Sting of the Drone (33 page)

“Right. This is your government advising you to stop your holiday shopping and hunker down because we think something may happen somewhere,” Burrell replied. “The Governor of Massachusetts called the President last night. The FBI has the Gov all spun up. He wanted to issue some sort of Red Alert.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Told him we don’t do colors anymore and for now he should just massively step up police presence and searches, keep hospital ERs fully staffed, but no announcement yet,” Burrell replied. “Told him we hoped to have more information on the plot today. Will we?”

“Maybe, but if we don’t, I would advise that some sort of announcement is going to be necessary later today. It may scare them away for now, give us more time. Or it may panic them into going early. No way to tell,” Ray admitted.

Hanging up the secure line, he turned to see Colonel Parsons busily running several drone missions. “You should be with your wife,” he said to Erik.

“She’ll be asleep for hours. Besides, I got work to do here,” Erik replied.

“Like what?” Ray asked.

Dugout looked at Erik. “Better tell him.”

“All right, but do not try to stop me,” Erik said to Ray. “I have a Global Reach on the way to Kiev and a Reaper en route to this place in Pakistan, DG Khan.”

Ray frowned at Dugout. “I geolocated the servers at the user ends of those VPNs,” Dug said. “The Kiev one is a complex that the CIA and FBI databases show as the warehouse headquarters of the Merezha cyber/narco cartel. It’s heavily guarded and they appear to have bought off the local police.”

“And the other place?” Ray asked.

“A villa outside of a city known as DG Khan. CIA carries it as the headquarters of the Qazzani clan. We did a Pattern of Life a few times before and it was all bad guys, but we never got the political clearance. State objected to hitting anything that deep into Pakistan.”

“Isn’t there also one in the U.S.?” Ray asked.

“It’s routed through Texas, but it’s really just north of Vegas, about five miles from where they were holding Jen. The Bureau and the SWAT guys are going to hit it right after dawn.” Dugout paused. “I asked them if I could go in after they cleared the place to do a first line exploitation on their computers. I’m already in the ones that are online, but they probably have some that aren’t always connected, or are never connected. Anyway, I got into the online ones.”

“Of course you did,” Ray said, sitting down.

“So, can I do it?” Dugout asked. “Can I go with the SWAT guys, I mean after the SWAT guys?”

Ray ran his hand through his hair. “Sure, why the fuck not, we’re about to break all sorts of rules.” He looked at Erik. “Colonel, did you know there’s already an IG investigation of you?”

“Yeah, but I understand they haven’t got anything on me. They asked me to take a voluntary polygraph,” Erik said.

“What’d you say?” Ray asked.

“I told them to get fucked. And then I figured I might as well do something they could actually investigate.”

Ray stared at the Big Board. He saw the Global Reach and the Reaper en route to their targets. “I don’t suppose anyone in Washington has approved those two flights?” No one answered.

“Didn’t think so,” he said to no one in particular.

“The ranch we’re going to hit at dawn?” Dugout said, changing the subject. “We just got this: there’s a mobile phone there that’s been calling another mobile about three miles from here. Narrowed it down to a high school, or near it.”

Ray stood up. “Gimme those coordinates and the number. We still have FBI guys out front. Maybe I’ll drive over there with them. Dugout, you go get out to that ranch and exploit the computers after the SWAT guys hit it.

“Erik, you moved up when Sandy died. You’re in charge here now. Do what you have to do. You’re familiar with the emergency protocol, right? It gives the GCC Director the authority to act in exigent circumstances. With Sandy gone that would be you. You just have to check with the most senior National Security official available. That would be me. And I judge that there is an imminent threat to the lives of Americans who could be killed in a series of terrorist attacks planned by the Qazzani cartel, working with the Merezha gang.”

Ray and Dugout walked to the exit together. “Take ’em out, Colonel, take the bastards out,” Ray said in a loud voice that everyone on the Ops Floor could hear. Then in a quiet voice he said to Dugout, “And let’s hope they haven’t already sent the go signal to their attack cells.”

42

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 22

COPPER HILLS RANCH

KYLE CANYON, NEVADA

“You’re up early, Mykola,” Yuri Poderev said as he stumbled into their computer room in his underwear. “Did you make the coffee yet?”

