The high-pitched hum climbed into the darkening sky like an insect that had learned to hunt.Fiona pressed herself flatter into the mesquite. Thorns scraped the side of her neck. The makeshift bandage on her thigh was already warm and wet again. Kennedy’s hand settled once on her shoulder, steady pressure, not comfort, then withdrew as he tracked the sound. The drone’s rotors grew sharper, more focused, the note changing as it adjusted altitude and began a slow search pattern over the scrub line they had just entered.“They’ll have thermal,” he said, voice almost lost under the mechanical whine. “We stay still until the first pass is complete, then we move while it’s looking the other way. If we run now it paints us immediately.”Fiona nodded once. Her mind sorted the new variables without permission: heat signatures against cooling ground, the limited battery life of most commercial and tactical drones, the time required for the operators to close distance once a target was marked. N
Last Updated : 2026-09-05 Read more