Game of Drones Read online

  His response was immediate. “Extremely high. That’s why we need to get him to Gitmo so that we can mine him for information in a secure environment and develop a course of defense.”

  “Agreed. But that won’t make us safe—not completely. Al-Qaeda will still hold us responsible.”

  A hush fell over the room as the President got to his feet and stood before the center window of the three behind his desk. He looked out over the nighttime D.C. skyline as he spoke.

  “Cells are here in the homeland. There’s a reason why we need to keep our enemies close. Watch all Internet sites, all telecom lines. Get all agencies involved to monitor insurrectionist thinking and attitudes. Identify those willing to use this event as an excuse to take up the march in the name of Allah. We're always funding those research grants to develop software to identify these people before they strike. Now's the time to put those apps into practice. Is all that clear?”

  There was a chorus of agreements, mumblings really.

  The president went on. “We have al-Zawahiri, and because we do we need to be at the top of our game. He may be the key to bringing down al-Qaeda for years to come.”

  He turned away from the window to face his audience of friends, people whom he had come to trust with his ideas and agendas over the term of his presidency. “There will be retaliation,” he stated evenly. “So let’s not forget who we are and what we’re capable of.”

  VP Madison nodded smartly. “Understood, Mr. President.”

  “Keep me posted.”

  The Secretary of State spoke before everyone moved to leave.. “This is a great victory for us, yes?”

  Carmichael nodded. But deep in the back of his mind he knew that victories could be short-lived. It was the war that they needed to win, not a single skirmish. And the capture of Zawahiri certainly had the potential to be earmarked as the start of a violent chess match.

  The next move was al-Qaeda’s.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Bolling Air Force Base. 0211 hours

  Approximately 30 Hours after the Extraction of al-Zawahiri

  Aasif Shazad had served the U.S. military for sixteen years, earning the rank of Lieutenant Commander in the Navy, serving as an executive officer for SEAL teams before he disappeared amidst his own rising fundamentalist beliefs. Born in Dearborn, Michigan and raised in Detroit, he found religion to be more of a crutch in his youth than a mainstay of beliefs, attributing his wayward attitude to the influence of American culture at the time.

  Then the world changed as did his cultural landscape when the twin towers fell on nine-eleven. It was also the day that his sense of neutrality began to gravitate towards his Muslim roots, finding religion the salve of healing for the sudden and painful vilification he had suddenly come under, despite his loyalties to the American banner.

  In time he had grown inwardly hostile and angry as his repugnance matured into intolerance, his intolerance then evolving to fundamentalism, and finally his fundamentalism becoming the burning hatred of all things not Muslim.

  Two years ago, while stationed at the JBAB, the Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling, a military installation located in Southeast Washington, D.C., he absconded from service with vengeance in his heart.

  He had become nameless and faceless inside American borders, working simple jobs to stay under the radar when he was, in fact, developing a cell made up of the most seasoned warriors who abided by the same intolerances toward the ‘infidels’ as did he. When the U.S. military employed around 20,000 Muslims as part of their fighting force, recruits were easy to come by. So in the two years that he’d gone missing, Aasif Shazad had become a conduit working through a network of mosques on U.S. soil, eventually becoming the eyes, ears and mind of al-Qaeda on the D.C. front. With ties to two cultures and the vision to see as his enemy does, and with tactical training by way of the U.S. military, Aasif Shazad would become much more than just an enemy of the state.

  He would become the scourge to a superpower in the name of Allah.

  When he was contacted twenty-four hours ago regarding the extraction of al-Zawahiri from Islamabad--presumably with the influence of the American government--his patiently developed cell had been activated. Plans went into motion.

  As an officer he had driven the route to the JBAB many times before, where the Naval Support Facility Anacostia and Bolling Air Force Base were joined together as a single base.

  He knew the facility well, knew the enemy even better, as he drove the first of seven military cargo trucks to the front gate. Sitting beside him was former Army Ranger Naji Mihran, his second lieutenant.

  A sentry posted at the guardhouse with an MP5 submachine gun slung over his shoulder held his hand up. A second sentry remained inside, pecking at the keyboard of a computer.

  “Papers, please.”

  Shazad smiled. “Certainly.”

  As he reached into his shirt pocket, Naji Mihran leaned across the truck’s cab with a suppressed firearm and did a double tap, the two bullets finding the sentry’s head, killing him instantly.

  When the sentry inside the guardhouse saw his comrade fall through his peripheral vision, he sprung to his feet, reaching for his holstered Glock pistol. Before his hand could reach his weapon, three quiet shots from a suppressed weapon impacted his chest and drove him to the wall. As the soldier slid to the floor with a surprised look regarding his own mortality, a trail of blood marred the wall behind him.

  Good shooting, thought Shazad. But then again, he expected nothing less from his team, especially from Naji. “Maintain the guardhouse,” he told him. “You’re the first line of defense. Make sure that no one enters or leaves. Should there be problems...” He lowered the curved arm of his lip mike. “Then advise. Is that clear?”

  Naji nodded. Quite clear.

  Shazad held up his wrist to show his lieutenant the face of his watch. Eighteen minutes left to complete the mission.

