Game of Drones (25 page)

“Chance . . .” Tanner didn’t know what to say or what to add. He was right about the plant.

"My mother and sister live right there, Tan!"

"They’d still want you to leave!" Tanner's whole body was tense, his senses electrified as he glanced at the clock. 2:34. "You know they would!"

Chance offered him a feigned smile, the one-sided cocky grin that he was so well known for. “It’s all right. I’m an OUTCAST. This is what we do. This is what we were made for. Protecting our nation and those we love. I can't let those bastards win, Tanner. I just can't. I'd rather--” He couldn't bring himself to finish the sentence. Instead, he bent to the task of steering his Reaper.

For as long as Tanner could remember, they had been best friends since their teens, sharing secrets and doing the stupid things that teenage boys do. And later watching each other’s back when they got a little older--when missions became very real and the dangers even more so. What they shared was an umbilical tie to one another as brothers, something organic. And it was about to be yanked away.

“I can do this,” he told Tanner, pointing to the monitor. “It’s coming into view. But I need to get closer before I can shoot off the Hellfires.”

“You may not have the time,” Tanner stated, almost imploringly.

“There’ll be enough time,” Chance said. “But barely.”

Tanner scanned his watch once again: 02:25.

Chance gave Tanner a soft prompting with his hand, a small shove toward the exit. “You need to go.”

Tanner sighed because he now stood at the crossroads between staying and leaving, between life and death. Between allowing a man to sacrifice himself in the line of duty or not.

“I said
go
,” stated Chance, this time firmly. Then his face softened. “Please explain to Nay why I had to do this. Tell her I’m sorry. Tell her that I love her with all my heart.”

“You know she’ll never understand,” he returned.

“Not right away. Someday."

The two Outcast operators studied each other for a long moment--longer than they had time for--before Chance eventually turned away and refocused his thoughts back to the screen, working the joystick, maneuvering his drone into position behind the first one.

“Good-bye, Chance. We'll be at the mobile units if you change your mind. I hope you do. Good luck."

But Chance didn’t say a word. He was lost in his duties.

When Tanner fled the room, however, Chance, turned to see his friend exit.

“Good-bye, my friend,” he whispered, then returned to the controls.

#

The second Reaper moved quickly behind the first drone. The distance between them was still too great. If Chance was to have an opportunity to knock it out of commission, then he needed to get closer to lock on to its position with the air-intercept missile. But time seemed to move much too quickly.

The fins of the first drone--
his
drone, for he truly owned it now--were growing on the monitor’s screen, closing the gap as he tried to steady its course, the image of the first drone growing larger on his display. “Come on, baby,” he murmured. “Just a little bit closer.”

By his estimate, the first drone was about five miles from the power plant. Time was closing.

He pressed switches and toggles, piloting the drone until it was tailing its quarry. Though the drones were still separated by considerable space, he was left with no choice but to fire off a Hellfire.

The drones were now four miles apart, the gap closing by the second.

He carefully finessed the joystick until the screen’s crosshairs turned from green to red, acquiring the target of the drone. He engaged the Hellfire missile, the rocket leaving the undercarriage of the pursuing drone at a speed of 950 miles per hour.

The missile's contrail curved slightly before drawing a straight line, the distance between it and the first drone shrinking swiftly.

But the first drone obviously had a contingency defense programmed into it. The moment Chance locked onto it, the mechanism read the threat and disengaged its MUAVs. The mini-drones hovered in space a moment while updating their settings to intercept the incoming missile. After getting their bearings, they moved toward the threat.

The Hellfire, not equipped to outmaneuver the MAUVs, was easily intercepted by one of the mini-drones and lit up the sky with a futile inferno.

Chance cursed and slammed the heel of his hand against the console in intense aggravation as he watched petals of flame drift slowly back to Earth.

The Reaper was three miles from Calvert Cliffs, and closing rapidly
.

