Sting of the Drone (26 page)

“Dugout? Now we’re believing someone calls himself Dugout, over the Sheriff and Air Force OSI?” Erik asked.

“Didn’t know Office of Special Investigations is involved.” Sandra said. “They run their own computer forensics?”

“I don’t know. No, probably not. They told me to talk to the Sheriff. They kind of begged off doing anything of their own. This Dugout do some computer forensics?”

“Yes, he did. He works at the Policy Evaluation Group and he’s good, real good. Ray gave the results to the Fibbies. They opened a case,” Sandra replied.

“The FBI has opened a case to see if the Wongs were murdered?” Erik asked.

“Yes, they have,” Sandra said as she approached the door to her office, “but keep that to yourself for now. Until we really know what happened, I don’t want to freak out every pilot on that floor out there. Now, let’s go take a look at this Swat Valley mission.”

Sandra Vittonelli walked to a central area on the operations floor of the Global Coordination Center. Unlike the other cubicles, which were small and had a seat for only one pilot, this area was open, designed for complex, multibird missions. Major Bruce Dougherty sat in the middle of the three seats, supported by a civilian signals intelligence expert detailed from NSA and a senior enlisted officer who acted as a back-up pilot and communications expert.

“Okay, Major, what have we got?” she asked.

“Well, we’re flying this specially configured Reaper. It’s got the standard Ku-band satellite radio for my control links, just like all the other Preds and Reaps. That’s off the commercial satellites, but it’s encrypted. This Reap, however, has also got an X-band satellite radio and it’s using a frequency that NRO let us use for a week only. NRO normally uses this freq for talking to its own secret satellites.”

“So, we’re also using a channel they normally use for their intelligence collection satellites, neat,” Erik commented as he joined them.

“Right and we also have an X-band radio on the stealth bird, the Peregrine, that we’re flying in trail at 22,000,” Bruce Dougherty explained. “So we got back-up comms and using the two birds we can geolocate a signal source in the Ku band.”

“Great. Let the games begin,” Sandra said as she plunked down into one of the row of observer seats set behind and slightly above the operators.

“I’ll throw the view from the Peregrine up on the Big Board,” Bruce said as a scene of snow-covered mountains appeared at the front of the theaterlike operations center. The view then zoomed in on a gray-white Reaper drone, slowly flying ahead and below. Four missiles, but not Hellfires, were visible under its wings. The Reaper banked to the right and began a long, slow circle over the Swat Valley.

Halfway through the Peregrine’s second time around the Valley an alarm sounded on the console next to Bruce Dougherty, taking Sandra out of her daydream. “Strong jamming on the Ku-band command link, Major,” the sergeant read off of her computer screen.

“Roger that, switch command link to X band and continue circling,” Bruce replied.

“The bird would have continued to circle anyway,” Erik, seated in an observer chair, said to Sandra. “The guys in the jammer aircraft won’t think that unusual.”

“Triangulate on the jamming signal, slew the Peregrine’s camera to the jammer,” Bruce instructed.

The on-board computers on the two drones calculated where the jamming signal was originating. Their information was bounced up to a satellite, down to the GCC’s computers, which correlated the data from both aircraft, computed the most likely point of origin, and then sent a signal to the higher-altitude stealth drone to point its camera.

The Y-11 aircraft suddenly appeared on the Big Board. “Two-engine prop job, tail number Alpha Poppa dash Zebra Romeo Poppa,” Bruce read out.

“Chinese-made aircraft. Pakistani civilian aircraft designator,” the NSA officer announced as she tapped into her computer. “And it’s not in their database. It does not exist.”

“Of course not,” Sandra said.

The alarm sounded again. “Military GPS signal being jammed. And, wait for it, it’s the same source,” the sergeant said.

“Okay, Bruce, bring the Peregrine alongside that Y-11. I want to look in the windows,” Erik ordered.

“That should be fun, boss,” Bruce replied. “Never done that before with a drone.”

“No, but you and I have done it a few times when we flew F-16s. Same thing.”

On the Big Board, the image of the Y-11 rolled about as the Peregrine drone came out of steady flight and moved into an intercept course. The screen split into two images. The new image was of three dots, one red, one blue, one green. It was a simulated radar screen, showing the location of the two drones and the Y-11 relative to each other. The blue dot, the Peregrine drone, was moving quickly toward the green dot, the jamming aircraft.

