“It’s me, Shuggie. Wolfe. Um… I’m down in the drainage tunnels…” He gave the address. “And I got Chunkies all around me, up above anyway. And uh… I think we’re gonna get some drones here.”
“Drones. Like back in North Africa-type drones?”
“Yeah.”
“They going to be shooting Sidewinders at me and my boys?”
“I doubt it. I don’t think these use those kind of weapons and I don’t think they’re looking for you.” His arm was aching from holding onto the metal rungs and he pulled closer to it, to distribute his weight better. “I was just wondering if you could pull some of this heat off of us.”
“I thought I told you, you were on your own if you went down there?”
“Yeah but uh… I just wanted to say, bro: De Oppresso Liber.” The Delta Force motto.
Shuggie laughed bitterly. “You know what that motto even means? It means ‘To Liberate the Oppressed.’ Anybody here oppressed, it’s me, man. You should be liberating me, motherfucker.”
“Next time I liberate you. We take turns.”
Shuggie snorted. “Yeah right. De Oppresso Liber, fuck! Let me think on it. But I doubt I’m gonna be able to help. Doubt it a lot. Fucking drones…”
Shuggie hung up.
Wolfe growled to himself and put the phone in his pocket.
He descended the ladder. “So much for the cavalry, I guess.”
“What were you saying to him about drones?”
“Yeah. Going to be looking for us. This is Verrick’s way to test them in Chicago too. So we’re part of testing the Iceberg Project. Always good to feel useful to Major Roger Verrick. You see anybody coming? Hear anything?”
“Not so far.”
“Let’s keep going.”
They went on down the tunnel. Water dripped down their necks. It began to rush along in a gutter beside the slimy concrete walls.
Seline said, “That phone of yours… The one you use for hacking…”
“Yeah. You’re thinking I can use it to control the drones? If it’s the same kind as last time—maybe. But not more than one at a time. And there’s more than one.”
“How do you know?”
“Because…” He pointed down the tunnel. “Two of ’em are coming at us right now…”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The UAVs were faintly outlined, small red lights tracing their edges. The drones were both delta shaped, like the one Wolfe had seen at the country SmartHouse, but these were each about a third the size of that one.
The drones were armed, though. A gun muzzle protruded from the snout of each drone.
“Retreat, Wolfe?” Seline asked.
“Hell yes retreat! Go, Seline!”
They’d passed a manhole access space about five strides back. Seline ran back and he ran behind her. Bullets cracked on the floor just behind them.
Then they were in the cylindrical chamber. They flattened to either side of the tunnel entrance. Wolfe could hear the drones moving their way, their engine noise more high pitched than the larger one that had patrolled the SmartHouse grounds.
“Can you fire an assault weapon?” he asked.
She gave him a look of irritation. “I’m a Marine.”
He tossed her the AK47. She caught it neatly. “Try to shoot down those drones. Or at least slow ’em down…”
He was already working on the PearcePhone, trying to break into the drone’s GPS.
Seline fired a short burst from the AK47 down the tunnel. “I think I disabled one of them,” she said. “The other’s pulling back a little…”
No luck with the GPS hack. Then he heard a voice, coming from his phone…
“You’re trying to break into the drone’s GPS control, right, Wolfe?”
He knew that voice, from the SmartHouse. It was Starling. He was talking in a snotty tech smugness way that had always irritated Wolfe. Starling was so proud of himself he said more than he should’ve:
“Yeah, I’ve pulled back for a little minute but the GPS hack won’t work down here anyway. Most GPS doesn’t work underground. There are systems that try but they’re too spotty.” A moment’s pause and then Starling added boastfully, “We use a combination of geomagnetics, downloaded information about infrastructure, and, of course, the camera on the drone. You see what does work down here is the transmitter we’ve dropped into one of the tunnels. And that transmitter is completely insulated from any possible hack. It’s bouncing signals from me to the drones, and back. So I can see what it sees. And tell it what to do.”
“That’s nice,” Wolfe said. “You’re a very impressive little boy. You’re not going to ‘sir yes sir’ me?”
There was a moment’s crackling hesitation. Then, “No. You don’t deserve it. You’re not in authority over me.”
“We’ll see about that. If I can kill you, that’s authority enough for me. And that’s what I plan to do, Starling. You’re a traitor to this country.”
“I’m not a traitor! I’m going to help liberate this country. From people like you, Wolfe. You’re going down first…”
Seline was looking down the tunnel. “The drone’s coming back… the other one’s bumbling around like a bee in a jar.”
“Wait till it’s close and open up on the aggressive one,” Wolfe said. He was trying to find some way to hack into the camera on the drones… screw with what Starling was seeing.
But it turned out there wasn’t time for that.
Seline fired a long burst down the tunnel. Then the AK47 gave out an empty clicking sound. “You got another clip for this?”
“Nope,” Wolfe said.
“It’s still coming.” She threw the AK47 itself down the tunnel, to try to confuse the drone.
The drone fired at her, and she sucked air between her teeth. “Ouch.”
He looked at her. “You hit?”
“Just a small chunk of my shoulder. Flesh wound stuff. Didn’t think I was that exposed. Stupid.”
“There’re bandages in that backpack that…” He broke off, listening. A humming had drawn his attention to the other tunnel, running the opposite way.
“Seline—that tunnel…” He saw them then. “Two drones from that direction now.”
“We’re getting boxed in.”
Wolfe pulled out his .45, emptied the clip at a drone—it drew back a little but he could still see its small red running lights in the tunnel.
He ejected the clip from the .45, pulled another from his pocket, quickly slapped it in the gun and handed the weapon to her. “Use this one. We’re going to have to head in another direction.”
He swarmed up the manhole’s rungs as she opened fire at the drones.
“They’re slowing,” she called. “Doing some kind of evasive maneuver…”
The UAV’s returned fire.
“You hit?” Wolfe asked as he got to the manhole cover.
“No! But they’re moving in! We’re caught between them, Wolfe!”
Wolfe pushed up, hard, on the steel disk. The manhole cover just didn’t want to open. Probably it was rusted into place. He pressed harder yet, using his back and shoulders. He grunted with effort. The cover creaked.
“Oh Wolfe!” she yelled. “You got any ideas? They’re coming!”
He pressed with all his strength—and suddenly the manhole popped upward.
No time to see if the coast was clear. He shoved the steel cover out of the way, climbed up, clambered onto the street, immediately reaching down to Seline. “Come on, Seline! Up!”
She jumped to the rungs and climbed them—fast. Wolfe braced himself and caught her coat collar, lifting her up almost by the scruff of her neck.
The drones were coming into the manhole space below, tilting up to aim…