Web of Extinction (Zone War Book 3)

by John Conroe

  Having a girlfriend (yeah, it’s official, we’re dating again) who grew up basically conducting small unit military operations in hostile terrain had major benefits in circumstances like this. She knew instantly what I was talking about and she nodded her agreement, then took off, her turn to lead the way. Shots zipped through the cars around us, but then the sound of light e-mag carbines came from behind us.

  A glance back revealed several of the NYPD officers firing patrol rifles at the sniper’s position, giving us the perfect distraction to run into the big multi-acre parking lot filled with cars.

  We made it without any sniper fire, but no sooner were we in the lot than the sound of full auto e-mag fire came from the terminal. We both looked back in time to see the remaining guards and cops gunned down by heavily armed operators coming out of the terminal building.

  With just one glance at each other, we took off running between cars. Running like our lives depended on it.

  Chapter 26

  We ran at a diagonal across the vast lot, weaving and dodging among cars and SUVs. Ten meters into our run, the sniper got back into business, his shots tearing through cars all around us. But we’d gained enough distance that his shooting angle was flatter, which put more metal and glass cover between him and us.

  Shots rang out behind us, bursts of auto fire that tore up the car immediately behind me. Instantly I spun around and snapped off two shots from my 9mm Magnum, one of them clipping the lead operator in the shoulder. Others were following him, but they ducked down at my shots.

  Not waiting around to see what happened to him, I followed Astrid. If we could get across the parking lot, moving south from the terminal, there were other buildings and another parking lot with big vehicles like buses and trucks parked there.

  Sirens sounded in the distance, more cops responding to the scene, so unless another team waited up ahead, we had a shot at getting away as help arrived. Or unless they had some other edge up their sleeves.

  The sudden familiar whine of UAVs filled the air and a trio of light recon and overwatch Redhawk drones zipped out over the parking lot. The predecessor to the modern Kestrel, Redhawks were still in use by troops all over the world. They could be flown by remote control or sent out under their own AI autonomous guidance.

  These three swooped our way, stubby pistol-caliber weapons barrels poking out where a real live hawk would have a beak. They found us almost instantly. But almost as fast, we started shooting at them. I took out the two rear ones as Astrid killed the lead drone.

  We reloaded as we moved, almost to the bus lot. Tires squealed as an SUV raced onto the road in front of the commercial wharf building, headed right for us. Then we were behind massive tour buses and safe, at least temporarily, from the sniper’s fire. A whining electric vehicle motor from the opposite direction, the direction we’d hope to head toward, turned us back. We couldn’t outdistance motor vehicles and drones all while hiding from a skilled sniper. We needed speed.

  Astrid suddenly pointed. A squat building on the edge of the bus lot, which was currently helping to hide us from the sniper, had an electric utility vehicle parked in front of it, unattended. We raced to it, Astrid sliding behind the driver’s wheel. I jumped into the passenger seat just as she powered it up and hit the accelerator. The electric motor had some punch to it and it was all I could do to hang on as she shot out of the lot, turning right onto a side street.

  Immediately ahead of us, an electric Mercedes SUV was coming straight at us, men with guns leaning out the windows. Astrid cut the wheel hard to the left, spinning us around the corner. As she smoothed out our direction, I fired four fast shots back at the Mercedes and was rewarded with a tight spiderweb of holes in the glass right in front of driver. The big SUV instantly veered away, slamming into the curb and jumping right over it, crashing into a building. Then my view of it was gone as Astrid accelerated up the road, my eyes catching sight of the street sign on the corner as the pursuing car disappeared behind us—it was called Sullivan Street.

  Another pair of Redhawks caught up to us, immediately splitting apart, one to either side of the UTV. It took half the remaining rounds in my magazine to hit the one on my side. By the time I did, the other Redhawk had enough time to put two rounds into the driver’s front tire of the UTV. The tire blew and instantly Astrid was wrestling for control of the little vehicle. Had I been driving, our run would have likely ended with a spectacular crash. But she’d been driving all kinds of vehicles from dirt bikes to armored personnel carriers from the time she could walk. I was handed a gun almost in the cradle, Astrid—a steering wheel.

