Tom Clancy - Locked On

The legs were the propulsion system of this ground-traveling bug-bot, and Ryan tested the device by ordering it forward and backward, then panning the 1080p video camera in all directions. Once satisfied that the robot was working nominally, he powered it down, then switched back to the helo controller. He ordered the microhelo to hit its three waypoints and return to its helipad.

Five minutes later he was flying a second bug-bot to Rehan’s roof, landing it near the first. The wind had picked up a little between flights, so the second sortie took almost twice as long as the first.

“Ready for number three,” Jack whispered when the helicopter was back on its pad.

Chavez loaded the bug-bot on the aircraft. “Microhelo is ready to launch payload three.”

“How are we on time, Ding?” Ryan asked.

After a moment’s hesitation, Chavez said, “Fair. Don’t rush, but don’t fuck around, either.”

“Roger that,” Jack said, and he switched his video glasses back over to the camera in the swivel turret under the microhelo’s nose.

After the third and fourth bug-bots were delivered to the air vent over the attic of the target building, Jack brought the helo back to waypoint alpha, two hundred feet above his head, in preparation for a landing. Chavez was ready with the fifth payload and fresh battery for the chopper, as they had determined it could not fly for more than an hour on a single charge.

“Okay,” Jack said. “I’m bringing it down.”

Just then a breeze caught the helicopter, pushing it inland. Jack had dealt with a half-dozen such incidents in the past forty-five minutes, so he did not panic. Instead he brought the chopper back out over the water, it took a second for it to right itself, and he thought he had control. But it drifted again, and then a third time as he started his descent.

“Damn it,” he whispered. “I think I’m losing her.”

Caruso was watching the feed in his monitor. “Just bring her down a little faster.”

“Okay,” Jack said. At one hundred fifty feet the craft jolted forward, and Ryan had to pull it back. “I’m losing the GPS hold. Could be losing battery.”

Carusfifo said, “Ding, can you see it?”

Chavez looked into the night sky above. “Negative.”

“Keep looking, you may have to catch it.”

But it was too late. Jack saw his video feed turn away from the water and the lights of the Kempinski Hotel as the microhelo began to spin slowly, and its descent speed increased sharply.

“Shit!” he said, a little too loudly considering their covert position. “It’s dead. It’s dropping.”

“I don’t see shit,” Chavez said. He was walking around with his eyes in the sky. How fast is it coming down?”

Just then the helicopter slammed into the grass ten feet from its launch pad. It exploded into a dozen fragments.

Jack took off his goggles. “Son of a bitch. Set up the reserve helo.”

But Chavez was already moving toward the wreckage. “Negative. We’ll go with the four bots we have in place. That’s going to have to do it. We don’t have time to send another bird up.”

“Roger that,” said Jack, secretly relieved. He was exhausted with the stress of flying the tiny aircraft into the target location, and he looked forward to getting back across the water, where Caruso would be in charge of operating the bug-bots in the air vents.

It was approaching five a.m. when the three men got back to their bungalow. Jack was beyond exhausted. While Domingo and Dominic set up the remote equipment for the bug-bots, Ryan dropped onto the couch, still wet from his swim. Dom laughed; he’d been through every bit of the physical exertion that his cousin had endured, but the mental strain of launching, flying, and landing had all been on Jack Junior.

Now it was Caruso’s turn to drive.

Dominic had studied the architectural plans from the developers of several of the Palm Jumeirah properties in order to find the best entry points for their bug-bots. The attic vents were deemed the best bet, and as the former FBI agent drove his first little bug-shaped robot into the vent, he was happy to find no post-construction metal grating or wire mesh in his way.

The tiny legs on the robot could be magnetized for moving up and down metal surfaces, just like in the ductwork of the air-conditioning system, so he had no problem moving on both the X and Y axes as he progressed deeper into Rehan’s safe house.

The video quality was amazingly good, though the fluctuating transmission speeds at times caused a degradation in the quality. Dom and the other operators at The Campus had also tested a thermal infrared camera, similar to but superior to the one in the nose turret of the microhelo’s thermal cam, but ultimately they decided that that feature would not be necessary for the indoor work they had planned here in Dubai, plus the infrared cams drew more battery power and this would be detrimental to their mission, so they were not attached to the ground drones.

After twenty minutes of operation, he had his first bot in position at the ground a/c return duct in the master bedroom. Dom adjusted the tilt of the camera and checked to make certain that nothing was obstructing the pan. Then he set the white balance and focused.

The laptop in the bungalow displayed a near-perfect color image of the room, and even though there was nothing to hear at the moment, the

rush of air through the vent convinced him the audio was working nominally.

Dominic Caruso repeated this process twice more over the course of the next hour. The second bug-bot he placed in a duct overlooking the great room. The camera afforded only a narrow view of the sofa area and the entry hall — by no means a perfect shot of every corner of the room — but Caruso felt sure the microphone was positioned well to record anything that was said in the room below.

The third bug-bot started normally and moved a few inches, but stopped within a foot of the entrance to the ventilation system. Dom and Jack spent a few minutes troubleshooting the problem, but finally they gave up, unable to tell if there was some hardware damage to the transmitter or if a software glitch was creating the problem. They declared the device dead, and Caruso moved on to the last robot. This one he placed in a second-floor office area without any problems.

By seven a.m. the operation was complete and Dominic powered down all the cameras. The surveillance equipment, the cameras and the microphones, were passive systems, meaning they did not operate all the time — instead they had to be turned on remotely. This saved battery power greatly, but it also would be incredibly beneficial for an operation that was expected to last a week or more.

Caruso called Granger in Maryland, and Granger confirmed that they had been able to pick up feeds from three of the cameras and audio from three of the mikes, just as Dom, Jack, and Ding could from the bungalow. The feed needed to be sent to The Campus instantly as, it was assumed, much of the audio they would pick up would be in Rehan’s native tongue, and Rick Bell had an Urdu-speaking analyst at the ready twenty-four/seven.

Caruso asked Granger if there was any news about Clark, but John had not checked in. Sam Granger also said that Sam Driscoll had not checked back in yet, either, but they had no reason to suspect anything was amiss.

When Chavez hung up with Granger, he flopped on the couch next to Ryan. Both men were worn out.

At first Jack Jr. was dejected with the success of the mission. “All that work and just three out of five cams and mikes are online? Are you serious? For all we know Rehan likes to sit at the kitchen table when he works. If that’s the case, we’re fucked, because we won’t hear a damn thing that isn’t in the office, the great room, or the master bedroom.”