Drone Strike: A Dreamland Thriller (Dale Brown's Dreamland)

by Dale Brown

Over Iran

  VAHID TURNED THE MIG NORTHWARD, MOVING IN THE general direction of the ground team that had just contacted him. He’d crisscrossed the area so many times in the past hour that he had lost track. Both he and Lieutenant Kayvan, his wingman, had landed once and refueled “hot”—waiting on the runway as fuel was pumped into their planes so they lost little time. They were once more getting close to their reserves, without any tangible results.

  “We’ll run into one of the mountains before we find anything,” said Kayvan.

  “You better die if you do,” snapped Vahid.

  “At least it’s getting light. Maybe I can see.”

  Vahid nosed Shahin One through a thousand meters, looking for the ground unit he was supposed to be in contact with.

  The unit had responded after another driver reported seeing a truck on the hillside. The report was vague and the location and descriptions haphazard at best. The ground troops as well as the MiGs had looked over dozens of hillsides without results. Granted, it was dark and the terrain rugged, but the MiG’s radar—reverse engineered from Russian equipment by the Iranians themselves—could detect a ground target the size of a truck or tank at some thirty kilometers. Nothing had appeared all night.

  It didn’t help that he had never trained to perform a night search. His wingman had barely practiced ground attack at all, and Vahid wouldn’t have been terribly surprised to find that Kayvan couldn’t effectively handle the radar. He was hardly a gifted pilot; he’d gotten his spot in the air force solely because he was the son of a member of parliament.

  Vahid scanned outside the cockpit, peering down at the bluish earth. The terrain looked like a blanket slung over a child’s bed. Here and there small tufts of black—rocks and bushes—poked from the fabric.

  A narrow crevice appeared in the blanket. It widened slightly, spreading north.

  “Ground Two, I am over the road,” he radioed. “Can you hear my engine?”

  “Negative.”

  “I am flying right over the road,” he said.

  “We do not have a visual. Sorry.”

  “Repeat your position.”

  Vahid climbed, trying to locate the ground unit. He was at the coordinates they had given him; obviously, they were mistaken.

  Idiots.

  They were some fifty kilometers from Qom; the Tehran-Qom Highway was on his left as he came south.

  Maybe the jerk was reading the coordinates backward, giving what should be the second set first. Vahid made the mental correction and changed course. Before he could resume his search, the radio bleeped with a call from the Pasdaran colonel, Khorasani. Vahid gave him as diplomatic a report as possible, before adding that he and his wingmate were very low on fuel.

  “You are to stay in the area as long as the ground unit needs you,” said the colonel.

  “I may need a divert field.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “A place nearby to land.”

  “The closed air base—will that be suitable?”

  “At Manzariyeh?”

  “Yes.”

  “That would be fine.”

  “We’ll make the arrangements.” The colonel snapped off the radio.

  “Shahin One, are you still with us?” asked the ground team. It was headed by a lieutenant whose voice seemed to crack with every other word. Usually the Pasdaran units were led by older men; this one seemed to be the exception that proved the rule. “We have been ordered to proceed immediately.”

  “We are here but cannot find you,” said Vahid. “You’re going to have to fire a flare.”

  “The enemy may see us.”

  “If the enemy is there, that is true,” said Vahid. “But then I and my wingmate will know where you are and will be able to help you.”

  When he finally persuaded the lieutenant to fire the signal flare, it was Kayvan who spotted it—several kilometers east of even the reversed coordinates, and nowhere near the location the lieutenant had given him earlier.

  “Idiot doesn’t know his east from his west,” complained Kayvan.

  Though inclined to agree, Vahid said nothing. He corrected his course, then finally spotted the two trucks by the side of the road. They were about seven kilometers south of the former Manzariyeh air base, alternately known as Kushke Nosrat Airport. The field was off limits except to certain aircraft connected with the nuclear program.

  “The vehicle up the hill,” said the lieutenant. “Do you see it?”

