Mike Maden: Drone Threat

Alyssa Abbott— White House Press Secretary

Clay Chandler— Vice President of the United States

Melinda Eaton— Director, Department of Homeland Security (DHS)

Jim Garza— National Security Advisor

Jackie Gibson— Lane’s Chief of Staff

Stella Kang— Pearce Systems (security, drone operations)

David Lane— President of the United States (POTUS)

Carl Luckett— U.S. Army Ranger

Ian McTavish— Pearce Systems (IT)

Margaret Myers— Former President of the United States

General Gordon Onstot— Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS)

Ilene Parcelle— Partner, Seven Rivers Consortium

Troy Pearce— CEO, Pearce Systems

Julissa Peguero— Attorney General of the United States

Mike Pia— Director of National Intelligence (DNI)

Norman Pike— CEO, Chinook Charter

Steve Rowley— U.S. Army Ranger

Sarah Swift— Pearce Systems (combat medic)

Daniel Brody— Mossad agent

Tamar Stern— Mossad agent, former Pearce Systems associate

Moshe Werntz— Mossad chief of station, Washington, D.C., head of North American operations

Abu Waleed al-Mahdi— Caliph of the ISIS Caliphate; Iraqi national

Kamal al-Medina— ISIS unit commander, Iraq; Saudi national

August Mann— Pearce Systems (Director of Nuclear Facilities Deconstruction); German national

Aleksandr Tarkovsky— Russian Federation Ambassador to the United States

AUMF— Authorization to Use Military Force

COTS— Consumer Off-the-Shelf

CTE— Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy

IAI— Israeli Aerospace Industries

LaWS— Laser Weapons System

MALE— Medium-Altitude Long-Endurance

MWDSC— Metropolitan Water District of Southern California

PTSD— Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

ROEs— Rules of Engagement

SOG— Special Operations Group (CIA)

SVR— Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation

TBI— Traumatic Brain Injury

TXDOT— Texas Department of Transportation

VTOL— Vertical Take-Off and Landing

As with the previous novels in the series, the drone and related systems described in this story are currently deployed or are based on patent filings, prototypes, or research concepts. In some cases, I’ve modified or simplified their performance characteristics for the sake of the story.

The sun’s bloodred halo framed the Christ hanging from his towering crucifix.

Or so it seemed to Ahmed. He cupped his hands around his eyes to get a better look, his spent RPG launcher heavy on one shoulder and his battered AK-47 on the other.

Not a Christ. A Christian, and a Kurd.

It was a kafir they had crucified, he reminded himself. His limp body hung from a utility pole on top of the hill, his arms tied at the elbows to the crossbar with baling wire and duct tape. The kafir wouldn’t submit, wouldn’t renounce his infidel faith.

He crucified himself, Ahmed thought. He spat in the dust at his aching feet. The boots he wore were too small, taken from a dead Iraqi weeks ago.

He glanced back up. The blowflies swarmed around the moist tissues of the pastor’s mouth and nose, laying their eggs. The orifices were caked with black blood. The eyes would be next, Ahmed knew. He’d seen it before, in the last village. And in the one before. The hatched larvae would begin their grim feast and in a week the pastor’s skull would be picked clean. Disgusting. Ahmed spat again.

Brave, this one. Not like the Iraqi soldiers who fled like women when his convoy of pickups arrived in a cloud of dust yesterday, black ISIS flags flapping in the wind, each vehicle crowded with fighters like him. The Iraqis just dropped their gear and ran.

Well, not all of them.

Was it the flags that scared the cowards? Or the head of an Iraqi colonel hanging like a lantern on a pole on the lead truck? The Iraqis were probably Shia. Worse than infidels. Cleansing the Caliphate of all such nonbelievers was their sacred duty. Only through such cleansing and blood sacrifice would the Mahdi come with the prophet Isa and defeat the Antichrist. Has the Caliph not rightly taught that all of the signs are pointing toward the Day of Judgment? And was it not their duty to bring this about, one infidel corpse at a time?

Ahmed turned around. A line of utility poles marched down the long sloping hill. He counted ten more bodies hanging on them, including three children.

The pastor’s children. Children of iniquity.

Dirty work, that , Ahmed thought. Glad he wasn’t asked to do it. He would have, of course. Allah commands it. And if not, Kamal al-Medina ordered it, and he was more afraid of his commander here on earth than he was of the Exceedingly Merciful on His heavenly throne. He’d never seen Allah behead a screaming kafir with a serrated combat knife nor listened to him sing while he did it.

Such zeal. It is to be admired , he thought.

A Dodge Ram pickup honked behind him. He turned around as the truck skidded to a halt in the dust. A sharp-faced brother called out from the cab. He was a twenty-five-year-old Tunisian from Marseille. A French national like Ahmed, though Ahmed was a lily-white redhead of Norman stock and only nineteen.

“The commander has called for you,” the Tunisian said in French. He threw a thumb at the truck bed. “Hop in.”

Ahmed felt his stomach drop and the back of his neck tingle.

“But I’m on guard duty.”

“I’ll take your place after I drop you off.”

“Why does he want me?”

The Tunisian lowered his voice. “Does the Black Prince consult with lowly commoners like us?” He flashed a crooked smile.

The pejorative reference to Kamal al-Medina’s royal bloodline would have earned the Tunisian ten lashes with a whip if Ahmed reported the slur. He wouldn’t, of course. Ahmed used it, too. They all did. And they all admired Kamal al-Medina as much as they feared him. The Saudi had given up everything — palaces, gold, power — to fight for the Caliphate and the ummah .

“No, he doesn’t.” Ahmed unslung his RPG launcher and rifle and clambered into the back of the Dodge. He slapped the cab roof and the truck whipped around, speeding toward the center of the small village of squat cinder-block houses, well kept and brightly painted in hues of red, blue, and yellow. Most doors were defaced with a spray-painted red Arabic N for Nasrane. A slur for Jesus the Nazarene and his followers.