Berlin out on a Friday night.
But he put it out of his mind—Zack was a master at compartmentalizing his emotions—and he fired.
A second drone dropped to the ground in the park; this time its warhead detonated on impact.
He looked back up into the sky with his thermal optic. This wasn’t a sustainable fight, Zack knew this. Soon, whoever was controlling the swarm would grow annoyed at the dickhead sniper on the roof shooting down his craft, and he would rain high explosives on Zack’s position.
He had seen that the wounded spotter on the roof had been carrying a shotgun, and this gave Zack an idea. The weapon would be loaded with buckshot, and it would fire in an ever-widening pattern. If Zack had the shotgun handy, he might be able to take out more of the swarm if they came down within range.
He’d likely die in the process; he couldn’t get them all before they got him, but he told himself fighting off a robot attack would be one badass way to go.
He ran across the roof now, his body low. On the ground in the front lawn of the property he heard someone yell at him in German, but he ignored it, just as he ignored the smattering of gunfire that continued below his feet in the building. He snatched up the shotgun, saw that there were extra shells in a carrier on the wounded man’s chest, and ripped off the Velcro carrier and ran back to his attic sniper’s hide.
He’d just made it back to the window when the screaming of four tiny propellers grew in his ears, and he dove headfirst inside as a massive explosion peppered the flat roof right behind him with shrapnel.
Zack rolled into a ball for a moment, his ears ringing again, then pushed himself up to his knees and racked a shell into the shotgun’s breech.
“Fuck you!” he shouted, his eyes wild. Hightower was in a one-man battle to the death with the robots now, and it was as if he had lived his entire life for this moment.
SEVENTY-THREE
Court and Zoya passed several dead security officers before Zoya found a weapon that was both operable and powerful enough for her. She slid the sling of a Colt M4 with simple iron sights off the neck of a motionless Regional Security Office man lying facedown, then felt in his jacket for another magazine. This she stuck in her waistband next to her pistol, and she checked the rifle to make sure it was loaded and the safety was off.
They’d moved halfway through the long gallery; only emergency lighting high on the walls was still operational, so they cast long, incriminating shadows as they walked.
A group of people came out an open door on their right. Court trained his MP5 submachine gun on them but saw that they were State Department personnel. He motioned them forward, and they reluctantly moved out past the threshold.
Zoya whispered to them, “There are armed drones outside. You do not want to go out there and make yourself a target. Find a position and fortify it.”
The little group moved past the two operators, back up the hall, and Zoya had no idea if they would listen to her or not.
She and Court moved on towards the west wing, past paintings and bodies, past discarded food trays and champagne bottles, past an American flag that had fallen on its side. A dead woman, a security officer from DSS, lay on her back, her eyes open and vacant.
They made it nearly to the end of the gallery when another door opened, and they saw a pair of men in black reach out with their AKs. Both Court and Zoya dropped flat behind an antique chest of drawers along the wall, then popped back up together, aimed their weapons across the marble top, and opened fire.
The pair of Quds Force men had separated at the doorway; one went left and the other right, and Court shot the one on the left through the mouth with a 9-millimeter round that exited the back of his head. Blood splattered a large, nearly blank canvas on the wall behind him, and the man went down.
Zoya fired a pair of three-round bursts at her target, killing the man on the right, then dropped to one knee and spun around, checking her six.
Court kept his weapon trained on the doorway in front of them, but when no one else came out, he and Zoya began moving forward