by Mel Odom
The plan was ragged, a patchwork thing, but doable.
Then Flicker dodged to the right and yelled, “Sniper at three o’clock on the roof!”
Just starting to move, already raking the rooftops with his enhanced vision, Hawke felt a high-velocity bullet graze his temple hard enough to jolt his head sideways. His reinforced skullcap kept the round from penetrating, but the glancing blow jarred his brain, causing his vision to double and vertigo to dance through him.
Drawing a Predator, he fought to stay on his feet and find cover, but a second bullet thudded into the subdermal armor right over his heart just as the loud crack! of the first shot reached his ears.
CHAPTER THIRTY
If the heavy-caliber bullet had only struck flesh and bone, it would have passed through Hawke’s chest and staggered him at best, leaving a fist-sized hole he might not have recovered from. But since all the velocity expended against his subdermal armor, the round knocked him backward. His wired reflexes came online automatically as his adrenal pump flooded his system.
The world slowed down as he managed to keep from falling by spreading his feet and shifting his center of gravity. He spotted the third bullet streaking toward him, and threw himself to the left. The round slapped the ground behind him, creating a long scar before bouncing up and speeding off toward the harbor.
Hawke ducked and rolled as the fourth bullet blasted through the air only centimeters behind him as the sniper tried to follow his movements. When he reached the cover of a nearby building, one of the Predators came up and he opened fire, throwing a salvo of slugs in the rifleman’s direction.
A hundred and forty-three meters distant, the building was a three-story stone hotel, a monolith from the town’s better times. The Amazonian flag flew out front, while LED panels scrolled the room rates and availability. Although the distance was too far for accurate shooting with the Predator, the slug-thrower still peppered the building with rounds that shattered one of the LED panels in a shower of sparks.
“Hawke!” Flicker called over the comm. On the other side of the narrow, dusty stone street, she opened her messenger bag and unleashed a swarm of drones.
“I’m fine.” Hawke glanced down at himself to make sure. Pain flooded through his chest, and a trickle of blood soaked into his shirt, but the onboard med suite was already taking away the hurt and coagulating the wound, as well as the one on his head. He cursed and glanced around the corner at the sniper’s position.
Rachel Gordon and the professor had reacted slower than Hawke and Flicker had, but they’d reached the fountain wall and now lay on the ground, hands wrapped over their heads.
A few blocks down the main thoroughfare, a large GMC Bulldog step-van shot out of a cross street and roared toward the fountain. The two axles in the rear had four tires each to support the vehicle’s tonnage, and the stiff suspension showed in the way it rocked as it raced along. Painted a nondescript gray and green, the van featured no windows except the bullet resistant front windshield.
A hatch popped open on top, allowing a gun turret to lock into place. Heavy-caliber machine gun rounds sprayed along the building where Hawke had taken cover. He ducked back as the bullets chewed chunks out of the corner and threw stone splinters everywhere.
His back to the wall, Hawke took a breath, and was glad the effort didn’t hurt as much as he thought it would. The chems had cleared most of the foggy dizziness from his mind and vision.
“Read me in, Flicker.”
“Datastream coming to you now.”
Hawke braced himself. Even though he’d been given access to her drones through his cybered vision before, the translucent overlay of images was a staggering amount of visual data to take in.
An image of the downtown area overlaid Hawke’s normal vision. Through the drone-view, he watched the van skid to a stop beside the professor and Rachel. The screech of tortured rubber grated on his hearing as a dust cloud roiled around the vehicle. A side door popped open, and two armored men jumped out and ran toward Rachel and Fredericks. The men wore featureless black combat armor, and moved like they’d trained together.
The professor was already getting to his feet. He had both hands wrapped around Rachel’s forearm, and was dragging her toward the two approaching gunmen. It was possible the gunmen had ordered the professor to do that, but Hawke didn’t think that was the case.
“Flicker.”
“I see them.”
