Clear by Fire (16 page)

Typically, only a skeleton crew manned the TOC during the day, since most missions took place at night. Obviously something big was going on and the large, open room was packed. Soldiers frantically pecked at computers lining the massive square table that sat in the middle of the room. The three large monitors hanging from the ceiling were alive with maps and lists of coordinates as information was posted for all to see.

The plywood floor was covered in a layer of fine grit called “moon dust,” which hadn’t been swept away, and the trash cans were overflowing with Styrofoam coffee cups and tobacco-filled spitters.

General Swift was standing below a monitor, with a phone in each ear, and a huge dip in his lower lip. The usually unflappable officer was stressed out, and seeing Renee walk in added to the already deep scowl on his face.

The video playing on the screen was in black and white and had a large targeting reticle in the center of the feed. Numbers designating altitude, airspeed, and heading told her that she was looking at the heads-up display of a drone.

“General Swift,” she said from her boss’s side.

The general held up a finger as he listened to whoever was on the other line. “Right now, all we know is that there was an attack on American forces near Kamdesh,” he said in his gravelly tone.

His right fist held the phone so tight that his knuckles had turned white. Turning his head, he spat a brown glob of tobacco into an overflowing trash can.

“I understand that, sir, but we had no idea they were operating in the area. Kamdesh is not an operational FOB.”

The way the general said the word “sir” made her smile. She’d learned long ago that a person’s inflection when saying the word was one of the oldest yet safest ways of showing displeasure when talking to a ranking officer. He might have been saying “sir,” but he sure didn’t mean it.

“Roger that, I’ll keep you updated.” He slammed the phone down as Kevin approached with the coffee. “Thanks, son,” he said, grabbing Renee’s cup and taking a sip despite the dip in his mouth.

Kevin shrugged and headed back to the coffeepot to retrieve another cup.

“Some CIA dipshits have been running an illegal detention site at Kamdesh. They were using a Special Forces team as security and last night the FOB got hit. We have a Reaper en route now and about ten minutes ago, we got this.” He pointed over to a staff sergeant staring at a laptop.

“General, I need to ask you something,” Renee began.

“I’m a little busy right now.”

“It’s about Colonel Barnes,” she spat.

General Swift’s wide shoulders went rigid, and he turned slowly toward Renee. “What did you say?”

“I know about the Anvil Program, sir.”

“General, I have the video up,” the staff sergeant said from his place in front of the laptop.

Swift’s eyes narrowed as he studied Renee. He was about to say something but decided against it.

“Renee, check this out,” Kevin said from the table.

Renee knew she’d lost her chance and grudgingly moved to the
laptop as the general picked up a phone and began dialing. “What do you have?”

“It’s an unencrypted video that came in from the FOB,” he said, hitting play.

The video was from a mounted helmet camera and was from the point of view of whoever was wearing it. The quality was clear but jumpy. She could hear the man’s muffled breathing and it sounded like he was wearing some kind of mask.

The camera panned to a group of men wearing level-three chemical breathing masks. Their position overlooked a typical Afghan village, and the video perfectly captured a sixty-millimeter mortar that had been set up next to him.

“Hang it,” he commanded as another soldier held a mortar round at the top of the tube.

“Fire.”

The gunner dropped the mortar round into the tube, and they heard the metallic sound of the round sliding down before the mortar bucked as the firing pin hit the primer on the bottom of the round. A cloud of dust shot up as the round arced out of the tube with a boom.

“Hang it,” the man said again.

Another round was held above the tube and on the “fire” command the sequence was repeated.

“What the hell is this?” Renee asked the sergeant.

“Some really fucked-up shit, ma’am.”

The camera was turned to the village and someone off-camera said, “Splash,” followed a second later by the round air-bursting over the target. She could barely make out the white cloud that was forming when the second round exploded near the first one.

The picture held tight on the cloud that was slowly spreading and drifting down onto the dirt-brown compounds. The villagers looked like tiny caricatures of people grouped together in clumps as they pointed up at the cloud.

