Drone

by M. L. Buchman

  He watched astern as he dragged two glorious spirals of water along the surface behind him. Invisible in the night, to anything other than his carefully crafted radar, it was a thing of beauty.

  A glance aloft revealed stars of the radiance that could only be seen through night vision.

  Helen had tried to explain to him that flying the drone was very different from piloting a jet. But as a non-pilot, there was no way for her to explain it.

  Harvey wasn’t flying the drone.

  Harvey was the drone.

  It was the ultimate hand job: his slightest whim was answered by the UAV with unbelievable perfection.

  Not a drone.

  Definitely not a drone.

  An unmanned aerial vehicle.

  Except it wasn’t unmanned because he was here, one with the aircraft, flying far more surely than some piece of meat in a chair back in Nevada. Or even than some piece of meat in an F-35 Lightning II’s cockpit. All those brother pilots he’d so envied for their ability to fly were like mud on the ground.

  This was a future.

  Here he ruled the sky.

  Holding a hundred meters above the sea, the horizon lay over thirty kilometers to either side. His “vision” included everything big enough to throw back a radar signature.

  Off the US–Mexico border, mapped like a red line across his vision, the sea traffic dropped significantly. Now the main surface craft were the massive container ships bringing produce from Chile to the western US.

  All the way down along Baja he saw nothing unusual. Along the coast to Colombia, he even swung the extra eight hundred miles down to Ecuador. Narco-subs hadn’t been spotted that far south, but it didn’t mean they weren’t there. It turned out to be a waste of an extra half hour of his time.

  But on his sweep north, he spotted a trio of very deep-sea fishing boats driving out to sea in a loose formation a few kilometers apart. On a whim, he spiraled upward, taking his time as he climbed to sixty thousand feet and watched them slide west. Three fishing boats headed to sea in the dead of night.

  He imagined a plot of where their courses might converge, then began searching the area. It wasn’t long before he spotted the anomaly—a straight line radar pattern with no vessel to make it.

  Someone had told him that nature abhorred straight lines. Probably Old Man Tucker, who helped run the round-doored Harmony Wedding Chapel. Of course, he might have been talking about Harvey’s mom, as single women in Harmony could be counted on two fingers. If he was, Harvey didn’t want to know—imagining the old guy and his mom ever doing the dirty was far too weird.

  The straight line below was a reflection from his radar. He made three passes over it and determined that it was actually below the surface of the water. It was the line of air bubbles from the diesel engine exhaust reflecting aloft the turbulence it was causing underwater.

  “Well, isn’t that convenient?”

  “Isn’t what convenient?”

  Harvey almost stumbled in the air. He’d forgotten about how communication worked.

  There was no radio—no need for it with a drone.

  All he had to do was speak aloud and the operator sitting next to him at Groom Lake could respond immediately without any missed words or radio interference. They were just talking person-to-person two thousand miles away from the rest of his consciousness.

  For a second it broke the illusion and he could feel the padded chair in the bunker and the pressure of the blackout goggles on his face. Suddenly the conduit of information through the contact behind his right ear ached. He reached up to rub it and felt the pressure of the arm straps as his beautiful UAV tumbled sharply.

  He forced himself back down the conduit. Could feel himself moving up to the satellite in orbit and finally back down to the tumbling Casper. Almost viciously he grabbed control and righted the aircraft.

  “Do not talk to me while I’m flying unless I specifically ask something.”

  He heard only silence in the Groom Lake bunker.

  Good.

  Damn, but the situation was convenient, even if he wasn’t going to be explaining why out loud.

  For half an hour, he circled and waited.

  No other vessels in the area—they’d found a place far from the shipping lanes.

  At some signal, the submarine surfaced just as the three deep-sea fishing boats arrived. According to Harvey’s briefing, they would unload the submarine and then scuttle it in deep water. Throw away a four-million-dollar vessel after a single use of moving a billion dollars of cocaine. The three fishing boats would then return by three different routes to three different ports.