Suddenly, Hawke’s view of one of the sec men zoomed in fast, and he knew the rigger had coaxed the drone to greater velocity. The image held him as the little machine closed on one of the gunmen. The man’s forehead suddenly filled the view, and the datastream went dark.
Instantly, another view opened up. This one showed the gunman’s profile as the back of his head erupted in a spray of blood and bone when the drone blasted through and dropped in pieces to the ground.
Fredericks shied away from the dead man as blood spattered the side of his face and shoulder. He kept pulling Rachel toward the van. The surviving gunman caught the woman’s other arm and helped drag her along.
Several of Flicker’s finger-length drones smashed into the van’s windshield, but didn’t penetrate the barrier, ending up shattered or embedded in the transplas. Others trailed after the professor and the other gunman, closing in for the kill.
Just before the drones overtook their two targets, another of the armored men stepped from the van’s door with a metal bar trailing a power cord. He held it straight out and the video and audio feeds from the drones suddenly went dead.
Flicker cursed.
“I’m dark,” Hawke said over the commlink.
“They hit my swarm with a degausser,” she said. “Knocked out their magnetic fields. They’re toast. New feed coming online now.”
Almost instantly, a new translucent image shaded Hawke’s vision. He watched as Rachel and the professor were pulled aboard the van. “Can you take out the sniper and the turret gun?”
“I can.”
“Keep me in the loop with a visual on the van.”
“I will. What are you going to do?”
“I’m gonna recover our cargo.” Hawke edged to the bullet-riddled corner of the building, held his position, and watched the big GMC van wheel around in a tight turn, sunlight reflecting from its cracked windshield.
The sniper atop the building suddenly went slack as one of Flicker’s remaining drones zipped through his eye and into his skull. The moment he dropped his sniper rifle, Hawke raced around the corner and leaned into the speed the wired reflexes gave him. He ran for the fountain, to the body of the man lying there, and snatched up the Ares Alpha assault rifle/grenade launcher combo as he pursued the van.
CHAPTER THIRTY-oNE
Accessing his PAN, Hawke pulled up a map of Playa del Iguana Verde and tracked the Bulldog’s progress. The vehicle was headed out of town, but the road curved around a steep incline that slowed its progress. The all-terrain tires slipped on the dirt road as it slewed around the bend, spitting dust as they fought for traction.
The turret gun spun atop the van and opened fire again, struggling to lock on Hawke as he broke from the straight course he was on and headed through a nearby cluster of buildings. Bullets crashed into the buildings around him, leaving smoking craters. An instant later, a swarm of Flicker’s dart drones slammed into the turret. Although it tried to turn, the gun couldn’t sweep around, and the whine of its overstressed motor was almost lost in the main engine’s roar.
Slinging the Alpha assault rifle over his chest, Hawke ran, feeling the adrenal pumps supply his body with fuel as the reinforced muscle tissue bunched and propelled him forward, pumping his arms and legs like pistons.
“Hawke!” Flicker sounded out of breath.
He knew she was trying to keep up, and he knew she’d never be able to match his speed. He didn’t know how many drones, if any, she had left other than the one still trailing the Bulldog. “Watch yourself. I’m going for the van.”
As he closed on the first building, Hawke leaped onto a battered truck parked in the alley, then jumped and caught the low edge of the roof. Hauling himself up, he threw his body onto the top and rolled to his feet. Then he was sprinting again, propelling himself forward like a human bullet. When he reached the end of the roof, he leaped across the narrow alley and caught the roof there, slightly higher than the last one.
By the time he reached the third building, trees and brush covered most of the surrounding area except for switchback trails that led from dwelling to dwelling. The rooftops were islands of mostly level ground that allowed him clear passage and stair steps up into the nearby hills and jungle.
The ghostly image of the Bulldog grinding up the incline remained printed across his vision. He ran and leaped and ran again, gaining a small lead that allowed him to reach the dirt road across the crest of the hill before the van barreled around the curving road below, barely visible through the thick jungle canopy separating him from it.
