Sting of the Drone (21 page)

Men in white vests did a last inspection of the Sea Ghost and then backed away, using hand signals to the yellow-vested controller. The controller looked one last time at his handheld device, checking the status of all onboard systems. Then he switched control to the aircraft itself. From now on it could fly a preprogrammed mission on its own, unless and until a human intervened. If none did, the Sea Ghost would patrol for four hours, then locate the
Lincoln,
signal for permission to land, and precisely set down on the rocking carrier flight deck, grabbing the arresting cable that would stop the aircraft’s forward motion.

Now, in autonomous mode, the Sea Ghost waited for the catapult. A second yellow-vested man knelt near the aircraft. He gave a thumbs-up to the Sea Ghost’s forward camera, then quickly dropped his arm, with his gloved hand pointing forward toward the sea. The forty-thousand-pound drone shot forward in a cloud of steam, left the deck, dropped briefly below the front of the
Lincoln,
then quickly rose as its one turbofan engine lifted the Sea Ghost up in a sharp climb toward the clouds.

There was no pilot assigned to that one drone, rather there was one flight supervisor below decks, monitoring the status of six Sea Ghosts aloft, some looking for aircraft, some looking for ships, others listening for electronic emissions. Two hours and fifteen minutes into the flight of Caspar Six Charlie something came up. Orders were received on the
Lincoln
and in minutes the flight “soup” got the kind of order he had been hoping to receive, an order to put a human in the loop. “Soup, take control of Six Charlie as its pilot and go feet dry. Set it on a vector to do photo recce of the Maaten al-Sarra air base.”

Caspar Six Charlie was about to fly into Libyan airspace.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 23

PEG HEADQUARTERS

NAVY HILL

WASHINGTON, DC

It took only fifteen minutes, driving against the last of the rush-hour traffic, for Bowman to get to his office. The Kill Call videoconference was already up on the ten flat screens on the wall of his conference room. On the largest screen, he saw a single aircraft, a four-engine military cargo plane, sitting on an airstrip in a desert. “What have we got?” he asked as he sat down.

“We followed this AN-24 from Beirut International. CIA sources say it belongs to Hezbollah and is used to run guns throughout the region.” It was Sandra’s voice, coming from Las Vegas. “It’s now on an airstrip in the Libyan desert. As you can see, it’s being loaded from that storage bunker across the way. We believe that bunker is used to store chemical weapons, specifically VX nerve gas in artillery shells.”

The NSA officer on screen chimed in. “We can confirm the aircraft is run by Hezbollah. And that Libyan military communications has in the past referred to Special Weapons being stored there. That is their jargon for their chemical weapons.”

“Lovely,” Ray said over the network connection.

“One more thing,” Sandra added. “The Sea Ghost UAV we have giving us this image is a reconnaissance bird off the USS
Lincoln
in the Med. It’s unarmed. No missiles.”

“So what are our options?” Ray asked.

An Admiral at the Pentagon replied, “We recommend flying the Sea Ghost into the Antonov, ramming it, either on the runway or, better yet, in the air over the desert. The Sea Ghost has a jet engine. It can catch up with the Antonov once the cargo plane takes off.”

“Wouldn’t that spill the nerve gas?” the Justice lawyer asked.

“Most of it would burn up,” the Admiral answered.

“But not all of it?” the lawyer questioned.

“No, not all of it. Some would be vented, some would be ejected beyond the thermal zone,” the Admiral admitted.

“So what?” the State Department representative said. “Get real. The alternative is having the Hezbollah terrorist group getting its hands on nerve gas. They will use that against Israel, an American ally. The choice is between maybe killing a few camels in the middle of the desert or wiping out thousands of Israelis. That’s a no-brainer.”

“Legally, I don’t think it’s justified,” the lawyer responded. “We do not know that Hezbollah will use the nerve gas. Doing so would trigger an enormous Israeli response. Hezbollah probably just wants it as a deterrent, to stop Israel from attacking it again. Moreover, we oppose using ‘U.S. interests’ as grounds for using the drones. It should be a group committed to killing Americans. Is Hezbollah?”

