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

by Dale Brown

  “On second thought, Sergeant, tell them to attack with extreme prejudice and vehemence,” commanded Colonel Khorasani. “The sooner we dispose of these pests, the better.”

  STONER SAW THE TWO MEN WHO’D FIRED MOVING down along the rocks. He could take them easily; the question was what to do next.

  Turk was in the ruins due west of him. To get there he would have to get past another group of soldiers coming down a road at the far end of the village.

  He could retreat south, then swing back, hoping they didn’t have time to span out along the flank. Some would follow him; those he could ignore. The others between him and his target could be picked off one by one.

  Better to move ahead now, while the size of the force was still manageable and the initiative was still in his favor.

  Stoner rose and fired two bursts. The men who had shot at him fell. He picked up the bike and pushed it to the left, coasting with the hill until the engine caught. Steering down the dirt road, he angled toward the ruins.

  The dirt in front of him began to explode in tiny volcanoes of dust.

  More bullets. There were men nearby he hadn’t seen.

  TURK PUSHED AGAINST THE SIDE OF THE RUINS AS THE gunfire stoked up. It was coming from the western end of the hamlet, up near the tracks.

  They weren’t shooting at him.

  Was it Grease?

  Grease was dead.

  It had to be Grease.

  Dread? Curtis? Tiny? Captain Granderson? Gorud?

  All dead. He knew they were dead. He’d passed the truck. So it could only be Grease.

  A fresh wave of guilt and shame swamped him. He’d abandoned his companion, even though he was still alive.

  Turk started through the window, then stopped, catching a glimpse of a vehicle moving from the far end of the ruins, down the dirt road at the eastern edge of the desert. A half-dozen men trotted behind.

  There were too many. Too many for one man, and even two.

  Too many even for Grease.

  STONER PUT THE M-4 ON HIS HIP AND FIRED AS HE drove, hoping to chase back the men coming down from the village on his left. It worked, but he faced a more difficult problem ahead—a troop vehicle had stopped at the far end of the ruins, and soldiers were using it for cover. From their uniforms, he guessed they were Pasdaran, Revolutionary Guards.

  He got off two bursts, taking down three or four, and was aiming a third volley when the bike began slipping out from under him—someone had managed to get a bullet into the tire. He let it go as gracefully as he could manage, putting his weight on his left foot and swinging his right out as the bike hit the dirt. As he started to run, something hit him in the chest, just above his heart.

  The slug was stopped by the thin, boron-carbon vest he had under the coveralls. He barely felt it.

  Stoner sprinted to the left, running toward a low wall. As he neared it, he rolled on his shoulder, turning and facing the men who had fired at him from above. He saw three men; all of them fell with a tight double-pump on the trigger.

  Stoner checked his breathing, slowing it to retain control. He could feel blood vibrating in the vessels at his neck, and knew adrenaline was coursing through his veins. For years he’d been pumped with artificial stimulants, every bit of him altered and manipulated. He’d been the slave of monsters who used him as their weapon, primed him to kill, hired him out as a high-profile assassin.

  And now he remembered not the details of that time, the horror of being controlled, but something deeper: excitement. Danger. Life.

  He loved it. It was oblivion.

  Stoner saw two more men coming from the direction he’d just driven. He aimed and fired, got one, but missed the next, leading him rather than simply squeezing off a bullet into the man’s chest.

  It was the sort of error one made in haste. It was emotion-driven, adrenaline-fueled. He would not make it again.

  The man had ducked behind a wall. Stoner took a very long, very slow breath, switched the gun to single fire, then waited for the man to rise.

  He took him with a shot to the head.

  “Infrared,” said Stoner, telling the smart helmet to switch on its infrared sensors. “Count.”

  The smart helmet calculated five targets moving along the edges of the ruins behind the men he’d just killed. They were obscured by the terrain, but their heat signatures were visible.

  Stoner looked left and then right, gauging the area and its potential for cover.

