they probably thought Zack had been killed with the last warhead.
Zack had a slight advantage due to this, but he knew it wouldn’t last. As soon as he started knocking the little machines from the sky again, the operator on the other end of this fight would know where to send his explosives.
An SUV displaying the decal of the Berlin polizei raced with its lights out over the grassy park. Zack saw another just behind it, and he worried they would be too good a target for the UAVs to pass up.
He brought the thermal to his eye, scanned back and forth, and then he saw it. A pinprick of light—the reflection of the still-burning truck fire on Finkenstrasse against the ball-shaped camera on the bottom of a quadcopter. It was racing down, at speed, like a falling star. One hundred fifty meters away from his position, Zack knew he had less than a half second to stop it before it impacted with one of the vehicles.
He fired, pumped the shotgun to chamber another shell, and fired again.
The quadcopter detonated fifty feet over the SUVs, sending fire and debris down on them, but not destroying them or killing the occupants. They rolled closer to the ambassador’s residence.
“It’s on now, motherfucker!” Zack shouted, and he scanned the sky again.
Soon he saw another device lowering, as if homing in on a target. It wasn’t moving as fast, and Zack didn’t take the time to see what it was aiming to destroy, but at a range of eighty yards he fired three more shells, and this airship, too, detonated harmlessly in the sky.
Zack knew he had to move, so he jumped to his feet, ran across the attic to the other side again, and dove into the corner.
He’d shot down four drones, and his enemy had expended three more trying to kill him. He couldn’t play this game all night but, he told himself, he wanted to take out at least one more quadcopter before yet another was spent taking him out.
* * *
• • •
Matt Hanley knew how to read people, and it was clear to him that Haz Mirza was out of his mind with both stress and fury at the moment. It was Hightower, Hanley knew; he was still up on the roof somewhere, blasting hovering machines out of the sky.
Mirza looked up from his computer for the first time in minutes, then stood and stepped away from it, walking over to his cohorts. There were four other men dressed in black and carrying Kalashnikovs now, and the injured man who had crawled in earlier lay still in the middle of the room. Hanley was pretty sure the man had bled out from his wounds, and his teammates obviously were, too, because they had disarmed him and left him there unattended.
Mirza spoke with his men for a moment more, then made a call on his radio that received no response.
Hanley put it together. These five shitheads were all that was left of the group, and as long as Mirza was not at his computer, the drones would leave Zack alone. Even if they were autonomous, they would be programmed to attack concentrations of individuals or moving vehicles; they wouldn’t be set to detonate over a single man.
The leader of the Berlin cell turned away from his men, then headed towards the group of men and women standing against the wall near the closed closet door behind which the panic room was hidden.
His English was fair. “Ambassador Sedgwick is in his secure room, right there in the closet. He is a coward. While he watches you in safety, he leaves you to your fates.”
Mirza turned around dramatically and pointed his weapon high in the corner of the home office. Hanley couldn’t see a camera there, but the young Iranian seemed sure that there was one. He addressed a spot on the wall. “Mr. Ambassador, if you do not come out of that room, I will kill every last hostage.”
* * *
• • •
Matt Hanley knew he had to buy time. He stepped forward, and an AK barrel was jammed into his chest by one of the Quds fighters. Undeterred, he said, “Please, listen to me. I can help you.”
“How?” Mirza asked. He wasn’t even looking his way; instead he was checking his laptop.
“I am more valuable than the ambassador. Take me with you. I am all you need to achieve your objectives tonight.”
Mirza looked at the big American in the dark