“As the only civilian in the room,” said Altschuler, “do you want to walk me through what you’re envisioning, General?”
“Certainly,” said Girdler. “As soon as the X81 Falcon is delivered to the naval base,” he began, “we load it aboard the modified helo carrying the EMP Cannon, where it should be insulated from the effects of the burst. We then get the helo airborne and at the ready. When Nick learns approximately where we can expect the drone to be, we blanket that area with our targeted EMP. Two things will happen immediately. The drone will become visible, and it will drop from the sky, with the sarin safely inside its canister.”
Altschuler nodded. “So you wait until an instant after the EMP Cannon is fired to release the Falcon Drone,” he said, “so it won’t be affected by the EMP, correct?”
“Exactly,” said Girdler. “The Falcon will then snare the falling drone, keep it above five hundred feet, and drag it off over an empty stretch of the Pacific, where it can then drop it.”
“Sounds like a workable plan,” said Campbell. “Hopefully, we won’t need it. With any luck, Nick will be able to wrest control of the drone from the terrorists. But if it’s on auto-pilot and its course can’t be changed, we’ll still need Nick to learn the precise target and time of strike, or none of this will do us any good.”
The general nodded solemnly. Hall had always come through in the past. But they had been unable to come up with any plan for stopping the attack without another one of his miracles, and so far he was striking out.
“If anyone can manage to pull this rabbit out of his hat,” said Girdler, “it’s Nick Hall.”
While this was true, he said it without conviction, and he wasn’t inspiring anyone, himself included. Because he had a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach that they had been too lucky for too long, and that their lucky streak was about to end.
16
“Got them!” said Hall triumphantly as an adrenaline spike temporarily jolted him from his coma-like state.
The pilots exchanged glances and shook their heads as they continued their easterly search pattern. What did that mean? Were they taking orders from a raving lunatic?
Hall hadn’t so much found the two terrorists as their hateful, violent thoughts had cut through the unholy background din and found him, stabbing into his tortured mind.
He reeled as he realized that their malevolence wasn’t directed at the target of a sarin attack. It was directed at a Pave Hawk helicopter.
The one he was now in.
Hall grasped the situation in an instant. ISIS had deployed all ten of their drones for this mission, leaving nothing to chance. Eight had been patrolling San Diego, in the unlikely event the US got wind of what was about to happen. The two terrorists had been tracking the Pave Hawk for some time now, and had deduced it was searching for them. Now that it was getting close, they had decided to do something about it.
Each of these drones was the perfect weapon. Undetectable, they could be crashed into a larger craft like a guided missile, impossible to see coming.
The terrorists’ mental elation at the imminent destruction of the helicopter, their anticipation of stabbing at the heart of their enemy, was deafening. Hall could see through their eyes. It was as if they were playing a video game. Each watched a monitor displaying the progress of the Pave Hawk, and each controlled four drones that also appeared on the screen.
Hall’s breath caught in his throat.
All eight drones were converging on the Pave Hawk in a big, big hurry.
“Dive! Dive! Dive!” Hall shouted at the pilots. “Invisible drones coming at us from all sides, seconds away. Immediate evasive action!” he added, having heard this in an old Star Trek episode and having no idea if this was a real command.
The instant he shouted his warning, Hall tried to use his implants to beam what he had learned to his teammates in Utah and Coronado in case he didn’t make it, but the Internet was down. All communication was down.
The two pilots must have realized this the moment he did, which is what saved them. They had been warned the drones could kill communications if they were nearby, so they knew Hall’s desperate command wasn’t so crazy after all.
The helo dived straight down like a rocket launched in the wrong direction. Hall fought to ignore his abject terror as the ground raced toward him and G-forces and nausea threatened to sever his psionic connection.
He had to stay in the terrorists’ minds. Had to see what they saw.
“Bank right!” screamed Hall in a panic as he noted that one of the men was positioning a drone in the path of their descent. The helo jerked to one side, missing the drone by inches, with only one man knowing how close a call it had been.
