Rounds flew past his head,zhip zhip. He glanced down at the parking lot and saw four men with rifles raised in his direction, muzzles flaring. The drones were tiny now, the red lights shrunk to pinpricks. The four others had retreated behind the jacked-up pickups, where they stood with their necks craned, watching the flight. One was the boy with the controller.
Peter aimed for the device, knowing he might well miss it and hit the kid. He told himself the boy was a combatant, no different from a teenager in Fallujah staring down the sights of a rifle. And it was true. But if Peter killed him, he’d dream about the boy, anyway, like he did all the others.
More rounds flew past,zhip zhip zhip. Beside him, a branch fell from the shrub. He cleared his mind, aimed, let out a breath, and fired. The controller didn’t move. The boy looked around, startled but unharmed. Peter had missed. He adjusted his aim to fire again, but the boy turned and ran through the row of sheriff’s vehicles and disappeared behind a boxy SUV. Above him, the red pinpricks slipped sideways and began to descend. Maybe Peter had hit the controller, after all. He allowed himself to hope.
Then the night sky was lit up by bright white fireworks high in the air, a twin waterfall of sparks that kept renewing themselves like the world’s largest arc welder. The drones were lit from below, their spideryblack skeletons in stark relief, the linked motorcycle chains between them glowing orange from the high-voltage current in the wires it had bridged. The falling sparks were flecks of superheated metal from the wires and the chain. They bounced off vehicles and pavement and continued to burn.
Then a substation transformer blew with a spray of orange sparks and the thunder of an exploding mortar round. Another transformer went, then two more in rapid succession.
The sparks stopped abruptly. The substation lights blinked out. Peter glanced up to see the lights on the transmission towers go black one by one, the darkness marching west toward the cities of the coast. He looked behind him at the town sprawled across the low hills, just in time to see it vanish street by street until it disappeared entirely into the night.
There was no moon. He turned in a circle. Aside from the stars, the only visible illumination came from the headlights in the parking lot below.
Peter had failed.
The Messenger’s people had won.
The Dark Time had come.
62
Partly concealed in the scrub, Peter bent his head and pulled in a deep breath. He’d failed to prevent this shitstorm. He couldn’t undo the damage. But his mission wasn’t over. It had changed. He would capture Hollis and Vance and whoever else he could get, and deliver them to the law in Seattle. After that, all bets were off.
He looked up to check on the gunmen in the parking lot. Lewis had already taken down one of them. The other three were advancing across the blacktop, backlit by the pickups’ headlights, spraying armor-piercing rounds across the hillside. At fifty yards, Peter thought he recognized Troy Boxall, but not the other two. They all seemed to think their armor and weapons made them invincible, even though they couldn’t see their adversaries in the scrub.
Watching them come, Peter keyed his radio. “Listen up. We’re taking prisoners.”
Lewis’s voice was low and liquid in his ear. “Are you kidding? We should smoke these dirtbags and call it good.”
“I’m with Peter,” June said. “We need to know what they know. Also, taking prisoners is what makes us different from these assholes.”
“I already know I ain’t an asshole,” Lewis growled. “Plus there’s eight of them and only three of us, and we got no armor. I don’t want to trade my life for these motherfuckers.”
“We won’t,” Peter said. “Besides, I only want three of them, and they’re not the ones shooting at us right now. So here’s the plan.”
—
First, Peter and Lewis focused on the advancing gunmen, who couldn’t see them hiding in the scrub. The gunmen’s torsos were armored, but not their heads or lower extremities. At forty yards, a couple of well-aimed rounds took out their legs and left them bleeding on the blacktop. They were still armed and firing, but lying prone, their armor didn’t help much and they were easy targets.
Peter and Lewis made the kill shots, then turned and ran to the right, leaving June behind as they circled across the low curve of the hillside. Like the young drone pilot, the three men watching from behind the pickups had retreated through the line of sheriff’s vehicles where the cover was better. They were all armed, but were evidently more cautious than the four dead guys.
Peter floated through the scrub, breathing easily, his legs strong and his boots sure on the uneven ground. Lewis was a shadow six feet behind him. Nobody was shooting at them. He heard June taking careful shots at the vehicles, punching holes in radiators and shattering windshields, keeping the remaining Messenger’s men pinned in place behind the spaced line of sheriff’s cruisers. Manny had given her his HK carbine when they split up. It was a much more accurate weapon than any AK-47.
Once Peter had gone far enough to be outside the beam of theheadlights, the darkness became almost complete. He dropped his night-vision gear over his eyes and the world glowed a soft, familiar green.
A few minutes later, he stopped. They’d come ninety degrees from their previous position and were now even with the line of vehicles. Thirty yards out, he could see grainy green shadows crouched behind the two center SUVs, occasionally leaning out to one side or the other. They were peering through the row of cars to try to locate June’s muzzle flash on the hillside, but had to keep ducking back to avoid her pinpoint return fire.
Peter assumed the remaining Messenger’s men had night-vision gear, too. That’s why he’d asked June to avoid punching out any headlights. When the others looked in her direction, that brightness would make their goggles flare for just a moment. Which made it harder for them to target her and easier for Peter and Lewis to approach unseen.
Peter keyed his radio and whispered, “June, hold fire in thirty seconds; repeat, hold fire in thirty seconds.”
Side by side, they crept down the slope, rifles up and ready, silent as ghosts. Twenty-five yards. Twenty. Fifteen. June stopped firing. The shadows resolved into three men, bulky with body armor, the bulge of night-vision gear atop their heads. Peter couldn’t see the boy. He took another step.
One of the shadows turned toward them. Peter assumed he meant to slip around the rear bumper of the SUV and fire at June. But along the way, he glanced in Peter’s direction, saw something in the night, and raised his rifle. Peter knew by his enormous size it was Vance.
Peter shot him in the chest four times. He went down, punched in the armor with the force of a hammer blow.
The second man turned. Hollis. Lewis gave him two rounds to the chest plate, then pivoted and shot the third man twice in the back. They both fell. Lewis sidestepped to cover Peter as he ran up andkicked Vance and Hollis hard in the head, then tore away their rifles and threw them into the scrub. Lewis knelt to look at the third man, Nickels, who was already bleeding out. One of Lewis’s rounds had missed his vest and torn through his neck. Die by the sword, Peter thought.
