Mike Maden - Drone

August stationed an insertion team at the tunnel exit on the American side, and an insertion team at the tunnel entrance on the Mexican side. The American exit was located inside of a Castillo-owned tire warehouse; the Mexican entrance was located inside of a blue stucco Assemblies of God church, also owned by the Castillo organization. Both ends of the tunnel were lightly guarded by a few armed men stationed aboveground.

When the six tunnel occupants had bedded down for the night, August signaled both teams to take out the tunnel guards. August didn’t want the robots to have all of the fun. He let his human team members drop the tunnel guards with suppressed rifle fire.

After cutting all of the power down in the hole, each insertion team lowered two Talon SWORDS tracked robots into their respective entrances. The large suitcase-portable tracked vehicles were loaded out with similar packages. In addition to video optics, two of the tracks were mounted with 6mm grenade launchers and 5.56mm semiauto rifles; the other two tracks were outfitted with breaching devices and smoke delivery systems.

One of both types of drone was dropped in each entrance, along with signal relay boosters to ensure continuous video feeds and radio-control operation of the Talons from the surface.

August watched the green, ghostly night-vision images of the chaos wrought by the robots with scientific detachment. Groggy, blinded in the dark, and choking on smoke, the defenders shot wildly at the mechanical sounds they heard in the lightless void, but within minutes, the first five targets had been gunned down or shredded with grenade fragments.

The lone survivor, Alejandro Castillo, had miraculously escaped into an office space and bolted the heavy wooden door. It took August another ten minutes to breach it. The Talon SWORDS had been used extensively in bomb disposal and bunker-breaching missions during the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. A simple wooden door was no match. The SWORDS blew off its hinges, revealing Alejandro cowering in the dark. Thirty rounds of steel-jacketed ammo broke his torso open like a crab hammer.

“ Sehr gut, August,” Pearce whispered in the German’s earpiece.

“Danke.” August switched channels and barked orders to his team. They had to pull those units out and evacuate the area before the federales showed up, which Mann estimated would be in fifteen minutes.

They left behind a timed demolition charge that collapsed the entire tunnel structure minutes after they egressed. Forty-five minutes after the operation had begun, August, his men, and his robots were all safely back on American territory.

Tijuana, Mexico

A black Cadillac Escalade rocketed down the parking garage ramp, skid plates throwing sparks as it banged over a speed bump.

“There!” Julio Castillo screamed as he pointed at the exit turn.

The driver threw himself into the sharp left-hand turn, slamming his chest against the shoulder belt with the centrifugal pull. The big SUV tires shrieked on the slick concrete floors of the empty parking garage, still under construction.

A hundred feet behind them, a Schiebel S-100 helicopter fitted with the GTMax artificial intelligence “learn as you fly” autopiloting package and a six-barreled 7.62mm Minigun raced after them. The three-foot-tall German-manufactured helicopter had already chased them off the highway into the parking structure. Julio couldn’t believe the helicopter would follow them into such a cramped space. They’d dodged scissor lifts and stacked pallets on every level up, and still it followed. The top of the ramp was blocked, so they had to whip around and head back down. The helicopter had just fired its first short burst and missed, blowing chunks of concrete out of the wall in front of the SUV on the last turn.

Julio glanced back to see that the unmanned helicopter had missed the last turn and was racing past their position. His face was drenched in sweat, but not from the sweltering heat outside.

The driver turned hard again. Julio banged his head against the thick bulletproof glass but he hardly noticed.

“Can’t you drive any faster?” Julio screamed.

The driver said nothing but mashed the gas pedal harder. The Escalade roared down the sloping straightaway.

“Where the fuck is it now?” Julio screamed, his head on a swivel. His three lieutenants in back peered through the windows, their big pistols drawn as if they were prepared to shoot the drone down.

The Escalade bucked savagely as it crashed over another speed bump. But the big SUV was flying too fast now. The driver stomped on the brake as he whipped into the next turn. The forward momentum threw all of them against the seat belts, then the sharp left turn crashed their bodies hard into the right-side doors as the Escalade drifted toward the far wall.

BANG! The side panels crumpled and sparked as the SUV scraped against the concrete wall, but the driver soon righted the vehicle and mashed the throttle again. The exit was just a hundred meters ahead, a big black square framed in the harsh sodium lights of the parking garage.

Julio roared with delight. He pounded the driver’s shoulders with both of his beefy hands. “You son of a bitch! You did it!” The men in the back laughed, too, until the helicopter dropped into the center of the exit.

“Gun it!” Julio screamed. He knew the copter would pull away before it got rammed. The driver crushed the gas pedal to the floor.

The Minigun flashed. Three hundred armor-piercing incendiary rounds poured through the windshield like liquid lead. The Escalade exploded in a ball of fire.

The helicopter rose at the last second to avoid the fiery wreck as it tumbled end over end out of the exit, finally coming to a halt in the middle of the busy street. Oncoming traffic slammed squealing brakes. Bumpers crashed, glass broke, horns honked.

The burning hulk of the Escalade continued to roar with flames, superheating the already sweltering night air as the pilotless Schiebel slipped away, its stealthy AI navigation program guiding it back to base.

Isla Paraíso, Mexico

Pearce studied his monitor. Ten thousand feet above, one of his surveillance drones drew lazy circles around the small island. César Castillo was nowhere in sight, but Pearce had seen him enter his palatial home earlier that evening. So far, so good.

On the western side of the island, two Castillo guards stretched on loungers by the pool. They were painted like slim gray ghosts in Pearce’s thermal-imaging camera. The tips of their cigarettes flared to white-hot pinpoints when they inhaled. The other two guards patrolling the far side of the home were more diligent. Their skin glowed a whiter shade of gray because they were hotter from trudging steadily in the humid night air.

Pearce turned to the other two monitors at his station on the boat. They also featured thermal-imaging cameras, but targeting reticles were centered on the screens as well. These were the cameras mounted on two Spartan Scouts, small unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) stationed on either side of the island. The first Spartan monitor was barely catching the tops of the heads of the two lounging guards on the western side, but the other Spartan Scout reticle easily targeted the first of the two guards patrolling the eastern perimeter.

Pearce engaged the automatic targeting program for the eastern Spartan’s weapons system, which was fitted with a suppressed M110 semiauto sniper rifle firing 7.62mm slugs. The western boat was configured exactly the same way. Both vessels were rubber pontoon platforms, like Zodiacs, with reinforced polymer decking for the gun systems. Tonight’s sea was choppy, but the guns were mounted on a computerized stabilizer to neutralize the motion.