After a few seconds, the helmet-mounted camera looked down at the black case, and Renee recognized it immediately as a military-issued Pelican case similar to the one she had under her bed. Inside the box two more mortar rounds sat, nestled in gray egg foam. The bright orange biohazard symbol painted on the body of the rounds stood out clearly.

“Oh no,” she whispered.

She could feel her stomach knotting up as a sick feeling washed over her.

This was what Decklin was doing in California. Suddenly the pieces began to fit. She thought she might puke and got up to find a trash can but instead bumped into the general’s drone control station, made up of a makeshift cockpit being helmed by two air force pilots. The terminals resembled a training simulator that pilots used before actually getting into an airplane.

The “pilot” sat on the left, in front of a bank of controls and screens, which allowed him to fly the drone. Next to him, the sensor officer had a similar setup, but instead of flying, her job was to operate the onboard targeting systems and cameras that made the Reaper so deadly.

The feed from the drone’s heads-up display was linked to the giant screen that hung on the far wall, and Renee watched as the pilot banked the drone hard to the west.

Over his headset, he was talking with one of the air force’s AWACs, the sophisticated aircrafts that provided command and control for coalition pilots in the area.

“Whiplash 14, this is Sentinel 3, readvise heading and altitude,” a voice said from the speaker attached to the station.

“Sentinel 3, this is Whiplash 14, stand by.” The pilot checked his heading before turning to the sensor operator. “Sensor, confirm heading, I think there’s a problem with the compass.”

“Heading is two nine zero degrees,” the red-haired woman replied.

“Yeah, that’s what I’ve got. I can’t bring the damn thing around.”

The pilot gently pivoted the joystick in his hand, but the Reaper refused to respond.

“Run a diagnostic check for me,” he told his female counterpart.

“Flight systems green, navigations systems are green, uplink is . . . We have uplink failure.”

“This piece of shit,” he swore. “Sentinel 3, Whiplash 14, be advised that we have uplink failure. I say again, we have no control of the drone.”

“Whiplash 14, I copy. Be advised you are leaving your operation box.”

“What’s going on?” Renee asked.

“Something is interfering with the drone. It’s not responding,” the female captain replied calmly.

“What in the hell?” General Swift bellowed from across the room. “Why am I getting calls that my Reaper is leaving the ops box?”

“The drone isn’t responding,” Renee replied.

“I can see that. Why is this happening?”

“No idea, sir, we are running diagnostic checks right now. Something is wrong with the signal,” the male captain replied.

“Get that piece of shit back online, I don’t need this right now.”

“Whiplash 14, Sentinel 3, we are clearing the airspace until the drone gets back online. How copy?”

“Whiplash 14 copies.”

“The frequency’s jammed. It won’t let me override it,” the woman said, typing furiously on the keyboard in front of her.

“Where is it going?” Renee asked.

They ignored her as the drone leveled out and then gently waggled its wings back and forth. “Diagnostics are good, it’s not a software problem.”

A red alert prompt popped up on the Reaper’s heads-up display. It read, “UPLINK TERMINATED.”

“Someone has hacked the feed.”

“Is that thing armed?” Kevin asked.

“Yes, it has the usual complement of Hellfire missiles,” the woman replied.

The general snatched a phone off the cradle and violently punched in a number. He impatiently waited for someone to answer while yelling orders across the TOC. “Can someone find out where the hell this million-dollar piece of shit is going?”

“Can you disable the flight link?” Renee asked.

“No, ma’am, it doesn’t work like that. If the guidance link is severed, they are programmed to return to base.”

“Is there anything you
can
do? I mean, there has to be something in the manual.”

“No, ma’am, someone is going to have to shoot it down.”

“This is General Swift. I need to speak with the officer in charge. No, I can’t wait, get him on the phone.”

“Sir, it looks like the drone is heading to Highway One,” a lieutenant said from the map attached to the wall.

“Yes, who is this? Captain Otto, we have a nonresponsive drone two kilometers west of Highway One. I need an immediate intercept with authorization for a shoot-down.”

Renee could see Highway 1 appear on the horizon where it snaked toward Pakistan like a dull gray serpent.

“Bird’s inbound, time to intercept five minutes,” the general yelled without taking the phone from his ear.

