“Let’s see,” he said. “Amateur UAVs? A horizontal airspeed of thirty feet per second, or…let’s call it twenty miles per hour.”
“Then I am seriously going to try to catch it.” She braked to quickly check the intersection side to side. The movement made her head ache and the skin above her brow line started to sting. She gunned the V8 and snatched up her two-way. “One Lincoln Forty, ten-thirteen. Request assistance on a ten-ten, shot fired. One-L-forty and passenger wounded. In pursuit of drone, repeat: drone. Caution, UAV is armed and dangerous.”
The innately unfazed dispatcher came back, “Copy, One Lincoln Forty. State location.”
“Astoria. Northbound Thirty-Seventh Street, crossing Thirty-sixth Avenue.”
“Watch it, watch it,” called Rook.
Heat swerved barely in time but missed the first in a caravan of halal food carts being pushed from a driveway into the street. “Thanks, got it.” She lit up her flashing LEDs but decided against the siren in case the drone was wired for sound. There was a chance the operator hadn’t realize she was crazy enough to pursue.
They caught a green light at 35th Ave., but Nikki brought her speed way down because a bus was unloading a group of middle schoolers on a field trip at the Museum of the Moving Image. “I got the kids, you stay with the drone,” she said. Once clear, she squeezed by a double-parked oil truck, then accelerated up the block past a body-waxing studio, an awning manufacturer, and indoor batting cages.
“Uh-oh, getting some altitude,” he reported. “Cutting a left at this corner, I’ll bet.” He winced when Nikki gassed it to beat the red for her left turn.
“Sorry.” She caught the rusty flavor of blood that had started to congeal on her lips and fought nausea. “You stop bleeding?”
“Some.” He lifted his palm and amended that. “No.”
The quadcopter had gained enough height to clear the two-story townhouse and descended again as it moved west after its turn. But then it goosed its speed and arced a sweeping left at 36th Street. “Don’t turn left,” he warned her.
“But that’s where it went.”
“You’ll get dead-ended. Kaufman Studios just put up a permanent gate.” Rook was right. The street was barricaded by a dark-blue fence. “I saw it when I did my guest spot on Alpha House.” Heat watched the drone move south, having flown right over the barrier. “We tried,” he said.
But Nikki wasn’t giving up. She drove to the next corner and started to make a left. “You do know you’re about to go the wrong way down a one-way street,” said Rook.
“No, I’m not.” Then she pulled the car into the driveway of the studio loading dock. “I’m going to drive down the sidewalk beside the one-way street.” The entire block was taken up by the massive wall of a movie soundstage, which meant no doors, no shops, no foot traffic in and out. The concrete ahead was clear. Still, Heat drove slowly, just in case someone suddenly emerged from among the fleet of white production trucks lined up along the curb. When she reached the corner at the other end, they both craned their necks to the left.
“There!” He pointed, and she just caught a glimpse of the drone as it zipped down 36th Street, disappearing behind the far side of the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts.
She double-chirped her siren and drove off the curb with a hard thump that pained them both. She chirped it once again as she cut across lanes of traffic, then made a right down 36th, chasing the tiny dot at the end of the block. Heat’s vision had fuzzed. She swiped at the blood, but it didn’t help. “Lost it. What’s it doing?”
“You all right?”
“What’s it doing?”
“It’s slowing down. And descending.”
Nikki blinked rapidly to clear the blood coating her lashes. “Got it. Two o’clock, beside the parking structure.” The thing had been easier to spot in the open sky. Now that it had decreased altitude, the speck became more challenging to track against the confusing background of buildings, windows, and signage.