Drone Wars 1: Day of the Drone (28 page)

Chapter 24

“Are you sure of this?” Xander said, staring agape at the sheet of paper that had just been handed to him.

“It came from the tap Almasi placed on the bunkers back at the Center. It’s faint and was hard to trace, but the NSA gives it a ninety-percent credibility rating.”

“Karachi … not Islamabad?”

“It’s about as far from the capital as he could go. Still, the location appears to be right in the heart of the city.”

“You even know which building?” Xander was in a mild state of shock. He tried his best to keep his expectations under control, but he was fighting a losing battle. And seeing the ecstatic expressions on the faces of his team members, as well as on Tiffany Collins, didn’t help.

“We’ve got the son-of-a-bitch,” Hugh Barden exclaimed.

“And Jonas may be there, too,” Billy threw in.

“If only,” said Karen.

Xander looked at the even expression on the face of Nathan Hall. “But you said he’s in the city. Is it possible to drop a huge-ass bomb on his head and get this over with?”

Hall shook his head. Xander was anticipating what came next. “He picked the best—or worse—possible location, depending on which side you’re on. First of all, he’s in the middle of the second most populous city in the world, and having a massive bunker-buster blow out a crater a quarter-mile in diameter will probably not go over very well with the locals.”

“They started this!” Jeremy Fenton pointed out.

“Almasi did, not the people of Karachi. Even then, there are other considerations. His compound is sandwiched between a hospital and school. The inevitable collateral damage is something the brass won’t accept.”

“Then
we
go in,” said Jeremy Fenton. “I’m sure you have RPAs in the region, or ones that can be placed there in a reasonable timeframe.”

“The military—not DARPA—has units over there,” Nathan said, just before a wicked smile stretched his lips. “And we also have five Goliaths aboard the
carrier Gerald R. Ford
.”

Hugh slapped the older man on the back, a little too forcefully. “So there you have it! We go in all stealthy and shit and take them out before they know what’s happening.”

“Karachi is located on the Arabian Sea,” Tiffany offered. “Where’s the aircraft carrier now, Nathan?”

The man tried to look calm, but failed miserably. “About five hundred miles south, steaming north at thirty-five knots.”

“You bastard!” Xander said. “You already have the op underway.”

“It was worth keeping it under wraps just to see your expressions. Yes, we’re a go. Five of you will pilot the G’s, and an additional twenty-five JEN-Tech Panther IV’s will provide support and backup guided by the military pilots.”

“I’m glad to see my babies are on our side this time,” Billy said. “You know how hard it was to fire on them yesterday?”

“They’re great machines,” Nathan said.

“Yeah, but we made mincemeat out of them with the Goliaths. You know how humbling that is?”

“Let’s hope the Goliaths can to do the same to Almasi’s drones,” Karen said. “You know he’ll have defensive cover. And to another point: you said you have
five
Goliaths. There are six of us. So who gets left out in the cold? As the only woman on the team, I sincerely hope it ain’t me. You guys wouldn’t survive the sexual discrimination lawsuit I’d slap on … well, everyone!”

Nathan came to the rescue, much to Xander’s relief. “Since Mr. Moore has the most combat experience from his tenure at the RDC, I suggest he take the lead and the rest of you draw straws. That way we can avoid any potential lawsuits, and the remaining team member can lead the Panther squadron.”

When no one protested—for real or in jest—Nathan’s face turned deadly serious. “The
Gerald R. Ford
will be on station in twelve hours. We launch shortly thereafter. We’re getting close to shutting this thing down, yet there’s no telling what that bastard Almasi has planned next. Whatever it is, we can’t let him carry it out. This has to be the decisive battle. America can’t take much more of this.”

Chapter 25

“Ready up! We drop in five minutes.” Xander’s voice echoed off the cold steel walls of the aircraft hangar, which by that time had grown deathly quiet. He walked along the rows of pilot pods, nodding at the young men and women at their stations, offering quick words of encouragement.

On the screens were thirty different views from inside the C-130 Hercules cargo transport. The drones were still hooked to chargers, yet their cameras were active. In an amazing feat of courage and daring, the huge cargo plane had managed to lift off the deck of the aircraft carrier—the largest plane capable of a carrier-launch. Now, within minutes, the tail of the Hercules would open and the contents of its cargo bay would be dumped out the back.

