Drone Wars 1: Day of the Drone (25 page)

A few tense heartbeats passed. “All right, but transfer the money now, and have your goons get me a computer with Internet access.”

“Return the phone to Faisal.”

Ten minutes later, Jonas Lemon had confirmation of the funds transfer and emailed Abdul-Shahid Almasi a file containing an algorithmic series of numbers.

“These will work?”

“They should. The modified master frequency generator you have will be able to reverse the process and broadcast a blast once the channel is open. After the new bounce-back codes are accepted, the rest will fall into place. You’ll have no problem gaining access, and at that point you won’t need any of the others from your cowardly coalition of the unwilling.”

“With how this day has progressed, I cannot share in your confidence that the codes will work. You should know that if this information is found to be false or unworkable, I will seek you out—even on your South Pacific island hideaway. You see, Jonas, there are no secrets you can keep from me.”

“Only the transponder codes, and trust me, they
are
good. Just make sure you have at least forty-five seconds for the initial upload. Once started, the signal will lock and begin to filter throughout the entire grid. It’s the ultimate computer virus…”

“You never said anything about needing time to upload the codes! What if we do not have forty-five seconds?”

“All programs take time to upload. I thought you knew that. But relax, Abdul. Use the broken link back at the RDC to gain entry. The techs who open the source won’t be expecting someone else waiting to slip in.”

“You had better hope we are given the time, because if this mission fails—whether by your fault or mine—I
will
gain satisfaction and redemption in your death.”

“Do what you have to do, Almasi … and I will do the same.”

“Goodbye, Jonas Lemon. Let us both pray that this is the last time we speak with one another.” Almasi pressed the “end” button on the phone.

He quickly dialed another number. After thirty seconds the phone began to ring and was answered immediately.

“I am sending you the transponder codes now.”

“Now?” said the American voice on the other end of the line. “I thought we weren’t going for another two days, at the soonest?”

“Everything is in place, is it not?”

“Sure, it has been for weeks.”

“Then what is your problem?”

“I don’t have a problem.” The man’s voice conveyed frustration and insult. “Just send the damn codes. I assume you’ll be controlling the master feed from there?”

“I will. When can you be ready?”

There was a pause on the line, and then: “One p.m. tomorrow, at the soonest. That’s a little over twenty-four hours. I need to round up the last members of my team. They weren’t expecting to be needed so soon.”

“That is not acceptable. We go with or without them,” Almasi said. “I will be back in contact with you in forty-five minutes. Have your team ready to move at that time.”

“Forty-five minutes! That’s not—”

Almasi cut the connection, and then in the deathly quiet of his underground bunker, he clenched his teeth and firmed his resolve. He could still salvage the events of the past few days—with something so huge that it would impact the United States of America for generations to come.

Within the day, Abdul-Shahid Almasi would make history … by destroying it.

Chapter 20

The reunion that afternoon at Andrews Air Force Base between Xander and the other Alphas was both touching and emotional. In most cases, these were people he’d known since his pre-teens. Together they’d discovered the joy of building and flying UAVs, and when the time came to test their skills against the best of the best, they had risen to the occasion in gold medal-winning fashion.

“I should have known the two of you would be right in the thick of things,” said the only woman on the Alpha Team, Karen Prado.

“Hey, don’t blame me,” Billy Jenkins protested. “Zan showed up at my door yesterday—a door that’s been shattered to pieces from about a thousand bullet holes, I might add—and now I’m in Washington, D.C., trying to figure out how to save the country from a deadly horde of ravenous drones.”

Karen smiled. “Yeah, he does have that effect on people.” She had been Xander’s first, even if he suspected Billy had been hers. When adolescents spend so much time together, sharing a common passion, things are bound to happen. It hadn’t lasted; they seldom do at that age.

“So, Karen, you got married … and divorced?”

She snorted. “I got the first one out of the way early so I could make way for Mr. Right.” She looked at Billy and winked. “Now someone with shitloads of money would be just the ticket.”

Billy wrinkled his nose at her. “When will I find a woman who loves me for me and not my money?”

Hugh Barden slapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t knock it. Once they get to know the real Billy Jenkins, money’s about the only thing you have going for you.”

Hugh was the true lady’s man of the group. Crowding six-foot-five, the slender, mixed Hispanic and Caucasian man had a perpetual tan, curly black hair, and a brilliant white smile. He was the least technically-proficient of the group, yet he was a ruthless bastard when it came to drone piloting. Given a small nudge, he would have turned into a taller and better-looking version of Jonas Lemon.

