Drone (A Troy Pearce Novel)

by Mike Maden

  “Fair enough,” Myers said. She turned to the rest of the group. “I’m rethinking the border closing. Thoughts?”

  “My father taught me that you can break a man’s fingers one at a time,” Strasburg said, holding up a splayed hand and then clenching it. “Unless he first makes a fist and beats you to death with it.”

  “Meaning?” Jeffers asked.

  “It’s always better to present all of your controversial ideas at one time. It makes them much harder to unpack. If President Myers dribbles them out one at a time, they can each get broken, and the cumulative effect is devastating.”

  Strasburg turned to Myers. “You’re about to make an address to the nation. That will give you an opportunity to show your enemies your fist. I suggest keeping the border question tucked safely away until then.”

  Myers nodded in agreement, but her thoughts had turned somewhere else.

  Yucca Valley, California

  The high-desert altitude kept the nights cool, even during the summer months, and a good dusting of snow was common every now and again during the winters. Not like Palm Springs down on the valley floor where the humidity wrapped around your lungs like a hot, wet blanket this time of year, even after sundown.

  Yucca Valley’s claim to fame—true or not, it didn’t really matter to the locals—was that an old Rat Pack love nest was located there, a Mid-century Modern that squatted on the very top of a hill on the edge of town. The helipad for the helicopter that flew in the girls and the dope was still visible from one of the main drags through the sleepy little desert town.

  Old motor lodges, coin laundromats, and a dozen used-car lots littered the sides of Twentynine Palms Highway, which snaked north from I-10 out of L.A. up the steep mountain passes to the high desert. Yucca Valley was the perfect location for an enterprising drug operation, feeding the insatiable maw of Southern California addictions to the south or running shipments through the nearby Marine base, which, unfortunately, had a few bad apples willing to deal locally and transport globally.

  Whereas the resort of Palm Springs featured multimillion-dollar estates, manicured private golf courses, world-class restaurants, and frequent visits by Hollywood celebrities, its uglier, deformed, and acne-scarred sister city up in the high desert had a slightly more modest appeal. It wasn’t the Pizza Hut, the Walmart, or even the Starbucks that had tempted so many to make this a permanent home. In fact, these civilizing institutions nearly killed the place.

  The reason why most people found purchase in the stony ground was because of its desolate isolation. Joshua Tree National Park was nearby, but the land around it was equally beautiful, cruel, and unforgivingly dry. The area had long been home to survivalists, painters, ex-con bikers, dishonorably discharged vets, child-support deadbeats, religious fanatics, and other reclusives. There were even miners still working a few active claims up in the hills.

  Pearce and Early alerted the county sheriff about a possible national security exercise occurring that night, but only at the last minute—a courtesy call, nothing else. Gunfire wasn’t entirely uncommon around here; the Twentynine Palms Marine Corps Base was just twenty miles up the road.

  Castillo’s men had relocated to Yucca Valley to take over a meth lab situated in an abandoned silver mine up in the hills above the town. A pair of surveillance drones had been tracking the three of them for the past thirty-six hours. They normally lived in a big five-bedroom rancher with a saltwater pool closer to town, but tonight they were in the meth lab cooking up a new batch.

  Sergio Navarro had actually located a schematic of the operation from an old U.S. Bureau of Mines microfiche that had only recently been digitally scanned and archived. The good news was that there was only one way to access the mine, a single point of entry and exit. Perfect for a napalm attack or even a mass burial beneath the rock and dust. But Cruzalta opted for neither. He and his handpicked team wanted bloody vengeance, up close and personal.

  Cruzalta had invited Pearce to come with him on the mission, but only as an observer. Pearce accepted. He wanted to study Cruzalta’s tactics and small-unit operations firsthand. He knew there was always more to learn in the world’s most dangerous game, and Cruzalta was one of the best players around.

  The Marinas utilized a German EMT Aladin drone for scouting, a battery-powered plane of similar design to the American RQ-11 Raven that was about the size of a large model airplane and flown with a remote control. The infrared camera indicated that no guards had been posted, but three scrawny coyotes were lingering within thirty feet of the mine entrance.

