Drone Wars 1: Day of the Drone (30 page)

“Listen, Jonas, obviously you’re pretty well wired into things, so if you don’t mind, I really have to get back to work before the boss dings me for taking personal calls on company time.”

“Oh, but this isn’t a social call, dude. I just thought you’d like to know who you’re going up against at the compound. Almasi has seen fit to allow me to play along—he knows talent when he sees it. But unfortunately, I can’t be in two places at the same time or else I’d be with the group attacking your hangars right now. Still, we have a lot of game ahead of us, so bye for now, but I’ll be dropping in from time to time throughout the battle.”

The image of Jonas Lemon disappeared from the screen.

“Heads up, everyone. Jonas Lemon is on sight in Karachi, and manning something called a Ninja V. Anyone ever hear of one?”

“Nathan Hall here, Xander. I have. They’re not stealth, but all down the checklist they’re superior to the Goliaths.”

“Now you tell me. I thought we had the baddest bots on the block.”

“Stealth makes you the best, with the exception of the Ninja. Hopefully there’s only one on station.”

“Count on it, Nathan. Jonas is the type to insist on having only the best, and only for him. That could be our saving grace.”

“Compound dead ahead,” Karen Prado reported. “Here we go. Game on.”

The five Goliaths soared over the twenty-foot high wall and dropped down to near ground level. Huge swirling torrents of red sand curled up into mini-tornados, filling the entire grounds in a blinding dust storm.

“All this dust is making us stand out like neon signs,” Jeremy Fenton announced over the comm. “I’m taking some heavy gunfire from the tall building on the west side.”

“Well, we didn’t come here for an exhibition match. Weapons hot, let’s level the place!”

The concrete block building Fenton had mention suddenly lit up with hundreds of pinpoint explosions as 7.56mm rounds perforated the structure. Even before Xander and his team could take aim at the shooters on the roof, a good half of the building fell inwards, collapsing the snipers’ firing platform.

As was expected, Xander now saw bearded men shoving women and children out the doorways and into the center of the compound, while they retreated for cover. With bullets and pencil-missiles filling the air, several of the woman and children fell to the ground, covered in blood. Xander was sure he’d seen some of the men inside the doorways aiming their AK-100’s at the backs of the victims.

In response, he spun the Goliath around and sent four accurately-aimed missiles screaming through the doorway. An instant later, a billowing cloud of white smoke blew out the bottom of the building. Small balconies on the three stories above gave way and crumbled to the ground.

“Be careful, Xander,” Karen called out. “We don’t want to block any entrances to the underground complex.”

“I hear ya, it’s just that I couldn’t let those bastards get away with shooting women and children in the back.”

“Here come the defenders,” another voice announced over the comm, a radar tech who was not part of the Goliath team. “Forty-two at first count. Could be more deploying.”

“Forty-two? Damn, that’s a lot,” Curt Tharp said. “Where are the Panthers?”

“We’re staying back a little,” declared Billy Jenkins. “Let the bad guys commit, then we’ll sneak up on their six.”

Just then a rocket-propelled grenade streaked from a corner of the long garage-like structure and struck one of the Goliaths. The craft was thrown backwards and tumbled, a trail of broken armament littering the ground.

“Who’s hit?” Xander asked.

“That would be me,” Curt Tharp said, sounding dejected.

“Status?”

“Looks like I lost my upper weapons package. I can still fly, but I only have the five-mils on the sides and a single block of twenty missiles.”

“Circle around the building and find that asshole with the RPG.”

“With pleasure. Just watch out, it’s obvious these superdrones
can
be hurt.”

The air above the compound was suddenly thick with smaller UAVs. With his trained eye, Xander could tell that a good two-thirds of them were auto drones, tasked with defending the compound using attached bombs and bullets, striking anything that didn’t fit their pre-programmed profiles. Whether the sensors could pick up the Goliaths with enough confidence to make a determination remained to be seen. But the Panthers would be targets. This also told Xander that Almasi didn’t have a lot of extra pilots to assign to the RPAs. He was keeping them manning the drones whizzing around outside the hangars.

********

Charlie Fox and the pilots of nine Goliaths placed their craft in the space between the perimeter of the base and the hangars. If the Goliaths were the targets, the attacking drones would have a hard time taking them all out, even with over ninety approaching units. Yet the other way to neutralize the DARPA drones—and frankly the easiest—would be to take out the pilots first. Then the units would be sitting ducks.  So as Charlie and the others watched the first wave of former RDC combat drones closing on them, they knew they were both an assault force and a defensive line. And for Fox, he had exactly forty-eight seconds of flying experience on the quarter-million-dollar UAV.

Fortunately, he didn’t have time to worry about his predicament before the two forces joined and instinct took over.

