by Mark Donovan
It took them nearly an hour to release all of the required Hunter-Falcons along the upwind leg of the target search field area. After releasing the last one, Ron reported into the headset lip mic he was wearing that all the birds were deployed.
The pilot of the Caravan made a wide arcing one hundred and eighty degree turn back over the target area to return to Chicken Airport. Ron put on his gloves to warm his nearly frozen hands and looked out at the mountainous terrain below. It was a vast snow draped wilderness void of any roads or villages. As he continued to look out of the aircraft’s open cargo bay door he saw the occasional hunter’s cabin, along with an elk herd and two moose, but little else of interest.
The pilot announced over the intercom that they were ten minutes out from the airfield. As the pilot finished his sentence, Ron noticed four snow machines racing through the forest below him. The snow machines were all the same make and color. They were black and looked to be Polaris snowmobiles. A single person rode on each one of them and they were headed northwest, directly away from the airfield.
Ron yelled out over his headset, “So where do you think those guys are headed?” as he pointed out to the Border Patrol agent the men and snow machines passing directly underneath them.
“No idea,” responded the agent. “Those machines are not ours.”
Dave overheard Ron’s transmission over his headset and looked out his window. He could see the four snow machines racing underneath the belly of their aircraft. He took a quick look at the GPS reading displayed on his computer screen and made a mental note of it. As he did, he felt a sudden chill run up his spine. He wondered to himself, was this the Al Qaeda competition that Eric McDonald and John Bates had warned him about.
Five minutes later the 208 Caravan landed at the gravel Chicken field airstrip. Dave quickly closed up his laptop and packed it away in his knapsack. He would pull it back out as soon as they got to the operations headquarters tent. Ron closed up the empty boxes that contained the Hunter-Falcons. When the aircraft came to a stop Dave, Ron and the Border Patrol agent immediately disembarked from the aircraft’s cargo bay door and made a beeline for the operations tent. Dave wanted to make sure he didn’t miss a beat on the status of his squadron of miniature drones, even though their transmitted flight data was automatically being backed up on a server back at NSurv headquarters.
Inside the warm operations tent, the three quickly shed their winter clothing. Dave then immediately walked over to a table, set his laptop down on it, flipped it open, and hit the ON button. While he did, Ron and the Border Patrol agent poured themselves steaming hot mugs of coffee. Chief Davis strode up to the three men red faced with anger.
“According to a report from the pilot who jut flew your mission we have some visitors in the target search area.”
“Yes, we saw them just before we landed,” responded Dave.
“We have had a temporary no trespassing restriction on the target search area posted since we arrived on the scene last week,” returned the Chief. “No one should be in that area without our prior knowledge and authorization.”
“Maybe it’s a group of locals who did not hear about the restriction or see the posted signs,” suggested Dave.
“No. There may be some hermits living in this area, but all of them have radio communications,” replied the Chief tersely.
“They didn’t look like locals,” commented Ron. “Those snow machines were all of the same make and color, and they looked new.”
“Then most likely we have some competition Chief,” said Dave.
“Affirmative. I had briefly considered sending out one of my teams to track them down and bring them back here for questioning. However, with night fall nearly upon us I decided to hold off until morning. They won’t get far this evening. Not in this rough mountainous terrain.”
The chief looked down at Dave’s computer on the table. “So how did the release of your drones go?” asked the Chief.
“Excellent,” responded Dave. “I was just about to sit down and check on their status.” Dave turned his attention to the laptop and pulled up a chair. “Let’s have a look.”
The Chief, Ron and the other Border Patrol agent made their way to the table where Dave was sitting. Ron handed Dave a mug of hot coffee. Dave took a sip from it and then placed the steaming mug next to his computer. He then typed a few key strokes into the laptop. Five seconds later an aerial view of the target search area came up on the screen. From left to right across the display were horizontal dashed lines representing the prescribed flight paths of the released Hunter-Falcons. The first released device was already nearly two thirds of the way across the flight course. The last device still had about ninety percent to go.
