Drone Command (14 page)

MAO ISLAND

SIX MILES DUE WEST OF THE SENKAKU/DIAOYU ISLANDS

EAST CHINA SEA

10 MAY 2017

T
he
Tiger II
's deck was a beehive of noisy energy, the clamor of ringing hammers, growling diesel engines, straining cables. Arc welders hissed, throwing sparks, as supervisors shouted orders, urging speed as pipes, fittings, and a thousand other crucial pieces came together to begin the process of drilling on the ocean floor several hundred feet below—a cakewalk for the experienced deep-water crew.

The commander of the
Kunming
hung up the bridge phone. His orders from Admiral Ji in the preparation of the mission were clear, and now he confirmed them again verbally. He'd known the admiral for more than twenty years and knew him to be an honorable man. The kind of man an officer would willingly follow into combat, into the very mouth of hell itself. But the commander also knew that the decision he was about to make would change the course of his life and, perhaps, the life of his nation if the enemy didn't react the way they were supposed to. And if military history had taught him anything, it was that the enemy seldom obeys one's wishes.

No matter. If the operation went sideways, the commander knew his life would be forfeit, but he comforted himself in the knowledge that Ji would take the blame first. That was why the commander believed Ji was the man best suited to lead China, not the moneygrubbing pigs in Beijing.

The commander pushed open the steel hatch and stepped out onto the flying bridge. Held the binoculars to his eyes. Saw the delta-winged Multimodal Volant surveillance drone high above, no doubt recording everything.

The commander stepped back into the bridge, took his command chair. Picked up his phone.

“Lieutenant Liu, do you still have the target on your scope?”

“Aye, sir!” The lieutenant was one deck below in the CIC, a darkened room of two dozen video monitors and computerized combat stations. The commander hated it. Thought it looked like a video-game parlor.

“Then . . . engage.”

Before the commander hung up the phone, a single TY-90 missile roared out of a rotating deck launcher, arcing into the sky like a bolt of lightning in reverse.

The first shot in the battle of Mao Island
, he thought.

He doubted it would be the last.

FOUR SEASONS HOTEL AT MARUNOUCHI

TOKYO, JAPAN

10 MAY 2017

Y
ou may have lost your privacy, but at least you're in the Chairman's Suite now,” Pearce said. He stood at the floor-to-ceiling window, staring at the bright lights of Tokyo's bustling business district. He sipped a hot green tea.

“Comped, too. One of the perks of fame. That poor hotel manager was embarrassed that he didn't recognize me when I checked in.” Myers sat on a large sectional, also enjoying hot tea. The suite was tastefully modern. Very
Mad Men
, Japanese-style. Glass, stone, wood.

“He's probably just as concerned about your security. You've got the whole floor to yourself—including guards stationed at both ends of the hall.”

“And you,” Myers added.

“I'm not on his payroll.”

“You should be.”

“He couldn't afford me.”

Pearce fell into the cushions opposite Myers. “You sure you're okay?”

She smiled, nodded. Her tired eyes said otherwise. “Part of the job description.”

“I must've missed that part about you possibly dying.”

“It's what we agreed to,” Myers insisted. But she was touched at his obvious concern.

“Not exactly. But you pulled it off perfectly.”

“Thank you. I don't remember much after we went into the library.”

She took another sip of tea. The bionic pancreas was functioning as expected. Not only in her body, but in the worldwide press attention they'd hoped to receive. Now everybody on the planet knew that a bionic pancreas wasn't nearly as high-tech as it sounded. Clearly, the former American president could never again walk through an airport security scanner without setting off the alarm bells.

She wore on her body two Tandem t:slim insulin pumps connected to separate infusion sets, a Dexcom CGM monitor, an embedded glucose sensor and transmitter that monitored her bloodstream, and an iPhone streaming the data every five minutes, running a patented algorithm that drove dosing decisions. Nearly three hundred times a day, the iPhone broadcast Bluetooth dosing commands to the pumps according to the insulin levels in her bloodstream.

Hardware, software, smartphone, sensors. Myers was loaded for bear. But at least the bionic pancreas had completely automated the monitoring and dosing functions that every other type 1 diabetic had been forced to figure out manually for decades. No more stinging finger pricks for blood samples, no more nasty needles chasing veins. Best of all, no more mistakes or miscalculations that could result in under- or overdosing—the kind of thing that could land a diabetic in the hospital battling a coma or worse.

But both of them knew that in Myers's case, the overdose wasn't an accident. After consulting with her endocrinologist, she fasted for twenty-four hours, ate very few carbohydrates before or during Ito's dinner, injected twice as much “fast” insulin as was normally prescribed, and waited for the inevitable results.

In typical Margaret Myers overachiever fashion, she nearly overdid it. The goal was to pass out. When the ambulance arrived, she was on the edge of a diabetic coma.

Myers reached for her iPhone, didn't feel it. A momentary panic. She glanced over at the wireless charging pad. Saw it there. Relaxed again.

“When did you learn you were diabetic?” Pearce asked. “Type 1, right?”