For piloting a supposedly stealth combat drone, Fox was startled at how accurate the fire was from the attackers. The first few seconds of the engagement was spent dodging incoming fire rather than singling out targets to strike.

He aimed his camera at where he knew other Goliaths were in the air, and that’s when he noticed an obvious glowing and flickering in the dark sky to his right. “Damn it, they can see us!” he announced. “We glow in the dark. Break off and pursue. Stealth is not going to cut it this time.”

In his first strafing run on the incoming hijacked RDC drones, Fox was able to shred six of them before he detected buffering from his tail end. He scanned his aft camera and saw at least ten of the red, white, and blue painted UAVs coming up behind him, filling the air with missiles and gunfire.

The rear view camera went black, and he noticed a slight pitch to the left as something else went flying off the Goliath. Now with a full minute of experience under his belt, Charlie Fox decided to go for broke. He aimed the craft straight up and gunned the motors. The drone shot off into the dark sky, leaving his adversaries far behind. He watched on his heads-up display as his speed jumped past one hundred seventy miles per hour, which was faster than any drone he’d ever piloted. He let out a soft whistle, just as he began to pull the drone over in a large looping maneuver.

He sent the drone screaming toward the ground, passing two hundred miles per hour in a flash. Below him he saw a cluster of enemy units streaking after a faint object that was glistening in the night. Charlie locked his guns on ten targets simultaneously and with a press of the trigger unleashed a torrent of hot lead. The Goliath slowed noticeably from the recoil of the guns, but soon regained forward momentum. All the targets splintered into a thousand pieces.

“Anyone keeping count?” he asked into the comm.

“Still over sixty active signals,” an unknown voice stated. “Concentrations to the north, circling back in and headed your way.”

“Much thanks, Mr. Wizard. Keep us informed.”

A series of bright flashes assailed his night-adjusted eyes to his right. He glanced down and saw a line of missile flame headed for the eastern hangar.

“Command hangar, missiles incoming, impact eastern side! Take cover!”

It was only two seconds between warning and impact before the entire side of the metal hangar exploded. Flames lashed out and half the roof bent over toward the main runway. Then a series of even brighter explosions appeared further off to his right, over the vast open expanse of the flight line. But this time is was from exploding drones and not from missile fire.

“Mr. Wizard, you still with us?”

“Yep, I’m in the control tower. Looks like another eight hostiles just bought the farm.”

“Thanks for the update.”

Fox guided his drone down toward the crumpled east side of the hangar. He zoomed in the focus of the forward camera to get a better look inside the building. There were people running about, helping the injured and dragging away the dead, but as far as he could tell a good half of the interior was still intact. Huge tractors used in towing aircraft had been lined up near the east wall of the hangar and had absorbed much of the explosive force. Even then, that entire side of the building now stood open and vulnerable to a second attack.

“Calling all Goliaths, this is Fox. Looks like the strategy has changed, they’re going for the hangars now. Help form a shield around them. If they take out the pilot hangar, the mission in Pakistan fails, and all of this will have been for nothing. Oh, and by the way, we’ll be dead too. Let’s not let that happen.”

There was chorus of acknowledgements from the other Goliaths, which now numbered seven in total, two having been destroyed or rendered inoperable from enemy fire.

“A new wave is coming up from the west and south,” reported Mr. Wizard.

“I see them. Nothing gets past, okay? Now let’s do some engaging!”

********

 “We must take out their command hangar,” Abdul-Shahid Almasi was saying. “Once we do that, the drones outside will fall from the sky.”

“Unless they take us out first,” said General Burkov.

“Our center is underground and fortified, theirs is out in the open and unshielded. And our defenders here are now on-site. We should prevail.”

“Yet you did not anticipate being under attack yourself.”

“What is your problem, General? Since when are the Russians the smartest military minds on the planet? I did not hear you voice any concerns for such an attack, not until you employed your incredible powers of hindsight. Not every event can be predicted, and your second-guessing and snarky criticisms are getting tiresome. I would welcome some constructive suggestions for a change, though I doubt you are capable of formulating any.”

The fat Russian officer flared with anger and took a step in Almasi’s direction. In a blurred motion, the slender, wiry terrorist produced an eight-inch long combat knife  and placed it against the pale, flabby skin of the general’s neck. He pressed the Russian against the back wall of the huge chamber, in the shadows where they couldn’t be seen.

“I have personally beheaded no fewer than sixteen men in my time, Nikolay, and four of my bombs have taken the lives of invading infidels … just like you. Do not push me further. I have real blood on my hands. You only have reports and paperwork as proof of your warrior fire. You are in my world now, and it is so much more savage and primitive than you can ever imagine.”

Almasi withdrew the blade and backed away. The Russian general, having never experienced his potential death so intimately, was stunned into silence, sweat forming on his forehead.