Xander’s team was ready, as were the twenty-four military drone pilots manning the JEN-Tech Panthers—with Billy Jenkins in command. Since it was made up entirely of UAVs his company manufactured, Billy had volunteered to lead the Panther squadron. Karen Prado thanked him by laying a wet kiss on his lips.

As the transport plane dropped to twenty-thousand feet over the glistening blue waters of the Arabian Sea, Xander slipped into his pilot pod and flexed his fingers. They were about to do something that had never been done before, but in theory should work. The cargo of drones was to be literally dumped out the back, power off and left to freefall. At five thousand feet, the motors would switch on and the fourth-generation Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 SoC flight controllers within the Panthers would take over, providing gyroscopic stabilization within seconds of activation. The Goliaths were much larger units and would be affected more by wind drag. They also operated using a different flight control board, yet the results
should
be the same.

If the drones weren’t able to stabilize within the narrow altitude window, they would unceremoniously splash into the water below, bringing a quick end to the ambitious operation. Yet this was the only way the Panthers could reach the target with enough of a battery charge to last an hour on station. The Goliaths had more than enough power to have flown from the carrier all the way to the mainland, but there were only five of them, and with such a spur-of-the-moment operation as this one, no one was fully aware what they might encounter, either on the way to or at Almasi’s compound.

Another UAV—this one a sixty-foot wingspan spy drone—was aloft at over eighty thousand feet, and would provide the command links with the NSA satellite tasked to the mission. 

Satellite imaging had also provided the pilots with a fairly detailed layout of Almasi’s compound. Like most residences of the wealthy in the Middle East, this one was isolated from the poor masses by a twenty-foot high, white-washed concrete wall, with one main entrance for motor vehicles and two smaller doors for pedestrian traffic.

Six structures dotted the grounds, with three large buildings serving apparently as living quarters. There were two other buildings that had a fair number of women and children going in and out, and then a long, single-story garage with four, twenty-foot-wide raise-up doors. Somewhere in the complex there was an access to the underground command post used by Almasi and his pilots. It’s just that no one had a clue which building it was in or how complex the maze of tunnels and chambers would be.

Xander had been assured that the huge Goliaths were nimble enough to navigate tight quarters, especially when transitioned to ground-mode. The much smaller Panthers wouldn’t have any trouble—they were designed for close-quarters combat. Reality would depend on the widths of the corridors in the underground labyrinth.

Without a doubt, Almasi would also have a hidden cache of defensive drones somewhere nearby. These didn’t necessarily have to be on the property, and could be in one of the surrounding houses or shops. So besides having to seek out and gain entrance to the true heart of the compound, Xander knew they’d also be fighting off a whole horde of rabid defenders.

In addition, Nathan Hall had been correct when he pointed out the strategic location of the compound. The hospital next door wasn’t big, but it did have a steady stream of patients and workers entering and exiting at all hours. And the school to the west of the property was a kindergarten to high school equivalent, with hundreds of children present during the day. The timing of the attack had been set for early morning, just at sunrise in Pakistan, so there shouldn’t be too many schoolchildren on the grounds at the time.   

Xander had no illusions that the team could get in and out without at least some collateral damage, either caused by his people or by Almasi’s. Yet the stakes were too high not to take the risk. Let the chips fall where they may, but this was the head of the snake, and it desperately had to be severed.

********   

The press of humanity in the underground command chamber was incredible, and with a smell to match. Over the past half-day, Almasi had had additional control stations moved in and hooked up, and now he had over eighty pilots crammed into the room, which included a mixture of Arabs, Persians, and Russians, along with a few Koreans thrown in for good measure.

With access to ninety-two RPAs scattered throughout the bushes, fields and culverts of Northern Virginia, it was imperative that he get as many of these units into the battle as soon as possible. With battery levels already below optimum, he was operating under a severe time constraint. Even though the drones were disposable after the battle, they still had to maintain charge throughout. Therefore the raid had to be quick, overwhelming, and decisive.

The outcome of this battle—which now encapsulated his entire war against America—would be known in less than half an hour. His entire legacy now rested on the efficiency of his strange mix of drone pilots. He also had the element of surprise on their side. After all, who would expect him to launch a major attack on a force of advanced drones that only a day before he didn’t even know existed?

He felt his lips stretch out into a weak smile. His face wasn’t used to the expression, and he didn’t do it out of joy. It was a grin of inevitability. He knew that if this mission failed, the Russians would not allow him to live. He was too much of a liability, as was his entire organization.

