Drone Wars 1: Day of the Drone (2 page)

Prologue

A
nastasia Beaumont heard the high-pitched whine before she saw the tiny remote-control dune buggy slip past her and enter the bank. She watched with curiosity as the little toy, with the shiny silver canister taped to it, drove further into the marble-floored and jade-columned vestibule, before it stopped mid-room and began to perform a series of radical three-sixty spins.

It was an odd scene, with people in the bank displaying diametrically opposed expressions. The two security guards wore scowls on their stern faces, while the customers smiled, waiting for the bank promo regarding auto loans to be announced…

A small flying drone suddenly lifted off the dune buggy and climbed toward the ceiling. It hovered there, as a tiny attached camera turned on its gimbal, scanning the scene below.

Knowing this wasn’t part of a bank promotion, the guards hesitated only a moment before spreading out and approaching the vehicle from opposite directions.

A tiny servo-motor began to whine, and the shiny, foot-long canister atop the dune buggy split open along a thin centerline. Robert Williams pulled his .9mm Glock—feeling silly to be pointing it at a toy—but he gasped when he saw what was inside the canister.

“Ah-ah … don’t come any closer,” said a tinny voice from hidden speakers.

The canister contained six sticks of red paper-wrapped dynamite, with a series of wires running end-to-end and terminating at a glowing cellphone.

“What the hell?” he blurted. Williams and his partner, Gavin St. Croix, were less than ten feet from the menacing object.

“I can hear you, Mr. Williams,” said the tinny voice, sounding almost giddy as he spoke. “Now, if you don’t want Gavin to get hurt, or Joyce, or Kaitlyn—you see I know the names of all the employees at the bank—then I suggest you holster your weapon and back away.”

“What’s this all about?” St. Croix asked just as bank manager Francine Howell came up next to him. Her expression was one of concern, rather than the anger displayed on the faces of the guards.

“This is branch manager Francine—”

“Yes, I know, Francine Howell,” the voice interrupted. “To answer Mr. St. Croix’s question, this is a robbery, pure and simple.” The speaker paused to let his words register with everyone in earshot. Both guards shook their heads and smirked.

“Bullshit,” said Williams.

“Watch your language in the presence of a lady, Bob. As I was saying, this is a robbery. I have six sticks of construction-grade dynamite wired to explode upon my command or if the device is tampered with in any way. Now I will ask that you look to the main entrance door…”

All eyes turned to the single, four-foot wide glass door, now closed. Outside was another RC vehicle, this one a Tonka replica of the quintessential yellow quarry dump truck, and with a round, thirteen-gallon plastic trash can sitting in the bed box.

“Please open the door, Mr. St. Croix, so my associate may enter.”

“No friggin’ way!”

“Ms. Howell, please have Gavin do as I ask. I would hate to stain the interior of your beautiful bank with the bloody body parts from your fifty or so customers and employees.”

Panic swept through the cadre of customers and a dozen or so lurched towards the exit. “Stop!” the voice cried out. “Stop … or I’ll set off the bomb.”

Most people obeyed; others didn’t. Fearing for their lives from the actions of the noncompliant, several of the bank customers grabbed onto the ones still rushing towards the exit and pulled them back by their suits and dresses. Scuffles broke out.

“Stop it, all of you!” the voice from the toy car boomed out, louder than ever. “All I want is some of the bank’s money. Just let my associate in and then have the tellers fill the can with cash. After that we’ll be on our way, and with no one getting hurt.”

Gavin St. Croix snorted. “You really expect us to fill your trash can with money and then just let you drive off?” He had his weapon drawn. “I bet that’s not even real dynamite.” He looked around at the frightened customers and employees. “This is probably some computer geek’s scheme for making a quick buck … by scaring the hell out of everyone here.”

“Are you willing to risk the lives of everyone here to satisfy your macho bravado? Just let me have the money. After that, it’ll be the job of the
real
cops to find me. Don’t be a hero, Gavin,” the speaker growled. “Besides, the amount I’ll take from the bank today won’t even register as a rounding error on the ledger. Now do everyone a favor … and open the damn door!”

One of the customers near the entrance pulled the door open and the RC dump truck quickly entered. In the ensuing confusion, the customer ran out, along with five others.

