could get him to its relative safety. He slung his HK and then took several deep breaths, trying to load up on oxygen for the final dash.
Three...two...one...go! Arms and legs pumping for all they were worth, he retraced the path back outside the facility, still zigzagging every few steps to present a more difficult target.
Every step felt like it took a minute. His combat-booted feet pounded the ground, sending puffs of dust up around his legs, but Connor didn’t pause to look down or back. He didn’t stop for anything, just kept moving toward his goal, just like when he’d carried the ball back at university and nothing was gonna stop him from reaching the line—
And just like that, he hit the blisteringly hot side of the Range Rover so hard he almost bounced off it. Crouching, King duck-walked around the back to the passenger side, figuring he should be safe from the shooter there.
The sun was still high overhead and beat down mercilessly on his uncovered head. King realized he’d lost his hat somewhere, but didn’t care about that; he just wanted to get the hell out of there.
Dropping to the ground, he crawled underneath the SUV to the right front tire, then reached up into the wheel well to clean the dust off the spare-key holder mounted there. Digging out his smartphone, he transmitted a combination and was rewarded with the small box popping open. Grabbing the ignition key, he closed the box, was about to crawl back to the passenger side when he happened to look at the rear of the vehicle and the open cargo bay.
The drone... The footage it had taken could reveal who had set up the ambush. In any case, it would be invaluable evidence of what had happened.
Connor swallowed hard. It was a hell of a risk but one he had to take.
He began crawling toward the back of the Range Rover, ready for someone to charge up and demand he come out of there, or just shoot him where he lay. But no voices were heard, no bullets were fired, and he reached the back with no difficulty.
Stretching up again, he couldn’t get to the iPad from where he was and had to stick his upper body out to grab it. Again, he tensed at the possibility of a bullet plowing through him, but he was able to recover the tablet and scoot back under cover of the SUV without incident. Waking it up, he took control of the drone, which was still hovering in place over the facility, and guided it back to him. At any point he expected the phantom sniper to blow it out of the sky and was a bit surprised to see it settle to an ungainly landing near the back of the Rover.
King stretched out far enough to grab it and toss it into the cargo bay, then shoved the door closed behind it. Next, he slithered through the dust to the passenger side, unlocked his door and crawled inside. Climbing into the driver’s seat, he stayed hunched over as he slid the key into the ignition and started the Rover.
The window next to him exploded in a shower of safety glass pellets, and his shoulder felt like it had been struck with a sledgehammer. Pain bloomed across his chest. The closest thing he could compare it to was being dump-tackled during a scrum his freshman year and his shoulder being dislocated when he slammed into the ground. This injury was similar but about a hundred times more painful, and even worse. Connor tried to lift his right hand enough to engage the gearshift lever, but it refused to obey his frantic mental efforts.
As the echoes of the sniper’s shot died away, King could hear the crunch of boots approaching his position. He tried to make his right arm move again and was gratified to have it obey, if haltingly. No matter, he managed to get his numbed hand around the pistol grip of his HK and tried to bring it up to point at his assailant.
“Whoa, mate!” a voice said as the driver’s door opened and King fell out, the submachine gun pulled out of his hand as he tumbled onto the hardpan. He hit with an impact that sent agony screaming down his chest and opened his mouth to speak, only to expel a gob of blood onto the ground.
“Hey—he ain’t dead yet,” the man said to someone King couldn’t see. Something about the speaker’s voice sounded familiar and he struggled to look up at him. “Yeah. Fetch the drone. We’re gonna need it, too.”
His vision tunneling into a gray haze, King looked up at the person who had most likely killed him—and his mouth dropped open again when he saw the uniform of his attacker. “Wh-wh—” he tried to say through the blood filling his throat.
“Sorry, mate,” the man said as he aimed a pistol between the younger man’s eyes. “You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
The muzzle exploding in a blast of flame was the last thing Connor King saw.
Barbara Price had rarely seen her boss so angry.
No, the mission controller for Stony Man Farm thought as she shifted in her leather chair at the long conference table, she’d never seen him this angry.
To be fair, however, the Justice Department honcho and director of the Sensitive Operations Group, part of the clandestine organization known as Stony Man, based at Stony Man Farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, was doing an admirable job of restraining his temper. With his pouched, slightly bloodshot eyes and sometimes dour demeanor, the big Fed resembled a bulldog someone had dressed in a rumpled suit.
Price had worked with him for so long that she could read every physical tic, from his blunt fingers tightly intertwined on table in front of him, to the jut of his jaw as he clamped down on the unlit cigar sticking defiantly out of his mouth. He was furious, to put it bluntly.
At the moment, however, she couldn’t tell what he was more upset with, although she had a pretty good idea.
The first possibility was playing out on a TV monitor on the wall in front of them.
“—these attacks on sovereign Australian industries are an offense against the good, hardworking men and women of this country and they have to stop immediately!”
Angus Martin—the man’s name was plastered across the bottom of the screen—was florid-faced and paunchy, with a shock of unruly, light red hair and the beginnings of jowls starting to cover what was otherwise a strong jawline. He shook a finger at his interviewer as she tried to follow up with a question.
“This most recent one resulted in the deaths of two fine Mobile Patrol officers!” he continued. “It’s the latest in a long string of outrages that have been inflicted on my company and its personnel by these cretins, and we’re not going to take it anymore! I’ve asked the local and national government time after time to step in and stop these terrorists, the so-called AFN—”
“Yes, the nonviolent political group known as Aboriginal Freedom Now—” the interviewer tried to interject.
“Nonviolent my arse!” Martin nearly shouted. “Why don’t you ask what my two employees think about their ‘nonviolent’ methods? Oh, that’s right, you can’t—because they’re dead! Nevertheless, the governing politicians seem content to sit on their bloody hands and let these...these people continue to run amok and destroy the livelihoods of hundreds—no, thousands—of decent Australian citizens just trying to earn a living! It’s absolutely disgraceful, I’m telling you, and I’ll keep repeating that until people start listening!”
Martin, dressed in what would have been an impressive three-piece suit if it had been tailored for his chunky frame, continued his monologue over the vain efforts
