Richard Clarke - Sting of the Drone

As the curtains were raised, Gulkkon fiddled with his mobile, quickly removing the back panel, pulling the battery, and slipping them both into a side pocket of his jacket. The others had already done the same. “So, now we are all good here, yes?”

The men nodded. The youngest looking of them offered, “I have been here three days. No problems, no sign of interest from anyone.” Gulkkon noticed that the line leading into the telephone on the bar had been unplugged. “And we reserved this room just an hour ago and then went right into it, so no time for anyone to leave anything behind,” the younger man said.

“Good, then let’s discuss the state of our project,” Gulkkon began. “As you know, our organization has been hired by our friends to run it, since they themselves now have little infrastructure and staff left in Europe.”

Before he could continue, he was interrupted by the man to his right. “Omar … I am sorry, I mean Mustafa … if we do this project, it may be very hard for us to sell our product in this market for a while. It will be very hot here. The people who take our gifts now may no longer be able to continue to look away.”

The man who now called himself Gulkkon twisted in his chair. As he poured from the Johnny Walker bottle, the room was silent. Then he looked to the man on his right. “Our leader knows the risks. Believe me, we are being very well paid for this project, very well. Our friends must have many sheiks behind them.”

Outside the Palais, the rain was letting up, passing to the west. In the dark, above the building across the street, the small, black object hovered quietly, emitting only a soft humming. Without the interference caused by the falling rain, its invisible laser could now beam through the glass outer wall and through to the glass interior window of the Cigar Bar. The laser beam could now carry an uninterrupted audio signal from the vibrations on the window of the Cigar Bar.

“…the U-Bahn in Munich, the U-Bahn and the S-Bahn here and in Berlin, all at the same time….”

On the hovering black oval a lens whirred, refocused, clicked, and moved slightly to the left, zooming in on the face of the man next to Gulkkon.

THURSDAY, JULY 2

SPECIAL OPERATIONS ROOM

CREECH AFB, NEVADA

Bruce Dougherty heard the voices from the Kill Call in his earpiece, coming from Washington, Virginia, Maryland, and Germany. “Positive facial ID on number four,” said the voice from Virginia. “True name Omar Faqir Nawarz, traveling on a Turkish passport as Mustafa Gulkkon.”

“Roger that,” a voice in Washington replied. “That gives us positive audio and facial on all of them.”

Dougherty was sitting in a smaller room, down the corridor from the GCC Operations Center from which he normally flew his aircraft. The sign outside said simply ROOM 103. Inside was a second door, on which a red sign said RESTRICTED ACCESS AREA. Around the GCC, Room 103 was known as Spook Ops, the place from which special CIA missions were managed. Bruce Dougherty did not want to read too much into it, but he had been chosen by Erik and Sandra not only to fly a Spook Ops mission, but also to do so with two new CIA-only stealth mini-drones. He was feeling good, but he also knew a lot of high-level eyes were on him tonight as he flew their first European mission, the least of whom were seated next to him, Erik Parsons and Sandra Vittonelli.

“Collateral check?” another Washington voice asked.

“Collateral good. Just the four targets in the room. No one else within the planned blast range,” Erik Parsons responded.

“Bird Two check?” Sandra Vittonelli asked.

The images on the screen were of the Palais Hotel, seen from several different angles, from traffic cameras across the street, security cameras in the lobby, and on the hovering oval above and across the street. This was Bruce’s first operational mission with the small hover-capable drone. The Agency called it the Hummingbird. Tonight, he had designated it simply Bird One, the little one that listened and watched while its bigger brother waited to strike. Bruce was also piloting the armed drone, another new, covert, short-range model. They called it the Myotis, the bat.

Now it was Bruce’s turn to speak. “Bird Two is circling two blocks away over the Hotel Imperial. All systems nominal.”

He looked up at Colonel Erik Parsons and Sandra Vittonelli standing just outside his cubicle. They both had headsets on, listening to the conference call. Erik raised a thumb. Sandra spoke into her headset for the benefit of the others on the call. “Bring her in. Clear to strike, repeat clear to strike.”

“Roger, clear to strike,” Bruce replied.

The Red Army had been headquartered in the Hotel Imperial during the Allied Occupation that ended in 1950. Its now elegant white and gold façade was bright and looked cleansed by the rain. Two hundred feet above a black triangle lurched quickly forward, banking left, and proceeding west above the Ringstrasse, picking up speed. Myotis, the black triangle, was three meters across at its base and two meters long on its sides. The back corners curved slightly upward, making it seem almost like a piece of paper folded into the shape of a paper airplane.

Fans spun on the bottom and rear of the triangle, providing lift or forward motion. The entire triangle was made of material that would quickly incinerate, leaving only black and gray ash. It turned off the Ring into the airspace above the trees on the block-long Coburgstrasse.

“Target acquired,” Bruce spoke into the mouthpiece of his headset.

“Target confirmed,” he heard from Erik Parsons.

“Switching guidance to the laser designator from Bird One,” Bruce replied.

“Roger, laser designator.”

In the Lobby Bar a zither player was setting up, unrushed. There were only two couples on the couches, only three men sitting at the bar rail. Maybe more people would stop in later, the zither player thought, now that the rain had passed by. Twenty-five feet away the clerk at the registration desk waved over the bell clerk. “Wilhelm, please bring Herr Gulkkon his room key and return his passport. Tell him his bags have all been brought up to his suite, 593.” Wilhelm Stroeder dropped his medical textbook on the bell desk and strode quickly across the lobby for the key and passport and then began with his long legs to take the glass stairs two at a time.

The black triangle stopped in midair, vibrating slightly up and down as it hovered.

“Booster check?” Bruce heard Erik in his ear.

He looked down on his virtual control panel. There was the indicator for the small, solid fuel packs that, when initiated, would briefly propel the triangle forward at a speed greater than Mach 1, the speed of sound. The fuel would burn fast, but enough would be left when combined with the plastic explosives along both sides of the airframe to cause a miniature fireball that would totally destroy any trace of the black triangle. Sitting just above the long tubes of explosives were the little pieces of razor sharp steel that would act as antipersonnel shrapnel, slicing everything and everyone for twenty-five to thirty feet. The indicator light on the booster was green.

“Booster good,” Bruce said.

“Engage booster.”

“Engaging booster, aye.”

The triangle had been blending into the black sky. Probably no one would have seen it had anyone on Coburgstrasse been looking up. No one was. But they could have seen the brief orange flame when the booster initiated, then maybe have seen the blur of black streaking forward and down. No one did.

A few people heard a bang, when the triangle hit Mach 1, but it was so soon followed by the crash of the glass façade when the triangle hit it, and then by the muffled thump when the triangle exploded in the Cigar Bar. Wilhelm actually saw the triangle as it came through the outer glass façade, less than a second before it went through the Cigar Bar door where he was headed. His eyes registered the flash of light when the triangle exploded in the bar, but his brain did not have enough time to process what his eyes had seen before the steel shards sliced his eyes and his brain and all the rest of him into a bloodied pulp on the burning carpet.