Drone

by Mike Maden

  When Jacinto’s wife got sick a long time ago, he took her to one of Victor’s clinics. It was her appendix, and they took it out for free. Very nice people, he remembered. And he remembered how surprised he was when Victor came in to see him and his wife. Mr. Bravo, everyone said. But Jacinto called him Victor, because they were children together, and they were friends. It made Jacinto very happy to see his old friend.

  But his friend was killed by the Americans. God damn them, he thought.

  A man came to Jacinto yesterday. He said he was Victor’s friend. That made Jacinto happy. Jacinto told him he was Victor’s friend, too.

  “Really? That’s an amazing coincidence. It’s almost like Victor wanted us to meet,” the man had said.

  Jacinto thought about that. The man was right. It truly was amazing.

  The man talked to Jacinto about Victor for a long time, about what a good man he was. Then he asked Jacinto to push his ice cream cart to Grauman’s Chinese Theatre tonight.

  “Why?” Jacinto asked. He didn’t push his cart in that direction very often.

  “Because Victor would want you to. Aren’t you his friend?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Then will you do this thing for Victor? He would want you to.”

  Jacinto thought about it. “Yes. I will do this thing. For Victor.”

  So Jacinto did it.

  And when the man told Jacinto to push his cart into the crowd as far as he could go, he did. And when he told him to be there at seven o’clock, and not one minute later, he did that, too, didn’t he? Jacinto didn’t know why he was supposed to be there at seven. But he did it because Victor would want him to do these things.

  Because Victor was his friend.

  Jacinto checked his watch again. It read 7:03.

  The sun exploded. At least that’s what it seemed like to Jacinto.

  A blinding white light. And noise, like ice picks in his ears.

  The explosion shredded Jacinto’s little ice cream cart. People were blown over in a big circle all around him, like cornstalks after the harvest.

  Jacinto didn’t know that Victor’s friend had packed his cart with C4 embedded with hundreds of ball bearings that morning. When it exploded, it acted like a daisy cutter, mowing down everyone in its path, including Jacinto, who was cut in half at the waist.

  The side of Jacinto’s face hurt where it was smashed against one of the cement squares with handprints. He couldn’t move, but he watched the blood filling up the handprint next to his face. The hand was much bigger than Jacinto’s. He wondered whose hand it was.

  48

  Washington, D.C.

  Early Saturday morning, Bill Donovan briefed President Myers and her cabinet.

  “At least a dozen attacks in as many states, with more reports coming in.”

  “Sounds like they’re on the move,” Early said.

  “Casualties?” Myers asked.

  “So far, thirty dead, ten times that many wounded, mostly minor injuries. RPGs, drive-by shootings, grenade attacks. Bombs were detonated at a movie theater in Hollywood, a Walmart in Knoxville, and a rodeo in Oklahoma City.”

  “And we think it’s Bravo people?” Myers asked.

  “Printed flyers read ¡VIVA VICTOR! at several sites; Facebook posts and Twitter feeds say the same thing. Sure looks like these attacks were in retaliation for the death of Victor Bravo.”

  “You can thank the damn Mexican television and radio stations in this country for that. They’re putting blood in the water,” one of Donovan’s assistant secretaries offered. “We can pull their FCC licenses right now, shut them down until they agree to stop running the Victor Bravo love letters.”

  “Then they would just run them on the Internet,” West countered. The FBI director was clearly frustrated. “They’re already there anyway.”

  “Then we shut those down, too, on the basis that they’re fostering terror attacks. The Patriot Act grants us that power.”

  “I don’t think free speech is the enemy here,” Myers said. She turned to Donovan. “Question for you, Bill. The Hollywood and Oklahoma City bombings look like suicide attacks. Were they?”

  “We’ve got security camera footage on both. Neither exhibited the classic signs—nervousness, eyes straight ahead, and the other telltale psychological markers. Locals ran fingerprints but no hits in our threat or crime databases. Probably illegals. We’ll know more about Knoxville in a couple of hours.”

