Chapter 19
Chapter nineteen
“The drone is catching up!” Rhett shouted from the backseat of the golf cart.
Darwin risked a glance over his shoulder as he drove, barely making out a blur of movement in the darkness a couple hundred yards behind them.
“I hope you have a good plan,” Jameson added from beside Rhett. “Because that thing is catching up fast, and I don’t think we’re going to outrun it in a damn golf cart!”
“The plan is simple,” Darwin snapped. “Don’t get shot. But if you have a better one in mind, feel free to jump out and run, if you want.”
Jameson grumbled something Darwin didn’t catch. Which was probably for the best since he didn’t have time to argue with the man. Not when the drone was on their butts.
The first bullet slammed through the windshield of the golf cart, barely an inch to the left of Darwin’s head, confirming they were already well within range of the damn drone.
He swerved back and forth across the narrow lane they were moving along, trying to make it a little harder to line up a clean shot.
“Hold onto something!” Darwin yelled.
Realizing the swerving wasn’t going to work for long, he jerked the wheel hard to the right, leaving the paved lane behind and bouncing across the soft dirt between the grape trellises.
The move seemed to catch the drone by surprise, and for a little while, the thing fell back.
Clearly, it hadn’t expected him to do something so bizarre as to leave the paved route.
Unfortunately, the softer dirt of the grape fields ended up slowing the gold cart down enough for the drone to make up lost ground quickly, and soon enough, more bullets were slamming into the cart, making Jameson and Rhett duck for cover.
Darwin gripped the wheel tighter, cursing under his breath. Racing around the vineyard on a golf cart until help arrived wasn’t working.
He needed a Plan B.
“One of you climb up here and drive,” he shouted after turning onto the next paved lane they happened across. “I’m going to try and slow down that drone.”
He heard more grumbling behind him, but a few seconds later, Rhett climbed over the seats, almost bouncing out of the cart before catching himself.
“Keep your swerves random,” Darwin said as Katrina’s brother slid behind the wheel, as Darwin kept the accelerator pinned to the floorboard.
The maneuver was clumsy and nearly sent them into a ditch, but then Darwin was in the back seat beside Jameson, pulling the gun from the holster at his back.
He braced one knee against the edge of the seat, holding himself steady until he spotted the drone.
The thing was maybe fifty yards behind them, at an altitude of thirty feet off the ground.
It was a tough shot, especially considering that both of them were moving.
But it was the best he was likely to get.
He squeezed the trigger slowly, sending half a dozen rounds at the drone.
At least two of them hit their target, but to no effect.
Truly, he hadn’t expected much. The platform would have been designed with its heaviest armor along the front for protection against the targets it was engaging.
Somehow, he needed to get a shot at the thing from the side. Or even better, from the rear.
“Did you hit it?” Jameson asked. “Why is it still coming after us?”
Before Darwin could answer, the cart swerved so hard to the right that he almost took a header over the side.
A split-second later, it went up on two wheels and almost tipped as bullets smashed into plastic and metal all around them.
Darwin reached out and grabbed Jameson’s shoulder just in time before the older man flew out of the vehicle.
“The damn thing somehow got in front of us,” Rhett called out over his shoulder. “I had to swing us around to avoid getting shot in the face.”
Of course, now they were heading in the wrong direction, back toward the resort and all the people there who would be at risk, including Katrina. But they didn’t have a choice. The Genesis drone was herding them where it wanted them to go.
Unfortunately, the cart had been hit multiple times in the process of turning around, and those rounds must have hit something important because smoke and flames poured out from the undercarriage of the vehicle, whitish-blue and intensely hot.
The batteries.
Bullets from the drone must have hit the lithium-ion rechargeable battery packs under the seat. They were all going up, and the heat and flames would only get worse.
Shit.
“We gotta ditch!” Darwin shouted.
Lunging forward over the seats in front of him, he leaned around Rhett to grab the wheel, jerking it to the right. The cart went off the paved lane and into a ditch, sending all three of them over the side as the vehicle tipped over.
“Run for the trellises!” he ordered, dragging Jameson to his feet and giving him a nudge toward the nearest line of vertically strung grapes. He prayed the flames and billowing smoke coming off the cart would give them enough cover to get there without being shot.
His prayers were answered as the drone got confused by the intense heat bloom coming off the burning golf cart. That allowed the three of them to make it to cover, where they played hide-and-seek with the drone as it flew around the trellises, trying to line up a shot at them.
“Tell me you have a plan!” Jameson shouted, breathing hard as he darted behind a vertical support pole holding up grapes and vines.
“Same plan as before!” Darwin told him. “Don’t get shot!”
Darwin had just ducked behind another support pole, the drone side-slipping to the left to stay with him, when he felt his phone vibrate. This probably wasn’t the time to check his phone, but he pulled it out of his pocket anyway.
It was a text from Simon, saying the Team was at the resort and already heading in their direction. That big flaming sign you left for us made it easy to find you.
“Texting while driving is bad enough,” Rhett said, his gaze locked on the rapidly moving drone as Darwin continued to text back and forth with his Teammate. “But trying to text while being shot at is all kinds of crazy. Maybe tell your friends you’re a little busy?”
