Page 143 of King’s Ransom

I nodded to Mia Kimura. ‘Ms Kimura, I hope you’re okay after everything that went down at the tower.’

Mia Kimura smiled tightly. ‘Thanks. I took a couple of days off but I’m back into everything now. Mr King, well, he never stops.’

Aristo King turned from up ahead. ‘Ain’t that the truth. Please, Sam, come this way. Your timing is perfect. We’re about to do a test.’

He guided me inside the hangar. Garrett and Kimura followed.

No sooner was I through the door than I stopped.

‘Whoa . . .’ I gasped.

Racks and racks of state-of-the-art military aerial drones stretched away from me.

They were all like the one that had attacked us on December 21st: black, sleek and aggressive. All were fitted with either guns or missile pods.

There must have been two hundred of them.

The whole space was the size of a football field and it was completely enclosed by the hangar’s high roof.

It was also all perfectly clean, spotless. Dozens of workers in white bodysuits moved around an assembly line.

King saw my wonder. ‘Pretty cool, huh?’

‘Sure is,’ I said.

‘This is my fleet of Spiderhawks,’ he said. ‘The Air Force and Navy love these babies.’

I noted an empty slot in one of the racks.

One of the drones was missing.

I was about to ask about it, but King had already crossed to an elevator on our right. The guy never stopped moving.

He entered the elevator. ‘Come! This way! It’s gonna be quite a show.’

I stepped into the elevator after him.

It rose quickly upward.

I stepped out into the top deck of the observation tower attached to the hangar.

The vast grassy field—with its mounds, bunkers and depressions—lay before me.

Technicians sat at computer consoles, speaking into headsets.

‘Are we ready?’ King asked them.

‘Rabbits are ready,’ one technician said crisply.

‘Hawks are ready,’ another said.

‘Commence the test,’ King said in a voice that reminded me of Jean-Luc Picard (‘Number One, engage.’).

And it began.

Holy shit.

Outside on the grass, a flock of small remote-controlled drones zipped out of a bunker and fanned out.