As the blue dot circled the green dot on the screen on the right, the screen on the left showed a camera feed from the Peregrine. The image zoomed into a side window on the Y-11. Then, as the Peregrine moved ahead, it looked back at the cockpit of the aircraft. Two astonished looking men sat in the Y-11’s cockpit, pointing at the drone’s front camera pod. As the Peregrine came around, the camera zoomed in on the newly installed antenna blister under the tail of the Y-11.

“Ms. Vittonelli, it is my professional opinion as a fighter pilot that the Y-11 aircraft is a hostile attempting to interfere with U.S. military operations and that it does not have onboard protected classes, such as women or children,” Bruce said somewhat formally.

Erik stood up. “I concur.”

“Very well, under the preapproved guidelines for handling hostile aircraft attempting to interfere with U.S. military operations,” Sandra began, “Colonel Parsons, take out the hostile.”

“Roger that,” Erik replied. “Major, engage with two Sidewinders.”

Bruce pulled the stick back, bringing the Peregrine quickly away from the Y-11, and then he handed off control. “Sarge, take over the Peregrine, keep it up at angels 25 and a klik off beam, keep its camera on the hostile.”

Bruce then assumed control of the Reaper, bringing it out of its autopilot circling mode. The Reaper went into a tight turn, until it was pointed at the Y-11, which had been above and behind it. The Big Board image now split between the Reaper’s view of the Y-11 from below and the Peregrine’s view from above and off to the side.

A high-pitched beep came from Bruce’s console. “I have a lock on the Y-11 with Fox two.” A long two seconds passed. “And firing, one and two away.”

The split screen showed on the left the smoke from contrails of two missiles leaving the Reaper and on the right a view of the Reaper itself and two darts, trailing smoke, streaking toward the Y-11.

“And impact,” Bruce said softly. The two screens showed an orange flash, and then another, and then what looked something like an elaborate fireworks display as fingers of white smoke shot in every direction. There was no noise of an explosion in the GCC, no sound effects.

“Bruce, congratulations, you are the first drone ace. The first drone pilot with an air-to-air kill. Maybe we should tell the Pakistanis that one of our drones exploded, or got shot down, over the Swat Valley,” Erik suggested.

“They’ll know what happened,” Sandra said, as she stood up. She shook hands with Bruce Dougherty and his two teammates. When she was ten feet away and moving toward her office, she spoke just loud enough to be heard by the team behind her. “Try to fucking steal my drones.”

32

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 9

GLOBAL COORDINATION CENTER

CREECH AFB, NEVADA

The red capsule or the black capsule, he wondered. Erik Parsons had been working most of the day, but he had to stay at work for at least another six hours to oversee a sensitive flight over Syria. He needed a caffeine infusion. Black was intensity ten. He inserted the purple capsule in the Nespresso machine in the break room.

“Goddamn Mustangs.” Bruce Dougherty had burst into the Break Room and thrown his car keys on the table.

“Some people like Mustangs, Major, my Jennifer for example,” Erik responded. “Seriously, Bruce, chill. What’s such a big deal?”

Bruce Dougherty collapsed into one of the plastic-molded chairs by the table. He held his left hand to his forehead, closed his eyes, and shook his head. “My car has another flat. I’m already driving on the little bitty spare. I can’t get the Ford dealer’s truck to come onto the base and they’re closing the dealership for the night in half an hour. It’s just everything is fucked, man, fucked.”

Erik sat down next to Dougherty. “This isn’t just about the car, Bruce, is it?”

“No, boss, it’s not. I mean, everything was going so good after the problems I had at the beginning of the year with the divorce. You let me fly the Vienna op and then go after the guys with the Stingers. But then we find out that I killed that American guy in Vienna and Sandra gets sued for it. Then I fucking bomb an orphanage. Did you see the video of those little bodies all charred up? Somehow somebody steals one of our drones and there are all these special investigator guys from CIA crawling around the GCC trying to figure out how, like it was one of us who did it. Then Wong and his wife get killed by some freak gas pipeline explosion. Boss, sometimes I just don’t know what I am doing here. I wanna fly, not play video games that kill real people, that kill little kids. I am like that freak who shot the kids in Connecticut, a baby killer, that’s what they called the ‘unknown pilot’ on TV. It’s me, I am the baby killer.”

