Drone

by Mike Maden

  “And he definitely got on the bus?”

  “Yes. And the bus is sold out. Packed like a tin of sardines, I’m sure.”

  Pearce heard the concern in Ian’s voice. “Don’t worry. He’s not going to blow it up. He would’ve just planted a bomb or ambushed it along the way if that was his target.”

  “Want me to contact the local gendarmes? Pull him off?”

  “No. Can’t take the chance they’ll lock him away and we won’t get a crack at him. Besides, if he gets cornered, he might shoot it out and then there really will be a massacre. Let him come all the way to Los Angeles, and we’ll see what he’s up to. Good work, Ian.”

  Pearce clicked off, turned around, then jogged toward his condo two miles back on the beachfront. His mind began racing through checklists, preparing for a showdown with the Iranian.

  But a nagging thought dogged his steps. Why did Ali suddenly appear out of nowhere? He was too careful to let himself get caught on a ticket-counter camera, even at a bus station. It was too damn convenient. Ambush? Feint? Or something else?

  Washington, D.C.

  Congressman Gorman gaveled the House Armed Services Committee hearing into session. The gallery was full. A parade of expert witnesses handpicked by Diele appeared one after another all morning.

  Each of the witnesses had impeccable defense and intelligence credentials with prior government service, and each of them currently occupied a prominent position in the defense industry or academia. And each scripted answer they gave was designed to draw the inevitable conclusion that President Myers was incompetent, negligent, and quite possibly dangerous—charges that could easily rise to the standard of “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

  Myers’s defenders on the committee offered up the best arguments they could before the hearing was gaveled to a close, but it was the damning quotes of the anti-Myers experts that lit up the news cycle all day.

  No one in the mainstream media either noted or cared that the experts who testified against Myers all had skin in the game if she suddenly found herself impeached.

  Gulf of Mexico

  In 1950, the American merchant marine fleet comprised nearly half of all shipping vessels at sea, but in the twenty-first century that number fell to the low single digits. The U.S. merchant fleet was probably the first great American industry completely outsourced in the twentieth century.

  In 2013, there were fewer than three hundred American-flagged cargo ships, and one of them was the Star Louisiana, a fifty-one-thousand-ton Panamax containership hauling Pennsylvania-built high-tech power-generation and transmission equipment destined for Shanghai, China.

  The captain of the Star Louisiana, Angela Costa, was a third-generation merchant mariner, the child of a Portuguese sailing family with roots in Massachusetts and, generations before that, the Azores. Fifteen minutes earlier, she’d greeted a new day standing on the outer bridge wing sipping hot coffee while watching the great silver disk of the sun rise out of the gray gloom. The long, white foamy trail churning behind her vessel reached straight toward the eastern horizon. Sunrises and coffee were her morning ritual, and she’d performed it on every ocean she’d ever sailed. She savored this morning’s sunrise ritual especially. There wouldn’t be many more for a while. When she got back to home port, she would inform her husband that she was, indeed, finally pregnant. It was time to exchange the chart table for a changing table, at least until the little skipper started school.

  Captain Costa was in the galley securing another cup of freshly brewed dark roast when she was summoned on the intercom by her anxious first mate. A Mexican Azteca-class naval patrol boat was closing fast at twenty-five knots.

  The big radar-controlled 40mm Bofors deck gun on the Joaquín began firing just as Captain Costa reached the bridge. The first round tore into the thin steel skin of the six-hundred-foot-long freighter ten feet above the waterline. The whole ship shuddered with the strike. Another shell followed five seconds later, slamming into one of the big stacked containers on deck. It tumbled overboard with twenty tons of diesel motor parts inside. The splash leaped thirty feet into the air.

  The captain bellowed orders to the radio operator to send out a Mayday to the naval air station in New Orleans and report they were under attack.

  Minutes later, a pair of F/A-18 Hornets flown by the River Rattler squadron scrambled into action.

  Captain Costa ordered the helmsman hard to port, trying to turn her big ship’s bow toward the Mexican warship to reduce her target profile. It was a completely futile gesture on her part, but it was better than doing nothing.

