by T. R. Harris
“But the targets were enemy combatants.”
“Or so they were portrayed. The pilots and sensors had a problem accepting that assertion, and so there was a lot of turnover in personnel in the early days of the program.”
“But here at the RDC you don’t have that problem?”
“Not at all, since we react to an attack already taking place. It’s our job to stop an event in its tracks by killing—if you will—inanimate objects. Our job saves lives, we don’t take them. It’s a completely different mindset, based on the mission, and our people take immense pride in what they do.”
“And yet you stay secret, unnamed, and hidden away.”
Xander smiled again. “We’re not looking for medals and ticker-tape parades, Tiffany. We stay anonymous because the enemy realizes our value and have made us targets. In all honesty, you can have thousands of advanced UAVs at your disposal, yet without skilled pilots and operators, they’re just useless pieces of plastic and composite.”
“Which brings us to the Exceptional Skills Bill. You know there’s a lot of opposition to its passage—”
The door to the conference room suddenly burst open and a grave-looking Colonel Jamie Simms stepped in, followed by an Air Force tech sergeant.
“Sorry to interrupt, but this interview is over,” Simms announced in a voice that left no room for discussion. “The sergeant will escort Ms. Collins to a safe room until arrangements can be made for her departure.”
“What’s going on?” Tiffany asked. Her face was flush with anger. “Was it something I said or asked?”
“No, it’s nothing like that—”
Just then an alarm began to sound throughout the Center. Xander had never heard this particular alarm before. It was different from the normal drills that were run periodically.
“What is going on, Jamie?” Xander didn’t care if Collins heard or not.
Simms looked at both their faces, seeing the matching concern. “This will be hard to keep secret as it is, so what the hell. The base is under attack, Ms. Collins, so it’s important that you go with the sergeant until the crisis is over. Xander, you’re back on duty.”
“Who’s doing the attacking?” Tiffany asked.
“The bad guys,” Simms responded. “Now please no more questions. Just go with the sergeant so Xander and I can get to work.”
Tiffany looked at Xander. “Xander, your name is Xander?”
“Talk to my mother about that. Now get going, please.”
Chapter 6
Once the reporter was out of the room, Xander turned to Simms. “Are we really under attack?”
“That’s a big-ass affirmative. A whole fleet of quads and octs have breached the outer perimeter east of the Center and are headed this way. According to the security images, they’re Lightning Z4’s and 8’s, equipped with full strike packages.”
“How did they get past the countermeasures?”
“That I don’t know, not yet.” The pair left the conference room and headed north toward the tactical section. They were in the Admin building, which housed the executive offices and command facilities for the RDC, and all the corridors were full of determined men and woman rushing about with concern on their faces.
Xander and Simms entered the main tactical command room for the Center, a huge chamber resembling a college lecture hall, with rows of observation stations set high to the back of the room and a series of flight control stations on the main floor below. In reality, very few operations were run out of the room. Instead, it was used mainly to monitor the activities of the ninety individual combat stations located in the Operations building.
Yet today most of the stations were occupied, with over twenty pilots and operators just now lighting up their consoles. Xander took a seat at a vacant pilot station. To his left and right were a wingman and a scanner-operator. Simms stood behind him watching the screens as they came to life.
“How many bunkers have activated?” Xander asked. Las Vegas had more than its fair share of rapid-response bunkers, not only from its proximity to the Center, but also because of the massive number of tourists who frequented the city each year, making it an ideal target for terrorists.
When no one answered, Xander looked to the scanner, a young Hispanic woman named Lydia Garcia. She was frowning deeply at the information on her screen.
“Report, Lydia,” Xander ordered.
“I’m sorry Mr. Moore, but I can’t detect a single activation.”
Xander’s mouth fell open, while Colonel Simms raced to a phone at one of the observation stations behind the control consoles. He began to yell into the receiver.
“That’s impossible,” Xander said to Garcia. “Maybe it’s a communications problem—”
“That’s not it,” Simms said, still cradling the phone on his shoulder. “All of the Las Vegas and Henderson bunkers have been hit with drone strikes, apparently simultaneously with an attack on Nellis, too. We’ve been compromised, and to the highest degree.”
The noise level in the room rose significantly, as officers, pilots, and operators all began to ask questions and demand answers.
“If the stations are gone, then how do we defend the Center?” Garcia asked. Her voice trembled and her eyes were moist.
This was the problem with remote warfare, Xander thought, the lack of connection to the battlefield. When the fight came to your own backyard, the fear and anxiety associated with real combat suddenly manifests itself. Although Lydia Garcia had participated in literally dozens of remote battles, she had never been this close to the real thing, and she wasn’t handling it very well.
