Drone Strike: A Dreamland Thriller (Dale Brown's Dreamland)

by Dale Brown

  “Is he looking at us?” asked Grease.

  “I don’t think so. It could be that village to the west. Or maybe the car.”

  Turk and Gorud studied the map, but it was impossible to say for certain what the plane was focusing on. It made a dozen more circular sweeps, then moved on.

  No one slept after that. They kept their shift watches—Grease was up next—but that was just a formality. All three men stayed close to the bend in the cave, back far enough from the entrance to avoid being seen, but close enough to catch a glimpse of anyone coming from the road.

  A little after noon Grease went to the supply cache and got lunch. One by one he inserted rations in a flameless ration heater and added water. The heater was actually a bag that contained iron, magnesium, and sodium. A chemical reaction started by the water heated the food.

  “Cheese tortellini,” said Grease as he handed out the food.

  Turk’s tongue felt numb. He seemed to have lost the sense of taste, though the aroma of the food that wafted up from the bag was strong enough to provoke memories of his middle school cafeteria. He ate quickly and scraped the side of the bag when he was finished.

  “More?” asked Grease.

  “Nah.”

  “Good, huh?” His tone was mocking.

  “It was fine.”

  “You Air Force guys aren’t used to eating out of bags, huh?”

  “No,” admitted Turk.

  “How about you?” Grease asked Gorud.

  The CIA officer turned to them. “I’ve eaten out of a lot of things,” he said solemnly. “Including a human skull.”

  NO ONE SPOKE FOR QUITE A WHILE AFTER THAT.

  Eventually Turk’s legs grew stiff from sitting. He got up and walked around the cave. Grease had given him a small LED flashlight from the gear stash, but Turk left it off; the darkness somehow felt more comforting.

  Creeping to the edge of the interior lake, he sat and listened to the nearly silent but resonant hush that filled the space. Every so often something would drop from the ceiling. The plunks echoed throughout the cave.

  He thought about how he would escape, and worried about having to swim in the Caspian. He wasn’t a bad swimmer, but in his vision now he saw the waves surrounding him. Suddenly, he felt claustrophobic in the dark. Hand shaking, he reached into his pocket for the LED flashlight and lit it. Then, heart pounding, he backed away from the edge of the water.

  He collided with Grease and fell. A shudder of fear ran through him, dissipating only after the trooper hauled him to his feet.

  “Shit,” Turk muttered. “I thought you were on watch.”

  “Gorud’s there. I was making sure you didn’t try swimming.”

  “I feel claustrophobic,” he told him, without explaining why. To his surprise, Grease told him that he did, too.

  “I don’t know what it is,” added Grease. “Adrenaline builds and then it runs away. It leaves you empty, and you start focusing on stupid things, things that might kill you, but won’t in a million years. It’s related to tension I guess.”

  “Yeah,” said Turk.

  “You feel that when you’re flying?”

  “Not too much.”

  “But sometimes.”

  “A few times,” admitted Turk. “Mostly, you’re too busy to think about it.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  AROUND 3:00 P.M. THEY HEARD HEAVY TRUCKS IN THE distance. Turk crawled to the entrance where Grease was keeping watch and peered out at the highway a half mile to the west. The road was empty, but a cloud of dust rose another mile beyond it, near the outskirts of the small village.

  “Be nice to have a UAV over us,” said Turk.

  “It would show them where to look,” answered Grease.

  “There is that.”

  Grease handed over the binoculars. There were three military trucks driving on a desert road near the hamlet, coming up from the south. Two troop trucks and a command vehicle—a patrol of some sort.

  “You think they’re looking for us?” Turk asked.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “You got any evidence that they are?”

  “No.”

  “That’s your answer.”

  “I’d love to hear something more reassuring.”

  “Me, too.”

  10

  Iran

  COLONEL KHORASANI GOT OUT OF HIS COMMAND VEHICLE slowly. The old building reminded him of his mother’s parents’ house in Gezir.

  Lovely days. Parties every evening with the neighbors and relatives. Iran was a different place. Some of the neighbors were Sunni, and there would occasionally be long arguments about religion, but with no one thinking of taking some sort of revenge or turning the others in.

  “The truck is in the back, Colonel,” said Sergeant Karim.

  “The place is abandoned?” asked Khorasani as he walked with his sergeant.

  “For years now. We are checking the local records.”

  The four-door Toyota had been tucked close to the house, invisible from the road and much of the surrounding area, though not from the air. The pilot who had spotted it had been over the area the morning after the “earthquake,” and swore he had not seen the vehicle.

  A very similar pickup was seen on the road near the farm truck that had been destroyed; it was clear in the video from the aircraft. That truck had a dent in the top rail; this one had an identical mark. The first character in the registration plate—all that could be seen—was identical.

  But this was entirely the wrong place for the pickup truck to be located. It was closer to the lab, not farther away.

  Maybe they were tasked with seeing what had happened. The colonel turned south, gazing in the direction of Fordow, which had a high security plant. There were dozens of others scattered between there and Qom farther south. The precincts were off limits to all but the workers and scientists involved in the bomb’s development. Khorasani himself didn’t even know the location of all of them.