  The Joaquín, traveling at more than twice the speed of the freighter, turned to starboard, drawing out into a wider circle to improve its angle of attack. For a brief moment, the two ships actually were bow on, but the radar-controlled gun continued to fire. The armor-piercing round struck the topmost container on the bow and blew it to pieces, turning the machine parts inside to shrapnel that sprayed the surface of the water like shot pellets.

  The two ships were now only a thousand yards apart as their bows separated on the point of axis, and the patrol boat’s L70 Oerlikon 20mm cannon opened up, raking the Star Louisiana’s superstructure with withering fire at the rate of five rounds per second. The 20mm rounds shattered the thick marine window glass and shredded the bridge like tissue paper. The helmsman standing at his post took a round square in his broad chest. His upper torso disintegrated in a spray of blood and bone as shards of glass and steel pinged around the cabin.

  The captain and the first mate had instinctively hit the deck, both barely escaping decapitation by the molten lead scythe roaring above their heads. They were safe for the time being. The Mexican warship was low in the water relative to their position on the deck inside the high bridge superstructure. But that would last only until the Mexicans came full around and could fire on her exposed port side.

  Right now, though, Captain Costa’s ship was drifting to a halt. Man-size wooden ship wheels and brass-plated engine-order telegraphs had disappeared decades ago, replaced by an array of computer monitors, control sticks, and track balls that looked more like the bridge of a spaceship than a merchant vessel. Now that the helmsman’s torso was sprayed over the back wall of the bridge and his station smashed, the engines were cycling down and the ship’s rudder returned to neutral position.

  Costa belly-crawled toward the helmsman’s station. She had to find a way to switch the systems back to manual and get the ship under way. Her elbows bled as they scraped across the razor-sharp glass and metal fragments on the rubberized deck.

  Another 40mm round slammed into the sky-blue hull of the Star Louisiana and the ship shuddered again. The chief engineering officer’s voice shouted over the loudspeakers that the number one engine had just been destroyed. Costa knew that the chief was shouting because the engine room was so damn loud, not because the old salt was panicked. She kept crawling, and wondered what the adrenaline dump into her bloodstream was doing to her baby.

  * * *

  The bridge of the Joaquín was in significantly better shape than the bridge of the Star Lousisiana, though the dried blood from the slaughtered Mexican crew on the steel deck wouldn’t have passed the lieutenant’s inspection under normal circumstances.

  “Two aircraft, closing fast, six hundred knots, lieutenant,” said the radar operator in Farsi.

  “That’s it, then. Helmsman, come hard to starboard. Let’s ram the great fat bitch,” the lieutenant ordered.

  The young Iranian naval officer was surprisingly calm for his first action, the senior helmsman noted. Under normal circumstances, he would have nominated him for a hero’s medal. But there was no need now. Martyrs received their rewards from the hand of Allah himself.

  “Coming hard to starboard, Lieutenant.”

  The Iranian naval crew had been brought in for just such a mission. They had been stationed in Cuba for over three months waiting for an opportunity for naval jihad against the Great Satan and had spent
their time studying Mexican naval operations and Spanish. Operating the vessel was simple enough; ship controls were universal in design and function these days. All of the enlisted men selected were veteran sailors and eager for martyrdom.

  The ship’s bow turned surprisingly fast and soon pointed directly at the giant white letters painted along the side of the enormous hull.

  “All ahead flank.”

  “All ahead flank,” the helmsman repeated.

  With any luck, the lieutenant hoped, they’d rip the containership in half and sink her before the American fighter bombers pinging on his radar scope could stop them.

  The two automatic deck guns continued to boom and roar as they fired their shells. The noise was fearsome even inside the sealed bridge. The air bore the faint copper smell of the explosives despite the air scrubbers. The big white letters on the containership were quickly pockmarked with giant shell holes and the big steel containers on deck practically melted under the stream of lead from the 20mm gun.

