Chapter Twenty

Sami

When my high school guidance counselor sat me down my freshman year and asked me where I saw myself in ten years, trekking through the rugged backcountry near Yellowstone National Park in the middle of the night carrying an M4 hadn’t been anywhere on my list of yeah-I’d-like-to-do-that.

And, yet, here I was.

If I said my heart wasn’t pounding a hole through my chest, that would be a big fat lie. I was scared spitless even though I knew it was not real. One thought kept circling through my head on an endless loop: I’m not ready for this.

Oh, God. Why the hell did everyone think I was ready for this?

The night was cold, verging on freezing, but sweat dripped down my spine as I followed close behind Remy. He glanced back at me, and, through my night-vision goggles, I saw his quicksilver grin. He was loving this. All of these guys loved this.

Harvard loved it.

Me? Not so much. At the moment, I wanted nothing more than to return to my Iron Throne and the safety of the digital world.

According to our intel, our hostage was an oil heir captured by ecoterrorists who disliked his father’s political maneuvering to allow drilling near Yellowstone. The part of me that was Fragment, the idealistic hacker who once tried to delete all student loans, sided more with the ecoterrorists than our hostage’s father. But I also knew better than anyone that breaking the law wouldn’t fix things, and our hostage didn’t deserve to be punished for his father’s actions.

The HTs—Hostage Takers—were holed up in a rickety cabin tucked away in one of the most rugged corners of Wyoming. We didn’t know how many there were, which left our little six-man team in a precarious position. Were we outnumbered? Were we staring down a repeat of Ruby Ridge or Waco? Those two cases were infamous in hostage negotiation, and the dos and don’ts of each had been drilled into our heads from day one of training.

Up ahead, Wolfe—who drew the short straw as team leader for this mission—held up his fist, indicating we should stop moving. We dropped to the ground.

His voice whispered in my earbud. “I have eyes on the cabin. No movement.”

After a moment charged with tension and way too much silence for my liking, he finally waved us ahead again. We crept inch by agonizing inch closer to the cabin, and I couldn’t help but wonder what kinds of animals were out here sharing the night with us. Cougars? Bears? Buffalo?

Oh my God. Moose?

Did moose live out here?

I’d heard stories about how dangerous they were. They attacked more people per year than bears and wolves combined and were so terrifyingly big. I’m an animal lover, but if we ran across a moose out here, I was absolutely using my newfound shooting skills and wasn’t giving it a chance to charge us.

I realized I was scanning the landscape around us for animals. And not the two-legged kind, which I should have been more concerned with. They were significantly more dangerous to us right now than a fictional moose, since these particular ecoterrorists already had a trail of bodies in their wake. It was Class Alpha’s job to take them down before they killed again, and I wasn’t going to help accomplish that mission if I was looking for moose.

C’mon, Sami. Focus.

Wolfe motioned Remy and Blaze to the left. Gavin and Will Campbell went to the right. Then he motioned to me. “Gigi, to me.”

I winced at my radio call sign.

Over the course of our training, we’d all ended up with nicknames. Remy was Shotgun because his full name was Remington. Gavin was still Crash—my nickname for him that first day had stuck. In radio transmissions, Wolfe was Mowgli, since he was—ha ha—raised by wolves, but in everyday life he was just Wolfey, or sometimes Wolfe-Boy. And I was Geek Girl, but thanks to Jean-Luc shortening my nickname to initials one time in Arabic class, I now sounded like a pampered Pomeranian with an attitude. Maybe that was why Jean-Luc had done it? I was by far the smallest in the group, but if they thought my bark was worse than my bite, they’d soon find out otherwise.

“Get that drone in the air,” Wolfe commanded. “We need a head count. HTs and hostages.”