  A Marina sniper took out the three coyotes with his suppressed rifle. They barely yipped as the slugs ripped through their emaciated bodies, shredding their internal organs in an instant. Cruzalta generally liked animals more than people, but he couldn’t take a chance on the feral canines barking once his men approached.

  When the point man reached the mine entrance, he checked for trip wires and laser alarms. There weren’t any. He advanced twenty feet into the mine, taking position behind a large ancient Dumpster on skids. He whispered in his mic, “Claro,” and the rest of the squad followed him in.

  A corporal set a modified Boston Dynamics RHex rough-terrain robot on the ground and guided the six-legged metal brick into the shaft. Fluorescent lights shone in the distance. Air-venting systems hummed, vacuum pumps rattled, and men occasionally shouted in Spanish above the industrial din. It was a good thing the shaft was noisy. The RHex’s six metallic legs—shaped in half circles and coated with rubber—thrummed like a washer with an unbalanced load. It made too much noise for Pearce’s liking, but the RHex was a reliable, battle-tested drone that could climb up, over, or through creeks, logs, sand, rocks, stairs, drainpipes, and just about anything else you threw at it—in both directions, upside down, or right side up.

  The nearly two-foot-long scouting bot chugged along one of the rough-cut walls. Cruzalta and Pearce watched the operator’s face. With fore and aft cameras displaying both infrared and normal vision modes, it was easy enough to navigate the tunnel and locate a secure position from which to observe the occupants. The corporal signaled his target count with the world’s oldest “digital” display—holding up a finger or thumb each time he identified one of the Castillo men or another criminal associate in one of the rooms. They knew there were three Castillo men and seven associates and, judging by the lighting, three rooms in use. Cruzalta needed to know how the men in the rooms were distributed.

  The little boxy robot scrunched its way over a pile of tailings on the way to the last lit room. The loose rock on the pile gave way and the bot tumbled down to the floor. Its thirty-pound metal body clanged sharply against a stone.

  The voices in the third room suddenly stopped.

  Pearce instinctively clutched his weapon tighter.

  A shadow emerged out of the far room, a human form backlit by the lab’s fluorescent lamp. The gas mask on his head and his bulky chemical suit gave him an odd, otherworldly silhouette.

  Cruzalta glanced over at his corporal.

  The corporal signaled associate. He looked back down at his laptop.

  The hapless investigator had just picked up the RHex and held it close to his face in the dark, studying its camera eyes.

  On the corporal’s IR screen, the man’s face was a white glowing mask, heavily distorted by the lens in such close proximity.

  The lab worker shouted over his shoulder to someone in the back room. His chemical suit squeaked as he turned.

  “Hey! Look what I—”

  Thwump-thwump. A silenced 9mm round tore out his larynx before he could finish the sentence and a second round severed his brain stem. His lifeless hands dropped the robot.

  Cruzalta whispered commands in his throat mic before the meth cooker’s corpse hit the dirt. His men rushed forward, MP5s in front of their helmeted faces, silent as cats, tossing flash bangs against the walls that
caromed into the rooms. Pearce and Cruzalta followed right behind. The targets screamed as the concussive explosions burst their eardrums and their retinas seared in the blinding light.

  The Marinas dashed in. Pearce stood back. He heard six muffled pops—silenced pistols dispatching the remaining workers—and watched three men dressed in chemical suits being frog-walked out into the main shaft, black bags over their heads, howling muffled curses through mouths stuffed with cotton rags and duct-taped shut.

  Cruzalta signaled Pearce into the first room. It was definitely a meth lab. Pearce wasn’t an expert but it looked to him like they were just about to begin a cook. Container barrels had been opened and plastic jugs full of clear liquids were stacked in rows on a tarnished steel table. Three corpses with their brains blown out lay crumpled against the far wall, red gore spattered on their bright yellow chemical suits.

  “Two more rooms, two more labs. What do you want me to do with the bodies?” Cruzalta asked.

  Pearce shrugged. “Leave them to rot. A lesson to anybody who wanders in here.”

  Cruzalta nodded. “Food for the rats.” He then pointed at the barrel and jugs. “What about the chemical precursors? Those are very dangerous materials.”