After a moment, he took a deep breath and tugged at the bottom of his green service jacket to pull it down tight over a protruding belly. “I will allow you this one indiscretion, Almasi, but be assured I do not favor threats or physical assault.”

“Then you are in the wrong business, General. This is what the real face of war looks like. If you cross
me
one more time, I will hack at your fat neck until your head rolls at my feet. Do not doubt me.”

Almasi turned his back on the Russian and walked away to resume direct command of not only a battle raging above their heads, but another taking place on the opposite side of the planet.

Chapter 27

“Incoming, launching countermeasures!” The voice was that of a military pilot which Charlie Fox had never met, even as the man sat in a command pod twenty feet away.

“We have countermeasures?” Fox queried.

“Look on your board. Four buttons on the left side—flares and ball bearings. I’m sending them all.”

The barrage of four tight missile trails came down from high above, closing on the western hangar—the building housing the drone pilots. Suddenly the sky between the hangar and the incoming streaks of yellow fire filled with a cloud of brilliant light, as well as the reflections off thousands of tiny balls of metal. The missiles launched by the RDC drones were fire-and-forget, so they continued along the same trajectory even though the path was blocked by the countermeasures. They entered the bright cloud a split second later and disintegrated.

“Great job!” Fox cried out.

“Yeah, but that’s all I have. These units were not designed to go up against this many advanced UAVs.”

“Now that I know about the countermeasures, I can pick up some of the slack.”

From far below, another missile trail sprang into existence. “Where the hell did that one come from?” Fox called out.

“I see him. He’ll be toast in about two seconds.”

In the meantime, the missile fired from the doomed drone was still on its way toward the pilots’ hangar, and there was nothing any of them could do to stop it.

“Xander, get ready, we’re about to take a hit.”

The missile struck the middle of the huge south-facing rollaway door, puncturing the lightweight metal with ease before passing through to the interior of the building. Half a heartbeat later it exploded.

Charlie Fox, ensconced in a control pod three rows in and facing away from the hangar door, felt the blast of heat even as it spared his pod from any serious damage. However, the row of pods closest to the door didn’t fare as well. Nine control stations took the brunt of the blast, deforming the compact metal and plastic pods into unrecognizable hunks of debris. No one could have survived the crushing impact of the blast.

Fox looked around at the surviving pods. He knew only one other person in the room intimately, and that was Xander Moore. He didn’t see him, but he did recognize three other members of Xander’s Karachi Goliath team.

“Xander, are you okay? Xander…?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Who was hit? Can anyone tell?”

There was an awkward silence on the comm. ‘C’mon, someone take a look.”

“Jeremy’s Goliath just crashed into the garage building.” It was the trembling voice of Hugh Barden.

“Jeremy, come in. Answer me.”

Silence.

“Dammit!” Xander shouted.

“Xander, take a look at the side of the garage where Jeremy crashed.” It was Karen Prado on the comm.

“What?”

“I said take a look at the building. I think there’s a ramp leading down.”

Xander shook his head. He had known Jeremy longer than any of others, since second grade as a matter of fact, long before they’d discovered drones. “A ramp?”

“Yeah, I’m blasting open the front doors. This may be our ticket to the big leagues.”

The area in and above Almasi’s compound was now filled with nearly a hundred buzzing drones, all performing an elaborate ballet of sorts. Billy and his Panthers were now on-site and blasting through the auto drones without too much trouble, even as the RPAs controlled from underground did a number on his squadron. The smaller drones seemed content with fighting amongst themselves, so when Karen sent two missiles into the wooden doors of the long garage, the remaining four Goliaths, under Xander’s command, darted inside the building without resistance.

Curt’s drone was badly damaged, more than he’d first suspected. Half of the propellers were idle and he was down to only a handful of munitions.

“I’m not going to do much good down below. I’ll stay up here and warn of any hostiles coming your way.”

“That’ll work. Okay, the rest of you, this can get tricky. I’ve had my share of battles within office buildings and shopping malls, but never with a unit this big. Switching to ground-mode. I think we’ll be able to maneuver better. When we get below, spread out. First one finding the pilots room gives a shout out. And then fuck ‘em up good. Most of those pilots will be controlling the drones outside the hangar, the same ones who killed Jeremy. Let’s return the favor.”

The ramp leading underground started off wide and with a high ceiling to accommodate the construction equipment used to build the underground complex. There were four main corridors leading from the ramp, and three of these were covered by the remaining Goliaths. Xander took the corridor on the far right, Karen disappearing into the one next to him, while Hugh shot down the far left tunnel.

 To his relief, Xander found that the main corridors remained relatively spacious. In fact, a pair of golf carts could pass easily by one another in the passageways. He now had the Goliath riding on the four rotor rings. The controls for ground travel were a little touchier—or at least his lack of experience with them made it appear so—and he scraped the walls of the corridors more than once before getting the hang of it.

