Bobbie Jo checked her orientation, swung across the black stroke-marks of a dozen streets, then flattened out and slowed to a hover above the confluence of roadways that marked her station.
Hovering in stealth mode ate fuel like fire ate oxygen. Fortunately, she had talked the Colonel into equipping the high-performance Sniper with long-range fuel tanks.
"Air One on station, Colonel…"
"It's about time, dammit…"
Springfield and Market Streets came together like 8 great V, slicing through the jumble of buildings and cross-streets at the core of the Newark sprawl. It seemed ironic because that V pointed across the Passaic River to Jersey City and the soaring towers of Manhattan Island. The enclave of power and money. Where everyone wanted to be. Most of the millions in Newark would never get there.
"Status, Air One."
That was Skip, sounding very official. The Colonel must be leaning over her shoulder or breathing hot and hard down Skip's neck. Bobbie Jo focused her downward-looking eyes and went to work, computer-augmenting the best views.
The club stood on Springfield. The front of the place was all dingy and black but for the large gold letters hanging above the main entrance, reading, "Chimpira," whatever that meant. It was supposed to be a hangout for yakuza and other miscreants. Most notably, the miscreants the Brigade had been hired to shadow.
Target indicators winked rapidly in front of her eyes, picking out movement on the ground, computer-directed to single out human-sized targets only. Her view plunged to sidewalk level thirty-seven times in a row for a camera click glance at every face, every moving body, then every two-legged body anywhere near the front of the club. That included the three trolls and eleven Asian norms, all males, immediately in front of the club. None of her real targets were among them. She fired her gathered data back to the C C. The Colonel would have his status report and the Brigade's new fugitive unit would undoubtedly find some use for the digitized images in her burst transmission.
An hour passed. The Colonel kept demanding more data from Skip, and Skip kept hounding her for more digipics. She circled the club. When the first of the miscreants, the supposed leader, finally appeared, Bobbie Jo fired her alert signal to the C C.
Target One moving Target One moving…
She fired digipics in a continuous stream back to the C C. Target One exited via the front of the club. Through her computer-enhanced closeups, she saw that he was a Hispanic male of medium height and build and that her images of him matched exactly the digitized pics in her ground-based memory. An Asian female soon followed him out of the club. That was Target Two. Tall and good-looking. Light-skinned for an Asian, but there was no mistaking the slope of her eyes. The two of them met in the alley beside the club and moved to the alley at the rear of the club. There they met Target Three and Target Four: a heavily built ork male and a long-haired dwarf male. Together, they moved through the alleys to King Boulevard and around the corner to Stirling Street. There they entered a gray and black ghost of a van.
Target Alpha moving, all targets onboard…
She repeated that.
Brigade comm traffic murmured rapidly in her ears. Ground-based surveillance units' were moving into position to follow the van, designated Target Alpha. They didn't have much time. Target Four was a rigger and very hot with wheels. Even as the last of the group climbed into the van and closed the side door, the van was rolling, picking up speed, smoking tires and really moving out.
Bobbie Jo prepared to follow. No need for stealth mode now. Her on-board combat comp set three green target indicators to winking in front of her eyes. Those pointed out the pursuit vehicles. Ground One, Two, and Three, dark mid-sized sedans with stock New Jersey plates. Standard procedure called for one sedan to close with the target vehicle, follow for a short distance and then turn off, while another one closed in.
It didn't work out that way. The van blew the light on Howard and roared up South Orange Avenue. Bobbie Jo's warning was all that kept the pursuit vehicles from being left in the dust. As the cars raced to catch up, the van turned left onto Fourteenth Street and into a gridwork of streets and cross-streets lined with cars and crammed with buildings. The van careened through the grid at breakneck speed, gaining ground with every turn. It broke out onto Springfield Avenue, blew a series of red lights, and in another minute was flying down the entrance ramp to the South Newark Transitway.
Abruptly, Bobbie Jo heard a muted stammer that sounded like autofire weapons, then a voice, distant but urgent, exclaiming, "Ground Three! Ground Three! We're in the middle of a gang bang-up!"
The other two cars were out of the grid and racing up Springfield, but they were nowhere near getting the van into visual range.
"Air One status!" Skip barked.
No choice.
The van was disappearing into the dark of an underground section of the transitway. The pursuit cars would never catch up. Target Alpha was flying. Bobbie Jo punched up her engines and dove, turbofans screaming, to the roof of a tandem-trailered truck just then sluicing down the incline and into the dark of the transitway tunnel.
It was like pitching into an attack run.
One moment she had only the dark haze of the night above her, in the next, she was sandwiched between the roof of the truck's lead trailer and the massive girders supporting the ceiling of the transitway. She had about a half-meter of airspace above her and about the same below. One errant breeze, one minor electronic fluctuation, and the girders above or the truck below would smash her into oblivion.
That scared the hell out of her, only she didn't let herself feel it. She reminded herself that she really wasn't there. Her body was safe. Only the electronic sensorium of the Sniper drone was at risk. But that didn't help. She kept on, redlining her emotive indexes. The truck provided cover. The broad roof of the trailer and the glaring lights of the cab would keep her hidden from anyone within easy visual range. She searched ahead with her eyes. Target indicators winked, then she spotted the gray and black ghost-van veering across two lanes and into the gray-lit tunnel of a transitway exit. Target exiting target exiting… Her target indicator winked rapidly, then blinked out. She didn't dare follow. The exit tunnel was too confining, and she'd be spotted. The targets were pros, and the van was believed to be equipped with advanced electronics that might very well include short-range antiair radar. Bobbie Jo did what she had to do. She stayed with the tandem-trailered truck for another eight hundred meters. The instant the transitway surfaced again, she punched up full power. The steady whine of her engines rose to a cyclone scream. She arced up and back, soaring over the, city, then quickly flipped to bring her belly pod to bear on the ground below.
A dozen target indicators winked in front of her eyes.
She was still scoping them out, sweeping back and forth across the city, hunting the target, when Skip called her back to base.
The Colonel was not happy.
Rico grimaced, clenching his teeth. Barely an hour had passed since he'd accepted the job from L. Kahn and already he didn't like it. The whole thing could be a set-up.
"You sure you saw a drone?"
"Of course I saw it," Thorvin snapped, steering the van around one final corner onto Mott Street. "Any moron with freaking infrared goggles coulda spotted it. I oughta know a freaking Cyber Designs Stealth Sniper Series 53 when I see one. I broke one of the freaking things down about a year ago just to see how it worked. It ain't top of the line, but it ain't half bad either. It's serviceable. All right for standard recon. It just hasn't got anything like the kind of electronics to beat what I got in this van."