Game of Drones (6 page)

The missile was fast and direct. But the plane, perhaps guided by the self-preservation efforts of its pilot, or maybe just a lucky bout of turbulence, banked hard to its left just as the missile approached. It missed the big fuselage by less than five feet.

Naji sucked in his breath. The drone wavered back into position, its programming drawing a bead before releasing its second and final missile. The Hellfire sped away from the undercarriage leaving a contrail in its wake, the projectile shadowing the moves of the plane as it banked from left to right, then from right to left, trying to make a difficult target. But the Hellfire countered with robotically efficient reactive maneuvers as it closed in.

The Boeing nosedived, trying to shake its pursuer. But the missile persisted.

As the jetliner attempted to raise its nose in a futile attempt to climb skyward, the missile struck its tail section, shearing off the entire assemblage. The last row of seats, with instantaneously charred corpses still belted to them, were ripped through the jagged opening, whipping through the stratosphere along with what remained of the plane's lavatory. Luggage and food carts took to the air in the plane’s wake as it canted and spiraled out of control.

The Boeing, now firmly in its death throes, flipped over and then descended into a chaotic series of gyrations, the airliner nothing but a useless, metallic hazard falling to the Earth from an altitude of seven miles.

Seconds before his consciousness succumbed to the g-forces and sudden lack of cabin pressurization, Senator Houseman flashed on the fact that his candidacy for the presidency would never be realized, a thought that competed for attention--and, oddly enough, won--with the knowledge that he was about to die.

In the last few split seconds he closed his eyes, hoping to relive the positive milestones from his life that he would leave behind as a lasting political legacy. But no such pictures emerged. In fact, behind the closed lids of his eyes just before they left this world, he saw nothing but a parade of petty schemes masquerading as significant events cloaked in the historical reputation and stature of his office. In the very end, he saw only darkness.
I helped people...didn't I? Surely I--

When the plane impacted, Senator Paul David Houseman, along with his aide and 164 other souls, perished onboard Flight 2194.

There were no survivors.

#

Shazad’s team watched everything play out on the monitors as Naji navigated the drone from the northeast to its designated intercept point of the senator’s plane.

It had circled like a true predator, examining its prey with the unblinking eye of its high definition lens, before taking up position next to the flight deck. For a long moment the Reaper kept pace, its lens zooming into the cockpit to spy on the captain, and then it peeled back, adopting a trailing trajectory behind the commercial airliner.

Naji then tapped digits on a keypad and directed the joystick. When his intuition told him,
now
, he pushed the red button, firing off the first of two Hellfire missiles. Through the electronic eye they watched the missile spiral away from the undercarriage and head for the plane, which was beginning to bank hard to the right. The missile matched the Boeing's maneuvers, but missed its intended target as it passed within feet of its underside.

Naji quickly regrouped and repeated his actions to prepare the missile for firing.

Then he depressed the button once again, the missile leaving a wispy contrail in its wake as it zeroed in. The airplane tried to move left, then up, but it was too big, too slow, the vehicle entirely without any true elusive skills as the missile impacted with its tail end, causing the airliner to go into a death roll.

Naji fell back from the podium and smiled while Shazad and his team clapped and cheered.

Game over!

Onboard Marine One
1015 Hours

Marine One is the presidential helicopter transport to locations with minimal landing areas in close proximity. The current version is the VH-71 Kestral, a state-of-the-art mobile air unit that has a service ceiling of 15,000 feet and travels at a speed of 192 miles per hour, with a range of 863 miles.

Its interior featured two presidential Captain’s chairs, three couches, matching drapes and plush carpet. It also served as a small communications center with fax, phone and satellite Internet. Sitting inside the chopper’s bay was President Carmichael, Chief Advisor Simon Davis and Attorney General Steven Cayne. As they waited for the rotors to achieve liftoff acceleration and for the FAA to provide prohibited airspace clearance--they needed to fly through a specified corridor two hundred feet above ground--they pored over recently obtained documents and transcripts regarding the senator’s downed aircraft. Latest information put the wreckage at approximately 180 miles due west of Dulles.

