Mike Maden - Drone

Early turned to him. “Is that what this is all about?”

“What?”

“Annie.”

Pearced daggered Early with his eyes. “Don’t even think about going there.”

Baneh, Iran

August 24, 2005

A fertilizer warehouse squatted in the western district of the city, a converted American army Quonset hut from the ’50s. Electric light glowed beneath the wooden side doors and from behind the shuttered windows. There were no other lights on in the area. There was a quarter moon that night, but no street lamps. At least none that worked. The small regional capital of seventy thousand people was just across the border from Iraq.

Troy, Mike, and Annie had worked their way to the warehouse by foot after traveling overland from Iraq in a battered 1979 Toyota Land Cruiser, a common vehicle in these parts. They dressed like civilian day laborers but wore soft Kevlar vests beneath their cotton shirts. Annie wore a keffiyeh to hide her face and hair.

Annie peeked through a gap in the warehouse window shutter while Troy and Mike stood guard. She counted seven stolen 155mm artillery shells, huge and lethal, lined up along the far wall. One of the American-made shells was lying on a table like a surgical patient surrounded by three Quds Force technicians. They were connecting wires to detonators and a remote control.

The only locals on the street were a couple of wild dogs feeding on a bag of garbage lying in the gutter, too famished to pay attention to strangers.

Annie flashed hand signals. Mike gently tried the handle on a side door. He signaled with a nod that it was unlocked. Troy pulled out two flash bangs, and Annie slid her short-stock MP5 9mm submachine gun into firing position. She knew it was better to not fire her weapon if at all possible. Just one of those 155mm shells was powerful enough to flatten the entire block.

Troy nodded to Mike, who cracked the door open just enough for Troy to toss in the two flash bangs. Mike shut the door. The charges cracked sharply on the concrete floor in the large open room—perfect for flash bangs. Nowhere to hide when they went off.

Troy dashed in first in a low crouch, a suppressed 9mm Glock in his hand. Mike followed in right behind him, pistol drawn, while Annie stayed put, scanning the perimeter behind them. She watched the dogs skitter away, frightened by the flash bangs. When she was certain it was all clear, she made her way inside the building.

Annie turned the corner into the doorway just in time to see Mike and Troy popping caps into the heads of two unconscious men slumped on the floor. The three bomb makers were the actual targets; they were far more lethal than the ordnance in the room.

“Clock’s ticking,” Annie said. Her voice distorted by a slight electronic buzz in the microphone.

“I’m killing as fast as I can,” Troy said as he put a slug into the temple of the last technician. They all agreed it would have been better to bring at least one back for interrogation, but there was no way they could pull off an extraction with such limited resources.

“Wish there’d been ten more of ’em,” Mike said.

Annie pointed at the detonators, r/c units, timers, and motherboards on the table. “Grab those. Evidence.”

“Roger that,” Mike replied. He opened up his rucksack and started loading them in.

Troy scooted over to the far wall where the artillery shells were lined up. He slapped a wad of C4 onto three of them, then ran wires to a digital timer and set it. By blowing the ordnance, it would appear as if the Iranian technicians had accidentally killed themselves.

“Three minutes,” he said.

Annie stepped back over to the door and sighted her weapon in the direction they’d come in from. Early scooped up the last detonators and remote-control units.

“Damn it!” Annie shouted.

Troy whipped around just in time to see a hand grenade bounce onto the concrete floor. It was halfway between her and Mike. Troy was still on the other side of the room.

Like in every bad war movie Troy had ever seen, time slowed to a near crawl. It was the adrenaline kicking in, heightening his senses.

Annie glanced up at him. Her bright eyes locked with his for an eternity.

For a second.

She smiled.

And then she whispered, “It was a ring.”

The ring that was still in Troy’s pocket.

Before Troy could react, Annie took three slow bounding steps toward the grenade.

Troy shouted for her to stop. Bullets shattered the door and spanged on the sheet-metal wall curving above his head.

Annie leaped onto the hand grenade. A muffled thump. Her body bounced a few inches into the air.

Troy’s senses recovered. The shit was hitting the fan in real time now.

He raced over to Annie. A Quds soldier stepped into the doorway, an AK-47 sloped in Mike’s direction. Troy raised his pistol and shot the man in the throat, just below his scraggly beard. The AK-47 clattered to the floor. The fighter crumpled to his knees, grasping at his neck, choking on his own blood.

Troy grabbed Annie’s corpse by the collar, pulling her behind him toward the rear door. The toes of her Reeboks dragged through her own blood on the floor.

Mike shouldered his loaded rucksack and followed Troy. Troy didn’t even try the exit door; he just smashed a size-fourteen foot against the wood and the door broke off of its frame. He dragged Annie’s limp body outside just around the corner, scanning for trouble. He whispered, “Clear,” and Mike bolted out into the street as Troy lifted Annie onto his back in a fireman’s carry and followed him. They ducked into the shadows of an alley two blocks away and turned a corner just as the C4 ripped. The artillery shells roared. The earth shivered beneath their feet as the sky lit up like a sunrise. Neither man stopped to look back. Both shared the same desperate thought as they raced down the alleyway.

Time to get Annie home.

Snake River, Wyoming

“Annie was a soldier and a good one. She knew what she was getting into when she signed on. We all did. She had a job to do, and she did it.”

“Shut your piehole, Mikey.”

“She paid the price. It could’ve been us. Should have been us. I get that, believe me. I think about it every damn day.”

Pearce got in Early’s face.

“She laid it all down all right, but for what? So that a shit-faced senator can dodge an awkward question at a cocktail party? You know those pukes. The Ivy Leaguers call all the shots for guys like us, but less than one half of one percent of them ever swear the oath themselves. We’re the ones who do the bleeding and the dying out in the boonies while they’re doing reach-arounds in the clubhouse sauna. To hell with them. I’ll take their money, but I won’t bleed for them anymore, and I won’t let my people die for them, either.”

“That’s why we need you. We don’t want anyone to get hurt, not on our side, at least. Take the job. Besides, it’ll make you filthy rich, I promise.”

“I already am filthy rich. And the nice thing about being rich is that you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. And by the way, nobody ever got killed for saying no.”

Pearce grabbed another beer. “You need to get out of this thing, Mikey. It’s going to go south in a hurry. She’s going to march your ass straight into a shooting war and a lot of people are going to die on both sides.”

“That’s exactly why I can’t leave. I’ve got to do what I can. I don’t want another American soldier to die in a war we don’t have to fight. Besides, I swore an oath to protect and defend the nation. So did you.”

“I didn’t break my oath. They did.”

“Bullshit. You walked away. I can’t make politicians or bureaucrats or the ring knockers do the right thing, but I sure as hell can stand up like a man and do my job. Myers is right. The nation is under assault. You want to keep us out of a shooting war? So does she. The only difference is, you’re the only one who can prevent one by doing what you do best. Now. Before it’s too late.”