by M. Lorrox
The missile sees the bounced infrared laser light, and it angles its trajectory to strike the two-meter-wide target.
One second later, the attacking drones are twenty feet away from the helicopter, and the missile is twenty feet from its target.
The twelve pounds of polymer-bonded HMX stuffed into the Griffin missile’s warhead will yield an earth-shaking explosion equivalent to twenty pounds of TNT. The missiles that were intended only for firing demonstrations don’t have detonators, so Balena jammed blasting caps she collected from claymores and hand grenades into the compound. Hopefully, they ignite the warhead…and hopefully the warhead is large enough.
Everyone in the helicopter holds their breath while the missile rockets the last few yards to the target. It slams straight into the tower, and it immediately explodes.
Ghost smiles and relaxes, dropping the collection of wires and equipment from her hands to her lap. Balena glances at the explosion long enough to see that it’s on target, then she looks to the drone coming at the helicopter from the southeast. It’s still flying!
She aims the jammer and rifle, but before she pulls the trigger, it begins to drop altitude. She glances at the drone attacking from the northeast, and it too floats slowly down. Without a control signal, all the drones are programmed to set down. Far below them is a forest, and when the drones eventually reach the treetops, their blades will get ripped apart, and they’ll fall to the ground.
Charlie breathes a loud sigh of relief. “Looks like we ain’t dead yet.” He glances at the tower, which is now collapsing and falling forward.
Directly above their helicopter, another drone with an explosive payload strapped to its bottom drops altitude.
Hector stares at static-filled screens on the wall across from his desk in SeCComm. “Goddamn it!”
Paul Baudin looks up from his station in the bullpen. “We’ve lost ALL incoming signals. They must have taken out the tower!”
Hector clenches his teeth until he realizes they now have a seven-ton problem. He hits a few buttons and grabs the microphone. Across The Plant, -Diiinnng- comes through all speakers, followed by his nervous voice screaming, “Brace for impact!”
Everyone inside The Plant freezes. Impact from what? A bomb?
The blast destroyed the tower’s support structures on the side of the facility. Like a straight tree hacked on from just one direction, it bends toward the weakened part. It falls crashing along the top of the mountain. The tower’s tip reaches the facility and smashes into the edge of the helipad. It snaps the rotors off the helicopter that’s parked there like they were dried linguine.
Inside the huge building set into the mountainside, the floors shake and everyone—even Hector—reaches out to steady themselves.
The drone above the helicopter Charlie, Ghost, and Balena are in continues to drop toward them.
When the passengers see the tower smash, they cry out in excitement.
“YES!” Charlie presses the pedals to spin the helicopter, pointing it at the facility. “Nice aim, Ghost!”
She sighs. “That’s the kind of shooting I can tolerate: painting targets!”
The drone above them is now in the helicopter’s rotor wash, and it’s sucked downward into the blades. The drone’s auto-leveling function kicks in and fires the motors. In the turbulence, the drone travels toward the outer edge of the helicopter’s rotor area, and it hits the rotor-tip vortex.
The drone has no hope of making any corrections, and while it’s sucked downward at an angle, one of the helicopter’s long rotors smashes into drone’s carbon fiber frame. -Thunk!- The impact crushes into the computer and control electronics. The drone’s systems short out as it’s thrown out of the vortex, and it explodes. -BOOM!-
Inside the helicopter, the vampires heard the initial impact, then after the damaged rotor spun a fraction of a rotation, they felt a new vibration. But when the drone explodes a dozen feet away, they jolt as tiny pellets slam into another of the helicopter’s rotors and ricochet off the roof of the helicopter. “Holy shit!” Charlie clenches his fist on the cyclic stick and tries to hold it steady, but in the shock, he jerks it to the side.
The helicopter veers. Now with two damaged rotors, it shakes like an old commercial washing machine—filled with fuel, ordnance, and passengers and is hundreds of feet in the air. Ghost shoves the target-painting equipment that was on her lap out the helicopter’s open door, and she grabs her seat and the doors frame. “Don’t crash us! I swear I’ll never fly again!”