  But perhaps the most obvious explanation for the truck was that it wasn’t related at all. Smugglers would use a house such as this to stash their wares. It was empty, but perhaps the airplane had driven them off.

  The structure had been abandoned years ago. Part of the wall was missing. Khorasani stepped through, entering what was once a bedroom. All of the furniture was long gone, but there were old photographs tacked to the wall: a family picnic lost now to memory.

  The colonel walked through the rooms. Dust was thick everywhere.

  Khorasani stood in the middle of what had been the kitchen and stared at the weathered pipes in the wall. He had no other leads. The more work he and his investigators did, the more he came to believe that the “incident,” as he called it, was actually an accidental blast caused by the scientists themselves.

  That was unlikely to be admitted.

  The truck must be linked somehow. Parking here—maybe they were smugglers, but what if they were spies? What if there were more commandos, eyeing another attack?

  Khorasani strode outside. Sergeant Karim was waiting.

  “Colonel, it is the captain coordinating the Twelfth Guard unit,” said the sergeant, holding the satellite phone out. “He wishes to take his men off alert. They’re worried about their families.”

  “They can worry later,” Khorasani snapped. “Tell him the entire area is to stay on alert. Tell him—tell him we are looking for commandos who stole this truck.”

  “Uh—”

  “Sergeant Karim, follow orders,” he said, returning to his command vehicle.

  11

  Iran

  TURK HAD TO STAND NEAR THE ENTRANCE TO THE CAVE for the sat phone to work. He was just punching the quick-dial to connect with Breanna when he heard a plane approaching from the north.

 
“I may have to cut this short,” he said as soon as the connection went through. “There’s a plane nearby.”

  “Turk, are you OK?” asked Breanna. He heard concern, even fear, in her voice.

  “I’m good. I don’t want to take the chance of being seen. The Iranians have been sending airplanes through the region.” He leaned back against the side of the cave. The plane wasn’t getting any closer. “It should be dark soon. Do we have a target?”

  “We have two.”

  “You still have two? I thought—”

  “I have a coordinate for the area we think is safest for you to operate from,” she said, cutting him off. “The procedure you’re going to have to follow is different than the first strike.”

  “How different?”

  “They’re still working on things. It’ll be more hands on and you may be making the attack in the morning, near or after sunrise.”

  “In the day?”

  “Possibly. Probably, I should say.”

  Turk looked out across the valley in front of him, letting the words sink in. They were still figuring out exactly what to do—that wasn’t a good sign.

  “Turk?”

  “Yeah, OK. Those coordinates?”

  “I’m sending them via the text system now.”

  His satcom beeped, signaling that the information had been sent.

  “Call when you’ve arrived. We need you in place by 2200 hours,” Breanna added, using the military term for 10:00 P.M. “So we can download everything to your unit before clearing the launch. We’re going to use the first orbiter as a relay station; some of your programming has to be changed. There’s only a small window to do the download.”

  “Understood.”

  “THEY’RE INSANE IF THEY WANT US TO GET TO THIS point.” Gorud shook his head. “We’ll have to pass two barracks and an antiaircraft site. They’re crazy. God.”

  The CIA officer got up and started pacing. He folded his arms over his chest and began scratching his left bicep frenetically, as if he wanted to tear through the cloth and dig past the skin to the muscle and bones.

  Grease glanced at Turk and gave him a look that said, He’s losing it. Then he took out the paper map of the area that had been stored there and examined it. Turk looked over his shoulder.

  The topo map showed a trail they could take from the road toward a narrow hillside ledge, but it ended about a half mile before reaching that point. The topo lines squeezed together, showing a sharp rise. It would be a difficult climb.

  Grease studied the area.

  “If we could go through this air base, we’d have an easy time,” he said, pointing at the map. “Otherwise the nearest road is ten miles here. Then we have to go out this way and back.”

  “Unless we go through the desert,” said Turk.

  “We can’t—this is the salt lake. It’s water out here. There may be patrols on the road.”

  “There’ll be patrols inside the base.”

  “Not as many as you’d think. Remember the place we hit the other day? Security is something you do at the perimeter, if there.”

  “Those are barbed-wire fences, I’ll bet.” Turk pointed to the parallel fence line on the map. “And they’re not going to let us through the gate.”

  “We can cut through the fences. That’s not a problem.” Grease studied the map some more. “We’d have to scout it, obviously. A satellite image would be convenient.”

  “Yeah,” said Turk. They weren’t likely to get one; the data download was due to take place after they arrived.

  “We could take one of their trucks and get right out the front gate. Be less likely to attract attention than ours.”

  “What are you talking about?” demanded Gorud. “What the hell are you thinking?”

  The CIA officer started waving his good arm in the air. He seemed dangerously close to losing control—maybe he already had.

  “You don’t understand,” he said. “They’ve given us a suicide mission—”

  He stopped speaking. Turk stared at him for another second, then looked at the map again. Grease had already turned his attention back to it.

  “We can leave the truck about a mile away and walk through this ravine,” Grease told Turk. “We get past the fence here, then it’s a straight jog to the administrative buildings.”

