Drone (12 page)

But Mann knew that this wasn’t just about money for Pearce, or himself for that matter. This was good environmental work that needed to be done and they were both proud to be part of it. Pearce Systems was leaving an important legacy for future generations. The fact that he and Troy would get rich doing it was just an added benefit.

August emerged from the great black lighthouse tower. He held up a hand to guard his blinking eyes against the sand stinging his face. Maybe he would bring his girls out to the beach for a picnic this weekend if the wind died down. But if it didn’t, he’d gladly bring his board instead.

Near the Snake River, Wyoming

Pearce finished his beer and picked up his phone to dial again. August was seven hours ahead of Pearce. His next call was four hours behind him on the other side of the world from the lanky German.

Port Allen, Hanapepe Bay, Kaua’i, Hawaii

Dr. Kenji Yamada was barefoot. The converted wharf workshop wasn’t technically a “clean room,” but it could’ve been. Sensitive electronic controls, motherboards, and other equipment were susceptible to damage from dust and particulate matter, but Kenji was building
working
vehicles and didn’t mind a little real-world challenge. He used his bare feet as contamination sensors, constantly monitoring the state of floor cleanliness, or so he told his graduate students. Truth be told, he just liked being barefoot. His feet were doing a lot of sensing today because everybody was scrambling to load up the last of the equipment on the modified 350 Outrage excursion boat bobbing in the water outside.

The fifty-three-year-old researcher wore his thick silver hair in a braid and sported a downy silver beard that contrasted nicely with his sun-drenched skin. He’d traded in his lab coat for a pair of board shorts decades earlier. His excuse was that he’d found it easier to do lab work in board shorts than it was to surf in a lab coat. His passions were whale research and surfing, in that order, with adventurous women, premium beer, and fresh sushi next on the list, also in order.

The humpback whales had arrived last December in Hawaii to calve and now the pods had just begun leaving for the three-thousand-mile return trip to the Gulf of Alaska. Thanks to Pearce Systems’ funding, Yamada had spent the last three years developing an autonomous unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) designed to swim along with the humpbacks without disturbing them. Yamada had spent the last twenty-five years recording the migratory habits, social relationships, and communication patterns of the giant mammals, but no one had been able to travel with them for an extended period of time, owing in part to the extreme distances and water conditions. Some humpback pods were known to travel up to sixteen thousand miles in their annual migratory loops.

Yamada was on the verge of a revolution in whale research, thanks to
Pearce Systems’ support. By translating his hard-won migration data into an artificial intelligence program, he hoped to be able to insert into a whale pod a torpedo-shaped UUV equipped with radar, cameras, extension arms, and other devices needed to monitor the humpbacks in the wild. In order to accomplish this feat, the UUV had to be stealthy, self-powering, able to receive and send data signals to the control base, and perform a dozen other monitoring functions, all without disturbing the whales or disrupting their migratory patterns. Yamada also didn’t want his UUV to invoke the fearsome wrath of an angry thirty-five-ton adult, which could crush the UUV and scatter its priceless components on the bottom of the ocean floor with one mighty swipe of its massive fluke.

Yamada’s UUV was still under development, but it was far enough along that he wanted to try a short run with one of the pods. The UUV was already in position, but the AI program was still buggy. The best he could hope for was a remote-control test run of a couple hundred miles by following the underwater drone in a surface vessel like the 350 Outrage.

Yamada pointed at a stack of yellow storm-proof camera cases and told one of his grad students, “Don’t forget the Pelicans, please.” He felt his smartphone vibrate in his shorts pocket. It was Pearce’s ring tone.

“Troy! Howzit, brah?” Yamada asked. Born in Japan in 1960, he had migrated like his beloved humpbacks to Hawaii with his family when he was a teenager and had gone completely native. He was fluent in three human languages—Japanese, English, and pidgin—and he was an avid collector of whale songs.

“I was going to ask you the same thing, Kenji. Ready to launch today?” Pearce was aware of the AI bugs but wasn’t concerned. He knew Yamada and his team were close to solving them.

“On our way out the door. Wish us luck.”