  “We’re still too far,” said Vahid. “It should be in sight shortly.”

  “Can you bomb it?”

  “Are there enemy soldiers there?” asked Vahid.

  “Unknown at this time.”

  “Are our soldiers there?”

  “I’m sure this vehicle must be the one stolen by the enemy,” said the lieutenant. “We need you to attack it.”

  “Stand by. We have to locate it first.”

  “Complete idiots,” grumbled Kayvan. “We’re probably blowing up the jackass’s father-in-law.”

  26

  Iran

  TURK SAW THE FLARE JUST AS THE NANO-UAVS CAME under his control.

  One more thing to worry about, except he couldn’t—he had to focus on the Hydras.

  Site Two, the more likely bunker to hold the bomb, was first up. The entry point was an air exchanger unit shaped like an upside down U that sat on a concrete pad at one end of an agricultural field. The exchanger was housed in a large metal unit that sat next to an irrigation pump; the property over the bunker entrance had been turned into a working farm to help camouflage the facility.

  Screens guarded the air scoop to keep birds and large insects out. The first UAV to arrive blew them both, extending its winglets like fingers to drag much of the screen with it. Two nano-UAVs flew right behind, swooping down, then taking a sharp right into a long air tunnel. They were moving at a hundred knots, considerably slower than the aircraft in the first attack but still beyond Turk’s ability to physically control them in the twisting tunnel.

  He didn’t have to, at least not yet. The first aircraft blew a small hole in one of the filtration units; the second shot through, scouting the tunnel for the rest of the swarm. Turk glanced quickly at the performance stats. The computer recorded no problems. Then he clicked the main screen over to the swarm attacking Site One.

  The plan was to enter through a straight pipe that had been identified as a utility exhaust at the southern end of the facility, one of several pipes clustered amid rusting machinery behind a shed attached to a cemetery. The facility had been built under the cemetery; the main entrance was through a large mausoleum set at the back of the property, with a secondary entrance in a storage shed near the road. Though deeper than Site Two, the facility was smaller and considered less likely to hold “the treasure,” as the briefers referred to the atomic bomb material.

  The initial entry was easy, but the UAVs had to execute an extreme turn west, plunge again, and take another turn to get into the shaft that led to the bunker’s work area. Turk could not have flown the UAVs through the maneuvers except at extremely low speed, which would have robbed the planes of the momentum needed to strike the target. The computer handled them perfectly, and the lead Hydra blew itself up as it reached the interior exhaust turbine, making a perfect hole for the rest.

  So far, so good. Turk switched his view back to Site Two. A trio of UAVs had entered the long utility chamber that ran to the main elevator shaft. The first UAV blasted a hole through it; the next group descended the shaft to the main level.

  A warning flashed on the screen; the elevator had started up. The two UAVs reversed course, but it was too late for the leader; it was caught by the gondola as it rose and exploded.

  The power to the elevator should have been shut by the earlier explosion; that would have sent the elevator automatical
ly to the bottom.

  It didn’t. The intelligence was incorrect, or at least lacking. What else was wrong?

  The explosion had minimal effect on the elevator, which continued to rise up the long shaft. Turk had to intervene.

  “UAV 6, strike Power Nodule Two,” he told the computer. The small craft, now traveling barely faster than the elevator, continued upward to a panel near the cable and gear mechanism. “Detonate,” said Turk as it arrived.

  He switched over to the feed from the NASA spy plane for a sitrep visual. The explosion had worked: the elevator was moving downward at a good rate.

  Turk clicked the master control and slowed the next group, adding ten seconds to their flight plan.

  “How we doing?” asked Grease from the edge of the ravine.

  “Getting there.” Turk lowered his head closer to the screen. He needed to concentrate.

  “We got some trucks moving around down there. You hear those planes?”

  “No,” Turk said. “I gotta focus.”

