CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Nicholas could see there was an exit ahead in a few hundred feet. He floored the car, whipped off onto a tree-lined country road, shouting, “Get down, get down! Don’t you dare get shot!”
Mike had already flattened herself against the seat. “I’m okay, lots of glass shards, but only pricks, nothing major, no blood, no pain, no bullet wounds.”
The road was thankfully empty of traffic. Mike came back up on the seat and looked back. All she saw was country road.
“Did you see the shooter?”
“No, they must have been on the A14, and there’s no one behind us.”
Nicholas checked in the rearview mirror. Nothing. “We must have kicked the hornet’s nest. Mike, there’s a gun in the glove box. Wherever the shooter is, you know he’s coming back. When he does, take him out.”
They were hit with another barrage of bullets.
“More bloody hornets! Hold on, Mike.” He wrenched the wheel to the right, and the car started to spin. He looked grim, hard, but there was no panic. More bullets, but none struck the car, it was weaving around too fast.
Mike grabbed the Glock out of the glove box and twisted in her seat, aiming out the shattered window with her right hand, her left holding her steady. She looked behind them, to the sides, didn’t see anything. “I don’t understand. Nicholas, there’s no one here,” and then she looked up and saw it—a drone flying above them.
“Crap, it’s a drone. Hold the car steady, hold it steady.”
He slowly brought the car around until they were once again straight on the road.
Immediately, more shots. Nicholas gunned the gas again, and the Beemer leaped forward. The shots kept on coming, ripping into the side panels.
There was a moment’s pause in the gunfire. Mike ignored the shards of glass and pushed herself up on the edge of the window, leaned out. She sighted the Glock, and her father’s words came clear in her mind. Trace the path, pull the trigger, once, twice. It was tough to site, the drone was only about two feet in length, but she did it. She missed. There was a flash of gunfire from the drone, and she ducked back into the car, a bullet pinging not two inches from her head. Nicholas yanked the wheel to the right, and she tumbled, hit her shoulder hard against the gearshift, and yipped. “I’m okay, I’m okay.” The moment the bullets stopped, she was hanging out the window again, tracing the path, tracing the path, shooting upward. This time, with the third bullet, she hit the drone. She saw a trail of black smoke and watched the drone swallowtail out of the sky.
She pumped her fist. “Yes! Nicholas, I got it!”
Nicholas slowed. They heard the drone slam into the ground some twenty feet off to their left.
When Nicholas had backed up and they were out of the car, Mike said, “I was expecting a small fireball, maybe some burning bushes or grass, but there’s nothing.”
“No,” he said, “nothing, only a dead death machine. Great shooting, my girl.” He cursed. “You’re bleeding.” His fingers wiped away a trickle of blood making its way down her neck, seeping onto her white shirt.
Mike felt the base of her skull. Her fingers came away wet. “No, don’t worry, not much blood. I think it’s a cut from the window glass when it exploded.” She grabbed his hand. “I’m all right, Nicholas. Now, how about you? That was some driving, by the way.” And she whispered a prayer.
“What?”
“I’m thanking my dad. He taught me how to hit a moving target. Now, answer me, are you okay?”
“I’m mad as hell, is what I am, but my body’s intact.”
She saw the rage in his eyes, a killing rage. Calm down, calm down. She said, her voice matter-of-fact, “Let’s go get a look at that drone.”
Several cars were pulling over now, a few people getting out to see what was going on, but Nicholas waved them off. He shouted, “Thanks, we’re fine. I’ve called the police.”
Once alone, they walked through the tall grass until they found the crash site.
Nicholas put a hand on her arm. “Stay here. I want to make sure the thing isn’t still capable of shooting or blowing up on us.”
“Nicholas, forget it. I’m the one with the Glock although how a gun would save us might be in question.”
He wanted to argue but gave it up. They slowly circled the drone. The twin engines were still smoking from Mike’s bullets. The drone was slightly tipped, and they saw a bullet hole through the small camera mounted inside the base of the fuselage.
Nicholas said, “Whoever was driving the drone can’t see anything now, not with a bullet in the camera. Great shot, Mike.”
“Great piece of luck. Think maybe it has a self-destruct mechanism?”
“It could, and wouldn’t that be diabolical?” He poked about a bit, then straightened. “Okay, it looks pretty dead to me. We need to take this thing apart.”
“I hope it’ll lead us to whoever tried to kill us.” Saying the words aloud spiked his rage. She saw it, grabbed him around his neck and squeezed him tight. He buried his face in her hair, felt a small shard of glass and felt more rage pound through him. Then her voice, light, nearly laughing, “Now, Nicholas, don’t forget, it’s been more than a week since our last adventure, so don’t go all mushy on me.”