“So what happens when these birds complete their prescribed flight over the target area?” asked Chief Davis as he looked over Dave’s shoulder. “Do they self-destruct or just fall out of the sky?”
While staring at the computer screen Dave responded dryly, “They have the GPS coordinates for this tent stored in their memory. They will fly a direct path back to us.”
“We can also send them a self-destruct sequence if necessary,” chimed in Ron.
“Impressive,” responded the Chief with a slight touch of sarcasm.
A small red marker started blinking on the computer screen. One of the Hunter-Falcons had located a potential target. It was in the northeast corner of the search area.
“It looks like we might have a hot spot,” commented Dave in a clinical voice.
Dave moused over the red marker and doubled-clicked the right button on the mouse. Immediately the screen zoomed into the target search area. Dave typed in the Hunter-Falcon ID number on the keyboard and a green dot lit up on the screen.
“There’s the drone that found the potential target,” said Ron.
Dave moused over the green dot and double clicked the right mouse button again. Immediately a bird’s eye view transmitted from the Hunter-Falcon came up on the screen. On the right side of the screen was a vertical altitude tape strip. The drone was nearly one thousand feet above ground level and looking straight down at a sparsely forested area that was blanketed in a deep layer of snow. With a few keystrokes the Hunter-Falcon moved back towards the red dot. As it did, the altitude tape strip showed the drone descending. It was approximately at five hundred feet above ground level when the drone was directly over the red marker.
“Do you see anything gentlemen?” asked the Chief.
“I see several large mounds of snow penetrating up from the blanket of snow,” said Ron. “But, I can’t make out any details.”
Dave tapped a few strokes on the keyboard and the Hunter-Falcon dropped down to an altitude of one hundred feet. As it did Chief Davis blurted out, “It’s just a hunter’s cabin with several large fuel cans and a small outbuilding situated near it.”
The cabin, fuel cans and outbuilding were covered in snow but there was no mistaking what they were. The Chief was right. Dave nodded his head in disappointed agreement.
“We already radar mapped that cabin two days ago,” sighed Chief Davis in disgust. “It looks like your birds are redundant.”
Just as the Chief completed his sentence another red light blinked at the top right hand side of the screen in a legend area. Dave immediately tapped in another command on the keyboard and the original screen image came up. Another Hunter-Falcon had detected a target in the south central part of the target search area.
“We have another one,” said Ron.
Dave again moused over the small drone which had detected the terrain anomaly and guided it back directly over the red marker displayed on the screen. Two keystrokes later the drone was hovering one hundred feet over the target and displaying a zoomed in view of the area. The background view was of a rugged mountain wall. In between the trees, pointed upwards towards the sky, were bony rock outcroppings. Again, the initial image of the specific target area consisted of several humps in the unending blanket of snow below. However,
this time the humps had a different consistency to them. An elongated bulge in the snow below was intersected by another bulge of similar size. To the right of the intersecting bulges was another more concentrated hump.
“Take it down lower,” ordered the Chief. Dave could smell the Chief’s reeking cigar breath as the Chief moved his head closer to his and stared at the computer screen.
When the Hunter-Falcon descended to ten feet above the ground Dave placed it into a hover and slowly flew it over the bulges in the snow. From the side views of the humps it became instantly apparent that they were looking at the wreckage of a small aircraft. The two perpendicular raised bumps in the snow were of a mangled fuselage and wing.
“I think we have found your missing aircraft,” commented Ron in a hushed tone.
“Can you make out the tail number on the fuselage?” asked Davis.
“The fuselage is an accordion mess, but we will take a look,” responded Dave.
Dave slowly moved the Hunter-Falcon along the side of the heavily damaged fuselage.
“There, stop there,” ordered Davis. “Can you zoom in to that area?” as he pointed to a spot on the computer screen.
