Game of Drones (15 page)

“I need more time than that!”

“One hour,” he reiterated. He got up and walked off the field of view before the picture shrank to the size of a speck on the screen, and then it was gone.

“I don’t believe a word he’s saying,” Carmichael finally said to his team. “Not one.”

“Of course not,” said Rimaldi.

Chief Advisor Simon Davis put his hands together, interlocked his fingers, and rested his elbows on the tabletop. “Mr. President, if I may. Shazad has three undetectable Reaper drones, six Hellfire missiles, and eight MUAVs fully loaded with plastic explosives. With two drones, he was able to bring down a commercial airliner carrying a senator, two fighter jets, the Capitol Building, and the vice president's residence, killing two Secret Service agent in the process. Despite our best efforts and technology, we do not know where he is or where to look. Right now he has our balls in a vise, Mr. President, and he’s not letting go.”

Carmichael cocked his head questioningly. “Are you proposing that we do as he says? All that would do, Simon, is give hope to all the factions and set the groundwork for future terrorist activity. Once they see that the United States is willing to bend and give, then radicals will attack ceaselessly—always punching, kicking, scratching and clawing like a small child having a tantrum until we say: Okay, that’s enough, you win.” He leaned forward. “That is not going to happen, Simon. Not on my watch.”

“Mr. President...” Simon pointed to an adjacent LCD that showed the Capitol burning. “That dome stood for more than two centuries. And now it’s gone. The refusal to negotiate with terrorists was always a command decision based on the acts taking place on foreign soil. But this time it’s different. This is taking place on American soil with American people dying on lands they presumed to be safe.”

“To everyone at this table,” the president said, “we have been at war for some time now. And we have been at war on the fronts of other countries. Now that conflict has finally reached our shores, we will look upon this as a test of our mettle. It’s been said before and I’ll say it again: The road to freedom is paved with casualties. Let’s not forget that. Let’s not forget who we are.”

“Mr. President, if I may.” This time it was Secretary of State Jenifer Rimaldi.

“Go ahead.”

“In one hour, when Shazad comes back and you tell him that you will not concede, he will set off another drone.”

President Carmichael leaned forward. “That’s one hour, Jenifer—one hour’s time to find this guy. It’s one hour I didn’t have a few minutes ago.”

Rimaldi seemed to understand him and gave an agreeable nod. “I see,” she said. “You’re allowing commlink to trace the path of the incoming calls from Shazad.”

“That’s exactly what I’m doing.”

“Still,” said Simon Davis, “you’re taking a gamble here. Cyber prints can be disguised, Mr. President. It can take time to track down his trail. And time is not exactly a luxury we have at the moment.”

“Sometimes in war, Simon, you have to gamble in order to win the entire pot. Right now we have little to go on since Shazad has played this perfectly.”

Carmichael then gazed upon the display and watched the Capitol burn. It was at this moment that he felt caught within a Gordian tangle of strife and emotions that were all twisted and black. Slowly, President Carmichael was becoming a husk of his former self as these sentiments began to eat him hollow from the inside out.

He then sighed through his nose, never once taking his eyes off the screen.

Rome was once again burning.

OUTCAST Facility

Beneath the first level of the meeting and communications rooms lay the armory, a weapons chamber that was encased by two inches of titanium. The door was electronically operated by a keypad code, and strips of motion-activated LED lighting ran along the ceiling, casting whitish glow over a table with disassembled pieces of MP-5 submachine guns scattered over its surface.

Nay, Liam and Dante were dismantling and reassembling the armaments, checking them for possible malfunctions and wear, and making sure that they were primed and without fault when the call came down from Tanner for them to move—should the order come down at all.

So far Shazad and his team remained as ghostly as the Reapers that terrorized the skies.

Liam finished up by oiling the rails, wiping away the excess oil with a chamois cloth, racking the weapon, and adjusting the gun sights. Satisfied the action on the weapon was smooth, he set the gun aside.

