by Jack Parker
Victoria sprinted for the remaining car. Sure enough, she found it rigged to explode, but the charges had misfired. Gingerly, she removed the plastic explosive and detatched the detonator. Vaguely, she was aware that Claire had followed her and was watching the entire process with interest. Ugh, she's like an annoying little puppy dog.
"Go back, Claire."
Victoria opened the canopy. There was no one left to object. Everyone had fled the area.
"I'm coming with you."
Victoria drew her gun and pointed it at Claire, who seemed taken aback, and a little hurt.
"No, you're not. Now go before I shoot you myself. At least that way I won't be giving Mako the satisfaction of killing someone else because of me."
"Mako killed my . . ." Claire trialed off. "Mark . . . Robin. He and I were close."
Victoria sighed and climbed in the vehicle. She didn't have time for this.
"He took someone from you too, didn't he?" Claire pressed. "I heard him . . . in the recording. You should know how I feel."
"Look, Claire. The fact remains that you aren't trained for this. You'll only be getting in the way and if they get ahold of you again I . . ."
Victoria trailed off as she looked at the controls to the vehicle. The Skycar was supposed to work with a programmable autopilot that would simply take the driver and passenger where they wanted to go. There was, of course, a failsafe manual flight system, but the cars were designed so anybody could use them. Anybody except Victoria it seemed. Victoria flushed.
"You wouldn't happen to know how to . . ."
"Scoot over," Claire said with a smile.
Reluctantly, Victoria did as she was asked. Claire flipped two switches and used an ipad like touch pad to activate two engines at a time.
"Looks like all systems are working," Claire said. "We're good to go. These things still need pilots, as the autopilots are still taking some time to get right. Didn't you read your material?"
"I . . .haven't exactly had time to—"
"Hang on tight, Ms. Super-spy," Claire said, beaming and hitting a switch that closed the canopy. "We're going for a ride!"
"Claire, whatever happens you stay in this vehicle, you understand?"
"I understand," Claire said. "And call me Charlie. I like it better for this kind of thing."
* * *
"There they are," Dawn declared, pointing out the two black canvassed trucks as if he wasn't already descending on an intercept course.
"Tell them we'll head them off before they cross under that next overpass."
Dawn had a bluetooth over her ear and was patched into a conference call with the other two cars to coordinate the attack. She pressed the device close to her temple even though the interior of the car was fairly quite considering it operated on four VTOL engines. One of Dawn's deadly assassin sisters known as Angelina piloted a car slightly to his left. A man wounded in the encounter with Agent Kinglsy and the new one rode with her. He would be useless in this attack except to pilot the car. The car to his right had a single occupant, another mercenary recruited by Dawn. The man that Mako had ordered to be his partner for this impromptu mission was reported to be shot out of the car and killed.
Fools, Mako thought in annoyance. Why hadn't they just flown away?
Now instead of three people to take control of the trucks there was only the two sisters. It wasn't if he expected anything to go wrong and for one of them to be killed or incapacitated by a stubborn truck defender, the women were far too skilled—Mako just always like to have a card in reserve.
"They're ready," Dawn informed him. "Are you sure you can't let me deal with Carlo? I really want to but a bullet in that bald slimy little piece of snail shit. It sounds like sooo much fun."
"Da, I'm sure. I need you down there. He'll try and run for it when he knows we have the weapons. Load them into the hovercraft and cut him off. C-130 would crush this car unless I have a death wish and want to aim it at an engine. I won't make move until you are ready."
"What are you going to do until then?"
"Govno."
"What?"
Mako pointed out the window, where in the distance a trio of lights started out small like starlight and rapidly grew larger. It was another skycar.
"I thought you blew the other two?" He said to Dawn in frustration.
"Only one blew but the other should have been disabled enough to be—"
"Nevermind. I'll handle her. First, let's drop you off."
* * *
Jake heard engines from above. Now the loud engines of fighter jets, or the thrum of a helicopter, but they were load enough to be heard clearly even over the groan of the mighty diesel engine of the truck her road in. He crawled to the back of the truck, hung his head out, and looked up. He crawled back inside. Then, just to make sure his eyes had not deceived him, he peered out for one more look.
"Here we go again," he said flatly. "Now it's small jet planes?"
A heavy thump on the canvas roof above him let him know that he now had a visitor. Jake had a sneaking suspicion he wasn't just going to be able to ride this one out. Whoever it was that had just hitched a ride with him was going to be less than cordial if Jake was found inside. He would have to quickly determine the intentions of his guest. He took out Montoya's revolver, checked the safety, and stepped up on the tailgate. Grasping the edge of the roof of the truck, he kept the gun pointed and peered over the side, and just barely had time to glimpse a woman in a red jumpsuit crawling towards the truck cabin. The sound of gunfire from above and a sudden jerk in the truck made him lose his balance and topple back inside.
There was a screeching whine as the sound of a jet engine changed in pitch. Jake crawled back up just in time to see one of the strange red aircraft spiral out of control, hit the concrete of the freeway, and pinwheel away from him in a fiery explosion that caused two cars to have to swerve out of the way as the unsuspecting drivers nearly found themselves caught up in the destruction.