Darwin dove toward the next trellis, rolling across the ground and texting again before he was even back on his feet.
“My friends have a plan to help us,” he said. “But for it to work, we’re going to need to make ourselves some really inviting targets.”
“It’s already trying to kill us,” Jameson pointed out breathlessly after running a short dash to another trellis and spinning around to the back side to put it between him and the drone. “How much more inviting do we need to be?”
“A lot more,” Darwin said. “We’ll probably need to stand out in the open between two rows of trellises, making sure the drone is completely focused on us.”
Both Jameson and Rhett looked absolutely terrified at that idea, but ultimately nodded their heads in agreement.
“We need to move deeper into the grape fields,” Darwin said as he moved in that direction. “Lure the thing out into the open.”
A few moments later, his phone vibrated again.
“This is it,” Darwin called out after he read the text from Simon, saying he and the other guys were in position.
“Spread out across the row. You two stay on the outside while I take the middle. When the drone moves into position, make yourselves targets and hold still as long as you’re comfortable with, then dive for cover. ”
Darwin didn’t mention the fact that being in the middle meant he was the farthest from the nearest cover. But that was the way he would have wanted it anyway.
Standing there waiting between two rows of grapes as the Genesis drone swooped into position was the most surreal experience of Darwin’s life.
Every instinct inside him screamed RUN!!
!! But he resisted the urge and took out his weapon as he put his cell phone away.
He already knew the handgun wouldn’t do much against the drone, but he needed to make sure the thing recognized him as the primary threat.
The drone seemed to realize it had a fixed target and moved in. This close, Darwin couldn’t help wondering if the platform had been designed to be intimidating. The sharp angles and menacing hum of the rotors made him think of Darth Vader.
Then he stopped thinking and started pulling the trigger. He hit the drone multiple times, but once again, there was no obvious damage. It didn’t matter, though. The thing seemed completely focused on Darwin now.
From the corner of his eye, he caught sight of both Jameson and Rhett leaping for cover. Darwin held his position and fired another round at the drone. Then he saw a muzzle flash from the left side of the drone, and he threw himself to the side, knowing it was already too late for that.
The round clipped his right shoulder, throwing him to the ground. His weapon went tumbling away as pain numbed his arm. He started to look over his shoulder to see how bad it was, but then the drone moved closer, and he knew he had bigger things to worry about.
Darwin tensed, ready to roll himself to the side in a desperate attempt to avoid being shot again, but couldn’t imagine the damn thing missing at this distance.
Just as the nose of the drone dipped down to line up for the next shot, the air was filled with the roar of automatic weapon fire. Muzzle flashes came from both his right and left as the drone was riddled with dozens of rounds into its less protected flanks.
The drone tried to pop up to avoid the incoming fire, but his Teammates had the thing pinned in, drilling it with round after round, no matter which way it moved.
The explosion caught him by surprise, pieces of the drone flying everywhere as the vehicle staggered in the air, slipping sideways for a moment before going into a forward dive, right toward him, Jameson, and Rhett.
“Run!” he shouted, in case it wasn’t already obvious.
Then he shoved himself onto his hands and knees and scrambled toward the right as far as he could before lunging into a forward roll between two of the vertical support poles.
A fraction of a second later, the Genesis drone crashed into the ground right behind him, a huge fireball flipping him through the air as composite fiber material and metal debris pelted him like a dozen angry punches.
By the time he stopped tumbling, he was far enough away from the impact point to feel safe lying there and groaning in pain.
Simon and Lennox appeared at his side, pulling him to a sitting position and checking him for injuries.
“Where are Jameson and Rhett?” Darwin asked with another groan.
At a gesture from Lennox, Darwin looked to his right and found Katrina’s father and brother standing with some of his other Teammates, staring at the demolished drone with sad expressions.
Like they’d just lost a lot of money. Which they probably had.
But at least they were alive. Katrina would appreciate that.
“It looks like a round nicked your shoulder,” Simon said from where he’d pulled Darwin’s suit jacket halfway off, exposing the site of the injury.
Darwin grunted. From the small amount of blood, it wasn’t that bad. The shirt was ruined, but considering the drone was down, and he was alive? He’d take that outcome any day.
Simon helped him slide the dress shirt far enough off to confirm the wound wasn’t much worse than a half-inch deep laceration. He’d gotten worse playing volleyball. Simon quickly slapped a quick-clotting bandage across the wound before taping down the edges.
“We have to get to the resort,” Darwin said, wincing a little as he stood up and slipped his shirt and jacket back on. “Katrina is there. I need to check to make sure she’s okay.”
“She just sent me a text a few minutes ago,” Lennox said. “She said she’s hiding in the Merlot Room, whatever that is. She should be okay.”
Thank God.
Darwin quickly found his weapon, sliding it into the holster at his back. “We need to go find her. Chapman probably already bailed, but I’d feel better seeing for myself that she’s safe.”
“We have our SUV about a quarter mile back up the road,” Simon said, pointing back toward the resort. “You good to hoof it out of here?”
Darwin nodded, but had barely taken more than a dozen steps across the rough ground of the field when his phone vibrated in his back pocket. He pulled it out, his blood going cold when he read the single word typed there.
HELP!
Darwin cursed and started running, shouting at the others to hurry the hell up.