reached an arm out and motioned toward the rear hatch.

“Get in. I’ll take us out of here.”

Carmody shook his head. “Not yet,” he said. “Not me.”

Long looked at him through the lowered window. “Did I miss something?”

“I’m riding back to the castle.”

“Boss, we need to evac.” Long nodded his chin skyward. “Those drones are headed right where you want to go.”

“I hear them.” Carmody paused. “There was someone with Zolcu.”

Long said nothing.

“A woman,” Carmody said. “Her name is Clinia.”

Long said nothing.

“I promised I’d come back for her,” Carmody said.

Long stared out the window a second or two. Then he scratched under his ear. “Guess I did miss something,” he said.

Kali turned to Carmody from atop her bike.

“I’m going with you,” she said.

Carmody looked at her. She met his gaze, her shoulders very straight.

He exhaled through his mask. Not hard, and not visibly, just quietly breathing out. The sound in the sky had become loud and low and constant, like ocean waves. They had no time to lose.

“Okay,” he said. “Stay close.”

She nodded.

“Wait here for my orders,” he told Long. “Be ready in case things get hot.”

“Will do.”

Carmody slipped a little fuel into his engine and eased in front of Kali. They throttled up, their Ninjas bucking forward with shudders of awakened power.

An instant later they were streaking south on the road to Castle Graguscu.

The sky throbbed with the sound of the approaching drone swarm as Carmody and Kali emerged from the woods behind the castle on their motorcycles, bore right off the two-lane, then swung left around the soaring western bastion. The only sign of the storm system that had passed through earlier that night was a light accumulation of snow on the ground.

At the drained artificial pond, they again turned left and rode straight across the band of open ground between the pond and cobblestone apron. The wreck of the Rezvani was ahead of them on the castle’s scalloped outer stairs, flipped over on its roof and nested in broken glass. They could see blood in the snow around it.

About six feet from the apron, Carmody signaled a halt.

She pulled up alongside his bike. The phased, fluctuating white noise in the air seemed to envelop them. He raised his voice so she could hear him.

“Stay here,” he said. “Someone has to stand lookout.”

“I’ll wait outside the entrance.”

“Here’s better.”

Kali didn’t speak. She could hear drones swirling and buzzing overhead.

“Listen,” he said. “I’m disabling my AI link. The RoIP, too.”

“We’ll be out of contact. You can’t be sure what’s waiting in the castle.”

“Clinia, hopefully.”

“You know what I mean.”

Carmody looked at her. “They break into our link, they can map our relative positions. Pinpoint your whereabouts out here.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“I know,” Carmody said. “But if I’m not back in five minutes, get out of here. Just in case.”

Kali was quiet a second. The clear, star-encrusted sky overhead looked deceptively settled and peaceful. There was no visible sign of the drones. Only the pulsing sky to warn of their coming.

“I think it’s wisest that we stay together, Mike,” she said. “But that won’t change your mind.”

Carmody throttled a little fuel into his engine.

“Not this time,” he said. “Stay alert.”

Then he broke his eyes away from hers and rode off toward the apron without a backward glance.

Crimea

Drajan found her standing on the stone jetty running out from the seawall to the unsettled chop of the surf. Her back was to the shore, the whitecaps slapping up against the large, kelp-draped rocks under her feet.

He glanced down from atop the wall. A short jump below him, a narrow beach of sand and wet, wave-polished pebbles ran between the base of the wall and the perpendicular jut of stone. Crouching on his toes, he held on to the wall with one gloved hand, lowered himself a little over its ocean side, then dropped onto the beach.

The jetty was several yards ahead to his left. He strode lightly across the pebble beach to its landward side, then climbed up onto the rocks. She continued to face the ocean, standing above the shallows, a fur-lined hood drawn up over her pale blond hair.

He walked up behind her. The water lapped and slurped at the rocks to either side. The wind sounded like breath inside a throat. When he was almost close enough to touch her, she turned to face him.

As always, Quintessa Leonides had chosen her moment.

“Drajan,” she said, “I’m surprised to see you out now.”

He looked at her face. It was like finely cut crystal. Sharp-edged and beautiful, with striking glacial-blue eyes.

“You’ve been gone over an hour. It’s cold.”

“No colder than inside,” she said. “How goes it in Romania?”

“I haven’t heard from Zolcu. He’s vanished. In my custom Regera.”

She smiled thinly.

“Naturally,” she said. “Do you think they’ve taken him?”

“I don’t know. I’m not too concerned yet.” He paused. “The rest goes as planned.”

“In Baneasa as well?”

“Yes. Our fliers are in the air. The Americans will be crippled. Even if they choose to rebuild, their attention will be diverted until it’s too late for them to interfere with us.”

She nodded, her gaze turning northward. There was a bright smudge of light about a quarter mile up the unseen curve of the shoreline. A constellation of smaller lights surrounded it, sprinkling the darkness of the harbor water with red, blue, and white.

“The men work on the boat round the clock, and the Americans and their allies are blind to it,” she said. “Their satellites, their drones, their spy planes. Blind. More incredibly, they see what isn’t there. I don’t know how you do it. I don’t have a head for it.”