“I talked to Ghazi. He’s coming over later. This is probably A-Day,” Mykola replied. “I bet when he comes today, he tells us it’s time. Then I play with the DC Metro, and BART, and MARTA in Atlanta. Big day.”

Yuri stretched. “Did you make the coffee?” he repeated, as he walked into the dirty kitchen and found a fresh pot already made. As he began to pour the coffee, a loud alarm sounded, “Intruder! Intruder!” and then a series of loud blurts. Yuri poured the coffee on the floor, and on himself. He moved quickly back into the living room they had converted into their computer room.

“All the intruder sensors are going crazy,” Mykola said. “And the perimeter ones. Look at the cameras, there are SUVs on the road.”

“Pull out the hard drives. Smash them,” Yuri yelled, but by then they could both hear the loud rotors of a helicopter directly above the house. As a blindingly bright light shone through the window, there was a blast and the front door flew across the room, quickly followed by two, then four men in dark blue helmets and body armor, swinging automatic weapons with lights on them, wildly from left to right.

“Do not move, if you move you die!” one of the stormtroopers yelled. “All right now, arms out to your sides. Show me your palms. Open hands facing me. Now, slowly, down on your knees. Slowly, facedown on the floor. Do not breathe.” In seconds, Yuri and Mykola had their hands tied behind their backs and then their ankles laced together by a strong plastic belt. They heard a helicopter landing, but the light from another hovering aircraft still darted in and out of the window.

“It’s clear, bring him in,” one of the blue men said into a microphone on his helmet.

Dugout, wearing some of the blue body armor suit, walked gingerly through the blasted doorframe and struggled to take off his helmet. “Next time, I want the white suit. Which one of you guys is Vader?” he said to what were by then twelve body-armored blue men crowding the living room.

“I’m the senior FBI Special Agent on site,” one of the assault team members said dryly. “I am supposed to ‘facilitate your exploitation of the computers’ for an hour or so. Then we start ripping them out and taking them to our computer forensic lab.”

“I’ll tell you when they get ripped out,” Dugout said, sitting down at one of the chairs in front of a bank of three screens.

Two FBI agents in body armor were lifting Yuri off the floor and dragging him out of the house. Dugout spun around in his chair and pointed at two more agents about to drag Mykola out. “Hang on a minute.” He looked at Mykola. “I know you.
Dovgo ne bach
ī
l
ī
s. Berlin, dah?
”

“I speak English,” Mykola replied. “Yes, it was Chaos Communication Congress, two years ago in Berlin. You spoke on finding flaws in encryption routines. Is that what you did? Is that how you found us?”

“Next time when I submit a paper at Chaos, maybe you should read it,” Dugout replied. “Listen, you’re hosed, so all you can do now is buy yourself a better prison roommate. I can get you a safe one, or your own private room, but you better talk to me now. Passwords, the attack plans, you know what I need. No tricks. Trick me and you get shot resisting arrest. Shot dead, man, fatal, right Darth?”

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 22

LEGACY HIGH SCHOOL

NORTH LAS VEGAS

Ray was not supposed to do tactical missions. There was a bright red line against that in his job description. It had taken him years to stop people from saying he should not be “operational.” The advent of drones had made him very operational and no one could argue against that, at least not successfully. The PEG Director, however, was supposed to do analysis, not race through the suburbs in a convoy of Chevy Suburbans. As they drove, he noticed the streetlights go out and the sky turn a pinkish orange. He wasn’t supposed to be with the gun toters and, he thought with a smile, Dugout certainly wasn’t either.

He held on to the door handle as the big truck cornered without slowing down and began speeding down the straightway, past the high school campus, over the rise, and into the open desert. Then he saw the 747 above.

“Stop,” he yelled. “Everyone out, out of the truck. Incoming. Get away from the truck!” He opened the door and leaped while the vehicle was just starting to slow down. He hit the dirt hard, but curled and rolled in the military parachute landing style, keeping his head off the ground. He scrambled to get up and ran into the sand and rock at the side of the road as he heard the second Suburban rear-end the first with a metal on metal crunch.

Then the explosion knocked him down, face first into the dirt. He felt a rock cut into his left cheekbone just below the eye. Facedown, he could still see the light from the blast and the fire. He felt the heat.

