The Drone

by Adrian Magson

  Then he recalled the camera he’d seen in the bottom of the smaller case, and the screen attached to the control unit. Damn, he’d been careless; the thought that they might have been able to see him watching them made his blood run cold.

  Even as he thought it, he saw something. It was a flicker of movement beyond where the men were standing. It was too quick to identify, but something low to the ground. He figured it might be a fox or a dog, come to see what was going on, and Paul had seen the same movement.

  He breathed more easily and moments later saw Donny rejoin Paul. The bigger man was giving the geek a hard time, the words snapping out like a whip in the dark. Donny didn’t say a thing, just stood there and took it, head down like a beaten child. After a while Paul seemed to run out of steam and the geek went back to kneeling on the ground again, only this time working on the other two crates.

  Ten minutes later another shape took off, dipping sharply towards the ground before recovering and disappearing into the dark just like the last one. This one had a small red light on it, showing its position about fifteen feet above the ground and moving to one side some fifty yards away.

  Tommy-Lee figured it was some kind of locator light so they could follow its progress in the dark. Maybe the last one hadn’t been working properly. The light didn’t stay on for long. After several manoeuvres that took it closer and closer to the ground, it suddenly flew high in the air like it had been fitted with a booster rocket, the buzzing frantic and high-pitched. He heard Paul shout a warning and saw Bill running off to one side to get out of the way. But it was too late. The red light dipped and went down to the ground way faster than it had gone up.

  There was another crash followed by a howl of frustration from Paul. This time Bill was silent. Paul strode across to Donny and swung his arm in a roundhouse punch. There was the sound of a fist on flesh and Donny gave a shrill cry and fell to the ground, his head-light flying off to one side.

  Tommy-Lee had seen enough. The morons had as much chance of keeping those things in the air as they did of flying to the moon. Whatever they thought they were going to do, they weren’t going to accomplish anything except make holes in the ground and smash up their toys.

  All he wanted was his money and he could be out of here.

  As for Chadwick, he’d have to take his chances.

  He was turning to go when he heard a phone ringing, followed by Paul’s voice. He sounded angry.

  ‘I told you who they work for. All you have to do is track the movements of any personnel from London. Use the brotherhood to enter the company’s systems. There are only two of them and one is a woman; it should be simple enough. Do not let them get in my way. I don’t care how you do it, but find them, follow them and stop them! End it now!’

  28

  Donny Bashir was feeling sick to his stomach. Which he thought was pretty odd, considering he hadn’t eaten properly for days now. As his mother would have surely told him, he was hardly big enough to sustain a diet in the first place; drinking only water and nibbling at biscuits was no way to stay healthy.

  The fact was, the very idea of eating had begun to desert him in earnest the moment he’d heard Asim – or Paul, as he liked to be known outside their group – finally outline the precise details of his plan to strike a blow at the Americans and send a clear message around the world to demonstrate that nothing and nobody was beyond the reach of the truly committed.

  Jihad, he had announced with ringing drama, was inevitable and just, and freedom was fast becoming a reality for all who were oppressed.

  Freedom and the oppressed. Words he’d heard uttered often and with great passion back at the mosque in Queens, and during other meetings with like-minded individuals. And Asim seemed to use them as a daily mantra for driving himself and others on in what he saw as their holy duty. But was it really a possibility? And what would real freedom be like, anyway? In the last few weeks he had felt less freedom in the company of Asim and Bilal than he’d ever experienced growing up, as a student at NYU or in his job with Apple. With these two men he’d been watched every second, his day laid out before him with no time off, little or no opportunity to relax and absolutely no contact with outsiders under pain of retribution.

  Was this what freedom would always be like?

  He lifted his head from the pillow of the cheap motel bed and looked across at where Bilal lay sleeping on the other side of the room. The man mountain was snoring as usual, his feet poking off the end of his bed and his muscular shoulders at rest like slabs of meat. He slept like a baby every night and Donny wondered if anything made much impact on him, even the idea of killing many people if the plan they were engaged in came to fruition.

  He checked the window. It was still light outside. His watch said four pm. An occasional vehicle rumbled by, but this backroad motel was in its dying days and didn’t seem the kind of place to receive much commercial or leisure traffic. In fact it pretty much reflected the pattern of low-level, roach-ridden dives they’d been confined to for the past few weeks since getting together under Asim’s directions; deliberately choosing cheap motels on county roads and moving every two or three nights so as not to attract attention.

  Travelling under the guise of a university film crew working on a documentary about rural society in the states of Oklahoma and Kansas, they had elicited few questions, as Asim had predicted. After all, who would care about students and their strange comings and goings and late sleep-ins? In addition, they had the right props in the form of cameras and recording equipment in case anybody did ask. In fact Asim had even thought of that, making Donny shoot some footage of barns, roads and countryside, and record some commentary in case they were stopped and questioned.

  It was forward planning, as Asim had explained, and it seemed to work. While Donny and Bilal were hardly of obvious white American stock, Asim looked and sounded like a university professor and was able to talk his way out of trouble with a few jokes and a genial manner.

