Drone

by Mike Maden

  August stationed an insertion team at the tunnel exit on the American side, and an insertion team at the tunnel entrance on the Mexican side. The American exit was located inside of a Castillo-owned tire warehouse; the Mexican entrance was located inside of a blue stucco Assemblies of God church, also owned by the Castillo organization. Both ends of the tunnel were lightly guarded by a few armed men stationed aboveground.

  When the six tunnel occupants had bedded down for the night, August signaled both teams to take out the tunnel guards. August didn’t want the robots to have all of the fun. He let his human team members drop the tunnel guards with suppressed rifle fire.

  After cutting all of the power down in the hole, each insertion team lowered two Talon SWORDS tracked robots into their respective entrances. The large suitcase-portable tracked vehicles were loaded out with similar packages. In addition to video optics, two of the tracks were mounted with 6mm grenade launchers and 5.56mm semiauto rifles; the other two tracks were outfitted with breaching devices and smoke delivery systems.

  One of both types of drone was dropped in each entrance, along with signal relay boosters to ensure continuous video feeds and radio-control operation of the Talons from the surface.

  August watched the green, ghostly night-vision images of the chaos wrought by the robots with scientific detachment. Groggy, blinded in the dark, and choking on smoke, the defenders shot wildly at the mechanical sounds they heard in the lightless void, but within minutes, the first five targets had been gunned down or shredded with grenade fragments.

  The lone survivor, Alejandro Castillo, had miraculously escaped into an office space and bolted the heavy wooden door. It took August another ten minutes to breach it. The Talon SWORDS had been used extensively in bomb disposal and bunker-breaching missions during the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. A simple wooden door was no match. The SWORDS blew off its hinges, revealing Alejandro cowering in the dark. Thirty rounds of steel-jacketed ammo broke his torso open like a crab hammer.

  “Sehr gut, August,” Pearce whispered in the German’s earpiece.

  “Danke.” August switched channels and barked orders to his team. They had to pull those units out and evacuate the area before the federales showed up, which Mann estimated would be in fifteen minutes.

  They left behind a timed demolition charge that collapsed the entire tunnel structure minutes after they egressed. Forty-five minutes after the operation had begun, August, his men, and his robots were all safely back on American territory.

  23

  Tijuana, Mexico

  A black Cadillac Escalade rocketed down the parking garage ramp, skid plates throwing sparks as it banged over a speed bump.

  “There!” Julio Castillo screamed as he pointed at the exit turn.

  The driver threw himself into the sharp left-hand turn, slamming his chest against the shoulder belt with the centrifugal pull. The big SUV tires shrieked on the slick concrete floors of the empty parking garage, still under construction.

  A hundred feet behind them, a Schiebel S-100 helicopter fitted with the GTMax artificial intelligence “learn as you fly” autopiloting package and a six-barreled 7.62mm Minigun raced after them. The three-foot-tall German-manufactured helicopter had already chased them off the highway into the parking structure. Julio couldn’t believe the helicopter would follow them into such a cramped space. They’d dodged scissor lifts and stacked pallets on every level up, and still it followed. The top of the ramp was blocked, so they had to whip around and head back down. The helicopter had just fired its first short burst and missed, blowing chunks of concrete out of the wall in front of the SUV on the last turn.

  Julio glanced back to see that the unmanned helicopter had missed the last turn and was racing past their position. His face was drenched in sweat, but not from the sweltering heat outside.

  The driver turned hard again. Julio banged his head against the thick bulletproof glass but he hardly noticed.

  “Can’t you drive any faster?” Julio screamed.

  The driver said nothing but mashed the gas pedal harder. The Escalade roared down the sloping straightaway.

  “Where the fuck is it now?” Julio screamed, his head on a swivel. His three lieutenants in back peered through the windows, their big pistols drawn as if they were prepared to shoot the drone down.