Then he addressed his colleagues. "Congratulations,” he said openly.

At first Nay and Dante didn’t know what Liam was talking about until the ex-SEAL tilted his chin in the direction of Nay’s hand, more specifically at the ring on her finger. “I didn’t think Chance had it in him to break down and propose.”

Nay set aside the weapon she was working on and raised her hand against the light, then spread her fingers to showcase the ring. The stone's facets glimmered with iridescent blends of rainbow hues, the diamond a magnificent piece of jewelry. Yet she could not feel the overwhelming elation she did the night before when Chance slipped it over her finger. She should have been on top of the world. Instead, her mood had been dampened by the horrific sequence of current events.

Her eyes were downcast as she spoke. “Today should have been one of the happiest days of my life,” she said, never taking her eyes off the gemstone. “But with all that's going on . . .” She allowed her words to trail, but her mind echoed her thoughts very distinctly.
The sky should be blue and not full of black smoke. And the sun should be bright, not dimmed by the haze of destruction.

“I’m happy for you both,” Liam stated softly and lightly. “I really am.”

“Thank you.”

Nay walked away from the table to a connecting room that housed explosives that were currently maintained in a dormant state with their pins, fuses and detonators removed. This was her playroom, her wares and toys.

During her time as an ATF-Special Agent, Naomi ‘Nay’ Washington was at the head of her class when it came to explosives, especially improvised explosive devices or IEDs. With brewing troubles in the Middle-East where insurgents had fallen in love with the IED as their primary weapon, and with the potential of terror cells implementing IEDs on American soil, she had become the expert-at-hand in the disengagement of such weaponry. Over the years she had witnessed the evolution of the bombs and the high-tech progress of their detonation systems, but for her, each new improvement represented not only a new danger to be aware of, but a fresh challenge to reverse engineer. She had always mastered the techniques to disarm them, keeping pace with an ever-changing technology that allowed users to make the most efficient use of whatever materials were at hand.

But three years ago she had become witness to organizational improprieties while she was stationed in the Arizona field office. ATF agents were selling automatic weapons to the cartels by supplying them with assault weapons that had been confiscated and scheduled for destruction. Log books had been doctored to appear that the firearms were destroyed as required, when in actuality they were traded for huge sums of cash. According to the paper trail reviewed by high-level executives, these guns no longer existed. Yet they most certainly did. They continued to wreak havoc in Mexican townships where the number of dead in the streets outnumbered the living.

The moment Naomi became the whistleblower by pointing an accusing finger at the misdeeds of the organization, she was marked as a pariah. For two years she had been placed on administrative leave, the two most difficult years of her life. She eventually became the target of threats that were hardly veiled, one of the worst of which being when she came home one night to find that her house had been ransacked--the walls, carpet and ceiling covered with vile graffiti that spelled out profane warnings in reddish ink that was later determined to be the blood of a pig.

She resigned, giving up a job she loved. She disappeared by moving to the east coast. But it was difficult for her to find a new job in law enforcement. As soon as her history with the ATF came to light during her background checks, she was passed over, even though she had done the right thing. They just didn't want any trouble. It was easier to get someone else than it was to figure out who might be in the wrong and possibly be held liable for hiring someone with a known history of issues.

And then she met Chance.

He was brash and conceited, elements she hated in any man. But he was also upbeat and confident, features she loved. In time she gravitated to him, finding his looks just as appealing as his childlike cockiness. His goodness, despite how he tried to play it off, far outweighed the negative aspects of his personality, so she had learned how to live with it. Eventually she fell in love with him because above all else, Chance Zanetti was not a player.

In the ensuing months she was introduced to Tanner Wilson, Chance’s best friend and founder of OUTCAST, a mercenary-like operational group who worked independently from the government, but at times for the government. The way Tanner explained it to her, they did whatever they had to in order to protect the United States and its citizens, regardless of whether the means coincided with the wishes of the Administration.

