Half a dozen of the remaining Arrivals were charging toward the fire engine. First, they had circled it in a manner that reminded Kyle of Indians riding their horses around the circled wagons in an old-time cowboy movie. The fire truck’s driver was going to have a hard enough time getting away with a car wedged under the frame, but even if he did manage that, how was he to get past the Arrivals buzzing around him?

Then something astonishing happened.

One after another, the Arrivals plowed full speed into the massive truck. There’d be a huge crash, and then another, followed by another. The cars were destroying themselves in the process.

“Christ,” Kyle said breathlessly. “They’re kamikazes.”

All those who’d been gathered around the Arrival that bit off Lisa Carver’s leg were now transfixed by this new and even more frightening display. Everyone except Albert Ruskin, who was still attempting to communicate with his boss trapped inside the car.

“Ms. Carver!” he shouted. “Lisa! Lisa, can you hear me?”

The woman showed no signs of life, but he persisted.

You had to give the guy credit, Kyle thought. As much as Ruskin reportedly hated that woman, he was putting on a good show of caring about her.

Brandon Kyle was well aware just how intensely Albert Ruskin detested his employer, was even willing to wager the contempt he felt for her came close to his. For as long as he’d worked for her he’d been subjected to constant humiliation and relentless abuse. You expected a CEO to be demanding, to expect the best of her people, but by all accounts, that was not Lisa Carver’s style. It didn’t matter how well you did your job. She always found fault. She demeaned, she insulted, she mocked.

Turnover at Arrival’s administrative ranks had always been high. It was a classic “the beatings will continue until morale improves” environment. Everyone in the industry knew it. It was an open secret.

So Kyle was impressed, watching Ruskin struggle to get that car door open, trying to save his boss. Was it all a charade, or did he really mean it? Kyle believed Ruskin couldn’t help but take some small measure of pleasure from his boss’s predicament.

The next step in what Kyle sometimes thought of as “Operation Dead on Arrival” was already in the works. A prearranged email would start hitting the in-boxes of Arrival employees. A ransomware demand, supposedly from a team of Russian hackers. All Arrival had to do to stop the carnage was transfer over a million in bitcoin. Let them waste time trying to figure out how to get onto the dark web and send funds to an account that didn’t exist.

What Kyle had to think about now was getting the hell off this island.