Charlie tenses every muscle in his body while he regains control of the craft and returns it to level.
Balena regains the ability to speak. “I didn’t know there was a drone up there. Glad it didn’t blast over our Jesus pin, because then we’d be crashing now...” She sets down the M4 with the attached jammer, clicks the device off, then looks at the helicopter pad while her whole body vibrates with the helicopter. “New problem: where are we supposed to land?”
Charlie swallows and pushes the cyclic forward. “Well, we could just blast down next to their helicopter. What’s left of the rotors will be shredded off by the building, but we should be able to crash in one piece.”
Ghost looks at the helicopter pad and the building on the right side of it—her side. She imagines landing there, then she squints one eye and raises her other eyebrow, grimacing at the same time. “Sir? Remember how we don’t have any doors on this thing... Think those shredded blades will fly into the cabin here? I kinda like my face.”
“Good point. Well, I’m open to suggestions.”
Ghost motions to the facility. “Most the roof looks flat.”
Charlie smiles. “Done.”
Balena studies the roof as they approach, then she shakes her head. “No dice. It looks like it’s got sections that open. It might not be strong enough to support us.”
Charlie scowls as the helicopter shakes. “We don’t have time for this. I’m crashing this sucker.”
“Oh fuck.” Ghost unbuckles and dives into the larger area in the back where she and Balena take cover against their equipment.
Charlie grits his teeth as he flies toward his thin landing zone. One side is a concrete reinforced wall, and the other is a fueled helicopter and collapsed steel tower. “If I come down from the top, the blades’ll snap against the building first, and we’ll probably spin and crash sideways into the other chopter. It’ll blow, then we’re dead. If I zip in like a regular plane, the blades might get chopped on both sides together, and their chopter might blow, but we won’t be sitting on it. Then the only problem would be sliding past the pad and crashing into the mountain... It’s worth a shot.”
Ghost shakes with her eyes closed. A drop of sweat falls from her face and plops on Balena’s cheek.
Balena pulls Ghost closer to her body. “This is just a mission complication; nothing ever goes according to plan. Just focus on the task. We’re not going to crash and die…”
Someone rushes into SeCComm’s Command Center. “The tower hit the helicopter!”
Hector stands up and rips his desk off the floor—its legs were bolted through the holes in the mesh. It flies toward the monitors and crashes onto the stations below, barely missing someone’s head. “Battle stations!”
-HHOOONNNKK!- “Fuck you, too!” John swerves the SUV he rented at the airport back onto the road, barely avoiding a collision with a sportscar that snuck into his blind spot. “Italian drivers are the fucking worst.”
Li Chen rolls his eyes while he sits in the front. Steve’s pulse pounds in the middle seats, and Sadie’s trunk weighs down the SUV’s rear end as they all travel from Rome to Lorenzo’s home near a smaller, nearby city. Steve checks his phone again. Hmm. Nothing from Mad, maybe her phone isn’t international or whatever. He writes a text to Qilin:
From Nettuno, following coast... south? Water on our right. Road unnamed
? maybe 48? Hard to keep track.
He sends it, checks that they’re still headed in the same direction, then once his phone shows that the message was sent, he deletes the conversation. Damn, battery’s dying... “Hey is there a phone charger in here?”
Li Chen snickers. “Can’t get off Reddit for a minute, can you? Just chill.” He looks at John. “We almost there yet? This is taking for fucking ever.”
John ignores him for a moment, then motions with his chin toward something on the right side of the road. “There it is.”
Steve and Li Chen both look. The road curves left, but off to the right sits a three-story villa beyond a grand lawn. Lemon trees line the drive, and on one side of the villa is a hill with olive trees. Behind the large home’s large rear yard and gardens lies a beach and the dark blue of the Mediterranean.
Li Chen revels in his good fortune of becoming an asset to Lorenzo, and he pictures himself pulling up to the house on a shiny motorcycle with a woman on his back. “Damn, that’s what I’m talkin’ about.”
