Drone Games (12 page)

“Dr. Al-Aran, sir . . . um, we were just finishing,” Jones squeaked, standing guiltily at attention. “It’s been a long day. How are you? Locked? Um, no particular reason, sir. We just felt better about security with the project and all.”

Al-Aran gave the room a general glance. Satisfied there were no hidden women, he tucked his security SmartCard away. “You might be interested to know that your drone was named top Pirelli prize winner. Professor Robertson sent a departmental email. Your research budget just got a quarter-million dollars richer.”

Al-Aran walked to the room’s refrigerator and popped open a Coca-Cola. He spied the drone on the table.

“I suppose we might bend a few rules tonight,” he announced, lighting his pipe and dropping his match into the can. It sizzled briefly.

“Gentlemen, you should be proud. You’ve come a long way with your little flying gold mine. Did Professor Robertson ever mention that I helped design the wings for the first prototype? We cut them from containers that held Atlanta’s world-famous soft drink.” He tapped the aluminum can. The drone’s original name had been
The Coke Roach
until their lawyers intervened.

“They’re on the wall in Professor Robertson’s office,” Zee said. “But we’re way beyond that now. Everything’s synthetic.” He lifted the drone from the table and offered it to Al-Aran.

“I remember it being heavier.” Al-Aran set his pipe down. “But that was some time ago. Can it still carry its own weight?”

“More than double,” Jones answered.

“How long is the average flight time?”

“Fifteen to thirty minutes.”

“And then what?”

“Not much,” Jones said. “One fell from three hundred feet, and the frame was fine. It’s a pretty rugged design.”

Al-Aran made a mental note. “Who is most qualified person to provide technical answers regarding flight performance?”

“Robertson,” both answered.

“But I probably know as much as he does,” Jones added.

“One more question. How long would it take for a novice to become proficient at controlled flight, including maneuvering up to a structure and landing on, say, a vertical metal tube or shaft?”

Jones thought for a moment and shrugged his shoulders. “Half an hour, tops. Zee made a really great online training video that walks through everything from boot up to fuel to modular part replacements. Why do you ask?”

“I need you to gather six drone frames and all related components. We’re lending the system out for a while.”

“Huh?” Jones asked incredulously. “To who?”

Al-Aran relit his pipe and shook his head. “Six years of higher education should have taught you something about the use of subjective versus objective pronouns. To
whom
, Mr. Jones. A Saudi evaluation team is considering trialing the system. They’re interested in controlled flight maneuvering in and out of derrick rigs and grasping and holding onto metal structures to film and observe desert operations. It’s called asset monitoring.”

“Are you serious?”

“Arabs are always serious about security, particularly when it involves oil.”

“Don’t we need some kind of permission?” Zee questioned.

“You’re absolutely right. I almost forgot.” Al-Aran reached in his pocket and flashed a piece of paper.

The first thing Zee noticed was that the check was drawn on the Bank of Riyadh. But then his mouth dropped open when he spied the dollar amount. He had no clue that it was a complete fake.

“And this is only the down payment. If our drones perform well, there’ll be another just like it. I know it’s late, but I need you to have everything packaged and in my office before you leave. Do me another favor and print out a detailed set of operating instructions. Something that’s complete but easy to follow.”

“Sure, but what about Professor Robertson?” Zee asked. “He won’t be back on campus until Thursday. Shouldn’t we at least let him know? Who’s going to explain the system?”

Al-Aran folded the check and tucked it away. “I am.”

East Elmhurst, NY

Wednesday, May 13

AKIL SAT with his feet propped on the kitchen table in a brick, two-story, side-by-side, rented flat near the corner of Ditmars Boulevard and 81st Street.

He finished his second Big Mac and made a point to recover the last French fry from the bottom of the bag. He lifted his shirt. His stomach was expanding nicely.

He scanned a flyer that some protesters handed out at the McDonald’s drive-thru exit. LaGuardia’s Runway 4/22 was just four hundred yards away, and area noise pollution was a constant thorn in the sides of the residents. The concrete noise reduction wall across the street somewhat muffled the airport’s ground activity, but it did little to quiet airborne traffic.