“Don’t worry,” Xander said, “there are defensive measures here and at the airbase. This is one tough place to penetrate.” Or at least he hoped so. He had been with the Center since two years after its inception, yet he wasn’t privy to that part of the operation.
Simms replaced the phone in its cradle. “Listen up, everyone! Quiet!” After all eyes had turned to the RDC commander, he addressed the room. “All the nearby bunkers are gone so there’ll be no countering force coming from outside. Also, the Nellis flight line is in shambles, so we can’t count on them, either. The attacks were coordinated.”
“This doesn’t make sense, sir,” a senior Air Force officer called out. “Drones are not designed to hold territory, especially autos like most of these. So we just hunker down and wait for their batteries to run dry.”
“The problem with that strategy, Major, is that these units have an operational life of at least two hours. In that time they could level every goddamn building in the complex.”
“Not the underground facilities,” the officer countered. “We need to evacuate everyone below ground.”
Simms considered all the eyes looking at him. Ironically, the Rapid Defense Center was not designed to protect itself. It relied on forces from Nellis and the local rapid-response bunkers.
The approaching fleet of heavily-armed drones would be upon them in less than five minutes.
“Let’s do it,” Simms said decisively. “Get everyone down as low as they can go. No one remains outside.”
“Sir!” said a Marine Captain. “We have automatic weapons and a security force of forty-five. I say we take posts outside and blast as many of these fuckers as we can.”
Before responding to the Marine, Simms nodded to the Air Force major. Immediately, people began to stream from the room as the officer talked on a cellphone. Then Simms focused on the Marine officer. “There are over eighty UAVs heading this way Steve, with mid-range missile batteries and the ability to dart around at over sixty miles per hour. You may be able to take out a few of them, but then they’ll just saturate your positions with enough raw firepower to make the outcome a foregone conclusion. These are mindless machines we’re dealing with here. There’ll be no surrendering, no breaking off the attack at some point. The drones will just keep fighting until the last unit is gone. You’d be sacrificing yourself for nothing by staying outside.”
<
br /> Xander watched as the veins in the Marines’ neck pulsed. Simms continued: “Take your men over to Comm. Major Drake is right. The attackers can’t hold the ground, but they can take out our communications capability. Without that, we won’t have access to any of the remaining RDC facilities across the country.”
“Yes, sir!”
The man rushed out of the room.
Xander and his two surrogate team members now headed for the door. “Mr. Moore, a word,” Simms said.
The other two operators hesitated for a moment before leaving.
“We don’t have much time—”
“There’s more,” Simms said, interrupting.
“More … like in more bad news?”
“Exactly. The security breach goes deeper than simply identifying the location of the RR bunkers in Vegas. There’s also been a huge data dump on the Internet.”
Xander shook his head, not understanding.
“This download contains information about all our operations, the locations of the bunkers, as well as our security codes and protocols.”
“Holy crap!”
“They’ve also revealed personal data on all our pilots and operators.”
“What do you mean personal data?”
“I mean everything: names, addresses, photos, next of kin, even bank account information.”
Xander was stunned, even if he didn’t have time to react before Simms grabbed him by the arm and pulled him toward the exit. The attacking drones would be at the complex in less than two minutes, and they had to find shelter.
********
Even though there were several prominent awning-covered walkways between the buildings, all the structures had underground access tunnels between each other. Xander and Simms took the first crowded stairwell down to the sublevels of the Administration building and entered a passageway leading to the communications center next door.
“Where could they have gotten that information?” Xander asked.
“It had to come from here,” Simms answered. “It’s all on the mainframes.”
“I thought we couldn’t be hacked?”
“We can’t,” Simms answered gravely. “It had to be an inside job.”
With a few moments now to digest the impact of the news Simms had laid on him, Xander’s legs grew weak. As a pilot for the Rapid Defense Center, his identity—along with that of all the others—was some of the most sought-after information terrorists coveted, not only because of the skills the operators possessed, but also because of their effectiveness in foiling countless operations initiated by these groups. It was now a matter of principle for the dozens of radical terror groups operating around the world to take out any and all RDC operators they could find.
“All of us?” he asked.
Simms nodded. “I was told on the phone that there are reports of individual homes being hit as well as the bunkers.”
“The pilots?”
“And anyone else who happens to be home at the time.”
“But you said the information was just dumped on the Internet, and they’re already striking at the residences?”
“The info-dump was an afterthought,” Simms said. “These attacks took months to plan, including the ones on the pilots, so whoever’s in charge of this operation has had this information for a while. Now they’re just adding insult to injury.”
Simms’ comment was punctuated by a massive explosion that rocked the building above them, reverberating for several seconds after the first jolt. Ceiling panels crashed to the floor, covering the occupants of the corridor in a fine white powder. The lights flickered on and off briefly.
