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“Keep monitoring.”
Contreras hung up, then spoke softly to himself in Spanish. “I know how to do my job.”
Just then, the van rocked on its chassis as a strong gust of wind came from the direction of the nearby lake. Contreras quickly looked to his monitor and saw the real-time thermal image captured by the drone move; the clarity of the image lessened for a moment, and then it sharpened again. A quick scan of data on his other laptop showed him that everything on board the unit was working fine, but seconds later the image blurred once more, green data points on his second laptop flashed red, and when the picture cleared again, he could see that the UAV was literally tumbling through the air.
Contreras grabbed the controls. The autopilot had shut off, and he struggled to right the device plummeting through the sky nearly one hundred yards above and a quarter mile to the northeast of him.
The battle for control continued, and while it did, the German woman came back into his ear. “Wrangler, Control. We’ve lost the image—”
He shouted back as he furiously worked one of the joysticks. “Yeah, and I’m about to lose the entire platform! Leave me alone!”
Another blast came in, RC19 spun again, and a quick glance at his data screen showed Contreras that the tiny aircraft was only seventy feet above the ground and still losing altitude.
He realized his only chance to save the device was to forget about trying to fly it back to the van and land it right where it was. He kept up the descent while simultaneously looking for a flat piece of ground somewhere below.
At forty feet and falling he decided on a crash-landing attempt on the flat roof of a long, low building two thirds of the way back to his van from the target location. He maneuvered the joystick expertly, zeroing in on the corrugated metal surface, and pulled back on the power when it was only a few feet above it.
RC19 bounced to a hard and likely noisy landing, finally coming to rest upside down just inches from the two-story roof’s edge.
Contreras took a long breath to relax, and then he tapped his earpiece. “Control, Wrangler Zero One. RC19 crash-landed on a rooftop four blocks from me.” He added, “In this weather, nobody could have done better than that. I’m going on foot to retrieve it.”
He climbed out of the van, leaned into the wind, and began heading to the northeast, cussing under his breath because this screwup was not his fault.
TEN
Court and Zoya had passed the SUV and the lone man sitting inside it thirty seconds earlier, but so far there was no indication the man had entered into either a vehicle or a foot follow.
Zoya said, “I think we’re fine.”
Court shook his head. “He might not have pinged us for some reason, but he could still be a bad actor.”
“Hey, it was your plan.”
Court shoved his hands into his pockets and trudged on through the night. Zoya walked along next to him, occasionally holding her hood forward and down to keep the wind from blowing it back.
She said, “You really think we’re going to find a launch or a boat that will take us over the lake in these conditions?”
“If not, then we’re stealing one.”
Since the rain had stopped fully now, there were more people out on the street by the minute. It was a Saturday night; men and women filed into and out of restaurants and bars in this tourist town, and locals headed to tiendas and bus stops.
Zoya and Court eyed everyone they saw, surreptitiously, of course, and Court looked in every reflective surface he could find, hunting for an indication they were being followed.
But so far, anyway, Zoya’s insistence that they had not been compromised seemed to be holding up.
•••
With the strong wind to his back, Contreras arrived at the building where he’d crash-landed the drone minutes earlier. It was a long and simple two-story structure with a corrugated metal roof, festooned with signage. On the first floor, a small grocery and an arts and crafts shop were closed for the evening, and the second floor housed an optician and a dentist, also apparently dark and empty.
A kiosk that normally sold T-shirts was boarded up in front of the building, and its little roof was exactly half the height to the second-floor wraparound balcony. Contreras was no gymnast, but he’d had to climb up many trees, buildings, boulders, and the like to retrieve his wayward equipment in the past, so he figured he could get himself up there to his device without any trouble.
A bus passed, spraying water from its tires onto the Mexican. He cussed loudly, then snatched a five-gallon bucket off the sidewalk and took it over to the kiosk. Climbing onto this, he grabbed hold of the metal roof and, with some effort, pulled himself up.
From here he jumped across to the balcony, grabbed on to the wet railing, and then climbed up onto the roof.
Soon he was on his knees in the dark, folding up his white quadcopter and placing it into his backpack. Two of the propellers had snapped, but he had dozens of spares back in the van, so he just detached them and left them there.
A fresh gust of wind came from the southwest; he turned away from it and, as soon as he did so, noticed a pair of individuals appear out of a street running off to the east and then begin moving his way.
