Garcia watched as the video feed relayed the scene in real time.
‘We need to get one of these for ourselves!’ he said excitedly.
‘A drone?’ Cobb asked in his ear.
‘No, a military-grade, hi-res camera,’ Garcia answered. ‘Gimbal-mounted. Digitally stabilized. Electro-optical infrared. This sucker is bad-ass.’
‘Wow,’ McNutt replied. ‘You really are a geek.’
Unfortunately, McNutt had more to worry about than Garcia’s seemingly odd fondness for hi-tech cameras over tactical weapon systems.
He had scampered across the mountaintop and revisited the case of firearms that he had hidden near the entrance to the secret tunnel, but the addition of an M-4 rifle hadn’t made him completely at ease. Even the presence of Cobb — who had likewise armed himself with the compact assault rifle — didn’t extinguish McNutt’s anxiety.
It was still two against ten. Or more.
With an outer perimeter of free-falling death.
From a mile away, McNutt would have had a distinct advantage.
But close-quarters combat was a different story.
65
Cobb rolled to the ground behind a low wall of bricks, taking fire from one of the men the helicopter had ferried to the summit. They had scattered around the ruins, taking up cover around the corners of various terrace levels or diving behind small walls as Cobb had done.
McNutt had opened fire immediately, killing one of the men before return fire had forced him to flee and seek his own barricade. Cobb had no idea where he had gone, but he knew they needed to coordinate if they were going to survive.
‘Josh, take north. I’ll head south. Push them to the pond in the middle.’
The gunmen had arrived at the southeast corner of the pond on a small dirt trail that allowed passage around the rainwater-filled pool on that side. Cobb was already south of them, and two levels down, meaning the enemy had the high ground. He needed to make his way up the plateau before they converged on his position.
The helicopter was charging fast behind the drone.
Garcia started rocking the small craft back and forth, presenting a harder target, as he flew it out over the edge of the rock and away from the battle on the summit. The lone gunman still on board the pursuing chopper was leaning out the side door and trying to knock the drone from the sky with withering bursts of rifle fire.
Garcia had the advantage on maneuverability. He dropped the nose on the RQ-7, flying the drone nearly vertical in a dive along the edge of the massive rock. The helicopter pilot dipped in pursuit, though not nearly as steeply as Garcia.
Showing off, he corkscrewed the drone, closer to the mountain as it fell. Then he abruptly brought it up and buzzed past the helicopter, the minigun blazing. Most of the rounds missed the helicopter, with just a few peppering the tail before the drone raced past.
But that wasn’t the point of Garcia’s maneuver.
The drone was unmanned and presented no danger to Garcia, whereas the buzzing minigun presented plenty of danger to the Chinese men in the helicopter. The gunman dove back into the passenger compartment, and the pilot banked hard and away from the drone, narrowly avoiding impact. The burst of fire had emptied the rotary-barrel gun on the drone after just the first few shots, but the Chinese pilot didn’t know that. Garcia brought the UAV up in a steep climb, then twisted it in the air and dove down for the helicopter again.
The pilot reacted, banking away from the rock while trying to gain altitude. They were running scared, but they would soon realize the drone wasn’t firing at them anymore.
Then Garcia had a crazy idea …
Who said I have to return the drone to Pakistan?
They’re just going to tear it apart anyway.
The RQ-7 had a top speed of 127 mph, and Garcia cranked the accelerator, bringing the UAV toward the escaping helicopter as fast as it could go. A moment later, the pilot of the helicopter started to panic. Garcia could tell as he watched the craft zig and zag on his computer monitor. With every evasive maneuver the bird tried, Garcia’s drone was able to match it. The much smaller UAV could turn on a dime and there was no worry about G-forces on human operators.
The pilot dropped the helicopter into a steep dive and banked hard back toward the massive stone rock. The gunman reappeared in the open door, firing again on the drone, but Garcia was able to jerk and twitch the smaller craft out of the way of each burst. The helicopter was heading straight for the side of the rock, half way up the plateau.
Garcia realized this was his chance to finish the job.
He pushed the drone to its maximum speed and steered the UAV straight at the top of the helicopter’s rotor mount. Though he had no audio of the event, Garcia could’ve sworn that he heard the metallic crunch that it made when the drone impacted its target. He also imagined the scream that the gunman made when he fell out the cargo door and plummeted to his death.
His fall from the sky actually saved him from the massive fireball that consumed the interior of the cargo hold. The chopper’s blades ripped loose from their mount and the tail boom swung in a full 180-degree arc before it smacked into the side of the rock wall. The whole technological mess crumpled together in a twisted hunk of metal before following the path of least resistance.
In this case, straight down to the jungle below.
Despite her age, Maggie was faster than she looked. She charged up the main stairs of the plateau, ran past the frescoes, the Mirror Wall, and many other sights on her way to the top. She stopped occasionally to make sure that gunmen weren’t lurking nearby, but she quickly realized that the Brotherhood was focusing its assault on the other side of the plateau.
This allowed her to run without concern.
Before she knew it, she was cresting the top of the stairs, ducking behind ramparts, and eventually making her way inside the mouth of the tunnel.
Cobb rolled to the end of his terrace and dropped one level lower before moving back toward the west and the slightly higher ground. He assumed McNutt would already have gone that way, seeking the raised terraces and platforms that the western side of the summit provided. If McNutt could get back to the northern edge of the rock, he could cover all of it from the high ground there, which was easily thirty feet above the rest of the summit.
Garcia chimed in. ‘I killed the drone, but I’ve got real-time satellite now.’
‘Do you see me?’ Cobb whispered.
‘I do, and so does the gunman at your eleven o’clock. He’s trying to belly-crawl his way west, just under the pond.’
Cobb sprang to his feet with the M-4 leveled, and sighted on the man. He fired a single round that hit the crawling man and sprayed his blood on the adjacent wall. Before return fire could come his way, Cobb dropped back down.
‘Holy shit,’ Garcia said. ‘That was fast.’
A moment later, the wall in front of Cobb started to disintegrate under heavy fire from three directions. Cobb had no choice but to hunker down and ride out the storm.
‘Josh!’ Cobb called. ‘They have me pinned.’
In response, he heard the sniper’s rifle crack twice.
Each shot was punctuated with pink mist.
‘Damn,’ Garcia said, stunned by McNutt’s efficiency. ‘Two more down. And on the second guy, that was waaaaay down.’
McNutt grinned at the commentary. He wondered how many bodies had already plunged off the plateau. ‘I’ve got eyes on the pond. As soon as they pop up, I’ll take them out.’