“This… is for Henry…” Just as Hal was about to choke the life out of Yarbo, he spotted Weng above both of them. His submachine gun trained on Yarbo.
“Death is too good for this one,” Weng said. “He can lead us to the others. Let him go.” Hal’s eyes flicked up to Weng. “I’ll get the answers from him.”
Hal was reluctant to release his grip even though he knew Weng was right. Hal quickly let go and stood up, away from Weng’s barrel should Yarbo have any strength to fight. Yarbo choked and coughed for air, curling up in a ball. He took deep breaths. His blue face slowly regaining its natural color.
Weng noticed a flashing light out of the corner of his eye. “What’s that?”
Hal looked down at Yarbo’s helmet and saw the familiar countdown on the HMD of Yarbo’s face shield. “It’s a self-destruct.” Hal said, picking Yarbo’s helmet up and hurling it to a dark corner of the assembly, fifty feet away. “There’s a bug in the design. It won’t activate if the helmet isn’t attached.”
Yarbo lifted himself to his hands and knees. Gulping deep breaths.
“Start talking,” Hal said. “Don’t make him do it the hard way.” Referring to the torture Weng was about to dispense.
In the corner of the assembly, the helmet lie tilted on its side. The digital countdown ticked down on the HMD.
03…02…01…
Yarbo looked up. His eyes went wide in panic. Smoke rose from the neck and sleeves of his suit. He screamed in terror. Hal and Weng stepped back. Black smoke poured from the suit. Yarbo’s skin bubbled and boiled at his neckline. An internal chemical reaction sent plasma through the circulatory system of the suit. Causing the suit and the human inside to melt like magma. Yarbo’s arms and legs flailed on the carpet, steam and smoke rising from his bubbling body. The writhing stopped, and he was quickly reduced to a tar-like pool of blood, melted flesh and plastic.
A sizzling sound came from the dark corner of the room. The helmet glowed red hot and began to melt. Blackening the carpet.
“I guess they fixed the bug,” Weng said. Lowering his gun to his side.
“Let’s get out of here.” Hal said, “I’ll lead you out.” Hal put his helmet on, and it sealed to the neck ring in a WHOOSH. He retrieved his MP10 from the seats and strode to the hall, passing the Chinese President. He pulled back the flap on his wrist and activated the suit. He disappeared ahead of Weng and President Weilen on route to the General Assembly lobby.
A SWAT assembled in the lobby, prepping for a raid on the General Assembly. The doors burst open with Weng and President Weilen. Chinese officials and the SWAT team rushed over to help them. A flurry of reporters clamored at the door and windows outside. FBI and UN security paraded in and out of the entrance. Weng scanned the lobby for any sign of Hal, but could only imagine him disappearing through the entrance doors. Weng dipped his head and spoke into his concealed microphone in Chinese, “Mission accomplished. President Weilen is safe.”
Jennifer heard the static transmission over the laptop speakers and looked to Charlie for the translation. “It’s over. The Chinese President is safe.” Jennifer cupped her hands over her mouth with joy. Ecstatic and relieved. She rose to her feet and shook Charlie by the shoulders, unable to restrain her enthusiasm. He laughed. Charlie returned to his laptop. Typing in commands. “Watch this. Look out the window, to the north.”
Jennifer leaned over the desk, peering out the bunkhouse window to the far right…
“Strike team alpha, SITREP?” McCreary frantically said over the radio, a line of sweat rolling down the side of his face. He repeated the command.
Trest was also nervous, pacing behind him in the confined quarters of the box. “Wrap it up. All of it! We have to get out of here. Douglas, you keep the AOD on us. Everyone else, pack up.”
“Hanger One, sir?” Baldo asked, using slang for the latrine. McCreary nodded.
McCreary repeated his order over the headset. “Strike team alpha, respond.”
“SIR…” Douglas said, turning back toward Trest with a horrified expression. “I’ve lost control of her.”
Trest and McCreary turned intent gazes to Douglas’s monitor, showing the camera feed from the AOD stealth drone. It rolled and banked. Diving toward the box in attack position. Launching two Hellfire missiles. The missiles streaked toward the box, trailing white wisps of smoke behind.
“OH FUC—”
— KA-BOOM!! A double explosion of Hellfire missiles obliterated the box.
Baldo was blown back from the blast, squatting with pants around ankles in the weeds nearby. He tugged them up and darted into the desert.
Charlie rose to his feet, cheering the orange and black fireball blooming on the horizon.
Jennifer watched in awe, not sure what she was seeing. Charlie went back to the controls, swooping the stealth drone up out of its attack dive. He banked it around, watching the image from the drone camera he now controlled. “Keep watching. Out the window!”
The Barrett ranch house and bunkhouse appeared on-screen from a low altitude via the drone camera. Jenny spotted the angular, black drone flying straight toward them. The lethal drone buzzed right over the top of the bunkhouse as Charlie laughed at his controlled fly-by.
“Sir, I’ve got an unauthorized explosion,” a radar operator said, looking up from a bank of screens at the Holloman tower. “North-northeast of our position.” The superior arrived, looking at the screen and the nearest blip, identified as MQ-10S. “It’s the AOD, sir. I’ve been radioing the ground control center, but there’s no response.”
“Who’s controlling her?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“What else we got up there?”
The radioman scanned the screen. “Two unarmed F-22s on a training mission.”
“Scramble a pair of F-35s. Take it out — on my order.”
“Roger that.” He sounded the klaxon alarm to the ready room, where pilots waited on standby. He announced over their PA system, “Voodoo One and Two, proceed to aircraft…”
“Shouldn’t you land it?!” Jennifer asked.
“I can’t,” Charlie said. “They’ll know we hacked it when they go over the onboard computer.”
“So… where are you flying it?”
“Out over the desert, away from everything. I’m sure they’re sending up jets—”
— On cue, the roar of two F-35 Lightning II fighters took off, interrupting Charlie. Rising in tandem attack mode on the runway. Charlie and Jenny watched the nation’s most advanced fighter jets rise and bank back over Holloman, toward the desert.
Charlie looked at the monitor from the drone camera, flying over the rolling ivory dunes of the White Sands. Within ten seconds of being airborne, an F-35 had already targeted the drone from several miles away and launched a single missile. Charlie’s monitor flashed with static and a few frames of the drone disintegrating in mid-air.
It took twice as long for the pair of F-35’s to arrive over the crash site than the time it took for the missile to hit its target. A pilot leaned to his cockpit window. Eyeing the debris field of jet black particles strewn over the snowy, windswept waves of gypsum crystals making up the white sand. “Voodoo One to HAFB, target is down. Repeat. Target is down.”
“Voodoo One and Two,” the tower replied, “maintain posture and overwatch until ground crew arrives.”
“Good afternoon, Chairman,” Hal said, removing the stealth helmet — instantly appearing from thin air in a corner office chair of Congressman Watson Trent.