“What the hell are you doing? That’ll enrage them!”
“I’m counting on it.” He turned and hurled the canister out the window on the opposite side of the ship from the rescue boat. The canister tumbled end over end, falling ten stories into the canyons of the shipping containers below-gathering a swarm of drones in its wake, even as it fell. The unprecedented concentration must have been like a beacon, because the power of the attack signal spread quickly and the entire host around the ship’s bridge plunged down after it, creating a dense, mad crowd that jostled each other in pursuit.
Odin grabbed her by the arm. “Run like hell!”
McKinney smiled in surprise even as he pulled her along. Odin shot two small lingering drones out of the air near the stairwell and motioned for her to take the lead as he covered their rear. As they descended the stairs, McKinney could see through the portholes as hundreds of drones streamed past outside the bridge tower in pursuit of the canister. McKinney couldn’t wipe the grin off her face as she circled down the stairwell. “Very clever, mammal!”
“Just keep moving.”
At deck level they pushed through the watertight door and sprinted across the crimson-painted deck. The roar of drone engines coming from the far side of the control tower had risen to a crescendo by now. The air there was black with drones. They dashed across the decking and up to the sealed door of the rescue boat. There was a round porthole above the door near the words 38 Persons. Odin undid the latch and opened the door to reveal Foxy staring at him from the pilot’s seat.
“You’re such a drama queen…”
Odin helped McKinney inside. “Careful, it’s steep.” He held her hand as she climbed in.
She had never seen such a boat. The seats were heavily padded and facing backward like a theme park ride. Only Foxy’s seat faced forward, looking through what appeared to be a reinforced pilot’s window. Otherwise there was only one other forward-facing window to let light in. The thing resembled a big orange torpedo angled downward at forty-five degrees.
Odin glanced toward the bow of the ship, and then ducked inside, slamming the hatch shut and throwing the bolts.
Foxy peered through the narrow side window. “If I’m not mistaken, those are rocks up ahead. Get seated, people!”
McKinney was already strapping herself in as Odin climbed into a seat across the aisle from her. He raced through the fasteners, and then shouted, “Hit it, Foxy!”
Foxy pounded a release button, and they dropped in free fall for a second or two before plunging into the sea, fully submerging. The impact knocked the wind out of her. The rescue boat rolled and bobbed like a cork and finally surfaced, as the roar of drones and something even deeper came to them.
Then she heard a water jet engine kick to life and saw Foxy push the throttle lever forward. “I don’t give us much chance of outrunning them.”
Odin unbuckled from his seat. “I do. They’re otherwise occupied.”
McKinney unbuckled as well and joined him to look out the narrow porthole above the rear entry door. She held her breath as the massive container ship, swarming with drones, thundered past behind them-a wall of blue steel the size of a shopping mall.
She craned her neck to look ahead, toward rocks rising ten meters out of the sea in a swirl of crashing waves.
And then the bow of the ship crumpled and ripped apart as it steamed full speed over itself along the line of jagged rocks. The water reverberated with the horrendous shrieking of metal, but the momentum of two hundred thousand tons of ship and cargo going twenty miles an hour just kept it plunging forward, rippling the bowline and spilling thousands and thousands of forty-foot shipping containers into the sea and over the shoals.
The cloud of drones dispersed, while many were caught in the collapsing towers of containers. The ship was already grounded up to its center tower when it started to break in half, flames erupting as the crash continued for nearly a minute more before the wreckage finally came to a stop.
The whole time Foxy roared away at full speed from the scene, increasing their view of the wreck.
The stern of the ship settled back against the shallows, and the bow remained buried under a ridgeline of multicolored shipping containers crawling with thousands of agitated and completely disorganized drones-some now flying around on fire. Billowing clouds of black smoke climbed into the sky, marking the spot.
McKinney nodded to herself. “Looks like colony cohesion has collapsed. That’s not precisely how it works in the real world. I’ll have to look at the model.”
Odin just glared at her. “The hell you will…”
CHAPTER 31
Henry Clarke stood in front of his Reston, Virginia, office looking up at a crescent of ghostly white moon in the daytime sky of early spring. He’d never noticed that this place was actually beautiful.
A powerful V-8 engine rolled up somewhere behind him, followed by a few taps on a horn. He kept gazing at the woods just beyond the business park. How far did they go? Funny that he’d never wondered about that.
The whine of an electric window rolling down came to his ears, and he heard a familiar woman’s voice shout, “Get in the car, Henry. We’ve got a disaster on our hands.”
Clarke turned to see Marta peering out from the rear passenger seat of a black Cadillac Escalade. Steamlike emissions trailed from the tailpipe as the driver stood by, idling. Clarke walked toward the SUV as Marta’s fingers drummed impatiently on the window frame.
She didn’t look happy. “Why haven’t you been returning messages? You’re not even carrying your phone. I’ve been trying to find you all morning.”
Clarke just stood silently at her window.
“What the hell is going on with you?” She grabbed her sunglasses from her purse and put them on with exaggerated irritation. “Get in the car!”
Clarke shook his head and looked around the parking lot. “I’m not coming.”
She frowned and leaned forward. “Get in the damned car. I can’t believe you aren’t already scrambling to deal with this.”
He gave her a blank look that must have spoken volumes.
She looked horrified. “Are you telling me you have no idea what’s just happened?”
He shrugged. “I sure don’t. And you know what? It’s kind of nice not to know what’s going on.”
“I hope you’re not still freaking out over your midnight visitor.”
“He could just as easily have killed me, Marta. And what would have happened to him? Nothing. You and I both know it.”
“Probably, but that’s not the way it-”
“I had no idea I was signing on for that. I’m not a soldier.”
“This is how the world works. Power comes at a price. Maybe now you’ll realize there are one or two things I can still teach you.”
He shook his head. “I’ve learned everything I want to know already. This isn’t fun anymore. I need to get busy finding out what I want from life.”
“Get in the damned car.”
Clarke shook his head again. “I’m not getting in the car, Marta.”
“This isn’t a request.” She pulled off her sunglasses again, her eyes boring into him. “There’s a news story about to break in media outlets we have no control over. We’ve got to get out in front of this-disarm the opposition before our support in the House and Senate crumbles. There are hundreds of billions of dollars at stake, Henry. We need a full-court press, and it’s going to take all of our resources to contain the damage. So get your ass in the car.”
Clarke looked into her hazel eyes. He could see the unhappiness there. He’d never realized that before. It seemed a dismal prospect to think that this was all he could aspire to. “I’m done.”
“You’re done when I say you’re done. There is the slight technical detail that you have a contract.”
Clarke could smell her fear. “My company has a contract with your company. Remember, you didn’t think enough of me at first to require my personal involvement. All you’ve got over me is a three-year noncompete clause.” Clarke laughed ruefully. “And I won’t be remaining in the profession.”