After working the controls for a while and getting no response, Stein turned to Cash. “I’m sorry, but we have to go get it.”
“How far away is it?”
“About a klick.” She showed Cash the location on the console screen. “That’s where we are, and that’s where the drone is.”
It didn’t look all that far to Cash, but it was downhill, through rough country. She turned to Gunnerson. “You stay here. Don’t you move.”
“You should’ve flown it down closer, like I asked,” Gunnerson said.
Cash turned to Vanucci, the guard. “You watch him.”
Vanucci looked uncertain. “Agent Cash, I’m not sure it’s a good idea for you to go down there without security.”
Cash opened her jacket to show her shoulder-holstered Glock. “And I know how to use it.”
Vanucci nodded. “Okay. Fair enough.”
Gunnerson sat down, red-faced and sulky, on a fallen tree trunk and took another pull from his flask.
Stein said, “We pretty much go in that direction, downhill, for about three-quarters of a mile.” She showed Cash, using the console’s GPS, the exact position of the drone and the terrain in between.
They set off hiking down the meadow and quickly entered an aspen forest. Stein consulted the GPS on the console from time to time to guide them.
“What an asshole,” Stein said.
“I’m sorry I allowed him to come along,” said Cash. “That was a mistake.”
Stein shook her head. “Not your fault. It was so unexpected. Nobody’s ever done that to me before.”
“You think the drone’s toast?”
“It’s pretty tough, and it has automatic avoidance features—and it landed on pine needles. The blades might be chewed up, but I’ve got replacements. I think it’ll be okay.”
As they hiked down through the trees, the slope got steeper. They were soon working their way gingerly down through rocky outcrops and deformed trees with their knuckled roots clinging precariously to the hillside. The footing was slippery, and Cash found herself hanging on to branches to maintain her footing.
After a half mile, they were blocked by a granite cliff with a twenty-foot drop.
“Son of a bitch,” said Cash. “This sucks.”
Moving along the top of the escarpment, they precariously followed its edge, looking for a route down. After a hundred yards, they came to a ravine choked with boulders. They halted, staring at it.
“I think we could get down that,” said Stein.
Cash examined it. An ugly, steep little ravine, it was only a twenty-foot drop before it leveled out into a dark forest of giant spruce trees. There were plenty of foot- and handholds on the way down. It was doable, she thought.
Stein checked the map on her console. “The drone’s down there just a few hundred yards ahead.”
“I’m game,” said Cash.
“Let’s do it.”
Stein put the console into her pack, zipped it up, and started climbing down among the boulders, moving slowly. Cash followed. It was scary; the boulders were huge and covered with slippery patches of moss, with broken tree trunks lying every which way. But there were lots of handholds, and Cash reached the bottom without much difficulty, putting her feet gratefully on the firm forest floor and breathing a sigh of relief.
Stein drew the console out of her pack and stared at it. “That’s funny.”
“What is it?”
“The drone’s stopped transmitting.”
“But you still know where it is?”
“I dropped a pin on its location. It’s just a few hundred yards that way. Maybe the battery died.”
They set off through the gloomy forest, the trees shagged with moss. After five minutes of walking, Stein stopped and looked around.
“It should be right here,” she said. She stared at the console. “This is definitely where it landed, where I dropped the pin.”
Cash likewise cast her eyes about. The forest floor was thick with springy needles, and it was cool and shadowy, the tall trees filtering out the sunlight, leaving them in a deep green shade. The fresh scent of pine drifted in the air. There was something awe-inspiring about the grove. She felt a prickling of alarm.
Stein saw something on the ground and bent down as if to pick it up.
“Whoa,” said Cash. “Don’t touch that.”
She brought out a ziplock evidence bag from the small supply she habitually carried and a tweezer and picked up the object—a broken piece of plastic. She slipped it in the bag and gave it to Stein.
“That’s a broken blade from my drone. So where the hell is it?”
Cash felt the prickle of alarm grow. “It was taken,” she said.
“Taken? What the hell?”
“Taken and, I would guess, turned off. Which is why you lost contact with it.” She reached into her jacket and unsnapped the keeper on her sidearm and withdrew it, casting her eyes about. They were surrounded by trees that limited sight in all directions. This was not a good place to be.
Stein stared at the gun. “Really?”
Cash saw, or thought she saw, a brief movement among the trees out of the corner of her eye. She snapped her head around, focusing in that direction, but whatever it was had disappeared. She put her finger to her lips and listened intently, but the only sounds were a sighing of wind in the treetops and the occasional creak of a tree trunk. The usual ubiquitous chirping of birds, however, had stopped.
Stein suddenly spun around. “What’s that?”
Cash too thought she saw a brief movement, but when she stared—nothing. She had a feeling of being stealthily surrounded.
“I think,” Cash said quietly, “we’d better get the fuck out of here.”
Stein nodded.
Cash turned and began walking back the way they had come, Stein following. Cash looked steadily to the left and right as they moved, occasionally looking back to see if they were being followed. She glimpsed flickers of distant movement through the trees on either side of them—they were being paced. She had her Baby Glock in hand. Since she carried it without a round in the chamber, she now racked one in. The noise was loud and unnatural. They were definitely being surrounded. The movements through the trees on either side felt like they were getting closer, in a sort of pincer movement. What the hell were they—people? They didn’t seem to be moving like people—more like animals. But animals wouldn’t pick up and turn off a drone.
She murmured to Stein, “Run.”
They broke into a jog, keeping side by side. That seemed to provoke their pursuers, who kept pace, edging closer but remaining flashes of movement among the many trees, impossible to differentiate or see.
In a moment, the ravine came into view.
“You go up first,” Cash said, spinning around with her Glock raised. “I’ll cover.”
Bracing herself in a firing stance, she aimed the weapon while scanning right to left and back again. Behind her, she heard Stein scrambling up the rockfall, grunting with the effort as she hoisted herself up through the tight boulders. All around her, among the tree trunks, Cash could see movement, fleet and silent—a tightening of the circle. It felt more like circling wolves than human beings.
Christ, maybe they are animals. She sighted along the barrel of the Glock, but was loath to fire. Discharging a weapon meant a shitload of paperwork, and her training told her never to fire at anything without an absolutely clear view. She could definitely see forms moving swiftly through the trees, still shrinking the circle—and again, she had the sense they were animals. They were too silent, too fleet, too … feral.
If she couldn’t fire at them, she could at least try scaring them off. It would still mean paperwork, but that was better than being decapitated. She lowered the gun and fired into the ground. The sound of the shot boomed and echoed among the trees.
It seemed to have the desired effect—all motion ceased.
She glanced back; Stein was halfway up the slot. Time for her to start climbing too. She holstered her weapon, spun around, and started up after Stein, grasping the edge of a rock and wedging a boot in a crack, pulling herself up, reaching, finding a handhold and foothold, pulling up again, struggling to get to the top as fast as possible. She’d done some rock climbing before, and it came in handy now.
She heard a sharp cry above her and looked up in time to see Stein slip, hang by a second from one arm, the other gyrating madly, trying to catch a handhold, and then she fell right past Cash, glanced off a boulder, and landed on the bottom with a sickening thud, where she lay on her side.
“Lisa!” Cash cried, almost losing her own grip as she scrambled back down, jumping the last five feet and kneeling over Stein. Her eyes were slits. She was unconscious. She looked dead.
“Lisa. Lisa! Can you hear me?”
No answer.
“Lisa!”