“Close the door, Gavin!” the tinny voice demanded. “If another customer leaves I will set off the bomb, and believe me when I say this. Doing so will only cost me a couple hundred dollars in material, as well as a few sticks of the dynamite I stole from the Greater East River Reclamation Project a month ago. I won’t be harmed in any way, and I’ll still have enough dynamite to come back here and do this all over again. Maybe then I’ll be taken more seriously. Of course I’ll be dealing with a whole new set of employees, because all of
you
will be dead! Now get me my goddamn money … and no paint bombs, either! If I find any I’ll come back here with the sole purpose of blowing the hell out of this place.”

The dump truck had positioned itself between the original vehicle and tellers row. Francine Howell now motioned with her hands. “Hurry up, all of you. Empty the cash drawers and put the stacks in the can.”

The eight tellers on duty obeyed, worry clouding their eyes and visible in their frantic movements; however, in less than a minute, a fair amount of money filled the trash can.

“See, that wasn’t too hard, now was it? And no one got hurt. Now, Mr. Williams, it’s your turn to open the door so we can leave.”

Robert Williams was now closest to the exit, and he bit his lip as a vein pulsed in his neck. The tiny two-vehicle caravan took off for the front door, slowing to a stop as the guard stood firm with his left hand on the door handle and the other resting on the grip of his company-issued Glock. A standoff ensued.

“Don’t be stupid, Williams,” the voice said with steely purpose. “It’s not your money, so don’t die for it.”

The guard took a deep breath before slowly pulling the heavy glass door in towards him.

“Good choice, Bob. Now step aside and let us leave.”

Williams took a wide step to his right and the caravan began to roll toward the door. Yet when the lead car drew parallel to the guard, he lunged forward, reaching down to grab a handful of the wires connecting the dynamite with the cellphone. He pulled hard and the wires came loose. Then he kicked the model dune buggy to his right, sending it skidding ten feet over the smooth marble tile floor.

“I knew it!” Williams declared. “It’s all a fake.”

The dune buggy spun around on narrow black wheels, the electric motor whining until it was face-on with the guard. The miniature camera mounted on the hovering drone focused on the smiling face of Robert Williams.

“Do you think I’d be that stupid to build a bomb with only one way to detonate? Not likely. Now, say a prayer, Mr. Williams. You just cost all these people their lives.”

The explosion blew out the entire fifty-foot glass front of the bank and shattered windows along the entire block. Roiling clouds of white smoke billowed from the gaping hole on the ground floor of the twenty-seven story building. Shards of glass and splintered marble blanketed the street.

Eight people died in the bank that day—including Anastasia Beaumont—along with two on the street outside. Both security guards were counted in the fatalities. Bank manager Francine Howell wasn’t one of them, although she lost her left arm from the elbow down and suffered third-degree burns along the entire left side of her body. Three other people in the bank were permanently disabled, while every customer and employee in the bank that day experienced some level of injury or psychological trauma.

********

A week later in Chicago, another remote control car entered a bank. This time all instructions were followed without question, and after the robbery the two-car caravan left the bank and scooted along the sidewalk to an alley between the bank building and its neighbor. A large, eight-bladed drone called an octocopter was waiting. Expertly, the unknown pilot snared the dual straps on the trash container and lifted it from the bed of the yellow dump truck. The UAV—unmanned aerial vehicle—was rated for this heavy of a load, and soon the drone and the money disappeared over the crest of the building next to the bank.

A crowd of people, both from the street and the bank, had followed the RC cars to the alley. Now they stood at the entrance, gawking and uncertain what to do next.

The tiny dune buggy then turned to face the crowd. The tinny voice spoke for the last time. “All of you should take cover. I’m about to destroy the evidence.”

Thirty seconds later, an explosion erupted from the alleyway and echoed through the downtown area, yet unlike New York, no one was killed in this event, just some rather extensive property damage in its aftermath.

The drone and the money were never seen again.

Chapter 1

X
ander Moore had just pressed down the top of the Keurig coffeemaker, puncturing the small container of Donut Shop brew, when the bug in his ear sounded: “M-9 Alert! Repeat: M-9 Alert. All prime responders return to station.”

With the coffee machine located on a counter directly behind the pilot console, all he had to do was turn toward the screens to comply with the order.

“Which one?” he asked the other two men in the room. He already knew from the alert code that this was an attack on a shopping mall and that it was occurring somewhere within Zone Nine, which was the state of Florida.

“The Dolphin Mall, Miami,” replied Charlie Fox, his wingman. “Six seconds and counting, and we’re first in line.”

