Skystorm (Ryan Decker)

by Steven Konkoly

  “Ready in a few minutes,” said Anish.

  Good. He wasn’t sure how much longer they could stay parked here. Their windowless cargo van sat tucked away in the corner of a Safeway parking lot, a quarter of a mile from the APEX Institute’s four-story glass-and-metal headquarters. The grocery store hadn’t been busy when they’d arrived a few hours ago, but as the afternoon wore on, employees from the dozens of major corporations based in Tyson’s Corner had started to trickle in to do a little last-minute shopping before heading home.

  Six drones zooming out of the back of a windowless van fitted with an unusually powerful antenna—less than a mile from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence—was bound to attract the wrong kind of attention. He gave them three minutes from launch to pull off the attack. Any longer than that was pushing it, which didn’t give them much leeway. At least thirty seconds would be taken up by the drones’ preprogrammed flight to the building.

  “I think I’m ready,” said Anish, placing the drone he’d just finished inspecting on top of the folding table set up directly behind the van’s rear doors.

  “Think?”

  “I’m ready,” he said. “Just paying respect to Murphy’s Law. Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.”

  “Just make sure the six pounds of C-4 doesn’t go wrong inside this van,” said Tim, “while I’m sitting in it.”

  “The bombs have not been armed,” said Anish. “I may be crazy, but I’m not cray cray.”

  “Let’s get this over with,” said Tim.

  He got out of the seat and made his way back to the makeshift launching pad. His job was simple for now. When Anish maneuvered a drone out of the back of the van, he placed the next one in the stack on the table. Rinse and repeat until all six drones were headed toward the APEX building along their preprogrammed flight paths. Things got a little complicated after that.

  “Ready?” asked Anish.

  “Do it,” said Tim, switching the display on his watch.

  Anish pushed the dual rear doors wide open, exposing their drone-launching operation to the general public. Tim started the stopwatch the moment the quadcopter rose from the table, setting the phone aside. By the time he had returned his attention to the table, the drone hovered just outside the van.

  Tim grabbed the next quadcopter off the stack beside him and set it on the table, just as the drone behind the van zipped skyward with a high-pitched buzz. A few heads turned in the parking lot, and he revised the timeline. They’d drive out of here in two and a half minutes.

  Wasting no time, Anish attached the controller to its assigned Velcro patch on a long two-by-four board mounted to the van wall behind him and took down the controller labeled #2. He repeated the process, launching the second drone a little quicker than the first. By the time they cycled the drones out of the van and shut the door, forty-five seconds had elapsed.

  Anish shut the doors and retrieved controller #1, taking control of a drone hovering directly over the APEX building. He quickly landed it between two massive rooftop HVAC units before taking control of drone #2 and setting it down between a second grouping of HVAC enclosures. One minute and fifteen seconds down. Now for the hard part. Or fun part, depending on how you looked at it.

  “I’m maneuvering drone number three toward the underground parking garage entrance,” said Anish.

  Tim slid into the driver’s seat and grabbed the cell phone in the cup holder, placing his finger over the number three button. Each drone’s cell phone trigger was linked to a speed-dial number on this phone.

  “Are you in?” asked Tim.

  “Yep. I’m just looking for—no freakin’ way,” said Anish.

  “What? What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong, but I do have an open elevator door,” said Anish.

  “With nobody inside, I hope?”

  “It’s empty,” said Anish. “Aaaaannnnd now it’s out of order. Detonate drone three.”

  Tim pressed and held the button.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  The floor shuddered under Ezra Dalton’s feet, instantly killing the heated discussion between directors. The war room went quiet, interrupted a few seconds later by a phone call at Allan Kline’s workstation. He picked up the handset and listened, shaking his head.

  “Security thinks a bomb exploded in the executive parking garage,” said Kline. “The guards at the entrance said a drone flew past them, disappearing inside just before the explosion.”

  “A drone?” asked Vernon Franklin.