I pulled my bag off my back and grabbed the drone from inside. This drone was a work of art, the same one I’d taken control of while the team was in Austria a few weeks back. Five pounds with four propellers, it was about the size of a MacBook. It could be controlled remotely from thousands of miles away, had an hour flight time, carried a high-res camera with night vision and infrared sensors that fed data back to the controller in real time. Harvard had created this one, but if I wanted to buy something like it commercially, it’d cost a cool hundred grand.

Harvard could easily make millions with that kind of talent. He could even give Tucker Quentin a run for his title of wealthiest man in the country. Instead, he chose to put his life at risk to help rescue people.

I set up the drone’s command center and got the thing airborne. It was nearly silent. No way anyone in the cabin would hear it coming. I switched the view to thermal and scanned the area around the cabin. It picked up a few animals in the woods—no moose, thank God—and the heat signatures of the team, but nothing else.

“Woods are clear,” I told Wolfe.

He nodded and gave some orders to the others that I tuned out. I focused on the little screen in front of me. Unfortunately, this drone didn’t have the capability to see through walls, and the cabin just appeared as a warm square on my screen. “Dammit. I want a look inside.”

Wolfe clapped me on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. We can handle whatever’s inside. You stay here and watch our six with that thing, okay?”

I glanced briefly up at him as he moved away to join the rest of the team. He looked like a warrior right then, face set in hard lines, and not the sweet, fumbling guy who didn’t know how to talk to girls. I was so damn proud of him at that moment, I could’ve burst with it. He’d come a long way in the last few months. We all had. I know I wasn’t the same girl who’d landed at the airport three months ago.

I returned my focus to the drone’s screen. Switched to night vision, which gave me no more information than the infrared had. An idea occurred. I couldn’t see through walls with the infrared, but I could see through glass with the regular camera. I swooped down close to the cabin and guided the drone under the eaves along one wall until I found a window. I carefully dropped its altitude until it hovered just low enough for the camera to take a peek inside.

Adrenaline spiked my blood.

Harvard.

He sat in a chair next to Tyler, our hostage. Indignation flashed through me on his behalf. I knew how much he wanted to be part of the team, how much he wanted to prove himself, and while the team was out on a mission, Quinn was using him as a hostage. That had to burn.

He lifted his head, and my heart tried to claw out of my chest in shock. All that blood…

It was fake. It had to be fake. This was a training exercise. Quinn wouldn’t actually beat him up, right?

But it looked so damn real.

I didn’t see anyone else in the room. They appeared to be alone. For now.

“Geek Girl to Mowgli, I have eyes on Dallas,” I said into my mic. Dallas was the call sign we’d decided on for Tyler. “Northeast corner of living room. Appears unharmed, but be advised, we may have a secondary hostage in need of medical care.”

“Copy,” Wolfe replied. “We’re going in.”

I pulled the drone back to scan the woods with the thermal again. Still clear. I watched from the sky as Wolfe and the team breached the front door with a flashbang. I heard a lot of shouting through my earpiece, then silence for several terrifying beats.

“Clear,” Wolfe said, followed by each of the guys repeating the word.

“Dallas secured,” Remy said.

“Fuck,” someone said so softly I couldn’t tell who it was. Then it was followed by, “Medic!”

I wanted to scream, “What’s happening?” But I didn’t want to distract them, so I held my breath.

Was Harvard actually hurt?

Oh God.

My mind spun as I waited to hear more. I could see why Harvard hated staying behind when his team went out. The not knowing was excruciating.

Noise blasted over my comm channel. Shouting and panic. Pops of gunfire.

Whatever was happening, my guys were falling apart in there.

I guided the drone back to the window. At first, I couldn’t understand what I was looking at. Harvard was on his feet, his arm locked around Wolfe’s throat with a gun pressed to Wolfe’s head. Of all people, Gavin had stepped forward and was trying to talk him down, using all the tricks we’d learned in our hostage negotiation classes.

What the…?

Then it clicked. Gabe and Quinn were trying to trick us. Harvard had been a plant. A hostage taker posing as a hostage.

Which probably meant there were more surprises waiting for us.