The labyrinth was huge, and included living quarters, equipment rooms, and dining facilities, plus a major control room packed full of bulky pilot stations. To build and supply such a vast underground complex, adequately-sized passageways were needed. This made the going fairly easy for the huge drones, even though there would no sneaking up on an unsuspecting terrorist, not with a Goliath.

Although virtually invisible and silent in their mechanical operation, the Goliaths nonetheless stirred up vast quantities of dust and sand, even in ground mode. The wind from the two horizontal rings, plus the smaller pusher blades at the rear, produced a dull swishing sound that echoed down the unfinished drywall and mottled concrete passageways.

All along the way the team was met with waiting gunfire. Occasionally, an armed man would appear from a side room and fire at the drone. The rifle fire would cause no damage to his UAV, so Xander ignored such attacks, choosing to save his ammo for when it really counted.  

 “I just entered a larger room down corridor number four,” Hugh Barden reported. “No sign of the pilots yet—holy crap! Now there’s something you don’t see every day.”

“What are you talking about?” Xander asked.

“Just the largest, meanest drone I’ve ever seen.”

“It is active?”

“Active? Oh yeah. It just came out of a side room and caught me from behind.”

“What are you trying to say, Hugh?” Xander pulled up a side of the goggles and looked to his left at Barden’s control pod. The man was leaning back in the seat and shaking his head.

“Nothing really, Number One, except that I’m dead. I assume that was Jonas’s Ninja. The bastard just plastered my Goliath against the far wall. I’m out for the duration.”

Xander slipped the goggles back on, and was instantly halfway around the world again. He hadn’t heard any sounds of a battle taking place, so Jonas must have fired without warning and took out Hugh in a single shot. Now his force was down to just two Goliaths—his and Karen’s—and with Jonas Lemon lurking somewhere, in control of the deadliest drone ever made.

The incoming call alarm sounded again. This time Xander knew who was calling, so he activated only the audio.

“Uh oh, Xander, what you can’t see
can
still kill you,” said the voice of Jonas Lemon. “I told you I’d be around. So who was it that I just crushed?”

“It was me, you bastard,” Hugh Barden announced over the intercom. Xander had linked the communication to the rest of the team, just in case Jonas gave away a clue as to his location.

“Now that gives me great pleasure,” said Lemon. “I’d say that other than Xander, you’re the one I most wanted to beat the most.”

“Is this still about Linda what’s-her-name?” Hugh asked. “You know she never liked you anyway.”

“No, she preferred pretty boys like you—brainless geeks with a flashy smile.”

“Eat your heart out, you ugly muther. If I recall now, she was the best I ever had, so you really missed out on something special.”

“Keep at it, Barden. Now I’m filthy rich and I just knocked you out of the game. So sit back and be quiet like a good little boy while I do the same to the rest of your Team Alpha. You see, Xander, that’s been your major weakness throughout the years. You’ve always relied on others to help fight your battles. I only counted on me, so I was better than you.”

“Yeah, and that go-it-alone attitude got your ass fired and your wife out the door with your daughter. I understand she’s remarried, and that Katie loves him, unlike the hatred she now feels for her real dad. Oh, I’m sorry … is it too soon?”

“Stop trying to bait me, Moore. It won’t work. But I’ll tell you what I will do. First of all, I’m going to take out the remaining Goliaths you have in Karachi, and then I’m going to take over one of Billy’s little JEN-Tech drones outside your hiding place in Washington. Then I’m going to kill all of you, and not just your machines, but your flesh and blood bodies. That will be a new experience. It’s rare when we get to use our drones to kill a real enemy. So let’s get the preliminaries out the way so I can get on with the real contest. I’m in the furthest corridor to the north, the one marked with the large bronze flowerpot. There’s a connecting tunnel between all the south to north corridors. I shouldn’t be too hard to find.”

“Switch to backup frequency,” Xander ordered, and a moment later he said, “Don’t take the bait, Karen. We’re here to find the pilots room and that’s it. Maybe after that’s done we can go after Jonas.”

“I’m tempted,” Karen said, “but I know to follow orders. I haven’t found anything promising this way. I’m cutting south down another corridor. I assume most of these tunnels j—”

Xander could sense the dead air on the frequency. “Karen, are you there? Karen…?”

The line crackled. “I’m here. Comm cut out after the two RPGs were fired.”

“RPGs?”

“Yep. They missed, but I won’t be leaving the same way I came in. The tunnel’s collapsed. Where are you?”

“Hell if I know. All the corridors look alike. Wait … this looks interesting.”

The corridor Xander was in suddenly expanded in width and height, and he rolled into a large circular room with three double-wide doors lining the far wall. All three were closed.