She felt fear rushing through her again. Were these Chinese government agents? She, Odin, and Evans were, after all, in the country illegally. But the quality of the men’s suits began to put doubts in her head. Corrupt officials, gangsters-there was really very little difference.
The men roughly and very intimately frisked her, while another man pulled her hands behind her back and secured them with plastic zip-ties. They then marched all three of their prisoners to the panel van and pushed them inside.
Evans was looking more angry by the minute. “This is why I fucking hate you, Odin. I had a life, man.” He closed his eyes in a hard squint as if having difficulty coping with his anxiety.
Odin shook his head, muttering. “Zollo… zollo… zollo.”
“Don’t even pull that bullshit with me right now.”
They were all lying on the corrugated metal floor of the van with several men standing over them holding small black submachine guns. The van accelerated, sending the prisoners sliding. One of the guards kicked Evans.
“Ow!”
McKinney rolled over to look at Odin. “Odin. Who are these people?”
One of the other guards stomped on McKinney with his expensive dress shoes. The effect was less than he’d probably intended, but she kept quiet.
Odin just stared ahead, unreadable. She’d never seen him like that, which worried her more than anything else.
They didn’t drive long-just a few minutes. Given the size of the container yard, McKinney felt fairly certain that they couldn’t have left the premises in that time. Sure enough, when the van stopped and the guards opened the rear doors to drag them out, she could see that they were in the vast, empty section of the container yard where the weaver drone shipment had departed. There was nothing but empty pavement and silent shipping cranes for hundreds of meters in every direction-and the water of the Pearl River Delta close at hand. There were fewer men now-but still about a dozen. And they were all armed. McKinney, Odin, and Evans each had two men haul them by the elbows toward the water’s edge. McKinney felt her adrenaline spiking. This used to be an alien sensation- facing imminent death-but she was starting to become familiar with it.
The men stopped at the dock’s edge and pulled McKinney and the others upright with their backs to the water. From this perspective McKinney could now see a sleek, midnight blue Sikorsky S-76 helicopter parked not too far away in the vast empty space, its idle blades drooping. The chopper was facing nose-away from them, and one of the suited Asian men approached it holding McKinney’s backpack. He rapped on the fuselage, then handed the backpack to someone inside.
In a moment a suited Caucasian man stepped out of the chopper and approached with a casual confidence. Well before he reached them McKinney recognized him.
It was Ritter-the man who had pretended to be a Homeland Security agent all the way back in Kansas City. McKinney glanced over at Odin, but he seemed to be in his own world. That truly frightened her.
Ritter stopped ten feet away and nodded to Odin. “You got off with a warning as a professional courtesy, David. A warning you ignored.” Ritter nodded to the lead Asian man. “Get this over with.”
Odin spoke calmly, seemingly to himself. “White. Two through five. Red. One-two.”
“Apologies, but I’ll need DNA evidence.”
McKinney felt her heart race as three of the Asian men produced long, sharp-looking stilettos and walked toward them.
Evans shouted, “Oh, God! No! No! Wait!”
McKinney was speechless, mouthing silent words.
A howling sound came in on the breeze-and a thwack as a fist-sized hole blasted through the nearest man’s chest. The men to either side of her shouted, dropping her. She pitched forward onto the cement.
Odin shouted as he tumbled next to her. “Stay down, Professor!”
There were shouts in Chinese and she could see expensive shoes scrambling every direction across the pavement, and a thick rivulet of blood oozing toward her. Now there were short bursts of machine gun fire, followed by several more incoming high-pitched whines and thwack s. Screams. Men shouting, “Bie touxiang!”
McKinney craned her neck to look up and saw several suited men dead on the ground at the center of blood spatter trails. Other men groaned with terrible wounds; still others were kneeling, hands in the air, as Odin shouted at them,
Odin turned and shouted at Ritter, who was fleeing toward the chopper. “Stop, Ritter! You’ll be dead before you reach it!”
Ritter was still a good hundred feet from the Sikorsky and something ricocheted off the pavement between him and the aircraft. He slid to a stop, his hands raised to the surrounding world. He turned around to face Odin, a look of considerable concern on his face. “It was the mission, David. Nothing personal.”
“You always were a goddamned snowball. Even back in OTC. Did you even read the terrain? You really think I’d enter a place without overwatch? Without an exit plan?” Odin raised his bound hands behind his back as far as he could, and then brought them sharply down against his spine. The PlastiCuffs snapped, freeing his hands. Odin leaned down to pick up one of the fallen stilettos as he looked to McKinney and Evans. “Get up.”
McKinney struggled to her knees, by which time Odin had reached her. He cut her bonds, then moved to free Evans-who looked shaky on his feet.
“Jesus Christ, Odin. I fucking hate working with you.”
Odin grabbed one of the fallen MP5 submachine guns. He motioned for McKinney and Evans to follow him as he walked toward Ritter, who still had his hands raised, peering into the distance.
“Where are they? In the crane tower?”
Odin kept the gun trained as he frisked Ritter with his free hand. “Further.”
Ritter eyed the wooded hills in the distance. “They’re very good.”
“They’re the best.” Odin frowned, having come up empty. “You surprise me.”
Ritter looked feckless. “It seemed unnecessary. David, this accomplishes nothing.”
Odin pushed Ritter along. “Is your pilot armed?”
“He’s just a pilot. He doesn’t even know why we’re here.”
“Move.” He turned. “Evans!”
Evans was examining a wet spot in the crotch of his pants. “Yeah, what, asshole?”
“Grab a gun and meet us in the chopper.”
Evans sighed, still obviously angry, but trudged back to a nearby dead man.
Ritter opened the chopper door, and the pilot looked up from his logbook. Apparently gunshots hadn’t alarmed him. He was a clean-cut Caucasian with a military bearing and buzz cut blond hair.
Odin pointed the gun. “Don’t be stupid, and you’ll live. We’re going to Xiaonan Shan trailhead, right on the hilltop, there.” Odin nodded toward the forested hill overlooking the container yard, about a mile away. “There’s a park on the summit. Land in the grass.”
The pilot nodded grimly. “I have a wife and a young-”
Ritter just laughed. “That’s funny.”
“No one’s killing anyone as long as you do what you’re told.”
Odin and McKinney got into the back of the nicely appointed commuter chopper. There was carpeting, wood trim, and a plush leather bench with four seats, along with two swiveling captain chairs, in addition to the two pilot positions. McKinney, Evans, and Odin slid into the bench seat, while Odin nodded for Ritter to sit in one of the captain chairs, where he was in the same line of sight as the pilot. McKinney noticed her backpack on the floor nearby. She opened it to find the pheromone detector and canisters of perfluorocarbon still inside.
The engines started to whine to life.
“Whistleblowers never get rewarded, David. They get punished.”
The engines gained speed while they exchanged stares. They soon lifted off, rising over the vast container yard.
Ritter gestured to it. “That’s the modern world down there. Automated. Why should war be any different?”
“Because war can destroy us.”
Ritter sighed. “It’s going to happen. They need to invalidate the traditional military. They need to show that