  He tipped his nose over and pointed straight down at the clustered boats and submarine.

  Just killing them was too easy.

  He let the speed build in the silence of an unpowered dive.

  At five thousand feet, he dumped a set of flares and began pulling up into a loop. The flares burst to life at a thousand feet and the boats were suddenly in a vast halo of light. In moments, they were firing weapons aloft at the drifting flares.

  But he now had the Casper down at sea level, still silent, cruising at just below the speed of sound, in a sweeping arc around them. He imaged boat names, ports of call, and the faces of every man aboard.

  They were firing nowhere near him and his speed was bleeding off. He was below six hundred miles an hour as he turned directly toward them.

  A hundred meters before he passed over the group, he lit full afterburners and aimed his nose straight up. Forty-five thousand pounds of thrust punched straight down onto the gathered boats.

  In the rearview, he could see that the three fishing boats were immediately capsized. He dumped an AGM-114 Hellfire set to fire astern and lased the submarine. Before the missile had time to accelerate to Mach 1.3, it impacted the sub.

  It didn’t even matter that it was a direct hit, the eighteen pounds of explosive would kill everyone in the water with just the blast shock.

  But it did hit the submarine dead on. The warhead punched through the sub’s Kevlar skin and detonated inside. Twenty meters of narco-sub and probably ten tons of cocaine unfolded like flower petals blown open from inside.

  He wished he could shut off his hearing, the techs back at Groom Lake were applauding.

  Harvey ignored them, spread his metaphorical wings, and went searching for another target.

  40

  Mel Davis turned his Ford F-150 pickup off SE Covington Sawyer Road onto 179th Ave SE just as his brother gutted out an off-key falsetto to match Carrie Underwood’s high note. She was belting out Cowboy Casanova on KMPS radio.

  Danny didn’t get that she was singing about assholes-to-all-women like him, or maybe he did but didn’t care. Thankfully his brother was a better aircraft mechanic than he was a man…or a singer. Besides, he was blood. Just no way was Mel going to be introducing him to any more eligible women—at least not ones that he or his wife ever wanted to be friends with again.

  Left onto 179th, he reminded himself again to fix the small green-and-white Airport sign that was listing badly after the winter rains had softened the ground at the turn. Crest Airpark lay up the narrow one-lane that climbed to the airfield between the thick Douglas fir trees. They had to get an early start today, they had lessons scheduled and the Cessna 152 still needed an oil change before the flight. Then he needed to order parts for Erin’s Piper—shit, he should have done that yesterday.

  Clearly the DJ was having a “Danny retrospective” as he spun up Little Big Town’s Better Man, even if all the wishing in the world wouldn’t make Danny into one.

  Up over the rise, Mel was halfway to the first hangar before he jolted the truck to a halt.

  “What?” Danny broke off in mid A-just-a-little-flat about how he enjoyed talking down to women.

  Mel could only stare out at the runway.

  Parked close by the tall trees at the north end of the lone runway, not even pulled over onto the taxiway, was what had to be the big
gest plane ever to land at Crest.

  “Is that…” Mel just couldn’t wrap his mind around what he was seeing.

  “Isn’t that one of those new fighter jets?”

  “The F-35 Lightning II,” some part of Mel’s brain coughed up. He could see across the way that a couple of the folks who had houses along the far side of the airport were out in their yards. Despite it being just past sunrise, some were dressed for work, some in bathrobes, and Tom Jenks stood with his fists on his big hips wearing nothing but a pair of tighty-whities that were a real eyesore on his bulbous frame—he looked like a Goodyear blimp with all that gray chest hair on display.

  But that didn’t change what was sitting in the middle of his runway. A hundred-million-dollar jet had been parked at his airport with the canopy popped open.