  “One minute to target, sir!” the helmsman shouted proudly.

  “Inshallah!” the lieutenant shouted back with a joyous smile.

  But the lieutenant had made a tactical error. By maneuvering the Joaquín into ramming position, he put himself between the two F/A-18 Hornets and the Star Louisiana. That gave the Hornets a clear line of sight to the Joaquín. They acquired radar lock on their target, then fired four antiship missiles from twenty miles away.

  Too late.

  Ten seconds later, the bow of the Joaquín tore into the starboard side of the big containership, ripping a twenty-foot-tall hole in the hull and fatally snapping the ship’s steel spine.

  The Iranians cheered as they were thrown against the bulkheads with the force of impact, but their victory cries caught in their throats as the four inbound missiles struck the Joaquín, vaporizing the warship in a cloud of fire and steel.

  Thirteen minutes later, the Star Louisiana sank with all hands on board.

  Inshallah.

  55

  San Diego, California

  The news about the Mexican patrol boat attack on the American freighter and its subsequent sinking by U.S. Navy aircraft jammed the radio and television news broadcasts all day, but Pearce couldn’t pay attention to any of it. Pearce knew Myers would have her hands full and she’d be lucky to get out of a full-blown shooting war with Mexico before the day was over.

  But that was her problem. Pearce and his team were laser-focused on tracking Ali and hell-bent on setting up a capture with zero civilian casualties, which was growing increasingly unlikely.

  After arriving at L.A.’s Union Station by bus, Ali grabbed a couple of cabrito tacos from a nearby food truck and washed them down with a grape soda before purchasing a ticket with cash for a shared Prime Time Shuttle ride to the San Diego airport. What made Pearce nervous was that Ali wore a beige windbreaker that he kept zipped up at all times.

  Judy Hopper flew Pearce in a company helicopter to the San Diego airport where Pearce Systems maintained a private hangar. The Eurocopter AS350 she was flying was decked out with Pearce Systems corporate logos, which wasn’t ideal, but there weren’t any other options at the moment.

  Pearce grabbed the company car—an unmarked sterling gray 2013 Ford Mustang Shelby GT 500—out of its designated parking spot and took up station at the shuttle drop-off ten minutes before the shuttle was due while Hopper waited for him to radio her.

  At the San Diego shuttle drop-off, Ali grabbed a taxi that jumped on southbound I-5. Pearce trailed Ali in his Mustang as Judy kept tabs on both of them by helicopter. A few minutes into the ride, she called Pearce.

  “He’s heading for Petco Park. That’s got to be his target.”

  “Agreed,” Pearce said.

  “We’d better grab him before he gets in. The Padres game is sold out. I heard it on the radio.”

  Pearce knew that if Ali really did have access to a bomb or some other WMD, Petco Park would be the perfect venue to set it off—live on national television. Pearce weighed the arguments raging in his head. Ali was probably wearing a suicide vest under that zippered jacket and was probably smart enough to load it up with glass marbles and some kind of detonator that kept him from being caught by any of the metal detectors he’d already passed through. If the Iranian had booked his reservation for the seventy-two-virgin hotel, a mass murder at Petco Park was the perfect place to check in.

  But something still didn’t add up. Ali had practically begged to be discovered and followed. He made no attempt to hide his face with either a hat or sunglasses, let alone engage in the tricks every junior field operative employs to avoid detection by electronic surveillance. Ali wanted to be discovered and followed. Why?

  “Stay close, Judy. I might need you. How far away are Johnny and Stella?” Pearce had had Judy contact them as soon as Ali hit the freeway.

  “Twelve minutes, tops.”

  Ali’s cab dropped him off at Petco Park just in time for the start of the second inning. The sellout crowd of over forty-five thousand people roared as some sort of a play was made inside. He picked up a ticket at the will-call booth for the sold-out game against the Los Angeles Dodgers and dashed inside.

  Pearce dropped his car off at the valet service and ran up to the only open ticket window, desperate to find a way into the sold-out game without setting off alarm bells. Before he could concoct a cover story, the ticket seller asked, “You Troy Pearce?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Some guy just left this for you.”