  Donny tried covering his ears to blot out Bilal’s snores, but without success. The truth was he was too wired to sleep and felt like screaming with frustration… and not just a little naked fear. He’d given up everything in the name of jihad to join Asim and Bilal. Swayed by the words of visiting preachers at his mosque in New York, and a growing yet inexplicable feeling of discontent, he had allowed himself to be talked into the promise of achieving something glorious that would make his name live for evermore.

  True, he had achieved much already, from his studies in IT and engineering at NYU Polytechnic, followed by his internship at Apple. But success had somehow failed to ignite the fire he’d been expecting and which everybody had told him would surely come his way if he applied himself to his studies.

  It had been hearing Asim explain how a man could use his successes to build into greater success and glory that had finally captured Donny’s attention. He had no idea how Asim had chosen him, only that within minutes of being introduced, he had found somebody who seemed to know and understand him like no other person had ever done.

  He rolled over and felt a sharp jab of pain slice through his jaw where a tooth had become dislodged. It was a reminder that Asim’s understanding was a double-edged sword, and of his ability to turn from light to dark in a flash. The beating last night had brought with it the painful realisation that his belief in Asim had slowly been slipping away over the past few days, especially after the two drones had remained in the air for no longer than a few minutes before crashing to the ground with disastrous results. Bilal hadn’t helped; the big man, whom he knew was secretly taking steroids to maintain his grotesque appearance, which was surely contrary to Islam, was as openly contemptuous of Donny’s skinny frame and bushy hair as he was his education, and took every opportunity he could find of calling him ‘geek’ and putting him down, even occasionally swatting him across the head like a misbehaving child.

  He closed his eyes tight, seeing once again the awful mental reel of the second drone crashing t
o the earth, its tiny red light a taunting beacon to its imminent destruction and his failure to control it, followed shortly afterwards by a furious punch to the face from Asim and a snigger from Bilal as he fell down.

  He couldn’t understand it; he had aced the many games in circulation at school and college, no matter how complex and demanding, and understood the inner working of the drones in a way neither of the other two ever would, including making modifications to the parachute system capsule requested by Asim. Yet mastery of their flight somehow continued to elude him in spite of his efforts to relax and ‘feel’ at one with the machines in the way he knew he should.

  He knew why it was, though; it was Asim’s presence that was affecting him. The man’s brooding aura and the way he carried his gun, and his sudden bursts of fury when something didn’t go well or there was a delay he could not control, radiated out like waves of energy, making Donny feel sick and terrified.

  Especially after events at the airfield, and the construction crew. God, he’d been so stupid, so blind.

  Bilal’s snores were getting louder. For a crazy moment Donny speculated on the best way of silencing the noise for ever, along with the pumped-up moron’s open contempt for him. Maybe if he could summon enough strength to bring the wooden chair down across his throat or substitute his steroids tablets with something more lethal.

  He rolled off the bed and stood up. It was no good; the moron would swat him across the room with no more effort than he would toss a pillow. Besides, thoughts like these were getting him nowhere and he was certain Asim had a way of sensing what was running through his mind. He needed to get out, if only for a short while. If he didn’t, he’d go mad.

  He picked up his shoes and stepped over to the door, easing it open and taking the key with him. As usual Asim had gone out to yet another meeting, telling them that they should wait inside for him to come and pick them up. Wherever the meetings were, they seemed to be almost daily and never at the same place in which they were staying. In fact, thinking about it, he’d never once been aware of Asim staying in the same motel, claiming he had people to see and plans to refine. Donny wondered who these mystery people were. He’d found the courage to ask that very question a couple of days ago, but had been told sharply to mind his business since the less he knew the less he could betray if anything happened and he got taken by the police or the FBI.

  If he’d needed a reminder of his place in the pecking order, that had been it.

  He pulled the door closed and slipped his shoes on, then walked across the parking lot to the road. The motel sat on the outskirts of a small town, with a deserted and abandoned gas station a hundred yards away which seemed to be sinking into the scrubby lot surrounding it as if going back to nature. He turned right and headed along the grass verge towards a cluster of buildings a quarter of a mile away. He hadn’t been paying much attention when they’d driven through the town to the motel, but a sour comment by Bilal about a garish bar fronting the street had embedded itself in his mind.

  A beer. That’s what he needed. A Bud if they did it, maybe a Coors. He’d have to eat something to take the taste away, otherwise Bilal would smell it on his breath and tell Asim.

  He walked quickly, hoping for two simple things above all else: one, that Asim would not come driving along the road right now, and two, that Bilal would continue snoring like the pig he was.

  The bar was called Jokers, and seemed busy. Several cars stood outside, and three trucks. He took a deep breath and stepped inside.

  Nobody even looked at him.

  He let the door swing shut. Fifteen people inside, thirteen men and two women plus the bartender. He always did that on entering a building; he had no idea why, it was a habit he’d picked up as a kid. See the room and know instantly how many were there.

  ‘C’n I do for you?’ The bartended smiled and stood aside to let him see what was on offer.

  Donny asked for a bottle of Bud and the bartender had it out of the chiller cabinet and on the counter inside three seconds. Donny paid up and drank it down almost in one, then asked for another.

