Drone Wars 1: Day of the Drone (7 page)

“Even the privately-owned security drones?”

“That’s right. Quite honestly, we have the best remote pilots in the world, and our civilian counterparts acknowledge this. They’re more-than-willing to let us take the lead during an attack.  We can deploy within seconds of the call with state-of-the-art weaponry and equipment. We do our best to limit the damage caused by the attacks.”

“And just how big is the Center?”

Xander knew his job was to provide just enough information to give the population a feeling of security. He had been through this before, and most of the information was available online. But still the reporter insisted on asking.

“I can’t be specific, but we are much larger than the military foreign drone program ever was.”

“Because of the need?”

“Mainly because of the scope of our operations. We cover the entire United States and our territories, with literally hundreds of rapid-response bunkers ready to respond at a moment’s notice. Also, the devices within these bunkers have to be maintained and tested constantly to assure their readiness when called upon. And then we need operators—pilots. In the past we’ve had as many as ten simultaneous events taking place. That requires trained pilots and sensor-operators to cover all the shifts and be ready to react when needed.”

“And all out of here?”

“We are the main center, yet rest assured, as it is with most government functions, there are backups to the backups.”

“As I mentioned before,” the reporter continued, “drones have been around for a long time, but now they’ve been regulated so much that everyone assumes that a drone in the air is up to no good. There have been protests by hobbyists and others against these restrictions. What do you say to these people?”

“Hey, I was one of them for a long time. I got my first drone when I was eight. Then I began to build them. At that time there were so many kits available—in fact you could buy a drone for less than twenty dollars back then.”

“But they weren’t the sophisticated UAVs we have today.”

“Some were. Depending on how much you could spend, there were units capable of being converted into killers quite easily.”

“But there were—are—safety features in them.”

Xander’s smile was more of a smirk. “Like everything else, regulations are designed to keep law-abiding citizens from violating the rules. Criminals don’t care about laws—that’s why they’re criminals. Sure, there are safeguards programmed into the flight controllers, but like any computer program, there are ways around them.”

“The killboxes?”

“Exactly. If someone has the money and the access, they can acquire a killbox, and in less than a minute all safeguards are voided. But even more, the internals within the killbox allow for standardized reprogramming that can make even a mid-range drone into a killer.”

“Please explain.”

Xander hesitated. He knew all this information was available in the clear, but he was an official spokesperson for the government, so he couldn’t make the situation appear too bleak. His job was to comfort the public, not make them even more paranoid than they already were.

Tiffany sensed his trepidation. “My report will be screened through your security people, Mr. Smith. I’d just like to know … for background.”

“Please use discretion, Tiffany. After what happened in Miami, we don’t want to do anything more to dampen the spirit of the holiday season.”

“I understand. Please continue.”

Xander nodded. “As you know, drones are controlled through radio frequencies, and in the early days it was possible to jam these signals without too much difficulty, even though it was illegal for civilians to do so.”

“Why was that?”

“Because drones operate on the same frequencies as Wi-Fi, cellphones, and even 9-1-1 calls, so if a person were to build an illegal jamming device they could disrupt the entire grid, if even in the case of civil emergencies, the government would take such drastic measures. But then technology changed, and the killboxes have allowed a whole array of additional operations to be programmed into the flight controllers which are prohibited in most civilian drones, including the use of the misnamed random frequency generators.”

“Misnamed?”

“That’s right, because there’s really nothing random about these units. An RFG is a matching set of
pre
-determined radio frequencies unique to a particular pair of drone and controller that are constantly changing. This makes it impossible to jam the drones unless you overload every known frequency.”

“So there’s no way to stop them?”

“Short of shooting them out of the air, not many. A few years ago they tried using focused electromagnetic pulses, but that only works outside and on unshielded commercial drones, not combat-rated UAVs. Some facilities have used drone nets, either shot from guns or dropped from the ceiling.”

“I saw where one of these nets actually caused more harm than good.”

“That’s right. Malls began using them right at the outset of the crisis, but a net is just as good at capturing innocent shoppers as it is at knocking a drone out of the air. Now modern combat drones can cut through the netting, and have a ready-made killing field of trapped civilians nearby when they do. Or they can simply detonate an onboard bomb, killing every person within range who couldn’t get away.”

“Aren’t killboxes used mainly in the automatic drones?”