“Climb!” barked Hall, and then a second later, “Bank left!”
They were now over a wooded campground area and moving ever closer to the terrorists’ location in the woods.
“Continue evasive maneuvers and land in that clearing!” commanded Hall, pointing to an opening in the trees the size of a basketball court.
He continued to shout out instructions, and the pilots did a brilliant job of carrying them out as they approached the clearing, ducking and dodging invisible bogeys with dizzying changes of direction and gut-wrenching drops, not questioning how their guest knew what moves to make, just happy they remained unscathed.
But as they approached the clearing they were forced to slow, and there were too many drones, moving too quickly. One finally managed to slam into the rotor just as the Pave Hawk neared its landing, mangling the propeller and causing the now-wingless bird to fall the last twenty feet to the dirt.
The pilots fought the beast all the way down, somehow managing to hit the ground upright and at a glancing angle. Even so, the craft impacted the ground with bone-jarring force and skidded to a stop against a tree stationed at the very edge of the clearing.
Nick Hall’s head slammed into a bulkhead and he lost his connection to the two terrorists, but not before reading their awareness that the crash may have left survivors, and their excitement at having the chance to personally remedy this situation.
They would arrive at the site of the crash in minutes. But try as he might to cling to consciousness, his tenuous grip could hold no more, and he slipped quietly into the bottomless void.
17
“General,” said Nessie urgently, interrupting him in mid-sentence. “We’ve lost all communication with the Pave Hawk, including GPS.”
“Display its last known location on the screen,” he commanded.
Nessie did as requested, but the satellite map she depicted was of little help.
“Do we have any reports of a helicopter sighting in this area?” asked Campbell. “Or a crash?”
“Checking,” said Nessie. “Scanning police communications, medical, fire, 9-1-1—nothing so far. Personal and business phone traffic—also nothing.”
“Maybe they found the drone and it’s jamming them,” suggested Campbell.
“Maybe,” said the general. “But this area is relatively unpopulated, so this can’t be the drone’s final destination.”
“The terrorists could also be deploying their advanced jamming technology from the ground,” said Altschuler.
“Whatever is going on, we can’t afford to be blind and deaf,” said Girdler. “Nessie, get a satellite pointed at the Pave Hawk’s last known position as soon as possible, highest priority.”
“Acknowledged,” said Nessie. “When the satellite imagery is ready, I’ll send it straight to the monitor.”
“Good,” said Girdler.
“We should also get Megan airborne immediately,” said Campbell. “Coronado can scramble its fastest helo and get her within telepathic range of Nick in less than ten minutes. She’ll be able to determine their exact status and act as a communications relay if the Pave Hawk’s comm systems remain jammed.”
Girdler nodded, thankful, as always, that he had the honor and privilege of leading what he considered to be the
most impressive group of people ever assembled. “Good thought, Mike,” he replied. Sending Megan was an excellent idea. He just wished he had someone on the team left to accompany her.
The chopper with the EMP device installed had just taken off, and Joey Plaskett was on board, on Girdler’s orders. The Navy personnel on Coronado didn’t know that Girdler existed, but they did have strict instructions to follow all orders from Hall and his teammates, so sending Plaskett allowed Girdler to retain seamless command and control of the operation. He only wished he had another Plaskett to send with Megan.
“Nessie,” said the general, “relay orders under THT’s command codes to Admiral Dinkoff, urgent, priority one. Have him get his fastest helo ready for takeoff within four minutes, sooner if possible. Tell him we need it to make best speed to the Pave Hawk’s last known position, with Megan Emerson on board, accompanied by three SEALS. And remind him that her word is law on this mission.”
“Orders have been relayed,” reported Nessie.
“Good,” said Girdler. He paused to be sure there was nothing he was missing. He didn’t think so, but it was impossible to be certain. “Now open a line to Megan Emerson,” he commanded.
