Marc Cameron - National Security

Science was, more often that not, a waiting game, but when she considered what would happen if an Ebola variant escaped into the U.S. population, she wanted to pull her hair out for lack of something positive to do.

Then a man named Winfield Palmer had called. He said he was the Director of National Intelligence and asked if he could please pile a little more on her worry plate.

Now, deep in the lush forests of Northern Virginia, behind layers of electronic and physical security, Mahoney leaned forward in a soft leather office chair, her face bathed in a yellow-green glow from a series of flat-screen monitors.

Beside her, dwarfing a similar chair, a giant of a man with a Louisiana accent had welcomed her to the team like a big brother. He wore faded jeans and a tight black T-shirt that bunched above enormous biceps. His high-and-tight haircut and stern demeanor said he would have been more comfortable in uniform. His name was Jacques Thibodaux and he fidgeted as if he was ready to bounce off the walls.

A pimple-faced Air Force staff sergeant named Guttman sat, big ears pinched between a set of cheap headphones, looking outward from the blinking panel. His fingers worked a game controller connected to a separate laptop computer on his knees.

“Nothing yet?” Thibodaux asked

Staff Sergeant Guttmann was a prodigy, one of four Air Force enlisted personnel handpicked for their extraordinary hand-eye coordination and almost superhuman computer gaming skills to pioneer the advancement of a very specific unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV. Above his head, in ornate golden script was a three-foot blue banner with the motto of his secret unit, Detachment Seven of the Fifty-third Test and Evaluation Group: HIC SUNT DRACONES

Here there be dragons. It was the inscription on medieval maps for sections of uncharted sea.

“No contact from your friend, sir,” Guttmann said. His voice cracked as he spoke, making Mahoney wonder just how old he really was. “I did, however, just take out a Nazi field marshal and two of his zombie underlings using a World War II-era grease gun with extreme skill.”

Mahoney wrinkled her nose. These military types were so hard to understand. She shot a look at the Cajun. “Zombies?”

Thibodaux shook his head, muttering under his breath. “This damned multitaskin’ generation. While he should be tending to the business of looking out for Jericho, he’s playin’ Call of Duty-a computer game with Nazis of the living dead or some such thing. My boys love it.”

“What’s not to love?” Guttman smiled. “Who wouldn’t get a kick out of killing Nazi zombies? A bunch of guys in my squadron play all the-”

“You know, Guttman,” Thibodaux said, rubbing his jaw with a hand the size of a pie pan. “I got a friend out there, all by his lonesome self in parts unknown, facing some real-life shit that would make your zombie games look like a Scooby-Doo cartoon. You might consider showing some attention to your duties at hand.”

Guttman, flustered, snapped his personal laptop shut without another word. He glanced at Mahoney, blushing like a schoolboy taken to task in front of a pretty girl.

Thibodaux rose quickly from his chair and strode to the large wall map of the Middle East. He tapped the tiny red dot with a forefinger the size of a sausage between Riyadh and the Persian Gulf. Al-Hofuf, Saudi Arabia.

“Can your bird use its cameras to zoom in or something so we can see how he is? I don’t know… infrared maybe, like on those Tom Clancy movies.”

Guttman sighed, seemingly relieved Thibodaux had decided not to chop his head off. “Sorry, sir. No can do. If Damo was a conventional drone buzzing over a third world country with little in the way of defense we’d be able to get some images. Saudi Arabia would shoot one of those down in a heartbeat. But she doesn’t work that way. She floats around up there in stealth mode, out of the picture and out of radar contact-until we need her.”

Damo was a new and highly classified UAV. Far beyond the Predator and Reaper drones being used to run recon missions blasting away at insurgent compounds from Kirkuk to the wild and wooly Frontier Provinces of Pakistan, Damo was not supposed to be anything but a few sketches on a Northrop Grumman engineer’s drawing board. Three generations past the officially still experimental X47B Pegasus, the U.S. Navy’s aircraft carrier launch-capable Unmanned Combat Air System, Guttman’s UCAS, was more properly known as the AX7 Damocles. Particularly useful for its ability to loiter unnoticed above an enemy for long periods of time, Damocles could be suspended overhead, ready to strike like the mythic sword hanging by a horse hair. In reality, it had been in operation for well over a year, based out of Eglin Air Force Base in Florida.

Though most UAVs were piloted by officers, the AX7 was launched from the back of a Boeing 747-out of sight of snooping eyes and video cameras-and then controlled by a new generation of gamers from the enlisted ranks whose proficiency test scores had been off the charts. In the hands of a skilled computer dweeb with the right equipment, Damocles could be controlled from anywhere in the world.

Staff Sergeant Guttman was the king of computer dweebs. He checked the systems monitor, touching the screen with a plastic stylus, then made a note on his clipboard.

“I don’t know what your friend is out there looking for. That’s way above my pay grade, but I can only bring Damo down and into the open if I get the order from that phone.” He nodded toward a black handset on the stainless counter beside his joystick and stylus. “If I get the order, Damo is armed with four Tomahawks. But until that phone rings, I can’t…”

Thibodaux raised his big hand. “We get it, kid. Why don’t you just chill and kill some more Nazi zombies…”

Megan stood to go look at the map, to do something, anything but sit and wait.

Then the black phone on Guttman’s desk began to ring.

If given the choice, Quinn preferred quick, decisive movement over a lengthy deliberation. It allowed him the freedom to respond to gut feelings. More times than not, such action gave him the clear advantage. There was no doubt Dr. Suleiman had heard the pistol shot from outside the killing room. It was, after all, the fitting conclusion of his execution order. Jericho knew Suleiman was the professional, the one he would have to kill first, but when he sprang into the hall the chief veterinarian was gone.

The desk guard was on his feet, looking toward the double doors. Quinn put a quick double tap between his running lights. The startled man hardly had time to look up. His body spun to the ground in the particular corkscrew fashion of one who is brain dead before they fall.

Without a pause, Jericho rushed for the doors.

Dr. Suleiman met him in a head-on attack, crashing into him with the full weight of his body. The veterinarian was well groomed, but he knew how to fight. He smashed down with both fists in a well-delivered haymaker that sent the pistol skittering across the dimly lit room and out of reach.

Jericho crouched, springing forward like a lineman, using the strength of his legs to drive the Arab backward with the point of his shoulder toward a white marble support column. Flailing out with both hands, Suleiman dragged a tapestry off the wall, bringing the heavy woolen rug down on top of both men. Quinn rolled away, struggling to push free from the tangle of thick cloth. When he got to his feet, he saw a smiling Suleiman holding the thick dowel that had been used to support the tapestry. Five feet long and an inch in diameter, the wooden staff made a formidable weapon in the hands of someone who knew how to use it.

“I do not know who you are,” Suleiman panted, a fleck of spittle forming at the corners of his twisted mouth. “But I think you are no Kuwaiti horse buyer…”