“Whiplash 14, we have two F-15s moving in for intercept. ETA five mikes, how copy?”

“Roger, Sentinel 3,” the pilot responded.

“What’s that on the road?” Kevin moved forward to get a better look at the screen.

A line of SUVs appeared at the upper edge of the feed. The vehicles were moving at a high rate of speed and bunched tightly together.

“Sir, we need to find out if we have an asset on the road,” Renee said.

“I’m on the phone with Bagram, waiting on an answer,” another officer said from his desk.

Renee realized that her fists were clenched in anticipation, and she forced herself to relax. Her palms were red from where her fingernails had dug into her skin, and she wiped her clammy hands on her pant legs.

“Sir, it’s Hamid Karzai’s convoy.”

“Shit. I need those birds expedited, now.”

The Reaper cruised lazily at fifteen thousand feet, where it was invisible to anyone on the ground.

“Pilot, we have sixty-degree target lockout. Weapon and laser spin up,” the sensor operator said.

Renee wasn’t sure what was going on, but it didn’t sound good.

“Sensor, check weapon and laser status.”

“Status complete, weapons are hot. Laser and auto track are coming online. Laser status complete, laser is hot and tracking on heading three five zero.”

“Initiate auto-destruct.”

“Pilot, access denied. Master arm is hot, we have missile launch.”

The reticle of the high-definition camera was focused over the second vehicle in the convoy. The feed showed where the infrared targeting laser was locked on to one of the vehicles as it moved unsuspectingly down the road.

“Pilot, impact in three, two, one.” The missile appeared in the screen for a split second as it slammed into the roof of the target vehicle. The explosion obliterated the vehicle and washed out the camera in a giant orange burst of flame and black smoke. Before the smoke cleared, the sensor operator was speaking again.

“Pilot, laser is hot. Master arm is hot, missile away.”

“Oh God,” Renee whispered as the second Hellfire went streaking toward its target.

A deathly silence fell over the TOC as everyone focused on the unauthorized strike unfolding before their eyes. In the background someone aboard the AWAC was trying to confirm the first missile strike, but the pilot wasn’t answering.

Renee was amazed at the sensor operator’s cool. She reported the drone’s functions with an unattached professionalism, void of any emotion.

The drivers of the convoys had been trained by American Special Operations and went into immediate evasive action on the road. Assuming they had hit an IED, the trucks sped through the kill zone. If they stuck to their training, they would stop and take up a defensive perimeter once they were clear. There was no way for them to know that a second Hellfire was hurtling toward them.

Renee had seen countless drone strikes in her time, but never one like this. The state-of-the-art UAV seemed to be functioning autonomously while losing none of its lethality.

“Pilot, impact in three, two, one,” the woman said again.

The laser designator tracked its target as the vehicles sped down the road. It was two hundred meters away when the second Hellfire detonated. The impact tossed the vehicle in the air, where it tumbled like a scrap of tin before slamming into the ground in a ball of flames.

General Swift silently lowered himself into a chair, the phone cradled to his ear, forgotten.

“Sentinel 3, I confirm two unauthorized missile launches. We have two hits at grid . . .”

Renee wasn’t listening. She looked over at the general, who’d buried his head in his hands in disbelief.

The feed suddenly shuddered and the picture violently corkscrewed on the screen as the drone tumbled toward the ground. The last thing they saw was an air force F-15 shoot past the Reaper after successfully hitting it with its twenty-millimeter cannon.

“How do you hijack a drone?” Kevin asked from her side.

“Someone has to be very familiar with our operating systems,” Renee replied.

The enormity of the situation filled the room and slowly settled on the silent witnesses like an invisible weight. Everything had just changed.

“Sir, I just received another message on the secure network,” one of the men said from his desk.

“What?” General Swift asked weakly.

“Another video, sir.”

“Put it on the screen,” Renee ordered, taking the initiative.

“Yes, ma’am.”

A moment later the screen, which had gone blank after the Reaper was shot down, blinked to life. A blue box with a white “play” arrow appeared, and Renee watched the sergeant’s cursor scroll over to the arrow and click it.