  The unplanned destruction of the two UAVs meant he had to change the priorities slightly for the remaining eight in the swarm. One had carried an infrared sensor, another a highly sensitive gamma measuring tool.

  According to the plan, the UAV with the infrared sensor would have led the way into a dark utility tunnel that emptied into the elevator shaft. After detecting a spot in the shaft where water pipes cut through a hole, the aircraft would enter the pipe chamber and fly about twenty feet, where it would blow a hole through a thin wall into a ceiling space above the main laboratory chamber. The UAV carrying the gamma detector would then check the entrances at the far end of the lab, selecting the one with the highest residual radiation; presumably the corridor containing the room with bomb material. The rest of the swarm would follow, using the positioning coordinates radioed by the lead UAVs for their maneuvers. The next two had optical sensors that would inspect the area with the material. The swarm’s distributed intelligence network would attempt to spot certain key images indicating as much. The rest of the drones would then destroy either the bomb or, if there was no bomb, the machinery or gear in the laboratory chamber, massing their explosions to cause a cave-in and further damage.

  Turk faced a quandary. If he used the next two—UAVs 7 and 8, both equipped with optical sensors—in the slots where 5 and 6 were to have been, he’d be short an aircraft with visual sensors to make the final confirmation. That would mean taking a unit from the swarm meant to strike the other site, or possibly attacking blind.

  He checked the location of the rest of the swarm. The nearest Hydra, UAV 9, was thirty seconds from entering the facility.

  He slid it ahead in the next mission slot and directed the computer to reduce flight speed to the slowest possible. The computer warned that the command would reduce their flight energy to dangerous levels. Turk ignored it, zooming the image being projected from the NASA aircraft and focusing on the location of the two drones. He superimposed the schematic, looking for the weak spot.

  He couldn’t see the spot itself but knew it must be near where the pipes came out into the elevator shaft. He took direct control of UAV 7, and told it to strike the plotted position on the map.

  He barely had time to select the IR feed from the aircraft before it blew up.

  The computer flew UAV 8 through the hole into the main laboratory area, a large, irregularly shaped room over 6,000 square feet. Rather than allowing it to fly on its preprogrammed route, Turk instead used the bulk of the microengine’s fuel to boost speed to fifty knots. He placed the aircraft in an orbit at the ceiling, flying parallel to the walls.

  The room was lit; at least he had that.

  He also had activity in it, which was unexpected.

  The last six UAVs had already started downshaft.

  Turk now had to locate the entrance to the test chamber. While the images were being analyzed, he spotted a room with a red door and a number of warnings in Arabic and, surprisingly, English.

  That had to be it.

  There were four or five people in the main lab, and he saw one pointing at the aircraft as it swung around.

  “Unit 8, Destroy Door ID 2-3,” he told the computer. The screen view changed, blurring to red, then a cloud of gray, then black.

  An infrared image of the shaft above replaced the feed automatically as the control unit shifted the lead view to UAV 9. Turk had the swarm orbit the main lab room, then selected UAV 10, the aircraft with the gamma detector, and sent it and UAV 9 into the room behind the destroyed red door, a triangular-shaped chamber nearly 350 feet long and about fifty wide.

  There was no indication from the detector. Aside from a few crates, the room appeared empty.

  Fortunately, it was big enough for the UAVs to orbit in a holding pattern. Turk gave that command, then directed UAV 11, another infrared sensor robot, to destroy the other door, back in the main lab, this one green. He returned UAVs 9 and 10 back to the main room. As UAV 10 entered the room with the green door, it picked up trace radiation.

  Not enough for material. In fact, it was so low it could have been a trace residual—the lingering radioactivity of workers who’d been near a small amount of material.

  The green-door chamber was a rectangle that sank about a hundred feet farther into the earth. The floor area was approximately two hundred by five hundred feet wide. At the center Turk saw a cluster of workbenches; a spiderweb of shelving lined the west wall. Catty-corner to these shelves were a set of laboratory hoods and what in the infrared looked like stacks of small ovens and television sets.

