Sting of the Drone (4 page)

“No, they’ll read about it in the papers when it happens,” Burrell replied.

“Okay then,” Ray said. “And you’re not overly concerned about the operational risk?”

“No, we’ve done this kind of thing before. A lot, actually. They never get caught. It’s the one thing the CIA seems to be able to do well, fly drones,” Burrell said. “And actually, it’s not even CIA that flies the Goddamn things, it’s Air Force officers seconded to CIA. We’ve got this joint CIA-DOD coordination center that flies the sensitive missions and coordinates all the others. In fact, the new director of it is coming in to see me. You ought to join me in the meeting. Let me see here,” he said looking at his schedule. “Ms. Sandra Vittonelli.”

“Sandy?” Ray said, spilling some of his coffee.

“You know her? Is she good?” Burrell asked.

“She was when I knew her,” Ray smiled. “She is one tough cookie.”

“Good, that’s what we need in that job.” Burrell got up and walked back to his desk, signaling the meeting was over. As Ray was getting near the door Burrell added, “Oh, and Raymond, now that you are a member of the Kill Committee…”

“Yes sir?”

Burrell looked across the wide office at him. “Don’t call it the Kill Committee. And we don’t call them drones.”

“Why not?” Bowman asked.

“Because that implies that they are autonomous and they’re not.”

“Really, what do you call drones then?”

“Now, we say RPAs,” the National Security Advisor explained.

“What’s that stand for?”

“Remotely Piloted Aircraft. Reminds people that there is a human in the loop, if not actually inside the aircraft.”

“I thought they were UAVs, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles,” Bowman said.

“They were, but now they’re RPAs. The human involvement wasn’t clear with the use of UAV. See, actually they are not unmanned. It’s just that the man, or woman, is on the ground.”

“Okay, but I hear that the pilots call them Fuckers.”

“I’ve never heard that. Why would they say that?” Burrell asked.

“FKRs, Flying Killer Robots. The Predators are the Little Fuckers and the Global Reach are the Big Fuckers.”

“No, don’t call them Fuckers. I don’t want that to spread. Very bad messaging.”

Bowman nodded and left the room.

3

TUESDAY, JULY 2

THE RINGSTRASSE

VIENNA, AUSTRIA

It was a summer rain, from clouds that had moved quickly across the plain and then hit the foothills, dropping a cooling spray on the stones and asphalt of the old city on the Donau.

The black BMW had been maneuvering through a series of narrow side streets, known well to the driver who also served as a concierge at the palace hotel. He edged the car onto the slickened Ringstrasse, across the wet trolley tracks, and then turned in to the tree-lined road. The short street was blocked at the end by the stone ruins of the city’s old wall. Rising out of the remnants of that battlement, a modern glass facade reached up for three floors. Above and behind the glass and stones were the whitewashed walls and windows of the eighteenth-century Palais, now one of Vienna’s most exclusive hotels.

The passenger emerged from the back seat of the car under an umbrella held by one of the hotel’s doormen. Another doorman took his bags. The guest appeared to be perhaps a wealthy Italian, Greek, or Spaniard, in a fine dark suit. The gray speckles in his hair suggested he was in his late forties or early fifties. He looked up at the grand façade of the yellow and white Palais, lit by a string of flood lamps on top of the high, gray rock wall in front of it. Between him and the old town wall was the lobby of the hotel, a large expanse enclosed in glass. Inside, he could see a bar area and a grand piano and lights shining up at the rocks and stones that had once defended this old city from the men on horses who came from the East, from lands near where his people now lived.

Once inside, a doorman led him to a modern leather seat in front of a low registration desk.

“Coffee, sir?” the Registration clerk asked.

“
Ja, inder Tat. Einen grossen schwarzen, bitte,
” the man replied with a Berlin accent,
Hochdeutsch,
not the lilting Viennese version. He passed the clerk a Turkish passport. “Mustafa Gulkkon.” He checked his watch, which was made from a reddish gold. Then he switched to English. “My office made a reservation for two nights, I believe.” His English sounded British accented, perhaps slightly Indian.