  Naji understood as he jumped down from the truck along with two others. They exited from the rear, all dressed in the same uniform as that of the downed guards. While the others dragged the bodies out of sight, Naji lifted the arm gate to allow passage.

  They had seventeen minutes left.

  #

  In a housed facility approximately six hundred yards from the main gate stood a hanger with the number ‘17’ stenciled on the doors. It was massive, with enough interior space to contain several Boeing jets. But this particular hanger contained items of far more value.

  When Shazad pulled up to the doors, four heavily armed guards stood their posts, one of them holding up a hand and patting the air for him to stop.

  Shazad whispered into his lip mike. “Four tangos, all armed. One approaching the vehicle. The others are manning their posts by the doors. On five.”

  “On five. We copy.”

  Shazad glanced at his watch, which was synchronized to the second with those of his team.

  Four seconds.

  The guard approached the vehicle with a questioning look on his face, then settled about ten feet from the vehicle, advancing no further.

  “Sir, state your purpose.”

  Shazad noticed that the sentry was holding the mouth of his weapon toward the truck.

  Three seconds.

  “Sir, I'm asking you again to state your purpose.”

  Shazad nodded, produced a set of counterfeit documents, and held them out the window for the guard.

  Two seconds.

  The guard reacted with a measure of caution by arching a brow as he reached for the documents. He eyeballed them briefly.

  “We have no confirmation of your arrival from Main Gate."

  One second.

  Shazad gave a cocky grin. “I don’t think that really matters much."

  The guard’s eyes suddenly detonated with the realization that the JBAB had been breached. He raised the point of his firearm. But Shazad beat the guard to the draw, directing his suppressed weapon to a particular point on the man’s forehead.

&
nbsp; He pulled the trigger.

  The guard stood for a long moment as a ribbon of smoke exited from the bloodless wound, his eyes now alight with wonder as the moment of death approached, and then he fell like a stone to the ground, hard and fast.

  The other three sentries opened up immediately, strafing gunfire across the truck’s armor-plated body in a volley of shots that forced Shazad to duck down inside the cab.

  Zero.

  At that precise moment Shazad’s unit exited the vehicles, took immediate position, and then fired upon the exposed guards with punishing shots that gored their flesh. Bullets repeatedly found their marks, the impacts causing the guards to shudder in seizure for a moment before falling.

  As the last shot echoed off into the distance, Shazad sat up and shouted a single command: “Move!”

  Two of Shazad’s computer operatives went to a keypad situated to the left of the doors, removed its panel, and attached the leads from a handheld meter to the motherboard. Numbers began to scroll down the five windows on the meter’s screen at rapid pace.

  And then the warning sirens began to sound off—a high, keening wail that could be heard throughout the JBAB.

  Over his lip mike, Shazad intoned: “Mabad, Azlan, take position and may Allah grant you all your wishes in Paradise. It has been an honor to have you both serve under my command.”

  “Same, Shazad. We will not disappoint you.”

  “I know you won’t. You never have.”

  The two smallest cargo trucks—those not long enough to carry the required payloads—pulled out of formation. One headed for the barracks, the other for the Motor Pool.

  Shazad turned back to his team by the doors, knowing that the numbers on the meter were now beginning to reveal a set combination. The first number was 4, the second was 3, and the third was 8. There were two numbers left to go for the entry code as the numerals in the last two columns moved with blinding speed, then slowed, the final two values beginning to position themselves.

  The numeral 6 appeared and held in the fourth digit position.

  The sirens continued to wail.

  One number left to go.

  Shazad looked at his watch: thirteen minutes. They were falling behind.

  The final number in the window was 0.

  The doors began to part.

  #

  Everyone inside the barracks of Charlie Unit galvanized themselves the moment the sirens went off. They grabbed their weapons and headed for the doors, each man taking a unified position as their commander keyed the radio. “Charlie to Base Unit! I say again, Charlie to Base Unit!”

  Nothing but white static. Base Unit, or the main gate, had been compromised.

  As the defense outfit readied themselves to push forward, they found themselves caught within high-powered cones of light emanating from a cargo truck that barreled in their direction. At first they thought it was support. But as the truck sped up and veered directly toward the barracks with no obvious inclination to slow down, they raised their weapons and fired, the bullets shattering the headlights and the windshield.

  But still the truck kept on coming.

  #

  Mabad had been born in Michigan, and like Shazad, had grown up under the lifestyle of two cultures--one of his people and the other as a natural-born citizen of the United States. And like Shazad, he had found America to be a land of temptations, a place where God had no foothold whatsoever. People were wanton in their ways, always wanting but never giving. They valued goods and precious stones, flaunting luxuries because it was in their nature to do so. They lived in twenty-four carat neighborhoods, while his people suffered in muddy hovels. And they did this with their God being little more than an afterthought, when they should have been showering Him with praises.