“One more thing. I’ve scheduled the BP demo for September. I’ll need you and your team out in Galveston by August fifteenth at the latest. Will that be a problem?”

“Ah, brah. Serious?” Yamada whined. “Texas? How about Cali?” Yamada had earned his doctorate at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.

“Sorry, ‘brah.’ Gotta go where the customers are. You’ll be back before December.”

Yamada cringed. “Meh. Humpbacks are my customers.”

“I’m after greenbacks. The Brits have ’em in spades. That UUV you’re building is perfectly designed to run automated repair and maintenance routes on ocean-floor pipelines all over the world. We sign this BP contract, you’ll have more money for your whales than you’ll know what to do with.”

“And the rest of our deal?” Yamada asked. The hippie scientist agreed to join Pearce Systems and allow Pearce to fund his whale research operations so long as his UUV was never deployed for military purposes. Pearce was happy to comply. Like he told Yamada when he first met him, he really liked whales, too.
Especially if you cook them just right.
Fortunately for Pearce, Kenji had a sense of humor—and a busted bank account.

“Still the deal. Scout’s honor.”

“K, brah. See you in Texas. We talk logistics later. Gotta run.”

“Good luck, Kenji. I’m excited for you. Keep me posted.”

13

Highway 24, Sierra Madre Occidental, Mexico

The small convoy of Renault Sherpa 2s climbed the winding snake of asphalt known as Highway 24. It curved its way through the rugged, pine-covered mountains of eastern Sinaloa, not far from the bordering state of Durango. The road wasn’t heavily traveled. The only traffic was the occasional pickup or eighteen-wheeler hauling farm goods down the mountain from one of the
ranchitas
farther up.

Sixteen Infantería de Marina, among Mexico’s fiercest and most loyal soldiers in the drug war, were packed into the French-manufactured Humvee-style vehicles, each carrying a roof-mounted Heckler & Koch HK21 7.62mm machine gun. Oscar Obregón was in the lead command vehicle, standing inside the open-air weapon station. His helmet was equipped with a video camera providing a live “first-person shooter” broadcast. He was a freshly minted
subteniente
, the equivalent of a second lieutenant in American rank. Like all good young officers, he was determined to outperform on his first assignment with the unit.

A Hughes OH-6 Cayuse light observation helicopter provided overhead visual security. A video camera mounted on the helicopter provided an additional live feed of the events. It was piloted by another Marine lieutenant and the battalion commander, Colonel Israel Cruzalta, the most highly decorated man in the service. His unit had been responsible
for more drug busts and weapons seizures, and had engaged in more firefights, than any other military or police unit in all of Mexico. He had inherited a deep, broad chest and a cleft chin from his German grandfather, along with his height and bald head, which, combined with his dark eyes and complexion, gave him a fearsome, commanding presence.

The convoy was racing toward one of Castillo’s hideouts, thanks to a tip received by the Mexican Federal Police. A
Marina
forward observation team had been put on the ground two days earlier, and they had confirmed the presence of Ulises and Aquiles Castillo as recently as thirty minutes ago. The forward observation post also kept a live camera feed on the compound. They had identified the presence of two additional adult males, each armed with AK-47 assault rifles, who were alternating duty in twelve-hour shifts. Their long-range camera had also caught sight of two attractive young women in the compound, usually in bikinis and lounging near the outdoor pool. As the observation team reported, the buxom young women were definitely unarmed, but they were packing some serious heat.

In short, security at the compound was extremely light and no match for the two squads of highly trained combat infantry racing toward them.

All three live feeds were being fed simultaneously to monitors in command centers located at both Los Pinos and the White House.

The Situation Room, the White House

As soon as she was notified the convoy was en route, President Myers ordered her secretary to cancel all of her afternoon appointments because of “illness.” She didn’t want to set the town talking again with the news of yet another emergency meeting at the White House.

Madrigal, Early, Jeffers, and Vice President Greyhill were the only other people in the room with her watching the live feed on three separate monitors.

“They call that a resort compound? I see a shooting range, an obstacle course, and an outbuilding that looks like a barracks to me. Are they sure there’s no one else up on that hill?” Madrigal asked.

