Blue Warrior

The ragged neck wound pumped hot blood onto the floor with the last beats of Early’s dying heart, the blood surging over broken glass, spent casings, cigarette butts.

“GOD DAMN IT!” Pearce’s face twisted with rage and grief.

Cella crested the stairs. Saw Early on the floor. She gasped. “Mike!” She ran to his corpse.

Pearce crashed into her, wrapping his arms around her waist, putting his back to the shooter to cover her, driving both of them back down the staircase just as another bullet smashed into the wall above their heads.

Cella screamed and cried and beat Pearce’s shoulders with her fists, grieving and hating all at the same time as he forced her back down the stairwell.

57

Aéropostale Station 11

Tamanghasset, Southern Algeria

15 May

Pearce vise-gripped Cella’s wrist and dragged her in a dead run back to the hangar entrance, slinging her inside and into Mossa’s arms. She buried her head in his chest and wept like a child. Mossa patted her head but locked eyes with Pearce, his face dark with grief.

Pearce shook his head. Mike’s dead.

Mossa led Cella over to a corner and sat her down, then returned to Pearce. Mann stood next to him.

“A sniper, but I did not see where the shot came from,” Mossa said.

Mann cursed. “They shot down the Switchblade earlier, so I didn’t spot him, either.”

“Ian? You see anything?” Pearce asked in his mic.

“Sorry, nothing.”

“Can you take the others out?”

“I can try. But I only have two shots left. Good chance I’ll miss them while they’re on the move.”

“You saw the Hummingbird wreckage?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Do you have a backup plan?”

“That was the backup plan.”

“It’s turning into a Hungarian cluster fuck down here.”

“Fortunately,” Ian said, “I have a backup plan for the backup plan.”

* * *

The sky flashed like lightning.

A second later, a thundering boom vibrated the air.

Pearce felt it in his chest. A flower of smoke petaled high in the sky, like a Fourth of July firework.

“Ian! Did you see that? Ian? Ian?”

Karem Air Force Base,

Niamey, Niger

“Log the incident.”

The Blue One flight engineer, Captain Pringle, had given the self-destruct order. Having lost control of the Reaper thirty minutes earlier and unable to regain control or force a return to base, the operational protocol was to hit the self-destruct switch. He knew he hadn’t done anything wrong, but he’d get blamed for it anyway. The Air Force was funny in that regard. Destroying a fourteen-million-dollar airframe, no matter the justification, was generally frowned upon by the comptrollers in blue suits.

It was a lousy way to end a lousy mission, but better than letting the MQ-9 get hijacked and parted out. If Pringle was lucky, he’d only get a reprimand and a notation in his service jacket. If he had let that Reaper fall into enemy hands, he would’ve been busted out of the service for sure. Maybe even court-martialed. Too many American RPVs had been stolen in recent years. Several nations had built their drone programs primarily from stolen American and Israeli technology.

Pringle wished to God he hadn’t pulled this second shift. He knew better than do to favors for anyone, let alone volunteer. Life had proven to him once again: No good deed goes unpunished.

Oh well, he said to himself, and shrugged. He’d been thinking about separating from the service anyway. Try to land some cushy civilian contractor job back in the States.

* * *

Didn’t see it, exactly.” Ian’s brogue got thicker with his growing fatigue. “My screen went blank. Near as I can tell, they hit a self-destruct switch.”

“I bet the bad guys saw it, too,” Pearce said.

“Count on it.”

Pearce worried. He figured the only reason the DPVs hadn’t attacked again was that they were afraid of the Reaper overhead. If they knew it was out of action, he could expect trouble soon.

“I need eyes on the ground, Ian.”

“What about your Switchblade?”

“Shot down earlier.”

“Then you’re fecked.”

“You just figured that out?”

CRACK!

The sound exploded in Pearce’s earpiece.

“Ian! You there?”

Pearce Systems Headquarters

Dearborn, Michigan

The flash bang burst two feet from Ian’s workstation. The exploding light stabbed his eyes and the concussive blast knocked him out a second later, blood pouring out of both of his ears.

The FBI SWAT team had disabled the building’s security system with a chemical EMP grenade detonation and easily disarmed the three lightly armed security guards on the property, not at their sharpest just after four in the morning.

Earlier that morning, the special agent in charge of the Detroit FBI field office had received an emergency request from Washington to immediately assault Pearce Systems headquarters and seize all evidence and persons. Credible intelligence indicated that an AQ-affiliated cell located there was about to commit a terrorist act with a weapon of mass destruction.