I scrambled over to where I’d dropped my pack, retrieved my laptop, powered it up, and typed commands for the two drones waiting back at our operating base. These two were not simply for surveillance like the first one. These babies were unmanned combat aerial vehicles—UCAVs. Basically, flying weapons. I called them the Noisy Cricket and Lawgiver. Extra points if you know where I got those names.

I opened my mouth to tell the team my drones were going hot but stopped cold at the soft crackle of a foot on fallen leaves. The sound came from behind me—but everyone was in front of me at the cabin.

Dread clamped icy fingers around my heart. I’d set my rifle down to deal with the surveillance drone, and then I’d stupidly left it sitting ten feet away when I went for my laptop. As casually as I could, given my rabbiting heart and shaking hands, I moved back toward the surveillance drone’s command center. It still hovered overhead, and on the screen, I saw my own heat signature and three others closing in on me from behind.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

I couldn’t say anything to the team without giving away my element of surprise, which was the only thing I had going for me right now. It was the only way I was going to reach my weapon. The only weapon I had. I silently cursed myself for not taking Jean-Luc up on his offer to teach me some knife skills. If I lived through the next few minutes, I was going to correct that mistake, ASAP.

They had to see me shaking. I couldn’t keep my hands still as I sat down in front of the drone’s command center again and immediately pointed the camera toward the cabin. I didn’t want them to know I saw them coming. I reached out and set one hand on my weapon and heard their footfalls pick up the pace. They weren’t even trying to be quiet now.

I swallowed hard, grabbed my gun, and was already squeezing the trigger as I spun to face my attackers. I hit one of them square in the chest, the splatter of red paint enough like blood that my heart stuttered with real horror. He wore a mask, but in the bright light of the moon, I recognized his gray eyes.

Quinn.

I’d shot Quinn in the chest.

Holy shit.

Even he seemed surprised for a moment. He looked down at his chest, then back up at me. Maybe I even saw a smirk before he sat down to indicate he was “dead.”

This all happened in less than a heartbeat. I didn’t have time to marvel over my lucky shot because Gabe—the big man in black closing in on my right had to be Gabe—and the third attacker—no idea who he was; probably someone from one of Tuc Quentin’s other teams—would be on me in seconds.

I activated Lawgiver with the press of a button, then grabbed my laptop and the surveillance drone’s control and ran as hard as I could. I thought I felt a paintball whiz by too close to my shoulder. I definitely saw another strike a pine tree right as I zigzagged around it.

I needed to get out of the strike zone or I was going to vaporize myself. Well, I wouldn’t really vaporize myself now—the Cricket and Lawgiver’s weapons systems had been deactivated for training, and they’d just rain down red paint instead of releasing their actual missiles—but if this was a real mission, vaporization was a distinct possibility.

“Gigi to Class Alpha,” I said into my mic as I ran. “Lawgiver is hot. I repeat, Lawgiver is hot.”

No answer. Did I have a team left, or had Harvard’s ruse bested them?

I swerved to the left and headed up a steep hill. I was certain I wasn’t being followed anymore. The “bad” guys had bigger concerns than the tech geek—like my guys in the cabin. I had to help them.

I found a spot on the hillside that offered decent coverage and set up a small command post. I guided the surveillance drone out of its hover and circled around to where I’d shot Quinn. He still sat where I’d left him, but the others were gone. I pulled up Lawgiver’s navigation and—

What the hell?

It was way off course. I tried to guide it back, but its controls were unresponsive.

And wait. Shit. The Cricket was in the air now, too, and I hadn’t launched it. I tried to reach it with multiple commands and failed.

My stomach knotted up into a cold ball of fear. I wasn’t in control of the drones anymore. Just because they were disarmed didn’t mean they weren’t still dangerous. They were a couple thousand-pound projectiles that would obliterate anything they crashed into.

And. I. Had. No. Control.

Oh my God.

Quinn.

He still sat in that clearing pretending to be dead, but he might really get that way if he didn’t find cover now.

