Buck said, “You have an idea, son?”
He looked at Lonny and Carlos, “I think it means there’s only one control for them, too, and one operator. What’s going on, this swarming thing, is complicated, so if you can knock out the control, which is probably a laptop, or knock out the person controlling it, I think the other drones will either drop or go away or something, but they won’t attack.”
Buck said, “I can work with that.”
Hunter said, “We can charge, come at them from two directions.”
Buck said, “You
need to stay with the boys and be ready to run if you have to. There’s a small cave on the back of the first hill there, and if you can get in there, you can pull the door closed. I use it as a storage room for vegetables and things. It has a small seep spring in the back that keeps the cave cool.”
“What are you going to do?”
“See that little Gator?” He pointed at the vehicle. “I’m driving it to a small rise they don’t know about and give them hell with my rifle. By the time they see the Gator moving and realize it’s not one of their men, I’ll be in place. You wait until I start shooting and then you all can move.”
Hunter started to object, but Buck held up his hand, “You have to protect these boys. You know that. Be ready.” He winked at her.
Buck went across the uneven rubble and boards as agile as a deer, started the vehicle and drove in the direction of the slight rise sixty yards distant.
Hunter peeked over a part of the debris and saw the drones boiling in the sky above the boulders where the van and the truck remained half-hidden.
She got with the boys and told them what they would do, then she touched each one to reassure them.
The heavy report of the large .308 rounds echoed as Buck opened fire with the M-14, shooting fast and steady. As they ran, Hunter glanced at the boulders, seeing white explosions of dust and rock coming off them as Buck emptied one 20-round clip after another, reloading so fast there was hardly a break. She saw him advancing, moving from one cover to another, firing, moving, firing, always going forward. She lost sight of him then and focused on reaching the cave.
She put the boys inside and closed the door before running to help Buck. She knew she had less than ten rounds in the .22, but decided to put them to good use.
The drones that had been boiling like a thunderhead in the sky suddenly funneled down and entered the open door on the van. Hiyoki sat in the driver’s seat, frantically tapping on the laptop resting on the dashboard.
He was out of sight of Buck’s fire, but the man jerked with every report of the M-14. He hadn’t seen Hunter off to his side some seventy yards distant, and Hunter raised the .22 to her shoulder. She knew the bullet wouldn’t go through the glass but it might unnerve him, she thought.
She shot once. The bullet spider-webbed the glass and Hiyoki jerked as if stung. He turned wide eyes to her, then started the van as the last drone disappeared inside the vehicle and another man closed the sliding door before snapping a pistol shot at Hunter and running to the passenger door. She didn’t duck as the bullet hit the hill five feet to the left and ten feet higher than her position.
The man made it inside the van before she had another shot. Moving to have a better field of fire took her through a cluster of head-high mesquite and when she emerged at the far side in the greasewood flat she saw Buck coming into view on the top of a twenty-foot high ridge. He raised his rifle and shot at the van, putting a round hole in the engine area.
The van pulled into a shallow wash and they lost sight of it. Hunter ran forward as Buck trotted along the spine of the ridge.
When Hunter had the van in view, she saw it was stationary, but still running. She edged up to it as Buck covered her.
Hiyoki and his men were gone. She saw footprints leading down the wash toward the river.
Hunter cracked open the sliding side door, afraid the drones would fly out if she wasn’t careful, but they didn’t. They all were there, silent and unmoving, in tight rows covering the rear portion of the van and in four shallow tiers of shelves above the floor, obviously made to hold them. There were a lot of drones. When Hunter thought of the sarin gas they carried, a shiver went through her because she was so close.
Buck came off the ridge and stood beside her, “We might catch ‘em before they get across the river.”
Hunter looked at the abandoned van. “Meet me at the barn,” she said as she climbed in the driver’s seat of the van and backed it out of the arroyo.
Hiyoki and his two men hid at the top of a small, cone-shaped hill where they could see the van and the two people beside it. When Hunter got in the van and began backing it out of the wash, Hiyoki grew so infuriated he almost passed out. “That meddling bitch!”
He rolled on his side, took off his small backpack and brought out the laptop. As Hunter drove toward the barn, he tapped furiously on the keys, mumbling, “This’ll get you, oh yes.”
As Hunter drove the road to the barn, she heard a soft buzz emanating from the rear of the van that gradually grew in volume until the sound almost froze her heart.
It was a drone.
Glancing into the back showed her that one of them rising into the air. She floored the gas and the van shot forward.
Hunter drove all out, bouncing and scrambling onto the still burning rubble pile that was Buck’s home. She slammed the brakes and leaped out the door, closing it fast behind her before she stumbled and rolled to her feet again to stand as Buck caught up on foot. “What is it?” he said.