Ring of Fire

by Brad Taylor

  On the way up, jogging the metal stairs, the echo of his feet bouncing off the steel of the ship, Snelling had said, “We have four DroneDefenders on top. Do you have any idea what direction it’s coming from?”

  I said, “I don’t. What’s a DroneDefender?”

  “It’s a focused jammer mounted on a rifle stock. Basically, it cuts the drone’s ability to receive GPS or radio signals and causes it to either fall out of the sky or return to base, depending on the type of drone. It defeats the ability of anyone to control it.”

  “What’s the range?”

  “About four hundred meters.”

  “Do you have radar? Something to find the drones to get the weapons on target?”

  “Yeah, but we only have one. That’s why I asked the direction. Face it the wrong way, and it’s worthless.”

  We reached the deck and he said, “How serious is this threat?”

  “It’s serious. If I were going to call it, I’d say that fucking thing is in the air and headed this way. It’ll be an explosive charge, probably kinetic in action and not triggered by remote. They’ll want to fly it straight into where the president is speaking, so aim the radar away from him. Where’s his podium? Does he have a backdrop?”

  “Yes. The stage is in the middle of the ship, just in front of the tower for the bridge. He’s speaking toward the bow, although they’ve got video monitors for all the folks behind him.”

  “Then it’ll be coming from the bow.”

  We pushed through the crowd, and I saw President Hannister take the podium, showing not a whit of concern that he was being hunted. He cracked a few jokes and then went into his campaign speech. I have to admit, it was pretty impressive. He was on four or five giant monitors, and I didn’t see him scanning the sky, looking for his doom.

  We reached the edge of the bow and two different agents ran up, holding what looked like AR-15s with a couple of boom mikes for barrels. Snelling said, “Where should we put them?”

  “On each corner. Put the other two at the rear in case the drone flies by them. And get a guy up high, on top of the bridge, with binos. Where do we stand with the radar?”

  “That’s actually on top of the bridge right now. He’s scanning the bow and has about a forty-five-degree spread, which means he can see anything to the left and right of the bow in a cone that extends about a hundred meters both ways.”

  “Good. How long is the president going to talk?”

  “Believe it or not, over thirty minutes. Probably closer to forty-five.”

  I shook my head, then heard my radio earpiece go off with Jennifer calling Knuckles. I felt my first bit of hope, because I sure as hell didn’t trust all of this technological bullshit.

  That hope was drowned five seconds later, when Snelling said, “They have one, they have one.”

  He went to his radio, and I heard him say, “Spike leaders, Spike leaders, we have a UAV inbound.” He paused, then read off a grid reference that meant nothing to me, but hopefully meant something to the guys with the DroneDefenders.

  I caught my end of the radio traffic with Knuckles, just bits and pieces, but it was enough to tell me they’d found the hornets’ nest. Maybe they’d “cut the control” by killing that sorry son of a bitch.

  Snelling was scanning the sky. He pointed and said, “There!” He immediately went to his radio and began giving commands, bringing the aft DroneDefenders forward to the bow.

  I looked at where he was pointing and saw a speck in the distance, coming closer. It closed on the deck, and the DroneDefenders all aimed at it, unleashing an overwhelming barrage of electronic interference.

  Knuckles called, giving me a quick SITREP and saying they had control, and I didn’t have the sense to tell the secret service to quit what they were doing. Of course, I also didn’t know that the guy who’d built the weapon was a nascent genius and that our actions were playing into the terrorist’s hands.

  The DroneDefenders stopped the UAV in its tracks, so to speak, causing it to hover about seventy-five meters in front of the bow, only thirty feet above the deck. It remained stationary, and Knuckles called saying, “We’re looking at the screen, and we have no control. We can’t fly it away. I don’t know why.”

  I exhaled and said, “We got it. We got it. The secret service has an antidrone gun.”

  Knuckles said, “The camera is zooming in on the president.”

  I ignored the call and said to Snelling, “What now? Just let it hover until it runs out of juice?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know. This is the first time we’ve ever dealt with this type of threat.”

  I said, “You see that crap hanging below it? That’s a bomb. If it runs out of juice, it’s going to hit the water like concrete, and it’s going to go off.”

  I heard the president droning on in the background, the people cheering everything he said. Snelling wiped his upper lip and said, “I don’t know what else we can do.”

  Knuckles said, “Pike, that thing is doing something strange. We aren’t touching anything, and it’s zooming in on the president.”

  I clicked on and said, “It’s the electromagnetic interference. These guys are torching it.”

  He said, “I don’t think so. It’s stable and controlled. It’s not like it’s freaking out and going batshit. It’s looking for something.”

  I took that in and said, “Keep me abreast of what you see.”

  To Snelling, I said, “Shoot that fucking thing down, right now.”

  “What? We can’t start firing during a presidential speech. We have it contained.”

  Knuckles came on, “Pike, for some reason, the camera has gone from the president and is now scanning left and right.”

  I said, “Snelling, that thing has some program to defeat your weapons. I have a man that’s looking at the feed right now. It’s doing strange shit, and your DroneDefenders aren’t interfering.”