On level ground now, the Bulldog accelerated, trailing a cloud of dust as it hurtled along. As the brush and tree limbs slapped his face, Hawke knew he was scant centimeters from being too late for the intercept.
If he missed, Rachel Gordon and the jewel would be in the wind.
“What are you doing?” Rachel fought against the armored man who held her pinned face-down against the van’s floor in the cargo area. She kicked at his legs, hoping to topple him. The armored suit proved too strong for her, though, and she couldn’t move him. She rolled again, trying to get her hands free while the man struggled to secure her hands behind her back.
“Stop!” the man ordered, the suit’s PA system making his voice thunder inside the vehicle.
She kicked him in the face, putting as much of her weight into it as she could manage, and only numbed her foot when it impacted his helmet.
“I don’t have to be gentle,” the man warned. A transparent strand oozed out of one of his armored arms and he looped it around her left wrist. “Keep it up, and I’ll break something.”
The presence in the jewel grew more agitated in Rachel’s mind. She didn’t know how the others couldn’t feel it. Bracing herself as more of the strand played out, she fought to keep her remaining wrist free.
“Rachel!” Professor Fredericks stood against one side of the van, holding on to cargo netting covering the wall. “Rachel, calm down!”
Calm down? Rachel couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Her arm still throbbed from where the professor had yanked her toward the van. He wasn’t putting up a fight at all. In fact, he seemed almost happy to be there.
“They’re here to help,” Professor Fredericks told her.
“Lies!” The voice was a cold, razored rebuttal sliding through Rachel’s mind. “Betrayer!”
The armored man captured her other hand and bound them together. Her mind spun as she tried to hold onto her shifting realities. The Aztechnology soldiers had almost killed her. Hawke and Flicker had taken her captive. And now Professor Fredericks—the one person she thought she could trust on the dig—didn’t seem to be who he was supposed to be either.
“What did you do?” she demanded, turning to face him with an accusing stare.
Guilt pulled at the professor’s haggard face. He winced in pain and ran a hand across his forehead. “What I had to do, Rachel. Just go along with them. They’re not going to hurt you. Everything’s going to be all right. I swear.”
“Liar!”
The armored man yanked Rachel to her feet, almost popping her arms out of their sockets, and pressed her back to the cargo netting beside Professor Fredericks. She lunged at the professor and tried to kick him, so furious she couldn’t control herself. If she couldn’t hurt the guy in armor, she would hurt her betrayer.
The sec man knocked her foot away before it reached Professor Fredericks, numbing her leg from the knee down. She slumped against the cargo net and the man started to ooze more strands, tying her to the netting like a spider trapped prey.
“She’s not listening to you.” The sec man nodded to Professor Fredericks. “Make yourself scarce.”
Nodding, his face ashen, the professor sidled away, heading toward two other armored men in the cargo area. The van’s speed increased steadily, the growl of the engine growing louder.
The man holding Rachel popped his faceplate, revealing round features with burn scars that marred his right cheek and tightened his right eye. “I’m gonna trank you. Keep you docile for the trip back.”
A hypodermic needle slid out the end of his forefinger and dripped two drops of clear liquid.
“I need her backpack,” Professor Fredericks said.
“Sure,” the sec man replied as he stabbed the needle into Rachel’s throat under her right ear.
Pain bit into Rachel’s neck, and fire flooded her veins. In the next heartbeat, her senses started to fade. Her vision dimmed as the voice from the jewel rose to a furious shout. Someone pulled at her backpack, and it started to slide away.
Then something heavy thudded against the van’s roof.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Landing on the Bulldog, Hawke struggled for find purchase as his momentum carried him across the vehicle in an uncontrolled skid. For a split-second he thought he wasn’t going to secure a hold, then he managed to grab the frozen gun turret.