  Somehow she corrected and kept us going, although our speed was instantly less than half of what it had been before. Oddly, that was useful because it made it marginally easier for me to hit the remaining Redhawk with the last rounds in my pistol.

  I reloaded as our transport limped along, only slightly faster than I could sprint. We made it across the next intersection, but I could see another Mercedes coming our way from behind us, at a much faster speed than we could muster. Astrid took us around another corner. Turning around, I lay across the little backseat, pistol pointed out the back. With my arm resting on the body of the UTV, I snapped off a carefully aimed shot the exact moment the SUV followed around the corner. I just barely hit the car, maybe in the grill, but seeing as our vehicle was bouncing on basically three tires and a metal rim, it was better than I expected. Didn’t slow them down at all, but hopefully it would keep them from getting too aggressive.

  A burst of e-mag rounds chewed up the pavement on our right side, instantly killing my hopes that they would keep their heads down.

  “Hang on!” Astrid yelled, twisting the wheel hard to the left yet again. Suddenly we were on another street, headed parallel to the building the sniper had been on. At least we were a block over, with covering buildings between us, but there was at least one upcoming cross street where the bastard might have a shot as we traversed the intersection.

  Behind us, the second Mercedes wheeled around the corner. I was waiting for it, the 9x23mm reloaded and ready. I had started with four full mags of fifteen rounds each. I was down to two full and one partial. I had put the partial one back in, intending to use it up on our pursuers, leaving the full ones for whatever lay ahead. So now I began a slow, steady aimed fire, again targeting the driver, who I could see staring at me from behind dark sunglasses. My first shot hit just a bit high and right, passing close to his head. He instantly whipped the wheel over, anticipating my next shot—which I didn’t immediately take. Instead, I let him react, then shot slightly ahead of his new path, immediately rewarded with a round hole in the windshield, low, but closer to center of his side.

  It must have hit him because I could see his passenger suddenly make a mad grab for the wheel, only just managing to straighten the big car. My third shot possibly clipped the passenger’s hand, but the car didn’t crash, instead smoothly, mechanically straightening out and coming dead on. Must have turned the self-driving AI back on. The passenger slumped down, other guns poked out the rear side widows, and automatic fire flooded our way. I punched six rounds through the front of the hood, hoping to clip something important. Despite it being electric and not internal combustion, there was still a good chance to hit a vital part. Most electrics have some kind of cooling system for the batteries.

  At first, nothing happened and I decided to save the remaining rounds. As I switched the almost fully depleted magazine for my second-to-last full one, smoke suddenly came from the front of the Mercedes and it started to slow appreciably.

  “AJ, we got a bad spot coming up,” Astrid said, pulling my attention back forward.

  We were almost up to that cross street where our sniper would potentially have a shot. To add to that, another pair of Redhawks was coming at us from head on. I leaned out the passenger side and tried to line up my sights on the fast-moving UAVs but they were too far away, very small, and swooping in fast, erratic flight paths. A lot differ
ent from hitting a big old SUV.

  I was close to taking a shot, as unlikely as it would be to score a hit, when suddenly both UAVs pulled up. It was like they were being taken off mission. They turned as one and shot away toward the sniper’s building.

  “That was handy,” Astrid said, puffing out a breath to push her hair out of her face. In that moment, deep in battle mode, part of me realized that she was dressed for presentations, not combat. Still a complete bombshell though. “AJ, pay attention. We’re about to cross the sniper’s line of fire,” she said, frowning at me. I slid over her lap, my handgun pointing out the driver’s side. Hopeless to think I could put the sniper off his game with a pistol, but just giving up wasn’t in me.