  “Pike, I can’t just start blazing away during a presidential speech. I get you operate under different rules—I saw that with the helo—but that drone has lost control from the source.”

  I said, “I know it’s lost control from the source, because my men just slaughtered the guys controlling it. They’re now telling me it’s doing stuff on its own.”

  Knuckles said, “Pike, it’s found something it’s interested in. It’s zooming in on the seal attached to the president’s podium.”

  My mind went into overdrive, assessing everything I knew about the problem, and realized we’d lost control because we were blasting the drone. I had men who owned the hardware, and I was preventing them from executing.

  I said, “Turn off the DroneDefenders. Turn them off, right now.”

  “No way. That’s the only thing keeping it away.”

  “Snelling, turn them off. My men have the control box, but they can’t do anything because you’ve cut the signal. That fucking thing is on some secondary protocol, like you said before, where sometimes it flies back to base. You made it blind, and instead of flying back to base, it’s started searching.”

  He looked at me hesitantly, and I understood the pressure he was under. The president’s life hung in the balance, but I knew I was right.

  Knuckles said, “The screen is now nothing but the seal. What’s going on?”

  I said, “I don’t know,” and the drone began to move. Slowly at first, but then it picked up speed. The men with the DroneDefenders tracked it, hosing it down with electrical jamming, but it did no good.

  I shouted, “Turn them off!” And the drone began streaking toward us at an incredible speed. I ripped off my jacket and exposed my weapon. Snelling saw the rifle and immediately reacted as if I was a threat, his nascent suspicions of me causing his secret service instincts to take over. He jumped toward me and I hammered him with the barrel, right on the forehead, splitting the skin. He dropped
to the deck, and out of the corner of my eye I saw other secret service agents reacting to my display.

  The drone reached the deck going forty miles an hour and began to descend. I snapped my stock in place, thinking, Please, dear God, let me hit it before they hit me.

  I raised the weapon and began firing controlled pairs, each one missing. The drone dropped lower, now directly to my front. I saw an agent shouting at me, his weapon drawn, and knew I was going to die. He aimed, and I broke the trigger.

  The air above us turned into a fireball, the shock wave driving everyone within thirty yards into the deck. I hammered hard and rolled over, disoriented. I heard screaming, the trampling of feet, and saw a flaming bit of the drone to my left, but I didn’t move.

  I just lay there, taking one sweet breath after another.

  87

  Knuckles opened the fridge and pulled out another beer. I said, “You going to chip in for all those longnecks?”

  He said, “I’m an employee of Grolier Recovery Services, and as such, I consider this part of my salary.”

  He twisted off the cap and hummed it toward the garbage can. I watched it ricochet off both walls in the corner, then hit the bucket.

  He said, “Actually, come to think of it, this is about all that you ever pay me.”

  I said, “Nice shot.”

  Jennifer and Carly came from the back of our office, Jennifer saying, “And that’s about all there is to see. It’s pretty Spartan, but it does the trick. We’re incorporated as an LLC, have a DUNS number, and all the other stuff, so it’s a solid cover as far as the Taskforce goes. And occasionally, Pike and I go on real archeological digs, which are pretty fun.”

  Jennifer took a seat on the couch next to me, and Carly pulled the chair from around my desk, rolling over by Knuckles. She said, “Can’t ask for a better view.”

  Our office was smack-dab on Shem Creek, an inlet that went out to the Charleston Harbor on the left side of Patriots Point. Built in the late seventies, it housed a bank, then a real estate office, then a few retail shops, and finally us. It was a little shabby, but that didn’t bother me. The rent was cheap, and Carly was right; the view of the marsh out of every window was spectacular. Not to mention two of my favorite bars were within walking distance.

  Jennifer said, “What time is Kurt supposed to arrive?”

  “Any minute. I think he was just turning around the Rock Star bird in DC and coming straight in. He’s supposed to meet the president on Air Force One before he flies to his next event, then come over here.”

  I’d sent Retro and Veep back to DC with the Rock Star bird, escorting one Tariq bin Abdul-Aziz. I’d kept Knuckles with me—as my second in command—for any cleanup that might be needed, and Carly, as a CIA case officer, for any interagency coordination that might occur. Which is to say, we were going to sit on the back deck of my office and drink beer, watching the dolphins swim in Shem Creek. Rank has its privileges.

  After giving me the readout from the drone camera and making sure I was alive, Knuckles had dropped down into the muck and stalked out to Tariq, who had managed to get all of fifty meters in the pluff mud. Knuckles hadn’t even brought a weapon. Tariq had seen him approaching and had begun crying, with his arms over his head and blood running down one biceps. Knuckles had peeled his arms off, then slugged him hard enough to knock him out. He’d grabbed a leg and dragged Tariq back to the platform through the mud.

  The team had carried him back to the van, meeting Carly. She’d told them she’d found a rental agreement for Tariq in the car, and Knuckles had searched his body, finding the keys. He’d tossed them to Carly and told her to follow. They’d come to the office on Shem Creek and locked him up.