  He drove over the grass verge, cut between Simon’s Beech Bonanza and Tammy’s Cessna 172 and pulled up close beside the jet. It wasn’t all that much taller than his truck, so he eased up close beside the cockpit, then climbed out and into the bed of his pickup. It placed him high enough to see that the cockpit was unoccupied.

  “Think the keys are still in it?” Danny was looking over his shoulder.

  “No! Just…no!” Danny could drive women crazy and cost Mel friends, but no way was he letting his brother wreck a hundred million dollars of government fighter jet.

  Besides, with his luck, Danny would drop a bomb or shoot half the airpark with some stealth machine gun.

  “Who the fuck do I even call?”

  41

  “You really are hot shit, Mirrie.”

  Terence was no longer looking down at her. Instead, he was standing at the window peeking out between the curtains.

  “It appears that there are people waiting for you.”

  “What people?”

  “Wait for it…” He held up a finger as he watched someone out front, then swung his arm down just as there was a sharp knock on the front door downstairs. “Don’t know who they are. Some in uniforms, some not so much. I don’t think I have that kind of popularity.”

  The knock sounded again as Terence headed for the stairs.

  Then her phone rang with a number she didn’t recognize and a text message buzzed in before she could even answer it.

  “Wait a minute! Just everyone stop!”

  “I’ll get the door. You better answer…something.”

  “But I’m not even dressed!” She tucked her sheet and blanket more tightly around her.

  “You can answer a phone naked, you know.”

  She wore a t-shirt. That must be more teasing.

  He winked.

  Definitely teasing…she was fairly certain.

  “Naked text messages, too. Either way, better hustle along, girl. Doesn’t seem like the day is going to do any more waiting for the queen to put in an appearance.” He closed the door as he left.

  The text was from Holly, We’re here.

  Miranda answered the call with a, “Hold a moment please.” Then texted the six-digit code Holly would need.

  She could hear voices downstairs as Terence dealt with whoever was at the door.

  “Thanks for holding.” Rote politeness had its purposes. “How can I help you?”

  “I have a problem.” General Drake Nason’s voice sounded rough with exhaustion. “I think I found the jet that bombed your wreck.”

  “Oh.” She wasn’t sure what else she was supposed to say.

  “It ended up in the Pacific Northwest.”

  “Oh?” That didn’t seem likely. “At JBLM?” It was the only major military airfield in the area.

  “Someplace called Crest Airpark.”

  “No. Really, where?”

  “Crest Airpark,” the general repeated as if he was enjoying himself.

  “But…” She’d flown in there a couple of times. It was a tiny one-runway field tucked awkwardly in among tall trees in the hills above Kent, Washington. A training field for beginner pilots and a convenient countryside strip for people to keep their private planes or take private lessons. “So you have the pilot.”

  “Nope. No one heard it. Must have been a dead-stick landing, means no power.”

  “I know what it means.”

  “Oh, of course you do. No power, gliding in. Takes a really exceptional pilot to do that in an F-35 Lightning II.”

  The voices downstairs were becoming rather heated and Miranda was still only in an old t-shirt that wasn’t very long.

  “Why is someone downstairs? Are they your people?”

  “Downstairs? No. I don’t even know where you went last night.”

  “Well, someone is here,” she scooted over to the window and peeked out, misjudging the flexibility of the curtain material and momentarily revealing far more than she’d intended to the people looking up at her. She spotted one man’s wide grin before she realized that her t-shirt really didn’t extend down far enough. She let the material drop back into place. “Four Chevy Suburbans. Two police cars. And a lot of people in dark suits.”

  “What the hell?” General Nason didn’t sound happy at all. “Delay as long as you can. I’ll try to get people there. Give me the address.” As soon as she did, he was gone.

  Heavy footsteps on the stairs.

  She scooped up her clothes and knapsack, then retreated to the bathroom and locked the door.

  There was a knock on the door, “Ms. Chase. I’ve been asked to escort you to a meeting.”