  “And we’re certain it’s the Bravos behind all of this?”

  “Fans of Victor Bravo, for sure,” Donovan said.

  “Or who want us to think they’re fans,” Early offered.

  “What do you mean?” Myers asked.

  “The voices on the Cruzalta tape. The Iranians are connected to this somehow.”

  “If the Iranians were connected with anyone, it was Castillo, not Bravo,” Donovan said. “And there were only two voices on the tape. No way an operation this size could be carried out by just two assholes. I still think it’s the Bravos.”

  “I do, too. But weapons, training—the Iranians have contributed something,” Early insisted. “The Iranians had uploaded the El Paso footage, too. Their finger’s in the pie somewhere.”

  “What does that get us, Mike?” Myers asked.

  “Not much at this point, especially if the Iranians are independent operators.”

  “You mean like mercenaries?” Myers asked.

  “Yeah. But if this is a state-sanctioned op, we need to know. Have the DNI put more NSA assets on the Iranians. Maybe we can pick up some chatter on that end and get a better handle on this thing.”

  “Good idea, but it’s not enough. I want to know who’s on the ground right now killing Americans. What’s our best guess?”

  “The Bravos who blew the tank farm in Houston never reappeared. Those are the best candidates, without question,” West said.

  “What’s their next move?” Myers asked.

  “No way of knowing,” West said. “The targets have been random and geographically diverse.”

  “So we’re just waiting for the other shoe to drop?” Myers asked.

  No one said a word. The answer was obvious.

  Grapevine, Texas

  Six hours later, the other shoe dropped.

  Construction on local highways and interchanges, particularly the 114, the 121, and I-635, had been going on for years, and still had years to go, thanks to the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) and the billions of federal stimulus dollars that the “anti–big government” Texas congressional delegation had siphoned out of Washington coffers for their constituents.

  Grapevine residents had grown wearily accustomed to the massive construction vehicles lumbering along on the crowded freeways, usually clogged by lane closures and traffic cones, as whole sections of the interstate were being rerouted to fit the new TxDOT master plan. The big vehicles often had to exit and cross over surface streets where freeway ramps had been closed, so it wasn’t unusual to see asphalt tankers, cement mixers, flatbed tractor-trailers, and the like running through the city.

  That’s the reason no one paid any attention when a big rusty dump truck rattled into the back parking lot of the two-story Grapevine Christian Academy on a Saturday midmorning. In fact, the school had allowed construction vehicles to park there on more than one occasion. The school was just a mile or so from a section of Highway 114 that had been heavily renovated lately. The school parking lot was empty except for a late-model yellow Volkswagen Bug out front.

  Tom and Barbara Cole were the high school drama teachers and they were inside preparing for an early afternoon rehearsal, rearranging some of the musical scores from Godspell that the kids would be putting on in the fall. The building was brand-new and well insulated from the brutal Texas heat. The heavy insulation also masked the sound of the roaring jumbo jets that flew directly over the school in their flight paths to DFW Airport just two miles away.

  Barbara had just finished a parti
cularly bawdy rendition of “Turn Back, O Man” on the big Yamaha piano when she and her husband both heard a giant whump coming from out back. It sounded like a big timpani drum was booming out in the parking lot. There were no windows where they were located so they couldn’t see what was going on, but it could well have been something connected with all of the construction. They were about to play the tune again when they heard another whump and then a third, fourth, fifth, and sixth in quick succession.

  “What’s going on out there?” Barbara asked.

  “Sounds like a pile driver,” Tom offered, only half believing it himself.

  She stood up from the piano and the two of them crossed to the back wall where there was a big steel exit door. The whumping continued and, in fact, got louder the closer they came to the door.

  Tom flung the door open and saw the big rusty dump truck parked just a few feet behind the building, but that’s the last thing he saw. A suppressed 9mm machine gun stitched bullets across his chest and into the wall behind him. He crumpled to the ground, blocking the doorway with his corpse.