  The ticket seller slid a ticket under the glass. Pearce snatched it up. The Iranian had style.

  Pearce raced through the casual stadium security with a flash of a fake CIA identity card and made his way to a third-floor Premier Club suite right behind home plate. He pushed through the unlocked door.

  Ali stood at the bar and poured himself a club soda. His windbreaker was off. No suicide vest. Not even a gun or a knife.

  Pearce unholstered his .45 caliber Glock and marched straight at the Iranian, shoving the muzzle tip against the side of Ali’s head.

  Ali didn’t flinch. He held up the glass with the fizzy water and said, “Cheers,” lifting the drink to his mouth. Pearce batted it away.

  “You Americans. No manners.”

  “I’m two heartbeats away from blasting your brains against the wall. Tell me why I shouldn’t?”

  “Because if it was a good idea, you would have already done so. Why haven’t you, Pearce?”

  Hearing the Iranian pronounce his name chilled him. The Quds Force was a serious organization with world-class intelligence-gathering capabilities, but it was more likely that Ali had gotten his name through the torture he’d put Udi through. Pearce’s grip tightened on the pistol.

  “No answer? Let me help you. Is it A, because you don’t know why I went to all the trouble to arrange this little meeting? Or is it B, because you don’t know what might happen if I don’t come out of this suite alive? Or is it C, because you sense there is something else at work behind the scenes that you still have not figured out?”

  “All of the above, ass wipe.”

  Ali smiled. “Honestly, I’m surprised. Now lower your weapon, or I will signal my man to fire his SA-7 at your helicopter and kill your friend Judy.”

  Pearce’s eyes narrowed. How does he know about Judy?

  “I’ve been monitoring your comms since Union Station.” Ali pointed at his Bluetooth earpiece. “We have scanners, too.”

  The SA-7 was the Russian version of an American shoulder-fired Redeye antiaircraft missile, perfectly capable of taking out a thin-skinned civilian helicopter. When Libya fell, dozens of SA-7s fell into Iranian hands, though they had plenty in their arsenal already.

  Pearce lowered his pistol. “Start talking.”

  Ali tapped his earpiece, shutting down the comm link. He didn’t want his associates to hear the proposal he was about to make to the American.

  “You are a businessman, so let me get down to
business.” Ali motioned to a chair. Pearce refused. Ali took a seat anyway, putting his feet up on a nearby table.

  “I need safe transportation to Tehran.”

  Pearce laughed. “Oh, really? Well, I have a need, too. A powerful need to throw your ass through that plate-glass window and watch you break your scrawny neck on the dugout railing. You tortured and murdered one of my friends and I mean to pay you back with interest.”

  “You mean the Israeli spy who came to Mexico to capture me? Don’t be such a child. His duty was to capture me; my duty was to kill him. I did my duty, he failed his. For soldiers such as ourselves, it is as simple as that, is it not?”

  Pearce clenched his fists. He was definitely going to enjoy beating this cold-blooded bastard to death with his bare hands.

  Ali leaped to his feet and kicked his chair aside.

  “If you think you have what it takes to kill me, I welcome the battle. In fairness, I should warn you: if I don’t win and you emerge from this suite without me, a thousand people will be killed in this stadium by explosive charges. Is that price too high to pay for you to get your vengeance?”

  Pearce inwardly raged. There was no question he could take the Iranian out. But Ali had beaten him at every turn so far. Better let this thing play out.

  “Why don’t you let the Mexicans ship you out?”

  “We are no longer on friendly terms.”

  “Because you were the one behind the Bravo attacks here in the States.” Pearce grinned. “The Mexican government must be pretty pissed off at you.”

  “You have a gift for stating the obvious. They are as eager to kill me as you are.”

  “What do I get in exchange for transporting you in one piece to Tehran?”

  “Information of the highest order. Information that affects the vital national security of your country. It’s far more valuable than my worthless skin.”