Dave typed a few key strokes into the computer and the image nearly doubled in size.
Part of the tail number came into view. Five out of the six characters were visible. “N5453,” said Ron. “I cannot make out the last character.”
“That’s our downed aircraft,” responded the Chief with excitement. “By God, your little toy actually found her.” Chief Davis slapped Dave so hard on the back he nearly slammed up against the computer screen.
“So what are the GPS coordinates?” asked the Chief.
“She is about forty kilometers northwest of us,” responded Dave.
Chief Davis looked at his watch. “Damn it. It will be dark in fifteen minutes. We can’t get up there tonight to do a recovery. It’s just too dangerous for my men in that rugged terrain at night.”
“Yes, it’s very mountainous in that area and there are no direct trails to it,” replied Dave.
“I’ll plan to send a team out at first light tomorrow morning.”
Just as the three had agreed upon a plan for the search and recovery mission, another red light began to blink in the legend area on the computer screen. It was about ten kilometers away from the aircraft wreckage.
“What’s that?” asked Ron.
“Let’s have a look,” answered Dave.
The Chief, along with the Border Patrol agent standing next to Ron, stepped in closer to the screen. Again, Dave positioned the Hunter-Falcon that had detected the anomaly over the target spot. As he lowered the drone’s altitude, they began to make out four snow machines. Approximately twenty feet away from them were four men setting up a camp. Three were putting up tents and one looked as if he was starting a camp fire.
“Those are the men and snow machines we passed over on the way back to the airfield,” said Ron. “Even though it is dusk I can tell that those are the same snow machines.”
Chief Davis whispered quietly into the ear of the Border Patrol agent who was standing next to Ron. The agent immediately left the three of them.
“I’ve asked Agent Martin to contact Washington so that I can report our two discoveries.”
“What about these guys?” Ron asked, as he pointed at the computer screen. “What do we do about them? Should you up your timetable for a search and recovery?”
“They are not the priority. It also appears they are not going anywhere tonight. And again, it would be too risky for me to send my men out for a search and recovery in the middle of the night, particularly in this frigid mountainous terrain. We will wait until morning as planned to recover the contents of that aircraft wreckage. After we have completed our main recovery mission we will pay them a visit, if they are still in the area.”
Chapter 9 (April 13, Thursday 8:00am, Iran)
The sound of air rushed loudly through Aref Zarin’s enormous nose, like a saw cutting through wood, as he inhaled and exhaled rapidly. He had just gotten off the phone with Zand and he was livid with anger. Red faced, and with the phone still in his hand, he paced back and forth in his home in an attempt to quell his fury. Zand, along with the three additional men Aref had sent with him, were camped out in the back country of Alaska just a few kilometers away from the downed aircraft. Aref didn’t care about their condition or environment. He had given explicit instructions to Zand and his team that their mission was to recover the vial of Waterkill from the downed aircraft at all costs and as swiftly as possible. He made it vividly clear that mission failure was not an option for them. They would recover the lost vial before the United States government did or they would face the same demise as their deceased colleague Saeed. And if they tried to run and hide from him, they would be hunted down like dogs across the globe, but only after their families were first expunged from the face of the Earth.
Zand had said to him that his team had traveled nearly non-stop from when they left Iran to their present location, and that they were physically exhausted. It was also dark and cold, and they were in heavily mountainous terrain. However, Aref had accepted none of it. He knew the special transponder homing signal that was being transmitted from the body of the dead mule in the downed aircraft was growing weaker by the hour. Even though Zand had indicated they had a fix on the position of the downed aircraft, if the transponder’s encrypted transmission was to cease before they reached the aircraft, Aref knew the difficulty in actually finding the aircraft wreckage would increase tenfold in the snow covered mountains. Also, while Zand and his team slept, the Great Western Swine could potentially sneak in and find the aircraft and recover the vial first.
