Richard Clarke - Sting of the Drone

“Next time when I submit a paper at Chaos, maybe you should read it,” Dugout replied. “Listen, you’re hosed, so all you can do now is buy yourself a better prison roommate. I can get you a safe one, or your own private room, but you better talk to me now. Passwords, the attack plans, you know what I need. No tricks. Trick me and you get shot resisting arrest. Shot dead, man, fatal, right Darth?”

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 22

LEGACY HIGH SCHOOL

NORTH LAS VEGAS

Ray was not supposed to do tactical missions. There was a bright red line against that in his job description. It had taken him years to stop people from saying he should not be “operational.” The advent of drones had made him very operational and no one could argue against that, at least not successfully. The PEG Director, however, was supposed to do analysis, not race through the suburbs in a convoy of Chevy Suburbans. As they drove, he noticed the streetlights go out and the sky turn a pinkish orange. He wasn’t supposed to be with the gun toters and, he thought with a smile, Dugout certainly wasn’t either.

He held on to the door handle as the big truck cornered without slowing down and began speeding down the straightway, past the high school campus, over the rise, and into the open desert. Then he saw the 747 above.

“Stop,” he yelled. “Everyone out, out of the truck. Incoming. Get away from the truck!” He opened the door and leaped while the vehicle was just starting to slow down. He hit the dirt hard, but curled and rolled in the military parachute landing style, keeping his head off the ground. He scrambled to get up and ran into the sand and rock at the side of the road as he heard the second Suburban rear-end the first with a metal on metal crunch.

Then the explosion knocked him down, face first into the dirt. He felt a rock cut into his left cheekbone just below the eye. Facedown, he could still see the light from the blast and the fire. He felt the heat.

Ray forced himself up. He knew there was blood coming from somewhere, or maybe a couple of places, his cheek, his nose, his left ear. He saw the FBI men trying to make sure that everyone had made it out of the first two vehicles. Their windows were shattered into giant spiderwebs. He staggered ahead, away from the wreck. Was this what a concussion felt like? There was a ringing in his ears and he was squinting, trying to focus. Then he saw the C-17 model lifting off at the end of the long flat, dirt road. Three models waited for takeoff, a B-17, an A-380, and a B-29. Ray tried to yell back to the agents, but he couldn’t get the words out, coughing, choking.

But the large model C-17 banked left after lifting off, flying its programmed flight path, seeking a homing beacon.

“You okay, sir?” It was an agent from the third vehicle, one of three men in body armor who were now standing with him.

“Hey, there’s a guy down there in the middle of the road,” one of the agents called out, raising his HK33 assault weapon.

“Don’t shoot,” Ray said. “Let’s take him.”

“We’ll give that a try, sir, but we have our rules,” the Special Agent replied.

The four men walked slowly down the road toward Ghazi, who had placed a flight controller module on the ground and was walking toward them with his arms hanging by his sides, his hands empty.

“Stop there,” the Agent yelled. And then in low voice to Ray, he said, “Could have a suicide belt on.”

“Take off your coat and drop it on the ground,” another Agent yelled.

Ghazi stopped, but kept the coat on. “You thought you were invulnerable here, didn’t you? No one could get your drone pilots here. You could kill innocent people everywhere in the world, but no one could kill you, no one could get their revenge? Never be any payback? Thought you were the only ones with drones, didn’t you?” His right hand darted into his North Face windbreaker. “Vengeance!” he yelled and started to run toward them.

“Gun!” one of the agents cried out. All three FBI agents fired their HK33s in short bursts of a few bullets each.

Ghazi had no gun. Instead, he held a detonator and as soon as he hit its switch, the three large model radio controlled aircraft on the road behind him blew up in what seemed like a single, massive explosion.

The blast knocked the FBI agents and Ray to the ground again. Ghazi’s lifeless body lay bleeding out on the pavement.

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 22

SPECIAL OPERATIONS ROOM

GLOBAL COORDINATION CENTER

CREECH AFB, NEVADA

First, the Global Reach drone got to the target outside of Kiev.

“Five SUVs, one pickup in the yard. Guards inside at the gate. Guards outside. Guard on the roof. No signs of civilians. Getting multiple, human life forms readings through the windows. Laser is having trouble getting the conversation, but the voices are all male,” Major Jaimie Hernandez was calling out. It was his first day at the GCC, but he had flown birds from Eglin Air Base in Florida. Now he was stepping up to the big time, to the place where the important national missions were flown and on his initial shift there, he realized, he was already part of a mission like none he had ever heard about.

“Weapons check?” Erik asked.

“We’ve got two laser-guided 250-pound bombs, Mark 82s, and four Hellfire missiles, two with high explosives and two with fragmentation warheads.”

“Let’s drop the two bombs on the first pass, ten-second interval. On my mark, and fire.”

The warehouse erupted on the Big Board and then disappeared as the Global Reach banked to avoid the explosion it had created. There was no second bird to provide a video feed. Erik had been lucky to find a Global Reach already over eastern Turkey, looking for PKK terrorists and arms being smuggled into Syria.

“Okay, Jaimie, finish them off and set course for home. Do you have enough fuel to get back to CONUS?” Erik asked.

“No way, sir, I was going to bring it back to Turkey, to Incirlik,” Major Hernandez replied.

“The Turks may get a little touchy about our blowing shit up in the Ukraine and then landing in Turkey. If you can’t get to Sicily, Sigonella, bring it in to Ramat David and I’ll let the Israelis know not to shoot it down,” Erik said.

Looking at the Big Board, at the missiles ripping into the flaming warehouse complex, Erik walked down the line of flight controllers to Sergeant Rod Miller’s cubicle. Miller was flying a Reaper over the target in Pakistan. As Colonel Erik Parsons looked over Miller’s shoulder at the images from Pakistan, Communications switched a call from the Pentagon for Parsons to a red phone in Miller’s cubicle. It was Admiral Johnston.

“Colonel, are you the acting Officer in Charge?” the Admiral yelled down the line.

“Yes, sir. Under the Continuity of Ops plan, I took over when the Director was … was no longer available.”

“Well, what the shit did you guys just do in the Ukraine? There’s been no authorization to fly in there, let alone bomb in there. You trying to start a war there, son?”

“Admiral, I am operating a mission today under the Intelligence chain of command, not military. And, with all due respect, sir, I am still in the middle of that mission, so if you will forgive me, sir, I need to get back to work. I’m sure the White House will—”

“Colonel, you are to stand down. Now. You are relieved of any billet you have in any Intelligence outfit. Let the Agency do that stuff. I will not have a serving officer starting a Goddamn war. You get in your car and you drive over to Nellis Air Base and report to the Inspector General. Colonel?”

“Sir, I think you may be mistaken. I am not in your chain of command, sir.” Colonel Parsons hung up the red phone and looked at Sergeant Rod Miller.