Birdie was only a couple of feet wide, but in that space was packed a lot of the best ideas Zoya had ever had in her life. She had poured her heart and soul into her. A therapist would probably make a big deal out of how the drone represented the freedom that Zoya’s agoraphobia was denying her. It was suppositions like that which made her steadfastly refuse to see a shrink. It was all post hoc ergo propter hoc stuff like that – no, thank you.
Birdie had capabilities not seen outside of the US military. If anything could manage the high-risk task they were about to perform, then it was Zoya’s pride and joy. Still, she was nervous. If this went wrong, then the overall mission was in serious trouble and Birdie would be captured – something Zoya didn’t want to contemplate. She didn’t like people touching her stuff at the best of times.
Dionne moved again.
“Stop fidgeting,” said Zoya.
“Sorry. Sorry.”
They had planned this for precisely 2pm as each of the four guard towers swapped shifts at fifteen-minute intervals between 1.30 and 2.30pm. It was Arthur who had noticed the east tower swapped at 2pm. The minute before the shift swap took place, guards were distracted with paperwork and checking firearms back into lockers. The plan relied on a combination of that distraction, along with the fact that the towers focused on looking into the prison at the yard below and not primarily out at the desert where, at least in theory, there was nothing much to see.
Zoya had manoeuvred Birdie into place in the hours before dawn. It was too risky to fly her all the way into the prison in daylight. Someone would see that. So Birdie currently sat on the ground one hundred yards from the perimeter, carefully camouflaged to look like another boring bit of desert. So far, the only interest she had attracted was from a rattlesnake and a couple of scorpions.
The clock read 1.57pm. On the monitors at the side, Zoya could see a feed from the cameras inside the watchtowers and the ones covering the yard. She watched as Bunny dutifully moved into place on the baseball bleachers, as previously arranged.
Dionne cleared her throat. “It’s completely fine if you’re nervous.”
“I’m not nervous,” replied Zoya.
“I don’t mean about this,” said Dionne. “I mean about the other thing.”
“There is no other thing.”
“I mean how our new plan involves that Diller guy and how that means you’d have to …” Dionne finally noticed that Zoya was glaring at her. “Right, sorry. You meant there is no other thing in an eye-of-the-tiger-totally-focused-on-this-thing sort of a deal?”
“Yes.”
“Got you,” said Dionne. “I like it. One hundred percent concentration.” She nodded a lot.
“How’s your hangover?” asked Zoya.
“I’m absolutely fine,” said Dionne. “And don’t change the subject.”
Dionne was a long way from absolutely fine, but she’d had far too much to do to allow herself to have a hangover. Instead, she was powering through it on coffee and nervous energy. The thing with having “the big idea” in the middle of the night was that the following day you had to get to work on the mountain of tiny details that went into transforming it into a reality.
Joy had gone to get Zoya some additional parts she needed. Tatiana was dealing with securing their way in, following the part of the plan Arthur had come up with. Dionne had briefed Smithy that morning, and he was due to make contact with Diller. Arthur was going over the whole plan again, looking for flaws, trying to find anything they might have missed. Teresa was presumably watching Arthur to make sure he didn’t have any escape plans of his own. In between overseeing all that, Dionne had managed a couple of barfs and a really quick power cry.
“I won’t say anything else,” said Dionne.
“Good.”
1.58pm.
“All I was going to say is that maybe this is a good thing? You need to get out there and start living your life.”
“Dionne!”
“Right. Shutting up.”
“Finally.”
“Also, thanks.”
Zoya ran her palms down her jeans to remove the sweat, and rolled her head around her neck. She could see the two new guards heading up the stairs for their shift. “I’m going to regret this, but what for?”
“For coming out on the roof to check on me. I know that must’ve been really hard for you.”
“Yeah. I was worried you were going to do something stupid.”
“I did,” said Dionne. “I fell off the roof.”
“But only after coming up with your big idea, which, let’s be real, is actually a whole bunch of ‘something stupids’ rolled together.”
“Yeah,” said Dionne. “But the difference is, I’m not going to be the one doing them.”
Zoya laughed despite herself. “You are such a dweeb.”
1.59pm.
She checked the screens again. One of the guards was filling out the logbook, and the other was checking the firearms back into the cabinet. “It’s go time.”
Zoya held her breath as Birdie rose into the sky. She was a little relieved that her baby appeared to be behaving normally. Birdie had been sitting in the desert heat and dust for eight long hours. While she’d done all manner of testing and had run the figures, she more than anyone knew there was no replacement for real-world action.
The little beauty rose steadily into the air. By design, she ran so close to silent that nobody would ever hear her coming. She also had a special mesh design on her undercarriage that Zoya was particularly proud of. It projected an image of the sky as it appeared above Birdie, so that to the casual observer from the ground level, she would be all but invisible.
Zoya let herself breathe again when Birdie reached an altitude of three hundred feet. She started to guide it towards the prison.
When it reached the walls, she spoke without taking her eyes off the monitor. “OK. D, please type ‘freesoda’, all one word, on that