No one answered.

“Well, you are right about one thing,” Ray finally said. “Our original guidance from the President was that we could use the UAV program to stop attacks against ‘U.S. interests.’ The proposed new guidance would drop that. We could only act against groups engaged in attacks on Americans. So, CIA, does Hezbollah engage in attacks on Americans?”

The image on the large screen showed the trucks driving away from the Antonov. The ramp from the rear clam doors was pulled back into the aircraft.

Ray could see the CIA officer on another, smaller screen talking to others off camera, but he could not hear their conversation. Their microphone was on mute. After a few minutes, the CIA man said, “Not in recent years. Hezbollah did kill Americans in the 1980s and was involved in the Khobar Towers attack on Americans in Saudi Arabia in 1996, but we have not seen an intentional attack aimed at Americans since then.”

“Ray, that proposed new guidance is just that, proposed. It is under discussion, not adopted. State feels strongly that we have to act to defend U.S. interests, our allies, and not just ourselves,” the woman from the Department of State explained.

Puffs of smoke rose from two of the propellers on the aircraft and then the rotors on two of the four engines began to spin. “All right. I am going to need the official, final view of each of your departments in the next very few minutes. Check up your tapes.” He then muted his own microphone and stepped off camera. He picked up his drop line to the National Security Advisor, who answered it personally on the third ring. Ray quickly summarized the situation.

When he was done, Burrell answered quickly. “Ram the fucker.”

“Winston, under the new guidance proposed by the Attorney General, he dropped protecting ‘U.S. Interests.’ He believes we should only attack those who pose an imminent threat to American citizens,” Ray noted.

“Raymond, there are Americans all over Israel. Probably a million Israelis are also American citizens, hold U.S. passports,” Burrell said. “Besides, whatever the President’s guidance on UAVs might be, his orders to me on protecting Israel are very clear. He’d be crucified if he could have stopped Hezbollah from getting CW and failed to act. Ram the fucker. Understood?”

Raymond Bowman saw the third and fourth engine start to spin and the aircraft begin to move slowly onto the runway. “All right, people. We have a decision. We will intercept the Antonov over the desert.”

The Justice Department representative hit her Request to Speak button. “The Attorney General does not concur. Such a move would be outside our recommended legal parameters.”

No one else spoke. “Noted for the record,” Ray said. “GCC, you are instructed to fly the Sea Ghost into the Antonov in such a way that the Antonov crashes or explodes over the desert.”

“Understood,” Sandra replied.

The conversation on the conference call stopped. Everyone on the network watched silently as the Sea Ghost camera tracked the AN-22 taking off from the airstrip. The image on the large screen from the UAV’s forward-looking camera showed the Antonov from behind, its four turbo-prop engines spinning as the aircraft climbed. The distance between the Sea Ghost and the AN-22 began to close.

“We’re going to fly above the Antonov and then dive into it from about five thousand feet above it,” Sandra said. “It should split in two and then explode. It’s going to be over open desert, empty desert, for at least the next hour, but we should be in position to ram in about ten minutes.”

The forward-looking camera no longer showed the AN-22, as the Sea Ghost climbed. The screen showed very bright blue, cloudless sky.

“We will have to tell the Libyans. This transfer of chemical weapons was probably not approved by the government in Tripoli, probably a rogue officer selling the stuff,” the State Department officer commented. No one replied.

Then the image on the screen shifted, spun, and became a view of the desert below. “What the hell was that?” Ray asked.

“The Sea Ghost is in a sharp dive,” Sandra said. That much was apparent. The ground was rushing up fast. Then the screen went black. “The Sea Ghost just flew straight into the ground.”

“Why?” Ray asked. “How?”

“I don’t know,” Sandra replied softly.

“Holy shit,” the Admiral said into an open microphone.

There was a long silence on the network.

“Admiral?” Ray called.

“Yes, sir?”

“Contact the Kirya op center directly,” Ray ordered. “Give them an intercept vector.”

“Roger that,” the Admiral replied.