The barrel turned blistering hot as the gun unleashed a salvo that missed him and caromed from the Bulldog’s roof in ear-splitting whines. Between bursts as the weapon reloaded, one of Flicker’s drones zipped into the barrel, and when the gun fired again, a heavy-caliber round met the drone blocking the muzzle. With a muffled detonation and harsh clang, the turret gun vibrated and the barrel shredded, leaving curled metal strips peeled back.
“The gun’s offline,” Flicker informed Hawke over the commlink.
“No drek.” Hawke figured he’d been only a couple centimeters away from needing a hand replacement. As it was, his arm ached all the way to his shoulder before the med suite shut the pain down.
“I’ve commandeered a vehicle and I’m coming to you.”
Still accessing one of the next wave of Flicker’s drones that had just arrived, Hawke spotted a sec man about to climb onto the roof. He drew a Predator with his left hand and waited till the guy stuck his head up.
Mercilessly, Hawke shot him, but the curved bullet-resistant face shield kept the rounds from penetrating. Still, it was hard to not react to getting shot in the face, especially when the impacts rocked his head back. Hawke knew for a fact it was harder still to imagine not taking some kind of massive injury.
The sec man recovered from the frontal assault and leaned back outside again to search for his target. This time Hawke braced himself on the gun turret and whipped his body around to plant both feet in the guy’s face. Knocked from his perch, the sec man sailed off the Bulldog and smacked into a tree on the side of the road before rolling into the brush.
“Be careful on your approach,” Hawke called. “You’ve got one off in the weeds, and I don’t think he’s down.”
“I saw.” The roar of an engine underscored Flicker’s response over the commlink.
Holstering the Predator, Hawke reached for the Alpha, slipped the sling off the rifle, and let the weapon slide off the van, hating to see it go. He looped the sling around the turret, let out the slack as far as it would go, and tested its strength. Using the sling to secure himself, he curled over the vehicle’s side until he was hanging next to the open cargo door.
The driver must have spotted him, because the door slid closed. He drove along the edge of the road, trying to brush Hawke off into the trees. Several branches slapped or dug into him, splintering against the armor, but battering him against the vehicle.
Bouncing against the Bulldog’s armored hide, he pulled a thermite grenade from his vest and slapped it onto the door’s locking mechanism. He primed the detonator through his PAN, then scrabbled back along his tether to put distance between himself a
nd the explosive.
When he judged he was far enough away, Hawke detonated the grenade. A wave of heat blasted over him as his sound dampers muted most of the explosion. The door hung awkwardly now, leaving a gap where it joined the vehicle’s frame.
“I need a peek,” Hawke said over the commlink.
“Coming up.”
The drone’s view changed as it dropped altitude and matched the Bulldog’s speed, pacing the partially open cargo door. Inside, Professor Fredericks cowered against the far side while protected by a sec man. A second sec man held Rachel Gordon hostage in front of him, pressing a pistol to her head. She looked dazed, her copper eyes glassy and faded.
“I can give you one distraction,” Flicker said, “but that’s all. Which target?”
“The guy by the professor.” The other man was occupied holding Rachel hostage.
“On your go.”
Hawke shifted his weight, clinging to the rifle sling as he gauged momentum, and set himself. “Go!”
The drone’s view veered as it darted inside the van. It closed on the sec man, but he had his pistol up and was aiming. Hawke grabbed the broken door, set his feet, and heaved, wrenching it from its mooring as the driver headed toward the bole of a large tree. As Hawke tried to get inside the GMC, only meters away from being smashed into the tree, the sec man’s bullet smashed into the drone, and his view of the interior went black.
Unable to dodge the trees the driver steered the Bulldog against, Hawke flattened against the vehicle and hung on. Branches tore at his armor, one of them shredding his shoulder rig, tearing it loose. Both Predators fell and disappeared under the churning wheels. He reached for one of his katars and fisted the punching dagger without telescoping the blade.