by Mike Maden
ALSO BY MIKE MADEN
Drone Command
Blue Warrior
Drone
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
Publishers Since 1838
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
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New York, New York 10014
Copyright © 2016 by Mike Maden
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eBook ISBN: 9780698190726
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Maden, Mike, author.
Title: Drone threat / Mike Maden.
Description: New York : G.P. Putnam’s Sons, [2016] | Series: A Troy Pearce novel ; 4
Identifiers: LCCN 2016029298 | ISBN 9780399173998 (hardcover)
Subjects: LCSH: Special operations (Military science)—United States—Fiction. | Special forces (Military science)—United States—Fiction. | Terrorism—Prevention—Fiction. | Drone aircraft—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Action & Adventure. | FICTION / Suspense. | FICTION / War & Military. | GSAFD: Suspense fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3613.A284327 D78 2016 | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016029298
p. cm.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
Bernie, Celestin, Mark, Martin, Roger, Scott, Tad and Wes.
Faithful. Friends.
CONTENTS
Also by Mike Maden
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Major Characters
Abbreviations and Acronyms
Author’s Note
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Acknowledgments
About the Author
MAJOR CHARACTERS
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Alyssa Abbott
White House Press Secretary
Clay Chandler
Vice President of the United States
Melinda Eaton
Director, Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
Jim Garza
National Security Advisor
Jackie Gibson
Lane’s Chief of Staff
Stella Kang
Pearce Systems (security, drone operations)
David Lane
President of the United States (POTUS)
Carl Luckett
U.S. Army Ranger
Ian McTavish
Pearce Systems (IT)
Margaret Myers
Former President of the United States
General Gordon Onstot
Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS)
Ilene Parcelle
Partner, Seven Rivers Consortium
Troy Pearce
CEO, Pearce Systems
Julissa Peguero
Attorney General of the United States
Mike Pia
Director of National Intelligence (DNI)
Norman Pike
CEO, Chinook Charter
Steve Rowley
U.S. Army Ranger
Sarah Swift
Pearce Systems (combat medic)
THE STATE OF ISRAEL
Daniel Brody
Mossad agent
Tamar Stern
Mossad agent, former Pearce Systems associate
Moshe Werntz
Mossad chief of station, Washington, D.C., head of North American operations
OTHER NOTABLES
Abu Waleed al-Mahdi
Caliph of the ISIS Caliphate; Iraqi national
Kamal al-Medina
ISIS unit commander, Iraq; Saudi national
August Mann
Pearce Systems (Director of Nuclear Facilities Deconstruction); German national
Aleksandr Tarkovsky
Russian Federation Ambassador to the United States
ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS
AUMF
Authorization to Use Military Force
COTS
Consumer Off-the-Shelf
CTE
Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy
IAI
Israeli Aerospace Industries
LaWS
Laser Weapons System
MALE
Medium-Altitude Long-Endurance
MWDSC
Metropolitan Water District of Southern California
PTSD
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
ROEs
Rules of Engagement
SOG
Special Operations Group (CIA)
SVR
Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation
TBI
Traumatic Brain Injury
TXDOT
Texas Department of Transportation
VTOL
Vertical Take-Off and Landing
AUTHOR’S NOTE
As with the previous novels in the series, the drone and related systems described in this story are currently deployed or are based on patent filings, prototypes, or research concepts. In some cases, I’ve modified or simplified their performance characteristics for the sake of the story.
He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.
FRIEDRICH WILHELM NIETZSCHE, Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 146 (1886)
1
ZAKHO DISTRICT
KURDISTAN REGION
NORTHERN IRAQ
The sun’s bloodred halo framed the Christ hanging from his towering crucifix.
Or so it seemed to Ahmed. He cupped his hands around his eyes to get a better look, his spent RPG launcher heavy on one shoulder and his battered AK-47 on the other.
Not a Christ. A Christian, and a Kurd.
It was a kafir they had crucified, he reminded himself. His limp body hung from a utility pole on top of the hill, his arms tied at the elbows to the crossbar with baling wire and duct tape. The kafir wouldn’t submit, wouldn’t renounce his infidel faith.
He crucified himself, Ahmed thought. He spat in the dust at his aching feet. The boots he wore were too small, taken from a dead Iraqi weeks ago.
He glanced back up. The blowflies swarmed around the moist tissues of the pastor’s mouth and nose, laying their eggs. The orifices were caked with black blood. The eyes would be next, Ahmed knew. He’d seen it before, in the last village. And in the one before. The hatched larvae would begin their grim feast and in a week the pastor’s skull would be picked clean. Disgusting. Ahmed spat again.
Brave, this one. Not like the Iraqi soldiers who fled like women when his convoy of pickups arrived in a cloud of dust yesterday, black ISIS flags flapping in the wind, each vehicle crowded with fighters like him. The Iraqis just dropped their gear and ran.
Well, not all of them.
Was it the flags that scared the cowards? Or the head of an Iraqi colonel hanging like a lantern on a pole on the lead truck? The Iraqis were probably Shia. Worse than infidels. Cleansing the Caliphate of all such nonbelievers was their sacred duty. Only through such cleansing and blood sacrifice would the Mahdi come with the prophet Isa and defeat the Antichrist. Has the Caliph not rightly taught that all of the signs are pointing toward the Day of Judgment? And was it not their duty to bring this about, one infidel corpse at a time?