He looked up and saw two more of the little quad-engine craft zip away at full speed, one chasing diligently after the other. That has to be Victoria, Jake thought. He had given Victoria his Mobistealth cell phone tracker password, but he had not expected her to catch up with him so fast. Yet if she had commandeered one of those flying whatchamacallits and followed the bad guys, why wasn't she getting her pretty little ass down here to help him? He couldn't worry about that for now. If she wasn't going to stop the trucks, he would.
He climbed back up to find one of the female assassins nearly ready to swing herself down by the passenger side door. Her long dark hair had streaks of red in it in a color alternating braid. He aimed the pistol and took aim. She opened the passenger door with ease, and pulled a weapon from a holster at her hip. It extended with a press of a button by her thumb into a mini crossbow. If I can capture her, get her to surrender . . .
"Drop you're weapon!" he shouted.
She sneered at him, turned and fired two soundless bolts that stuck in the canvas just above his white- knuckled hand. He squeezed his trigger as she turned, but the driver of the truck had seen the woman now and was now swerving. He gripped the canvas tight and it tore away from the truck as the gun slipped from his hand from the recoil and fell inside the truck. The canvas continued to tear, swinging him out to the right side of the truck, his feet dragged for a moment on the pavement, and he whiffed the scent of burnet rubber from the soles of his shoes as he pulled himself back up. The woman had already regained her balance and shot the passenger, whom she pulled from the cabin. Jake saw a bolt through the dead man's neck as he bounced and rolled like a rubber rag doll down the highway, spreading red gore on concrete.
Jake watched her climb inside and imagined a similar fate for the driver. The truck swerved again, and Jake wrapped his arms around the iron bar which supported the canvas through the massive tear in the side. Jessica was about to commandeer the lead vehicle as she broke the driver's side window and tossed something inside. That tr
uck billowed a strange purple-grey smoke from the cabin, and swerved so far it hit the concrete divider on the right side of the highway. The two trucks barely managed to avoid colliding with each other as they ended up side by side. Someone had control of the truck he was on again.
Jessica was busying herself with moving the unconscious driver of her truck out of the way and holding the wheel steady. Jake climbed back inside his truck through the tear in the canvas and crawled deeper into his truck in attempt to stay out of sight. With deadly assassins in control of both trucks, Jake recovered the revolver and stayed low while considering his next move. The assassin driving his truck knew about him now and would signal Jessica. He suspected this had to do with the trucks staying side by side.
If he tried to approach the cabin by the passenger side, he was likely to get shot easily or become the meat in a truck sandwich. If he approached by the driver's side, he might still be gunned down through the canvas on the signal of the woman driving. He needed to stop both trucks, but for now he felt like a sitting duck. He settled in with his back against the stack of three rectangular crates and checked the ammo in the revolver. Three shots left. Things were about to get very tricky.
* * *
Victoria checked the GPS map on her phone again.
"Turn south to one nine zero," she told Charlie.
"Are you sure that thing can find them just by his cell phone?" asked the younger woman as she gently maneuvered the car with a stick not unlike those found in a fighter aircraft.
"My phone is a little more sophisticated than your average smartphone," Victoria explained. "Once I logged on to his account it now treats my cell phone as if it were his, showing me the location on my map. With any luck, we'll even find them somewhere on the highway heading for the base before Mako and his little sluts find . . ."
She trailed off. More than once already, Victoria and Charlie had mistaken the running lights of aircraft approaching the airport for the potential threat of the three hostile skycars. There was no mistaking the three headlight style beams that flashed by below them in a steep dive toward an overpass on the highway. Two black-canvased trucks were speeding around a long curve toward the barrier. It looked like Mako wanted to cut them off before the trucks passed under.
"Shit."
"What now?" Charlie asked, having also seen their enemy.
"Follow them in, and cut the lights."
"I can't," Charlie said in dismay after trying some buttons on the touch sensitive flat-screen in front of them both. "It's got some kind of safety protocol and it won't let me override it without ripping the guts out of this thing."
"Fine. Just stay on them, bring us in from above as fast and as close as you can and put it into hover."
Victoria flicked the safety off of her pistol and cocked the slide to put the weapon into semi-automatic fire mode. She put her hand on the canopy release for her side of the door. Charlie accelerated. Suddenly one of the trio of skycars turned and headed back directly for them. The altimeter read five hundred feet. There wasn't going to be much room to maneuver.
"Pass underneath that one!" Victoria barked. "Don't pass to the side. Concentrate on the overpass. We can't let them get to those trucks!"
"I can't. He's matching me!"
"I see that. Gun it. Play chicken with him and—"
The skycar heading toward them whirled into a hover and the canopy popped open. Victoria saw the light burst of automatic fire from the driver. She pushed on the stick covering Charlie's hand with her own.
"Hey!" Charlie protested.
Their skycar dipped directly under the attacker, and yawed nearly on its side as Charlie pulled back on the stick for control. Victoria redirected the engines manually by using the touch pad. The ship shuddered with sudden strain of being thrown into hover while moving at top speed. She had been watching Charlie and getting better at understanding how to control the car manually.
