Is it even one of ours?
Ding held still. It was trust at its most visceral level.
The tiny aircraft hovered for a solid ten seconds, it’s red light blinking like a heartbeat. Then in a flash, it pivoted, the engines revved, and it disappeared into the ebony sky.
Ding exhaled.
He hadn’t even realized he’d stopped breathing.
—
Clark had watched it all play out.
He low-crawled over to Ding, and said, “One came and looked at me as well.”
Both men ventured a cautious look over the crest of the berm. They saw a swarm of the tiny assassins swooping earthward.
“I wonder how many there are?” Ding asked.
“Hopefully enough.”
The incoming fire began to ebb. A man screamed in the distance, then was suddenly silenced.
“Are you seeing this?” Hyori called out from his perch behind the Gulfstream.
Everyone was. From their cover positions, fingers went motionless on triggers. A man in the distance start running, only to be cut down.
Ding said with surreal detachment, “This is some scaryTerminator-level shit.”
Clark sometimes recoiled at Ding’s crude analyses—but in this case, he couldn’t have put it better. “Yeah…it really is. I’m just glad these bots are on our side.”
It was over in less than a minute. All incoming fire stopped.
Still, Clark wasn’t completely convinced. “Eyes sharp,” he called out. “We need to check out that hangar, but there could still be threats.”
After five minutes of silence and watchfulness, he decided it was time to move. He instructed Sesniak to stay behind with Hooper, whose condition hadn’t improved. He also noticed that Charlie had taken a hit just above her right elbow. She’d rolled up the sleeve of her shirt and packed in gauze beneath it as a makeshift bandage.
“You okay?” Clark asked.
“Happy as Christmas, boss. A fragment of some kind, but the bleeding’s stopped. I can move and shoot.”
Clark took her at her word. The team emerged from behind the berm in spread formation, ready and alert. Klaus joined them, staying at the rear.
They encountered the first bodies near the hangar. Some the team had taken out themselves, but the drone’s victims were easily distinguishable: one clean round to the head delivered with machinelike precision. The fifth lifeless body they came across was splayed on the tarmac behind a utility wall, a neat hole in the forehead. Clark recognized the face from their briefing package.
He motioned Klaus over. “Is this Andrei Malenkov?”
Klaus, who had clearly never been on a battlefield, recoiled at the terrible sight. He confirmed it was Malenkov.
“I wish we could have talked to him,” Ding commented.
Clark bent down and regarded Malenkov more closely. He went through his pockets and came up with a phone. He tapped the screen, and when it popped to life Clark held it in front of Malenkov’s mostly undamaged face. It unlocked, and he went to the call log and studied it.
“Anything worthwhile?” Ding asked.
“I don’t know.” He pulled out his own phone, took a picture of the screen, then pocketed both handsets.
Clark stood and they moved to the next body a few steps away. The man was small and thin, Middle Eastern features. “This guy familiar?” he asked Klaus.
