Free Watch Dogs by John Shirley

Geoff Starling was getting flabby and sloppy. He almost always wore the same one-piece AF mechanic’s coveralls. And Starling didn’t bathe enough. Verrick could smell him.
    “Starling,” Verrick said, guiding the drone not far over the treetops of the woods near the farm, “do step back from me, won’t you please? At least a yard back.”
    “Sir, certainly, yes sir,” said Starling, in that obsessive-compulsive way he had. He washed his hands every thirty minutes but rarely washed his clothing or his person.
    Starling stepped back, and Verrick focused on slowing the drone till the delta-shaped aluminum and fiberglass UAV was almost hovering over the slightly snow-flecked grove of black walnut and sycamore trees. Of course, he couldn’t see the drone directly—he saw an outline of it generated by the program. But his point of view was actually angled down on the treetops from the camera in the base of the drone. “Thought I saw something move down there, between the trees,” he muttered.
    Verrick slowly slid the wheel on the mouse forward, inching the UAV over a small clearing. There was a little meadow about a hundred feet below. And in entering the meadow, taking delicate steps, moved a deer—a doe, with its mulish ears up and twitching. Perhaps the doe was hearing the distant whirr of the drone and not recognizing the sound. It took a few more steps, looking back and forth, picking its way through dimpled patches of snow...
    “There she is, sir, yes sir,” Starling said, looking at the screen from behind Verrick.
    “Starling—keep quiet, I’ve got to concentrate.”
    “Sir, yes sir.”
    Verrick moved the drone a little more ahead, then right clicked to bring up the drone action menu. He clicked on reduce altitude , and the ground seemed to slowly zoom toward the camera...
    Then the deer looked right up at him, her large brown eyes startled. She poised to leap away...
    With a flick of his hand he selected the aim cursor, swung the crosshairs to the deer, and clicked on fire.
    Somewhere, about a half mile from here, the drone—in actual fact—fired a rifle round from the tube on its base. The UAV jiggled in the air with the recoil, but not too much, most of the recoil being redistributed by hydraulic pressure release devices.
    The deer was halfway through a leap—and was struck in the rear right leg. It stumbled, fell, then was up again, limping...
    “Ha haaaaa,” Verrick said. “I got it!”
    “Sir, yes sir!” Starling agreed eagerly.
    Verrick tracked the deer a little farther as it staggered along, centered the crosshairs on its back, and fired again—right through its spine. The deer went down, twitching.
    The deer probably wasn’t dead yet. There were only four rounds in the magazine. He decided to save the other two, in case he could find something else to kill.
    “Sir, want me to arrange for that deer to be picked up for food, sir?” asked Starling. He had a taste for venison.
    “No, don’t bother. Is that a rabbit, over there?”
    Verrick tracked the UAV over to the other side of the meadow, thinking that the next step would be to get someone human out there to hunt; someone he needed to eliminate anyway. Like, for example, Aiden Pearce. Or a certain former Delta Force sergeant...
     Mick Wolfe. How would it be to have Mick Wolfe running like a rabbit through the woods under an armed UAV? Ironic and appropriate. Because Wolfe had used another drone to spy on Verrick’s own special acquisitions operation. Wolfe had nearly stopped that money from getting to Verrick—and to Purity.
    Sadly, it would be taking too much of a chance to put Wolfe out in those woods to let him run free so he could be hunted down like an animal. There was always a chance Wolfe could get away in a scenario like that.
    Verrick wasn’t going to take that chance. He was going to make sure Wolfe died at the first chance that came along...
    Wolfe couldn’t be allowed to interfere with the Iceberg project, nor could