Worse, Chance had less than ninety seconds for a second engagement.
Don't worry, Mom, sis. I'll get this. I promise, I'll get this...

Collecting himself, Chance maneuvered his drone back into position for his second and final attempt.

He had eighty seconds left.

When Tanner made it back to the vehicles, heavily out of breath, Nay didn’t see Chance. She looked beyond Tanner, expecting to see Chance bringing up the rear. But he was nowhere in sight.

She turned to Tanner with panic registering on her face. “Where’s Chance? Why isn’t he with you?”

“Nay—” Tanner didn’t know how to explain Chance's decision to remain behind to see the mission through. He had thought about it while racing through the woods to get here, but the words hadn't come then, and they weren't coming now.
How do you tell someone that the life of the person they love was about to come to an end?

“Where is he, Tanner?” Her voice was stronger, more stringent.

Tanner looked at the faces of his team and saw that they were all thinking the same thing, their eyes drawing a curious bead.

“Nay, Chance said he just needed a couple more minutes for his drone to come within range of the other one. I told him, it's time to go, but...”

She screamed, suddenly realizing that Chance was still inside the bunker. “
No
!”

“—he wouldn't leave. He wanted to stay behind to take it down.”

“And you
let
him?” She shot Tanner a venomous stare.

“I couldn't stop him. Chance made a choice,” he said. “He wants to get the job done! Maybe if the Semtex doesn't blow for some reason, or if he's already on the way out...”

But Nay was no longer listening to him. She hit her lip mike to patch herself through to Chance, then started running for the bunker. But Tanner held her back as she tried to fight him off. When Shah saw that Tanner needed help, he aided him by holding her as well.

She frantically screamed into her lip mike. “Chance! . . . Chance!
Answer
meeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
”

#

“Chance! . . . Chance!
Answer
me!”

Chance closed his eyes for a brief moment when he heard Nay’s voice. He could hear the great pain behind her words. He tapped his lip mike assembly to connect, then returned to his task at hand.
Don't let her distract you too much or staying behind will have been for nothing.

“Nay—”

“You walk away!”
she cried.
“You walk away right now!”

Chance could feel a sour lump crop up in his throat and the sting of tears brimming. He watched the MQ-10's tail assembly center itself in the distance on his monitor. When he spoke his voice cracked with the thickness of emotion. “Babe, you know I can’t. There’s a Reaper heading for—”

“Chance, get out of there!”
She was crying so hard that Chance could hardly make out her words as she pleaded with him. “
You walk away, you hear me? We’re going to get married!”
Then more softly, as if defeated.
“We’re getting . . . married! We’re going to have a family! And we’re going to live on a place with ponds filled with fish, just like we talked about! Please, Chance. Please walk away, damn you!”

Chance had lost friends in battle before, always feeling a sense of grievance. But what he was feeling at the moment was something much darker, something that struck deep. The pain, in essence, was far greater than he ever could have imagined as he stood there with eyes glistening. “Babe, I love you with all my heart and soul. But I can’t walk away from this—”

“But you can walk away from me?”

That’s not fair.
“Nay, lives depend on what I do here. My mother. My sister. Innocent lives. If I walk away from this, I could never live with myself . . . Please understand.”

Silence.

“Nay?” He could hear her sobbing over the connection. “Nay, I believe in the Light of Loving Spirits. And some day, we’ll be together again. This I promise.”

“Chance!”

“I love you, Naomi! He clicked off. From the corner of his eye, while trying to act stoic, a tear coursed down his cheek. Through a second tear brimming in his other eye the LED lights of the console beckoned with their blurry illumination.

Chance, remaining true to his nature as the protector of the innocent, once again devoted his full attention to the controls.

#

Nay was on her knees overcome with emotion. Tanner and Liam knelt by her side, ready to offer condolences and support.

