John Shirley - Watch Dogs - Dark Clouds

“Yeah, just two blocks outside that perimeter I was at,” Shuggie said. “Don’t get my ‘hood back till you’re dead—or until I deal with this.”

“Thanks for getting my back, brother,” Wolfe said, putting out his fist.

Shuggie gave him a fist bump, the kind Special Forces do. “Hey you know, I had to deal with those Chunkies sometime. Funny thing, the cops kinda making that possible, keeping the area locked up. But you know—it’s not the Chunky Crunkies I’m worried about…”

He pointed at the sky past Wolfe.

Seline and Wolfe turned—and saw two drones skimming their way over the rooftops.

Shuggie drew his Desert Eagle and took careful aim, both hands wrapped around the big hand gun—while the drone was taking careful aim at him.

Wolfe drew Seline back behind the car, assuming the drones would soon open fire. But he already had his PearcePhone out.

Shuggie fired; the gun boomed loudly, three times. The big gun, firing .50 Action Express rounds, easily penetrated the snout of the UAV on the right—and the unmanned vehicle exploded.

The other drone was rocked by the shockwave from the explosion. Shuggie fired at it, missed, and lined up his aim again

“Don’t shoot that other one, Shuggie,” Wolfe said. “I’ve got this.”

Shuggie looked at him. “You gonna deal with that thing with a phone?”

Wolfe was already flashing his fingertips over the interface. “No ordinary phone… and above-ground these things are vulnerable to a GPS hack…”

The drone, hovering just above the phone lines, angled downward to aim its gun at the group by the car—and then it froze. It seemed to jerk about in the air for a moment like a fishing float, then angled upward, and flew overhead. “I’ve got to deal with that police barricade,” Wolfe said. “With some luck this thing’ll do it.”

“You got control of that thing with a phone?” Shuggie said, amazed. “You show me how to do that?”

“We’ll talk about that sometime, brother,” Wolfe said. “Can you drive us back to my hidey-hole… if I can get rid of the cops?”

“You’re not planning on shooting any cops around here, are you?” Shuggie asked. “I don’t need that kind of heat coming down on me.”

“No worries, dude. Come on.”

Shuggie waved the other Viceroys away, sending them back in their own vehicles to the perimeter, as he got into the Duster beside Renfo. Wolfe and Seline got in the back.

They turned left at the corner, following the drone, as Wolfe continued to direct it on ahead. A few blocks down was a police barricade, with two CPD patrol cars parked radiator-to-radiator across the street at the corner. A barricade was up—and several cops were arrayed around the barricade with shotguns.

“They got nicer barricades than you do, Shuggie,” Wolfe said.

“I sure hope you know what you’re doing, Wolfe,” Shuggie said, slowing the car to a stop a block from the police barricade.

Seline looked at Wolfe. “I hope so too, Wolfe. Christ. Those cops aren’t going to like whatever it is you’ve got planned…”

Wolfe looked up at Shuggie. “You willing to drive up on a sidewalk, Shuggie? And over a lawn? Can you do it without wrecking this Duster?”

“Man I got the best shocks there is on this beauty. My baby can slam over a speedbump at sixty miles an hour, no problem.”

“Okay. Just try to do it without running anybody over…”

Wolfe tapped the PearcePhone, thumbs working the app. He could see the street, in the phone’s screen, from the point of view of the drone’s high def digital camera. The image showed the cops and their barricade, ahead and below. The cops had just spotted the drone, pointing upward at it, open mouthed. Some of them probably thought they were seeing a UFO. All the better.

He had to aim the drone carefully…

Peering into the phone’s screen, Wolfe moved the crosshairs with careful flicks of his thumbs, got the drone’s gun sighted in on the cops… then he moved the crosshairs so that it was aimed just a few steps short of them.

He licked his lips—and tapped the fire button. Twice.

The drone fired, smacking two bullets into the street in front of the police at the barricades.

One of them fired up at the drone, the others scrambled back behind the cars. He tilted the drone toward the cop firing at it—and the guy turned and ran, joining his police pals.

Wolfe fired twice more into the hoods of the patrol cars to get the cops to back away from them. It worked…

And he sent the drone down in a crash dive.

The UAV whined down like a bomb and smashed into the hoods of the two unoccupied cars, coming down right in between them.

The cops flattened—and the drone exploded.

“Now, Shuggie!” Wolfe yelled.

Shuggie accelerated, roared down the street, then cut to the left, driving up on the sidewalk. The car bounced and bumped and then he was screeching it across the lawn of the corner house. He turned left, down off the sidewalk, and burned away down the street.

Wolfe looked back. The cops were still flattened in the street. He doubted any of them had gotten the license number—they were too shaken up by the drone attack. Anyway there was no reason they could assume that the car was connected to the drone.

Shuggie cut right at the next corner, veered around several pot-holes, then cut left again. He got on his car’s Bluetooth, and called the address in to his lieutenants so they could keep an eye on the area.

That made Wolfe a little nervous. He never knew for sure what the other Black Viceroys might do.

“Well I got to say, that was interesting,” Shuggie said. “I wouldn’t have wanted to miss that one. Going to be a story to tell. I’m sorry I didn’t get it up on youtube.”

“I’m glad you didn’t,” Wolfe said. “But—you ever check out SystemLeaks?”

“Sure, a few times.”

“Check it out today. See some interesting files just uploaded there. So—you want to come up to my place, have a glass of Scotch?”

“Sounds good, Wolfe.”

They drove to the crumbling old tenement that housed the Pearce safehouse Wolfe was using. It was starting to snow, a little, as they drove up.

“Doesn’t it ever get serious about snowing around here?” Seline asked when they got out of the car. “I mean, I’m from Georgia, but I thought we were far enough north here…”

“Oh, later in the year,” Shuggie said. “One time we had a blizzard… what the fuck?”

He nodded toward the broken down fence of the tenement… where Detective Tranter was just stepping into view, pointing a gun at Wolfe.

“The drones saw you, Wolfe,” Tranter said. He was about fifty strides away, slowly walking toward them. “Whatever scrambling system you’re using didn’t help you with their cameras. Starling called me. He got your man Shuggie’s car there on ctOS… and we came to meet you. What’s up with this shitty old building you’re headed for? You got a hideout in there?”

“You talk pretty confident, detective, for a man outnumbered and alone,” Shuggie said.

“Oh I’m not either one, gangbanger,” Tranter said. He made a gesture, and four Graywater mercs stepped out from the behind the building, walking up to join him. They were all armed with Mack 10s.

“We didn’t know where you were going after you crashed that drone,” Tranter said, drawing a gun. “But since the street’s blocked off up past this spot and you parked right back over there… Well, we worked it out and here we all are! Now—here’s the deal. You three surrender to me—and we’ll give Shuggie a good deal on a prison term for all that shooting back there. The lady—I can’t say for sure what’ll happen to her. Wolfe, well, maybe he’ll live through it, if he surrenders. Better than dying right here.”