  That gave Barbara enough time to scream, turn, and run back inside, with the sound of the 120mm mortar rounds still whumping in the bed of the big truck behind her, but the man who had killed her husband leaped over his corpse and chased after her. The Bravo opened fire just as she reached the big Yamaha piano. He emptied his magazine in her direction, splintering the black lacquered wood into a thousand pieces and putting two bullets in her spine. The piano strings thudded in ugly half notes as the slugs split them in two.

  The killer ran back out the door as the last of the sixteen mortar rounds arced into the air. It had taken the mortar crew just one minute and eleven seconds to loft all sixteen of the finned rockets.

  A gray Chrysler 300 screeched to a halt behind the dump truck and all four men of the mortar crew—three Bravos and Walid Zohar, Ali’s trusted Azeri sergeant—piled into the vehicle and raced away. They left the Israeli-manufactured Soltam K6 mortar behind because they didn’t have any more shells left to fire, and when the Americans found it, they would only be able to trace the serial number back to the Nicaraguan army depot where it had been stolen from two years ago, along with the shells.

  Dallas––Fort Worth International Airport, Texas

  The first 120mm shell slammed into the tarmac just short of Terminal A right next to a parked American Airlines 737 being loaded with passengers through a movable jet bridge. The explosion instantly killed three bag handlers and shattered the big starboard Snecma/GE turbofan engine.

  Mortar shrapnel ignited the fuel truck loading up the 737, which set off another explosion that immediately engulfed the aircraft and the jet bridge. Alarms began wailing.

  The passengers in Terminal A dropped to the floor as security personnel scrambled to preplanned defensive positions. Automated TSA warning messages blared on the overheads. “Remain where you are, stay under cover. Remain where you are, stay under cover.”

  Mortars kept falling. Accuracy wasn’t needed, just speed. The targets were thin-skinned commercial aircraft and fragile aluminum-and-glass airline terminals. Round after round slammed down within a quarter-mile radius of the terminal, each strike ripping the air like a thunderclap.

  Inside Terminal A, passengers cowered beneath food-court tables or inside the terminal restrooms, alarms still blaring, survivors screaming, moaning, praying in the swirling dust and smoke.

  And then the mortars stopped.

  Able-bodied survivors finally screwed up the courage to look around. Some tended the injured. Most crossed to the big picture windows—or to what was left of them—shattered glass crunching beneath their feet.

  The tarmac was littered with burning aircraft, smashed trucks, and scattered baggage carts, along with shoes, underwear, soda cans, styrofoam cups, golf clubs, and a thousand other artifacts.

  And then there was the carnage. Corpses broken, twisted, burning. Limbs scattered like leaves. A few bodies still strapped in their seats, smashed into the tarmac.

  It was hard to believe that so much damage could be inflicted in just one minute and eleven seconds.

  49

  Washington, D.C.

  “Yes, I’m watching it now, on Fox,” Myers sighed into her phone. Donovan was on the other end. “It looks like Dante’s Inferno.”

  The camera trucks were blockaded from the airport entrances so they could only manage long-distance shots. Black columns of smoke mushroomed into the bright blue Texas sky.

  “We’re shutting down all outbound flights around the country until we’re sure this thing is over with,” Donovan said. “We’re also putting every surveillance helicopter we can lay our hands on—metro police departments, military units, executive shuttles, even news copters—on a five-mile radius sweep of every major airport in the nation. There haven’t been any other reports of similar attacks, but there’s no point in taking any chances.”

  “Damn it. We’re still playing catch-up with these bastards. We’ve got to get ahead of them, right now.”

  “I’m initiating Plan Orange,” Donovan replied. “Unless you’re ready to announce a national emergency.”

  “Not yet. But I’m calling in all of the other National Guard units not already activated, just in case.”

  “Understood,” Donovan said.

  “Looks like we’ll be putting boots on the ground after all, Bill. I just never thought it would be in my own country.”

