Richard Clarke - Sting of the Drone

Ghazi looked at the computer screens, but could not understand the data that they were showing. “But we don’t want it to go home. Home is the U.S. airbase at Bagram,” he said.

“Don’t worry,” Mykola replied. “Fifteen minutes from now we will start beaming what looks like GPS data down from the Hawker, on the public GPS frequency, but much louder, much more power. We will drown out the real GPS signal and we will give the little Pred our own GPS data, which will be wrong, of course.”

Ghazi sat down in an empty, ergonomic chair, webbed and black. He was finally understanding the beauty of what the Ukrainians were doing, how it was that they guaranteed that they would capture a U.S. drone. “So, as of now that drone is not being controlled by its pilot? It’s out of communications with him? And it’s circling, trying to phone home? It can’t get the military satellite signal to know where it is, so it is using the civilian GPS signal like my car gets from the satellites, right?”

“Exactly,” Mykola. “Now we wait for when it decides to go home and then we make the west into the east.”

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 13

GLOBAL COORDINATION CENTER, OPERATIONS ROOM

CREECH AFB, NEVADA

“Miller, your bird’s sick,” Lieutenant Wong said to the sergeant as he returned from the bathroom. “Can’t get through to it, but she’s still circling and we’re still getting the vid.”

“What the fuck’d you do to it, sir?” Miller asked as he put his earphones back on. The sergeant was twenty-two years older than the officer and, despite the rank difference, tended to treat the younger man as he would his college-age son.

“I didn’t touch it, Rod. Jeez man, this happens. The satellite radio for the control frequency died and the backup must have, too. So the bird will fly home. Without you doing shit. Just watch the camera feed, which you’re still getting,” Lieutenant Wong responded. “Chill, dude.”

Sergeant Miller punched in an extension number on his keyboard and spoke into his headset. “Major Dougherty, I have a problem with my Pred. Data link is down and she will probably fly herself back to base here in a few minutes.”

Bruce Dougherty was three rows above and behind him in the warren of cubicles. “Got it, Rod. Just keep an eye on her and alert Bagram. I got another problem on my hands right now. So, you handle it. It’s unarmed.”

“Roger that, sir,” Sergeant Miller replied and leaned back in his chair to watch the Predator fly itself home. Exactly fifteen minutes after the command-control data link to the aircraft had been broken, the video images changed. The aircraft was no longer circling, staring at the camp below. The camera switched to a forward view of mountains lit by the last rays of the sun and the dark sky behind them.

“Wait a second,” Miller said aloud. “The camera should be looking at the sunset, not mountains lit by it. This motherfucker is going the wrong direction.”

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 14

MASHHAD AIRPORT

MASHHAD, PAKISTAN

The runway at Mashhad was only used a few times a day for the flights to Karachi. To get to Islamabad you had to go by bus. Occasionally a Pakistani Army helicopter or a Pak Air Force C-130 would land, but there was no military base at the airport. The local police and militia maintained security at the field, with a light hand. The air traffic control tower was staffed twelve hours a day, but the workload was light.

By the time the on duty controller saw the Predator, it had already landed and was taxiing down the runway. He could not quite believe what he was seeing.

After taxiing to the end of the runway, the Predator just sat there, with its propeller spinning very slowly at the rear of the fuselage. Then the man in the tower noticed the cars and trucks driving across the grass toward the Predator and picked up his drop line to the police station. “We have a problem. There are vehicles on the runway that should not be there. And one of them is a drone.”

He picked up his binoculars and focused in on the unmanned aircraft as its rotor slowed to a stop. Then he saw the bright light from the television cameraman standing near the little terminal building.

The young man in front of the camera was talking. “Behind me is what appears to be a U.S. drone. It has just landed at this civilian airport in Mashhad, Pakistan, apparently surprising local authorities. There were no Pakistani military or police here to greet it. In fact, at the moment, only WWN and some local people are at the scene. As you can see, the local men are hitting the drone with their shoes and look like they are getting ready to do some more serious damage.

“WWN was contacted by an anonymous source who suggested that we be here at Mashad airport today. When we got here we were given a piece of paper by a man who then drove away on a motorcycle. The paper said the Pakistani and Afghan people were fighting back against the drones that, they say, kill innocent people. It did not say how they were fighting the drones, but then this one landed and, well, it seems pretty clearly to have been taken out of service somehow, at least for now. Americans may not be the only ones who understand this new killing technology. Bryce Duggan, WWN, Mashhad, Pakistan.”

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 14

828 NEW HAMPSHIRE AVENUE

FOGGY BOTTOM

WASHINGTON, DC

When Ray got up quietly from his bed, he saw on his Blackberry that it was almost four o’clock in the morning. It was about the only time of day when the neighborhood around his townhouse was quiet. When he came back to bed a few minutes later with two bottles of water, Sandra was awake. She had thrown off the sheet and the street lamp cast a soft orange light across her naked body. “You know we’re crazy on all sorts of levels for doing this,” Sandra whispered as he sat on the edge of the bed.

“No, I don’t know that,” Ray replied, as he slowly moved his hand along her leg. He spoke softly, slowly. “We’re both single again. We work in different organizations. No rules broken, no harm, no foul. Just good conversation and great sex. Don’t overthink it.”

She sat up in the middle of the bed and leaned over to kiss him, then moved behind him and put her head on his left shoulder and her legs around his waist. They sat there quietly for a moment looking together out of the second-story window at the quiet street below. She spoke into his ear, “It is great. And you’re the only one who understands me, my job, where I am in life. It’s all good, I just don’t want…”

“Complications, I know. Look, I meant what I said that night at the Ritz. I like being single, too. I get that right now your career is central, mine is for me, too. Marriage didn’t work for either of us and we don’t need any more obligations than we’ve got. I’m fine with being in the moment, it’s just that I’ve never been very good at it.”

“You did a pretty good job of being in the moment a few hours ago,” she laughed. “I like what we’ve got. We’re so much alike, I mean aside from the fact that I’m short and Italian and you’re tall and WASPy.” She rolled over and sat on his stomach, straddling his wide frame, looking into his eyes. She slipped her fingers slowly through the hair on his chest. “It’s good. We’re a good pair. Neither one of us would ever have been happy breeding, raising kids in some dreadful suburban wasteland, punching clocks, sitting in commuter traffic. I’d have gone mad and become an axe murderer.”

“Some people think we are murderers,” Ray replied.