  They’ll expect me to be in the ruins.

  If I retreat to the low run of buildings behind me, I can crawl into the weeds on my left. Then I’ll have a clear shot at the group coming up in front of me now.

  I’ll get Turk Mako when I’m done. If they don’t find and shoot him first.

  TURK REALIZED HE WAS GOING TO DIE. BUT RATHER than scaring him, the knowledge freed him. It told him that he should take out as many Iranians as he could. In that way, he would atone for having left Grease.

  He had to be smart about it. Going kamikaze was foolish, and an insult to all Grease and the others had taught him.

  Slipping out the window of the ruined building, Turk slithered to the ground like a snake. Automatic rifle fire boomed left and right; it sounded like he was on a firing range.

  Move out!

  He crouched down, keeping himself as low as possible as he moved along the ancient alley between the ruins. The loose sand and dirt were slippery, and with his weight bent forward, it wasn’t long before he tripped, sprawling forward in the dirt and landing hard on the rifle.

  Once, this might have discouraged him, perhaps even sending him into a depressed spiral that he’d never recover from. It would have reminded him that he was a pilot, useless on land, awkward and vulnerable. Now it was only something to work through, even take advantage of: he had become adept on the ground as well as in the air, a true warrior.

  Turk crawled along the ground, knowing that in his final moments on earth he was going to kill as many of his enemies as he could. He kept going until he reached an open spot between the walls where he could see the nearby ruins. Something moving on his left. He raised his rifle but before he could aim it was gone. He watched along the top of the old stone wall, saw one, two shapes briefly passing, then nothing as the wall rose a little higher.

  Two men, a pair of Iranians trying to get down along the side of the ruins.

  Turk started forward, then stopped. It would be better, he realized, to retreat to the remains of the building on his left and a little behind him. Then he could go around and come up on their rear.

  He’d have to be fast.

  Up, he told himself, and in a moment he was on his feet, running.

  SEVEN TARGETS APPEARED ON STONER’S SCREEN, IR ghosts that moved across the darker rectangles of the ruins. Lying prone in the dirt amid a few clumps of scrub weeds, he waited until they stopped near the edge of a building that was nearly intact. Switching to burst fire, he moved his rifle left to right, shooting into the scrum until all but one of the men were down. The survivor retreated up one of the alleys, disappearing behind a low run of tumbled-down blocks and stone.

  Two or three of the men he’d shot were still alive, trying to crawl to safety. Stoner dispatched them, then changed the magazine and started after the man who’d escaped.

  Two vehicles appeared in the distance on his left, both Kavirans. One winked at him—a machine gun was mounted in a turret at the top, Hummer style. Stoner went to a knee, zeroed in on the small area of glowing flesh at the top of the flashes, then fired.

  The Iranian fell off the top of the vehicle. The passenger-side door opened. Stoner waited, then took the man as he tried to climb up to the gunner’s spot.

  Stoner shot down two more Iranians, one from each truck, before they decided to retreat. Then he shot out the tires on both vehicles. It slowed, but didn’t sto
p, their retreat. He turned back toward the collection of ruins to follow the man who’d gotten away.

  Something moved at the corner of his vision as he neared the closest ruin. He spun and found two Iranians taking aim.

  He emptied the mag, dropped the box and pulled up a fresh one. In the half second it took for him to grab the fresh bullets, something turned the corner on his right. Two men, shooting—Stoner threw himself down. But before he hit the ground, the gunfire abruptly ended. Both Iranians keeled forward, blood pouring from their shattered heads.

  Behind them stood Turk Mako.

  IT WASN’T GREASE. TURK STARED AT THE FIGURE IN THE field, the man he’d just saved. He had the faded camo uniform of the Pasdaran Guard, but he was wearing a Whiplash smart helmet.

  Grease really, truly, was dead.

  “We have to get out of here!” yelled Turk. He pointed left and started to move. “Come on.”