Xander hugged the other two members of the team in turn. Jeremy Fenton was short, plump, with the stereotypical look of the tech geek. He and Xander were the first to discover UAVs, and it was through the obvious joy they’d both displayed when at the controls of their small quadcopters that the others thought they’d give it a try. And the rest was history.

“Curt, they let you out?” Xander asked the last member of the team—the tallish and stocky Curt Tharp.

“Not really, but your friends here obviously have some clout. They said if I play nice they could even make it permanent.”

“Dude, I was only kidding!” Xander said with shock and embarrassment.

“I wish I was, but that’s what you get for running with the wrong crowd. Wouldn’t you know it, that with so many drugs being legal these days, I would get caught dealing in the one that wasn’t.”

“How long have you been in?”

“Six months.” Curt noticed the concerned looks on the faces of the other team members. “Don’t worry. I understand they want us to fly some drones. Up until the day I reported to Lompoc, I had a controller in my hand. It’s like riding a bike, right?”

“A quarter-of-a-million dollar bike, Mr. Tharp,” Nathan commented. By now, Xander had pried a last name out of him—if it truly was his last name. It was Hall. Nathan Hall.

“No shit?” Curt said, looking with anticipation at Xander and Billy. “They’re going to let us play with quarter-mill toys?”

Xander nodded with a smile. “That’s what you get when you spend other people’s money. Kind of lose perspective about the true value of things.”

“That may be so, Mr. Moore. Still, try not to break anything,” Nathan said. “If you do, you’ll be billed for it.”

Curt threw up his hands. “Then I’m outta here. Take me back to prison, boys. At least there, if I break something it’s just a couple of skulls that needed it in the first place.”

Xander stepped up and assumed command of Team Alpha, just as he had so many times in the past. “Okay, fun and games are over. This is some serious shit we’re facing. I’m sure you’ve all been keeping up on recent events…”

“Hard not to, it’s all that’s on these days,” Karen said.

“Unfortunately, you’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg. This is more than just a series of random terrorist attacks against the evil Western Empire. We believe there are people who want to ruin America economically, and they mean to do it by destroying Christmas.”

“Are the people you speak of green-skinned with pointed ears and a mangy dog as a companion?” Hugh asked.

“I’d take the Grinch any day over these bastards, but here’s what we have: the RDC has been taken out, and even though there may be a fair number of combat-rated drones sitting idle in the rapid-response bunkers across the country, we don’t have time to reprogram them all to respond to secondary control. Thanks to Mr. Hall and DARPA—”

“DARPA? Karen asked. “You mean the bunch of super-smart guys and gals who get to play with all the most-advanced toys imaginable and with all the money the government can provide?”

“Where do I sign up for
that
gig?” Jeremy Fenton asked. “I’m a super-smart guy who likes to play with toys.”

“Just for the record, Mr. Fenton,” Nathan Hall said, “I’ve looked at your resume, and if we survive—or more precisely, if you survive—you have a spot here with us.”

Jeremy’s mouth fell open for a moment. “I wonder if it’s too soon to talk about my salary requirements? You know I don’t come cheap?”

“We’ll certainly take into consideration your current pay scale at Best Buy when determining our offer, Mr. Fenton. We might be able to do a
little
better.”

“Excuse me, but can we get on with the task of saving the country from a horde of bloodthirsty extremists?” Xander asked. When no one else interrupted, he continued. “Thanks to Mr. Hall and the people at DARPA, we have a small fleet of highly-advanced prototype drones to send up against the attacking units. Also, his people have found a way to neutralize killboxes, so we’ll only have to go up against RPAs. Since it appears most of the major, coordinated attacks have been carried out mainly using killbox-equipped drones the terrorists may be unprepared for the loss of such a substantial amount of their force. Also, many of the opportunists jumping on the bandwagon are using remotely-controlled UAVs, yet they aren’t that sophisticated. These units can be easily jammed since few are equipped with RFGs. The bottom line: once we deploy the number of units we’ll have to engage should be drastically reduced. Now, the drones you’ll be flying are called
Goliaths
. They are the largest, most advanced combat drones ever built.”

“Is anyone else here getting a hard-on?” Hugh asked.

Karen raised her hand. “I’m not.”

Xander just shook his head and looked over at Billy and the silent Tiffany Collins. “You can dress ‘em up, you just can’t take ‘em anywhere.”

