Arisen : Nemesis (17 page)

In fairness, Brendan reflected, and despite Kwon’s attitude, everybody did feel better with him up in that sangar behind a machine gun. He was an artist with the weapon, and could cut small things in half with it from a very long range.

“Yeah, small problem with the
follow-that-car
plan,” Elijah said. “The Predator’s got a small but non-trivial speed advantage on us. If they put the hammer down, they’ll pull away.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Brendan said. “As long as it stays within sight.”

Being newer, the Shadow actually had better optics – a gimbal-mounted, digitally stabilized, liquid nitrogen-cooled electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) camera.

As Elijah brought the Shadow around on the same heading as the Pred, they could make out its backside on screen. Elijah’s left hand moved to the camera controls and zoomed. The distinctive tail of the Predator, with its down-pointing stabilizers, beneath a rear-mounted propeller, swelled to fill the screen.

Then Elijah said, “But we’ve actually got a bigger problem. The MQ-1 has a slightly bigger engine – but it’s got an enormously bigger fuel tank. And thus a much longer range. Something like 600 miles, to our 180.”

Brendan squinted down at the digital status indicators on the GCS. “I thought the solar-cell package on the wings extended our range?”

“It does, in theory. But how much sunlight do you see out there right now?”

There wasn’t much. The sun was almost down.

“What do you estimate our combat radius to be right now?” Brendan asked. “Okay, never mind. We simply follow until we’re at bingo fuel. We’ll either make it to the Predator’s point of origin or we’ll be forced to turn back.”

He didn’t add,
And then come up with some other plan…

Elijah shook his head. “Yeah, well, unfortunately, bingo fuel is a slightly fluid concept. If there’s less sunlight on the way back than on the way out…”

Now Jake spoke. He was standing a bit to the side, still in shadow. “We can’t do without that asset.”

Brendan knew his team sergeant was right. He said, “We won’t risk it.” He pivoted and looked at the region map spread out on the table. “So what’s out there – down the heading this thing’s currently on? Mogadishu? Nairobi?”

Kate took a pencil and protractor, double-checked the heading from the control station, and drew a line from their point of origin.

Brendan scanned the map and shook his head. “Jesus. There’s
nothing
out past that. Just a whole lot of Galmudug bush… and the Indian Ocean after that. Where the hell are they going? It makes no sense.”

He looked up to see Jake eyeing him from under lowered brow. If Jake agreed it didn’t make any sense, he was keeping his own counsel about it.

On the screen, the soaring hills of the Cal Madow mountain range dropped away, as did the thick forests. They were now heading out over rutted and parched wastelands. But they could already see the foliage springing back up in the distance – that would be the Galmudug region of central Somalia. The area had been semi-autonomous even back when there was such a thing as a Somali government – and it had also been totally lawless and dangerous, the true wild west of what was already an extremely anarchic country.

Also the sun was now disappearing to the west – behind all of Africa.

They were being led away into darkness.

* * *

“It’s pulling away,” Brendan said. At their fixed level of zoom, the Predator was shrinking – slowly, but perceptibly.

Elijah exhaled. “I’ve already maxed us out. We can’t go any faster.”

Brendan leaned in at the systems readouts. The current airspeed read
114mph
. “I thought we topped out at 127?”

Elijah nodded. “Under ideal conditions. We’ve probably got a headwind.”

“Can you get above it?”

“I’ll try it out.”

As he started to climb, the distant Predator moved out the bottom of the screen. “Do not lose that thing,” Brendan said.

Kate leaned in to take over the optical controls, so Elijah could concentrate on flying. The Pred came back into frame, and stayed there… until it didn’t. A few seconds later, the view started to vibrate, then bounce – and then buck wildly.

Their airspeed started to drop, quickly passing down through 100mph.

“Son of a motherless goat,” Elijah said. As their designated religious guy, he had all the creative curse words. And now he didn’t have to explain that they had moved into a section of air with serious turbulence – and a much worse headwind.

“Back down?” Elijah asked. “Or try up higher?”

Brendan hesitated. He knew it was not unheard of for these drones, especially the small ones, to just fall out of the sky – from turbulence, downdrafts, uncaught mechanical issues. They could get knocked around, stall out, lose a propeller or strut… And they weren’t exactly manufactured to the same safety, stability, and redundancy standards as manned aircraft. For pretty obvious reasons.