  The Escalade bucked savagely as it crashed over another speed bump. But the big SUV was flying too fast now. The driver stomped on the brake as he whipped into the next turn. The forward momentum threw all of them against the seat belts, then the sharp left turn crashed their bodies hard into the right-side doors as the Escalade drifted toward the far wall.

  BANG! The side panels crumpled and sparked as the SUV scraped against the concrete wall, but the driver soon righted the vehicle and mashed the throttle again. The exit was just a hundred meters ahead, a big black square framed in the harsh sodium lights of the parking garage.

  Julio roared with delight. He pounded the driver’s shoulders with both of his beefy hands. “You son of a bitch! You did it!” The men in the back laughed, too, until the helicopter dropped into the center of the exit.

  “Gun it!” Julio screamed. He knew the copter would pull away before it got rammed. The driver crushed the gas pedal to the floor.

  The Minigun flashed. Three hundred armor-piercing incendiary rounds poured through the windshield like liquid lead. The Escalade exploded in a ball of fire.

  The helicopter rose at the last second to avoid the fiery wreck as it tumbled end over end out of the exit, finally coming to a halt in the middle of the busy street. Oncoming traffic slammed squealing brakes. Bumpers crashed, glass broke, horns honked.

  The burning hulk of the Escalade continued to roar with flames, superheating the already sweltering night air as the pilotless Schiebel slipped away, its stealthy AI navigation program guiding it back to base.

  Isla Paraíso, Mexico

  Pearce studied his monitor. Ten thousand feet above, one of his surveillance drones drew lazy circles around the small island. César Castillo was nowhere in sight, but Pearce had seen him enter his palatial home earlier that evening. So far, so good.

  On the western side of the island, two Castillo guards stretched on loungers by the pool. They were painted like slim gray ghosts in Pearce’s thermal-imaging camera. The tips of their cigarettes flared to white-hot pinpoints when they inhaled. The other two guards patrolling the far side of the home were more diligent. Their skin glowed a whiter shade of gray because they were hotter from trudging steadily in the humid night air.

  Pearce turned to the other two monitors at his station on the boat. They also featured thermal-imaging cameras, but targeting reticles were centered on the screens as well. These were the cameras mounted on two Spartan Scouts, small unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) stationed on either side of the island. The first Spartan monitor was barely catching the tops of the heads of the two lounging guards on the western side, but the other Spartan Scout reticle easily targeted the first of the two guards patrolling the eastern perimeter.

  Pearce engaged the automatic targeting program for the eastern Spartan’s weapons system, which was fitted with a suppressed M110 semiauto sniper rifle firing 7.62mm slugs. The western boat was configured exactly the same way. Both vessels were rubber pontoon platforms, like Zodiacs, with reinforced polymer decking for the gun systems. Tonight’s sea was choppy, but the guns were mounted on a computerized stabilizer to neutralize the motion.

  The eastern Spartan scoped on the rear guard first and dropped him effortlessly. The dead man’s rifle clattered on the ground, alerting his partner, who whipped around to face his fallen comrade. A second later he was tossed backward like a rag doll by a slug that caught him high in the chest.

  Suppressed weapons aren’t silenced weapons; their sound is only dampened. When the guards by the pool heard the two dull shots on the far side of the estate, they leaped to their feet and scrambled into defensive positions, facing the eastern side.


  Pearce engaged the western boat. The guards stood taller now and their fully exposed bodies glowed eerily on the video screen. Their heads lit up like flares as adrenaline and exertion raised their body temperature, the additional heat venting out of the tops of their scalps.

  The reticle squared on the first man’s glowing head just a moment before a bright-white blotch of fluid flowered on the other side of his skull. His corpse dropped silently on the monitor.

  The other guard threw down his weapon and dashed in the opposite direction, heading for the western slope leading down to the water.

  The Spartan’s automatic rifle tracked him as he slipped and twisted down the steep incline.

  Pop.

