Like Mind (23 page)

She hung up the phone and handed it back to Gutierrez.

“I hope you’re right, Corey.”

“I do too. But, in case I’m not, maybe we should get away from the car.”

“It can’t be any worse than being stuck in traffic. At least on foot we can run away if we need to.”

“Yes, let’s go.” Gutierrez agreed.

We climbed out into the dim, exhaust-clouded air of I-5 and started walking toward the shoulder and the next exit. Honks were quickly aborted when the armament of my compatriots was seen. I grabbed the hacking rig on the way out.

“What if you teach me to hack a drone and you two can cover me while I do it?”

“Well…”

“It could work,” Anka finished the thought for Antonio, “First let’s get to a defensible position. We don’t know how long it will take for Stephenson to be stopped by the Pentagon.”

“Right,” I agreed, “where’s a defensible spot?”

“Good question.”

“We could just go back to the entrance to the tunnel,” I suggested.

“That would leave us more exposed,” Anka said.

“Yes, and we would be easy targets.”

“That’s the generally accepted meaning of ‘more exposed,’ Antonio.”

“Yes.”

“Yes,” I echoed, leaving off the Spanish jay-sound at the beginning, “it would leave us more exposed, but it would do the same for the drones. It gives you two a better chance to get a shot off and, if it all goes to hell, we can run back into the tunnel where it will be harder for the drones to follow.”

“Actually,” Anka said, “it makes sense.”

“Don’t sound so disappointed.”

“Sorry, it’s just not what I was taught to do.”

“Did you ever stop to think that maybe they weren’t teaching you the best ideas if the training came from douche bags like Stephenson?”

She just picked up her machine gun and started walking toward the tunnel entrance. Other drivers shared my wisdom in not critiquing her decision. Gutierrez chuckled and followed her. I trotted to catch up with him.

“So, how do I use this thing, by the way?”

“Ah, yes,” he chuckled again, “it’s actually pretty simple. I’ll log in for you and then it will find and hack the closest drone. You will be presented with controls for all the systems. It’s, how you say, idiot proof.” His sidelong look at me was enough to convey his opinion of my skills in battle.

“Good,” was all I could manage to say.

Hacktivism

At the tunnel mouth, Gutierrez took the hacking case from me and entered his login credentials. He wouldn’t let me see what they were and kept peeking over the upraised lid to ensure I didn’t try to discover his secrets. While he set me up with the drone hacker, Anka was gently instructing people that they might want to vacate their vehicles and move to a different location. Her gesticulating with an AK-47 added a certain emphasis to her suggestions.

Soon the area was cleared of civilians and we were staring out at the mottled gray sky looking for signs of the quad-drones. I flipped on the toggle to initiate a hacking attempt and it started searching for potential drones to take over. They must have been just outside the range of the device because it didn’t find anything initially. I looked to Gutierrez for help, but he just shrugged and kept scanning the sky. After a few minutes the case beeped at me and indicated a hack-attempt was in progress.

The progress bar started moving across the screen. I was secretly thrilled at a true progress bar instead of one of those infinitely circling progress indicators that indicate precisely nothing. It was at about fifty percent when Anka spotted the drones in the distance.

“Twelve o’clock high,” she barked.

“Copy. I have visual,” Gutierrez confirmed.

“Um, copy that,” I tried to be included. Anka glanced over her shoulder and rolled her eyes at me playfully. It made me grin in the middle of everything.

“What’s your effective range?” Anka asked
El Tigre
as she knelt and settled the stock of the AK against her shoulder.

“The grenade will go a thousand meters, but aiming becomes difficult at greater than five hundred. That’s when the rocket stops firing. How about you? How far away can you hit them?”

“With iron-sights on an M4 carbine I qualified marksman at the Marine Corps range.”

“And…”

“Oh, that means I stand a really good chance of hitting them when they get within three hundred yards.”

“Okay, I put them at about a thousand meters out right now. I’ll try to get off two rockets between five and three hundred meters. By the time the smoke clears enough for you to see again they’ll be at about two-fifty. What’s the range of their missiles?”

“Three hundred meters.”

“Oh.”

I must have been in shock by that point because the reality was quite clear but I didn’t feel any fear. I knew we were going to die in a fireball from the sky, but it didn’t really matter to me. We’d stopped Stephenson, which was the important thing.

The case dinged at me when the progress bar reached one hundred percent.

“I’ve got one of them.”

“Good, see if you can take out one of the others.”

I oriented myself to the controls. It was like playing a new video game but starting on the hardest level with no tutorial and no instructions. Kind of fun. First I found the attitude controls and tested how it moved. Since the actual rotors were controlled by software, the controls were simple pitch, yaw, and thrust. The hack-box gave me a joystick for the pitch and yaw and a slider for the thrust. A simple sight mounted in the nose camera controlled the missiles. Point and click.

I tested the responsiveness of the controls and, at first, the quad-drone bobbed and weaved like Mike Tyson. But, eventually, I mastered level flight and turning. By this time I was lagging behind the other two drones.

“Any time now,” Anka said, “They’re about six hundred yards out.”

“Right.”

I lined up one of the drones and fired the missile.

It streaked out with a puff of smoke and the computer control systems automatically adjusted my thrust and pitch to compensate for the lost weight. I watched the missile shoot toward the leading drone and then harmlessly pass behind it. I judged it a good first attempt and proceeded to line up my next shot to lead the drone sufficiently. As I was fiddling with my new toy I heard various levels of cursing from my compatriots and glanced up.

The missile was heading straight for us.