“Go higher,” Brendan said. No one else spoke.

Elijah put the elevators up and the nose followed. They started to climb. The camera still bucked like a dog that didn’t want a bath. Kate zoomed out to keep from losing the Pred, which they were now looking down on. They all waited.

The bucking turned back to vibrating, and then went away.

And the airspeed climbed… all the way to 129.

Elijah smiled. “Slight tailwind.”

Todd clapped him on the shoulder. “Rock out with your socks out, brother.”

Elijah exhaled. “We'’re keeping up. But I don’t know that it matters much at this point. We’re approaching what I’d realistically call bingo fuel.” Bingo fuel meant you had enough to return to base – and no more. “We should RTB. If not now, then soon. Very soon.”

Brendan clenched his jaw. He looked over at Jake, who was watching him silently. They both knew the game. Jake saved his political capital for the leadership and tactical questions that were most important – that might get people killed if the calls were made wrong. This wasn’t one of them. Yet.

Brendan checked the moving map on the control station. “A little longer,” he said.

Elijah flew in silence for another minute. Kate kept zooming. They had to be getting close to the limit of the optical zoom now.

“Cap…”

“Wait,” Brendan said. He pointed at the screen. “They’re descending.”

And then they saw something looming in the distance and underneath. Rolling hillsides had sprung up, with sections of low and thick forest and undergrowth blanketing them. The bush. But there was one section coming up that was even thicker – strangely so. It didn’t look like natural growth.

Kate took their camera off the Pred and zoomed in on whatever it was. It swelled, then stopped. “That’s all,” she said. “We’re out of zoom.”

“Hold it there,” Brendan said.

“Cap…” Elijah repeated.

“What the Sam Hill is that?” Todd interjected. He was ribbing Elijah.

“I think those are walls,” Kate said. “It’s a fixed fortification. And it’s big.”

Once they knew what they were looking at, it started to resolve – what looked like their own fixed wood-post walls, except at least twice as high. And encompassing an area perhaps ten times as big as Camp Price. It also looked like an attempt had been made to camouflage it from the air – living foliage on the walls, and on netting that partially covered whatever lay inside. But much of the greenery and netting had rotted away, and not been replaced.

“Holy shit,” Kwon said. “What the hell is that?”

Brendan saw Jake looking over and checking the paper map. But he was still keeping his silence.

“I know what that is,” Brendan said, finally.

“Well, keep us in suspense, by all means. More fun that way.” Todd’s eyes twinkled in the dim light.

Brendan took a breath. “It’s the Stronghold.”

Elijah looked over his own shoulder. “The al-Shabaab Stronghold? I thought we were never convinced it existed in the first place. Never mind survived until now.”

Brendan said, “Can you think of a better set-up for surviving this long? Totally isolated, totally hidden – and totally self-sufficient.”

A beat of silence hung in the air.

Brendan realized Jake had his finger stuck on a spot on the map. “It’s right where we thought it would be,” he said. “Galmudug. In the seam between Algula District, and Xingod.” He looked up and held Brendan’s gaze.

“Well, damn,” Todd said. “The Pred wasn’t one of ours after all. Point to Kwon.”

Kate leaned in, boggling at the size of the compound on the video, and in particular at the height of the walls. “Jesus,” she said. “That’s one fixed position I wouldn’t want to have to assault.”

“Wait,” Brendan said. “What’s that on the walls?”

The light was fading now and the video on the day optic getting grainy and indistinct. Kate switched to the IR camera. Now they could make out heat blobs on the walls. Some of them were moving. And they looked armed.

“Switch back,” Bren said.

Now that they knew what they were looking at, they recognized the tiny figures walking the walls, presumably on a parapet mounted behind it. They were Somali by their color and shape, raggedly dressed, and carrying AKs. They could also see guard towers in all the corners, five or six of them. In the closest, they could just make out a mounted machine gun. Over the top of it flew a tattered black flag, with white writing in Arabic and a white circle below that.

It was the flag that had been used by ISIS, al-Shabaab, AQAP, and a few others. It was the black flag of jihad.