“
Autonomous
drones, Tiffany. RFG and advanced satellite disruption is something we’re always working on, but that only applies to controlled units, what we call RPA’s or remotely-piloted aircraft. These days, a vast majority of attacks are carried out using autonomous drones which are programmed with a predetermined route and then sent off to accomplish their missions without outside influence. There’s no signal to jam, and since this class of drone is cheaper to purchase and operate, they’re the weapon of choice for terrorists. Killboxes also allow for the installation of sophisticated sense-and-avoid equipment, which enables a unit to scan its surroundings and avoid obstacles. These auto-units are able to effectively operate within buildings and far beyond the range of any pilot-controlled drone.”

“Yet the one inherent limitation with drone warfare is battery life, isn’t that right?”

“That’s another thing that technology has improved upon. Even ten years ago, the most you could expect was between twenty minutes to half-an-hour of flight time. Now with lightweight and long-lasting fuel cells, your average off-the-shelf UAVs can run for a couple of hours, maybe longer. And let’s face it, if an attack goes beyond half an hour or so, the effects will be exponentially worse.”

“Won’t they run out of ammo long before that … or just explode?”

“There’s not much that can done to stop the suicide drone designed simply to appear on-site and explode. For the others, there’s a whole menu of UAV-compatible armament now available, from lightweight nylon and composite cartridges to miniature missiles. And since most drone attacks take place at point blank range, there’s no need for a lot of range or penetrating power, so a decent-size combat drone can carry enough armament to last for a while, depending on how plentiful the targets are. That’s the reason the RDC has become so important. Without some countering force showing up on-site, these killer drones can just leisurely pick off targets as they’re located. I know the death toll always look high in most drone attacks—even to me—yet without us there to shut down an event, the numbers would be far worse.”   

“Thank you for sharing that with me, Mr. Smith. Now I’d like to spend a few minutes talking about the operators—the pilots, as you call them. Are you really pilots?”

It was Xander’s turn to smile. “That’s what we’re called. I can be honest with you and say I don’t hold a pilot’s license for traditional aircraft; however, I’m pretty good with a controller in my hand.”

Their eyes locked for a moment. “I’m sure you are, Mr. Smith.”

The moment passed and she continued. “What about burnout and other psychological factors with your pilots? I know that was an ongoing problem with the military drone pilots.”

“We don’t have that problem here.”

“Why not?”

“Because our mission is completely different. What you’re referring to is the outdated foreign strike program. Those units have been retired. We now use the smaller UAVs.”

“So what makes your mission so different?”

“Simple, we’re completely defensive in nature. On background, Tiffany, the problem they had with the initial drone program came from the attachment the operators sometimes developed with their targets. They would often spend weeks surveilling a hostile before getting the order to take out them out. They weren’t given a reason, just the order. It’s one thing to be in a firefight against an enemy across the street shooting back at you. You’ll kill without remorse, justifying it as self-defense. Most of the PTSD live combat troops suffer is a result of the
fear
associated with such fighting, not from the act of killing itself. With the drone program, the issue became the killing. There was no direct feeling of self-defense or personal danger in these cases, and most compassionate people have a problem with simply following orders to execute a person—any person.”

“But the targets were enemy combatants.”

“Or so they were portrayed. The pilots and sensors had a problem accepting that assertion, and so there was a lot of turnover in personnel in the early days of the program.”

“But here at the RDC you don’t have that problem?”

“Not at all, since we
react
to an attack already taking place. It’s our job to
stop
an event in its tracks by killing—if you will—inanimate objects. Our job saves lives, we don’t take them. It’s a completely different mindset, based on the mission, and our people take immense pride in what they do.”

“And yet you stay secret, unnamed, and hidden away.”

Xander smiled again. “We’re not looking for medals and ticker-tape parades, Tiffany. We stay anonymous because the enemy realizes our value and have made us targets. In all honesty, you can have thousands of advanced UAVs at your disposal, yet without skilled pilots and operators, they’re just useless pieces of plastic and composite.”

“Which brings us to the Exceptional Skills Bill. You know there’s a lot of opposition to its passage—”

The door to the conference room suddenly burst open and a grave-looking Colonel Jamie Simms stepped in, followed by an Air Force tech sergeant.

“Sorry to interrupt, but this interview is over,” Simms announced in a voice that left no room for discussion. “The sergeant will escort Ms. Collins to a safe room until arrangements can be made for her departure.”

“What’s going on?” Tiffany asked. Her face was flush with anger. “Was it something I said or asked?”

“No, it’s nothing like that—”

Just then an alarm began to sound throughout the Center. Xander had never heard this particular alarm before. It was different from the normal drills that were run periodically.

“What
is
going on, Jamie?” Xander didn’t care if Collins heard or not.