“What is the curio, or whatever you called it, if I may ask?” the Justice representative asked.

Ray stood up and began to walk out of the room. As he got to the door, he heard someone on the call answer the question. “Headquarters of the Israeli Defense Force.”

24

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 24TH

PARK STREET MBTA STATION

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS

The young Somali-American from Portland stepped off the Green Line trolley at Park Street Over, looking like another of the tens of thousands of students who went through that T station every morning. There were over twenty colleges and universities within two miles of that subway stop, in both Boston and Cambridge. There were a quarter of a million college students in the metropolitan area and it seemed like half of them were on the T headed out for Thanksgiving break.

He wore a backpack over his hoodie, had on a Patriots cap, and kept playing with his iPhone. He moved with the crowd toward Park Street Under and the Red Line trains to Harvard and Braintree. He took the stair that led to the middle platform, where he could get a train in either direction. He started walking behind the staircase to the end of the platform, where there were almost no people waiting. His mission for today was simple. Slip down into the tunnel and check it out for a place where, next time, he could leave his parcel.

A man from South Boston who had just turned eighty-two said to the young Portland man in the hoodie, “Trains don’t stop that far down the platform. Only four-car trains this time a day.”

“Fuck off, granddad,” the young man replied and kept walking, disappearing behind the staircase.

The old man walked in the other direction, to the MBTA police officer who had just stepped out of the train from Ashmont. “The poster says ‘If you see something, say something,’” he said to the officer and then he told him about the student.

As the officer walked around the staircase, he saw the young man holding a video camera and approaching the gate at the top of the ladder down from the platform to the tunnel. “Hey, hold up there,” the officer called out.

The young man in the hoodie started to run toward the ladder. The officer bolted toward him. The student was over the gate and on the ladder before the officer could reach him. The old man, who had slowly followed them, saw both the student and then the officer jump over the gate and climb down into the dark subway tunnel.

In the tunnel, the officer moved quickly on the gravel path by the side of the track, on the opposite side of the railbed from the lethal third rail. As he approached the man in the hoodie, the officer reached out and grabbed the backpack, which came off in his hand. The officer lost his balance, staggering forward. The young man put his hands together and brought them swiftly down on the back of the officer’s neck. The officer fell, hitting his head on the track. He did not get up.

Minutes later the old man saw the lights coming down the tunnel, the Red Line train from Harvard. As the lights grew close, the student climbed back over the gate onto the platform. His backpack was gone, as was his Patriots cap. His hood was hanging behind him. Once over the gate, he began to run up the platform.

“Hey, stop, where’s the cop?” the old man yelled, grabbing onto the student.

The younger man pushed with both hands, knocking the old man down onto the hard concrete platform. “I told you to fuck off,” the young man said as he ran off.

The driver on the Red Line train hit the horn and the brakes when he saw the body on the tracks in the tunnel, just a few meters outside of Park Street Station. When the alarm went off in the MBTA Operations Center at Arborway, the image from the surveillance camera on the platform showed the front car of the train stopped where the emergency brake had brought it to a halt, just inside the entrance to the station.

25

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 26

NAVY HILL

WASHINGTON, DC

The heavy rains from earlier in the week were still moving down the creeks and into the streams that fed the Potomac, making it high, fast, and almost milk chocolate in color. Raymond Bowman sat on what he thought of as his bench, high above the rest of the Foggy Bottom neighborhood, on Navy Hill. His field of view included the green forest patch of Theodore Roosevelt Island in the middle of the river, with the high-rises in Virginia beyond. To the right was the giant Kleenex box that was the Kennedy Center and beyond it the riverside in Georgetown. To his left was what he thought of as an architectural travesty and an even more dubious use of money, the building housing the U.S. Institute for Peace.

It was where he came, behind Donovan Hall, a few hundred meters from his office, to think. The gray sky, the aroma from the black Dunkin’s Bold, the breeze off the river all combined to relax him enough that he felt for the first time in months that his mind was clear, that for a moment his brain was not racing, processing, planning. And then Dugout sat down next to him.