  Man, that was so good. He hadn’t had a beer in a long time and felt himself starting to unwind immediately, a pleasant warmth spreading through his belly and right up his neck to his head. He’d show Asim and Bilal – and the ‘expert’ Asim had kept talking about; the man who would teach him to fly the drones. Damn, he didn’t need teaching; he was a graduate of NYU and wasn’t about to be shown up by any so-called expert. And Bilal could go swallow a bucket of steroids; brains beat muscles any day.

  He glugged down the next beer almost as quick, this time watched by the bartender.

  ‘A rough day, huh?’ the man said automatically, and wiped a few stray spots of beer off the bar top. If he was curious about where Donny was from, he clearly wasn’t about to come right out and ask.

  ‘You could say that,’ Donny replied, and signalled for another bottle.

  This one came with a friendly warning. ‘You want to slow down there, son. You look like you haven’t eaten in a while, and that stuff can go to your head.’

  Donny slurped back a mouthful and wondered why everybody he met these days seemed to be happy giving him advice and orders. Deep down he knew the man was right, and he’d come in here intending to eat as well. But the booze had washed away any caution he might have been feeling when he stepped through the door. Who the hell did these people think they were? First the college staff, then the Apple staff, now Asim and Bilal. Everybody assuming a right to tell him how to live his life. Even the two men standing at the bar a couple of feet away had turned and were giving him the eye, like he’d just landed from Mars.

  ‘You sure you ain’t serving ’em a little young today, Chuck?’ one of the men said to the bartender. He was dressed in jeans and a check shirt like a gazillion other Americans, and sporting the same buzz-cut as many other men in their forties, clean-shaven and confident.

  God how he hated their air of superiority and condescension. He should have seen the danger signs, but he was already too far gone.

  ‘None of your business,’ Donny muttered, and found his tongue beginning to stick to the roof of his mouth. Damn, that beer was strong. Or maybe he really should have eaten something first.

  ‘Say what?’ The other man had turned now, and was staring at Donny with a look of amusement.

  ‘I’m twenty-four and it’s none of your damned business if I drink,’ Donny said. He’d spoken calmly enough, although for some reason it came out as a shout, accompanied by a spray of spare beer that he hadn’t got round to swallowing.

  ‘OK, that’s enough,’ The bartender leaned across the counter and tapped him on the shoulder. ‘I’ll have to ask you to leave. Now.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ Donny hugged the half-empty bottle to his chest and pulled away. ‘I’m not drunk!’

  ‘I said, you’re leaving.’ The bartender stepped along the bar and through a flap to back up his request. The other two men stepped back to give him room.

  ‘Fuck you!’ Donny shouted, feeling what he was sure was an adrenalin rush, although he suspected it might be the beer and a rising sense of injustice.

  The room went quiet and the man in the check shirt said, ‘I think we can handle this, Chuck.’ He put down his drink and stepped towards Donny. ‘Excuse me, sir, but this is where you put down the bottle and leave. Nice and quiet.’

  ‘Shit on you!’ Donny squeaked, and backed up fast. ‘You filthy American kuffars have got a lesson coming very soon… and you’d better watch out!’

  The man raised an eyebrow. ‘Say what?’

  A few comments from the rest of the room began working their way into Donny’s fogged brain. They sounded angry and aggressive, but he was past listening.

  ‘Hear me now,’ he continued, beginning to sway. ‘We will strike at your heart, our insects delivering the sting of death from the sky… your own toys of death spraying our message of destruction on the head of your leader and ending hi
s tyranny.’ He threw out his arm in a dramatic gesture, launching a spray of beer from the bottle in his hand over a wide area, including the man’s check shirt. ‘Allah be praised!’

  ‘Like hell he will.’ This voice came from right behind Donny, and he vaguely recalled seeing a big man in the corner when he’d come in. Sadly his mobile responses were working at quarter-speed, and he only had time to sense a movement before a heavy fist slammed into the side of his head and knocked him to the floor.

  * * *

  The man in the check shirt brushed the beer droplets from his shirt before bending to check Donny was still alive. Then he waved away the big man who’d hit him and took out a cell phone to make a call. When he finished speaking he squatted next to the dazed Donny and said quietly, ‘This is your lucky day, son. I’m Lieutenant Coley of the Oklahoma State Police Special Operations Troop. My colleague is Trooper Turner and we’re taking you out of here before you get yourself lynched. Maybe once we’re in the car, you can tell me whether you’re drunk, stupid or downright dangerous.’ With that, he and Turner grabbed Donny by the arms and dragged him out of the door.

  29

  The following afternoon Tommy-Lee woke to the sound of an engine being driven hard. He recognised the sound and rolled off his bed, checking his watch. Damn, they were early. What the hell had lit their fuses?

  He stepped over to the slit window. Nothing to see yet but the noise was getting closer. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be good news. He checked on James, who was moaning in his sleep, and shook him awake.

  ‘You’d better get yourself ready, pal,’ he said, handing him a bottle of water. ‘They’re coming back and it sounds like they mean business.’