Simms looked at both their faces, seeing the matching concern. “This will be hard to keep secret as it is, so what the hell. The base is under attack, Ms. Collins, so it’s important that you go with the sergeant until the crisis is over. Xander, you’re back on duty.”

“Who’s doing the attacking?” Tiffany asked.

“The bad guys,” Simms responded. “Now please no more questions. Just go with the sergeant so Xander and I can get to work.”

Tiffany looked at Xander. “
Xander
, your name is Xander?”

“Talk to my mother about that. Now get going, please.”

Chapter 6

Once the reporter was out of the room, Xander turned to Simms. “Are we really under attack?”

“That’s a big-ass affirmative. A whole fleet of quads and octs have breached the outer perimeter east of the Center and are headed this way. According to the security images, they’re Lightning Z4’s and 8’s, equipped with full strike packages.”

“How did they get past the countermeasures?”

“That I don’t know, not yet.” The pair left the conference room and headed north toward the tactical section. They were in the Admin building, which housed the executive offices and command facilities for the RDC, and all the corridors were full of determined men and woman rushing about with concern on their faces.

Xander and Simms entered the main tactical command room for the Center, a huge chamber resembling a college lecture hall, with rows of observation stations set high to the back of the room and a series of flight control stations on the main floor below. In reality, very few operations were run out of the room. Instead, it was used mainly to monitor the activities of the ninety individual combat stations located in the Operations building.

Yet today most of the stations were occupied, with over twenty pilots and operators just now lighting up their consoles. Xander took a seat at a vacant pilot station. To his left and right were a wingman and a scanner-operator. Simms stood behind him watching the screens as they came to life.

“How many bunkers have activated?” Xander asked. Las Vegas had more than its fair share of rapid-response bunkers, not only from its proximity to the Center, but also because of the massive number of tourists who frequented the city each year, making it an ideal target for terrorists.

When no one answered, Xander looked to the scanner, a young Hispanic woman named Lydia Garcia. She was frowning deeply at the information on her screen.

“Report, Lydia,” Xander ordered.

“I’m sorry Mr. Moore, but I can’t detect a single activation.”

Xander’s mouth fell open, while Colonel Simms raced to a phone at one of the observation stations behind the control consoles. He began to yell into the receiver.

“That’s impossible,” Xander said to Garcia. “Maybe it’s a communications problem—”

“That’s not it,” Simms said, still cradling the phone on his shoulder. “All of the Las Vegas and Henderson bunkers have been hit with drone strikes, apparently simultaneously with an attack on Nellis, too. We’ve been compromised, and to the highest degree.”

The noise level in the room rose significantly, as officers, pilots, and operators all began to ask questions and demand answers.

“If the stations are gone, then how do we defend the Center?” Garcia asked. Her voice trembled and her eyes were moist.

This was the problem with remote warfare, Xander thought, the lack of connection to the battlefield. When the fight came to your own backyard, the fear and anxiety associated with real combat suddenly manifests itself. Although Lydia Garcia had participated in literally dozens of
remote
battles, she had never been this close to the real thing, and she wasn’t handling it very well.

“Don’t worry,” Xander said, “there are defensive measures here and at the airbase. This is one tough place to penetrate.” Or at least he hoped so. He had been with the Center since two years after its inception, yet he wasn’t privy to that part of the operation.

Simms replaced the phone in its cradle. “Listen up, everyone! Quiet!” After all eyes had turned to the RDC commander, he addressed the room. “All the nearby bunkers are gone so there’ll be no countering force coming from outside. Also, the Nellis flight line is in shambles, so we can’t count on them, either. The attacks were coordinated.”

“This doesn’t make sense, sir,” a senior Air Force officer called out. “Drones are not designed to hold territory, especially autos like most of these. So we just hunker down and wait for their batteries to run dry.”

“The problem with that strategy, Major, is that these units have an operational life of at least two hours. In that time they could level every goddamn building in the complex.”

“Not the underground facilities,” the officer countered. “We need to evacuate everyone below ground.”

Simms considered all the eyes looking at him. Ironically, the Rapid Defense Center was not designed to protect itself. It relied on forces from Nellis and the local rapid-response bunkers.

The approaching fleet of heavily-armed drones would be upon them in less than five minutes.

“Let’s do it,” Simms said decisively. “Get everyone down as low as they can go. No one remains outside.”

“Sir!” said a Marine Captain. “We have automatic weapons and a security force of forty-five. I say we take posts outside and blast as many of these fuckers as we can.”