“They’d better be sure. Otherwise, they’re going to need a whole lot more firepower,” Early said.

Obregón’s helmet camera bounced and jostled as the stiff suspension of the Sherpa 2 rattled over the uneven mountain road. His head was on a swivel, and the camera swept in broad circles frequently on the lookout for trouble.

Occasionally Obregón’s camera ducked down into the personnel compartment where three young Marines—a corporal and two privates—were riding in bone-jarring silence.

“I’m getting motion sickness watching that guy’s helmet cam,” Jeffers said.

“How much longer, Mike?” Myers asked.

Early checked his watch. “Ten minutes, maybe fifteen.”

“Why couldn’t the Castillos have just come in?” Myers said.

No one answered. They all knew the question was rhetorical.

Cruzalta’s OH-6 Cayuse

The helicopter rotors hammered against the cloudless blue sky, spun by a Rolls-Royce turboshaft engine roaring overhead.

Los Pinos had decided to run the op during the day because of the terrain. It was closer to an arrest than an assault. If it had been an assault, the soldiers would have gone in at night. The Marines’ night-vision capabilities gave them a significant advantage over most opponents, though syndicate soldiers had been known to deploy the same technology on occasion.

Colonel Cruzalta scanned the road ahead with his field glasses. A wicked hairpin turn following a switchback was about five hundred meters ahead. A steep mountain with loose rocks walled one side of the road;
the other side was nothing but air and a thousand-meter drop into the gorge below.

“Obregón. Tell your driver to slow down. There’s a nasty curve up ahead.”

“Yes, Colonel,” echoed in Cruzalta’s headset, along with the Sherpa’s four-cylinder diesel engine whining in the background.

Like all true warriors, Cruzalta was anxious. Only armchair generals and fat-assed politicians thumped their chests and laughed at danger because they never really had to face any. Without fear, courage was impossible. Fear kept a man alive while courage kept him in the fight.

Cruzalta’s orders were to escort the Castillos back to Culiacán, by force if necessary, where an assistant attorney general was waiting to ask questions in the air-conditioned comfort of a federal building. If the twins requested it, Cruzalta was ordered to escort the Castillos back to their resort compound. It was possible that the Castillos would forcibly resist the attempt to bring them in for questioning, but the appearance of elite
Marinas
should cause them to think twice. However, it had been determined by the president’s office that a minimum of force was preferable in order to avoid any unnecessary provocation. Cruzalta prayed that the Castillo boys were wiser than their youth suggested.

Several hundred meters ahead, an ancient tractor-trailer rig belched clouds of oily smoke from its vertical exhaust pipes.
The driver is doing a bad job of downshifting,
Cruzalta thought to himself. The trailers were fully enclosed but ventilated. Cruzalta guessed the truck must be hauling cattle down the hill to the slaughterhouses in Culiacán.

Obregón’s Sherpa 2

Loaded out in his combat gear, including a Kevlar vest, Obregón sweated fiercely, but he could sense a slight cooling in the air temperature as they gained altitude.

He glanced up and over at his two o’clock, watching Cruzalta’s helicopter on station, keeping an eye on things. He was glad the old man was up there watching out for them. Cruzalta’s reputation was second to none in the
Marinas
. He had always led his battalion into battle from the front and he had the wounds to prove it.

Obregón ducked his head back into the crew compartment. The three young soldiers sat grim and determined beneath their camouflaged helmets, rifles locked between their knees.

“You girls ready to dance?” Obregón shouted over the noise.

“Sir, yes, sir!” they shouted back in unison, smiles creasing their fierce, young faces.

“Good. Won’t be long now.”

The Situation Room, the White House

Greyhill frowned. “Okay, now I’m starting to get carsick.”

Early grinned. “Trust me, it’s worse for them, especially the guys in the back.”

“Boys,” Myers whispered. “They’re just young boys.”

Cruzalta’s OH-6 Cayuse

Cruzalta watched Obregón’s lead vehicle enter the southern end of the mile-long tunnel that cut through the mountain. The other Sherpas were close behind. The drivers were tired and distracted after a three-hour ride in the twisting mountains.