“We get the idea, Number One,” Curt Tharp said. “This is serious, and we’re the team of superheroes brought in to save the day. So where are these superdrones that we superheroes get to play with?”

“Follow me,” Nathan Hall said. “And don’t touch anything that says ‘Don’t Touch.’ It might explode.”

Chapter 21

The man in the yellow vest looked up from the pile of debris and frowned when he noticed the letters emblazoned across the breast pockets of the black jackets the six men were wearing.

Derrick Howard could almost hear the man thinking,
What the hell is the EPA doing here?

Howard flashed his ID at the man. “How’s it going? We’re here to help.”

“Help? How is the EPA going to help sort through this mess?”

Derrick smiled. “Well, help might not be the right word. We’re here to monitor the release of toxic gases within the ruins, specifically mercury and asbestos. Is this the Communications Building—or what remains of it? We need to get down to the equipment bays.”

“Yeah, it is. There’s another group of techs down below. There’s an access over by the yellow tape. Good luck, though, not much survived. Those fucking drones…”

“I hear ya. Every last one of them should be banned.”

“You got that right. Watch your step going down. Most of the overhead is unstable.”

“Thanks for the heads-up.”

Derrick nodded to his team and they set off along a cleared path within the massive pile of rubble where a five-story building had once stood. They found the yellow tape and the surviving metal steps that led underground. Before descending, each man placed a white surgical mask over his face.

Below ground the damage wasn’t as bad as on the surface, but it was still a mess. The shattered remains of dozens of plastic drones lay everywhere along the wide corridor. Once the batteries had drained, the survivors of the RDC had emerged from hiding and systematically bashed the inert UAVs to pieces. The process was cathartic to a point, yet it did pose a problem for the forensic teams that came in afterwards, looking for serial numbers and other identifying markings.

Three floors down, the damage was even less, although it was apparent the killer drones had reached the main communication rooms for the Center. Here, strategically placed missiles, bullets and bombs had ripped the huge banks for sophisticated equipment to shreds. Add to this the complete destruction of the topside communication dishes, and the RDC had been effectively cut off from the outside world.

Yet this was just the exposed part of the comm center. Embedded within walls and floors, before running far below ground in fortified concrete tunnels, the main feed lines still survived. Some ran to power sources outside the Center, while others led to the graveyard of shattered satellite antennas and dishes.

Air Force techs had set up portable relay equipment outside, with a new arrangement of nine interlocking dishes pointing into the sky. Once-severed comm lines had already been reconnected to this temporary setup. Now all that remained was for the team below to finish their work before the array could be lit up.

In the underground comm room, eight Air Force techs were in the process of tracing broken coax cables, ethernet lines, and thick fiber-optic bundles, looking to make contact with the equipment on the surface. To help with the task, they’d brought in their own version of miniature mainframe computers, towers of server-holders rolled in on six-foot-long metal carts.

Two other airmen stood around the huge room holding M27 rifles and looking bored. They perked up momentarily when Derrick Howard and his group entered.

“Damn, the EPA,” said an airman whose name patch read
G. Garner
. “That’s a new one. We’ve had FEMA, the CIA, FBI, even the NTSB down here, but not the EPA.”

“Derrick smiled at the young man. “The Environmental Protection Agency is everywhere,” he said menacingly.

“So it seems. Just stay out of the way of the techs. They’re a touchy group when it comes to their equipment.”

“Don’t worry, we brought our own, air sniffers and such.”

“Dang, you mean you’ll be able to detect the tacos I had for lunch?”

Derrick frowned and wrinkled his nose under the white mask. “Man, that’s disgusting. Let’s hope not.”

His men retired to a vacant corner of the room and began to open their heavy black cases. All the equipment was battery-powered and contained within the boxes. Switches were flicked as lights and screens came to life.

A few of the Air Force techs looked over at them and frowned, but soon returned to the tedious work of tracing orphan wires for their source and purpose.

Derrick walked up to a group of them on their hands and knees at what looked like a small crop of thin wires growing out of the floor. “How’s it going? You guys making progress?”

“Fuck it!” said one of the men without looking up. “This is like looking for a needle in a haystack.”

The man next to him looked over his shoulder at Derrick and took in the EPA label on his jacket. His breast tag read
D. Grissom
. “Don’t mind him, we’re doing fine. We should have a preliminary link up in a few minutes. Should we be wearing masks or something?”

“That wouldn’t be a bad idea, at least until we’re done with our air samples. We brought down a supply of them just in case.”