  She yanked on her underwear as she scanned her options. She flushed the toilet in between yanking up her slacks and lacing her boots. She still needed a bra and a real shirt, but that seemed to be less of a priority at this particular moment.

  Her options, other than flushing the toilet again, were quite limited but they did include a window.

  Opening it, she looked down into Terence’s small back garden where they sometimes shared a quiet dinner beneath the blooming magnolia. To the side was a lip of the roof.

  The pounding renewed and quickly became more insistent.

  With a moment of inspiration, she dropped a towel and her one spare t-shirt out the window. They fluttered down to land on one of the patio chairs and the wrought iron table. She slung on her pack.

  Swinging out the window, she placed a foot on the roof’s edge. By clutching onto the corner trim, she eased onto the shingles and managed to edge her way up the steep slope until she’d reached the peak.

  There was a crashing sound of the bathroom door being broken open. Didn’t people understand the purpose of the little hole in bathroom doorknobs? All it took was sticking a slender object into the hole to unlock the door.

  The man fell for the ruse and shouted out that she’d jumped out the back window. People began running around the house. Except this was Georgetown and yards were very private. Someone climbed over the side gate, the next person kicked it down.

  She edged up to the peak and looked down at the street out front just in time to see a SWAT team truck roll up.

  Her phone rang again. She answered it quickly, but every face turned to look up at her.

  “What?” She didn’t even look at who had called and ruined her ploy.

  “Transport is almost there.” It was the general. “They’ll deliver you to the Pentagon.”

  “What about these other people? There’s a newly arrived SWAT team as well.”

  “Apparently the CIA has declared you as a suspect in a terrorist bombing incident and enlisted local forces to capture you. Anything you want to be telling me?” He offered a chuckle that was wholly inappropriate for the moment.

  The police had weapons aimed up at her as did members of the CIA—because she assumed that’s what the men in black suits were. The ones streaming out of the SWAT van were heavily armed and armored.

  Someone grabbed her ankle. She tightened her grip on the roof’s peak and kicked out instinctively. She contacted with something.

  A male voice cried out and he released her ankle.

  She turned i
n time to see a man with blood gushing from his nose sliding toward the edge of the roof. Before she could so much as call out a warning, he was over the edge.

  He stopped himself for a moment by grabbing the rain gutter. She could see by the flexion of the material that Terence had stout steel gutters rather than the aluminum ones.

  For a moment, the man’s white-knuckled grip remained in view.

  Then the gutter itself separated from the edge of the roof. The man cursed as his knuckles disappeared from view, then a grunt as he landed in the back yard. The CIA now owed Terence a new gutter.

  When she peeked back over the rooftop, she saw that the SWAT team had a sniper perched behind his van; his long rifle zeroed so exactly on her face that she imagined she could see her own reflection in the end of the scope.

  “Still with me, Miranda?” She’d forgotten about the general on the phone.

  “There’s a sniper out there. And the SWAT team is now racing into my friend’s house.”

  “I hope your friend relocked his front door when he closed it.”

  “You what?” Even as she protested, she saw the SWAT team scatter across the front yard and duck for cover. There was a hard explosion as they blew up Terence’s front door.

  “Look to your left.”

  Down the street, Miranda could see a television van slewed across the street. A cameraman and a reporter were squatting in the open doorway clearly filming her.

  “So my demise is to be on national television.”

  “I’d suggest that you wave, but I can see you need your free hand to stay on the roof. It’s making some great footage, by the way.”

  Miranda didn’t like her current perch even one-handed, but she had to hold the phone somehow.

  “They’re presently reporting about the police and CIA invading Georgetown. Right now the reporter is announcing that they are attacking two unarmed and highly respected NTSB officers. Oh, here comes the best part,” Drake was practically chortling, which sounded odd coming from a grown general.

  Miranda, perched on a rooftop in the center of Georgetown, tried not to feel self-conscious that everyone was looking at her. Then she glanced at the big camera and ducked lower behind the roof edge. Everyone!