  “I’ll call Early. We’ll get a DEA hazmat team to pull them out.”

  Cruzalta grinned at Pearce. “Aren’t you curious what I’m going to do with those three pendejos?”

  “Not as curious as they are, I’m sure.”

  A sergeant appeared out of the dark. He asked Cruzalta a question in Spanish. Cruzalta nodded.

  The sergeant lifted a razor-sharp tomahawk, the kind the U.S. military first issued in Vietnam. He crossed over to one of the corpses, stepped on the lifeless forearm, and raised the ax high. The blade tinked on the rocky soil as it cleanly severed the man’s hand at the wrist. The sergeant snapped open a clear gallon-size evidence bag out of a pocket and tossed the hand in. He proceeded to the other body.

  Pearce frowned a question at Cruzalta.

  “That’s how we collect fingerprints in my unit,” Cruzalta said with a grin.

  —

  Two hours later, Myers got the call from Pearce.

  “Cruzalta is a true believer now. He sends his thanks and is awaiting your instructions.”

  “Once again, I’m in your debt. Good luck, and good hunting.”

  38

  The White House, Washington, D.C.

  Myers was grateful for Pearce’s phone call but it was anticlimactic. Myers hadn’t been waiting idly for Cruzalta’s approval. She’d always suspected he’d throw in with her. She knew in her bones that a patriot like Cruzalta would do whatever it took to save his nation from its enemies. As soon as Myers and Pearce had broken their Skype connection four days ago, Myers began ramping up so that when Cruzalta did formally agree to join forces they’d already be running in full stride.

  The overall plan was simple enough, at least in theory. The drug cartels had held Mexican society in a stranglehold for decades, corrupting the political system with either cash or violence. By wiping out the Bravo organization, Cruzalta and his compatriots would be able to push aside the Barraza regime and help assemble a new national government. It would be a dangerous and lengthy venture for sure, but it was the first and perhaps only chance Mexico would have to form a new and fair democratic government, free from the tyranny of narcopolitics.

  To assist Cruzalta and his allies in the formation of a new Mexican government, Myers directed Attorney General Lancet to provide a secure means by which the hundreds of Mexican politicians, military men, and law enforcement officers who were living in official and unofficial exile in the United States could be safely vetted, contacted, and recruited for voluntary service in the Mexican project.

  Myers also promised Cruzalta that the United States and Mexico would soon draft new trade, border, and security treaties subject to approval by both national legislatures. More than anything, the new treaties represented Myers’s sincere attempt to assuage any Mexican fears that the U.S. was somehow imposing a new kind of hegemony over Mexico rather than trying to form a genuine political and economic partnership.

  That was the big picture. Myers knew there would be many smaller steps that had to be taken to begin this incredibly arduous journey. But given the scope of the undertaking and the breakneck timing, she couldn’t afford a linear approach. She had to attack several fronts all at once, putting her most trusted staff to work on each one independently. If all the pieces didn’t fall into place on time, the entire plan would fail.

  After speaking with Pearce on Skype, Myers made three phone calls. The first was to Jackson, authorizing him to begin assembling a most-wanted list. The next morning, Jackson contacted the DEA, FBI, and DHS for recommendations. Twenty-four hours later, fifty names had been selected: twenty-five in Mexico, twenty-five in the United States. The trick now was to both find and track them all. Jackson focused DAS, RIOT, and Mind’s Eye operations on the task, particularly for the Mexican list. The American list would be easier to find and track, thanks to the NSA, which had warrantlessly recorded, sorted, and stored every e-mail, phone call, tweet, and Facebook post of every American for the last few years as part of the counterterrorism efforts of the federal government, often in contravention to FISA restrictions. The “big data” analytics that had been originally pioneered by American corporations like Google and IBM to predict consumer behavior were now being perfected and deployed by the federal government to secure the nation against future terrorist attacks. In fact, dozens of private companies were wittingly or unwittingly participating in the NSA’s global data-mining efforts.

  —

  An hour after Pearce called with the good news about Cruzalta, Jackson reported that all fifty targets had been identified and were being tracked. He couldn’t guarantee how long that would last, so time was of the essence.