So not only did his legacy rest on the events of the next thirty minutes. His very existence was at stake as well.

********

    The cargo plane had descended to ten thousand feet when the cargo chief opened the rear door. The three-man crew was bundled in thick coats to protect against the cold, while the attack force sat stoic and unaffected by the temperature. These drones were rated down to minus twenty below Fahrenheit. In fact, the colder it was, the faster their circuits fired.

The thirty combat drones were resting on a wide conveyor belt. When activated, the belt began to rotate towards the rear of the plane. The first row of drones unceremoniously fell out the back, tumbling in the crisp, clear air without the aid of parachutes. Row after row fell out the back, until seven seconds later the cargo bay was empty.

The UAVs became tiny dots in the sky, dispersed over a wide area and falling at a rate of one hundred twenty-two miles per hour. Then the first of the automatic stabilizers kicked in. Rotors began to spin, and within a second the internal gyroscopic controls took over. The drones stopped tumbling, even though they were still falling freely towards the ground. Slowly, so as to not overstress the props, the drones began to brake their descent. As the seconds passed, their rate of fall declined, until the units were in controlled flight and gathering into a large bird-like formation.

Xander and his pilots had debated whether or not they would use the FPV goggles during the freefall. It was finally decided they wouldn’t. The tumbling, dizzying effect would have been disorienting, and might have interfered with their effectiveness at the controls. Yet when the units stabilized and gained upright flight postures, goggles were slipped on and suddenly Xander and the others were halfway around the world and falling fast toward the blue water of the Arabian Sea below. Not less than a few deep inhales could be heard in the hangar as the pilots adjusted to their new perspective.

There was a thin cloud layer below, and the turbulence within caused some of the drones to wobble and break formation. But as they broke into the clear again, the skill of the pilots corrected the flight paths with perfection.

At two thousand feet, the pilots—seated in an aircraft hangar seven thousand miles away—steered their charges toward the shore and the looming mass of structures ahead. Karachi was a huge city that dominated the coastline of southwest Pakistan. A mostly Muslim population of over thirty-million called the city home. Its ports were the lifeblood of the region, including not only Pakistan, but Iran and India as well.

 It would take thirty second to reach the shore, and by that time the Panthers would be radar visible, even as the Goliaths remained hidden.

Xander was counting on confusion to give them time to enter the city and get lost in the megalopolis. The confusion would be on the part of radar operators and air traffic control personnel at the local international airport. The signal on their screens would be like nothing they’d seen before: a thin cloud of contacts with no strong, individual central point. It would be like a large flock of birds, yet all with light metallic coatings. Hopefully, this strange mix of data would be enough to create a hesitation before reports were sent. By then, Xander and his force would be beyond the defensive perimeter and inside the city itself.

********

Tiffany Collins had stepped outside the hangar for some fresh air, as the hundred or so pilots and techs that occupied the huge single room were engrossed in their individual tasks. She wasn’t one of them, and she felt conspicuously like the proverbial fifth-wheel.

It was a few minutes past nine at night when the operation got underway, and she was briefly shocked and revived by the thirty-degree temperature of mid-December. She had spent considerable time in the area reporting on various stories, yet her tenure in L.A. had spoiled her to near-perfect year-round weather. Even then, this was just what she needed to get things back into perspective.

The two hangars which Nathan Hall had commandeered as his temporary operations center were located at the south end of the western runway at the Andrews Joint Military Base, about five miles southeast from the horrific scene of destruction along the Washington Mall. Tiffany walked to the edge of the building and looked in that direction. There was an abnormal glow over the area, as repair and rescue crews worked long into the night under brilliant floodlights. The damage caused to the buildings would take years to repair—the damage to the American psyche … much longer.

The night was not quiet, even with the curfew, as a chorus of sirens warbled in the distance. On the western side of the pilots’ hangar, along Arnold Avenue, the parking lot was full of vehicles, but beyond that, over the rest of base, only the headlights of the occasional security vehicle could be seen. As for the rest of the city, its occupants were now hunkering down for another night, unsure what the new day would bring.

Tiffany Collins knew more than most, yet even she was as uncertain. Even if Xander’s mission succeeded, what did the future hold in store for America? Irreparable harm had been caused to the country, physically, economically, and emotionally. Mentally, she began to work out the lead to her first broadcast once she was allowed to resume her duties. It wasn’t coming easy, the subject too vast to be condensed into a single sentence.