them. She wondered about that. Was it the delay it took them to transmit the pursuit message to the others? Whatever the reason, it had given them time enough to break through.
In any event, there wasn’t much margin for error. Get stuck in a rut or strike a tree, and they were all as good as dead. She focused as she slid and weaved the jeep between trees, running now over nearly level ground. And then a dirt road did appear through the trees ahead, almost perpendicular to her. McKinney started to angle the jeep, veering left. She could see a ditch next to the road and figured it would be safer to cross if she was running nearly parallel to it.
Heavy brush forced her hand, and she had no choice but to drive straight for the road, taking the ditch head- on. A jolting lurch, and they landed on the roadway, veering toward the far side. She corrected, and they were now racing on the road, headed downhill-and toward a tall, corrugated metal building with no windows.
Foxy smacked her arm. “Straight ahead, Professor.”
Odin shouted, “Drive to the far side of the hangar. There’s a door there. Foxy, you able to move okay?”
McKinney glanced over and for the first time noticed that Foxy appeared to have been shot in the side. His glove was spattered with blood.
“There’s sure as hell no way I’m staying out here.”
“Okay, even before the jeep stops, I want you to hop out and get that door open. We’ll be right on your tail with the rest of the wounded.”
McKinney was already racing around the side of the hangar building. It was easily seventy feet on a side. A level grass landing strip stretched out before them. She glanced in her rearview mirror and saw that the swarm of drones wasn’t far behind. Perhaps a few hundred meters now.
“Keep our speed up!”
McKinney brought the jeep thumping on flat tires around the far side of the hangar, next to a steel door. She slid to a stop, unbuckling her seat belt. The hum of the swarm was already growing louder.
“Move! Move! Move!” Odin looked up and whistled at the ravens-which were already diving down to meet them.
Smokey hefted the body bag containing Hoov out of the cargo bay, while McKinney helped Odin pull Tin Man over the side of the jeep. Tin Man sucked it up and moved under his own steam while they helped him toward the door that Foxy was already unlocking. The others were close behind. Everyone was bleeding from major or minor wounds.
As they pushed through the doorway into a sizable hangar with a concrete floor, McKinney felt a wave of relief pass over her-even though the sound of drones smacking into the building like hail was already sweeping around from the far side.
“Close that door!”
Odin waited until Huginn and Muninn flew past, and then he pulled the metal door shut with a boom. The humming sound went down a few decibels.
The team was already rushing forward to a large single-engine plane that McKinney recognized-a Cessna Grand Caravan. She’d seen them used as bush cargo planes. This one was painted white with green and yellow stripes and looked fairly new.
“Smokey, secure the twins. There’s a cage in the cargo hold.”
“On it.”
Ripper already had the cargo doors open, and she was limping around to the pilot door. Blood soaked her lower leg.
“You okay to fly, Ripper?”
She gave Odin a look. “Just get in the damn plane.”
Smokey lifted Hoov’s body bag into the hold and climbed up after it.
McKinney climbed in through the wide cargo door as the ravens flew in past her. Spatters of blood were already staining the floor and upholstery. She grabbed one of several seats in front of the cargo area, while Smokey urged the ravens into the safety of a black mesh cage. There were a few boxes and equipment cases, but the cargo bay was nearly empty.
Smokey looked up. “Should we toss the cargo?”
Ripper was flicking switches with headphones on. She shook her head. “No time.”
Foxy climbed into the copilot seat and put on headphones too. “How we getting these hangar doors open?”
Ripper pointed.
Odin was standing next to the hangar doors, his hand over a switch. He held up an arm, giving several signs Ripper seemed to understand.
“Let’s hope this damn hangar holds together long enough to pull this off.”
The turboprop engine began to whine to life.
McKinney leaned forward. “You’re starting the engine-in a closed hangar?”
“Like I said, Professor. Keep your fingers crossed.”
The engine thundered to life, and Odin hit the hangar door switch. McKinney watched in horror as he raced the eighty or so feet toward them, the doors opening ever wider.
Foxy shouted, “Run, goddamn you!”
A cloud of drones started issuing through the widening opening between the twin hangar doors. Before the swarm could orient itself, Odin reached the open cargo door and leapt inside.
“Get the hatch!”
Smokey reached out to get the hatch as the swarm raced toward the plane. Several lead ones disintegrated amid sparks in the whirling propeller blade, but two slipped past in the high wind and tumbled into the passenger area before Smokey got the hatch closed.
Odin grabbed an equipment case as a weapon. “Look out! Get them!”
The buzzing, insectlike quadracopters quickly righted themselves and launched around the passenger cabin, one rushing straight for Smokey’s face. He bashed it aside with the butt of his HK416.
The other one streaked right toward McKinney, who was strapped into her seat. She knocked it away with her hand as it fired a bullet with a deafening bang that grazed her wrist. One moment later, and the bullet would have gone right between her eyes. She ducked and unbuckled her seat belt-unsure where the drone had gone. “Where is it?”
Ripper shouted, “Everybody hold on!” She rammed the throttle forward, and the plane surged ahead. Smokey, Odin, Mooch, and the two drones they were contending with slid back toward the rear of the Cessna as dozens of drone bodies clattered along the outside the fuselage or disappeared in a cloud of sparks into the plane’s propeller.
Smokey pressed his boot down on one of the rotor mounts of the drone, pinning it to the floor. He then repeatedly smashed his rifle butt into its circuit board core-crushing its optic array. “Die, fucker!”
As he pounded the small machine, it fired its several small-caliber bullets from tubes on its metal frame-at least one bullet catching Smokey in the ankle before it died.
“Goddammit!” He toppled back.
They were roaring along the airstrip now, nearing eighty miles an hour. The tree line raced past, and the drone swarm fell behind.
Huginn and Muninn caw ed angrily inside their cage as Odin hurled a heavy equipment case at the remaining drone hovering toward the front. “Tin Man, get it!”
By now the cabin was spattered in blood as the wounded team clambered around trying to destroy the last drone.
But the device headed straight for McKinney. She deflected it with the trauma plates strapped to her arm, but it kept driving up against her, its electric blades humming.
She was both horrified and riveted by its appearance this close. It was a simple four-rotor helicopter with blade enclosures, but the frame seemed to be made of thick wire, ending in spiky legs. In the center pod, held in the metal frame, was a series of tightly packed circuit boards and a row of four lenses-its “eyes.” Next to that, in racks, were what looked to be silver compressed-air canisters-the type of thing whipped cream was dispensed with. But these seemed to be spraying the air with some type of chemical that had a faint peppery smell-a pseudopheromone, marking her. And then stacked to either side of the core body were what turned out to be gun
