Richard Clarke - Sting of the Drone

“We will have people ready, soon,” Ghazi said, wondering how Bahadur was doing with that part of the plan.

“Bayurak doesn’t want what we do traceable back to Kiev, back to him,” Mykola announced.

“Well, you know how to anonymize, bounce through servers in Saudi, make it look like it’s al Qaeda in Yemen,” Ghazi said.

“The Americans can figure that shit out now. Fort Meade, NSA, Cyber Command, those guys,” Yuri said.

“So?” Ghazi asked.

“So, we got to be in Vegas,” the two Ukrainians replied in unison.

“Fucking Christ, all right, you can go to Vegas,” Ghazi exclaimed.

Mykola high-fived Yuri. Then Yuri turned back to Ghazi. “Fucking Christ? I thought you were Muslim.”

“I was, as a child,” Ghazi replied. “Now I am a global citizen. I believe in what works.”

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 17

MANDALAY HOTEL

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA

The Peter Michael “Pointe Rouge” Chardonnay flew through the air. It was carried by the sommelier’s attractive assistant, who had attached herself to a wire, touched a control pad, and had been pulled rapidly fifty feet above the restaurant floor. There she had opened one of the many glass enclosures that held the extensive wine collection in temperature-controlled environments, a series of wine rooms that composed not a wine cellar, but a wine attic soaring above the diners.

Descending to tableside, the acrobatic wine steward announced, “So, we did have the 2009. You’re in luck, because it really is the best available year. Would you like it chilled?”

“No, no that will suppress the taste,” Colonel Erik Parsons replied. “Just leave it on the table, thanks.”

“You knew that wine was in the top case, didn’t you?” Jennifer Parsons said, smiling and simultaneously shaking her head. “Did you pick it just for the show?”

“I don’t know why you say things like that. This is the best California Chardonnay on the list,” Erik replied.

“So what is the occasion? This is not our anniversary and it’s not my birthday, which I think was the last time you took me to a fancy Vegas casino restaurant.”

“Do we need an occasion? It’s my night off. We live ten miles from some of the best restaurants in America. With our combined incomes, we can afford to live better than we do, especially now that we have the last of the tuition payments behind us.”

She looked at him as he tasted the wine. “Honey, we have been together for twenty-five years. I know you. And I am a working psychiatrist, so don’t tell me we have come here just because it’s Monday. Talk to me. What’s on your mind, GI?”

“Well, see, doctor, I have this friend,” Erik began. “And he has been having fantasies of flying through the air above a restaurant and hooking up with his wife, who is also in the air, and they do it somewhere between the Shiraz and the Merlot. But in the dream, they knock over this whole wall of Pinot Noir.”

Jennifer laughed and touched her glass to his. “That is an easy diagnosis. Your friend is probably a former fighter pilot who commanded a squadron of F-16s and is frustrated because now his squadron is a bunch of flying killer robots and neither he nor his pilots ever get to fly themselves through the air … which for them, when they were flying their F-16s, was better than sex.”

“Jeez, Jen, that was such a classical Freudian interpretation, I’m surprised you didn’t go for the F-16s are phalluses thing.”

“Ha!” she laughed. “Goes without saying.”

“Going supersonic, the high G turn, all that stuff was never better than what we’ve done together, really,” Erik said softly.

“Bullshit, now really, what’s bothering you?”

They had ordered the six-course “Degustation” tasting menu and the courses began to appear.

“I think some of the guys are getting ragged. Two days ago one guy clipped the wing of a UN 737 over Mogadishu. He says he never saw the plane. The Reaper spun out and hit a refugee camp, exploded. Amazingly, no one got killed. And the 737 continued on in and landed. Lucky.

“Another guy, Bruce, you know him, says he never saw the civilian walk right into the kill zone, just before he fired. Fried the guy, as well as the four bad guys.

“Then one of Bruce’s birds just seemed to disappear. We later found it on satellite imagery in pieces on the ground. Still trying to figure out whether he clipped the mountain or what happened.

“Out of seventy-five pilots, eleven have asked for early transfer, I dismissed three for DUIs, and eight have filed for divorce since they got here. Those are not normal numbers, Jennie. I am supposed to be a leader, inspire them, keep them happy, act like a team. That ain’t happening. Washington has suggested having chaplains and shrinks just outside the Ops Center, in case the pilots need immediate counseling.”

Jennifer Parsons had followed her husband around the world, moving ten times since they married. There had always been Air Force hospitals or off-base clinics where she could practice. She knew the stresses the military placed on most families and she had always felt blessed that she and Erik had maintained such a real partnership, that they and the two girls had always been such a team together.

“I can’t see any of the guys in your unit or their spouses because of the conflict of interest rules, but I do consults with my colleagues, so I hear things, always without names, but nonetheless …

“There is a lot of stress in the program. Let’s face it, they kill people fairly often and then they walk out of their dark game-boy room and they’re in the blazing Las Vegas sun, where it’s perfectly safe, fun is all around. It’s hard to live in those two worlds simultaneously,” Dr. Parsons observed. “You don’t want them to think of their job as just a computer game. You want them to know there are real people at the other end. But then when you achieve that they also know that those real people are killed like fish in a barrel, they can’t fight back. It’s not really a fair fight, so your guys get guilty.”

“It’s not supposed to be a fair fight,” Erik shot back. “That’s the whole point. We have found a way of eliminating our enemies that does not put our people at risk. Military leaders have wanted that forever. That’s why they put men inside big metal tanks or had them fly overhead in bombers, but then those things got vulnerable, too. I don’t want it to be fair and to have one out of ten of my guys killed. I want none out of ten killed. And that’s what I got with the drones.”

They stopped talking as the waiter explained the next course. They were used to editing their remarks when others were within hearing distance, when civilians were around. Erik hoped that, to the waiters, they looked like a couple in from Columbus for the medical equipment show that was filling up the casino’s giant convention hall.

“Trouble is, you got a bunch of your young pilots who spent their high school years killing pretend people on their computer games,” Jennifer said when the waiter had left. “They have to constantly remind themselves that this is not a game. And they’re not supposed to go home and talk about it with their husbands and wives. It’s an abnormal environment.”

“Truth is they know that we don’t really need highly trained pilots who can drive an F-16 to do this stuff,” Erik admitted. “And they know they may never get to fly a real fighter, one that they get to sit in. We’re buying fewer and fewer fighter planes and more and more drones. The days of the fighter pilot are dwindling fast. They’ve gone from being highly select, well-trained jocks to being, what’d you call them, game-boys?”