A whole array of basic information concerning the attack was already scrolling on the screens at each of the three stations, requiring only a couple of seconds to digest. Two UAVs, carrying bomb packs, had struck the main entrance to the mall and detonated just to the left of the security maze. The breach was significant enough to allow twelve trailing combat drones to enter the mall.

“All autos?” Xander asked his scanner-operator, David Lane.

“These are,” the young man answered, “although an RPA
just entered—and a huge muther, too!”

Xander paused for a moment as he received confirmation through his earpiece that his team was now the lead in the event. “Red-One confirmed, taking command.” He glanced to each side of his station at the other two members of his team. “Okay, boys, we’re it. This is a huge, so we should have backup on-site in seconds. Dave, post them to the exterior of the mall to take out any predators near the service exits. What about our assets?”

“Up and in route,” Lane replied. In the early seconds of an alert, David Lane was the eyes and ears of the operation, feeding crucial data to the other two from a variety of sensors under his control. “Units were offsite, but ten seconds out. Damn, we have eight rapid-response bunkers along the Dolphin Expressway, with a lot of targets within a few miles, including Miami International.”

“Any simo’s being reported?”

“Not yet, it looks like this is the only target being hit at this time.”

“I have the Viper—assuming control.” With practiced and confident skill, Xander gained control of the main defensive drone—an LSC Industries Viper III. Charlie Fox took command of the smaller JEN-Tech Panther, while Lane locked on to the tiny, yet extremely fast and agile, observation drone.

All three team members donned compact virtual reality goggles, placing them in FPV—First Person View—of their respective drones. Even after all the years of doing this, it still took Xander a split second to adjust to the sudden shift in perspective, where one moment he was seated in a dimly-lit team room at a bank of sophisticated monitors and controllers, and the next suddenly zipping forty feet above a crowded parking lot in the brilliant sunshine of south Florida, twenty-three hundred miles away.

With the defensive drones launching on autopilot from their hidden bunkers only a few blocks from the mall, they were already quickly approaching the main entrance to Miami’s largest shopping center by the time Team Red-One took control. Up ahead, they could see where the iconic and massive banner sign displaying the words “Dolphin Mall” in large block letters had once spanned the outer concourse. At night the panel would be illuminated in brilliant colors of Art Deco neon, in traditional south Florida fashion. Now the sign was split in two, each half still swinging precariously from broken and twisted supports. Sparks popped from severed electrical wires and fire was burning off the remnants of bunting that had once proclaimed the arrival of the joyous Christmas shopping season. All the joy and promise of the holiday season had come to a sudden and tragic halt less than twenty seconds ago.

Smoke billowed beyond the shattered sign, where the main breach had occurred. Most malls—as well as other large public venues in America—were now fitted with ingress and egress security mazes. These imposing, S-shaped tunnels were designed to slow any attacking drones attempting to gain entry to the mall. They were equipped with heavy blast doors that could be closed at a moment’s notice, trapping the attackers within the solid metal walls. At that point, even if the drones exploded, the damage would be contained within the maze.

Yet, in this particular case, the terrorists had avoided the security maze altogether. The two designated breach drones had simply detonated their substantial payloads of high-grade explosive against the supposedly bullet-proof plate glass window to the left of the security maze. The resulting breach wasn’t large—only about ten feet in diameter—but it was big enough to allow the other drones entry into the mall.

It seemed, too, that the terrorists had done their homework, selecting the only large public facility in the area that didn’t employee a private drone security force. The pilots of the RDC had the authority to assume control over any and all defensive drones operating within a crisis area, whether private or government UAVs.   

The three main drones in Xander’s sortie were RDC units—the most-advanced to be found in any defensive fleet—and now they shot through the same hole through which the enemy units had just entered only seconds ahead of them. And Xander’s defenders weren’t alone. Trailing behind the three RPAs—remotely-piloted aircraft—came a force of twenty autonomous defense drones. These
auto-controlled
units quickly dispersed, some turning left, others right, while four proceeded straight down the central concourse of the mall. Equipped with the most advanced sense-and-avoid software and scanners, the RDC auto drones were designed to navigate tight quarters and hone in on other UAVs in the vicinity through a combination of radio signals and audio pick-ups. Any aircraft not carrying the proper transponder code would be blown out of the air.

It was the responsibility of the live operators of Team Red-One to assess the event and coordinate the proper defensive response, while also being on the lookout for any RPAs operated by enemy pilots. Actively-piloted drones posed the biggest problem for the defenders, since they were unpredictable in their actions, needing to be engaged in head-to-head aerial combat.