  We hit the cross street and I tried to line up my sights on the corner to the big building but didn’t fire. Instead, I watched, amazed, as the two Redhawks engaged the sniper’s position, firing their weapons in a steady barrage. That’s when it occurred to me that Rikki was intervening, distracting the sniper without actually hurting him. Go Rikki.

  Then I saw the man stand up to run, only to get shot at point-blank range by both drones. Still taking rounds, he stumbled backward and fell from the top of the building, plummeting to the ground below.

  The whole scene—building, drones, and sniper—disappeared as we got to the other side of the intersection, leaving me stunned at what I had just witnessed.

  “What happened? We get lucky?” Astrid asked. Her words brought me back to reality and I immediately noticed how warm her legs were under my chest and how good she smelled against the burning rubber stench of the shredded, burning tire.

  I pulled back upright in my own seat. “Ah, the Redhawks shot the sniper,” I reported, turning to look behind us. A hundred meters back, the Mercedes had rolled to a stop, but now a human form was kneeling outside of it, aiming something at us. The muzzle of whatever weapon he was using sparked red with fire and then something smashed into the back of the UTV. It looked like a stainless steel mesh net and it was just suddenly all bound up in our tires. The little vehicle bounced and skidded to a stop as Astrid fought for control a second time, the anti-vehicle round locking up the entire rear drive.

  “Out, time to run,” I said, but she was already sliding out of the UTV and taking off down the street. Behind us, I saw three figures running after us, the Mercedes left behind.

  Chapter 27

  Astrid was ahead of me, moving fast despite her less-than-ideal shoes. I pushed to catch up, glancing back in time to see one pursuer stop and raise his weapon. E-mag rounds chewed through the UTV behind us and tore up the street on our right side. We automatically moved toward the other side of the street.

  Probably what he wanted, but knowing that and doing something about it were two different things. We were still heavily outgunned, outnumbered, and without backup… except for whatever had happened to the sniper with the Redhawks. I had thought it was Rikki, right up until the drones shot the sniper. Rikki wouldn’t have done that, would he? His programming didn’t allow for harming humans. But it could’ve been Harper. Yes, that was most likely it. Harper had taken over the drones somehow.

  Astrid was getting a little ahead of me so I put the matter out of my mind and pushed myself to go faster. The sound of tires rounding a corner off to the right of us made us turn left again and now I recognized the sight of the Red Hook Container Terminal looming up ahead of us.

  Stacks of massive steel containers created a group of alleys to hide in. Unfortunately, it was very logically laid out, almost like a parking lot for containers. I would have liked a more hectic jumble, but we weren’t rich with choices here.

  Astrid turned toward the water’s edge, where a long line of containers was parked, parallel to each other as opposed to the straight stacks of containers out in the middle of the terminal lot. Three massive gantry cranes were unloading a ship, swinging the long steel boxes off the deck and onto the pavement where four-wheeled reach stackers were clamping onto them and then moving them into storage.

  We darted into the little maze along the shoreline, moving fast to get as deep into them as we could. Something about the unloading operations was itching in my mind but survival basics kept most of my attention.

  Astrid finally crouched down at the corner of the sixteenth container, about halfway down the line, her little 9mm pistol gripped firmly in hand. “I don’t have much ammo. It only holds eight shots and I started with three mags,” she said in a low, quiet voice.

  “I’m down to about the same amount,” I said back, also speaking in hushed tones.

  The electric hum of a car caught both of our attention at the same time, then the sound of a second one came immediately after. Car doors opened and slammed.

  We crouched and watched.

  “Ajaya Gurung, you are pinned down!” a man yelled out. The voice was vaguely familiar. “We could have killed you immediately, you know that, right? Provide us what we want and you will go free.”