  “Do we need to evacuate?” asked Donovan Mayhew, getting up from his seat.

  Samuel Quinn spun his chair away from the screen at the front of the room to face them.

  “What kind of drone?” asked Quinn.

  “Does it matter?” asked Kline.

  “It kind of does,” said Quinn, sharing an annoyed look with Dalton.

  Kline requested information and listened to the answer. “It was about two feet across and had a bunch of propellers.”

  “Sounds like a quadcopter,” said Quinn. “They can’t do much more than cosmetic damage to the building. Especially at that size. We’re talking one, maybe two pounds of explosives.”

  Two successive thumps rattled the room, the lights briefly flickering.

  “Are you sure about that?” asked Kline. “That sounded like more than cosmetic damage.”

  Dalton picked up the phone at her station and dialed the building’s security commander directly. She started speaking the moment he picked up the call.

  “Krueger. What the hell is going on?”

  “Ma’am. We just had two explosions on the roof,” he said.

  “What hit us?”

  “We’re reviewing the camera footage. Hold on.”

  “I need to know what we’re up against right now,” said Dalton.

  “I understand, ma’am. There it is,” said Krueger. “Shit. It was another drone. Quadcopter.”

  A fourth explosion shook the room, sounding like it had detonated right outside the operations hub.

  “Dammit, Ezra,” said Kline, finally snapping. “What the hell is happening?”

  “They’re just trying to rattle us,” said Quinn.

  “After the boat and the massacre at the senator’s house, I’d say they’re doing a good job,” said Abbott.

  “Krueger. I think another one hit the third floor,” said Dalton.

  “I’ll send—” started Krueger, his words cut off by another explosion, this one just slightly vibrating the floor.

  “Krueger? Krueger?” she said.

  The security commander answered after an uncomfortably long delay. “They flew one of those things right into the revolving door in the lobby! Blew all of the door’s glass out! I just sent RST to make sure nothing gets through.”

  She stiffened at the thought of an explosive-laden drone flying around the Institute’s hallways.

  “What?” said Abbott.

  “The last explosion blasted the glass out of the revolving door,” said Dalton.

  Quinn finally stood up, the typically collected expression on his face replaced with one of genuine fear.

  “Does he have people in place?” asked Quinn.

  “RST is handling it,” she said.

  “Would one of you kindly let us in on your little side conversation?” said Kline.

  “Krueger thinks the drones could fit through the missing glass of the revolving door,” said Dalton.

  “Wonderful,” said Kline. “We’re basically trapped in this room is what they’re saying, unless you can outrun an explosive drone.”

  A brief tremor passed through the room. The sixth explosion within a minute.

  “Krueger?” she said, waiting a few seconds for a reply.

  “They blew a small hole in the underground parking security door,” he said. “The team lowered it right after the first one exploded.”

  “Can a drone fit through that hole?” said Dalton.

  “Hold on. Let
me ask,” said Krueger.

  “Another breach? How big?” said Quinn, before heading toward her station.

  “Garage security door,” she said. “They’re checking the size of the hole.”

  Krueger finally responded. “They’re pretty sure a drone could not fit through.”

  She didn’t like the sound of pretty sure.

  “Send some of your shooters down to the parking garage to make sure nothing gets through,” said Dalton.

  Quinn asked her for the phone, which she reluctantly handed over. Dalton had a feeling he was about to overcomplicate the situation.

  “How many RST and regular security officers do we have in the building?” Quinn asked Krueger.

  After hearing Krueger’s reply, Quinn said, “That’s not enough. Scramble the Manassas Annex. Get everyone over here immediately.”

  “In rush hour traffic?” said Kline.

  Quinn shot him a look before yelling into the phone. “I understand it’s rush hour. I said immediately. Spool up the helicopters and get them over here now!”

  He slammed the phone into the receiver, muttering a string of expletives. She’d never seen him like this in the fifteen years he’d been with the Institute.