The flyer showed Akil’s house centered in the photo along with his Toyota. Thankfully, no other meaningful identification was apparent. He crumpled the flyer into a tight ball and buried it in the trash can. There was work to do.

Akil retrieved the last two plastic gallons of bleach from ten cardboard cases in the bedroom. He filled a measuring cup with potassium chloride granules until the needle on a small vegetable scale read sixty-three grams.

He poured one bottle of bleach and the granules into a large metal pot on the gas stove and turned the burner to medium-high. The liquid reached a slow boil in six minutes. He dipped a battery-charged suction tube into the mixture and watched the plastic balls float upward to the full-charge calibration line. He turned off the heat and set the pot in the refrigerator next to two others. Each was labeled with masking tape to indicate rotation en route to a final cooling temperature of thirty-three degrees. A heavy crust of crystals had formed around the rim of a pot at the front of the production line. Akil gently scraped the excess into a 1-cup gun mesh funnel from a local paint store and tapped the filtered material into a drinking glass. It was already half full. He carefully measured out fifty-six grams of crystals and added them to a container of one hundred milliliters of distilled water. This he also boiled and cooled into a secondary crystallization process.

After another round of gentle scraping, this time with a plastic spatula to avoid sparks, a white powdery substance finally appeared—potassium chlorate. Akil placed the powder in a flat pan and heated it to drive out any moisture. Next to that pan, he heated an even ratio of Vaseline and wax melted with a small amount of white camping kerosene. He poured that mixture over 90 percent of the potassium powder and allowed the kerosene to evaporate. He kneaded the now gooey gray-brown matter together and pressed the finished product into a rectangular plastic tray separated into six-ounce cubes. Finally, he poured a layer of melted wax over the tray until each space was waterproof.

He updated a label on the container with the name and the birth date of each charge—a charge with the explosive power of one stick of dynamite and a room temperature decomposition lifespan of four days.

Akil dug deep in his pants pocket and unfolded a single sheet of paper.

KILLING MADE EASY
PREPARATION OF POTASSIUM CYANIDE (KCN)

Heat ammonium formate crystals by flame in an environment containing as little oxygen gas as possible. The ammonium formate decomposes into formamide (HCONH2) and further into hydrogen cyanide. Condense the gas given off in a rubber, plastic, or glass tube that has one end immersed in a beaker containing a solution of potassium hydroxide (KOH). Position the tube so that any liquid in it will run off into the beaker of potassium hydroxide. The hydrogen cyanide will quickly react with the potassium hydroxide to form approximately 65.1 grams of potassium cyanide crystals. Hold your breath and dilute 900 to 1000 mg in any drinkable liquid. Victims will fall into comas almost immediately. Timeframes depend on stomach contents, but death generally occurs in less than two minutes. KCN is virtually untraceable, and its symptoms mimic heart failure. Antidotes, even if administered directly after ingestion, often cause severe and irreparable brain dam—

The front-door handle began to turn, followed by a squeaking of metal hinges. Akil reached for his Glock 23 Gen 4 .40-caliber pistol and flattened himself against the refrigerator. The door continued to open, stopped only by the latch chain.

“Kenny, are you in there, lad? I thought I fixed that doorbell, but I guess it won’t work.”

Akil crept into the bathroom and twisted the tub spigot.

“I’m in the shower,” he shouted.

Mrs. Timmons pressed her face into the door crack. “When did you get in, lad, and what’s that smell?”

“This morning. I was cleaning.”

“Now, don’t you fuss. You come next door when you’re finished and meet me brother before he leaves. We’re conversing in the living room. You’ll need to hurry because the taxi man is on his way.”

“I’ll be there in a few minutes,” Akil answered. “Should I bring anything, Mrs. Timmons?”

“Just that Scotch and Soda coin trick you promised from that mall in Minneapolis. And even though I’m your landlady, there’s no need to be so formal. You might refer to me as Mary.”

