A Murder of Crows (28 page)

H
ICKS KEPT
checking the dashboard screen to see if Stephens was following him. The icon for the Ford Expedition stayed on the shoulder of the highway. The distance between them grew, with the SUV’s icon moving toward the lower edge of his screen until it was off the map.

Hicks was encouraged. Maybe Stephens had listened to reason after all.

The left lane began to slow as the traffic in the center lane began to speed up. A narrow space next to him cleared, so Hicks decided to put the V12 to work.

He checked his mirrors before signaling he was going to change lanes. He was almost in the center lane when a black Peterbilt truck seemingly came out of nowhere and slipped into the spot from the right lane. It wasn’t pulling a trailer, so it easily fit into the narrow space.

Hicks cursed, aborted the move and steered back into his the slower left lane. His Buick might’ve been a big car with an even bigger engine under the hood, but the freight hauler was a hell of a lot bigger, even if it wasn’t pulling any cargo.

Hicks noticed the center lane traffic was still moving well, but the black Peterbilt didn’t speed up to match the flow of traffic. It was keeping pace with Hicks, boxing him in against the concrete highway divider on the much slower left lane.

Something was wrong.

He glanced over at the rig. It was riding too close and too high for him to see up into the cab. All he could see was the side of the chrome bumper and the big front wheel churning as the truck moved along beside him. He looked for a company name or some kind of identification on the door, maybe even a design or a logo. Nothing.

Impatient drivers stuck behind the slow-moving rig saw the wide space opening up between the Peterbilt and the other cars ahead of it. Hicks heard them hit their horns and, in his rearview and side view mirrors, saw them flashing their lights and gesturing for the truck to get out of their way.

But the truck held its speed.

Hicks checked his rearview mirror again. The car behind him was cruising more than a car-length back. He decided to test a theory. He took his foot off the gas without hitting the break. His engine geared down as the Buick began to gradually lose speed.

But so did the Peterbilt. Only now, it was beginning to slowly drift into his lane.

Instinct kicked in and Hicks slammed on the brakes. The Peterbilt narrowly overshot him as it crowded in front of him into his lane.

The truck banged into the concrete divider separating north and southbound traffic sending sparks and bits of concrete into the air. Traffic in all lanes behind him swerved to avoid the dangerous situation unfolding in front of them.

Hicks cut the wheel to the right, glided into the center lane, and gunned the engine. The V12 roared to life as the Buick darted past the semi.

But the Peterbilt bounced off the concrete divider and careened to its right, bunting the Buick into the left lane. The big car skidded over onto the shoulder, but Hicks managed to keep both hands on the wheel, fighting to maintain control and speed without hitting the concrete retaining wall along the narrow shoulder of that portion of the highway.

Hicks floored it and raced up the shoulder lane. Cars in the other three lanes honked at him as he sped past. He hoped another car hadn’t broken down or was getting a ticket somewhere ahead of them. If they were, it was about to be a bad day for a lot of people.

In the rearview mirror, he saw the Peterbilt glide onto the shoulder and fall in behind him; closing ground fast. Hicks may have had a V12 under the hood, but the big engine needed space to maneuver. He saw the shoulder lane was narrowing as there was an onramp ahead.

Hicks was running out of room.

And with the Peterbilt closing in fast, he was running out of time.

Since he didn’t have the space to outrun the Peterbilt, he would have to find a way to stop it. And with traffic beginning to thicken ahead of him, he’d have to do something fast before the semi smeared him against the concrete divider.

He lowered the passenger window as he pulled the Ruger from his holster. An ad for the Ruger .454 boasted it had once stopped a charging Alaskan grizzly. He hoped it worked as well on American steel.

With the passenger window open, Hicks heard the Peterbilt’s engine shift into a higher gear as it lurched ever closer. He jerked the wheel to the left and brought the Buick across two lanes into the center, then into the far left lane as panicked drivers all around them began to speed up or slow down to stay out of the way.

The Peterbilt’s engine geared down as it came off the shoulder and careened toward the Buick.

Now.

Hicks aimed the Ruger at the truck’s front tire and began firing through the open window. The revolver boomed as he jammed on the brake, pumping all eight rounds of the modified Ruger into the bulk of the Peterbilt as it raced by. The Buick’s tires screeched as round after round punched through the semi’s front left tire, the engine block, and finally the driver’s door before the gun clicked empty. At such distance, it was impossible for Hicks to miss.

The recoil from firing eight rounds from the big Ruger deadened his right hand. He dropped the revolver on the passenger seat and tried to control the wheel one-handed. He saw the massive front left tire of the Peterbilt shred as it sped past him, sending thick chunks of rubber bouncing off the Buick’s bulletproof windshield. Hicks moved from the brake pedal to the gas, pulling the wheel to the right as the truck skidded in front of him, buckling forward on its left side like a wounded animal. The Buick narrowly missed the back end of the Peterbilt as Hicks skidded back into the center lane.

