the lawn, wearing black! They’ve got drones with warheads, too. I’m heading for the roof to engage.” He ran up the circular staircase, his rifle swinging in his right arm.
Court heard him through his ringing ears, but he still wasn’t clear. Drones? Did he say drones? “You’re going to engage the terrorists?”
“Negative! I’m engaging the fuckin’ killer robots, Six! Those tangos are your problem!”
Court’s MP5 was slick with the previous owner’s blood, but he chambered a round and brought it to his shoulder as more explosions crashed outside the residence.
* * *
• • •
Haz Mirza’s men had all left the trailer behind him; he could hear their outgoing gunfire just outside the cab, but he sat where he was, tapped a few more keys on his keyboard, and then closed his laptop and tossed it into a backpack staged there on the bed next to him. He’d just set the remaining UAVs, some twenty-five in all, to autonomous mode, meaning they would identify and attack targets on their own.
The UAE tech who had programmed the weapons had set their autonomous mode to launch strikes against any vehicles moving towards the ambassador’s residence in a fifty-meter radius. Any force responding to Mirza’s attack by vehicle would be identified by the squadron’s computers, then destroyed.
This bought Mirza and his men the time they needed to focus on the ground battle.
Slipping the pack over his shoulder, Haz hefted his rifle, checked to make certain his chest rig holding his AK magazines was in place, then opened the little door to the cab.
Immediately he saw his driver slumped over in his seat. The man was alive, but barely, bubbles of blood popping from his lips. The man had done his job, and Mirza had no time for him now, because he had to go do his job. He climbed out of the sleeping berth, leapt down from the passenger door, and brought his AK to his shoulder. Scanning ahead through smoke and fire, he saw his men already running up the driveway, firing at any armed person they could find.
Mirza’s radio was attached to the shoulder of his vest, and it crackled with traffic, but he couldn’t hear over the noise as he ran forward, through the fire, trying to catch up with his advancing force.
His objective was the ambassador, and Mirza knew he didn’t have to capture him in the opening assault, but he did have to have some access to the man so that he could communicate with him, so he pressed the talk button of his radio as he ran up the driveway. “Faster, brothers!”
The first men were at the entrance now, with others moving to both the east and west sides of the property to enter there.
Mirza himself broke left and began running through the yard behind a group of his men. Civilians ran from the home in all directions. As instructed, his men didn’t waste time or bullets on anyone who clearly posed no threat, and the runners ran so frantically and haphazardly, they hardly looked like they’d be posing any defense.
He did see a man peer through a second-floor window with a pistol in his hand. Mirza raised his AK and fired, sending the man diving back inside, the glass shattering above him, and the curtains billowing in all directions from both the breeze and the gunfire.
But he did not stop. The ambassador was tonight’s goal. Nothing else mattered.
And above him twenty-four Kargu drones remained, loitering at two hundred meters. Some were antipersonnel, some were high explosive, and a few were armor piercing. And they all scanned the ground below, looking for something to kill.
* * *
• • •
Court had wanted to get to the front door, or to one of the front windows, to engage the men Zack had warned were coming up the drive, but when another dive-bombing drone crashed through a front window and detonated its high-explosive warhead in the next room, he thought better of this plan. Instead he retreated north on the ground floor, through the long east–west gallery, and then up a little hallway that led to the expansive living room at the rear of the home. Here he took a knee, his MP5 to his eye.
This was as good a place as any to die, he told himself. He assumed the attackers would know they could flank the defenders by entering from the back or side of the house, or moving left and right from the front door along the gallery,