He drew a deep, calming breath and pressed his forehead to hers. “Yes, you’re right. Now, I have no intention of putting this thing in the boot and driving it down to London. I’m calling Penderley. He can handle it.”
Mike listened with half an ear as he explained what had happened to Penderley. She knew the fallow field they stood in would soon be overrun by a Scotland Yard forensic team, or a drone team. Was there any such thing yet?
Who was trying to kill them? How did they know where they’d be? How did they even know she and Nicholas had poked the hornet’s nest?
We’re being watched.
She pulled out her phone. Her last call was two days ago; she’d spoken to her parents, telling them she and Nicholas had arrived at Old Farrow Hall. That was it.
Nicholas punched off. “Penderley is sending a special group to deal with the drone.” He stared off into space a moment and said slowly, as if reading her mind, something he did entirely too often, “Whoever sent this drone has access to us, our phones, the computers. How else would they know to send something after us when we were only assigned the case this morning?”
“I haven’t made any calls since we arrived. But you have, Nicholas, to Savich, then to your dad, an hour ago.”
“Bloody hell, you’re right. Someone could have tapped the phones at the Home Office, no other way to find us.”
He took the battery out of his mobile, tossed it toward the car. Mike followed suit. They walked a good distance from the smoking drone. Twenty steps later, he said quietly, “Mike, we have to assume whoever is behind these attacks can only hear when we’re directly communicating, so we’ll accept everything electronic is compromised. Not only keystrokes, they might very well have audio, as well.”
“We’re talking someone with a lot of money, probably a lot of power, as well, Nicholas. That drone—how much do you think it cost to build?” She felt her neck again, no more blood. She pulled another small shard of glass from her hair.
He raised his hand, worked another piece out of her ponytail. “We’re going to make sure we can’t be overheard discussing this from now on.”
She leaned up, whispered, “Let’s have meetings in the park like spies.”
He pictured Hyde Park, the two of them huddled on a bench on the banks of the Serpentine. “Good idea. Now, as I see it, the problem is, if they’ve penetrated the Security Services’ firewalls, they can certainly access the CCTV and watch where we go. Your glasses are crooked.”
“But why are they so scared of us? I mean, they came after us within two hours.” She took off her glasses, blew on the lenses, wiped them off on her shirt, straightened each temple, set them back on her nose. “Okay, good?”
He cupped her chin in his palm, studied her face, her ratty ponytail. “Yes, glasses straight, perfect. Do you think our reputation has preceded us?”
She snorted, then frowned. “Well, you did save the president’s life—that was pretty big news—and we know it leaked out that you saved Washington, D.C., from a Godzilla-size tsunami. You think maybe someone’s trying to get even, for whatever reason?”
That didn’t sound right, but Nicholas didn’t say anything. The people involved in orchestrating those two affairs were all dead.
Nicholas walked around the drone, studying it, while Mike studied the sky. Nothing, only rolling white clouds.
“Nicholas, why? What could we possibly know this soon? You know this could happen again.”
He whispered in her ear, “Because whoever is behind this doesn’t even want us nibbling around the edges. We know now for certain my father’s been hacked, which means all the Security Services have been, as well. How deep does it go?”
Mike whispered back, “Their operating system is MATRIX, installed worldwide. Are you assuming MATRIX has been completely compromised? Okay, go with me on this. If yes, then it’s possible, isn’t it, that our FBI servers have been hacked?”
He nodded, continued in a near whisper, “Which means when I spoke to Savich and Sherlock this morning, I could have compromised them, as well. I’m going to have to find a secure method of communication with them, with the team.”
She stared down at the still-smoking drone. “Nicholas, we haven’t been hacked, more like we’ve been infiltrated. Who can breach the phones and computers of the most secretive organizations in the world?”
“Like you said, someone with a lot of money, someone powerful, someone who can infiltrate MATRIX.” He took her right hand in his, ran a finger over the callus between her thumb and forefinger, built up spending years on the range. “Remind me to thank your dad when I meet him. You shoot brilliantly.”
“That’s what I tell my dad. When I was a kid, we’d trek off into the wilderness to this remote range and shoot for hours until I was so tired I could barely hold my shotgun. Then he started me on rifles. Finally, I graduated to handguns. I got pretty good. He loved to show me off to his friends. And don’t change the subject.”
Before he could answer her, a distant siren grew louder.