  STONER STOOD, FROZEN TO THE SPOT. TURK MAKO was there, not fifty feet away.

  Assassinate.

  He raised his gun, then hesitated. Turk had just saved his life; at that range, the Iranians would have had good odds of hitting him somewhere.

  A strange emotion took him over: doubt.

  What was his job, exactly?

  Find and eliminate Turk Mako. He had been sent precisely because he wouldn’t feel.

  Stoner hesitated as Turk ran. Killing him was trivial. He raised his weapon.

  What was his mission? They wanted him eliminated.

  Stoner was a killing machine, turned into something less than human. He hesitated. He had a memory of something else, something deeper.

  Turk Mako had just saved his life. He was an American. Turk Mako was on his side.

  A man’s heat signature flared in the corner of his screen. Stoner turned, saw that he had ducked behind the wall.

  He waited until the man peeked out again, then fired, striking the Iranian in the head.

  Assassinate Turk Mako.

  Save Turk Mako.

  Stoner moved methodically up the row of the ruins, reaching the dirt road that ran along the edge of the city. A dozen buildings sat between the road and the railroad tracks, strung out in a long line between clusters of buildings at either end. The Iranians had moved two large troop trucks near the tracks at the exact center of the road and the city; a half-dozen men were standing in disorganized clumps around the vehicles.

  Poor discipline, thought Stoner, switching his weapon to single fire to snipe them, one by one.

  TURK REACHED THE SLOPE OF ONE OF THE FIRST HILLS overlooking the city before realizing he was alone. He climbed up, some seventy or eighty feet, and looked back in confusion. The Whiplasher was in the center of town, walking near the vehicles parked there, methodically eliminating soldiers.

  Turk watched in wonder as the trooper single-handedly took on what had to be a platoon-sized force. The enemy didn’t gang up, and the groups of soldiers east and west at either end of the village remained where they were, but it was still an impressive, almost superhuman show. Even Grease couldn’t have accomplished it.

  Was he just lucky? Could he keep it up?

  Turk climbed to the rounded peak and surveyed the area behind him. Hills poked out of the desert like measles. There were clumps of vegetation, mostly in the valleys between the hills.

  A pair of jets passed to the southeast. He started to duck, afraid they’d been sent as reinforcements, then realized they were in a landing pattern.

  The same base as the Phantoms he saw landing earlier, he thought. The base that had been empty.

  WITH THE LAST OF THE IRANIANS DEAD, STONER CONSIDERED taking one of the vehicles. But it would be easily spotted, especially from the air; he’d heard aircraft and decided that he would do better, at least in the short term, on foot. So he turned and ran back toward the ruins.

  “Map subject,” he told the computer in the smart helmet.

  A map appeared in the lower left-hand corner of the visor, showing Turk’s location and his own. Turk Mako was several hundred yards away, on the top of a hill.

  Kill him now.

  Stoner heard the order in his head, and recognized it as a remnant of the person he’d been—the assassin created as the ultimate weapon, guided by hypnotic suggestion.

  He was no longer that person. He was Mark Stoner—not quite the man he’d been before the accident, but more himself than the robot he had become. He decided what he did, not some human programmed with designer drugs.

  He would bring Turk Mako back alive.

  TURK WATCHED THE WHIPLASH TROOPER RUN TOWARD him, moving faster as he approached. He was a big man, thick at the shoulders though not the waist. Dirt and dust trailed behind his feet. He ran like a sprinter, but faster. Turk had never seen a man run that fast, not when he was training with the Delta team, not when he was a high school athlete.

  The two remnants of the Guard unit were still back at the village, split in two and separated by nearly two miles. They weren’t moving to pursue. Perhaps they didn’t even know what had happened.

  Turk let his rifle slide down by his side as the man came closer. He was starting to feel tired again, starting to feel the aches in his muscles.