Steve scrunches his brow and frowns at the security fence, cameras sitting under the roofline, and a security guard walking a German Shepard beside the hill with the olive trees. He swallows. “Hoo...quite the place.”
John pulls up to a steel gate between stone pillars, enters a keycode, and the gate begins to swing open. He parks at the end of the drive and motions for the boys to follow him. While climbing out, Steve gives the trunk he’s meant to eventually recover one last glance. Don’t go disappearing on me now...
Inside, Lorenzo is drinking wine and laughing with a woman and another man. He turns to see his newly arrived guests, and he greets John with a nod. When Li Chen and Steve enter the room, Lorenzo stands, dips his head to the others sitting with him, and raises his hand. “Perdonatemi un momento.”
He smiles as he takes a few steps toward Li Chen and Steve. “Ah, welcome to my humble abode.” One side of his lips curls as he waits, tempting the boys to appreciate his grand home.
Steve smiles back and nods, but Li Chen bites and looks around. He makes no secret of his awe; it’s reflected in every golden picture frame, beveled mirror, crystal chandelier, and vintage, low-wattage bare-bulb of the wall sconces that glow orange through their spiraled tungsten filaments. I could get used to this.
Lorenzo walks beside them. “We have much to discuss, but I’m currently entertaining some very special guests. I may not be available to conclude our dealings until the morning. My home and my staff will be at your disposal. Let me show you to your rooms, I imagine you may appreciate some rest.”
“Sounds good to me.” Li Chen glances at Steve. “Right?”
Steve relaxes. “Sounds perfect.”
Lorenzo brings them to rooms on the second floor, each with its own private bath. In his room, Li Chen leaps and flops backward onto the bed, letting his body sink into the soft duvet.
In Steve’s room, he checks for bugs—the electronic kind—and doesn’t find any. After using the bathroom and laughing at the bidet, he finds a corner of the room where he’s certain he can’t be spied on from, and he sends Qilin a couple texts:
At Lorenzo’s house. He’s here. You’ll know the one, it was off that same road. Place is huge, security fence, German shepherd, orange trees or something and big yard.
I’ll try and snoop around, but he wants to do the deal in the morning. Might have to bust out overnight. Text me back when you find the place.
“Brace yourselves!” Charlie holds his breath as he pilots the tourist helicopter they cut the doors off toward a helipad on the side of a mountain without clearance on either side for the aircraft’s rotors. He’s flying toward the spot at twenty miles per hour and is ten-feet higher than the helipad. His hope ultimately is that they live—but the first steps would be to have enough speed to crash into the spot after the blades get torn apart by the building on one side and a slightly broken helicopter on the other.
Ghost and Balena huddle together in the back and close their eyes.
The helicopter’s rotors slam into the reinforced concrete. They leave marks on the wall and break like a kid swinging a twig against a tree trunk. A split-second later, the now-slightly-shorter rotors strike the other helicopter and do a lot more damage to it than just leaving marks.
Charlie is still flying/crashing forward at over fifteen miles per hour, and he twists the collective control to cut the engine power. The helicopter rocks to the left as it falls, and its landing skids strike against the concrete helipad. The entire cabin jolts, and the little glass of the windshield in front of Charlie crumples and shatters.
The helicopter slides forward. The cabin shakes with the asymmetrically torn blades whipping through the air, then with their ripping into the other helicopter’s fuselage, then finally with them tearing themselves off entirely as the helicopter slides closer to the reinforced concrete wall.
Then the helicopter beside them explodes. It sends flames, steel, and aluminum flying into the door-less tourist helicopter and into Charlie’s side and Balena’s feet. She screams as one long, spiraled piece drives through one boot’s sole. It extends out the top of her insole like a bloody middle finger.
Charlie flinches to the side but holds the controls tight. No matter what he does, nothing but physics and their environment can change his helicopter’s trajectory, but that realization hasn’t hit him yet. He’s still hoping they don’t slam into the mountain past the helipad, crumple the passenger compartment, and explode, also known as dying in a fireball of twisted steel.