“They call mine type 1.5. It falls somewhere between type 1 and type 2. LADA is the official term.”

“Latent autoimmune diabetes of adults,” Pearce said.

“If you already knew the answer, why'd you ask?” Myers said. She was secretly pleased that he'd taken the trouble to do the research, but she played it cool. “That's what lawyers do when they cross-examine witnesses.”

“It's rare, isn't it?”

“Very. I'm just lucky, I guess. I was first diagnosed two years ago. Handled it fine with diet and exercise until my pancreas shut down about a year ago.”

“And here you are.”

“Make lemonade, I always say.” She held his gaze for a moment then turned to her tea, slightly embarrassed.

“Excuse me,” Pearce said. He headed for the restroom.

Myers watched him amble away. His gait was powerful and athletic even at this late hour. Though in his forties, Pearce still had a fantastic physique and excellent health. For the first time since they met, she felt like damaged goods. Her body was letting her down, which only reminded her that he was several years younger. Not that she was vain—she didn't really think about her age all that much. She'd been strong and healthy since working her father's cattle ranch as a little girl all the way through high school, along with lettering in three sports. She always ate right, exercised. Never looked her age. Not even now.

She grinned. Okay, maybe she was a little vain. It was hard to imagine a man like Pearce wanting to be physically intimate with an android like her with her pumps and needles and monitors. Not exactly Victoria's Secret stuff. He'd probably think he was making out with one of his drones.

Her smile faded. She remembered sitting in the doctor's office two years earlier. The LADA diagnosis hit her hard that morning. She had spent the first few minutes staring at the lab results and feeling sorry for herself. A real pity party. Life wasn't fair. She had already lost her husband and her son, and now she was losing her health.

And then she realized it was true, life really wasn't fair, and that she'd had a far better run of good fortune than most, even though most of that luck had been earned through hard work and taking big risks. Her dad had taught her a lot. Life was like a temperamental horse. Discipline worked wonders. But even the best horse still crapped in the barn every now and again. By the time the doctor came back, she had decided to pull up her big-girl panties and get on with it.

Pearce returned and sat back down across from her.

“Nice bathroom. Size of a basketball court,” he said.

“There's two more of them, should the need arise.”

“We're certain Feng saw the broadcast,” Pearce said. The androgynous Thai had confirmed it verbally an hour earlier, according to Lane. “Now what?”

“We wait.”

“I hate waiting.” Pearce drummed his fingers on the cushions, thinking. “You ever like a guy who wasn't paying attention to you?”

Myers fought back a grin.
You have no idea.

“Yes. In college, there was someone.”

“How did you get him to pay attention to you?”

“Easy. I ran into his car in the parking lot at the student union. I was driving an old Buick at the time. Did a fair amount of damage, as I recall. I left a note with my name and number.”

“How did that work out for you?”

“Asked me to marry him six weeks later.”

“Your husband?”

She nodded. “He was a really good guy.”

“No doubt.” Pearce smiled. The laugh lines deepened around his dark blue eyes. “So now we just have to find ourselves another Buick.”

ON BOARD AN HA-420 HONDAJET

IN THE AIR OVER THE EAST CHINA SEA

11 MAY 2017

W
hen Myers and Pearce arrived at the new business-jet terminal at Narita International Airport, everything was waiting for them, including one of the new HA-420 HondaJets. As soon as Pearce dropped his American Express Black Card onto the counter, a small army of uniformed agents suddenly appeared and swiftly expedited all the necessary legal, flight, and insurance documents for today's scheduled round trip to Taiwan's Taipei Songshan Airport. A courteous young flight steward served Myers a French press of dark Arabica coffee and a plate of
matcha
cookies in the executive lounge while Pearce conducted his preflight inspection of the HondaJet with a company official. An hour later, she and Pearce were airborne.

—

W
hy'd you pick the HondaJet?” Myers whispered in the headset.

“Because I own one,” Pearce said. “Judy taught me how to fly it.”

“I liked her.”

“Me, too.”

Judy Hopper had been his personal pilot and was the best flier he'd ever met, but she turned out to be a great flight instructor as well. She brought him along on single-engine prop planes before finally promoting him to the HondaJet, a magnificent lightweight aircraft with a
state-of-the-art cockpit featuring flat-panel displays with touch-screen flight planning and navigational controls.

Pearce thought about Judy a lot lately. Her piloting skills saved his life back in Algeria. Myers's, too. He hoped she was happy in her new life as a missionary's wife in Africa. Wished she was flying the plane today. It would improve their chances of surviving greatly.

Pearce and Myers were flying at nearly five hundred miles an hour, bypassing Nagasaki Airport on their way out over the northern reaches of the East China Sea, heading roughly southwest toward the island nation of Taiwan.

The digital navigational panel displayed their GPS location and registered flight path, circumscribed by narrow red bands that warned against veering off course. The terminal agent explained that the air lanes between Japan and Taiwan weren't safe beyond the red zone owing to certain recent political developments. She was either too polite or too afraid to say that the Chinese now considered the area their national airspace and that planes entering it were subject to being shot down without warning.