Before responding to the Marine, Simms nodded to the Air Force major. Immediately, people began to stream from the room as the officer talked on a cellphone. Then Simms focused on the Marine officer. “There are over eighty UAVs heading this way Steve, with mid-range missile batteries and the ability to dart around at over sixty miles per hour. You may be able to take out a few of them, but then they’ll just saturate your positions with enough raw firepower to make the outcome a foregone conclusion. These are mindless machines we’re dealing with here. There’ll be no surrendering, no breaking off the attack at some point. The drones will just keep fighting until the last unit is gone. You’d be sacrificing yourself for nothing by staying outside.”

Xander watched as the veins in the Marines’ neck pulsed. Simms continued: “Take your men over to Comm. Major Drake is right. The attackers can’t hold the ground, but they can take out our communications capability. Without that, we won’t have access to any of the remaining RDC facilities across the country.”

“Yes, sir!”

The man rushed out of the room.

Xander and his two surrogate team members now headed for the door. “Mr. Moore, a word,” Simms said.

The other two operators hesitated for a moment before leaving.

“We don’t have much time—”

“There’s more,” Simms said, interrupting.

“More … like in more bad news?”

“Exactly. The security breach goes deeper than simply identifying the location of the RR bunkers in Vegas. There’s also been a huge data dump on the Internet.”

Xander shook his head, not understanding.

“This download contains information about all our operations, the locations of the bunkers, as well as our security codes and protocols.”

“Holy crap!”

“They’ve also revealed personal data on all our pilots and operators.”

“What do you mean
personal
data?”

“I mean everything: names, addresses, photos, next of kin, even bank account information.”

Xander was stunned, even if he didn’t have time to react before Simms grabbed him by the arm and pulled him toward the exit. The attacking drones would be at the complex in less than two minutes, and they had to find shelter.

********

Even though there were several prominent awning-covered walkways between the buildings, all the structures had underground access tunnels between each other. Xander and Simms took the first crowded stairwell down to the sublevels of the Administration building and entered a passageway leading to the communications center next door.

“Where could they have gotten that information?” Xander asked.

“It had to come from here,” Simms answered. “It’s all on the mainframes.”

“I thought we couldn’t be hacked?”

“We can’t,” Simms answered gravely. “It had to be an inside job.”

With a few moments now to digest the impact of the news Simms had laid on him, Xander’s legs grew weak. As a pilot for the Rapid Defense Center, his identity—along with that of all the others—was some of the most sought-after information terrorists coveted, not only because of the skills the operators possessed, but also because of their effectiveness in foiling countless operations initiated by these groups. It was now a matter of principle for the dozens of radical terror groups operating around the world to take out any and all RDC operators they could find.

“All of us?” he asked.

Simms nodded. “I was told on the phone that there are reports of individual homes being hit as well as the bunkers.”

“The pilots?”

“And anyone else who happens to be home at the time.”

“But you said the information was just dumped on the Internet, and they’re already striking at the residences?”

“The info-dump was an afterthought,” Simms said. “These attacks took months to plan, including the ones on the pilots, so whoever’s in charge of this operation has had this information for a while. Now they’re just adding insult to injury.”

  Simms’ comment was punctuated by a massive explosion that rocked the building above them, reverberating for several seconds after the first jolt. Ceiling panels crashed to the floor, covering the occupants of the corridor in a fine white powder. The lights flickered on and off briefly.

“We have to protect the comm links at all costs,” Xander said. “You were right. The only way an op like this can succeed is if they take out our way to communicate with the remaining bunkers. Without the ability to launch and control, our entire inventory is useless.”

There was storm of ear-shattering noise now as the fleet of killer drones reached the RDC and unleashed their relentless assault on the facility. With no defense for the buildings, the enemy UAVs wasted no time sending small yet powerful missiles through windows and doors, resulting in catastrophic damage and crumbling structures. In less than three minutes, all six buildings in the complex were nothing more than smoldering piles of concrete, glass and steel.

By now, Xander and Simms knew the external satellite dishes and arrays were also gone, but the guts of the comm center remained intact four stories underground.

The deafening cacophony from above was diminishing; however, that didn’t mean the attack was over. Now the drones would find their way into the sub-levels.

Xander fell against a wall as one of the blasts from above rocked the building. He righted himself and found Simms bleeding from a head wound caused by a falling metal support beam from the ceiling.

“Are you okay?”

“I’ll live.” Simms wiped the blood from his left eye. “They’ll be coming down here next.”

“Where are the Marines?”

“They should be directly ahead of us. C’mon.”

By now the corridor between the buildings was nearly deserted and littered with fallen debris from the overhead utilities runners. Water pipes had broken, with the concrete floor slick in places and pasty in others as the water mixed with the chalky remains of drywall and acoustic ceiling tiles.