Ahmed turned around. A line of utility poles marched down the long sloping hill. He counted ten more bodies hanging on them, including three children.
The pastor’s children. Children of iniquity.
Dirty work, that, Ahmed thought. Glad he wasn’t asked to do it. He would have, of course. Allah commands it. And if not, Kamal al-Medina ordered it, and he was more afraid of his commander here on earth than he was of the Exceedingly Merciful on His heavenly throne. He’d never seen Allah behead a screaming kafir with a serrated combat knife nor listened to him sing while he did it.
Such zeal. It is to be admired, he thought.
A Dodge Ram pickup honked behind him. He turned around as the truck skidded to a halt in the dust. A sharp-faced brother called out from the cab. He was a twenty-five-year-old Tunisian from Marseille. A French national like Ahmed, though Ahmed was a lily-white redhead of Norman stock and only nineteen.
“The commander has called for you,” the Tunisian said in French. He threw a thumb at the truck bed. “Hop in.”
Ahmed felt his stomach drop and the back of his neck tingle.
“But I’m on guard duty.”
“I’ll take your place after I drop you off.”
“Why does he want me?”
The Tunisian lowered his voice. “Does the Black Prince consult with lowly commoners like us?” He flashed a crooked smile.
The pejorative reference to Kamal al-Medina’s royal bloodline would have earned the Tunisian ten lashes with a whip if Ahmed reported the slur. He wouldn’t, of course. Ahmed used it, too. They all did. And they all admired Kamal al-Medina as much as they feared him. The Saudi had given up everything—palaces, gold, power—to fight for the Caliphate and the ummah.
“No, he doesn’t.” Ahmed unslung his RPG launcher and rifle and clambered into the back of the Dodge. He slapped the cab roof and the truck whipped around, speeding toward the center of the small village of squat cinder-block houses, well kept and brightly painted in hues of red, blue, and yellow. Most doors were defaced with a spray-painted red Arabic N for Nasrane. A slur for Jesus the Nazarene and his followers.
It was also a mark for death.
Their truck sped past still more utility poles with a Christian corpse hanging from each, their sightless, downcast eyes keeping silent vigil over their lost village. The long shadows they cast were quickly fading in the dimming light. It would soon be time for the brothers to wash for evening prayers.
If only these Christians had submitted, Ahmed thought. Submitted to the will of Allah and signed the dhimma contract and paid the jizya—perhaps that would have kept them from death. Easier still, they could have just lied to save their lives and fight another day. Was taqiyya not permitted in their book as well?
He liked this village. It was neat and well organized and surrounded by fertile fields. A village not much different from the one he came from in Normandy. He wondered how soon before those utility poles back home would be filled with Crusader corpses, too. He hoped he would live long enough to see it and to see even the whole world under the great Caliphate of God.
Inshallah.
—
THE PICKUP SKIDDED to a stop in front of the church guarded by two jihadis, an almond-eyed Kazakh and a graying Uzbek. Both good fighters, Ahmed knew. And zealous.
Ahmed leaped out of the truck bed and the Dodge sped off. Ahmed stood a moment, unsure of his situation. Had he sinned? The commander’s zeal for God knew no bounds. Just last week he punished a brother who kept smoking cigarettes in secret. Sharia forbade it. Smoking was haram. “There are no secrets here. God knows all and he will not honor us if we don’t keep his law,” al-Medina proclaimed before personally delivering the forty lashes to the brother’s back with a thick leather whip.
Ahmed weighed his chances against the two guards. There were no bullets in his battered rifle and his RPG had no grenade—not that he could’ve used either in close-quarters combat. He had his grandfather’s old folding knife in his pocket, but that wasn’t much of a weapon, either. Both guards were well armed and could kill with their hands. He’d seen it himself. Perhaps he could run, but then they would shoot him in the back like a dog.
The Uzbek nodded a
dour greeting and pushed open one of the two front doors and signaled him to follow.
Ahmed hesitated before the open door. He hadn’t stood in a Christian church since he was a child—his first communion. The small stone church in his village had long since been abandoned by the last Catholic faithful and converted into a bike shop. Still, he wondered what judgment might be waiting for him inside this holy place after a day of slaughter. The sun had fallen beneath the hills and the long shadows had given way to a general gloom.
“He’s waiting for you,” the Uzbek said. “Follow me.”
Inshallah, Ahmed said to himself again with a shrug. He followed the Uzbek in. The old fighter limped heavily on his left foot into the broad expanse of the sanctuary and down the rows of mostly empty pews. The aisles were littered with chunks of broken plaster, half-melted candles, torn hymnals, and spent cartridges. A few of the brothers were passed out on the long benches, snoring from exhaustion. Three unit subcommanders stood on the raised platform and used a communion table to study a map they had laid upon it. A few dim bulbs in a chandelier overhead threw a sickly yellow light around them. A black ISIS flag hung from the rafters.
Ahmed’s eyes drifted to the smashed ceramic Christ crunching beneath their feet, broken into a dozen pieces and tossed like garbage around the floor. This pleased him. A false Christ these kafir worship, and an idol at that.
The Uzbek led Ahmed to another door to the side of the sanctuary. He knocked on it. “Enter!” boomed from the other side. Ahmed recognized al-Medina’s commanding voice.
The Uzbek nodded curtly to Ahmed, then hobbled away.
Ahmed took a deep breath, then pushed open the door.
