Extinction Machine

Chapter Seventy-four

Hadley and Meyers Real Estate

Baltimore, Maryland

Sunday, October 20, 11:45 a.m.

Aldo always stuck his tongue out of the corner of his mouth when he was doing delicate work. It was something Tull found oddly endearing. He’d seen kids do that on TV, and sometimes when he looked into windows in the dark of night. That’s how Tull learned a lot about families. Watching them through windows. He’d done it for as long as he could remember. Once he saw an old man doing the tongue thing while he rewired a toaster.

“Last one,” said Aldo, his tongue back in his mouth, small beads of nervous sweat on his forehead. He set the modified pigeon drone very carefully on the desk and pushed his wheeled chair away.

“You’re sure they can take the weight?” asked Tull.

Aldo shrugged. “I stripped out everything but the motor and the GPS. As long as we don’t want them to fly high or for long, they should be okay. We got to be careful not to let ’em fly into a telephone pole or something. The central switch is only held by a little bit of that ionized gel stuff. Hit it too hard and … well, that would suck very, very large moose dick.”

“Noted,” said Tull.

They each took one pigeon and carried it to the rear window, then went back for the others. There were ten of them in all and they made slow, careful trips, staying well clear of each other or obstructions. With each trip, Tull noticed that Aldo was sweating more heavily. He found that strange. He’d seen Aldo in firefights looking cool as a cucumber. Why should this make him more frightened? People were funny.

When the pigeons were all in the back room, Tull fetched the Ghost Box and set it on a stack of boxed SOLD signs. He squatted down and as Aldo read the serial number stamped on the first drone’s leg, Tull typed it into the computer. Then Aldo leaned out the window with the pigeon cradled gently in his cupped palms, then he gave it a little toss, like a Disney princess setting a songbird free. Tull kept that observation to himself.

One by one Aldo released the pigeons and Tull watched them appear on the tracking screen.

“And that’s all of them,” said Aldo with obvious relief. He squatted next to Tull and they watched the white dots on the screen flying at rooftop height through the streets of Baltimore.