Джеймс Паттерсон - The Games

“Gimme the gun,” I said.

The lieutenant handed it to me.

I set it in my lap, reached up, and undid the slide window.

Air rushed in. I took the control stick with my right hand and pushed the gun out the window with my left. I spun the chopper one hundred and eighty degrees and saw Castro lift his head and his gun, grinning like a madman.

The instant I had a sight picture, I shot, shot, and then shot again.

The first bullet went right by Dr. Castro’s left ear.

Before he could return fire, the second slug hit him squarely just below the sternum. He bucked at the impact; it was like he’d been punched in the gut, except this punch was as hot as lava. Castro managed to squeeze off one round.

The pilot shot a third time and hit Castro high in the right chest.

The doctor was flung against the hatch frame. He swooned in shock and pain. The pistol slipped from his fingers, bounced off the statue’s arm, and fell to the terrace below.

Castro was dazed, but not confused. The doctor knew who he was and wanted to show the police that it didn’t matter what they did; he’d already won.

Castro held up the phone and with a bloody smile waved it at the helicopter and the men inside. Then he dropped it inside the arm.

It is done, he thought happily as he slumped toward death.

It is irreversible.

It is... good.

We watched Castro sag against the hatch, drop the phone into the arm of the Christ, and die.

General da Silva saw him die too, said, “Now get control of that drone.”

“We can’t get control,” Acosta said. “He’s put it on autopilot. That’s why he waved his phone at us before he died.”

I hadn’t understood then, but now I agreed. If Castro had gone to this extreme, he must have had backups.

Swinging the helicopter away from the statue and accelerating north, I said, “General, evacuate that stadium.”

“The opening ceremony’s already started,” da Silva said indignantly.

“That drone’s flying right at you and forty-five thousand other people with more than a billion people watching. Your call.”

“Find the drone,” he said. “Knock it out of the sky.”

“It’s a pretty big sky, General,” Acosta said with a grunt as he got his belt around his upper arm and pulled the tourniquet tight.

“Actually, it’s not,” I said, and I took the helicopter up to one hundred and sixty miles an hour. “We know where it’s going. We’ll just get there first.”

“I’m going to have the cellular towers shut down, Jack,” da Silva said.

“What? Why?”

“That phone controls it. We’ll cut the link.”

“Don’t do it,” I said. “If you cut the link, it could go off anywhere, and we’ll never get a crack at intercepting it.”

I didn’t wait for a reply, said into the headset, “Mo-bot, are you there?”

“In the security center, Jack.”

“Patch me through to Sci,” I said as we closed on the stadium, which was glowing brilliantly.

“I’m sitting right beside her, Jack,” Kloppenberg said.

“We have a drone on autopilot heading toward the stadium with Hydra-9-infected blood on board. We have to figure out how to stop it.”

After a moment, Sci said, “How will it be dispersed?”

“I’m not sure,” I said as I dropped our airspeed over the parking lots of Maracanã and turned the chopper around. We hovered there, looking back toward the Redeemer.

Sci said, “If the drone’s navigation is on autopilot, it’s heading to a specific location. Which means that the triggering device of the delivery system has to be location-specific as well. Once the drone hits a certain GPS spot, the virus is released.”

“So if we stop it from getting to the stadium, there will be no release?”

“Unless he put redundancies in place.”

“Such as?” I asked.

“Maybe if it crashes, it goes off?”

“Great,” I said, gaining altitude and turning back toward the stadium.

I flew right over the top of Maracanã and hovered there about three hundred feet up. Below us, athletes from more than one hundred countries were surrounded by troops of samba dancers shaking their stuff on raised stages. “They’re pointing at us,” Acosta said, looking out his window. “They think it’s part of the show.”

I didn’t care. I was scanning the horizon back toward the mountains. Where was it? A minute ticked by.

General da Silva said, “You’ve upset the organizers by hovering up there.”

“I don’t give a damn,” I said, still peering back to the southeast.

Where was the drone? Had it crashed? Had something gone wrong? Was the drone down? Was Hydra-9 already killing somewhere outside the—

Blip! Blip!

Glancing at the millimeter-wave radar readout, I said, “Here it comes. Six hundred and fifty yards out.”

I pushed the stick forward and we flew toward the drone.

“What do you want me to do?” Acosta said.

“Pray,” I said.

“What are you going to do?”

I thought of Sci warning me not to knock it down. I thought of the location-specificity in the triggering device. I thought of the helicopter I was flying.

In the next instant I saw our only chance.

“There it is,” Acosta said when our spotlight caught the drone, which was three hundred and fifty feet away and puttering along at fifteen miles an hour. “Looks like an octopus or something.”

“Tanks, hoses, and airbrushes,” I said. “The dispersal system. I’m going to try to hook it with the front of my strut.”

I turned the screen to camera view. It was a fish-eye lens and showed both landing struts at a curved angle.

I had three windows to look out — two in the door and one down by my ankles that gave me a solid view in front of the left strut. I swung the helicopter gingerly in behind the drone, which got caught in our rotor wash and dropped altitude fast.

I backed off and for a second I thought I’d blown it and knocked it out of the sky. But then the drone began to climb again.

I decided I couldn’t do this with finesse. I was going to have to swoop in, dive at it, and, hopefully, hook it.

We were three hundred yards from the stadium when I made a nifty move with the control stick, came in at a steep angle, and missed snagging the drone by inches.

“It’s almost here!” General da Silva cried as I spiraled up and away from the drone, getting in position for one last try.

“Jack told you to evacuate the stadium, General,” Lieutenant Acosta said. “You wouldn’t listen to him.”

I ignored all of it, searched for the drone, and spotted it ten yards from entering the airspace right above the stadium and dropping altitude fast. I hit the throttle and dove the chopper once more, tilting the bird almost on its side so I could watch the strut knife right at the drone.

I missed again.

But a foot peg on the strut support about two feet back hooked the mesh hammock.

The drone now dangled upside down below the hammock with its five propellers spinning wildly.

“Got it,” I said, and I pulled away from the stadium.

Ten voices started hooting and cheering in my headphones.

“Well done, Jack!” General da Silva roared.

“Perfectly executed,” Sci said.

“Almost perfectly,” I said, exhaling long and low. “But we’ll take it. Any idea where we should bring the virus?”

“Take it to Castro’s lab,” Sci said. “The clean room is still up. It can be contained and dealt with there.”

Before da Silva could comment, Justine’s voice came over my headset.