  The man ran up the hill, his rifle pointed directly at him. Turk felt his throat tighten; his heart clutched, contracting with a long beat.

  What was this?

  The man stopped, gun still pointing at him. “Captain Mako?”

  “Yes.”

  “Stoner. Let’s go.”

  Stoner turned to head north.

  “Wait,” said Turk. “Not that way.”

  The trooper turned back.

  “I have an idea,” said Turk. “I think I know how we can get out of Iran quickly.”

  12

  Pasdaran Base 408

  Kushke Nosrat, Iran (Manzariyeh)

  CAPTAIN VAHID WATCHED THE TWO F-4 PHANTOMS SET down on the closer of Manzariyeh’s two runways, then bump along the access ramps and head for the apron adjacent to the terminal building. The uneven concrete pavement was one of several signs of neglect only visible up close. With Qom closed to foreign pilgrims and the air force evicted, the Pasdaran troops quartered here had little incentive to keep the place in top shape. They didn’t even keep the name: known to the air force as Manzariyeh, the few men they had met here on the ground used the civilian “Kushke Nosrat” and stared blankly when he’d said “Manzariyeh.”

  “More planes,” said Kayvan. “But no maintainers.”

  “Yes.”

  “They can’t expect us to fly without fuel.”

  “It’s supposedly on its way.” More than a little of Vahid’s frustration slipped into his voice. They’d been here for hours, told to stand by and join the Phantoms on reconnaissance but given no support—not even a place to sleep.

  The Pasdaran were ignorant animals and idiots.

  “I wonder what we did to deserve this punishment,” added Kayvan. “Escorting old ladies.”

  “It’s not punishment,” said Vahid. “It’s an honor.”

  “An honor, flying with Phantoms? What are we protecting them from? The scientists’ own errors blew up their labs.”

  Vahid whirled. “Shut your mouth,” he told the lieutenant. “Just shut it.”

  “Why? You know the Americans didn’t send bombers. We would have seen them. Even the B-2s aren’t invisible.”

  “Shut your mouth, Lieutenant. Keep your criminal thoughts to yourself.”

  “Don’t worry, Captain. I won’t hurt your chances for promotion.”

  Vahid just barely kept himself from decking the man.

  “I’m going inside to see if I can find something to eat,” he told Kayvan. “Stay with the planes.”

  “But—”

  “Stay with the planes, Lieutenant, if you know what’
s good for you.”

  Where the hell was their fuel?

  13

  Istgah-E Kuh Pang

  COLONEL KHORASANI COULDN’T UNDERSTAND WHAT the major was telling him.

  “Half of your company?” said Khorasani. “Half your company is dead?”

  “Twenty men,” admitted the major. “But the enemy has not escaped. They are still in the ruins. Hiding.”

  “How many?”

  “Two dozen at least. Maybe more.”

  The major described how his unit had surrounded the village, then been ambushed from the site of the ancient city at the edge of the desert. By the time the major finished, the enemy force had increased twofold.

  Khorasani was split between disbelief and awe. How had such a large force managed to get inside Iran, let alone avoid notice over the past two days? Even allowing for some exaggeration—the major, whose shirttail was askew, was clearly not the most competent officer in the Pasdaran—the enemy force must be considerable. By the time Khorasani arrived, the enemy force had retreated, though there was still some scattered automatic rifle fire near the ruins.

  One or two enemy soldiers—even a dozen—might be dealt with. But there would be no explaining away something this size.

  On the other hand, the regular army was responsible for dealing with conventional enemy forces. They would be the ones to blame.

  “I’ve called for reinforcements,” continued the major. “We should have more forces soon.”

  “Send more people south,” said Khorasani, “so they can’t escape from the ruins.”

  “I have sent two squads into the hills. I will send more when I have them. They won’t escape.”

  “Good.”

  “I was wondering, Colonel—should I call the army for reinforcements? The air force has flown over a few times, but they do not yet—”