He needed a Plan B.
“One of you climb up here and drive,” he shouted after turning onto the next paved lane they happened across.“I’m going to try and slow down that drone.”
He heard more grumbling behind him, but a few seconds later, Rhett climbed over the seats, almost bouncing out of the cart before catching himself.
“Keep your swerves random,” Darwin said as Katrina’s brother slid behind the wheel, as Darwin kept the accelerator pinned to the floorboard.
The maneuver was clumsy and nearly sent them into a ditch, but then Darwin was in the back seat beside Jameson, pulling the gun from the holster at his back.
He braced one knee against the edge of the seat, holding himself steady until he spotted the drone.The thing was maybe fifty yards behind them, at an altitude of thirty feet off the ground.It was a tough shot, especially considering that both of them were moving.But it was the best he was likely to get.
He squeezed the trigger slowly, sending half a dozen rounds at the drone.At least two of them hit their target, but to no effect.Truly, he hadn’t expected much.The platform would have been designed with its heaviest armor along the front for protection against the targets it was engaging.Somehow, he needed to get a shot at the thing from the side.Or even better, from the rear.
“Did you hit it?”Jameson asked.“Why is it still coming after us?”
Before Darwin could answer, the cart swerved so hard to the right that he almost took a header over the side.A split-second later, it went up on two wheels and almost tipped as bullets smashed into plastic and metal all around them.Darwin reached out and grabbed Jameson’s shoulder just in time before the older man flew out of the vehicle.
“The damn thing somehow got in front of us,” Rhett called out over his shoulder.“I had to swing us around to avoid getting shot in the face.”
Of course, now they were heading in the wrong direction, back toward the resort and all the people there who would be at risk, including Katrina.But they didn’t have a choice.The Genesis drone was herding them where it wanted them to go.
Unfortunately, the cart had been hit multiple times in the process of turning around, and those rounds must have hit something important because smoke and flames poured out from the undercarriage of the vehicle, whitish-blue and intensely hot.
The batteries.
Bullets from the drone must have hit the lithium-ion rechargeable battery packs under the seat.They were all going up, and the heat and flames would only get worse.
Shit.
“We gotta ditch!”Darwin shouted.
Lunging forward over the seats in front of him, he leaned around Rhett to grab the wheel, jerking it to the right.The cart went off the paved lane and into a ditch, sending all three of them over the side as the vehicle tipped over.
“Run for the trellises!”he ordered, dragging Jameson to his feet and giving him a nudge toward the nearest line of vertically strung grapes.He prayed the flames and billowing smoke coming off the cart would give them enough cover to get there without being shot.
His prayers were answered as the drone got confused by the intense heat bloom coming off the burning golf cart.That allowed the three of them to make it to cover, where they played hide-and-seek with the drone as it flew around the trellises, trying to line up a shot at them.
“Tell me you have a plan!”Jameson shouted, breathing hard as he darted behind a vertical support pole holding up grapes and vines.
“Same plan as before!”Darwin told him.“Don’t get shot!”
Darwin had just ducked behind another support pole, the drone side-slipping to the left to stay with him, when he felt his phone vibrate.This probably wasn’t the time to check his phone, but he pulled it out of his pocket anyway.
It was a text from Simon, saying the Team was at the resort and already heading in their direction.That big flaming sign you left for us made it easy to find you.
“Texting while driving is bad enough,” Rhett said, his gaze locked on the rapidly moving drone as Darwin continued to text back and forth with his Teammate.“But trying to text while being shot at is all kinds of crazy.Maybe tell your friends you’re a little busy?”
Darwin dove toward the next trellis, rolling across the ground and texting again before he was even back on his feet.
“My friends have a plan to help us,” he said.“But for it to work, we’re going to need to make ourselves some really inviting targets.”
“It’s already trying to kill us,” Jameson pointed out breathlessly after running a short dash to another trellis and spinning around to the back side to put it between him and the drone.“How much more inviting do we need to be?”
“A lot more,” Darwin said.“We’ll probably need to stand out in the open between two rows of trellises, making sure the drone is completely focused on us.”
Both Jameson and Rhett looked absolutely terrified at that idea, but ultimately nodded their heads in agreement.
“We need to move deeper into the grape fields,” Darwin said as he moved in that direction.“Lure the thing out into the open.”