“Opened,” said Nessie. “And Admiral Dinkoff has acknowledged the orders and will escort Megan to the helicopter himself, an upgraded AH-99 Apache.”
Girdler nodded. He got on the line with Megan and hastily explained the situation. Minutes later she was in the air.
“Are communications on the Pave Hawk still down?” he asked the AI the moment she had taken off.
“As far as we know, yes,” replied Nessie.
Girdler frowned deeply. What could possibly be going on? he asked himself for the hundredth time.
Whatever it was, he had high hopes they would know in just a few minutes, courtesy of a telepathic connection that could not be jammed.
But as he glanced at the digital clock on the monitor, he knew that they were rapidly running out of time, and that a few minutes might just be a few minutes too many.
18
Sergeant Kevin Wellman screamed into Hall’s mind with all of his might. He wasn’t telepathic, but he knew the more visceral his thoughts the more penetrating they would be, and his visceral panic could not have been more genuine.
Wake up, Nick! he blasted at his friend.
He watched his captors through lidded eyes, and when they moved out of earshot he kicked Hall savagely in the leg. Nothing. He might as well have kicked a corpse. The only way he knew he hadn’t was the shallow rise and fall of Hall’s chest.
Nick, wake up! Wake up or we’re both dead!
Nothing. There was no way to reach him. The man had been mentally depleted to the depths of his soul before the crash landing, and now he was fighting physical trauma to his brain as well. Hall was probably relishing this sleep, almost longing for the peace that death would bring him.
Wellman’s eyes widened as he realized that there was one death that would motivate Hall, far more than his own.
Nick, dammit, wake up now or Megan will die!
Wellman focused all his mental energy on images of Megan Emerson being beaten. Of men slicing into her arms and legs with razor-sharp knives as blood gushed around the blades. Of acid being poured onto her face and eating its way through the skin as she writhed and screamed in agony. Wellman sent every horror-movie scene of psychopathic torture he had ever watched in a steady, relentless barrage at his friend, with Megan Emerson as the victim in each case.
Wake up, Nick! Megan is dying!
Hall’s consciousness rushed back to him in a blind panic. Megan! he thought in horror. No! he mentally screamed as tears began to form in eyes that were still closed.
Just as he was about to scream out loud he realized he couldn’t actually sense Megan anywhere nearby. He explored further.
She wasn’t being tortured.
None of this horrific imagery had originated from Megan. Instead, he discovered, it had all come from Kevin Wellman, who had used Hall’s love for her to light a psychic blowtorch that had been impossible for him to ignore, jolting him fully awake.
It was a despicable thing to do.
But it was also brilliant, and utterly necessary.
He and Wellman were both prisoners in a rustic cabin in the woods, and both were sitting on the floor with their wrists cuffed together behind them with plastic straps. While all communications weren’t being jammed inside the cabin, the terrorists who had downed them, Hassan Salam and Abdul Rehmani, had been instructed to block all Wi-Fi signals so they wouldn’t be tempted to connect to the Internet, which would make their computers vulnerable to scrutiny.
Which meant that Nick Hall couldn’t connect to the Internet, either.
The two ISIS terrorists were just completing the task of sending all of their remaining drones to strategic locations between here and downtown San Diego to continue their watchdog mission. Since they weren’t watching their two prisoners at the moment, Hall took the occasion to nudge Kevin Wellman and shoot him a wink before slamming his eyes shut once again.
Wellman’s mental images of Megan being tortured immediately ceased and were replaced by thoughts of pure elation. Thank God you’re okay, Nick, he thought as hard as he could. Keep your eyes closed. They’re leaving us alone until you regain consciousness. I know you’ll use your abilities to get us out of this. I’ll follow your lead when you come up with something. Move your right pinky if you’ve read these thoughts.
Hall moved his right pinky ever so slightly—eliciting a burst of pure joy from Wellman—and then went to work reconstructing how he had come to be here, darting between the minds of Kevin Wellman and the two ISIS terrorists.
