Gun Metal Heart

by Dana Haynes

  Daria hopped down from the fence and jogged into the grounds as a big, pale man with a square, jowly face and shaved skull stepped out from behind the shed and fired a single silenced shot at her. The .45 bullet snapped off the raised, ruptured cement and sent a tuft of caked dirt and hearty weeds into the air.

  Daria changed tack, turning on a dime, seeking cover behind a tall breaker box that was standing like a dull gray casket in the middle of the grounds.

  She had time to register the gunman when a second bullet panged into the ground and coughed up crumbled cement. But this shot came from behind her.

  Behind her and above her.

  A hawk drone swooped past her, arcing over the van and gaining elevation for a second pass. Daria crouched behind the breaker box, adjusted her backpack, and dug out a stolen Makarov. She glanced at the sky and found two hovering hummingbirds, unblinking plastic eyes locked on her.

  Two more hawks circled for position.

  Hummingbirds are spotters. Hawks are shooters. The combat analysis flashed through Daria’s mind without any conscious effort. Hummingbirds hover. Hawks swoop. Hummingbirds can operate stationary. Hawks need a glide pattern facing their target.

  The pale man fired his sound-suppressed SIG, and a bullet smashed a hole clean through the breaker box, a meter over her head. Daria spat, “Shite!” and bolted.

  A movement caught her eye. No time to analyze it.

  She sprinted for the body of a rusted-out Russian Kamaz truck. Long abandoned and slumped on disfigured rims, the midseventies vehicle had the aerodynamics of an anvil.

  The pale shooter’s SIG coughed again, and the bullet cratered the Kamaz’s radiator. Daria ducked behind the snub-nosed truck, landing on her ass. A hawk made a pass for her, but she’d changed position before it could adjust its diving run.

  Her years of combat training fed her a continuous stream of subconscious analysis. You can’t aim the guns on the hawks. You can only aim the hawks themselves.

  Fat lot of good that would do her if any of the shooter drones were carrying missiles. And given their target—the Parliament building—she assumed at least one of them was.

  * * *

  Simultaneously—both in Sandpoint, Idaho, and inside the silver van sixty paces from Daria’s redoubt—Bryan Snow and the hacker, Winslow, attempted to regain control of the drones.

  Snow, in Idaho, did so with an army officer’s handgun aimed at the back of his skull. He was sweating heavily and in fear of losing control of his bladder. His two pilots stood frozen, their faces a combination of helplessness and slowly evolving anger, as they realized Snow’s role in the crisis.

  Snow’s fingers flew over his keyboards. “I can’t…” he bleated. “I can’t get ’em back!”

  Colonel Crace said, “Why not?”

  “Their signal is too strong! They’re … Jesus, I don’t know! They’ve boosted their signal somehow. They’re blocking me out! I don’t know!”

  A little over a thousand kilometers to the east Winslow breathed a thankful prayer that Viorica had boosted their signal through the communications array of the ambassador’s residence. The added gain was more than enough to disrupt the signals beaming from the Idaho panhandle.

  “American Citadel attempting to reacquire,” he spoke calmly. “And failing.”

  Viorica’s voice came over his headset. She spoke from inside the residence. “Do we have control of the drones?”

  “They were programmed to find Gibron amid a crowd, to isolate her and to kill her. That program is running.”

  Viorica said, “All of the drones?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, get the missile birds back on target!” she hissed. “Mission number one is the destruction of the Parliament building.”

  Winslow allowed himself a smile. “I’d say mission number one is keeping that crazy woman away from me and this trailer, thank you very much.”

  But he began to reprogram the two drones carrying missiles.

  * * *

  Daria squatted with one boot under her, the other leg extended and ready to provide her with balance if she moved left or right. She gripped the Makarov in both hands.

  When she was behind the breaker box, she’d sworn out loud and noticed that both of the hummingbirds froze. Those beasts were the ones tracking her voice print.

  She inhaled deeply, let it out, breathed in again, and shouted:

  “My country tiiiiiis of thee…!”