The thick Viennese coffee appeared quickly from the Lobby Bar. “I have it here,
mein Herr,
” said the clerk. “A beautiful suite on the fifth floor. You will be staying with us for two nights, yes? And, let me see here, I also have a message waiting for you from your colleagues; they are up in the Cigar Bar. If you like, we can have your bags taken up to the suite and I can have Wilhelm show you to the Cigar Bar.”

Led by the young bell clerk, Herr Gulkkon walked through a glass door in part of the stone ruins and up a glass, spiral stair. The indirect lighting made the ruins’ stone walls seem warm and comforting. The Cigar Bar, a small room on the second floor, had a large window that looked across a narrow corridor to the outer glass wall. The bar’s door was covered by a black shade on the inside. A small sign hung on a chain outside,
GESCHLOSSEN.

Wilhelm was not deterred by the “Closed” sign. “Your colleagues have reserved the Cigar Bar for just themselves this evening, yes?” he said in American-accented English. As he pushed open the door with his right hand, Herr Gulkkon slipped a five-euro note into his left.

“
Danke, mein Herr
. There is a bar set up, but if there is anything else you would like, please just ring the Lobby Bar.”

Now there were three men in the dark, wood-paneled room. Like Gulkkon, they were clean-shaven, in expensive, dark suits, probably from Saville Row. They sat in large, red leather chairs around a low table. Only one man was smoking a cigar, but that was enough to fill the small room with the rich fragrance from Cuba. Behind glass doors on the walls, boxes of many varieties of Cuba’s crop were on offer. On the low table in the middle of the armchairs were half-empty glasses and opened bottles from three of the Permanent Member states of the UN Security Council, Cristal champagne from France, Johnnie Walker Blue Label scotch whisky, and Kauffman vodka from Russia. All that was missing, Gulkkon thought, was baijiu and bourbon. This was his version of Islam, one modified by years living in Canada and Europe.

The three men, who had been seated, stood and shook hands warmly with Gulkkon, who appeared to be somewhat older than the others. “Perhaps we could raise the curtains,” he suggested. “Meeting with them down looks suspicious and we are, after all, just businessmen with nothing to hide.”

As the curtains were raised, Gulkkon fiddled with his mobile, quickly removing the back panel, pulling the battery, and slipping them both into a side pocket of his jacket. The others had already done the same. “So, now we are all good here, yes?”

The men nodded. The youngest looking of them offered, “I have been here three days. No problems, no sign of interest from anyone.” Gulkkon noticed that the line leading into the telephone on the bar had been unplugged. “And we reserved this room just an hour ago and then went right into it, so no time for anyone to leave anything behind,” the younger man said.

“Good, then let’s discuss the state of our project,” Gulkkon began. “As you know, our organization has been hired by our friends to run it, since they themselves now have little infrastructure and staff left in Europe.”

Before he could continue, he was interrupted by the man to his right. “Omar … I am sorry, I mean Mustafa … if we do this project, it may be very hard for us to sell our product in this market for a while. It will be very hot here. The people who take our gifts now may no longer be able to continue to look away.”

The man who now called himself Gulkkon twisted in his chair. As he poured from the Johnny Walker bottle, the room was silent. Then he looked to the man on his right. “Our leader knows the risks. Believe me, we are being very well paid for this project, very well. Our friends must have many sheiks behind them.”

Outside the Palais, the rain was letting up, passing to the west. In the dark, above the building across the street, the small, black object hovered quietly, emitting only a soft humming. Without the interference caused by the falling rain, its invisible laser could now beam through the glass outer wall and through to the glass interior window of the Cigar Bar. The laser beam could now carry an uninterrupted audio signal from the vibrations on the window of the Cigar Bar.

“… the U-Bahn in Munich, the U-Bahn and the S-Bahn here and in Berlin, all at the same time.…”

On the hovering black oval a lens whirred, refocused, clicked, and moved slightly to the left, zooming in on the face of the man next to Gulkkon.

THURSDAY, JULY 2

SPECIAL OPERATIONS ROOM

CREECH AFB, NEVADA

Bruce Dougherty heard the voices from the Kill Call in his earpiece, coming from Washington, Virginia, Maryland, and Germany. “Positive facial ID on number four,” said the voice from Virginia. “True name Omar Faqir Nawarz, traveling on a Turkish passport as Mustafa Gulkkon.”

“Roger that,” a voice in Washington replied. “That gives us positive audio and facial on all of them.”