And like her, Naomi discovered that Stephen Shah, Danielle Sunderland, Liam Reilly, Dante Alvarez, and even Tanner Wilson himself each possessed a very special and noted skill-set, but at the same time were ostracized from their respective agencies. These people were family and OUTCAST was home.

When Tanner saw the skills she had in disarming bombs, he was amazed at her poise about as much as Chance was taken in by her beauty. So when Tanner extended her an offer to join his team and stand by their side, she didn’t hesitate.

Then last night, when life could not have been any more perfect, Chance adorned her finger with an engagement ring.

Everything was good.

Then the world shifted, its calm winds and slack tides morphing into cyclonic twisters and tsunami waves that were monstrously destructive. In less than a day Aasif Shazad had taken away everything that was good in the minds of people and destroyed it with uncontained violence. Americans were suddenly under the mercy of this man who sat upon his throne within a Stygian darkness, while his surroundings burned with the stink of Satanic brimstone. At least this is how she saw him, as a putrefied man with no conscience or morals. But she realized that Shazad probably viewed them the same way--as demons to be exorcised.

On the day she should have been celebrating her engagement to the man she loved and admired, she was instead inside a secure basement room handling explosives.

She picked up one piece in particular. The device was roughly the size and shape of a hockey puck. One side was highly magnetized. The other was polished chrome. On the chrome side was a small button and a tiny LED. The indicator blinked red when activated by a timer that could be set for up to five minutes, or as little as five seconds. The puck could be attached to metallic fixtures, such as the underside of a car, or it could be thrown like a simple grenade.  Its function was always at the will and creativity of the person who used it.

Naomi hefted the device, which felt far heavier than what its size would indicate. Then she flipped her hand over and inspected the diamond on her finger. It was magnificent, she thought. But as lustrous as it was, it could not outshine the deepening clouds that cast a dark, saddening shadow over the land.

She brought the ring to her cheek and touched the diamond to skin that was as smooth as porcelain. She closed her eyes and thought how no matter what, even in this new world of terror, she would always have Chance.

#

Inside the weapons chamber, Liam and Dante continued to ready the MP-5s.

Though they worked together in the exclusive, specialized unit, they acted more like associates than friends, neither man truly clicking with the other as a brother-in-arms. They only spoke to each other either as a courtesy or when something needed to be said to complete a task, which was why the chamber remained quiet without Nay’s presence, other than the clicks of weapons being pieced back together.

Liam viewed Dante as a man with a weakness for drink. And a man with a weakness for drink was also a man who could not be depended upon in the heat of battle. When he came in for the briefing, Liam could smell alcohol wafting off Dante like a punch to the senses, strong and pungent.

Yet Dante appeared clearheaded when breaking down the weapons. His hands were quick and agile, his movements fluid and clean. But when examining the pieced weapons for faults, Liam wondered if Dante was inspecting them with a keen eye, or with the rheumy-red gaze of a drunkard.

“Something the matter?” asked Dante, refusing to look at Liam as he racked the weapon to check its slide capability.

“You know it’s mandatory to be at your sharpest.”

“I'm always at my sharpest."

“You smell like a brewery.”

“What I smell like has no bearing on my presence of mind.” He laid the weapon down and gave Liam a sidelong glance. “Alvarez, I’m a man of two worlds,” he told him. “I have a private life which is mine to live. And I have
this
life, which I hold with the highest regard. When I work for Tanner, I am at my best.”

Liam wasn’t so sure, wondering if Dante was merely a functioning alcoholic.

The former Secret Service Agent grabbed the weapon off the table and checked its sights.

“At your best?” pressed Liam. “Didn’t you get canned for a prostitution scandal in Columbia?”

Dante looked at Liam with hard impact. “My team got canned. I wasn’t even at the hotel when it all went down.”

“Why? At a bar?”

Dante did not respond, which was answer enough for Liam.

“Look,” said Liam, "my point is simply this: when I go into the field, I want to know that the man watching my back is functioning at one hundred twenty-five percent when everybody else is claiming to be at one hundred ten percent.”