“Don’t overfly them,” Brendan said. “We don’t want to risk losing the drone to ground fire.” With the powerful zoom, it wasn’t nearly as close as it looked. But they were getting closer.

“Not an issue,” Elijah said. “We do
not
have the fuel to overfl—”

He was cut off by Jake. “More importantly, we need to not let them see that we have eyes on them.”

Brendan nodded at Jake. “Yeah. That was the mistake they made with us.” The two leaders were in agreement.

“
Captain
,” Elijah said. He started to bank the aircraft around on his own authority.

“No, wait,” Brendan said. “Where’s the Predator?”

Kate zoomed out and panned around until she found it. By this point, it had touched down on what looked like a packed-dirt airstrip, just outside the walls to the south. It was now rolling to a stop.

And there was a human figure walking up to meet it.

“Zoom, zoom,” Brendan said.

The figure resolved as tall and lanky. He was wearing Western clothes. He seemed be wearing eyeglasses and had short curly hair.

And the hair looked blond or straw-colored.

“Okay, I’ll bite,” said Todd. “Who’s the John Walker Lindh-looking motherfucker?”

“The white boy jihadi?” Elijah asked.

“Yeah.”

“NFI, man.” Elijah shook his head. “No freaking idea…”

White Boy Jihadi

ma’Qal (“The Stronghold”) - Just Outside the Walls

Baxter watched the last long shadows around the clearing stretch out into what would soon be all-consuming darkness, as he put the tow rope over his shoulder and hauled the Predator off the landing strip and into its storage shed.

They had built the airstrip outside the walls – not so much because the Stronghold wasn’t big enough to hold it, but because the walls were so high, and a hazard to take-offs and landings. And they were only getting higher – Baxter could even now see guys up there at work, extending them up beyond their original twenty feet, due to current events. Also, the Pred needed a good 1,500 meters of hard runway to get off the ground safely. They’d decided not to mess around with it.

The shed was there to securely house the drone, without having to haul the two-thousand-pound bird of prey in and out the gate all the time. They flew a lot of missions. The Emir was big on ISR – intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. Basically, he wanted to know what was going on, at all times – everywhere.

Baxter shrugged.
The Emir
– at first it had rankled to have to call Godane that. But he’d gotten over it. There probably wasn’t anyone still breathing air, this far into the post-Apocalpyse, who hadn’t made huge compromises to stay alive.

And who hadn’t had his spirit broken, at least a little bit.

Baxter got the drone inside the shed and moved to close the big double doors. But then he hesitated. There’d been a little wobble in the bird’s flight, some tremble in the engine. He should probably check it out while he was here. He took his Gerber multitool from its pouch on his belt and got the screwdriver out. There were real tools in the shed, of course. But using the Gerber made him feel tactical. It was the same model Dugan and Maximum Bob had carried. Like a lot of guys in the conventional military and the intelligence services, Baxter had a bad case of operator envy.

Though it was more like hero worship in his case.

While unscrewing and popping the engine maintenance hatch, he tried to occupy his mind so as not to think about the real reason he was doing this.

He just didn’t want to go back inside.

He didn’t want to have to face Zack – not in his current, and seemingly permanent, state. He didn’t want to return, at least not right this second, to their paranoid subterranean existence, crawling around beneath the earth like moles. Maybe being a live mole beat being a dead human.

But it was hard to appreciate that all the time.

And he definitely didn’t want to risk being summoned by the Emir again. Every such royal audience took it out of him. He’d been a super-hard worker in the Agency, and before that at the Farm, the Agency’s clandestine training facility. And before that Georgetown, and going all the way back, actually. He also had a famously positive and can-do attitude – Zack had always said so, and complained about how bloody insufferable it was.

So Baxter knew how to work, how to put his head down and get on with it. He even knew how to suffer, how to shut up and keep humping.

But bowing and scraping wasn’t in his DNA.

It was just what he had to do now to survive. And survival always required adapting. “Tough shit,” Dugan had told him, on that long harrowing drive away from the Agency safehouse in Hargeisa – which by then was in flames and being overrun by both the dead and heavily armed Somali militias. With the world falling apart all around them, Dugan had given him the secret to survival: “We adapt and overcome.”