I tried to move, but I couldn’t get my brain to affect my body. It was oddly like the effects of Grosskopf’s treatments. As the bringer of death streaked toward us I vaguely remembered some distance calculations that seemed important. It wasn’t until the smoke stopped and the missile arced toward the ground that I remembered. The drones at five hundred meters weren’t able to hit us with missiles that have a range of three hundred meters. What a relief.

The person whose parked car exploded probably wasn’t terribly relieved, however.

I lined up my next shot and fired at about the same time that Gutierrez launched his RPG. My aim was much better the second time around. The missile struck the quad-drone squarely and removed it from existence. I smiled and waited for the smoke and debris to clear from the drone’s camera view so I could line up the next shot. But, before I could move I saw something emerge from the dark cloud of destruction.

Gutierrez’ RPG struck my hacked drone full on.

I learned more Spanish swear words as
El Tigre
yelled at me. The drones were less than four hundred yards away.

Gutierrez frantically loaded another RPG while I frantically flipped the toggle to hack the remaining drone. Anka looked anything but frantic as she sighted the final drone and waited for it to come into range.

My progress bar inched painfully along. Gutierrez launched his next grenade. I held my breath as it streaked through the sky. It appeared to be going straight toward the drone, but, at the last second, the drone dropped suddenly and the RPG flew by it. I didn’t see where it landed, but I hope it only took out another parked car.

“Stephenson must be flying that one by hand. He taught the drone class.”

“Good?” I asked.

“There’s a reason he taught everyone else,” Anka replied without turning.

She slowly exhaled and squeezed off a shot. The drone seemed to flinch but kept flying. My progress bar crept to seventy-five percent. Anka fired again, but this time the drone dodged to the left. She readjusted and fired again, but not before a missile left the drone and flew toward us. This time we were within range.

Anka threw down the gun.

“Run!”

We moved as fast as possible getting back inside the tunnel, but in about a second it struck where we were standing. The only thing that saved us was the relatively small size of the missiles carried by the quad-drone. The warhead was about the size of a golf ball. Still my ears were ringing and the glass in the cars all shattered. The back of my body was covered in cuts from flying glass, concrete, and metal. Rather than the dramatic jump-to-safety ahead of the explosion, I was pushed over by the blast.

When I hit the ground, the hack-box dinged at me. I had access to the drone. I immediately pulled back on the pitch and pointed the business end of it toward the sky. But, without my prompting, it rotated back to face the tunnel entrance.

“Damn, he must be able to control it still.”

“What?” both Anka and Gutierrez shouted.

“Someone’s fighting me.”

“That shouldn’t be possible,” Gutierrez said.

“Should I ask for my money back?” I was too busy to pursue the conversation further though. I turned and pitched the quad-copter to point it away from us again. I pulled back on the throttle too in an attempt to get the drone to crash, or at least give us some time. Stephenson and I danced around each other at the controls for a few minutes with him responding to every push I made. I kept pulling up and to the right and he kept pushing down and to the left.

So the next time I pushed down and to the left. Lessons from Bugs Bunny cartoons truly have a broad application. He responded in Pavlovian style and further pushed the craft down and to the left. I repeated the motion and, by this time, the drone was pointed straight at the ground. I cranked the throttle and, seeing that there were no cars in sight, fired off the remaining missiles. The explosion was far closer than I imagined. It sent a wave of fresh heat and dust into the tunnel mouth, which reminded me of the oozing lacerations on my back.

“That should do it. He’s out of missiles.”

“Yes, good,” Gutierrez stood up and brushed off his pants. I started to push myself up from the ground without rolling over onto my back, so I saw the drone’s view on the hack-box as it caught sight of Antonio standing up.

“No!” Anka yelled, “there’s—”

A gun. It fired from the belly of the drone and caught Gutierrez full in the chest. It appeared to be a shotgun from the hole it left in the Cuban. He slowly toppled as the drone searched for additional targets.

Game Over

Anka popped up from behind the Subaru she’d used for cover and took three quick shots at the drone before dropping out of sight again. It didn’t appear any worse for the wear since it sent another shotgun blast toward her.

“Do something, Corey!” She was nearly screaming.

I pulled the hacking rig closer and mashed down on the pitch and yaw controls. I felt like that guy who gets frustrated playing Street Fighter II and just palm-slaps all the buttons at once. The drone jerked and bucked as Stephenson tried to get control back. He randomly fired off a few more blasts, which came dangerously close to hitting me as I lay prone.

Then I had an idea.

“Get ready. Aim for the rotors when I tell you.”

I pressed and held the down pitch control. Stephenson fought me and, between us, we held the quad-drone to a standstill.

“Ready?”

“Yeah.”

I released the controls and yelled, “NOW!”

Anka popped up again as the drone pitched straight up exposing all the rotors. Anka had switched the AK-47 into auto-fire and she just sprayed the thing until it dropped. Her clip emptied, she dropped it out, stood, strode toward the drone and popped in another clip. She emptied that one too as she walked toward the downed quad-drone. Smoke was rising from it by the time she reached it. She proceeded to beat the remains with the, now empty, AK.

After a quick glance at the hacking box I gingerly rose and walked toward the raging woman who’d just saved my life.

“It’s dead.”

She continued to thrash it with her gun.

“Anka, it’s dead. You can stop.”

She started kicking it.

“ANKA!” I grabbed her shoulders before she started punching the now-inanimate object.

“What?” she snarled at me.

“It’s over. Game over, man.”

The look in her eyes scared me. I thought she would start trying to kill me. It’s not the most manly-feeling moment when you realize that you are in mortal danger from the woman you just made out with. But it’s also kind of hot. After a moment the death-fire left her eyes and she recognized me.