The Detachment - Barry Eisler [133]
“The hell’s that thing made of?” Dox said. “I just put sixteen rounds in it. All right, switching magazines.”
“Larison, Treven, get the fuck out of there,” I said. “You’ve done all you can. There’s no more time. Go!”
The school was at the center of the screen and rapidly expanding. I thought the drone couldn’t be more than a few seconds from impact.
“All right, sweetheart,” I heard Dox say. “Come here. Come take what I’ve got for you.”
There was a methodical drumbeat of cracks. The image of the school shuddered. It shook. It stabilized, filling the whole screen—
And then the camera veered and began to spin wildly.
“All right!” Dox said, jubilation creeping into his normally supercalm sniper tone. “Score one for the home team.”
The sky flashed past on the screen, then the ground, then everything was moving so fast I couldn’t make out any features at all. A moment later, the screen went dark.
“Where did it go down?” I said.
“Not the school,” Dox said. “The parking lot, though. Hot damn, that was close. Nobody hurt, I don’t think.”
“Did the warheads detonate?”
“No, sir. Gillmor must have had them set to blow on nose-first impact.”
“Treven, Larison, you all right?”
“Fine,” Larison said. “Walking away southeast.”
I heard sirens in the background. “Same,” Treven said. “Could use a pickup. Feeling a little conspicuous at the moment.”
“Go to the bug-out,” I said. “Dox, you especially. That cop is going to report sniper fire coming from your position. We’ll rendezvous in twenty minutes. Or less, the way Kanezaki drives.”
I expected Treven and Larison would be able to ghost away just fine in the tumult outside the school. But it wouldn’t be long before coherent witnesses came forward and described them to arriving police. And Dox needed to get far from his hide.
Kanezaki pulled out an iPhone and took photographs of Gillmor’s body and the controls on top of it.
“What are you doing?” I said.
“This is our proof.” He started moving the phone in a small circle, talking as he did so. I realized he must have switched to video mode.
“We need to go,” I said.
He held up a finger. “The man on the ground is the new head of the National Counterterrorism Center, Dan Gillmor, who was controlling the drone that attacked a school in Lincoln today. This is Palmyra, Nebraska, about twenty-five miles away.”
He walked over to the guy he’d shot and took his picture, too, then filmed the truck and its license plates, talking the whole time, dates and coordinates and identifying details. Then we ran back to the van, which he proceeded to drive as though the trip out were just a warm-up. We reached the bug-out point, a church a mile from the school, in under fifteen minutes. Kanezaki cut his speed and pulled into the parking lot.
“It’s us,” I said into the commo, and Dox, Larison, and Treven melted out from behind a dumpster. They got in the van and we drove off at a normal speed.
I climbed in back. Everybody shook hands. I said to Dox, “Good shooting.”
“Hell,” Dox said, “if it had been good, I would have dropped it on the first shot.”
“Hey,” Treven said, “you put it down. That’s all that counts.”
“Well,” Dox said, looking at me, “I don’t want to blame anyone else for how long it took me, but I don’t think the avionics in that particular model of drone are in the nose, unless they’re severely hardened. I finally just shot the shit out of the thing, and hoped I’d hit something vital. Which apparently I did.”
We all laughed. “Tom,” Dox said. “Are you all right? Did I hear you say you were hit?”
“In the vest,” he said. “I’m okay.”
“You’re going to be sore later,” I said. “But the hell with that. Nice shooting.”
“You shot Gillmor?” Dox said. “I thought that was Rain.”
“No, his security,” Kanezaki said.
“Who had me pinned down,” I added.
“Oo-rah!” Dox said. “Somebody give me that man a cigar. Was that your first kill?”
“I guess it was,” Kanezaki said.
“You guess,” Dox said. “That’s funny. Well, you know what they say. You never forget your first. Glad he was shooting back at you. That’ll make it a little