it’s obsolete-and that requires a demonstration. You know that.”
McKinney narrowed her eyes at him. “Who the hell are you?”
He ignored her. “Listen to me, David. We shouldn’t be fighting. Men like you will always have a place.”
“I already have a place.”
The chopper was rising toward a lush hilltop festooned with banners covered in Chinese script. The summit had a circular road with a swath of grass. It was the only obvious landing zone, so the pilot brought them down, causing a couple of park visitors to flee for cover from the wind.
Moments after they touched down, several people with long, black nylon bags slung over their backs rushed to the chopper. As the doors opened, McKinney smiled at the sight of Foxy, Ripper, Smokey, and Mooch. Over the sound of the idling rotors Odin shouted to the pilot, “Out!”
The man looked incredulous until he saw Foxy and Ripper with. 45 tactical pistols at the pilot’s and copilot’s doors. He unbuckled and quietly exited the chopper while Mooch and Smokey climbed in back, unslinging their rifles. They also appeared to have small nylon enclosures for the ravens-each bird behind a screen mesh. They passed these inside. In a few moments Foxy had taken the pilot seat and Ripper the copilot’s. They pulled on headphones as they did.
Foxy raised the throttle and the big chopper lifted off smoothly from the top of the hill. “Man, I love Sikorskys. This is the way to travel.”
Ripper spoke in her headset, looking back at Odin. “Where we headed?”
Odin picked up the map of the Ebba Maersk from the printout sitting nearby and handed it to her. “South. Out to sea.”
She examined the map. “We won’t have the range to get out there and back again.”
Odin just stared. “I know.”
CHAPTER 29
Ritter contorted his body and pounded his feet into the wall panel. “Goddammit, David! What you’re doing is insane! You can’t stop this. You’re too late.”
Odin stared at the ocean passing below. He was now in the copilot’s seat, headset on, examining his map of the South China Sea. “You’d better hope we can stop it.”
“You’re the reason they activated it early. It’s already too late. What you’re doing is pointless.” Ritter nodded toward the instruments. “We’ve only got a four-hundred-mile range. We won’t have enough fuel to get back to land.”
“We’ll be landing on the Ebba Maersk.”
“No! You won’t. Goddammit, that’s what I’ve been… you won’t be landing on the ship. What sense does it make to throw all our lives away?”
Odin turned slowly in his seat to face Ritter, as did McKinney and Evans.
Foxy spoke into his pilot headset. “That doesn’t sound good.”
Odin nodded toward Ritter. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying, if we approach that ship, we will die. Anything that approaches that ship in the next seventy-two hours will die.”
“Do you know how to stop it?”
“There is no way to stop it. That’s the whole point. They take care of it.”
“Who’s behind this, Ritter?”
“I don’t know! My job was to make you stop looking. But if you turn around, I’ll help you find out who’s in charge. I swear it. Just turn the chopper around.”
Odin turned forward again. “Sure you will.”
Ritter’s face contorted, and he started kicking the wall panel again. “Goddammit, turn around!”
“What’s that ahead?” Foxy pointed at a wisp of black smoke on the horizon.
Odin nodded. “Make for it.” He turned back to the others. “Get ready.”
“If you get too close, they’ll knock us out of the sky.”
Evans stared at Ritter, the man’s panic starting to rub off on him. “Maybe we should listen to him, Odin.”
“Mission’s not done yet, Mordecai.”
Evans sighed. “Fuck…”
The smoke on the horizon grew rapidly into a black plume, and then to a smoking ship wallowing on the waves.
Foxy brought them in low and fast as they passed over a two-hundred-foot-long fishing trawler crawling with what looked like black vampire bats the size of surfboards. The nets were torn apart on the booms, and the wheelhouse was engulfed in flames. There were burn holes in the steel hull. Bodies and debris floated in the water all around it. The ship was clearly sinking, its bow almost in the waves.
The black-winged drones swarmed over the surface of the vessel, showers of sparks flying up as they cut the ship apart even as it sank. Clouds of smaller drones hovered above them-and then rose to give chase to the passing helicopter.
“Heads up, heads up!”
Foxy leaned the chopper forward, increasing speed. “I’m on it.”
The smaller drones fell back behind them.
McKinney stared at the carnage, trying to come to grips with what they were heading into.
Ritter just groaned. “I told you. And this is nothing. We need to turn back.”
Odin nodded toward the horizon. “The colony ship must have left these behind.”
McKinney tapped his shoulder. “They wouldn’t know they’re on a ship. It’s just the nest to them. The model wouldn’t make it easy for them to find their home ship if they couldn’t see it.”
“Then they’re single-use. But I guess they have plenty of extras.”
Evans was still looking back at the drones devouring the trawler. “I was standing on solid ground. I could have just gotten out with the pilot, but no…”
Odin looked at the map. “The Ebba Maersk came straight through here.”
Ritter shouted, “I’m telling you, we need to turn back. It’s too late to do anything about this!”
Odin drew a. 45 tactical pistol and aimed it straight at Ritter’s face. “You want to add something constructive, or do you want to go out the door right now?”
Ritter just stared at the gun barrel, then turned away sullenly toward the wall.
McKinney eyed Odin, but he stowed the pistol and turned back toward the front. “Professor, please think of a way to stop this Frankenstein monster of yours.”
“It’s not my Frankenstein monster-and I don’t know. I’m… I’m thinking.”
They traveled for another thirty minutes in deep existential silence, listening only to the white noise of the engines. Then Foxy pointed to the horizon again.
“More smoke ahead.”
Odin nodded. “Two plumes this time.”
Foxy glanced down at the fuel gauge. They had traveled about four hundred miles in two and a half hours, deep into the center of the South China Sea. “Running low on fuel, boss. Probably not more than another thirty minutes’ running time.”
Odin nodded. “We saw the position of the ship. We’re within range of it. Just keep going.”
Ritter groaned in despair.
Soon they were roaring past two more vessels a mile apart, burning and adrift. One was a large pleasure yacht fully engulfed in flames on its way to burning to the waterline. The other was a rusted freighter, guttering plumes of black smoke from the stern, which just now rose up out of the water as the ship slipped beneath the waves-several drones still cutting into its keel with a brief shower of sparks and smoke.