  The Afrikaaner, Danziger, had moved up from the shed to seek cover behind the silver van. He got ready to move again, to pin down the Israeli, when he heard a song: off-key, bellowed.

  “… sweet land of liiiiiiberty!…”

  The two hummingbirds reacted to Daria’s acoustic signature and vectored for her position. They found her and hovered, sending telemetry via satellite directly to the hawks.

  Daria bleated, “… of theeee I—”

  She rose, spun, and snapped off two shots, then dropped to her haunches again.

  She heard the sounds of sparks jumping and metal clattering to the cement. Funny, she thought: she hadn’t realized she’d had that song stuck in her head.

  * * *

  In the U.S. ambassador’s residence, Viorica stood in her shimmering black leather outfit and stilettos, beaming vapidly, waiting for the latest faux interview to end. She thanked her subject in high Arabic and watched as her rigger escorted the Bosnian businessman away from the alcove.

  She heard Winslow over her earjack. “Christ!”

  She flipped the frequency of her hand-held cordless mic. “Trouble?”

  Winslow’s voice sounded in her ear jack, “I … wait…”

  “Talk to me.”

  “Two Mercutios are down!”

  “Two?”

  “Ah … yes. They were tracking the woman. Then … no signal.”

  Viorica squeezed her eyes shut. “She’s going for the drones. Winslow: you have six more Mercutios. Get them back on task. Danziger: kill her.”

  Across the elegant drawing room, Viorica made eye contact with Zoran Antic, the little Bosnian diplomat in the too-large suit. She nodded.

  He made a show of glowering and looking at his wristwatch.

  * * *

  Sure enough: Daria’s stolen Makarov jammed.

  When she had fieldstripped the weapons in the pharmacy, she realized the Skorpjo hitters had not taken good care of them. She’d been expecting the cheap gun to jam.

  The big man across the way leaned out and fired at her, then ducked back.

  Daria pegged him at six-five and three hundred pounds. She preferred not to go hand-to-hand against a gorilla. But if it ended up being a hand-to-hand fight, Daria wanted it to be on her terms. The man was right-handed but also right-eyed—he lined up his gun with that eye. And right-footed: from the way he moved, the man would strongly favor going to his right.

  Knowing that wasn’t much of an advantage, but a little advantage often is enough.

  Daria drew the second Makarov from her backpack. She reached up and gripped the long whip aerial of the rusted-out Russian truck. She placed the gun barrel against the base of the antenna and fired once.

  She hunkered down again, now holding almost six feet of wiry antenna in her left hand.

  Forty-Two

  In the van, Winslow retasked the drones to head for the Parliament building. That meant removing two of the three Hotspurs, the birds that were loaded with the ten-inch-long pyrophoric rockets. He left one Hotspur behind for the annoying Israeli. That drone had fired twice—once at Petrovic, once at Daria—and still had four rounds left.

  Daria had “killed” two of the Mercutio spotters, leaving six. Winslow assigned four to go with the rocket-launching drones, leaving two to find Daria.

  The Chinese embassy grounds are across the street and one block down from Parliament. It took his drones less than fifteen seconds to get back on target.

  Both Hotspur drones arced toward the capital building. One drone fired. Rel
ieved of the additional weight, it arced sharply upward.

  Dragan Petrovic had been the last established target, so the missile defaulted and aimed for Petrovic’s office.

  The explosion knocked out windows in a two-block radius.

  The missile’s external blast-fragmentation sleeves disintegrated on impact, multiplying the effects of the carnage. The pyrophoric nature of the weapon meant that everything in the foreign minister’s office—including Dragan Petrovic—instantly ignited.

  * * *

  Daria, hunkered behind the Kamaz truck, went to her knees, and covered her ears as the office in the Parliament building disintegrated. She listened as glass and concrete and plastic and metal clattered into the street. Cars began smashing into each other in blind panic.

  * * *

  The explosions shook the ambassador’s residence. The lights flickered, failed, then stuttered back on. Marines and Deputy Chief of Mission Allison Duffy were the first to react.

