Drake, recognizing men of his own natural vocation, strode over to a group of Special Forces soldiers. The men who eyed him nodded after a few seconds, before returning their attention to a small screen held by their captain.
“Snipers have a bead on it,” one of them breathed. “Wait. Gonna take it out.”
“Fucker has to be guided by a hacked military satellite,” another muttered. “Command should just take that out.”
“It might not be a satellite-controlled drone,” someone else answered. “Could be hacked locally, retrofitted with some kind of GPS software.”
“Even,” another man said. “Stolen or hijacked from one of our private security companies. Someone like Blackrock. They have drones all over the world guarding their mercenaries.”
Then Drake looked up as the drone blasted overhead.
Smyth watched the drone employ its super-agile air defenses as it came under fire. Switching between precision-guided and precision-miniature weapons, it suppressed the army defenses and strafed the open spaces around the Metro Station. High-velocity rounds stitched a curving line through the massed forces down there, continuing through Washington Circle Park, taking chunks out of the monument and peppering the walls of nearby buildings.
Smyth hung his head. “God help us.”
The drone swooped, then rose almost vertically and made to come around for a second pass. Fighter jets would have been scrambled almost immediately, but even those already on alert would take two to three minutes to hit the skies over Washington.
A fully armed drone could do a lot of damage in two minutes, depending on the skills of the human controller. No doubt he was just aiming for mayhem, and was cruelly accomplishing just that. The drone flew down like an attacking hawk, firing its lethal projectiles at a terrifying rate. Parked cars jumped and shook as they were torn apart. Running men fell in the street. Glass windows and the sides of buildings shattered and fragmented, pouring debris down onto the men below. Even the hospital came under fire, along with the ambulances and white FBI cars parked outside. Street lights, trees and exterior stalls collapsed, crashing down among a group of soldiers. Outside the Metro station, I Street was clogged with vehicles and personnel, most in disorder and chaos as they tried to deal with the first few minutes of Kovalenko’s newest strike. The drone came in at about treetop height, a deadly black-painted predator, and mowed a wavering line from one side of the street to the other. The sound of bullets discharging and plowing into hard concrete and solid steel was overwhelming as the UCAV felled all in its path. Before it began to pull up again, an echoing boom was heard as two F-22’s sliced through the skies.
The drone swerved between buildings.
Drake ran toward the madness, Dahl and Alicia at his side. When they burst out of the furthest station entrance the drone had already blasted overhead, stitching the ground along its flight path with a good chunk of its payload. Drake saw snipers on the roofs and soldiers on the streets, all with rifles aimed high, along with black-suited agents pointing their guns to the skies, all standing in the face of the onslaught and returning fire. They put up a stiff, heroic resistance but the drone passed by intact. Seconds later, the F-22’s tore the clouds apart as they spotted and locked on to their target. The drone vanished along a wide street but couldn’t just sit there. It soared out of the far end, hurrying to get some altitude before it began a third devastating run.
Drake could imagine the frantic communications passing between the fighter pilots and command. All they needed was the go-ahead to destroy the drone over downtown Washington and the battle would be done. All they needed was a man with a set of brass balls.
To his right, Drake heard President Coburn ask for an immediate line of communication to be opened to command. When the mobile comms was passed to him he ordered the drone to be shot down, no bluster, no airs, but also no doubt. “Just take that bastard out.”
The drone lined up for another strike. One of the F-22s fired an AMRAAM, a fire-and-forget air-to-air missile with full active guidance.
“Fox Three… away.” Drake heard the pilot’s voice clearly through Coburn’s open comms. The missile streaked toward the drone, hitting and blasting it apart in under a second. A cheer went up as smashed pieces of the drone fell to earth, scattering across rooftops and a good part of I Street.
Drake breathed a sigh of relief. At last, he could point his gun at the floor, a sign that the threat had lessened.
For now.
Dahl made a quick gesture. “Now,” he said. “Call the others.”
CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT
Kinimaka listened to his head and not his heart, and waited for the ambulance to turn up. It arrived accompanied by a military escort. Karin, using newly established local contacts, and Kinimaka, using his juice as an ex-CIA agent, had pulled every string in their respective bows to get Hayden escorted to the nearest best-guarded hospital. The men they had spoken to had won their confidence and come through with the prompt ambulance and heavily armed escort. The SPEAR team was still under threat, a point acknowledged by all, and were permitted as much security as the authorities could spare.
Kinimaka watched with a pained expression and an aching heart as Hayden was carried away on a stretcher. He held her hand until the last moment, its limp weight almost breaking his heart. The paramedics didn’t need to say that his impromptu field surgery had saved her life. He just hoped they could keep it that way. He glanced up into the morning sun as the ambulance drove away, seeking solace in its warmth, then returned to the ruined safe house.
“I’ll see you again,” he said under his breath: a promise, a wish.
“Tell me again,” he added, louder, “Why I can’t go with her.”
“This is why.” Karin held out her phone. “The team needs you more than Hayden does right now. So does this country. I have Drake on speakerphone. Listen to this.”
“Kovalenko got away, Mano. He blew up some underground tunnels, used some kind of drone and escaped through the labyrinth beneath Washington.”
Karin knitted her brows. “They’ll still have him on CCTV, Matt,” she said. “There’s surveillance cameras below DC too, and most other major cities.”
“I know. But the arsehole’s got some tech wizards working for him. They disabled some remotely, destroyed others. We have some patchy footage, but nothing that tells us where he and his psychotic band of brothers came out.”
“Tech wizards for sure,” Karin said. “Covert agency standard at least. Controlling that drone must have been almost as hard as stealing it. Then we had the traffic light fuck up. The Special Agent Grid incursion. What next?”
“He hit hard and fast,” Dahl said. “He put everyone on the back foot. Especially us, with all the extra suffering we’ve had to face. Now he’s on the run. This is our chance to pull together and end this the right way.”
“You have everyone with you,” Kinimaka said. “We all owe that bastard.”
“Damn straight,” Smyth rasped quietly, a look of sadness on his face. “What’s the plan?”
“Head for the Foggy Bottom Metro and use your IDs. Coburn’s calling together the meeting of all meetings. I have an idea… a good one,” Drake paused. “But I need all of your support to help me pull it off and make it look good.”
“On our way.” Kinimaka looked around. “C’mon, guys. It’s time to make Kovalenko pay. Time to shed some blood.”