This was the last weekend before Christmas and the Dolphin Mall had been overflowing with eager and desperate shoppers at the time of the attack. That was why the mall had been targeted in the first place—more death and destruction guaranteed.

 With the unpredictability and spontaneity of drone attacks, the team’s primary objective wasn’t to
prevent
an attack, but rather to
limit
the effects. They accomplished this through a combination of the quickest response time possible, followed by the systematic destruction of the attacking auto drones before they could target civilians and detonate their onboard bombs. Time was the variable in the equation. The sooner the enemy robots could be neutralized, the lower the body count.

With a quick scan of data now present on his heads-up display, Xander Moore began assessing the situation at a location over twenty-three hundred miles from where he sat. By now, he was tied into the mall’s sophisticated security camera system, and with a flick of a toggle on his sixteen-function controller, he switched from scene to scene looking for targets and damage.

The hostiles had come in shooting, which to his relief was better than coming in and detonating; however, he could already see a number of bodies dotting the marble floor. Too often drone attacks lasted less than thirty seconds, as three or four UAVs would fly into a crowded venue and simply explode—nothing fancy, just spontaneous killing for the sake of killing. Casualty counts for such events could be in the hundreds, and there was nothing the Rapid Response Center could do to mitigate the damage.

Most autonomous attack drones operated on sophisticated pre-loaded programs, which basically instructed them to fly to a designated GPS location and shoot anything with a specific heat signature—the heat signature of a human being. To combat this, malls and other public venues—where possible—would douse their patrons in cold water in order to disguise their temperature readings. In addition, installed heating columns would activate during an attack, acting as decoys to distract the drone sensors from their primary targets. These towers were protected by thick, bulletproof glass and could withstand an onslaught from the lightweight, nylon-jacketed .5mm rounds most attack drones fired.

Of course, once these mindless killing machines depleted their supply of ammo, the next order of business was to detonate the small explosive charge each carried on board. Drones were cheap and disposable weapons of destruction. Once the mission was complete, they usually went out with a bang.

Yet by the time the auto drones reached the end of their usefulness—which could last as long thirty minutes in some cases—most of the civilians in the area would have heeded the broadcast warnings and left the building or taken shelter. At the end of an event—as the RDC termed terrorist attacks—only additional property damage would result from the explosions. At least that was the plan.

Drone Alerts were becoming more common, with most being triggered by small-time events involving only a single drone or two, flown by lone-wolf terrorists or members of homegrown radical organizations. In one recent event, an attack had been initiated by a man with a hefty bet on a football team that was losing at the time. Out of desperation, he flew an unarmed drone into the sports arena causing the game’s suspension. It was a spur of the moment event and the drone caused no real damage, beyond the frayed nerves and tempers of over fifty thousand terrified spectators. The man was quickly apprehended, and his gambling losses soon became the least of his worries.

If there was a silver lining to these events, it was that they emphasized the seriousness of the threat and helped quicken the public’s reaction time when a Drone Alert was announced. For civil defense planners, the problem then became what to do with thousands of panicking people set in motion by the alert?

The solution—at least temporarily—was to be found in the long, no-frills hallways that branched out from the main public concourses and used by vendors, employees, and maintenance personnel. Now they took on a dual purpose—as fortified bomb shelters. Once an alert sounded, civilians would have thirty seconds to enter the nearest, clearly-designated service corridor, after which heavy blast doors would be shuttered. In some cases, a thousand or more people could be packed into these dimly-lit and stuffy chambers.

Most often, patrons were not allowed to leave these shelters until all the exits were cleared of potential hostiles, including those that might be waiting outside for the mass of evacuees to reveal themselves. This made for a very uncomfortable half-an-hour or more, producing its own set of often tragic consequences in the process.

In addition to the service corridors, all inline stores at the major malls were retrofitted with heavy, automatic-closing security doors or grills, which allowed employees and customers to remain safely inside until the crisis passed. That was unless a drone chose to blow open a store’s security barricade to get at the soft targets inside. This didn’t happen often, yet when it did the body count was significant.

After spending five years as the senior pilot at the Rapid Defense Center, Xander Moore had seen his share of carnage created by even the most basic drone attack, so he expected nothing less from this event; however, upon entering the mall, he was relieved to see that the main connecting concourse was clear of civilians, at least those who remained visible.