  After they were clear, Knuckles had called 911 from a decrepit pay phone at a gas station and hysterically screamed about hearing gunshots at the trail, and then had hung up. From the news, the authorities believed that Anwar had acted alone, which allowed Tariq to disappear into Taskforce control.

  As for me, I was unceremoniously arrested by the secret service. They knew I’d saved the president’s life but had no idea why or who I was. All they knew was that I had whipped out a pretty sophisticated weapon and started shooting within a stone’s throw of the man they were charged with protecting. They’d defaulted to holding me under guard until the chaos of the Yorktown could be sorted out.

  Eventually, President Hannister—at some unknown location he’d been whisked to—had heard the story of what had happened, and he’d put two and two together. After five hours of sitting under the watchful eye of a secret service counterassault team member, outfitted in stylish ninja black with Velcro accents, I’d been released. No questions asked. The CAT member had simply handed me back all of my equipment, including my weapon, and asked me where I wanted to go.

  I said, “I think I left my car on the sidewalk past the parking lot.”

  He’d driven me there, then had said, “You’ve got some powerful friends.”

  I said, “You have no idea.”

  I’d exited, and he’d leaned over, saying, “Nobody official will say this, but thanks.”

  Like I’d just given his car a jump start, I’d said, “No problem. It was my pleasure.”

  I’d met the team at the office, and we’d coordinated exfil. Twenty-four hours later, it was like nothing had happened.

  I pulled my own beer from the fridge and said, “Kurt had better hurry the hell up. I’m not wasting the day sitting in my office.”

  Knuckles laughed and said, “Life of a commando. Hurry up and wait.”

  Like magic, as soon as he said the words, there was a knock on the door. I opened it to find both Kurt and George on my stoop.

  I said, “I feel honored that both of you gentlemen would travel so far from the seat of power to visit.”

  Kurt pushed in and said, “Got any more of those?”

  Knuckles opened the fridge, pulled out two bottles, and tossed them to the pair.

  Kurt opened his and took a swig. I said, “Well, don’t keep us in suspense. How do we look?”

  George said, “Good. Not perfect, but good. There’s a little bit of cleanup to do, and a few threads that someone can find, but if we’re lucky, it’ll just be a conspiracy theory in ten years.”

  “Is Tariq talking?”

  Kurt said, “Yeah. He’s singing. We’re getting all sorts of information, and not just with this operation, but deep-dive stuff on terrorist financing around the world going back to 9/11. Tariq had more shell accounts than you could shake a stick at.”

  The comment brought a question I’d been wondering about. “What did you guys do with Johan? Do you still have him?”

  “Nope. I took your advice and let him go.”

  “Did the FBI pick him up?”

  “Not yet. Right now, they’re digging into Icarus Solutions and his boss. There are serious indicators that Dexter Worthington may have helped finance 9/11. Inadvertently, but he helped all the same, and if he knew Tariq was bad after the fact, he never said anything.”

  “I hope they fry his ass.”

  “They’re building a case, but it’ll take time.”

  “Where’s Johan now? Do you know?”

  “No idea. Probably back in South Africa. That’s where I would have gone after all of this.”

  I shook my head and said, “I don’t know about that. He didn’t strike me as a runner.”

  88

  Dexter Worthington hung up the phone, poured himself two fingers of bourbon, and drained the whole thing. Now the FBI wanted him to travel to their Florida office to answer more questions. Apparently, that scourge of Dexter’s life—Tariq bin Abdul-Aziz—was suspected of financing terrorism worldwide, including the latest attacks on US soil, and he was running loose in America.

  Ostensibly, it was just a follow-up to close out the questions they’d had
about Dexter’s offshore accounts with the Saudi, and he wasn’t under any cloud of suspicion, but Dexter was beginning to believe that he was also the target of the probe.

  The door to his office swung open, and Dexter found himself looking into the ice-blue eyes of Johan van Rensburg.

  Startled, Dexter said, “Where the hell have you been? I’ve been trying to contact you for days. The FBI has been here. They’re going crazy over those offshore accounts you found. How’d they get them?”

  Johan said, “I don’t have a lot of time, which means you don’t either. I have some questions, and I want you to answer me honestly.”

  “What? Why?”

  “You knew that your money financed the terror attacks in 2001. My question is, did you know before, or find out after?”

  “I . . . I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Johan turned around and closed the door, saying, “Dexter, please. We’re beyond the guilt phase. I just left the custody of one of your intelligence units, and they showed me what Tariq bin Abdul-Aziz has been doing with his accounts around the world. You told me you didn’t know who he was. That was a lie. His name is in the 9/11 congressional report, and I saw you reading it when it was finally released.”

  “Intelligence unit? What were you doing with them?”

  Johan snarled, “Stopping a terrorist attack funded from a bank account with your name on it.”

  Dexter held up his hands, leaning back. He said, “Okay, okay, I did see the report, but it wasn’t proof of anything. Even the congressional committee concluded it wasn’t proof of anything.”

  Johan walked around the desk, circling behind Dexter’s chair. He said, “Because you didn’t give them the proof. Why didn’t you tell them what you knew about the bank accounts after the attacks? Was it money? The original contract in Saudi Arabia? Or did Tariq pay to keep you quiet?”