“Stop gawking and get me another drone!” Lisa commanded.
I started out of my reverie and got to work.
“Rotor wash,” she said, disgusted. “Blew it away and down. We can’t get a direct hit with an unguided drone, it’s just not possible.”
“I hate to rush you, but fucking hurry up already, I can only keep the wolves at bay for so long.” LoTek said into our ears. “And I hate to criticize, but maybe a little less of the random explosions and wanton destruction. The emirate of Dubai, like most governments, tends to frown on buildings going boom within its borders.”
“That’s very helpful,” Lisa said tartly, “thanks so much.”
The helicopter circled back towards us, and worse yet, as I mounted the third drone, lights came back on all over the roof. An automatically triggered emergency generator, I supposed.
Then I caught my breath, and thrilled with something like triumph. Only five figures were visible by the helipad. Jesse was missing. He had used the power cut and the distraction of the explosion to get away, he was out there somewhere behind one of the air-conditioning ducts that sprouted like huge metal fungi all across the roof. I was sure he’d picked his handcuffs too.
The helicopter swept back towards us, coming in over the factory this time, low enough that gravel flew up from the roof beneath. Lisa fired the third drone not directly at it, but at a protruding duct nearby. I saw her intent; if it exploded close enough, and at a sufficiently obtuse angle, the resulting shockwave might send the vehicle tumbling to its destruction.
But with the factory lights on, the incoming UAV was all too apparent. The helicopter lifted up and pulled away. Its rotor wash inadvertently knocked the drone off-course and left it drifting helplessly across the roof, flat and low, on course for Iran like our first shot. I winced as I opened the next case. We only had two drones left, and I couldn’t see how either might be used successfully -
“Look,” Lisa said.
A figure sprinted across the roof, racing to intercept the drone before it cleared the factory. Jesse. I watched openmouthed, and tensed when I heard the pop of bullets as they shot at him; but he was too far away, moving too fast.
I thought he wouldn’t make it, thought the drone would escape – but he managed a final Olympic-worthy burst of speed, leapt through the air like Michael Jordan, and caught the UAV in midair just before it flew out of reach. I gasped with terror as he landed stumbling on the very edge of the roof, but he managed to right himself, and ducked behind another duct, carrying the drone with him. Its engine yowled helplessly for a moment; its propeller was built to carry its bird-light body, and Jesse was nearly two hundred pounds of solid muscle. Then he found its OFF button.
It had been a spectacular physical feat but I didn’t see what good it did. The helicopter corrected its course and proceeded towards the landing pad. I mounted a new drone, our third last, and Lisa swivelled the drone launcher to aim it. Not at the helicopter. At the five people waiting for its arrival.
“Wait,” I said, “what are you doing?”
She said grimly, “We can’t let them get away with Sophie. No matter what.”
“What?”
“She’s too dangerous.”
The helicopter slowed into a hover, began to stoop towards the landing pad. Lisa squinted, ready to fire, ready to kill everyone there.
I didn’t even think about what I did next. The thought process that caused me to leap at Lisa, tackle her, and pull her away from the launcher lived somewhere far below consciousness.
I couldn’t tell exactly what happened after that. Something sharp, maybe an elbow, rammed into my gut, and as my breath whoofed out my arm wound up coiling painfully around my own torso instead of hers. Then I tripped on something, possibly her deftly deployed foot, and fell against the elevator wall. My head hit metal. I saw stars, and fell disjointedly to the ground, my limbs temporarily unavailable for command.
Lisa bounced back up to the launcher, ready to fire, to do her duty.
Instead she said, “Holy shit.”
I pulled myself up to one knee in time to see Jesse racing back across the roof, this time towards the launching pad and the descending helicopter, carrying the drone over his shoulder. A panel was open in its side. The payload.
“No,” I breathed.
They were paying attention to us, not him, and the howl of the descending helicopter drowned out his footsteps. He got to within about fifty feet before they finally noticed him, and the Russian thugs started to shoot.
This time they didn’t miss. His whole body convulsed with the kinetic energy of the bullet, and he fell hard. I groaned involuntarily, as if I had been shot myself.
Then I saw Jesse reach out clumsily to the fallen drone beside him. Saw his hands move. Saw him bring two wires together. And saw the patch of roof where he lay blossom instantaneously into red and gold.
The shockwave rattled our freight elevator, knocked the five figures by the landing pad off their feet, and sent the helicopter tumbling. One moment it was airborne, and two seconds later it had disappeared behind the lip of the roof. It caterwauled down to the ground with stunning speed. I heard its crash only dimly through the aural fog left by the explosion.
The smoke began to clear from where Jesse had been. I stared at it disbelievingly. There was nothing left but a ragged crater in the factory roof. It didn’t seem possible that I had just witnessed my best friend’s death.
“James. James!” Lisa said sharply, cutting through my shock. “Stay with me. I’m sorry. But this isn’t over.”
As she spoke, the five figures near the helipad began to stir.
Chapter 84
“You said you’ve got access to their phones?” Lisa demanded.
I stared at her, confused, stunned, still in pain from when she had casually overpowered me. It took me a second to realize she was speaking to LoTek, not me.
“Jesse.” His voice sounded hoarse. “Did he – on the cameras it looked like -“
“He’s dead,” Lisa said brutally. “And you both need to focus now, or it was for nothing. Their phones. You said you had access. Do you or not?”
“Their phones.” He took a rattling breath. “They who?”
“Dmitri and Anya. The Russians on the roof.”
“Yes. I do.”
“Then conference them in,” Lisa said. “It’s time we talked.”
It took thirty seconds for LoTek to remotely activate Dmitri and Anya’s phones and patch them into our ongoing call. Lisa used the time to mount a new drone on the launcher. I didn’t use it for anything at all. I was still in shock. Jesse was dead. I was suddenly living in a world in which my best friend no longer existed. I would never banter with him again in our own private dialect, never open a door and find him unexpectedly on the other side, never call him up despondent and find myself full of cheer within seconds. It didn’t seem possible that such a world could exist. I wanted a rewind button, an escape clause, an ejector switch.
My ears filled with terse Russian in familiar voices.
“Anya,” Lisa said loudly. “Dmitri. Listen up.”
We saw them both twitch with surprise, then reach for their phones.
“Who is that?” Anya asked. Her voice was hoarse.
“It’s us,” I said harshly.
“James? Where are you?”
I had forgotten that they hadn’t yet identified us. “Let me put it this way. I can see you from here.”
They took a second to absorb that, and then Anya began to laugh hollowly, in a way that expressed no mirth whatsoever.
“You’re joking,” Dmitri sounded angry at himself. “We’ve been running from Kowalski for the last twenty minutes?”
He made it sound like they had been treed by a teddy bear. I almost wanted to thank him. His scorn helped transform my grief into fury, and I liked fury a lot better. Fury was eruptive. Fury could be directed outwards. “That’s right, motherfucker,” I snarled, “and you’re all out of places to run.”