I had no way to reach him. He wasn’t connected to our comm channel, so I couldn’t radio him. Did I try to hack into the drones and regain control? What if it took too long? I couldn’t risk it.

I tapped my earbud. “Gigi to Class Alpha.”

No response. Not even the buzz of static. Had we lost our comms as well? Or maybe I just couldn’t hear them. If they could still hear me, I had to try and warn them.

“Gigi to Class Alpha,” I shouted as I scrambled back down the hillside. “I’ve lost control of the UCAVs. Get out of there now and warn Quinn!”

I still had the surveillance drone’s controller in hand and used it to scan the surrounding skies. Lawgiver would be here any second, and Cricket couldn’t be far behind. I switched to thermal, and there it was, a void on the screen, shooting straight toward the cabin’s location. It wasn’t going for Quinn. Nope, whoever was behind the controls wanted max casualties.

I made a decision that could possibly cost my position with Class Alpha, but if it saved Harvard and my friends, I’d gladly take that hit. I maneuvered the surveillance drone into Lawgiver’s path and sent it zooming forward at full speed. The smaller drone hit Lawgiver nose to nose and disintegrated. But it was enough. The collision sent Lawgiver careening into a stand of lodgepole pines, shaving off their branches as it crashed to the earth. I felt the vibration of the impact through the air, and the ground rattled under my feet. Fire lit up the sky with an orange glow way too close to the cabin for comfort. I hoped I wasn’t too late.

I broke through the tree line into the clearing where I’d last seen Quinn. He’d taken cover behind a boulder, and I dove behind it with him as Lawgiver burst with a deafening pop of an explosion.

“What the fuck?” Quinn said. I’d never seen him scared, but he sure looked it now. His eyes all but bulged out of his head.

I tried to answer, but I was breathing too hard. I don’t think I’d ever run so fast in my life. “Someone took control of the UCAVs,” I managed to gasp out. “I didn’t know how else to stop it.”

“Jesus.” Quinn shoved to his feet, but I grabbed his arm and pulled him back.

“Wait! The second one’s coming.”

He dropped down again and tapped his earbud. “Achilles to Stonewall, abort training. We have a hot UCAV bearing down on our position. How copy?”

I didn’t hear Gabe’s response, but it couldn’t have been a happy one, because Quinn winced. “Roger that. Achilles out.”

“Are they okay?”

“They’re taking cover in the woods behind the cabin. How long do we have?”

“Seconds.” I scanned the sky overhead, but without my surveillance drone I had no hope of spotting the Cricket. It was designed to be invisible to the human eye. All I saw was the splash of stars, which at any other time I would love. Not so much when one of those stars could turn into a death missile at any second.

We waited.

Minutes passed.

Nothing happened.

“You’re sure it launched?” Quinn asked finally.

“Yes. Absolutely.”

“Fuck.” He stood up. “Wherever it went, I don’t think it’s coming here.”

I hesitated, gave the sky one last scan, then also climbed to my feet. As I stood there, dusting off my butt, I realized what had happened. I looked up at him. “They stole it.”

“Looks like,” Quinn said, but his eyes swept the sky as if he wasn’t entirely convinced we were safe.

Of course they did. Why didn’t I think of it before? The UCAVs were proprietary technology owned by Quentin Enterprises. They were faster, smaller, and lighter than anything currently in use. The military didn’t even have one yet. Everyone wanted this kind of tech.

But who would take the risk?

Defion?

Or my benefactor?

I frowned. Could my benefactor be part of Defion? It didn’t seem very likely, because they’d reached out to me almost a full year before HORNET even existed and Defion hadn’t been a threat to us until this summer. But my benefactor had said they put me here. Had they maneuvered me like a pawn on a chessboard to get at Tucker Quentin? That was possible. Maybe HORNET wasn’t the main target, but Quentin Enterprises?

I had to fix this. I didn’t know how, but I had to make it right before someone got hurt.