Slowly, she raised her hand and splayed her fingers, displaying the ring Chance gave her less than twenty-four hours ago. The facets sparkled with iridescent colors, beautiful hues. Colors of the rainbow, she reflected. She let her hand fall slowly to her abdomen as she embraced herself and allowed her forehead to settle against the forest floor, sobbing and grieving even as Chance still lived.

Her future, her love, was about to be forever lost, killed by the very technology she had devoted her professional career to studying.

She wept uncontrollably.

Chance was beyond wired, his heart racing and his pulse becoming electric as he locked onto the first Reaper. With a trembling finger, he pressed the button to launch the last Hellfire, face riveted to the screen as the missile promptly zeroed in.

The Reapers were within two miles of the nuclear facility when new programming orders initiated within the first drone. Commands were sent to the offensive system. Its two Hellfires were beginning to acquire their ground target, the retaining clamps about to disengage.

But Chance’s Hellfire, traveling at a speed of 950 miles-per-hour, struck the drone and decimated it, the attached Hellfires detonating along with it. A concussion rent the air like a sonic boom, felt as far as seven miles away.

With six seconds left on the timer, Chance smiled in victory as he closed his eyes. He tilted his head ceilingward and opened his arms as if to receive his heavenly invitation.

. . . 00:05 . . .

. . . 00:04 . . .

. . . 00:03 . . .

In a kind of accelerated meditative trance, Chancellor Zanetti watched his life pass by with blinding speed. He saw and worshipped the moments he and Tanner became the best of friends, doing things only good friends do, foolish or otherwise. He saw Nay encircled within a nimbus of light--his angel--smiling with rows of perfect, white teeth against a face that was the most beautiful he had ever seen. He recalled their first kiss, the first time they made love, and he remembered the times they laughed until their eyes ran with tears, always talking about raising children, many children, with the brats belonging to her and the well-behaved ones belonging to him, that particular conversation always bringing more laughter. Yes, he considered, despite what was happening, he had been truly blessed.

. . . 00:01 . . .

. . . 00:00 . . .

And then his world suddenly erupted in a white-hot explosion.

#

The smoke-filled sky.

The burning canopy of trees.

The smell of oil from the downed helicopter.

When Lut came to, his world was a bastion of flames. The fire from the chopper had come close, feeding its way across the brush, the heat grazing his skin in soft caresses. Getting to his feet and staggering for balance amid a thin veil of smoke, Lut fanned his hand uselessly as if to clear the air around him, which he failed to do, the smoke thickening, the man coughing.

In a move toward self-preservation he pulled his shirt collar up over his nose and mouth, moving away in a wobbly trot from the smoke and towards the runway.

But it wasn’t quite far enough.

When the bunker lit up, the mushroom ball of fire shot outward and skyward, and Lut was no more.

#

Shazad moved quickly and quietly to the west, distancing himself from the destruction he knew was about to occur. When the bunker went up he took to a knee, turned, and marveled at how the slow roll and curl of flame blossomed over the structure, consuming it.

He made himself invisible against the inevitable surging forces, knowing that inquiries would be made by the Pentagon brass as to whether he died in the blast. Should authorities decide to take the dime-sized pieces of flesh and bone and gore found amongst the wreckage and analyze them for DNA, they would not find him. He glanced at his KA-BAR knife (one thing he would always concede the infidels got right) and winced as he momentarily considered slicing off a chunk of his own flesh to leave behind for them to find. But he allowed this moment to pass, rationalizing that it would cost him too much time, and that even with whatever flesh he could afford to part with, they may still not believe he had succumbed here.

Shazad would leave here a hunted man, forever forced to look over his shoulder, but after all, that was always something he intended to get used to. It was simply the cost of doing business at the pinnacle of his chosen profession, the same way a celebrity must tolerate the paparazzi. He was prepared for it. Having the skills and knowledge of his enemy, having been raised under the tutelage of American forces, Aasif Shazad would live not only to fight another day--but to launch another grand strike against the evil ones that would make the events of today look like petty vandalism.

He slipped into the woods, resuming his westerly course.