Two men had died instantly during the crash landing, including one of the pilots, who had cracked his skull against the Pave Hawk’s front windshield, and Chris Guest, who had been stabbed through the neck with a sharp piece of helicopter shrapnel. Floyd Briarwood had been thrown from the craft and had rolled under a tree, out of sight of the clearing. Since he had been knocked out cold, Hall could no longer read his presence, but Wellman had rushed to where the captain had ended up and had confirmed his pulse was strong.
The ISIS savages had never seen Briarwood. If they had, he would certainly be dead right now.
Hall and the other pilot had both blacked out as well. Only Wellman had retained consciousness, although he had been stunned and was bleeding from any number of cuts. After confirming Briarwood was alive, Wellman had lifted Hall in a fireman’s carry into the woods, taking great pains to hide him in a patch of thick undergrowth.
Unfortunately, Salam and Rehmani had arrived on the scene quickly and quietly enough to have observed Wellman’s attempts to conceal Hall. Their plan had been to kill everyone they found, except for one man they would spare temporarily for interrogation purposes.
But they were fascinated by Wellman. He could have fled and saved himself. He could have attempted to ambush anyone who came to investigate. Instead, he had risked leaving himself totally vulnerable to protect this one man.
Why was this man so important? How was he able to command such loyalty and sacrifice?
Wellman’s efforts to save Hall’s life by hiding him had failed, but, ironically, the fact that he had risked so much just to make the attempt had ended up saving his life just the same.
The ISIS terrorists carried assault rifles and were able to easily capture Wellman, preoccupied as he was. The sergeant could only watch helplessly as they shot the unconscious pilot in the head at point-blank range.
Finally, Rehmani, the brighter of the two terrorists, came up with an experiment. He told Wellman he would only keep one man alive, and asked him to choose who this should be. Predictably, Wellman chose the man he had been trying to protect. The fact that Wellman was willing to die to keep this man alive underscored his importance.
The man now unconscious was the one they needed to interrogate.
But Rehmani had decided to keep Wellman alive as w
ell, since there was no guarantee that the other would ever wake up, and they needed to assure themselves they would have one man left to interrogate.
Hall read all of this in seconds. The sacrifice Wellman had tried to make for him was stunning, but he didn’t have time to focus on this or thank the man—this would have to come later. For now he needed to focus on the coming sarin attack.
He quickly read everything that Salam and Rehmani knew about the attack. Rehmani had launched the drone with the sarin canister almost an hour before they had been shot down. It was on autopilot, as they had feared might be the case, and no human could alter its course. The attack was set for seven p.m. exactly. It had almost certainly reached its final destination by now, but neither of the terrorists knew where that was.
The target had been pre-programmed in and they had been purposely left in the dark. The drone possessed sophisticated sensors and a central computer programmed to trigger the sarin’s early release if it detected that the target site was being evacuated in any way.
The head of ISIS, a butcher named Sayed Nazry, had chosen the target and orchestrated the attack personally, and both of the men chosen to safeguard the attack were convinced it would be extraordinary. They were so eager to find out what Nazry had planned they were practically salivating. The target would not just be a run-of-the-mill stadium or park, but something that would make a profound statement. Something that would be remembered for eternity.
They believed this because they knew Sayed Nazry well, especially Rehmani, who was his nephew. Nazry longed to produce an attack that would scar the West forever, cutting far more deeply than even a large number of casualties alone would accomplish. And he had paid an exorbitant premium to purchase ten drones from Victor on an exclusive basis, making sure he retained the element of surprise on the global stage.
Nazry was well aware that terrorists and anti-terror forces had been locked in a deadly tug-of-war for decades. A technology and strategy arms race. Evolution in action. A constant battle by predator and prey to outdo each other, to adapt to each other’s evolving capabilities.
MindWar (Nick Hall Book 3) Page 10