  Bullshit. Give them whatever they wanted and immediately die was more like it. Lying down as low as I could to the ground, I started to peek around the bottom corner of my container. Going very low is the best bet for being unobserved by humans. Unfortunately, these people handled themselves like well-trained soldiers—they would look everywhere. It was still a real risk but I needed to see. Astrid tapped my back before I could poke my head out. She handed me a makeup compact. Brilliant. The sun was behind the container next to us so I didn’t have to worry about reflecting sunlight as I used the mirror to look around the corner, still keeping it low to the ground.

  About a dozen or more professional combat operators in civilian clothes were spread out across the pavement, the front of a black SUV just barely visible. They all carried military weapons, except one man who stood, hands on hips, turning in a circle as he spoke.

  “We will let your girlfriend go immediately as a show of good faith,” he said, turning back toward our side of the terminal, giving me a good, long look at his face. I knew him. It took a second to recall his name, but I had met him not very long ago. Blond hair, pale blue eyes, very pale skin. Cold, hard features. Shussman… something Shussman. Calvin Shussman, CFO of Zeus Global, the company that had hired me to go into the Zone and pull out an old laptop computer mere months ago.

  He turned and made a silent, sweeping wave to one of his people, a tough-looking woman carrying a short barreled automatic shotgun. Immediately, that soldier pointed her index finger three times in three different directions, ordering the rest of them to spread out and search for us. Automatically, they split into pairs, each soldier watching a different field of fire, and they began to move among the big main stacks of containers.

  “We just want contact with your friend,” he said.

  Astrid frowned at me. I mouthed Harper at her and she nodded, immediately understanding. Harper had said she had evidence on the true architects of Drone Night. She’d indicated I had met one of them. But so far, she hadn’t released all of her information, holding it back as protection of sorts.

  I pulled out my phone and held it up to Astrid, mouthing, “Should I?”

  She frowned and shook her head. Then she pointed at me and made a finger gun from her left hand, pointing it at her head. Oh. Shussman wanted me as a hostage to leverage Harper. And Astrid would make great leverage to force me to contact Harper.

  I turned and pointed at the edge of the water behind us. The dock dropped down to the water, which was currently almost a meter below the edge of the concrete. Maybe we could move along down there, unseen, and get back out to the city.

  Astrid’s head snapped around and she was suddenly pulling me back to the other corner of the container, then around it, farther from the water’s edge. She put her mouth up to my ear.

  “Team just rounded the corner at the end. We have to work our way toward the cranes.”

  The terminal was big, like many acres big, and with less than twenty people, Shussman was going to have to really spread them
out to find us. Problem was we were now trapped between containers with searchers on either end of the container lineup.

  I turned and pointed up, at the top of the next container. It was a bit more than two and a half meters high. I made a stirrup with my hands and she stepped off the ground with a little jump, her foot in my hands, my arms lifting to boost her momentum. Her weight stayed on my hands for a second, then disappeared as she pulled herself up.

  I took three steps away from the container, turned and ran, jumping up to catch her outstretched hand, my other hand grabbing the metal edge. Then I too was up, crouching on top.

  We took a second to look carefully around. None of the searchers had moved far enough away to see the top of our container. Immediately we both went down over the other side, lowering ourselves till we could drop as quietly as possible. Then we repeated the process on the next container. That one was very closely parked to its neighbor, so we easily jumped the gap between them, and then the space to the one after that. But we had to repeat the drop and climb maneuver to clear the next space between containers. Suddenly we froze. Down on the ground, the hum of a motor was clear and getting louder. The driver of one of the SUVs was using his vehicle to speed the search.

  We turned and ran at the next container in a sudden burst of fear-activated adrenaline, both jumping for the top edge, both catching it and climbing up.

  My arms and legs were burning, but good old solid fear drove me on. Astrid never showed the slightest sign of faltering, so how could I?

  We crouched down on top of the metal container, as close to the water side as we could get without exposing ourselves to the team moving up that side. Out on the main tarmac, the first pair of operators appeared in our line of vision, each looking between the big stacks of containers in front of them. If they turned back to look at their boss, they would immediately see us atop our metal perch.