  Unlike Shazad, who had grown up in Detroit, he had been raised in Dearborn, home to the largest Arab population in the country. Mabad, like Shazad, had come to enjoy the temptations that America provided. But when nine-eleven happened, he and his people had been vilified overnight, always coming under the sudden scrutiny of government eyes that began to profile members of his community, especially the high-principals who governed the mosques. Though he was a natural-born citizen, he felt less like one as the days, months and years pressed on, the government affording them the illusion that they were protected by the constitution as scribed by the forefathers, that everyone was equal. But over time it became apparent to him that the same conditions, rules and systems did not apply to him or his kind. It was as though they lived under a microscope, while the fair-skinned, blue-eyed kids he grew up with were always above suspicion. At least this is what he believed.

  Even though an official war had not been declared on the home-front, a war still existed, nonetheless.

  After weathering the storm in the aftermath of nine-eleven, his beliefs became increasingly radical, his anger slow brewing in an invisible vat constructed from the beliefs of his native culture. And like Shazad, he, too, had made connections. When he turned eighteen, with Allah strong in his heart, he joined the U.S. military and trained amongst them, learning their ways until he became a seasoned soldier gifted with all of the tools necessary to kill.

  He was now attacking his enemy from the inside.

  As he neared the barracks he could see the heavily armed troops lining up. He floored the pedal, gunning the engine, the truck accelerating as it made a direct route towards the troops that were being shored up with additional fighters.

  As he closed in, he could read by their expressions that they were ill-prepared for battle. Their looks alone satisfied him to the point that he already felt victorious, knowing that Paradise was only a few heartbeats away.

  Allah will be pleased.

  In his right hand was a detonator. Neatly packed in the rear of the truck sat twenty-five pounds of Semtex plastic explosives.

  He began to apply pressure to the detonator with his thumb.

  Then the lights of his vehicle were blown out with bullet strikes. After that his windshield spiderwebbed, the fissures expanding, then cracking under the constant hail of gunfire. Bullets began to penetrate the weakened windshield as rounds zipped past his ears with waspy hums.

  One bullet, however, found its mark.

  Mabad took one to the chest, his pain that of white-hot agony. And then another lodged deep in his left shoulder, the punch of the bullet causing him to turn the wheel of the vehicle to the left, veering off course. He then course corrected by righting his line of direction.

  The truck was now bearing down and looming larger within their sights.

  As Mabad relished in delight that he was the one to make the first shot across the proverbial bow, he held the detonator trigger high, and shouted, “Allahu Akbar!” God is the Greatest!

  He depressed the button.

  #

  The truck went up as a huge mushroom cloud of fire before rolling into gargantuan plumes of black smoke. The barracks were reduced to their ragged foundation, with those defending them obliterated into pieces so small that closed casket funerals were all but guaranteed.

  From his position, Shazad could see the rolling fireball and feel the shockwaves from the massive explosion. Mabad had done well, he reflected. He had taken out the primary line of defense and created a well-timed diversion.

  Shazad eyed his watch: they had eleven minutes. He shook his head disapprovingly. They were well behind.

  “Quickly!” he shouted. “Time is short!”

  His team headed for an area situated behind a second set of closed doors. Unlike the entrance doors, these did not have a keypad.

  The doors parted on their rollers with ease, giving passage to a large room that was, at least in Shazad’s eyes, a chamber filled with gold.

  Reaper drones were lined up in two rows of five, ten altogether, with their side wings folded upward. Their bodies were lean and sleek, with each carrying a 950-shaft-horsepower turboprop engine powerful enough to carry fifteen times their original payload ordn
ance, and cruise at three times the speed of its predecessor, the MQ-1. This particular set of Reapers, the MQ-10’s, had been modified with stealth capabilities, making them virtually invisible at altitudes as low as ten feet to as high as 60,000. They were also equipped with an eagle-eye lens capable of surveying the land mass with high definition, even from the upper atmosphere.

  In Shazad's eyes there were no equivalents to this particular stock of MQ-10s. Reconfigured to fly higher and faster with a larger payload, they were the true hunter-killers of the sky.

  Shazad waved his hand maniacally. “Hurry! Load as many as you can aboard the trucks! Quickly now!”

  Ramps leading to the cargo bays of the remaining three trucks were lowered. In haste the teams moved the drones in a push-pull effort with chains and pulleys, loading a single drone into each truck, leaving ample space reserved for MUAVs, or Mini-Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, termed remoras. These could be attached to the mother drone to provide additional weaponry beyond the ordinary payload of Hellfire missiles.

  Shazad checked his watch again. They were falling dangerously behind, if not critically so. “Hurry!” he reiterated. “Find the remoras!”

  In an adjoining room lit by the soft glow of mercury vapor lamps sat mini-drones that were no larger than birds of prey such as falcons or hawks. They proved to be light-weight and easy to move; loading commenced without delay.

  “Shazad!” Azlan's voice came over his ear bud.

  “Yeah. Go.”

  “We have Tangos going mobile.”

  Shazad had planned for every contingency—for every eventuality should his team fail to perform under the projected time limit. He was now two minutes behind, which gave the enemy time to assemble from other points and converge on their position.

  Then: “Azlan.”

  “Yes, Shazad.”

  “We’re behind on matters. You know what you need to do.” He paused, feeling an emotional swell. Then in a tone that was soft and more subdued, he added, “May Allah see you to Paradise.”

  “You too, my friend. Allahu Akbar!”