The attorney general led off. “Radio transmissions from the pilot of Flight 2194 to Dulles air tower, Mr. President, confirm that the pilot did see what he believed to be a Reaper drone circling the aircraft moments before it fell back and initiated target acquisition."

The president read over the transcribed documents. The interaction between the pilot and the tower clearly indicated that a ‘Reaper drone’ was circling the plane in a ‘suspicious manner.’ The second set of correspondence indicated in detail that the drone had maneuvered to the Boeing's aircraft-left, about 100 feet away, and kept pace for approximately twelve seconds before it peeled back and trailed the airliner.

“How did he know it was a Reaper?”

“He was in the Air Force,” Cayne returned evenly. “He recognized the model and the design. He knew exactly what it was when he contacted Dulles.”

“And the tower didn’t pick it up?”

“No, sir. They had one blip and one blip only, which was the Boeing. The drone never appeared on the screen at any time, before or after the strike.”

“Which means that it was utilizing stealth capabilities.”

“Yes, sir.”

Carmichael continued to look through the documents. He couldn't help but think that they had refined the perfect killing machine to the point where it could neither be seen nor heard until the moment it struck--a true ghost of the sky--only to have it used against their very homeland.

He shook his head as if to rid his mind of the unsavory reality. “And where is this drone now?”

“Nobody knows, Mr. President. By the time we assembled a squadron of Phantoms, it was already gone.”

The president closed his eyes and eased his head against the high-back cushion of the Captain’s chair, thinking. Shazad was moving quickly. Within a period of a few hours he had stolen the Reapers and claimed the lives of 200 victims.

He opened his eyes and looked skyward, to the cabin’s ceiling, wondering if there was a Reaper circling overhead right now with Marine One caught within its sights and possibly drawing a bead.

But Cayne guessed his worry and shook aside his thoughts. “There’s nothing up there, Mr. President. We have fighter jets patrolling the airspace all around us. You’re quite safe.”

But President Carmichael wasn’t so sure. The word ‘safe’ was a relative term that could lead to a false sense of security. How could anyone feel safe when a silent and invisible killing machine controlled by a well-connected, jihadist madman lurked somewhere in their midst? Jet fighters notwithstanding, there was a whole lot of space above and around them. The MQ-10 was too perfect a machine to simply dismiss for the fact that they had a few fighter plane escorts to see them all the way to Raven Rock. Underestimating your enemy, he knew, was deadly, so he verbalized his feelings.

“Steve,” he began, laying the documents on his lap. “We built these Reapers to do exactly what they’re doing--to be undetectable and to strike. That drone can be anywhere above us and not be seen, unless it
wants
to be seen.”

“Trust me, Mr. President, if it’s up there, our teams will find it.”

President Carmichael held a hopeful gaze a moment before going back to the paperwork
.
He wanted to believe him. But should he? Could he?

He read the line-by-line transcripts between the pilot and the tower command at Dulles. It appeared that the drone had come from the northeast of the plane’s position, circled it as if sizing it up for clarification, and then maneuvered close to the plane a moment before falling back.

The next two pages were disturbing, the pilot reporting that the drone had locked onto their position and then fired off a missile. The pilot attempted evasive maneuvers even though his aircraft was not designed for any such thing, with the first missile missing so narrowly that it almost grazed the plane’s underbelly.

The subsequent page was even more alarming, with the dialogue between pilot and tower coming to a close halfway down the page, the pilot in mid-sentence before the plane was struck by a second missile that hit the aircraft’s tail section, causing the airplane to commence its death spiral.

The page after that was most troubling of all. Not only were 164 lives lost, but one of those lives was that of Senator Houseman, the Senate Majority Leader. The president suppressed a chill.
Could Shazad have known Houseman would be on that plane?
He held up the paper.

“The Senator?”

Cayne nodded. “He was on his way to Washington from Texas.”