The helicopter tips from the blast of the explosion beside it, and it continues sliding forward on one skid. It crashes back down, spins ten degrees, and comes to a stop.
For a moment, Charlie just stares. Then he feels blood flowing down the side of his face. He reaches up to touch it but recoils—his cheek is raw and bloodied. He looks at his left side; three pieces of shrapnel stick out. With a single, continuous grumble, he rips them all out in quick succession. “You two alright back there?”
Ghost lifts her head. “We’re not dead?”
“Not yet.”
She looks out both sides of the rear compartment. She sees a massive steel door and a marred wall on one side, and a mess of helicopter parts and burning fuel on the other. “Are you sure?”
Balena sits up and groans, then she looks at the bloodied shrapnel sticking through her boot. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
Charlie hops out. “You gonna make it?”
“Yeah, but it just pisses me off. No way I can walk with this.” She reaches down and barely touches the metal, then winces.
-Rreeeeee...-
Charlie glances toward the source of the noise—a small panel inset in the concrete wall is sliding open. Past the still-moving door, something moves. In a flash, Charlie grabs an M4 from their pile of gear, raises the gun, and fires a barrage of three excellently aimed bullets. Two of them hit the edge of the door and one blasts past it toward whatever is inside.
The panel’s movement reverses, and the door closes. Ghost looks at Charlie. “Did you just hit where you were aiming?”
He tosses the rifle to her. “Go figure, cover us.”
She collects the gun from the air but wears shock on her face. “Hey, I hate—”
Charlie steps toward Balena’s injured foot. “Ghost! They don’t know that, now cover us! Balena...hate me later.” He reaches down, grabs the bloody piece of metal impaled into her boot, and shoves it back through her foot and out the sole.
“FFFFUUUUUCCCKK!”
Charlie holds up the seven-inch-long culprit; a piece of it is angled at the bottom. “Glad I didn’t tear it through the other way...” He tosses it to Balena. “Hope that’s your last injury. Now get your ass up and prepare to fire, I’ll aim.”
Her gaze is blurred from the pain, but she shakes her head back into clarity. “Just help me in
to the front first.”
In the cockpit of the Ghost attack boat, Eddy motions with his chin to a pint of blood. “Owen, can you give me that? I’m thirsty.”
He’s shutting down the boat’s systems, and he pauses to give Eddy a drink. “Here you go.”
Eddy clenches the bag in his mouth and sucks the whole thing dry. He spits the empty bag out to his side. “Thanks.” He sticks his torso through the blown-out windshield and trains his sharp eyes and ears to the southeast, the direction of the facility. “I don’t hear anything anymore.”
“Well, that’s either a good sign or a really bad one.”
Eddy nods. “There was the first big explosion, then a bang, then another explosion. I can’t hear the helicopter though—I mean, the helicopter isn’t flying any more. I hope that last explosion wasn’t them.” If it was, Dad’s dead.
“Hey Leo, is Hecate up there?”
“Hecate?”
No response.
“I can’t see her from here, I’ll go check.” Eddy scoots his butt backward then swivels his legs around. He leans his torso forward, then stands and looks along the top of the boat. Is that her? “I think she’s hurt!” He jumps onto the roof and dashes to her.
Hecate lies unconscious at his feet. Her face is red and swollen, and the hair along one side of her head is singed. On her right side, the clothes from her stomach to her shoulder are burned away, revealing charred and bleeding skin.
-Clong!- Eddy drops to his knees on the solid metal boat and focuses his eyes on her bare sternum to watch for breath.
Owen runs up behind him. “Fuck! Is she breathing?”
Eddy nods. “Yeah, she needs blood though.” He sees the blood-bead looped on some webbing on her belt, and he bends down and grabs it with his teeth. He rips it off the monofilament and crunches down on it. He mixes in some saliva, then he presses his lips onto Hecate’s and spills the blood, glass, and spit mixture into her mouth. He spits the monofilament line to the side, then he looks up at Owen. “She’ll need more blood, but I think I drank the last we had here. The team took the rest.”