“We have to protect the comm links at all costs,” Xander said. “You were right. The only way an op like this can succeed is if they take out our way to communicate with the remaining bunkers. Without the ability to launch and control, our entire inventory is useless.”
There was storm of ear-shattering noise now as the fleet of killer drones reached the RDC and unleashed their relentless assault on the facility. With no defense for the buildings, the enemy UAVs wasted no time sending small yet powerful missiles through windows and doors, resulting in catastrophic damage and crumbling structures. In less than three minutes, all six buildings in the complex were nothing more than smoldering piles of concrete, glass and steel.
By now, Xander and Simms knew the external satellite dishes and arrays were also gone, but the guts of the comm center remained intact four stories underground.
The deafening cacophony from above was diminishing; however, that didn’t mean the attack was over. Now the drones would find their way into the sub-levels.
Xander fell against a wall as one of the blasts from above rocked the building. He righted himself and found Simms bleeding from a head wound caused by a falling metal support beam from the ceiling.
“Are you okay?”
“I’ll live.” Simms wiped the blood from his left eye. “They’ll be coming down here next.”
“Where are the Marines?”
“They should be directly ahead of us. C’mon.”
By now the corridor between the buildings was nearly deserted and littered with fallen debris from the overhead utilities runners. Water pipes had broken, with the concrete floor slick in places and pasty in others as the water mixed with the chalky remains of drywall and acoustic ceiling tiles.
“Colonel, over here!”
Through the dusty haze of the tunnel, Xander could make out the first contingent of Marines guarding the entrance to the critical communications equipment for the Center. As the pair ran up to the line of heavily armed men, Captain Steve Harkness took a quick look at the blood on Simms’ head.
“Medic!” he called out.
“I’m all right. Are your men in position?”
“Yes, sir. We’ve locked down the upper access points. The only way in should be through here.”
“Good,” Simms said, as a Navy corpsman placed a compress on the side of his face and wrapped a gauze bandage around his head to keep it in place. “Can you spare any w—”
The heat and concussion from the blast was incredible, and threw Xander and Simms—along with the entire Marine contingent—out into the connecting tunnel. Smoke filled the passageway and visibility dropped to zero.
“What the hell was that?” Xander yelled out between coughs.
A voice in the gloom answered him. “One hell of a powerful explosion, I would say.”
Xander could feel a stiff breeze passing through the tunnel running from the Admin building through to Communications. The access way above had been breached and air now flowed freely between the two buildings. The tunnel cleared of smoke and dust almost instantly.
“They’re coming in from above!” a Marine sergeant reported.
Once the haze had cleared, Xander assessed the damage caused by the huge explosion. His friend Jamie Simms was pressed up against the far wall of the access tunnel, his eyes open, yet his head bent at an odd angle. Xander rushed to his side and pulled the body away from the wall. His neck was broken. He was dead.
Xander went pale. In all his years of drone combat, this was the first time he’d seen a corpse in person—and it was one of his closest friends. All the sounds of battle around him faded away as he held the inert body of Jamie Simms in his arms, until a pair of strong hands took him by his arms and lifted him up. Two bloodied Marines were dragging him down the tunnel beyond the Communications building and further on toward Research and Development.
As he regained his senses, Xander was able to better navigate the passageway himself. He looked around at the scant number of Marines around him. “Where’s the captain?” he asked.
“He didn’t make it. It looks like those drones came equipped with a bunker buster to get into the Communications building. Took out most of our force with the blast. Our position became indefensible, so we’re falling back.”
Xander Moore had been around drones since he was eight, yet when he detected the tel
ltale sound of angry bees coming up from behind, it struck terror in his gut. Drones were in the tunnel, and they were capable of traveling much faster than the men could run.
They were now at the R&D building, with three wide access portals leading off to the left. The Marines slid into the first portal and fell into defensive postures. Xander was literally thrown into the wide vestibule.
“Take cover!” one of the Marines yelled back at him.
Xander looked around. There was a series of utilitarian couches lining the room, and a circular reception desk where Audrey White and her reliefs would normally have been sitting. Now the granite desktop was covered with broken debris that had rained down from the ceiling.
Xander ran for the protection of the huge, permanent reception desk. He jumped and slid on the smooth stone surface until he fell off the other side.
He had been expecting to hit the hard ceramic tile floor behind the desk; instead he landed on something that was soft—and cursing.
Chapter 7
“What the hell!” a female voice cried out.
Xander was now face-down in the fabric of a blue pantsuit, and even without looking he knew from the scent of the perfume that he had landed on the Fox News reporter Tiffany Collins.
He rolled off the woman. Their shocked expressions mirrored one another. “What the hell are you doing here?” Xander asked.
