Mike Maden - Drone Threat

“The United States and Russia have many more things in common than not, including our enemies, especially ISIS. We share the same strategic imperative to eradicate them.”

“Some of my advisors think you only oppose ISIS because you support Assad, a tyrant and despot.” Lane reached for his coffee.

“We only support Assad for the same reason your country supported Mubarak, Qaddafi, Saddam, and even Assad himself, as well as his father, in the not-too-distant past. Not because you are in favor of totalitarianism, but because you knew they were the strongest hands to keep the lid on the revolutionary and radical forces always simmering underneath.”

“In the long run, it’s never in our best interests to support dictators,” Chandler said. “That puts both of our countries on the wrong side of history.”

Tarkovsky nodded thoughtfully. He anticipated Chandler’s rebuttal. The two of them had already rehearsed today’s conversation by phone. Chandler knew that Lane would get his back up if the two of them appeared to be making common cause. Chandler decided a little good cop/bad cop was in order.

“The wrong side of history? Perhaps,” Tarkovsky said. “But history has many sides. By abandoning the shah, you got the Iranian revolution. By pushing us out of Afghanistan, you got the Taliban and gave al-Qaeda an operating base. By toppling Saddam, you got ISIS. By toppling your ally Qaddafi, you gave ISIS a foothold in Libya. By promoting the Arab spring in Egypt, Mubarak fell, and the Muslim Brotherhood took power — until a right-wing coup by the army overthrew them. If I may be so bold, you Americans have a strange history of destroying secular regimes in the Middle East, and yet you are surprised when they’re replaced by theocratic dictatorships.”

Lane sat up. “May I be frank?”

Tarkovsky smiled. “Of course.”

“My hunch is that President Titov wants to fight ISIS only to bolster his credibility with the West in order to end the sanctions we’ve imposed on his government for the invasion of Crimea. This is all about economics, not security.”

“Economics and security are inseparable. The purpose of the 9/11 attacks was to collapse the American economy. If ISIS seizes the oil fields of the Middle East, they will have an even greater weapon to use against every Western economy.”

Lane sat back, tenting his fingers in front of his face as if in prayer, thinking. A strategic partnership with Russia wasn’t the worst idea in the world — certainly out of the box. But his gut was telling him that something wasn’t right.

He glanced up at the analogue clock on the wall. It read 11:55 a.m. He hadn’t thought about the letter until now.

He caught Chandler studying his face.

“Something on your mind, Clay?”

Chandler shrugged. “Maybe it was just a hoax.” He spoke cryptically. Tarkovsky was out of the loop.

Lane glanced back at the sweeping second hand. “We’ll know soon enough.”

The Airbus A380 taxied to a stop on runway 36R, facing due north (000 true), waiting for permission from the tower to take off. The red-and-white kangaroo logo on its eighty-foot-high tail glimmered in the late, high morning sun. Qantas purchased the world’s largest commercial airliner in order to create what had been, until recently, the world’s longest nonstop commercial flight of 8,578 nautical miles from Dallas/Fort Worth to Sydney, Australia. With a cruising speed of 560 miles per hour, the flight time was just under seventeen hours. Today’s particularly efficient ground crew put them on the flight line two minutes ahead of schedule.

Qantas Flight 8 was oversold again and every seat occupied. Five hundred twenty-five passengers were located in three different classes on two flight decks arranged like a London double-decker bus.

To make the long trans-Pacific flight, the A380’s four turbofan engines required more than eighty-five thousand gallons of highly flammable aviation fuel stored in tanks located in the wings. The nine-foot-long turbofan blades spun at supersonic speeds, feeding air into the three-thousand-degree inferno of the engine’s combustion chamber.

If the spinning blades ever broke off, they’d turn to white-hot titanium shrapnel. The plane, in effect, was a flying gasoline bomb, and the supersonic blades were giant spinning matches. An exploding engine could also damage or disable wing surfaces, landing flaps, and a dozen other critical airframe components, along with the plane’s hydraulic, electrical, and braking systems.

Sitting on the tarmac, fuel tanks full and cabin crowded to the gills with anxious passengers, the A380 finally received the tower’s signal for departure.

The captain pushed the throttles forward and released the brakes. The turbines whined as the engines accelerated. In order to achieve takeoff, the A380 had to reach a speed of at least 170 miles per hour. When the engines were fully engaged, the plane would reach that speed after covering nearly ten thousand feet of 36R’s thirteen-thousand-foot runway. Through the miracle of brilliant human engineering, the fully loaded A380 could cover that distance in just seventy-eight seconds.

Forty seconds down the runway, the copilot pointed at a familiar shape speeding just a few feet off the tarmac directly toward them. He shouted in his headset.

“DRONE!”

No way to avoid it.

The five-pound drone slammed directly into the number-three engine. The captain didn’t panic. The spinning forward fan blades were like a giant Cuisinart married to the world’s biggest vacuum cleaner. They were safety-engineered to suck in and push out all kinds of objects while in flight, including torrents of ice and water and even frozen birds. With any luck the drone would be shredded, burned, and spat out the other end like a hapless duck.

Unfortunately, the drone was carrying a small payload of brick-orange Semtex, a plastic explosive.

The Semtex erupted.

The blades on the forward fan disc in number-three engine ripped away like loose teeth. In less than a second, the titanium fragments exploded through the compressor and combustor assemblies like a shotgun blast, shredding gearboxes, casings, vanes, discs, and bearings.

The plane shuddered.

People screamed.

Lane, Pearce, Chandler, and DHS Secretary Eaton sat around the long table in the Situation Room. The attorney general, Julissa Peguero, was on a secured videoconference display as was Lane’s national security advisor, Jim Garza, on board a flight from California. Eaton had briefed Peguero and Garza earlier by phone at Lane’s request as soon as the first attack occurred.

“Dallas, Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles,” Eaton said. “The four busiest airports in the United States.”

“Four damaged aircraft at four different locations at nearly the same time can’t be a coincidence,” Garza said.

“And no fatalities?” Lane asked.

“The closest was Dallas,” Eaton said. “Captain’s a hero. She was past V-one. Not enough room to hit the brakes so she took it up and around and brought it back down. No serious injuries but a lot of angry customers. I asked Qantas to file it as a mechanical problem for now. They were good enough to comply.”

“The Airbus is an amazing airplane,” Chandler said. “They’re engineered to stay aloft on three engines.”

“Even one, in an emergency. But that was good flying for sure.” As a former air force pilot, Lane appreciated more than the rest what that kind of emergency situation felt like. He made a mental note to call the captain later and congratulate her personally.