  “Samuel. We don’t have clearance to fly those helicopters into Tyson’s Corner,” said Dalton. “And even if we did, I don’t think it would be a good idea with explosive drones flying around the building.”

  “I really don’t give a shit what you think, Ezra,” said Quinn.

  Quinn had either snapped or he had decided to try to salvage his seat on the board by turning the group against her—which wouldn’t be a difficult maneuver under these circumstances. A few more drone attacks and he could probably call for a panicked vote right now to dismiss her, though it would most likely serve him no ostensible purpose.

  Once the dust settled over the next few weeks, a comprehensive review of the past week’s debacle would lay a scathing indictment at his feet. He’d somehow allowed the SKYSTORM shipment to be tracked back to the ship in Houston, a small oversight that had cost APEX several billion dollars and landed an army of federal investigators at their doorstep.

  Instead of giving him the moment he wanted, and engaging in an unwinnable and certainly futile argument, she shrugged. Quinn wanted to play games? Fine. Let’s see how this all works out for him when the two helicopters fall out of the sky onto rush hour traffic, setting half of Tyson’s Corner on fire.

  “I guess we sit tight and wait for the cavalry,” said Dalton, taking immense pleasure in watching him partially deflate right in front of her.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  Jeffrey Munoz watched the busy hangar through his light machine gun’s reflex sight with little interest beyond finishing the job and getting on the road. He didn’t feel like sitting in traffic for three hours to get to Annapolis, and their window of opportunity for missing the worst of it was rapidly fading.

  They’d been on the road most of the day already, having driven from the senator’s safe house to the team’s base of operations in the Allegheny Mountains—a seven-hour round trip to retrieve the weapons they would soon put to use. The “bucket list” crab-eating experience touted by Rich and the senator had better be worth the added time in the car.

  The tail rotor on the first helicopter that had been rolled out of the hangar started to spin, picking up speed, as the main rotors engaged. The second Blackhawk’s rotors began moving a few seconds later. Behind the dark-gray war machines, about twenty heavily armed and armored operators gathered for a briefing.

  “I’m ready when you are,” said Enrique Melendez from a position thirty feet away to his right. “What are you thinking?”

  Melendez had been his partner in crime on the team for more than a decade, extending back to General Sanderson’s reboot of the Black Flag program. The combination of Melendez’s unrivaled long-range shooting skills with his more direct, close-up approach yielded a formidable team. The fact that they had worked together so closely for so long made them nearly unstoppable.

  “The primary mission is to disable the helicopters,” said Munoz.

  “Rich didn’t send us back to retrieve these just to ground the helicopters,” said Melendez. “I could have done that with one of the rifles back at the safe house.”

  “Thirty seconds,” said Munoz. “Then we’re out of here. No exceptions.”

  “Thirty should be long enough to put this operation out of business permanently,” said Melendez. “I’ll hit the one giving the pep talk first, then work on the helicopters.”

  “As long as you’re done in thirty seconds,” said Munoz, before placing the gunsight reticle center mass on an operative kneeling to the left of the group leader.

  “On my shot,” said Melendez. “Two. One.”

  His fifty-caliber sniper rifle boomed; the overpressure created by the muzzle wasn’t so bad this time. Placing him thirty feet away had been the right call. The last time they’d worked side by side like this, using similar weapons, he couldn’t hear a damn thing for a week.

  Munoz checked the second hand on his watch and pressed the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon’s trigger, unleashing a short burst at the assembly. The bullets struck the concrete several feet in front of the group, a few skipping into the security team and knocking them backward. He adjusted his aim and fired a longer burst, which dropped at least three more—as the entire group scattered.

  Melendez’s cannon pounded away at the helicopters, while Munoz chased the rest of the security team back into the hangar, leaving about half of them dead or wounded on the tarmac. A quick look at his watch told him they had about ten more seconds to inflict as much damage as possible. Bullets snapped through the bushes and thunked into the tree trunks around him as he fired a sustained burst at a small group that had started to return fire from the corner of the hangar, momentarily quieting their rifles.