One of Derrick’s men passed out the masks to all the other people in the room, and then the team huddled together, having pulled up broken equipment supports to use as chairs.

Derrick sat next to Steve Vasquez. “Are we syncing?” he whispered.

“Piece of cake,” Vasquez answered. “Still, this is a lot of data to upload in only forty-five seconds. I think they’re being optimistic. And then the carrying capacity of the connections may not be all that high.”

“What are you trying to tell me?”

“That we may need a lot more time for the upload than forty-five seconds.”

Derrick pursed his lips in frustration. He knew Almasi was waiting halfway around the world for the moment the upload was complete. He would know it at the same time Derrick and his team knew the link between Las Vegas and Karachi was solid and verified.

He carefully watched the techs across the room. Derrick was sure there would be some indication from the workers when connections were established, even though the equipment in the cases would know as well. Originally, the plan had called for the team to access the room after the link had been established. Even if all the RDC drones were accessed at that point, the operation called for the existing codes to be overridden by the ones Almasi would provide. That would have involved a hard tap on the lines, yet without so many people in the room.

But now the crazy terrorist wanted the override to happen sooner, basically in conjunction with contact being initially regained with the bunkers. It was estimated that even if the military were able to reestablish contact, this would only be the first step in changing out the transponder codes to correspond with those linked to new command centers. The old codes would have to be expunged so no conflicts would exist and then new ones loaded.

The codes Derrick carried in his equipment were ghosts of the existing RDC codes already in the flight controllers of the drones. The thousands of UAVs hidden away in hundreds of locations across the country would instantly accept the command authority of these transponder codes, even before they would allow the old ones to be dumped.

Two days from now, Derrick and his team would have had no problem overriding any new codes installed in the drones. But now the job had become trickier. The techs in the room would surely notice the presence of a second signal once the link was established. Derrick had to think of some way to keep them from noticing the ghost signal for what could amount to a minute or more.

He called over two of his men, the two who were classified as muscle on the team and not vital to the upload operation. He briefed them on his plan.

And then they waited.

A full hour later, the tech who had complained about the difficulty of the job lifted off his knees and leaned back against a side wall. “Damn, Sarge, that was a bitch.”

Tech Sergeant Grissom also climbed to his feet, along with his entire eight person team. He and two other men moved to a table that held its own array of sophisticated electronic equipment. He began to type on a keyboard. “Let’s see what we’ve got,” Grissom said. He reached under the white surgical mask and scratched his nose.

They all watched the computer readouts with rapt attention, until one of them pointed at the screen.

“Yeah, looks good, doesn’t it. Check the alignment.”

A moment later he stood back from the table and stretched his back. “Looks like we have it, strong and steady. Let the brass know, Zack.”

Suddenly a soft chirping sound arose from the other side of the room, and all eyes turned toward the source.

The EPA guys seemed agitated, and Derrick and two others rushed up to the tech team holding small readers resembling microphones.

“What’s going on?” the tech sergeant asked.

“High levels of radon have been detected. In fact, off the chart!”

“Seriously? What could cause that?”

“Is it dangerous?” another of the airmen asked.

“Dangerous? Hell yeah!” Derrick exclaimed. He looked to his other two men.

“It’s concentrated on this side of the room,” reported one of them.

“Please, Sergeant, can I get your men to move over by the doorway while we bring in fans and investigate the source?”

“Now? How long will it take?”

“Not more than a minute or two, that’s all.”

“C’mon, Sarge,” said the complainer. “I could use a break anyway.”

“We have to monitor the link.”

“Every second?” Derrick asked.

“Well, no,” relied the tech sergeant. “But we just got it back up.”

“Two minutes and it’ll be clear. Better than killing yourselves just so you can watch a damn computer screen.”

“This shit can kill us?”

“In the right concentration.”

“What about you guys?” the sergeant asked.

“We’re trained for this stuff. Now please, Sergeant, let us do our job.”

“Yeah, sure, just let me know when it’s safe.”

“Roger that.”

********

Fifteen minutes later, Derrick Howard and his team had left the underground comm room, having certified that the air was now safe to breathe.

In fact, they were already in a green EPA van and heading down the hill from the ruins of the Rapid Defense Center by the time Sergeant Grissom noticed something was wrong. Moments before, they’d had a solid link with the bunkers, and now, in rapid succession, the links were being lost. This was unusual, since the original link had been a blanket broadcast to all the RDC bunkers and not singling out any individual location. Now the progression was obvious and the sheer number of the bunkers they were losing was becoming evident.