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

by Dale Brown

  “Turk, we’re taking the radar plane off-line temporarily,” said Breanna. “He’s being attacked.”

  “OK. All right.”

  “We’re working on it.”

  “OK. I need to go.” He switched off the coms and took stock of the UAV swarm. In addition to the fifteen now hurtling toward the facility, there was one more at the far edge of the screen, designated as UAV 18, not yet under his control. He wasn’t sure why it was so far behind, but he made a mental note and went back to the attack swarm.

  The lead UAV descended through the air exhaust vent, plunging toward a chamber that had been identified as a cafeteria space earlier. Designated UAV 3, it hit the grill protecting the space, but did not explode; Rubeo’s people had calculated it could get by the grill without needing to do so. It zipped across the room at high speed, banking so it could enter a corridor that led to another passage downward. Here, it struck a machine that worked an air-conditioning zoning mechanism. As it exploded, the vents connected to the unit sprung open, clearing the way for the rest of the swarm to enter through a different passage just above the cafeteria space.

  The UAVs shot downward, entering a utility space populated by wires and pipes. The fit was excruciatingly tight, with bare millimeters of clearance at two points, plus a pair of tricky turns that looked like V’s with an extra leg curving down at the end. Turk knew he could not have flown this himself, but the tiny aircraft navigated the passage with ease, emerging in a large, empty chamber apparently designed for ventilation and heating equipment, but not used.

  The lead nano-UAV curled upward as it reached the end of the long space, exploding just before touching the top. The force pushed down a second UAV, which had followed, adding momentum to its attack on the thick metal access panel that formed the floor. The explosion blew a hole in the panel, but unfortunately, the hole was not quite large enough to allow the next UAV to pass. The aircraft tangled its wings against a shard at the edge. Before Turk could react, it had blown itself up, enlarging the passage.

  That had been one of the trouble spots Rubeo had warned of, a place where he feared they might lose one of the designated aircraft and have to rely on the backups. Two more lay ahead.

  UAV 5 was now in the lead, projecting its infrared image to Turk as it passed through an open doorway and started down a ramp area, passing someone walking up the ramp. The Hydra twisted on its axis, completing a hard turn to its right to enter a work area roughly the size of a football field.

  The screen blinked. A new set of words appeared at the bottom of the image: UPDATE: PROCESSING AREA.

  A small forest of silver cylinders that looked like stacked coffeemakers sat on the south side of the large room. They were centrifuges, used to refine weapons-grade uranium.

  That was a significant find, but Turk had not been briefed on it.

  The next area contained a large bath, built to hold fuel. The site they hit the first night had a similar area.

  This was starting to look like the place.

  The swarm moved into an orbit at the top of the lab room, slowing while they formed themselves into two groups for the next leg of the assault. Turk debated whether to override—he could use one of the UAVs to destroy the centrifuges—but decided not to. If the attack was successful, they would be destroyed in the explosion.

  UAV 5 tucked toward the floor, blowing out a stamped metal plate that covered an emergency drain. Seconds later the rest began to descend in a single line—until UAV 11, which struck something over the pipe and exploded.

  UAVs 12 and 13 were caught in the explosion; there was a secondary explosion, and gas began hissing into the space. Fire destroyed UAV 14, and then UAV 15, disoriented, crashed into a centrifuge assembly.

  Meanwhile, UAVs 16 and 17 plunged down the drainpipe unscathed, dropping toward the large holding tank at the east side of the facility. The tank had been punctured by UAV 6, opening the way into another large work space, about three-quarters the size of the centrifuge and pond area. The plan called for the swarm to move down another corridor into a lab area and from there to a second room that might be an assembly area, but Turk temporarily suspended it, putting the aircraft into a quick orbit around the top.

  He closed his eyes and bent his head back, stretching his neck in a gesture of both prayer and despair. He didn’t have enough UAVs to complete the mission, and he had no idea how to improvise around the problem.

  29

  Over Iran

  CAPTAIN VAHID SLOWED HIS MIG DOWN FOR A SECOND run near the hillside. The ground unit was on his left, the vehicle somewhere on his right. He hadn’t seen it on the first pass, though the soldiers on the ground claimed he had gone right over it. The rocks it was parked near—assuming it was there—obscured it on the radar.

  He stared at the silvery ground, but it was just a blur.

  “Fire a flare at the vehicle on my signal,” he told the Pasdaran commander. “Copy?”

  “They will know they have been located.”

  If they don’t know that by now, they are true imbeciles, thought Vahid. He told the commander to do as he’d asked.

  Banking the MiG, Vahid told his wingman what he was doing and then began his run.

  “Fire,” he radioed. A finger of red shot from the scratch road where the Pasdaran unit had stopped, leaping up the hillside into the rocks. Vahid saw something there, boxy, not moving.

  The truck.

  “Are you sure you want me to bomb it?” he asked. “You are very close.”