  The blond TV presenter in high-fashion leather ensemble and stilettos hardly reacted at all. Same for her camera crew. They’d been waiting for the explosion.

  Serbians older than thirty know the sound of buildings exploding. People began streaming for the exits.

  Not knowing if the embassy was under attack, the Marine captain in charge of security decided the best bet was to get out of the way of the civilians who wanted to flee. He spoke into his shoulder mic, and his men threw open the double doors to the front of the residence.

  Some guests and staff streamed out. Some stayed inside, hoping that was the safer bet.

  None of the Marines noticed John Broom, dressed like everyone else, slip into the courtyard, then into the embassy, amid the tumult. He stumbled on a tote bag a woman must have dropped as she fled. John rummaged through it and found a cell phone. He dialed an international number from memory.

  It was 2:00 in the afternoon D.C. time. One of the four summer interns in Senator Singer Cavanaugh’s office answered. Before she could go through her greeting ritual, John shouted, “It’s Broom! I’m in Serbia! I’m in trouble!”

  “John! It’s Piper. We miss you! What—”

  He found a walk-in coat closet that provided a modicum of privacy. “Kinda under fire here, Piper! I need help, quick!”

  “You need the senator?” she asked.

  “Nope. I need you! And Bryce and Ryder and Paige!”

  Among the people who did not panic was the seniormost representative from the government of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Professor Zoran Antic limped gingerly over to the TV news crew. Both camera operators snapped on their lights, lifted their rigs to their shoulders, and aimed at the old man.

  Viorica moved past him without a word. She wended her way deftly between jittery civilians. She got to the stairs that led upward.

  Seconds later, General Howard Cathcart raced downstairs. He’d been up on the second story balcony, looking for the so-called Major Arcana to show. At the foot of the stairs he skidded to a halt in his well-shined shoes, mouth agape, seeing the woman he’d been looking for.

  “General. Hello!” she said in English, flashing her radiant smile. “Are you ready for your close-up?”

  She pivoted and kicked him in the knee. The joint hyperextended, the anterior cruciate ligament tearing.

  The general fell like a guillotine.

  * * *

  The Afrikaaner hitman, Danziger, was safe enough behind the silver van. He’d shielded his ears when the first drone strike had destroyed the third-story office, kitty-corner from his position.

  The hacker, Winslow, was doing his part. Time for Danziger to do his.

  Danziger peeked out from behind the van. The Israeli woman fired. Danziger ducked back behind the van. She couldn’t hit him, but she kept on firing. Five shots. Eight. Ten.

  Amateur! he thought. Dumb enough to waste bullets on a man hiding behind a van. What could she have been…?

  The pure stupidity of his position hit him like the physical blow.

  The Israeli wasn’t firing at him, hiding behind the van. She was firing at the van.

  It’s fine to hide behind a van during a firefight. But not inside one. Few .45s can penetrate both walls of a van but most can penetrate one. Danziger scrambled for the front passengerside door of the van, ripped it open, clamored in.

  Too-white light from the ground-floor floods poured in through holes in the van’s wall. Winslow lay on the floor, holding his upper thigh, keening in pain. Blood oozed from between his clutching fingers.

  Inky, acidic smoke curled up from three of his ruined monitors.

  Danziger screamed into his head set. “Winslow’s down! She’s taking out the computers!”

  * * *

  In the ambassador’s residence, Viorica heard the call. She made eye contact with her camera crew, tossed the microphone to the rigger, and sprinted for the door.

  She passed John Broom without recognizing him.

  John was talking on the stolen cell phone. He recognized her but was too late to stop her.

  * * *

  Daria emptied the second Makarov into the side of the silver van. She tossed the weapon aside. Nothing to do now but wait.

  She’d hoped she’d done enough damage to the van—the transceiver array on the roof suggested that that was how they were directing the Flying Monkeys. But she hugged herself against the tireless rim of a truck wheel as one of the hawks swooped in and fired a .22 into the ground, an inch from her knee.

  She could only see one hawk now. The other two must be vectoring for the Parliament building.

