“We can’t let that happen.”
“Creech knows. They’re taking action. You worked years there. Does Creech have a way to shoot them down?”
Beatty didn’t answer right away, and when he did his voice was low and quieter. I could hear him, but it was as if he’d taken a step back.
“They do and they don’t,” he said. “These will come in low and fast.”
“Where are you? There’s a sniper on top of the trailer of that semi. Our SWAT squad is airborne and will deal with him, so hang back. Keep your truck away. Tell me how else we can disable these drones. Are they operating them from the truck? I see two people in the truck cab.”
“Those are the pilots.”
“I’ll try to put shots through the truck cab windshield.”
“I see it all now,” Beatty said.
When I turned and looked down the highway, I saw his truck, small but coming fast.
“Pull over and talk to me about how we disable these.”
“Is your SWAT team coming?”
“They’re coming. Do they target the truck not the drones? These things may get in the air before they get here.”
I lifted the rifle to take a shot at the cab, and the sniper almost got me. The bullet sounded like a loud bumblebee going by. I ducked and told Beatty, “Definitely two in the cab.”
“Then that’s it.”
“What’s it?”
There was a pause and I heard Beatty talking as if to Laura and then himself. I kept my head down but twisted and watched his pickup closing. When Beatty spoke again, his voice was even and clear.
“You see the lead drone rolling, right, Grale?”
“I see it and I’m still trying to get a shot at the truck cab without getting killed.”
“I can’t let this happen,” he said, and only then did I understand and yell into my phone, “Pull over! We’ve called Creech. They know. Our SWAT copters will get here, we’ll take out the cab.”
“Your SWAT isn’t here.”
“Creech will shoot them down.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“Jeremy! Jeremy, listen. I need your help!”
“You’re going to get it.”
Beatty centered on the two highway lanes. His engine roared as he passed by and the first drone lifted off. The second started to roll and I sighted on the sniper whose focus now was the pickup. I heard Beatty say, “Clear my name. Give me your word.”
“Hit the brakes. Pull over. Blackhawks are on the way.”
After I squeezed the trigger, the second drone lifted off and the roof of Beatty’s pickup caught its tail. That made a hard, bright slapping sound and the drone still rose, though its left wing dropped as its shadow swept overhead. A deafening explosion came seconds later when it pinwheeled into the desert south of me.
Jeremy’s pickup hit the third drone straight on. The explosion was loud, dense, and sharp. Debris rained and clattered onto the highway and median. A big cactus to my left was cut down. The blazing chassis of Beatty’s pickup careened off the highway, flipped, and kept burning. I saw multiple bodies on the highway and the sniper lying on his side, still on the truck roof with his long gun and a pool of blood spreading around his head. I saw the cab of the truck burst into flames.
When I was sure the sniper wouldn’t be doing anything very fast, I staggered to my feet and out to the highway, and then walked through smoke with my gun ready. Down the highway I heard a firefight at the other truck. I heard sirens. I walked toward the burning cab of the truck and saw only bodies.
Jeremy was dead. I saw what he did, and yet I looked for him as if somehow he’d be alive. There was nothing left of the pickup except burning tires and chassis. Inside the semi’s cab I saw two shapes, both sitting upright and wreathed in fire that roared and was too hot to get close to.
A Blackhawk helicopter passed by fast and low, then swung around and landed. SWAT agents jumped out with guns on me, then ran past, moving on.
I went body to body and found one man alive. He was on his back but bleeding internally, his fingers tracing a distended belly as if exploring something new and interesting. I looked at his other wounds and guessed he had maybe five minutes. I couldn’t do anything for him and he just stared when I questioned him. When he lost consciousness, I walked away.
After the fire was extinguished, I looked in the truck cab at the two blackened bodies, one big enough to be the Eastern European pilot, but no way to ID either. The heat off the still-smoldering cab was enough to make you squint and more than enough to have heated the truck’s cargo bed, yet I still had hope and waited at the cargo doors as the SWAT guys approached.
“If there’s anyone in there alive, we want to keep them alive.”
54