Erik Parsons looked at the younger pilot and wished Jennifer were there to help. She would know what to say. “Tell you what, Carrot Top. Take my car. No, seriously, take it. Jen can swing by and pick me up later. She has a base tag on the Edge.”

“Boss, I can’t just take—”

“Major, it’s an order. Go home. Better yet, go to Caesar’s, over by the roulette. Take one of the ladies who hang out there upstairs. Get drunk. Get laid. You’re off the next two days anyway, right? Do it. You need it. When was the last time you got laid? Don’t answer that. Just go do it. Then we can talk on Friday. Here, take the fucking keys, I have to get back into the Ops Room.” With that, Erik walked out of the Break Room.

Bruce looked at the two sets of keys on the table, picked up both, and walked out into the parking lot. He got into the black Camaro.

Forty minutes later he pulled up to the valet stand at Caesar’s Palace. A Cadillac XTS pulled up behind him. Bruce headed for the casino floor, but not to roulette, to the blackjack tables. No sooner had he bought his chips and sat down at a table than the waitress asked him what he was drinking. “Scotch, but not the rail one, not the free one. A single malt, Glenfiddich neat. And make it a double.” He handed her his AAFI MasterCard. “Run a tab.”

At the valet stand outside, the Cadillac driver had returned. “Hey, I left my iPhone in the Caddy you guys just parked. I don’t want you to pull it up here again. Can I just go down to the garage and get the phone out.”

“We’re not supposed to let anyone down there, sir,” the valet replied.

“I don’t want to get you in trouble,” Ghazi said, as he slipped the valet a twenty.

“No, sir, of course not. The cars are on level P4, in the back, spaces 400 to 600. The Caddy is probably like 480.”

As he approached the Camaro, Ghazi reached under the back bumper and removed the small tracking device he had left there a week earlier. He had tracked Colonel Parsons’s car, but the redheaded man who had walked out of it matched the description of Major Dougherty. Strange, he thought. Then he removed a modified iPhone from his pocket and activated a custom app that the Ukrainians had created. It simulated an OnStar signal. The device interrogated the Camaro through the satellite antenna and then,
pop,
and the driver’s side door unlocked. Inside, Ghazi found the USB connector and inserted a thumb drive. The OnStar signal had turned on one of the onboard computers, one of five. Now that computer had additional code running on it from the thumb drive. Ghazi removed the thumb drive and relocked the car.

Nine minutes later, back in the casino, still using his modified iPhone, Ghazi tracked Bruce’s mobile to the blackjack table. Ghazi sat at the next table and watched. The Major drank for two hours and seldom won. Then, finally, he scored. To Ghazi’s surprise, Dougherty then got up from the table and headed toward the teller window with his chips. Ghazi walked quickly to the valet stand and ordered up the Cadillac. As he was getting in, he noticed Dougherty giving his ticket to the valet. The Camaro would be pulled up soon.

Six minutes later, Bruce turned left on to Flamingo and then up the ramp on to I-15 North. He knew he was drunk, but he could still drive perfectly well. After all, he was a pilot, or used to be. The trick was not doing anything that would cause him to be pulled over by the Sheriff. There was no way he could blow the breathalyzer without getting arrested.

He took the left exit on to the Gragson Freeway west. He checked the side mirror as he merged into the flow of traffic. An 18-wheeler was coming fast in the right lane. No problem, Bruce thought, go to afterburners. The Camaro SS, he knew, had great pick up, not great rear visibility, but a lot of power under the hood. He punched the accelerator.

Instead, the brakes came on. Bruce knew he had hit the correct pedal, but the Camaro shuddered to a stop. He heard the doors click, as they locked. He looked up into the mirror and saw the grille of the Mack truck.

The Mack rode up over the Camaro and dragged it for 150 feet, scraping and sparking, before the entire mass of metal slowed to a halt. The truck’s driver was unhurt, the Sheriff’s Deputy later noted in the highway fatality report. The body in the Camaro was badly mangled. Death had been instant when the neck had snapped from the spinal column.

33

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 13

PRADO PARK

CHINO, CALIFORNIA

The B-52 circled the field and then lined up with the runway for final approach. There was a slight crosswind, which caused the aircraft’s nose to point a little to the left, but soon the pilot had righted the bomber as it descended and then touched down. It taxied down the runway and then pulled off to a parking apron. Then three men picked it up and carried it off to the grassy area where the other aircraft were on display.