  State of Veracruz, Mexico

  Mo Mirza sweated like a pig.

  He’d grown up in Westwood near UCLA, his alma mater. Beach weather mostly. Not the smothering heat of a Mexican jungle. But here he had privacy. And his own landing strip.

  Mo was twenty-four years old, but looked like he was barely out of his teens. His thin beard was patchy and untrimmed, and his dark short-cropped hair was mottled with blue coloring. With his thick black-framed glasses, red high-top Converse basketball shoes, plaid Tony Hawk skater shorts, and a faded Ramones concert T-shirt, he looked every inch the quintessential American slacker.

  He was anything but.

  The jungle hangar was little more than a thatched roof on polls, but the natural material was perfect for thwarting optical and infrared surveillance. No walls, but plenty of room for the Reaper’s twenty-meter wing span and the big drums of aviation fuel.

  The Bravo airfield was primitive by any measure, but sufficient for the task at hand. Four of Ali’s Quds men with automatic rifles were a grim comfort, but the airstrip’s extreme isolation was their best defense. The locals didn’t bother them. This was a Bravo camp and they knew to stay far away, even if Victor was dead.

  Mo slapped at another mosquito on his neck and cursed as he ran another diagnostic check on the avionics package. The Chinese unit was a piece of crap, but he couldn’t risk using the American one. Either they’d track it or lock him out remotely. Both were bad news. He’d flown the Reaper with a portable ground-control station from a third-party vendor out of New York that played just like a video game, and the Israeli uplinks connected perfectly with Nasir 1, Iran’s global navigational satellite. But the Chinese unit sucked balls and made the Reaper hard to fly.

  Mo’s phone rang.

  “Will you be ready?” Ali asked.

  “Rechecking everything now. Any luck on the Blue Arrows?”

  Ali had a lead on a couple of the Chinese Hellfire knockoffs, designed for use with the CH-4, the Chinese Predator knockoff, also stolen from the U.S. arsenal. When Mo hijacked the Reaper, it only had two missiles left. Now it had none.

  “They’ll arrive in three days.”

  “Awesome. Then everything will be ready.”

  San Diego, California

  Pearce’s phone rang. It was his tech guru, Ian.

  “Tell me you found him,” Pearce said.

  “Not Ali. His uncle.”

  “Where?”

  Ian chuckled. “You’re not going to believe it.”

  50

  Wash
ington, D.C.

  Myers stood in the situation room of the DHS, studying the wall-length electronic touch-screen display map of the United States with Bill Donovan.

  Previous attacks had been color-coded according to severity. Red markers indicated wounded; black indicated fatalities. Tapping on any of the markers pulled up a text window with all available data, including victim photos, crime scene information, agency in charge at the scene, etc.

  The best shot they had to predict the future was to process the fire hose of data that was pouring in from the Utah facility as it daily analyzed petabytes—billions of megabytes—of images and data inputs it was receiving from all of the law enforcement agencies, along with the Domain Awareness Systems, which were linked to the thousands of security cameras guarding most public buildings. The only thing they were sure about so far was that the Bravos had split up their forces and spread their operations over the widest possible area. Soft targets were the norm.

  Drone Command had continued to beg, borrow, steal, and lease several more drone systems as well, including the recently decommissioned Blue Devil 2 hybrid airship, which the air force had spent over $200 million to develop but had decided to mothball. The nearly four-hundred-foot-long airship was capable of carrying thousands of pounds of surveillance payloads and keeping them aloft for twelve hours at a time. Ashley had deployed the Blue Devil 2 with a Gorgon Stare wide-area surveillance package over Los Angeles just two days before the Hollywood attack and was eager to find out what evil the Mind’s Eye “visual intelligence” software had uncovered. Until they could discern an attack pattern, DHS had ordered a general mobilization of all LEO resources. State, county, and city law enforcement agencies were on high alert; police reserve units were called up; television and radio stations ran public service ads extolling citizens, “If you see something, say something. Don’t be afraid to call in anything suspicious.”