Blackbird maneuvers into position and starts shooting.
True slings her KO. Her heart is racing but her mind is calm as she turns to Rohan, ready to execute the next step in the mission plan. From his field bag he takes a climbing hook sized for the wall. Attached to it is a short rope festooned with looped handholds. He unfolds the hook, locks it open, and hands it to her along with a Kevlar mat.
He stoops, lacing his gloved fingers together. She places one boot in the proffered step. Juliet and Felice move in to help her balance as Rohan boosts her up.
In a smooth, practiced sequence, True stretches up, sets the hook over the top of the wall and drapes the mat beside it, covering the broken glass set there to discourage thieves. Still rising on the momentum of three pairs of hands, she hauls out, belly down on the mat, the crunch of glass underneath.
As expected, her view across the courtyard is blocked by the fluttering, multilayered ribbons of the anti-surveillance canopy, shimmering inches below her face like the dark surface of a wind-rippled pond. But the canopy is attached to the wall only at intervals, held in place by steel loops set three meters apart. Between those points, the edge is loose, and as the canopy billows, a gap opens allowing True to look straight down at a slice of the tiled courtyard, with a potted cypress off to the side and one of the PV boxes directly below.
She flinches at the hair-raising buzz of bullets zipping close at supersonic speeds. She almost kicks off the wall but steadies herself: The fusillade is expected. Four quick shots and then a fifth. The bullets tear through the canopy, hitting unseen targets with sharp paks! easily audible even over the wind. A sixth shot, and the PV box below her shatters, fragments spinning halfway up the wall. Mech parts: gears and wings and featureless chips of what she suspects are plastic explosives.
Goddamn. Her mouth shapes the word though she doesn’t say it aloud. Goddamn. No sound of gunshots follows; these were sniper rounds, fired by Blackbird at such a distance that the wind has swept the noise away. Barely audible: the buzz of Blackbird’s blades as it swings around to target the compound from a different angle.
Beside her, the grappling hook shifts; its rope pulls tight as Rohan starts to climb.
True hurries to retrieve one of the capsules from her vest even as Lincoln says, “Prep the swarm.” She shoves the capsule down under the canopy.
“Release it,” Lincoln orders over comms.
She pops the capsule open. She can’t see the swarm but she can hear the buzz as four mechanical mayflies take flight. They are fast and aggressive. They have to be, because they are short-lived. Operating autonomously, they are programmed to seek out anything human.
She pockets the capsule. Pulling the knife from the sheath on her forearm, she uses it to slice an opening in the canopy even as she scrambles to get a knee on the Kevlar mat.
Rohan pops up beside her. He grips her arm, steadying her as she swivels to drop over the other side. The toe of her boot knocks fragments of broken glass into the courtyard, but it doesn’t matter. Anyone down there will already know the compound is under attack. She kicks off the wall, landing with a jarring impact in the debris field of the PV box.
Lincoln watches the four mayflies disperse. Or rather, he watches the videos collected by their cameras. Each camera sends a distorted, super-wide-angle view. Hayden has arranged all four feeds side by side on the wall monitor.
The mayflies have been tested extensively, but this is the first time they’ve been used in the field. They’re tiny devices, small enough to balance on a quarter. Their brown oval wings are a crisp film made of woven spider silk and powered by an electric motor. An articulated tail trails two wires: one an antenna, the other a barb loaded with neurotoxin.
Tamara rises from her desk, comes to stand beside him.
Comes to interpret, Lincoln hopes, because he is having a hard time understanding what he’s seeing. Everything onscreen looks miles away. Tamara points to a feed. “The third mayfly isn’t going to find a target. The others are in line.”
Lincoln makes out a tiny human figure at the distant center of one of the videos and then, with shocking speed, the view zooms in, strikes something solid.
“Got ’em,” Tamara says in satisfaction.
Lincoln scans the video array. All four feeds are frozen. Three show a solid surface that he presumes to be the skin of the targeted sentries. The other, a distant wall. He says, “Hayden, I need a fresh overview of the courtyard.”
Tamara pats him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, Lincoln,” she says. “There were two sentries and both of them are down.”
“Status?” True whispers.
No cry of alarm has greeted her arrival. She crouches in the two-meter-wide space between the wall and a parked truck. A glance up shows her the cut canopy flapping and Rohan’s looming silhouette, the muzzle of his Fortuna a spike against the night sky’s dusty blur.
“Sentries are down,” Lincoln says. He doesn’t sound sure, though. “Tamara says they are,” he amends. “I’m waiting on confirmation.”
Blackbird rumbles in the distance and two more shots sizzle through the air, hitting targets somewhere in the back of the courtyard.
True moves out, staying low, using the truck for shelter as she approaches the house, her KO ready. Rohan drops from the wall, lands behind her with a soft thump. She reaches the truck’s bumper, pauses there to peer at the house.
The windows on this side are two vertical slits. Faint white light seeps through them. Tall potted shrubs flank the front door. Between them, a sprawled body.
The mayfly would have gone for the face, delivering its cargo of neurotoxin with machine speed, its whip tail curling, jabbing a barb through clothing if necessary and into flesh, dropping its target in seconds.
“Door guard confirmed down,” she whispers.
Rohan has moved in the opposite direction. “Confirming—”
A harsh buzz interrupts him. True’s visor highlights a streak of motion, racing through the air alongside the wall, coming straight toward her. No time to think, but she thinks anyway. She thinks, I don’t want to make noise. Then her brain registers a bleating alarm from within the house, a signal that they are done with stealth. Violence of action is all they have left.
She targets the object racing toward her, hand sliding forward on the stock of her rifle. She finds the shotgun trigger—
Whatever it is, the thing in the air, it blows apart with a now-familiar pak!
Blackbird took out the threat before she could pull the trigger. “God damn it,” she swears, whispering despite the alarm. She would have had that one. She could have taken it out herself. The noise wouldn’t have mattered, because the damn alarm is still ringing.
She glances back to check on her team. Felice and Juliet are over the wall and moving up behind her. Even with her visor, True sees them only as suggestions of shadowy motion, but she can tell them apart because they’re tagged with names projected in faint red. Jameson drops next into the courtyard.
True says, “Felice, you ready?”
“On your word, ma’am.”
“Right behind you,” Rohan says.
A warning comes in from Lincoln: “Guard your fire as you advance. Only friendlies in the courtyard.”
“Juliet, you set?” True asks.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Juliet will stay back to provide cover, control the courtyard, and prepare for their exit.