  Blood exploded in white petals on the slope behind him. The reticle tracked the limp corpse as it tumbled down the hill.

  It almost didn’t seem fair to Pearce, despite the fact they were cartel scumbags. Even the best human snipers he’d ever worked with missed their shots sometimes. But not the machines. They never missed.

  Human snipers were bounded by human frailty; the weapons systems they used were always superior to the operator using them. Hitting a target was a relatively simple algorithm with known variables: distance, friction, target speed, wind speed, projectile weight. New onboard computational systems and “smart” guided bullets were even solving those equations for human snipers. The profession was quickly becoming a “point and shoot” proposition. But human snipers contended with other variables, too: stinging sweat, the need to breathe, beating hearts, nagging doubts, sick kids back home, lack of sleep, fears. Most missed shots were caused by one or more of these all-too-human frailties.

  Pearce disengaged both Spartan weapons systems as a safety precaution, then powered up his own small boat and motored toward the quay, where he tied up his craft next to Castillo’s yacht.

  Pearce scrambled up the winding path. There was a quarter moon out tonight and he didn’t need his night-vision goggles. His pack was heavy and he sweated fiercely. When he reached the house, he ducked inside, carefully scanning for guards he might not have accounted for, but there were none. It was strange that there had only been four men protecting the head of the entire organization.

  Was Castillo that confident of his defenses?

  Pearce was certain that Castillo was locked away in his panic room bunker twenty feet below the estate. His security protocol would have called for him to immediately escape into the bunker if shots were ever fired.

  Pearce proceeded to Castillo’s lavish office with its 360-degree view of the gulf and opened up the hidden panel showing the live video feed of Castillo in his panic room bunker. The drug lord carried his favorite gun in one hand, a chromed .50 caliber Desert Eagle encrusted with rubies and diamonds. In his other hand he had a phone connected to a landline that led to a satellite dish on top of the house. Old-fashioned copper wiring was the only way to get a cell signal down in that hole.

  Pearce pressed a button on the video console so he could listen in on the conversation. But whoever was on the other end never picked up. Pearce thought that was strange. Either the person on the other end of the line had been asleep on the job or else they weren’t following the security protocol.

  Pearce watched Castillo rant like a demon, then finally give up. The raging drug lord slammed the phone receiver so hard against the wall it broke in his hands.

  Pearce checked his watch. He estimated he still had fifteen minutes before he would have to evacuate. Plenty of time.

  The problem with hiring one of the world’s premier architectural firms was that they designed everything on high-end CAD systems, then stored the digital blueprints on mainframes for reference on current and future projects. That was Castillo’s fatal mistake. Ian had pulled up Castillo’s palace blueprints in no time. It was the bunker on the property that convinced Pearce that Castillo would choose this location for his final stand.

  Pearce located Castillo’s small safe and opened it easily with a computerized lock pick. He pulled out all of the contents and stuffed them into a dry bag. What really caught Pearce’s attention was a sandwich baggie full of SD cards, the kind used in video cameras. He couldn’t wait to find out what was on them.

  Pearce dashed through the house to the kitchen area. According to the blueprints, the bunker’s air ducts were hidden behind the tiled walls of the villa, but an access door was located beneath the kitchen sink for duct inspections and repair. Pearce pulled on a gas mask, opened the access door, and snaked a long, thin plastic tube down into it, then he connected a small gas bottle from his utility belt to the line. After he emptied the bottle’s contents, he tossed the bottle aside and shut the access door.

  After stripping off his mask, he jogged back to the bunker video monitor. Castillo paced furiously, a crazed, caged animal. Pearce held up his smartphone and recorded the monitor images. Castillo’s legs soon turned wobbly and he tripped, then stumbled, and finally fell to the floor, his eyes rolling into the back of his head. His arms and legs jerked wildly as his jaw clacked open and shut like a rapidly blinking eye. Seconds later, he was dead.

  Satisfied, Pearce exited his phone’s camera function and pocketed it.