Dougherty was sitting in a smaller room, down the corridor from the GCC Operations Center from which he normally flew his aircraft. The sign outside said simply
ROOM
103
.
Inside was a second door, on which a red sign said
RESTRICTED ACCESS AREA.
Around the GCC, Room 103 was known as Spook Ops, the place from which special CIA missions were managed. Bruce Dougherty did not want to read too much into it, but he had been chosen by Erik and Sandra not only to fly a Spook Ops mission, but also to do so with two new CIA-only stealth mini-drones. He was feeling good, but he also knew a lot of high-level eyes were on him tonight as he flew their first European mission, the least of whom were seated next to him, Erik Parsons and Sandra Vittonelli.

“Collateral check?” another Washington voice asked.

“Collateral good. Just the four targets in the room. No one else within the planned blast range,” Erik Parsons responded.

“Bird Two check?” Sandra Vittonelli asked.

The images on the screen were of the Palais Hotel, seen from several different angles, from traffic cameras across the street, security cameras in the lobby, and on the hovering oval above and across the street. This was Bruce’s first operational mission with the small hover-capable drone. The Agency called it the Hummingbird. Tonight, he had designated it simply Bird One, the little one that listened and watched while its bigger brother waited to strike. Bruce was also piloting the armed drone, another new, covert, short-range model. They called it the Myotis, the bat.

Now it was Bruce’s turn to speak. “Bird Two is circling two blocks away over the Hotel Imperial. All systems nominal.”

He looked up at Colonel Erik Parsons and Sandra Vittonelli standing just outside his cubicle. They both had headsets on, listening to the conference call. Erik raised a thumb. Sandra spoke into her headset for the benefit of the others on the call. “Bring her in. Clear to strike, repeat clear to strike.”

“Roger, clear to strike,” Bruce replied.

The Red Army had been headquartered in the Hotel Imperial during the Allied Occupation that ended in 1950. Its now elegant white and gold façade was bright and looked cleansed by the rain. Two hundred feet above a black triangle lurched quickly forward, banking left, and proceeding west above the Ringstrasse, picking up speed. Myotis, the black triangle, was three meters across at its base and two meters long on its sides. The back corners curved slightly upward, making it seem almost like a piece of paper folded into the shape of a paper airplane.

Fans spun on the bottom and rear of the triangle, providing lift or forward motion. The entire triangle was made of material that would quickly incinerate, leaving only black and gray ash. It turned off the Ring into the airspace above the trees on the block-long Coburgstrasse.

“Target acquired,” Bruce spoke into the mouthpiece of his headset.

“Target confirmed,” he heard from Erik Parsons.

“Switching guidance to the laser designator from Bird One,” Bruce replied.

“Roger, laser designator.”

In the Lobby Bar a zither player was setting up, unrushed. There were only two couples on the couches, only three men sitting at the bar rail. Maybe more people would stop in later, the zither player thought, now that the rain had passed by. Twenty-five feet away the clerk at the registration desk waved over the bell clerk. “Wilhelm, please bring Herr Gulkkon his room key and return his passport. Tell him his bags have all been brought up to his suite, 593.” Wilhelm Stroeder dropped his medical textbook on the bell desk and strode quickly across the lobby for the key and passport and then began with his long legs to take the glass stairs two at a time.

The black triangle stopped in midair, vibrating slightly up and down as it hovered.

“Booster check?” Bruce heard Erik in his ear.

He looked down on his virtual control panel. There was the indicator for the small, solid fuel packs that, when initiated, would briefly propel the triangle forward at a speed greater than Mach 1, the speed of sound. The fuel would burn fast, but enough would be left when combined with the plastic explosives along both sides of the airframe to cause a miniature fireball that would totally destroy any trace of the black triangle. Sitting just above the long tubes of explosives were the little pieces of razor sharp steel that would act as antipersonnel shrapnel, slicing everything and everyone for twenty-five to thirty feet. The indicator light on the booster was green.

“Booster good,” Bruce said.

“Engage booster.”

“Engaging booster, aye.”

The triangle had been blending into the black sky. Probably no one would have seen it had anyone on Coburgstrasse been looking up. No one was. But they could have seen the brief orange flame when the booster initiated, then maybe have seen the blur of black streaking forward and down. No one did.