  Myers’s second phone call on the night of July 29 was to Attorney General Lancet. She was tasked with creating the legal framework for Drone Command. Lancet built organizational firewalls around Drone Command so that it would report directly to the president, completely insulating it from both the DNI and DoD command structures. Though a legal fiction, it was made an extension of JSOC, which operated with near impunity from congressional oversight and could invoke either Title 10 or Title 50 protections as needed.

  Myers’s last phone call had been to Early. He immediately contacted T. J. Ashley with the Drone Command offer and she accepted it on the spot because it sounded “interesting,” knowing full well she would be shaping the future of U.S. drone warfare for the next decade—and maybe even changing the face of warfare itself.

  Yes. Interesting.

  Early brought her in to meet Myers six hours later. Ashley wasn’t the least bit intimidated by her first visit to the White House or her first meeting with the commander in chief. Myers immediately liked the self-possessed younger woman. So did Jeffers, yawning over a cup of coffee. Just over five feet tall, with short-cropped dirty blond hair and hazel eyes, the trim, athletic engineer was a firm handshake and all business.

  “What do you think you’re going to need to begin operations in seven days?” Myers wanted to know.

  “Depends on the targets,” Ashley said. “When will I have those?”

  “Soon, including locations. Give me your best estimate.”

  “More hours in the day and a boatload of money should do the trick,” Ashley said.

  “Money I can find. More hours I can’t.”

  “Then I’ll take the money and sleep less. Do you want to review the organizational plan I’ve put together?” Ashley opened a leather satchel and handed Myers an inch-thick document.

  “How could you have possibly drawn up an organizational plan already?” Myers asked.

  “I wrote it a year ago as a kind of thought experiment. It seemed to me that this was the natural direction our
defense establishment would be taking in the near future. I just didn’t realize when I wrote it how near the future actually was.”

  Myers mentioned Pearce’s suggestions for Drone Command organization. Ashley had already incorporated them. She and Pearce had discussed the essential concepts a few years ago when he was trying to recruit her into Pearce Systems.

  Early grinned like a hyena. “Can Pearce pick ’em or what?”

  Jeffers nodded. “He sure can.”

  Myers dropped the organizational plan on her desk. “I don’t need to read this. You just be ready to jump when I give the go signal. The rest I’ll leave up to you.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Ashley couldn’t believe her good fortune.

  “Mike will be your liaison with the attorney general. See her next. Any other details, run them past Sandy.”

  “Anytime, day or night,” Jeffers said.

  “Thank you, sir. I’ll take you up on that.” Ashley checked her watch. “Better get to work.” She glanced at Early and he nodded, grabbing his cell phone as they both exited the office.

  “So far, so good, don’t you think?” Myers asked her chief of staff.

  “Just one question,” Jeffers said, pouring himself another cup of coffee. “Have you thought about how you’re going to start building a coalition in Congress for this thing?”

  “You played sports in college, didn’t you?”

  “If you call intramural tennis a sport.”

  “What do you know about old-school, smash-mouth football?” Myers asked.

  “You know I suck at metaphors, especially at this time of day.”

  “Give it a shot,” Myers said.

  “I take it you mean a ground game with lots of mud?” Jeffers asked.

  “No. More like a Hail Mary.”

  Drone Command Headquarters, Fort Meade, Maryland

  Having the most-wanted kill-list names and locations was one thing, but human targets had a nasty habit of moving around, especially if they ever got wind that they were on something like a kill list. With any luck, Drone Command would be able to take them all out in one fell swoop, but that was highly unlikely. Ashley needed to keep them under constant surveillance. For that she’d need to deploy the “persistent stare” technology of ARGUS-IS married to MQ-9 Reaper drones. The Autonomous Real-time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance Imaging System provided live wide-area video images by employing a 1.8-gigapixel digital camera, itself a construct of 368 5-megapixel smartphone-camera CCD sensors. At high altitudes, the ARGUS-IS could track all of the movement within an entire city simultaneously, resolving objects as small as license plates. By storing almost three days of video imagery, analysts could replay suspicious movements and establish potentially threatening patterns of behavior.