Almasi turned his back on the Russian and walked away to resume direct command of not only a battle raging above their heads, but another taking place on the opposite side of the planet.
Chapter 27
“Incoming, launching countermeasures!” The voice was that of a military pilot which Charlie Fox had never met, even as the man sat in a command pod twenty feet away.
“We have countermeasures?” Fox queried.
“Look on your board. Four buttons on the left side — flares and ball bearings. I’m sending them all.”
The barrage of four tight missile trails came down from high above, closing on the western hangar — the building housing the drone pilots. Suddenly the sky between the hangar and the incoming streaks of yellow fire filled with a cloud of brilliant light, as well as the reflections off thousands of tiny balls of metal. The missiles launched by the RDC drones were fire-and-forget, so they continued along the same trajectory even though the path was blocked by the countermeasures. They entered the bright cloud a split second later and disintegrated.
“Great job!” Fox cried out.
“Yeah, but that’s all I have. These units were not designed to go up against this many advanced UAVs.”
“Now that I know about the countermeasures, I can pick up some of the slack.”
From far below, another missile trail sprang into existence. “Where the hell did that one come from?” Fox called out.
“I see him. He’ll be toast in about two seconds.”
In the meantime, the missile fired from the doomed drone was still on its way toward the pilots’ hangar, and there was nothing any of them could do to stop it.
“Xander, get ready, we’re about to take a hit.”
The missile struck the middle of the huge south-facing rollaway door, puncturing the lightweight metal with ease before passing through to the interior of the building. Half a heartbeat later it exploded.
Charlie Fox, ensconced in a control pod three rows in and facing away from the hangar door, felt the blast of heat even as it spared his pod from any serious damage. However, the row of pods closest to the door didn’t fare as well. Nine control stations took the brunt of the blast, deforming the compact metal and plastic pods into unrecognizable hunks of debris. No one could have survived the crushing impact of the blast.
Fox looked around at the surviving pods. He knew only one other person in the room intimately, and that was Xander Moore. He didn’t see him, but he did recognize three other members of Xander’s Karachi Goliath team.
“Xander, are you okay? Xander…?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Who was hit? Can anyone tell?”
There was an awkward silence on the comm. ‘C’mon, someone take a look.”
“Jeremy’s Goliath just crashed into the garage building.” It was the trembling voice of Hugh Barden.
“Jeremy, come in. Answer me.”
Silence.
“Dammit!” Xander shouted.
“Xander, take a look at the side of the garage where Jeremy crashed.” It was Karen Prado on the comm.
“What?”
“I said take a look at the building. I think there’s a ramp leading down.”
Xander shook his head. He had known Jeremy longer than any of others, since second grade as a matter of fact, long before they’d discovered drones. “A ramp?”
“Yeah, I’m blasting open the front doors. This may be our ticket to the big leagues.”
The area in and above Almasi’s compound was now filled with nearly a hundred buzzing drones, all performing an elaborate ballet of sorts. Billy and his Panthers were now on-site and blasting through the auto drones without too much trouble, even as the RPAs controlled from underground did a number on his squadron. The smaller drones seemed content with fighting amongst themselves, so when Karen sent two missiles into the wooden doors of the long garage, the remaining four Goliaths, under Xander’s command, darted inside the building without resistance.
Curt’s drone was badly damaged, more than he’d first suspected. Half of the propellers were idle and he was down to only a handful of munitions.
“I’m not going to do much good down below. I’ll stay up here and warn of any hostiles coming your way.”
“That’ll work. Okay, the rest of you, this can get tricky. I’ve had my share of battles within office buildings and shopping malls, but never with a unit this big. Switching to ground-mode. I think we’ll be able to maneuver better. When we get below, spread out. First one finding the pilots room gives a shout out. And then fuck ‘em up good. Most of those pilots will be controlling the drones outside the hangar, the same ones who killed Jeremy. Let’s return the favor.”
The ramp leading underground started off wide and with a high ceiling to accommodate the construction equipment used to build the underground complex. There were four main corridors leading from the ramp, and three of these were covered by the remaining Goliaths. Xander took the corridor on the far right, Karen disappearing into the one next to him, while Hugh shot down the far left tunnel.
To his relief, Xander found that the main corridors remained relatively spacious. In fact, a pair of golf carts could pass easily by one another in the passageways. He now had the Goliath riding on the four rotor rings. The controls for ground travel were a little touchier — or at least his lack of experience with them made it appear so — and he scraped the walls of the corridors more than once before getting the hang of it.
The labyrinth was huge, and included living quarters, equipment rooms, and dining facilities, plus a major control room packed full of bulky pilot stations. To build and supply such a vast underground complex, adequately-sized passageways were needed. This made the going fairly easy for the huge drones, even though there would no sneaking up on an unsuspecting terrorist, not with a Goliath.
Although virtually invisible and silent in their mechanical operation, the Goliaths nonetheless stirred up vast quantities of dust and sand, even in ground mode. The wind from the two horizontal rings, plus the smaller pusher blades at the rear, produced a dull swishing sound that echoed down the unfinished drywall and mottled concrete passageways.
All along the way the team was met with waiting gunfire. Occasionally, an armed man would appear from a side room and fire at the drone. The rifle fire would cause no damage to his UAV, so Xander ignored such attacks, choosing to save his ammo for when it really counted.
“I just entered a larger room down corridor number four,” Hugh Barden reported. “No sign of the pilots yet — holy crap! Now there’s something you don’t see every day.”
“What are you talking about?” Xander asked.
“Just the largest, meanest drone I’ve ever seen.”
“It is active?”
“Active? Oh yeah. It just came out of a side room and caught me from behind.”
“What are you trying to say, Hugh?” Xander pulled up a side of the goggles and looked to his left at Barden’s control pod. The man was leaning back in the seat and shaking his head.
“Nothing really, Number One, except that I’m dead. I assume that was Jonas’s Ninja. The bastard just plastered my Goliath against the far wall. I’m out for the duration.”
Xander slipped the goggles back on, and was instantly halfway around the world again. He hadn’t heard any sounds of a battle taking place, so Jonas must have fired without warning and took out Hugh in a single shot. Now his force was down to just two Goliaths — his and Karen’s — and with Jonas Lemon lurking somewhere, in control of the deadliest drone ever made.
The incoming call alarm sounded again. This time Xander knew who was calling, so he activated only the audio.