Hicks struggled to control his car as he sped past the dying truck. The front left side of the Peterbilt crumpled against the concrete divider. Sparks and smoke and shattered glass poured out onto both sides of the highway before the truck’s momentum caused it to flip over the concrete divider and onto the other side of the highway.

Hicks brought the Buick under control and ducked into the right hand lane, hoping to slide back into anonymity with the traffic merging onto the highway. He checked his rearview and side mirrors. Smoke and flame began to flicker out from the overturned Peterbilt’s engine block. Cars had stopped on both sides of the barrier as drivers ran to the truck to free the trucker before it exploded.

He figured someone back there was bound to remember his car or a passenger may have even had enough time to take his picture with their phone. OMNI could always take care of that later. For now, he needed to put as much distance between himself and the burning Peterbilt as possible.

He hit the voice command button on the steering wheel. “Call Jason.”

The Trustee’s voice repeated the command as the dashboard screen flashed red. It was a warning he had never seen before. He looked at it for a full two seconds to make sure he was reading it right. Unfortunately, he was:

WEAPONS SYSTEM LOCK.

H
ICKS POUNDED
the steering wheel.
These fuckers didn’t give up.

He hit the voice command button on the steering wheel. “Show tactical map with drone.”

The map switched to a tactical view, but a red line blinked at the bottom of the screen:
DRONE OUT OF VISUAL RANGE

Hicks knew how drones worked. By the time the damned thing was in scanning range, he’d be dead. He would need more help than his onboard computer could give him. It wasn’t designed to track incoming threats from above. “Connect me to Jason.”

Jason picked up on the second ring. With danger imminent, both men forgot about the standard security protocols. “I got back home and saw what’s happening via OMNI. Are you okay?”

“Hell no. Did you see the drone warning?”

“Hold on.” He heard Jason’s fingers on the keyboard. “I see it now, but it’s a local alert from your handheld, not the OMNI system.”

“I don’t care where it’s from. The damned thing is inbound and I can’t see it yet.”

“Let me try to get a fix on its position. Hold on.”

Hicks continued to thread in and out of traffic, doing his best to try to confuse the drone’s guidance system. He knew it was no use. The damned things could kill a moving target from miles away, but the maneuvers made him feel like he was at least doing something more than waiting to die.

He had no idea how the drone was tracking him or if the pilot had been assigned to visually target him. Until he knew for certain, he had to keep moving among vehicular herd moving north.

Jason came back on the line. “OMNI’s showing it’s a CIA drone piloted out of Arizona. It’s five miles out of your current position and closing fast. The signals are consistent with Predator class drone. A prototype known as ‘Valkyrie.’ I’m not familiar with that particular class. I’m looking it up now.”

But Hicks knew all about Valkyrie. “It’s a Predator drone designed to rake me with bullets or drop a fucking missile on my head.” Hicks punched the steering wheel again.

The Valkyrie had been designed in response to popular civilian criticism that drone strikes were too imprecise. The taxpayers had grown tired of seeing the bodies of dead Middle Eastern civilians on the nightly news and wanted a more precision weapon. Civilians didn’t grasp the notion that there wasn’t anything precise about war. The drone’s systems had been designed to take out a single terrorist vehicle in a convoy full of school buses without hurting a single child in the explosion. The idea of a surgical strike was a misnomer, but Valkyrie got as close to surgical as a such weapon could get.

Stephens obviously wasn’t taking any chances. Since the semi had failed to kill him, he had gotten Langley to authorize a drone strike as well.

“Isn’t your Buick bulletproof?” Jason asked. “You should survive if they open fire.”

“Against automatic rifle and gunfire,” Hicks said, “not against explosive rounds or a goddamned missile.” Hicks kept threading through traffic, running through all of the feasible alternatives. He couldn’t out run it and he couldn’t bring it down. There was only one possibility that might work. “You’re going to have to get the drone to land.”

“How in the hell am I supposed to do that? I can’t fly a drone!”

“Hack it and whack it,” Hicks said. “None of the Varsity’s Operators have any experience with piloting drones either, so you’ve got as much of a chance of pulling this off as any of them. Have OMNI lock onto the drone’s remote control frequency and hack it.” He swerved to avoid a car that had drifted into his lane.

He heard Jason’s fingers on the keyboard. “Will it work?”

Hicks knew drones usually had command protocols to automatically land if they detect a malfunction or tampering. If OMNI could either hack it or confuse its systems, it might throw the drone off course, it’s the only shot we’ve got.

Hicks dashboard screen began blinking again.
WEAPONS ALERT. INCOMING DRONE WITHIN STRIKING DISTANCE.

Hicks looked for a way off the highway, but all he saw was cars and overpasses. No exits in sight. “Give me some good news, Jason. I’m running out of options here.”

“OMNI has locked onto the guidance controls and is working the hack right now,” Jason said. “But I don’t know if we’ll be able to bring it down before it catches up to you.”

Since the hack was the best chance they had, Hicks was going to have to buy himself some time.

He spotted a pair of overpasses about a quarter of a mile away. The shoulder lane ran directly underneath them. Since he didn’t have the space to outrun the drone, he might be able to hide from it.