Aref ordered Zand to break camp and to get his men back on the spore of the downed aircraft immediately. He was also to report back to him as soon as they had recovered the lost vial.
After pacing for nearly ten minutes, Aref’s rage slowly began to subside and his more normal ruddy complexion returned to his cheeks and nose. He refocused his thoughts on another pressing issue that he’d been working on before being interrupted by Zand. He had been going over the details about an attack he was planning in a small European town near Berlin, Germany. Berlin was the host city for the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Conference on European Health Policy. The conference was in a week and he wanted to send a clear message to the world. That nuclear weapon threats from rogue nations or terrorists groups were now the least of its concerns. That new forms of weapons of mass destruction were now available, and created more clear and present dangers to western civilizations. New bio-engineered weapons, invisible to the naked eye, and easier to manufacture than nuclear weapons, were now their most dangerous threat to their morally corrupt lives. The world would soon learn, he thought to himself with pride, how vulnerable it was to him and his brothers.
He walked over to the table that one of his young servant girls had prepared for his breakfast. Still too tense to sit down he remained standing as he spread butter and fruit jam on a piece of flat bread. He took a bite of the bread and slowly savored it as he thought more about his plans. He then placed the remaining piece of bread on the table and poured himself a cup of hot coffee. As he poured the coffee his prominent nose inhaled the rich strong aroma, like a dredge sucking up gold from a riverbed. Just the way he liked it he thought to himself. He raised the steaming cup of coffee to his lips and nose and momentarily savored its rich smell. He then took a small sip from the cup and felt the coffee’s energetic properties immediately begin to take effect in his body. As he continued to dine on the flat bread and take sips of coffee, his mind and senses sharpened again. He was thinking more clearly and beginning to formulate the details of his plan for the attack in the small European town.
One of the young servant girls came out of the resident’s kitchen area to ask him if there was anything else he desired before she began to remove the leftover food and coffee from the dining table. Aref had moved from t
he table and was resting on a sofa when she walked in. He had been consumed in the formulation of his plans when the girl’s voice broke his concentration. He looked up at the young girl and stared at her briefly before responding.
The girl kept her eyes aimed at the floor as she nervously waited for a response from him. It took all of her concentration to avoid visibly shaking in front of him. She knew Aref’s reputation from other women that also worked in the house for him. Aref looked at her for a moment before speaking. He estimated her age to be between eighteen and twenty years.
“What is your name?” he asked.
The young girl stood silently for a moment before speaking. An icy chill ran down her spine. “My name is Misha,” responded the girl in a weak whisper as she kept her eyes fixated on the floor below her.
“Such a pretty name,” replied Aref as he felt a heated stir within his body. “Your name matches your beauty.”
“Thank you sir.”
“Please, come over here and sit down next to me,” commanded Aref.
The girl stood motionless and continued to stare down at the floor, raising Aref’s ire once more.
Controlling his temper and feigning a compassionate fatherly image, he gently asked her once more to come over to him.
Misha looked up from the floor and saw the intensity in Aref’s eyes and knew she had no choice. She slowly walked over to the sofa and sat down next to him. She sat stiff as a board as Aref studied her face and body closely.
“Do you have a husband Misha?” asked Aref as he slowly slid the back of his hand over her cheek.
“No sir,” she lied, as she did not want this man to threaten her husband’s life.
“Would you like to be my wife?”
Misha stiffened at the question and hesitated to speak. The movement did not go unnoticed by Aref and he bristled with renewed and hidden anger. He waited for several additional seconds for Misha to respond. Finally, his anger at an uncontrollable level, he swung the back of his hand across her face with all his might. Her head snapped sideways from the blow. When she slowly turned her face back towards him, blood dripped from the side of her mouth. Immediately, upon seeing the blood, Aref became fully incensed and pushed her down onto the sofa and began to claw at her clothing. The young girl fought to fend him off, but she was no match for his size and strength.