  The last item on Pearce’s agenda was in the heavy rucksack he’d hauled up the hill. It contained a specially designed two-stage demolition device. He armed it and set the timer, then jogged back down to his boat.

  When his boat and the two Spartans had sped out a couple of miles, he cut the engines and turned around just in time to watch the top of the island erupt with a deafening roar. A mushroom cloud of fire boiled up into the night sky, fueled by a canister of white phosphorus. It almost looked like a volcanic explosion. It lit the ocean surface for twenty miles in all directions. Pearce assumed that NORAD was going crazy right about now.

  A gentle ocean breeze brushed against Pearce’s face. The phosphorus smelled a little like garlic. He fired up his engines and headed home.

  24

  Maiquetía, Venzuela

  Sandwiched between the steeply rising mountains looming behind it and the vast Caribbean sea on its doorstep, the city of Maiquetía featured a deepwater port, an unlimited coastline, and the Simón Bolívar International Airport. There was also a secured compound that protected a safe house. Ulises Castillo had been its only guest for the last week. The last surviving Castillo was under the special protection of General Agostino Ribas, the defense minister of Venezuela.

  Udi and Tamar were bored to tears. They had been floating off the coast of Maiquetía on a sixty-three-foot yacht for three days. Myers had forbidden Pearce to take out Ulises on Venezuelan soil so Udi and Tamar were reduced to babysitting.

  The first day the Israelis arrived was the most exciting. They went onshore and planted spider drones equipped with microphones and pinhead-size cameras for data collection on Ulises, but they had been confined to the yacht at sea ever since. The boat was also equipped with long-range laser voice detection and video surveillance systems. They even had an RQ-11 Raven, a miniature unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that could be launched by hand at a moment’s notice. But that was their only drone. They were too far away from friendly airstrips for ground-launched operations.

  When General Ribas suddenly arrived at the safe house with an armed escort, Udi and Tamar scrambled into action. Ribas entered Ulises’s living quarters alone, leaving his two personal bodyguards outside the door.

  Udi and Tamar tuned in to the conversation that was being recorded on video.

  * * *

  Ribas puffed thoughtfully on a fat cigar, clouding the small living room with blue smoke. The two men sat opposite each other on worn leather couches, separated by a glass coffee table.

  “Your father and I have been friends for a long time. That is why he entrusted you to my care.” Ribas leaned forward and pointed his cigar at Ulises. “You know, I held you in my arms once when you were a small baby.”

  “You and Papa ran Colombian cocaine together back in the ’80s,” Ulise
s said.

  “Whores, too. We made good money.”

  “Still do, from what he says.” Ulises smiled.

  Ribas roared with laughter. “Just like your old man!” Ribas took a long, thoughtful drag on his cigar before stabbing out the butt in the ashtray on the table. “Look, I have some bad news.”

  Ulises frowned. “My father?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?” Ulises demanded.

  “It does not matter. I am truly sorry.”

  “The Americans?”

  “Yes, of course. Who else could it be? They are animals.” Ribas observed the ruthless young Castillo carefully.

  Ulises stared at his enormous hands, emotionless. “It was inevitable, I suppose,” Ulises said. “The Americans are too powerful.”

  “You are welcome to remain here, of course,” Ribas offered.

  Ulises glanced back up, smiling. “I can’t kill Americans sitting here.”

  Ribas laughed again. “Your father would be proud.”

  “How soon can you get me back to Mexico?”

  “How soon can you be ready?”

  Ulises stood. “I’m ready now.”

  Ribas stood as well. “I already have a helicopter waiting for you at the airport.”

  “Helicopter?” Ulises knew that Mexico was too far away for a helicopter unless it had air-refueling capabilities.

  “I have made arrangements for you with one of our agents in Aruba. He is making arrangements to smuggle you from there to Veracruz. We must be extremely cautious, hijo, if we hope to get you home alive.”