  “Analyze,” he told the Whiplash computer, which was receiving a visual feed from his unit.

  “Chemical mixing facilities, baking and shaping frames noted,” declared the computer a few seconds later. “Explosive manufacturing.”

  The construction area for the explosive lens needed to construct a bomb?

  “Calculate optimum explosion to destroy lab area Subbase 5-D,” he told the computer. “Execute.”

  The swarm, which had been moving up and down in the room, suddenly retreated, flying back up into the main lab.

  “What the hell?” yelled Turk, as if the control unit were human.

  In the next second, he saw the lead nano-UAV darting toward a large round cylinder. Then the screen flashed white.

  The feed from the NASA plane showed him what had happened—the UAVs had caused a massive explosion on a supply of bottled gas in the main lab area, which in turn caused secondary explosions throughout the rest of the facility. The pressure from the chamber where the explosives were manufactured ruptured one of the support girders above the lab, then the entire facility collapsed.

  A perfect hit, except that they hadn’t found the nuclear material they were looking for.

  27

  CIA campus, Virginia

  BREANNA WATCHED THE FEED FROM THE WB-57, which was focused on the area above the Iranian weapons lab known as Site Two. What looked like a puff of white smoke rose from the area where the UAVs had entered; it turned into a steady stream, something approximating a faucet. Two clouds appeared, at what had been the doorways to the facility. Then the ground between them cratered.

  “Seismograph?” she asked.

  “Not a nuke,” reported Teddy Armaz. “Site Two is completely destroyed. Attack on Site One is under way.”

  “It was only an explosives lab,” said Rubeo, standing next to Breanna. “They’ll rebuild it in a month.”

  The surveillance aircraft shifted its flight pattern, extending its figure-eight orbit farther west. Breanna looked at the screen at her workstation, where the remaining UAVs were cataloged. All but the Hydra lost early on the mission were accounted for and in good shape.

  Turk had done an excellent job improvising on Site Two; she felt confident he would do well with Site One. Some of the bands of tension that she’d felt ti
ghten around her chest began to loosen. They were going to do this; he was going to get out.

  “NASA asset has trouble,” said Armaz up front.

  “What’s going on?” Breanna asked.

  “RWR—stand by.”

  RWR stood for “radar warning receiver”—the aircraft was being tracked by Iranian radars. That in itself didn’t mean anything, but it presaged Armaz’s next warning.

  “System 300 tracking them—there’s a flight at long range. Two MiG-29s coming from the west.”

  “They’re not in Iranian airspace.”

  “They’re being challenged.”

  The unarmed reconnaissance aircraft was out of the range of the System 300, a sophisticated Russian antiaircraft missile system that had been acquired with Croatia’s help. But the MiG-29s were another story. Though flying very high, the WB-57 was vulnerable to their radar missiles once they neared the border. The ground radar would direct the interceptors to its vicinity; once close, they would be able to fire.

  “He’s going to have to get out of there,” added Armaz. “The MiGs are already looking for them—their attack radars are active and they are closing fast.”

  Breanna glanced at Rubeo. Turk had relied on the feed from the WB-57 to improvise the attack on Site Two. The next attack was even more complicated—and that was if everything went right.

  “Those MiGs are attempting to lock on,” said Armaz. “They’re only a few seconds away.”

  “Get him out of there,” Breanna said. “Give me Turk.”

  28

  Iran

  TURK GLANCED UP, MADE SURE GREASE WAS STILL AT the edge of the ledge, then turned his full attention back to the attack on Site One. Two UAVs had already blown through the preliminary barriers; he had fifteen left.

  The plan required fourteen. One for good luck, he thought.

  Something was wrong with the WB-57; a message declared the feed off-line.

  “Turk, Ms. Stockard wants to speak to you,” said Paul Smith, who was handling communications back in Virginia.

  “Go ahead.”