Ray forced himself up. He knew there was blood coming from somewhere, or maybe a couple of places, his cheek, his nose, his left ear. He saw the FBI men trying to make sure that everyone had made it out of the first two vehicles. Their windows were shattered into giant spiderwebs. He staggered ahead, away from the wreck. Was this what a concussion felt like? There was a ringing in his ears and he was squinting, trying to focus. Then he saw the C-17 model lifting off at the end of the long flat, dirt road. Three models waited for takeoff, a B-17, an A-380, and a B-29. Ray tried to yell back to the agents, but he couldn’t get the words out, coughing, choking.

But the large model C-17 banked left after lifting off, flying its programmed flight path, seeking a homing beacon.

“You okay, sir?” It was an agent from the third vehicle, one of three men in body armor who were now standing with him.

“Hey, there’s a guy down there in the middle of the road,” one of the agents called out, raising his HK33 assault weapon.

“Don’t shoot,” Ray said. “Let’s take him.”

“We’ll give that a try, sir, but we have our rules,” the Special Agent replied.

The four men walked slowly down the road toward Ghazi, who had placed a flight controller module on the ground and was walking toward them with his arms hanging by his sides, his hands empty.

“Stop there,” the Agent yelled. And then in low voice to Ray, he said, “Could have a suicide belt on.”

“Take off your coat and drop it on the ground,” another Agent yelled.

Ghazi stopped, but kept the coat on. “You thought you were invulnerable here, didn’t you? No one could get your drone pilots here. You could kill innocent people everywhere in the world, but no one could kill you, no one could get their revenge? Never be any payback? Thought you were the only ones with drones, didn’t you?” His right hand darted into his North Face windbreaker. “Vengeance!” he yelled and started to run toward them.

“Gun!” one of the agents cried out. All three FBI agents fired their HK33s in short bursts of a few bullets each.

Ghazi had no gun. Instead, he held a detonator and as soon as he hit its switch, the three large model radio controlled aircraft on the road behind him blew up in what seemed like a single, massive explosion.

The blast knocked the FBI agents and Ray to the ground again. Ghazi’s lifeless body lay bleeding out on the pavement.

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 22

SPECIAL OPERATIONS ROOM

GLOBAL COORDINATION CENTER

CREECH AFB, NEVADA

First, the Global Reach drone got to the target outside of Kiev.

“Five SUVs, one pickup in the yard. Guards inside at the gate. Guards outside. Guard on the roof. No signs of civilians. Getting multiple, human life forms readings through the windows. Laser is having trouble getting the conversation, but the voices are all male,” Major Jaimie Hernandez was calling out. It was his first day at the GCC, but he had flown birds from Eglin Air Base in Florida. Now he was stepping up to the big time, to the place where the important national missions were flown and on his initial shift there, he realized, he was already part of a mission like none he had ever heard about.

“Weapons check?” Erik asked.

“We’ve got two laser-guided 250-pound bombs, Mark 82s, and four Hellfire missiles, two with high explosives and two with fragmentation warheads.”

“Let’s drop the two bombs on the first pass, ten-second interval. On my mark, and fire.”

The warehouse erupted on the Big Board and then disappeared as the Global Reach banked to avoid the explosion it had created. There was no second bird to provide a video feed. Erik had been lucky to find a Global Reach already over eastern Turkey, looking for PKK terrorists and arms being smuggled into Syria.

“Okay, Jaimie, finish them off and set course for home. Do you have enough fuel to get back to CONUS?” Erik asked.

“No way, sir, I was going to bring it back to Turkey, to Incirlik,” Major Hernandez replied.

“The Turks may get a little touchy about our blowing shit up in the Ukraine and then landing in Turkey. If you can’t get to Sicily, Sigonella, bring it in to Ramat David and I’ll let the Israelis know not to shoot it down,” Erik said.

Looking at the Big Board, at the missiles ripping into the flaming warehouse complex, Erik walked down the line of flight controllers to Sergeant Rod Miller’s cubicle. Miller was flying a Reaper over the target in Pakistan. As Colonel Erik Parsons looked over Miller’s shoulder at the images from Pakistan, Communications switched a call from the Pentagon for Parsons to a red phone in Miller’s cubicle. It was Admiral Johnston.