  “You almost done?” he yelled at Melendez, who was in the process of swapping out the fifty-caliber rifle’s outrageously sized ammunition magazine.

  “One more magazine. Just to be sure!”

  Munoz shifted his aim to the leftmost helicopter, finding that its main rotor had come to a stop, but its tail rotor was still spinning. For all he knew, the pilots had shut down the main rotor before taking cover. There was only one way to be sure the helicopter couldn’t take off. He sighted in on the helicopter’s tail and fired several short bursts until the rotor assembly broke apart, shredding the horizontal stabilizer underneath it.

  “I was working on that!” said Melendez.

  “Work faster next time,” said Munoz, sweeping the hangar from left to right with the rest of the machine gun’s two-hundred-round box.

  The fifty-caliber rifle boomed, Melendez firing projectile after projectile into the remaining helicopter—which felt like overkill under the circumstances.

  “You having fun?” asked Munoz.

  Melendez ignored him and continued firing, entirely focused on something other than disabling the helicopter. He could have done that with two more well-placed shots.

  “Booya!” said Melendez, followed by a loud metal-on-metal screech.

  Munoz turned in time to see the rightmost Blackhawk roll onto its left side, the fully engaged main rotor blades slamming into the concrete and exploding into dozens of thick metal splinters that tore through the other helicopter.

  Munoz rose to a crouch and took off, leaving the machine gun behind. Melendez did the same. The weapons had been taken from a Wyoming militia group’s arsenal, in the wake of a search-and-destroy raid they had undertaken a few years ago. Forensically, they were a dead end for any investigator.

  Sporadic gunfire chased him deeper into the forest until it tapered off to nothing. Melendez had caught up to him a few hundred yards later, at the edge of a recently tilled field—where their pickup truck waited on a jeep trail in the late afternoon sun. Munoz tapped a quick text message to Rich on his satellite phone after hopping in the frying-pan-hot pa
ssenger seat.

  Helicopters and half of annex detachment OOC.

  Rich replied in seconds.

  BZ. Dinner at 8.

  Five minutes later they were driving through light traffic on Prince William Parkway, headed for Interstate 66 and their unavoidable rendezvous with the Beltway’s notorious showstopping traffic. They’d be lucky to reach Annapolis by eight o’clock.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  Samuel Quinn’s face went pale after he picked up the phone, his expression going from partially deflated to flat within seconds. It was way too soon for the helicopters to have reached the building and come to a fiery end, so Dalton assumed the security team had discovered another breach. It turned out to be a combination of both, but not at all what she’d expected.

  “The annex was attacked, right before they loaded the teams onto the helicopters,” said Quinn. “Both helicopters were destroyed, and half of the rapid response team is gone. Laura Bachmann among them.”

  “More drones?” asked Abbott.

  Quinn shook his head slowly. “Machine-gun and heavy-caliber fire. One of the helicopters somehow rolled over.”

  “Maybe we should reconsider our position regarding Senator Steele,” said Donovan Mayhew. “In light of the damage she’s inflicted in the past twenty-four hours alone, a truce might be our best option. What else does she have planned?”

  Dalton considered offering her advice, which leaned toward staying calm and letting this storm pass without making any spurious decisions, but Quinn looked like he was on the brink of self-defeat—so she decided to hold back for now. He’d flipped on her without the slightest hesitation or warning. If he was about to pound another nail in his own coffin, who was she to stand in his way?

  “I think I’ve figured out her endgame. If you can call it that,” said Quinn.

  “Just like that you’ve figured it out?” said Kline. “I’m all ears.”

  Dalton allowed herself one quick indulgence.

  “Me too,” she said, receiving a venomous glare in return.

  “The rooftop explosions took two-thirds of the building’s HVAC capacity off-line. It’s late in the afternoon, when this building is always naturally warmer from a full day of sun. That’s why we’re cooking in here right now.”