  There had been no further explosions. That counted as some sort of good news.

  She heard the unartful pounding of the big man’s size-fifteen boots tearing across the ruptured cement patio. The man fired a few rounds in the general direction of the Russian truck to keep Daria pinned down. His plan was to overpower her with his speed, size, and weapon while the drone overhead circled and set up for a shot.

  The man would come in on her left, on his right. She’d seen it in the way he moved. Right-handed, right-footed, right-eyed. The fellow wouldn’t go to his left to get out of a burning building.

  Daria calculated the gyre of the hawk—ten seconds to get back into a shooting glide path.

  * * *

  Danziger rounded the bulky, rusted-out Kamaz, expecting to be shot at any second. He was a very, very big man, capable of running very, very fast. Shooting a big, fast man rarely stops him in his tracks. They still tend to move forward, even if wounded. And he was willing to bet his life he could round the truck and be on top of the damned Israeli before she fired a killing shot.

  He fired one more blind bullet to keep her head down, roared out his rage, and sprinted around the truck.

  There was no way she could tell which direction he’d come from. Chances were, she’d be facing away from him.

  She wasn’t.

  And insanely, the Israeli had moved toward him, not away.

  Danziger’s brain registered pain. Lightning hit him, and his body spasmed, feet landing wrong, momentum turned from friend to foe in the blink of a thought. His vision blurred and his pain receptors maxed out. He plowed, headfirst like a base-stealer, into the raised and ruined cement pavers. He skidded, his nose breaking. His SIG clattering away.

  He had no idea what she’d done to him.

  Daria used the whip aerial from the truck as if it were a real whip. The springy metal antenna, six feet long, sliced into Danziger’s face, from the upper left to the lower right, and across his chest and his right biceps. With Daria’s full weight behind the blow, the aerial had sliced through skin and tendons, and scored bones.

  The man crash-landed. His head ricocheted off the cement and blood spattered in a hundred-degree arc.

  Daria counted down in her head. The hawk would be back in five seconds.

  She turned and snapped the whip antenna again, this time severing the man’s carotid artery. The blood geyser was most impressive.

 
Daria circled the pulsing gush of blood, gathered the man’s SIG, and hauled ass toward the silver van. Her boots chewed up the distance.

  The hawk would be back in two seconds.

  She ran and the hawk completed its turn, firing at her from above.

  But she’d made her run crosswise to its gyre—running to the inside of its circular course. That forced the hawk into too tight a turn, and it couldn’t compensate for the moving target.

  The bullet embedded itself in a paver three meters behind her.

  Ten more seconds for the bird to come around again.

  Daria got to the van, threw open the back door, gun aimed inside.

  She found a smallish man, dressed as a civilian, lying on his side, screaming bloody murder, his arms and legs soaked with blood.

  She glanced out just in time to see Viorica, wearing haute couture and impossible heels, sprint across Avenue Kralja Milana. The tall blonde drew a Glock from a handbag—a nice Prada piece, Daria noted wryly.

  Viorica hit the gate of the security fence and it flew open.

  Daria ducked into the van, thinking, Splendid. Spring heroically over the gate, you bloody great idiot. Don’t bother to check if it’s locked.

  Forty-Three

  In the U.S. ambassador’s residence Zoran Antic told the camera operator to start rolling.

  The film crew looked at each other. “The major’s orders were to wait for the full explosions.”

  “And she has run off to assure that they happen,” the old man hissed. He had ordered his entourage to line up behind him. “We are running out of time. Begin the broadcast.”

  The rigger knelt and began adjusting controls on his portable production unit. The speech from inside the ambassador’s residence would be broadcast, live, throughout Central Europe. Thanks to the lash-up to the embassy’s own communications array.

  The same array through which the drones were being run.

  * * *

  Daria ducked low behind the van’s computer array as Viorica’s bullets began penetrating the side of the van. The embassy’s powerful floodlights were on that side of the van, and each bullet hole produced a conical blast of light, illuminating the growing haze of acrid smoke from the burned-out computers.