Akil heard the door slam shut. This was a problem. Mrs. Timmons was a petite Irish-Catholic in her late seventies with a constant smile and hosiery balled at her ankles. Her husband had passed away a year ago, leaving her to manage the rental property. She was thrilled with the extra income, but obviously ignorant about New York tenant law—barring an emergency, it was illegal to enter a residence without cause or advance notice. Akil was becoming the son she’d never had. He couldn’t tolerate such uninvited intrusions, especially if he wasn’t there.

—

Next door, Mary Timmons flopped onto her sofa and filled a glass from a jug on the coffee table. She raised a toast to her brother, who was sitting in a chair across the room. “Bernie, I really like that kid. If I were fifty years younger, I’d go for him myself. He’s only been here a month, but I can tell he’s a good one. And a worker too. What other young man would clean that whole apartment, so you could lick the floor and not taste a bit of dust? Wouldn’t let me pay for a thing. I never in my life saw so much bleach. He must have carried in a hundred gallons. What in the world was he thinking? But then, the place was filthy. The Olsons, who lived in there before, were as near to pigs as pigs could be. Their mongrel dog did his jobs on the upstairs carpet until there was a ring around the whole bed—left his filth for the whole world to see! Can you fathom a stench like that? How could people with working nostrils tolerate such a—?”

“Mrs. Timmons?” Akil’s voice spoke through the screen door.

“Come right in, Kenny. I’ve been swearing up a storm about the previous tenants when I should be thanking the Savior for who I have now.” She tried to rise but gave up. “Kenny, this is my brother, Bernard Sloan.”

Countryside Irish, Bernard was a hairless clone of his sister, complete with rosy cheeks and perpetual smile. He stood and extended his hand.

“It’s a fine pleasure to meet you, Mr. Wory. Me sister’s told me quite a bit about you and your sick mother, and I surely hope that she’s making good progress back to the world of the healthy.”

There was a moment of awkward silence as Akil struggled to comprehend the fast monotone. He noted the strength in the little man’s grip. It was icy from caressing a huge glass of beer.

“I’ve never been to Ireland, but I hear it’s beautiful.”

“Oh, it’s far more than that. So many think the populace lives in the bigger towns, but there’s a whole ’nuther world out there among the greens.”

“What part of Ireland?”

“Greencastle County Down, right along the coast of the Irish Sea, about an hour’s drive to the south of Belfast. We can see the ferries making their way up to Ulster. Been a lobster man all me life, but that’s only for six or seven months of the year, so then I try and get a good price for the shellfish.”

Akil nodded. For a moment he thought the language was some form of old Gaelic. He managed to hear the words
lobster
and
fish
in the diatribe and correctly concluded that the man had something to do with the sea.

“Greencastle is a medieval fortress that sits on the hill behind our old homestead,” Mrs. Timmons said. “Would you believe that Bernard and I used to play up there when we were just six years old? The Normans built it all from stone in the thirteenth century. We could see all the way down to the cellar through the holes in the floors. We’d jump across without any fear at all. Bernard would hide and then scare me half to death with his screams. Pigs stayed in that place, and they’d chase after us. What I wouldn’t give to hear them snort again. But that was ages ago.”

“It sounds very nice,” Akil said, noting the time.

“Kenny’s a bartender, Bernard. I’m sure the two of you would’ve hit it off,” Mrs. Timmons continued. “And he’s a trickster too. But only at night. In the daytime he attends the university.”

Bernard nodded curtly, tipping his glass.

“That’s a fine place to start out now, as long as you know what you’re wanting to study.”

“It’s gadgets,” Mrs. Timmons said. “He tinkers with everything. And that reminds me, Kenny. Why in the world would you have so many of those tiny little telephones all lined up on your sink? Plugged into the wall sockets like kittens drinking their mother’s milk. The other day, I think there were five. God rest his soul, Dermott used to say they were the toys of the devil himself.”