Richard Clarke - Sting of the Drone

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 13

COPPER HILLS RANCH

KYLE CANYON, NEVADA

Yuri Poderev did not like the sun. He was happier now that it had set. Bright sunlight made it hard for him to think clearly. It distracted him. He liked the night, when it was as if a noise went away. To deal with the Nevada sun, he had bought black-out shades and curtains for the rooms where he and Mykola Zatonsky had set up their equipment. The rest of the house they had left largely untouched. It was isolated, well off the Kyle Canyon Road, slightly more than an hour’s drive north from the Las Vegas Strip. There was a large pool in the backyard inside the fence, and beyond that a horse barn twenty meters away. There were no horses.

There were satellite dishes, a T3 high capacity Internet connection from the phone company, and a separate fiber line from the cable company. Running the lines from the road had been costly, but there did not appear to be any budget constraints on this operation. The Pakistanis had money, apparently from some Arab supporters. The only Pakistani Yuri had met so far in the operation, the one who had just moved into a high-rise condominium in Las Vegas, was Ghazi Narwaz. And Ghazi appeared to be a very Westernized, global operator who seemed to be somewhat computer literate. He could not follow all that Yuri and Mykola had explained to him, but he seemed to have a far better understanding than most “tourists,” as the two computer experts referred to the millions of Internet users who had no idea how either their computer or the networks worked.

Ghazi had been vague about his background, but he seemed to have operated in international businesses. Yuri knew that this operation was not the first time Ghazi had hired the Merezha organization, but the earlier projects were small, safe, profitable, personal. This thing now was huge and hugely dangerous. It was also bold and potentially fun, the sort of thing that Yuri and Mykola had always talked about doing. The thrill of it made them think less about the danger. And then there was the money. The Merezha was being handsomely paid for supporting Ghazi and his people. Yuri and Mykola would see a small portion of that, but even that portion was considerably more than they had ever made before and both men already had over ten million in dollars and gold scattered in banks around the world.

The beeping indicated a car had started down the long driveway. Mykola looked at the video monitor and then hit the control to open the gate that was set back where it could not be seen from the road. Ghazi appeared to be alone in the Cadillac XTS.

After he freshened up and poured himself a coffee, the two young Ukrainians showed Ghazi the Op Room, as they called the bedroom that they had converted into the computer war game playroom for this day’s mission. “The Hawker took off over two hours ago from Karachi, allegedly bound for Almaty,” Yuri explained. “And your guys say the Predator left Bagram almost three hours ago, so the two should be in the same general area by now.”

“Yes, but this will only work if we know exactly what the Predator’s target is so we can circle above it while it is circling below looking at the target for a while,” Mykola added.

Ghazi looked over the two unkempt men, who looked like they had not washed or shaved or even changed clothes in days. He had noted the pizza crusts and Red Bull cans in the living room. He hoped they knew what they were doing. It had been expensive to lease the Hawker executive jet and even more costly to fit it out the way the Ukrainians had wanted. It was one thing for the Iranians to have done this kind of operation to get their hands on the RQ-170 U.S. stealth drone. Iran had a huge military and intelligence apparatus. The Qazzani Group and the Ukrainian Merezha were highly successful at complex criminal enterprises, but capturing a U.S. drone was something few nation states could accomplish. “We are fairly sure we have lured them to the target. We fed them enough information that they should have sent one of their Predators out for a look and our source in the Pakistan Air Force says the flight is today.”

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 13

GLOBAL COORDINATION CENTER, OPERATIONS ROOM

CREECH AFB, NEVADA

The lone Predator was being flown by a senior noncommissioned officer. Officers flew strike missions and released weapons. Sometimes noncommissioned officers would fly the armed aircraft to the target zone and then hand it off to an officer. On unarmed reconnaissance flights the pilot for the entire mission was often someone like Sergeant Rod Miller, a twenty-six-year veteran of the U.S. Air Force. This flight seemed fairly routine to Miller. Take off out of Bagram in Afghanistan, fly over the Pakistani border into Northern Waziristan, and patrol an area where CIA sources said the Lashkar-e-Taiba had recently set up a training center.

The target was said to be an isolated cluster of about six buildings with a rifle range and an obstacle course. The mission was simply to find it and then circle it for several hours to develop a Pattern of Life, including whether there were women, children, or obvious civilians who could be considered collateral damage casualties. The presence of such potential casualties usually caused the target to be put on hold, even if it otherwise fit the pattern of a terrorist base sufficiently that it qualified for a possible future Signature Strike.

Once in the area, it took Miller only twenty minutes to find a remote cluster of buildings that seemed to fit the source’s description. There were a few vehicles and some men wandering around the yards, but Miller also saw clothing drying on a line near what could be the living quarters. Maybe there were families staying there. Sergeant Miller kept the main electro-optical imaging camera staring at the target as he programmed the Predator autopilot to fly a wide circle ten thousand feet above. At that height, the small prop engine could usually not be heard and the chameleon electrostatic panels on the bottom of the wings and fuselage would appear the same color as the sky above, making visual identification difficult.

Miller asked Lieutenant Bill Wong, sitting next to him running a similar mission, to keep an eye on his screen while Miller went for a quick “bio break.”

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 13

COPPER HILL RANCH

KYLE CANYON, NEVADA

“Better come in here, Nawarz,” Yuri called out from the converted bedroom. “The Hawker has visual on the target.”

Ghazi hurried down the hall from the kitchen, where he had been making coffee. “Yeah, they have also acquired the encrypted satellite links that the Pred is broadcasting, both the data streams and the video,” Yuri said as Ghazi joined them. “We can’t break the crypt though.”

“Don’t need to,” Mykola said as he sat hunched over three screens. “Just have to jam the encrypted military grade Global Positioning System’s signal from the satellite. And that we start to do now,” he said as he hit the Enter/Return key on the Dell. “In two minutes, when the Pred still can’t get the Military GPS signal, it will switch over to the public GPS channel. That’s how they programmed it. And now we jam the data feed so that the pilot can’t control the bird anymore. Zap!”

Yuri was standing behind Mykola, watching him and the screens. “The Hawker is circling at five thousand meters, so its radio signals are much more powerful than the commands on the same frequency coming down from the satellite is space. When the Pred can’t communicate with its pilot, it will just circle. But after fifteen minutes, if it still can’t phone home, it will break off the mission and fly home.”