“Gadget,” Laird said, turning the remote over and scrutinizing every part of it. “Ma, sit down. I can’t have you dying of a heart attack in front of me. You know how that would scar me?”
“Oh honey,” she said as she released her heavy breathing over the top of the stock pot and began to stir again. “You’re already scarred.”
“Right,” Laird mumbled, rubbing at the stretched faded skin along his chest and neck. On the back of the drone remote, there was a silver box engraved with the words “Kushkin Organization.” He dropped it. It clanged against the table.
His mother jumped and said, “See, now you’ll be the one to give me a heart attack.”
“Fuck.” Laird quickly grabbed the remote and half-ran down the stairs to his computer. Weick had failed to mention that this drone was a Kushkin war weapon. Something felt wrong about boosting up the weapon of their once mortal enemies, but he was going to do what Weick asked him because first of all, he’d owed it to her, and secondly because she’d promised him a shit ton of money. A lot more than he thought she’d had.
He clicked his tablet to the top of the remote and when the camera came on, it showed the concrete of a driveway stretched out in front of it. There was a woman unloading groceries from an SUV across the street and when he sent the drone forward and up, she screamed and dropped a watermelon onto the pavement. It cracked and little bits of pink and black seeds scattered out.
Laird laughed.
It was a long way from Seattle to DC for the drone, but this was high-tech stuff. All he had to do was input the address that Weick had given him and set it on its course. Weick was lucky this thing could fly at eight hundred miles per hour. Kushkin had really set her up—was that who she was working for now? Had she flipped all the way to Russian terrorism? He certainly wasn’t one to judge.
The monitors showed the empty podium of the press conference. The drone was parked behind it all, pretty far away, on the roof of an apartment building, waiting for that opportune moment that Weick had told him about—the other drone. But they had to wait for it to show up first and for Axtell to give whatever kitsch speech she was about to release on the world.
In the peripherals of the camera, it was that guy that Laird had seen on the occasional news story—swarthy British guy holding a sniper rifle on his shoulder. He looked at the drone and said, “Idris Amber, MI6. Nice to meet you, Laird.”
Way too polite.
Laird wished so bad this thing had a microphone. Instead, he replied with a whir of the motor.
The monitors above him flashed multiple news networks as Axtell took to the stage. She was a strong-looking Hispanic woman in full formal military uniform. She looked like the type of woman that would shoot him down in a bar and beat him in an arm wrestle.
With a soft smile, she took her spot on the podium, her hands kept behind her back. An American flag acted as her background, covering the facade of the veteran affairs building.
The news ribbon rolled with a bunch of purposeless headlines: First woman to take on VBA, Marianna Axtell Details Plans for Veterans, and Axtell’s Choice to Wear Uniform—A Controversial One.
Laird rolled his eyes.
“I am very grateful for this opportunity,” Axtell stated in a flat, professional cadence. “My brothers and sisters, our country's veterans, have seen and been treated to so many horrific experiences in order to better serve our country. Due to their sacrifice, we all live a safe and privileged American life. For a long time, veterans have received services and funding to better acclimatize to life outside active service—”
Two eye rolls in a minute. Laird was maxed out. He lit up a roach that was pinched in his glass ashtray and took a long inhale to get him through the rest of this. This lady was a government peon—no opinions of her own and as ignorantly polite as Idris Amber.
When she sounded like she was starting to reach the end of the speech, Laird leaned forward, puffing out his exhale from the side of his mouth as he kept his eyes glued to the tablet.
“Something in the distance,” Amber muttered. “About a kilometer out. Northwest.”
With a few flicks of his thumbs, Laird started up the drone, flying it in the direction Amber had pointed out. Taking the long way around so he wasn’t shot down by any Secret Service, he kept the drone high and out of sight. The misty wisps of clouds flicked on either side of the drone’s camera.
And just as the matte gray wings of the UCAV broke through the clouds up ahead, Laird’s attention was pulled from the tablet and to the monitors above him. The sound of gunshots. Axtell was down, on the ground. The American flag that had been waving behind her was trembling, a clean hot hole right in the middle of it.
There was a scuffle, Axtell maneuvering under another body that was on top of her. The crowd began to move and evacuate as the UCAV swooped in for the final blow.
“Shit,” Laird grumbled, turning back to the tablet and taking a shot. He let one of the missiles go, locking on to the UCAV, but it went wide. The UCAV was a high-grade military weapon, and it easily snaked out of the missile's trajectory. The missile flew past everything, colliding eventually with a tall oak tree in the distance, erupting every leaf and branch into flames.
The panels dropped out of the bottom of the UCAV, lowering