“And you think this was coincidence? That the one plane in the sky out of all the thousands of airbuses up there--that Senator Housemen just happened to be onboard?” Carmichael sounded edgy.

His chief advisor, Simon Davis, shook his head. “Of course not, Mr. President. It means that Shazad knew exactly what he was doing. He knew the senator’s flight and the plane’s precise course."

“They're that well-informed?”

“It would seem so, Mr. President. They were obviously aware of not only the senator’s schedule--some of which is publicly available, but his actual movements--which are not.”

"Could those be inferred?"

"We're looking into that, Sir, but the initial indications are that he somehow had access to the Senator's flight number in advance."

The president made a spitting noise and massaged the space between his eyes. “This just leads me to believe that the senator’s plane is only the beginning of what Shazad intends to do. I would hate to think what else he knows—although I sure as hell wish I knew what he plans to do next.”

Davis nodded in silent agreement. At length, Carmichael added: “Close all airspace nationwide. Any aircraft in flight are to land at the nearest available airport. That includes
all
airborne vehicles. Effective immediately.”

“Right away, sir.”

“I want nothing in the sky except our own units. Second, contact the Press Secretary and have him outline a dialogue that the senator’s plane went down, that authorities are currently looking into the cause. I want him to tell the nation that this is simply a precautionary measure until we get to the bottom of what’s going on. But before he speaks, I want to personally look over the verbiage to make sure it hits all the marks with nothing extraneous. I do
not
want to cause a nationwide panic due to mismanaged or misconstrued content originating from this office. What I do want is to brace them for what’s coming and to cushion the blow, if possible.”

“I understand, Mr. President. But do realize that the national psyche will once again become very fragile should you announce this prematurely. You run the risk of putting things in the wrong light.”

The president threw up his hands. “Prematurely? Wrong light? Seriously? Shazad has our goddamn balls in a vise, Simon! We don’t know where he is or what he plans to do next with these weapons that we can’t even begin to detect by radar. I will
not
..." Carmichael pounded a fist into his armrest to accent the word..."sit back and allow a nation to fly blind until they find out that we knew all along about Shazad and his actions." He paused to make eye contact with the rest of his colleagues. "Open your eyes, people! We are under
attack
. And right now it seems we’re impotent to do anything about it.” And it was here that he considered a single thought:
How can one man with so little cause a country like the United States to collapse into chaos?

As Marine One lifted and banked with its rotors turning in blinding revolutions, the White House quickly receded from view.

“Did you contact the Director at the Bureau?” he asked.

Cayne nodded. “Jenifer's on top of that.” Although President Carmichael thought his secretary of state to be stiff and emotionless, someone who moved about with the cold fortitude of a machine, almost to the point of insensitivity, she was extremely competent in her duties. When Jenifer Rimaldi took command of a situation, there was no need to worry. Unless that situation was a cocktail party, but that was another matter.

“Good,” he said. “When we get to Raven Rock,” he added, “give notice to those within the line-of-succession after the vice president—and I’m talking about the Speaker of the House, the President pro tempore of the Senate, Jenifer, the Secretary of Treasury, all the way down to the Secretary of Labor—that they are to be placed in a secured location. If Shazad has taken down a United States senator, then who knows who else may be on his hit list.”

“You’ll be safe at Raven Rock, Mr. President. He can’t get to you if you’re underground. Even with a Hellfire.”

President Carmichael leaned forward and looked his Chief Advisor directly in the eyes while pointing ceilingward. “If you haven’t noticed, Simon, we've barely left the White House grounds. There’s a lot of space between here and Pennsylvania. I implore you, do not underestimate Shazad. And certainly do not think that just because we have fighters airborne that it’s foolproof protection. It’s not. The MQ-10 is a stealth killer that can elude the sharpest of eyes and the most agile of jets.”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

Carmichael melted back into his chair. “Once we’re inside Raven Rock, I’ll feel better. Right now . . .” He let his words trail a moment.