Rules of Deception

“Whatever you do,” said Emma. “Don’t stop.”

The car gained speed, hurtling toward the barrier.

“Cut the lights,” she said.

Jonathan doused the headlights. Darkness cloaked the road. He pushed his face closer to the windscreen. The top of the barrier was barely visible, a white line cutting through the heart of darkness. He floored it. The car smashed the barrier, spraying shards of wood everywhere. The road flattened out. Lanterns placed at even intervals on either side of it lit his path.

The sound of gunfire picked up, frighteningly close. A salvo of bullets struck the car like hail pounding a tin shack. A bullet shattered the windscreen, leaving a large hole and a sagging web of glass. Wind rushed in. He caught sight of several figures kneeling in the snow, their silhouettes flickering in the wake of their weapons’ muzzle blasts.

“Keep going!” Emma leaned out the window, firing at the shadows.

Then he saw it. A silver beast with tremendous wings and a large pod hanging from its belly.

“Emma!”

The drone was coming at them, advancing from the far end of the road.

“Faster,” she said. “Ram it.”

“But…” He looked at Emma. It was suicide.

“Do it!”

Jonathan downshifted into third gear and pushed the accelerator to the floor. The engine screamed as the burst of torque hurled the car ahead. The drone showed no sign of taking off. It came at them relentlessly, a malevolent metallic insect. Emma was firing at the aircraft. He had no idea if her bullets were going home. His eyes focused on the teardrop-shaped pod attached to the fuselage. It was the bomb. Twenty kilos of Semtex, she’d told him. The equivalent of a thousand pounds of TNT. A bomb large enough to obliterate an airliner.

“Faster,” said Emma, ducking her head into the cabin.

The drone’s nose lifted off the ground, then touched back down. Jonathan braced himself for impact, squinting in anticipation of the collision, the exquisite burst of light…

The drone began to take off. The nose rose into the air. The front wheels left the asphalt. It was no good. They were going to collide with it. Every instinct told him to brake. He grasped the wheel harder and pressed his foot into the floorboard.

He screamed.

A gleam of silver whisked over their heads.

It was gone. The drone was airborne.

A second later, one of the car’s front tires exploded. The car bounded to the left, abandoning the paved road. Jonathan spun the wheel in the opposite direction, but it did no good. The snow was too deep. The car plowed ahead, speed bleeding rapidly. It hit an underlying patch of ice, and slid sideways, coming to a halt in a hollow between several oaks some twenty meters from the house.

Emma slapped the pistol into his right hand. “The man you want is inside the house. Find the controls and he’ll be there. Don’t bother talking to him. He won’t stop until he’s accomplished what he set out to do. You have eight bullets.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll stay here,” she said. “When I start firing, run into the forest and circle the house. You can reach the terrace by climbing on pylons built into the hillside. From there, you’ll have to find a way in.”

It was then that he saw that she’d been shot. Her shoulder drooped strangely and blood was spreading across her jacket. “You’re hurt.”

“Go,” she said, her eyes deflecting his concern. “Before they spot you.”

Jonathan hesitated for a split second, then took off. Behind him, Emma stood and began firing at the house.

87

The power.

Von Daniken lay in the snow, beyond cold, beyond feeling. During the briefing two days earlier, he’d learned that the control apparatus for a drone consumed an enormous amount of electricity. If he cut the power to the house, the drone would be incapacitated. It might fly, but it would be rudderless. Sooner or later, it would run out of gas. Odds were that it would fall to earth and explode harmlessly in the countryside. Regardless of where it fell, it would not take six hundred lives.

Rolling onto his belly, he raised his head and searched the hillside. Bullets struck the ground in front of him, spraying ice and dirt into his eyes. He ducked, eating a mouthful of snow, but not before seeing the rectangular metal casing that governed electricity to the neighborhood.

The junction box sat a few meters away on a flat plot carved into the slope. A section of the ancient citadel wall occupied the ground above it. The large stone blocks would provide a measure of protection.

He pulled himself up the hill, burrowing through the deep snow. He was shivering uncontrollably. He rested after a few meters and lifted his head, ready to throw himself back down at any moment. Gunfire was more or less constant, but the shots were no longer aimed at him. They were coming from the other side of the hill. A different caliber, too. It was Ransom and his wife.

The sound of a jet engine came to life. He thought it impossible that a small aircraft could generate such a deafening noise. The noise changed pitch, growing higher, straining. The drone was taking off. He turned onto his side and looked into sky. For a moment, he caught sight of a silver blade whisking over the treetops.

Pushing himself to a crouch, von Daniken scuttled up the hillside. He didn’t give a damn about seeking any kind of protection. He knew that he made an easy target, but the absence of gunfire spurred an irrational confidence within him. The house loomed ahead, looking like a concrete bunker. And then, suddenly, he was there.

He fell against the side of the box, panting. A padlock held it closed. He distanced himself from it, took aim with his pistol, and fired. The lock was obliterated. The junction box opened like a clamshell. He looked inside. A sticker warned him not to touch anything for fear of electrocution. A skull-and-bones decal drove the point home. He was confronted with a maze of wires, some woven together in dense, multicolored braids, others bound by protective rubber housing. It all looked terribly complex. He had expected there to be some kind of master switch he might throw. He craned his neck to get a better view.

The bullet caught him in the shoulder and spun him around. Before he knew what had hit him, he was lying facedown in the snow. He turned over, stu

Forcing himself to a knee, he aimed his pistol at the house and got off a few wild shots. The pistol’s kick made him feel powerful and optimistic. He aimed at the junction box and emptied the clip into it. Nothing happened.

He tottered, and in his fuzzy mind, decided that the situation was absurd. The first time he’d fired his weapon in thirty years, and it was at a giant metal box. He eased himself to the ground. The snow at his feet was red. He tried to move his left arm, but it was frozen and had no feeling whatsoever. Suddenly, he found himself fixated by the snow.

Water, he thought.

He didn’t need a gun to do the job.

Reaching into the box with both hands, he grabbed a bundle of wires and yanked them free. A flurry of sparks drizzled to the ground. One wire in particular fired a steady blue pulse. He picked up a handful of snow with his good hand and lobbed it into the junction box. The wire sizzled, then continued to spark. He didn’t know what to expect, but surely that wasn’t it.

He felt around inside the box until his hand came to a larger bundle, a tube the size of a police baton. He pulled at it repeatedly. Finally, it tore loose, exposing a fountain of frayed copper wiring.

As he stared at the wires, he thought of the drone and the plane from Israel. He knew that the plane had no chance of escaping the drone, just as a man, however frightened, could not outswim a shark. Then he thought of Philip Palumbo, lying there in the dark, riddled with holes.