  Surely it would make more sense for them to go up the hill and inspect it themselves. But Vahid guessed that the commander wasn’t willing to take that risk. If the truck was destroyed, there would be no way for the Israelis—or whoever was near it—to escape. He could wait for morning.

  That was undoubtedly the idiot’s logic. He didn’t seem to calculate that whoever had driven it there was undoubtedly long gone, since the Pasdaran unit had not come under attack.

  “Affirmative.”

  “Pull back, then,” Vahid told them. “Radio when you are a safe distance away.”

  “A waste of bombs,” said his wingmate. “But good practice.”

  30

  Iran

  TURK STARED AT THE CONTROL SCREEN. THE SIX UAVS he had left were circling at high speed in the water overflow chamber, an unfilled water tank that was part of the cooling apparatus for a system designed to hold hot uranium rods. The gear was left over from an earlier, ultimately abandoned phase of the project’s experiments.

  The UAVs were supposed to exit the massive tank through a small pipe, flying an intricate pattern through an emergency drain system and ventilation ducts before reaching the suite where the targeted lab was located. There, they would enter an air shaft, blast through a pair of ventilating fans, and invade the suite where the work chamber was located. It would take four UAVs to clear the way that far.

  Once they had done their job, Turk would take direct control and fly the remaining UAVs to the target area. The chamber itself consisted of several small rooms. Turk would take the UAVs into a corridor through the opening in the ventilation shaft. He would then blast his way through a set of double doors and enter the targeted space. It would take three UAVs to clear the way. The last would strike the target at a point the Whiplash system calculated to do the most damage. Turk worried about this; even a slight delay from the computer as it relayed the information—or a problem with the link—might complicate the final task. Worst case, there might not be enough momentum left to initiate an explosion.

  Unless the doors were open. If so, he could save several units and mass for the attack.

  Turk hit the button at the bottom of the screen to bring up the view from the WB-57. The plane, under attack from the Iranian MiGs, was too far away to provide a live image. The screen warned that he was looking at a view frozen several minutes ago.

 
One door was open in the image, a technician passing through it.

  Turk touched the screen and twisted his fingers, enabling a 3-D schematic view constructed from earlier radar penetrations. He moved it up and zoomed, looking at the area of the pipes.

  The computer beeped at him, warning that the UAVs were getting close to the point where their flight momentum would no longer be enough to complete the mission.

  Turk looked for another way into the final chamber. The ventilation shaft ran close to a utility closet at the end of the suite. It would take two UAVs to get there, then a third to get into the closet, and a fourth to blow out of the door.

  Leaving two to get through three doors.

  He moved the diagram, saw the utility closet at the base of a long chase of wires and pipes that ran up parallel to the chamber. If he blew into that chase, then had the UAVs descend, he’d use only five to get to the final target.

  Why hadn’t the planners chosen that option? He zoomed the image of the chase. The passage was tight, with two elbow turns and a final V before the closet.

  They must not have trusted him to guide them through the tight space. Not that he blamed them: the middle turn was ninety degrees. He’d never make it unless he was going very, very slow. And that wouldn’t leave enough flight energy to guarantee time to scout the final chamber.

  But he only had to make it once. Or rather, he only had to make each stage once, then use the onboard follow function.

  Turk aimed UAV 7 directly at the spot where the metal chase touched the wall of the tank. The explosion sent a shock wave bouncing through the chamber. The other aircraft fluttered but adjusted well, remaining in their pattern.

  Turk next slowed UAV 8 and tucked into the chase. The speed dropped under thirty knots—slow for the craft but too fast to make the turn perfectly. He clipped the top right wing but managed to keep it intact and moving into the next elbow turn. By the time he was halfway through the elbow, his speed had dropped below stall speed, and the nano-UAV headed toward the bottom wall of the chase. Turk used his small microburst engine to propel it upward, past a twisted artery of wires and to the final V turn. He used his last bit of power to start the maneuver, then leveled off quickly to get into position to drop into the closet. But the wing had been damaged by the earlier bump, and the UAV started to spin. He managed to push the nose forward, sending the aircraft sideways toward the top of the closet wall. He pressed the self-destruct button as the right wing slapped against one of the steel members framing the door.

  He wasn’t sure he had a hole. Worse, he couldn’t use the autofollow, since that would risk having the computer follow the crooked maneuver at the end. He’d have to try the maneuver again.

  UAV 8 had optical sensors rather than IR. The chase was too dark for it. He selected UAV 9, circled several times to cut his speed to ten knots, then started through.

  This wasn’t like flying an airplane, or even like commanding a normal UAV. This was flicking your wrist back and forth, reacting to little bits of light and dark that flashed before your eyes. This was remembering what you had seen. This was motor skill and intuition, putting everything out of your mind but the little dot of UAV that flicked behind the screen.

  The image blurred from gray to gray to gray and then light, vigorous light—he was out in the corridor—and the door ahead was open.

  Go. Go!

  “Swarm, follow,” Turk commanded.

