The screens on the flight deck showed the target in high definition: a crowd of civilians on the ground, all contained within a triangular piazza with a fountain at its centre. The Predator drone identified its target and asked for a yes or no answer. Riley Turner confirmed the kill.
‘Painting the target,’ his wife said.
‘Master arm hot,’ replied Riley.
‘Flying the laser,’ confirmed Rose. ‘Target painted.’
The men on the outside of the door were almost in. Riley didn’t have a second to hesitate. ‘Three, two, one, rifle,’ he said, launching a 100-pound Hellfire. ‘Missile away.’
‘Time of flight, sixty-three seconds,’ added Rose, as the fizz of the cutting tool stopped.
Husband and wife looked at each other with love in their eyes. They scooped their handguns off the console and rose from their seats.
Pope grabbed the handle and flung the door open. Baptiste darted inside. He fired three times, beating the Turners to the punch. The wife crumpled to the floor in a heap, her husband, a hole between the eyes, dropped his gun, turned and slumped dead on the controls.
Baptiste rushed to the flight deck, Pope at his shoulder. They pulled Riley Turner away from the console, smeared with her blood.
‘We’re too late,’ Baptiste said. ‘Missile away.’
Pope muscled in. ‘Move the stick. Throw it off target.’
‘Wherever it hits, it’ll take out a city block,’ Baptiste replied.
‘At least it won’t start a war,’ Pope said, pushing the stick to one side. Yet thanks to a smouldering bullet hole in the console, the targeting system didn’t respond.
‘What did you tell Gilmore?’ Pope asked.
‘I told him to get out.’ Baptiste called Gilmore’s number for the final time. ‘We’re too late,’ he said. ‘You’ve got forty-seven seconds.’ Before he could wish him good luck, Gilmore hung up.
Baptiste joined Pope in front of the screens. They watched on helplessly as the missile neared its target.
Lying low on her front, Rios unscrewed the silencer from her rifle.
Since incapacitating one of Chiang’s bogus security team, she’d been the talk of the police radio. The snipers at least. They were busy searching for her position, waiting for her to raise her head. Little did they know she’d stolen an earpiece and microphone along with a uniform from the back of their SWAT van, or that she could hear every word they were saying.
Still, she didn’t have long. An armed SWAT unit was going floor by floor through each building on the corner of the square. Rios figured she’d have to make her exit the hard way. That meant crawling backwards on her belly and taking the smoking gun with her. The best she could do was strip the rifle to its essentials. Yet as Rios worked the silencer off the end of the rifle, she heard jet engines in the distance.
In seconds, they arrived, a UAV blowing the cap off her head on its way over Rome. She watched it rise, bank and turn.
‘That can’t be good,’ she muttered, as the news came in from Gilmore. A possible drone attack, he said. Pope and Baptiste were trying to stop it. But her orders were to get out of there. Then seconds later, another update.
‘Missile away. Forty seconds.’
Rios set her mind on running for the door to the building staircase. Yet she hesitated and peered down from her position at the crowded square – a hundred innocent people about to get fried.
It wasn’t on her. And besides, what could she do? An idea flashed across her mind, unwanted, unwelcomed. Chances were it wouldn’t work and she might as well just paint a big red bullseye on her chest.
Rios dropped her head. ‘Fuck it.’
She grabbed the rifle, rose and knelt on the edge of the roof. Switching to semi-automatic, the Mexican took aim and opened fire on the crowd. People screamed and fled in all directions. The security barriers blocking off the square were trampled as they ran for their lives. She continued to unload into the fountain in the square. Then, as expected, a red dot appeared on her chest. A sledgehammer punch knocked her flat on the roof.
Rios coughed. Choked. Couldn’t breathe. Had to. She hauled herself up, a bullet lodged deep in her Kevlar. A broken rib or more. Rios retrieved her rifle and scrambled to the roof’s edge. She let off a burst of fire at the sniper across the way, driving him out of sight. Moving to her left, a volley of fire from a second sniper chased her as far as a ventilation housing.
‘Why always me?’ she asked herself as bullets riddled the metal shaft.
Spinning out of hiding, Rios pinned the shooter down, switched to manual and ran back to the roof’s edge. She slid on the seat of her pants and focused in on the square. A lone Chinese teen remained, wearing a red T-shirt and glasses with a pink manga backpack strapped to her back. She cowered by the fountain, the centrepiece of the square shot half to pieces. The police yelled at her to get out of there, yet they didn’t dare enter the square. Rios fired an inch to the girl’s left, scaring her into a run. She fled the scene into the surrounding streets.
Would it be enough?
Rios dropped the rifle, scrambled to her feet and sprinted across the rooftop. Sniper fire chased her all the way to the stairwell door. It was wide open. She was almost there.
Then a flash. The mother of all booms. A shockwave of raw energy and heat. The wave picked Rios up and propelled her through the door into the stairwell. She bounced off the back wall, came down hard and blacked out cold.