"Sorry. No time to explain. Take the stick. I'm on the engines."
"Wait! If you do that you'll—"
The car protested with safety alarms as it rolled nearly on its side.
"Warning," said a deep alto female voice. "air induction failure."
Victoria popped the canopy as the car jerked around to the right and started to drop like a rock. Her stomach dropped as she raised her gun and fired seven shots into the underbelly and nearest engines of the attacking car. It flared with two explosions in its engines and dropped like a rock out of sight.
"Warning . . . Warning . . . engine overheat," protested the voice of their car.
"I have to shut down one of the back engines!" Charlie said.
The car righted itself, and Victoria could see a flaming trail of debris where the car she had just shot out of the sky had met its end on the highway. She blew out a breath. There didn't seem to be any bad collateral damage. The bad news was they were down and engine, and the other two cars were in position above the trucks. Victoria could see a woman jump out and land prone on the roof of each one as their rides lifted skyward again. They began to maneuver in a hard right turn.
"Head back into the city!" Victoria commanded Charlie.
"But aren't we after the—"
"No choice! They have their people in place. These two will bracket us and take us down. We can't fight them both."
"But Mako—"
"Can't risk us alerting Carlo that the weapons aren't under his control anymore."
Charlie sighed and turned the car, speeding low over the city heading for the tall buildings of the northern strip. Victoria clutched the armrests of her seat as her stomach and its contents fought against the pull of gravity through the diving turn. The Hilton Grand rapidly loomed closer. She put her hand on Charlie's shoulder.
"Don't worry, you'll get your shot at the son of a bitch."
Victoria kept another thought to herself. You'll get your shot. Just at what is left with him after I'm done.
"They're still coming after us! You were right. But . . ."
Victoria shared Charlie's concern. On three engines, their little skycar was straining. The passed so close to the large neon sign of the Hilton Grand that Victoria felt for a moment like she was inside a tanning pod. She glanced behind and through the H-shape of their tail section saw the single heavy nose headlight of two skycars in rapid pursuit.
"Can we reboot the engine that went down?"
"I don't know!" Charlie was frantic on the digital screen, scrolling through menu options even as she held the throttle down. "I think we may have took a hit back there. This thing has a pissy check engine light. It really wants us just to land."
"Head for the stratosphere tower," Victoria decided. "I think we can reach it before they overtake us."
"Why? Then what are you going to do?"
Victoria smiled wickedly at Charlie, raising her eyebrows at her as if her new battle plan should have been quite obvious.
"We're going to play hide and seek."
Chapter Twenty-Four
Grace was never one for hiding. When the shooting started, Steve had made her promise she would get to safety. So she had, and while on a call with 911 she had driven without regard for traffic laws the short distance back to the Grande Chapel hotel.
Getting in wasn't easy. The third floor had a huge hole in the left corner which was still spewing a foreboding black smoke. The hotel was locked down and only rescue workers and the dozens of cops, SWAT members, or detectives were allowed in or out. It took explaining to a cop that she was a witness to shootings inside the network control room to get inside. The officer radioed for a detective to come out, but concocting a story about how they needed her at the crime scene and how his boss would not be too happy with him for holding up the investigation led to her being escorted inside.
She gave her escort a surprise shove and bolted for the control room once she was within striking distance.
"Hey!" Yelled the startled young beat cop who had become her babysitter. "What are you...? You
can't go in there! That's a crime scene!"
She ignored her of course, and had the double doors locked behind her before the young woman could catch up. Grace found a few stray computer chords and tightly tied the door handles yard together for good measure.
"Now to get this place up and running," Grace said to herself after a short calming breath.
Her escort pounded on the door for a few moments then went off in search of help. Grace turned on a computer and the large central monitor. She did her best to avoid the areas still caked with blood and gore, but just walking through the room made her feel queasy at the recent horrible memories. She wretched as she leaned over one console and typed in a few commands as it booted then flipped more power switches and prepared to open the control software she would need. She picked up a headset from the primary camera controller station and fit it into place with trembling hands.
"Steve, don't you dare go getting yourself killed before I can—"
"Flightcam one online," said a digital female voice in her ear.
"Flightcam two online."
All six of the flying cameras came up without a hitch, and she quickly linked them all to one station. With as many bullet holes and cracked monitors all over the place, it was a wonder any of the stations even worked at all. The good news was the cameras were all at the Mirage already in preparation for as much of the take-off of the sky cars as they could record. The rest was going to be filmed by helicopter or on board cam. The flights were going to be short, just enough to showcase what the cars could do. None of that mattered now.
What mattered now was that she find a way to make herself useful. The situation she left looked like a standoff. Maybe she could provide a distraction. Maybe if any of those murderers made a run for it she could make sure they had nowhere to hide. She wouldn't know until she got the cameras up and flying. She stood and retrieved an IPad from a drawer hat hung open at an odd angle. The device was no good, pierced with a bullet hole. She sprinted over to the storage locker, and finding a spare Ipad in working order, slaved her station to it through an internal wireless network. Now she could operate all the cameras on the big screen and command the cameras to any location she desired via a terrain sensitive map on the Ipad.