Pearce had previously marked the location of Mao Island on his digital map—a designation still unrecognized by every government in the world save North Korea and Cuba. The HondaJet was locked firmly in the middle of the designated flight path, nearly due south of the disputed new island.

He glanced over at Myers strapped into her padded leather seat. Whispered in the head set. “All set?”

Myers nodded. “You betcha.” She glanced around the high-tech cabin. “Not exactly a Buick.”

“Actually, Honda calls this ride the Civic of the Sky.”

Pearce turned the yoke and pressed the rudder pedal into a sharp, smooth turn heading due north. A moment later, cockpit alarms sounded as the navigation screen flashed a warning signal repeated by a female voice in their headsets. “Entering disputed airspace. Return to designated course.”

Pearce tapped the touch screen, killing the alarm bells and warning
signals. His radio buzzed. An incoming call from a traffic controller, no doubt. He ignored it.

“There.” Myers pointed at the windscreen. On the far horizon they both saw the two-hundred-foot-tall oil derrick looming high above the deck of the Chinese drillship. She tapped another screen and a forward camera began feeding a live image of the drillship into a video monitor.

Pearce nodded toward the west. Far below, the wake of the
Kunming
missile destroyer, keeping a distant watchful eye.

“Looks menacing, even from here,” Myers said.

“Heading down.”

Pearce eased the yoke forward until the digital altimeter read just one thousand feet. From this height, oceangoing container ships looked like toy boats.

“We should have their attention now,” Myers said. Her gut tingled.

“We got it the moment we entered their airspace. That destroyer has already painted us.” Pearce and Myers were informed by Tanaka personally about the Volant drone getting shot down the day before. Didn't exactly boost Pearce's confidence in today's mission. He wished the civilian HondaJet had missile-lock alarms and electronic countermeasures.

Pearce held his course steady until they passed directly over the drillship. His palms sweated. The radio call signal flashed again. Myers nodded for him to take it.

Pearce put the incoming call on both headsets. An angry voice in broken English screamed in their ears. The
Kunming
ordered them to return to their airspace immediately or risk being fired upon.

“Better do what the man says,” Myers said. “He sounds very displeased.”

Pearce snapped off the radio, then banked the aircraft to the northeast in the general direction of Japan.

“Think that will calm him down?”

“We'll see,” Myers said.

Pearce held the long, looping bank steady, dropping his altitude at the same time. The wide blue ocean grew larger. Soon, the red-hulled
Tiger II
filled the lower half of the windscreen.

“This idea feels dumber by the minute,” Pearce said.

The HondaJet roared directly over the derrick again. They were low enough to see the crew scrambling over the deck. Pearce hoped it was out of sheer terror.

“I should've been a fighter pilot,” Pearce said. “Get to fight sitting down.”

“You might get your chance,” Myers said. She pointed at the radar screen. A red blip was screaming toward them at Mach 2. More than fifteen hundred miles per hour.

Pearce slammed the throttles into the firewall and banked hard right and down, straight toward the deck.

“Troy—”

Pearce put the HondaJet twenty feet above the water, low enough that he'd slam into the side of an oil tanker if one got in his way. Luckily, nothing in sight. He glanced at the radar just in time to see the red blip directly on his six a half mile back—

The air exploded like a shotgun blast as a twin-tailed Shenyang J-16 Red Eagle strike fighter rocketed past them, five hundred feet above their heads. Pearce felt the tiny HondaJet buck in his hands from the turbulence above. He and Myers watched the Chinese fighter pull into a near vertical climb and disappear into the late morning sun.

“That was too close for comfort,” Myers said.

“Maybe being a grunt isn't so bad after all.” He kept his eyes on the radar scope. The blip reversed direction, heading back toward where it came from at a high rate of speed. “We just might be out of the woods.”

“That was reckless,” Myers said.

“Me or them?”

She glared at him. “Both.”

Pearce tapped the HondaJet's yoke. “We needed a Buick. At least I didn't hit anything.”

“Is that—” Myers pointed at the radar screen.

The red blip reappeared behind them again.

And gaining.

Pearce tapped a video screen. A rear-facing camera pulled up.
Incredible. The Chinese fighter flew just above the deck, trailing a vapor cone as it cut deep trenches of water behind it. His computer said the bogey was subsonic.

Pearce made a quick calculation, speed and distance. He held direction for three seconds, cut his throttles back to near stall speed, banked right.

Wrong move.

The big J-16's afterburners exploded again, roaring past them at supersonic speed, pulling a wall of pressure in its wake. The turbulence was too great this time. It grabbed one of the HondaJet's wings and flipped it as if it were tossing a coin. Pearce fought the yoke and rudder pedals, got it righted. The stall alarm screamed. The plane yawed and pitched. Pearce fought the controls, but before he could slam the throttle forward, the engines died. He keyed the radio.

“MAYDAY! MAYDAY!”

He kept the nose up as long as he could. Sixty knots and falling. He pointed the jet at a distant trawler. Prayed it was Japanese.

“BRACE FOR IMPACT!”

They hit the water.

Hard.