  “What if there are no vehicles?” asked Turk.

  “It’ll work, don’t worry,” said Grease. “Worst case, we go back. But we won’t have to.”

  “You’re crazy!” shouted Gorud. “Both of you! Crazy! We have to leave now! We have to leave now—now! We have to get out!”

  Gorud turned and ran toward the deep black of the cave’s interior. Frozen for a moment, Turk finally got moving only after Grease jumped to his feet.

  They caught the CIA officer at the edge of the underground lake. Turk, whose eyes seemed to have adjusted better to the dark than Grease’s, grabbed the back of his shirt and started to pull. Gorud swung around, trying to hit him. Instead they both fell. Grease leapt on Gorud, pinning him to the damp, uneven floor.

  Gorud yelled and screamed in pain. Grease leaned against his neck with his forearm while pulling the flashlight from his pocket as the other man squirmed harder.

  “Get him a styrette,” said Grease. “Morphine.”

  “God, he’s burning up,” said Turk. “He’s hotter than hell. He’s got some sort of fever. His wound must be infected.”

  “Get the morphine.”

  Turk stumbled back to the medical kit for one of the morphine setups. When he returned, Grease had spun Gorud over on his stomach and was holding him down with his knee. The CIA officer continued to scream until the moment Turk touched the morphine needle to his rump. Then, as if a switch had been thrown, Gorud looked at him with large, puzzled eyes, shuddered, and began to breathe calmly.

  Turk pushed the plunger home.

  “I’m going to give you an antibiotic,” he said. “And aspirin. You have a fever.”

  Gorud said nothing. Turk took that as an assent and went back for the drugs. Gorud didn’t talk as he plunged the second needle home. He swallowed the aspirin wordlessly, without taking the water Turk offered.

  “Don’t give us any more trouble, spook,” Grease told Gorud before letting him go.

  Gorud curled up defensively.

  “It’s all right,” Turk said, reaching to help him up. “We’ll get out of here.”

  Gorud stared but didn’t take his hand.

  “We need to get back to the mouth of the cave,” said Grease. “And we have to be quiet.” He spun the flashlight around. “Come on. You, too, Gorud. Let’s go. And don’t do anything weird.”

  Turk reached out to help Gorud, but he refused to be touched. He got up on his own.

  “We’ll be OK,” Turk told him. “We’ll be OK.”

  12

  Iran

  ABOUT A HALF HOUR BEFORE THEY PLANNED TO leave, an Iranian military vehicle drove down the hard-packed road near the cave. It was a Neynava, a new vehicle with a squared cab in front of a panel-sided open bed, the local equivalent of a U.S. Army Light Military Tactical Vehicle, or M1078.

  The sun had just gone down, but there was still plenty of light, more than enough to see the lingering dust cloud after the vehicle passed. The rear was empty; the man in the driver’s seat concentrated on the road.

  A few minutes later it came back up, moving a little slower this time. Turk decided it must have gone to the small hamlet about a mile south and then returned for some reason. It wasn’t until the truck came down the road again, this time moving at a snail’s pace, that he became concerned. He called Grease over from the pickup, which he’d been loading.

  “He’s gone back and forth twice now,” he said. “The back of the bed is empty.”

  “Mmmm,” said Grease. “Probably moving t
roops around.”

  “I don’t see any.”

  “Not yet.”

  Grease took the binoculars. Turk checked the AK-47, making sure it was ready to fire. He had an extra magazine taped to the one in the gun, and two more in easy reach. Suddenly, they didn’t feel like enough.

  “If they come up at us,” he said to Grease, “do we fight, or try to sneak out the back?”

  “I don’t know. Depends.”

  “On?”

  “How many there are?” Grease continued to survey the area below. “I see two guys patrolling. They’re just walking, though. Heads down. They don’t have anything definite.” Grease crouched down and moved to his right, angling for a better view. “They’re just assigned to check the road. BS stuff, that’s what they’re thinking . . . It’d be best to sneak out, but then we have to walk. It’s a long way.”

  He didn’t say that they’d have to leave Gorud, but Turk knew they would.

  “We can wait a while,” said Turk.

  “Yeah.”

  Grease moved away, toward the mouth of the cave. Turk stayed near Gorud, who was propped against the cave wall, sleeping.

  Leaving Gorud would condemn him to death, he was sure. But maybe he was already doomed.

  Leaving him alive here was too risky, Turk realized. They’d have to kill him.

  He knew he faced death himself. He didn’t think about it, didn’t even consider the many times he had, to one degree or another, cheated it. But killing someone else, someone on your side, to complete a mission—that was very different.

  “I saw two more guys coming down the road,” said Grease, returning. “The truck went back up.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think they’re just looking along the road for anything out of place, then they’ll leave.”

  “Are they going to come up this far?”

  “The mouth of the cave blends into the rocks. They can’t see it. These guys don’t look too ambitious.”

  “So we chance it.”

  “I guess.”

  They waited another half hour. Night had fallen by then; Turk heard insects but no vehicles.

  “We’re going to have go down and see if they’ve left,” said Grease finally. “Otherwise we won’t know if it’s safe.”