  The swarm descended at high speed. In the meantime, he pushed UAV 9 up through the corridor with the last of its fuel, moving through the still-open door. The frightened face of a technician appeared, then disappeared as the aircraft sped to a door on the far side.

  Closed.

  The UAV exploded. But the rest of the swarm was now in the long hall outside the targeted chamber.

  “Safe orbit,” he commanded.

  Turk caught his breath. He had four UAVs left. He’d need one to blow out the door; the rest to get his target.

  UAV 16 had a radiation detector. He selected the sensor panel. The radiation was at the high end of the gauge.

  He was in the right place, at least.

  He got a warning from the control unit—UAV 10 was overheating.

  Turk took control of the tiny plane and smashed it through the door to the targeted chamber. The unit that followed flashed video from the room: massive gridwork filled the screen, silver and red.

  They were cages, with tigers in each, snarling and turning to dragons.

  It was an optical illusion, caused by the lingering effects of the explosion and the rush of light. But it was an illusion built on reality—there were two large sets of metal struts and scaffolds at the far end of the room, beyond three sets of low walls made of sandbags.

  Two bombs, each in its own holster.

  “Calculate explosion point.”

  Seconds ticked by. They passed quicker than Turk expected—the solution, said the computer, was easy. It posted a crosshair between two pieces of metal on the assembly at the left, a tiny little spot big enough for one UAV only.

  And that’s all that was needed, it declared.

  Turk took UAV 16 and directed it into the assembly. “Target spot, ignite,” he said, directing the aircraft to ignite the explosive and detonate itself. He felt his body begin to relax as the aircraft zeroed in. The screen blanked with a flash of light.

  Then the feed from UAV 9 replaced the image. That was impossible—the bomb explosion should have obliterated everything.

  Except it hadn’t. The computer had miscalculated, or there was some sort of flaw in the Iranian design, or the UAV hadn’t struck it right, or any of a dozen different explanations that made absolutely no difference now.

  The explosion had done something: part of the cradle holding the unfinished weapon up had fallen away. The bomb tipped over but remained intact, at least to the naked eye.

  UAV 9 and UAV 15 were left, still orbiting at the top of the chamber though now at low speed, nearing their stall points. Lights flashed in the chamber—an alert.

  Do something, Turk told himself. Do it.

  But what?

  Rubeo’s people had identified a bank of small acetylene gas tanks at the north side of the room that could be detonated if no bomb was found. This would cause a partial collapse of the chamber roof, which should set up a chain reaction from above. The result would bury the chamber.

  But not destroy it.

  Better than nothing. And he was running out of time, as the UAVs were running out of energy. Turk took UAV 9 over directly, locating the tanks, which looked like a set of lockers at the end of the room. He was about to put UAV 15 into follow mode when he got a better idea. He told the computer to hit the acetylene with UAV 9, then steered UAV 15 toward the bomb he hadn’t struck, aiming for the wired mechanism similar to the one he remembered from the other day. There was no time to calculate any more; he had to aim it himself.

  UAV 9 struck the gas tanks. Fire flashed through the room, catching in the oxygen-enhanced atmosphere in a flash. UAV 15 wavered. He pushed hard on the flight stick, picking its nose up and plowing into the bomb assembly as his control unit’s visual screen went blank.

  A second later he felt the ground shaking beneath him, a gentle roll that quickly blossomed into a harsh jerk up and down.

  He had ignited the nuke, and its shock had exploded the other one as well.

  ORPHAN

  1

  CIA campus, Virginia

  NO ONE SPOKE. BREANNA STARED AT THE MAP SCREEN at the front of the control room. Turk’s position flashed on and off, on and off, a lonely green dot in a mass of gray and black.

  “Seismographic data, confirmed,” said Teddy Armaz finally. “We have a nuclear explosion—odd pattern—two maybe? One partial? Looks like, uh, four and a half total megatons. Uh—”

  “Judging from the wave patterns, there we
re two weapons,” said Rubeo. “These are only partial explosions. Whether because of our attacks or their design will require further analysis. Interesting.”

  Another brief moment of silence followed, no one speaking or even breathing. And then the room exploded with a cheer.

  Breanna turned to Reid. He was smiling. “We did it.”

  “Yes,” she told him. “Yes.”

  Reid picked up one of the handsets to call the White House. Breanna noticed Rubeo behind him. He was staring at one of his laptop screens, his face cemented into a frown.

  Someone in the front yelled, “Yeah!” The cheering crescendoed, culminating in a round of applause that would have shaken a football stadium.

  They deserved it. Iran’s nuclear program had been critically disabled. It would take at least a decade for the Iranians to reconstitute the human and mechanical infrastructure; by then, all manner of things would have changed.

  Still, they weren’t finished.

  “All right,” she told the room. “Settle down. We need to get our people home.”

  2

  Iran

  TURK LAY ON HIS BACK, CONFUSED AND DISORIENTED. The control unit, still in his hands, had fallen onto his chest, but for a moment he didn’t realize what it was. He was so tired that his brain was scrambled and his eyes physically hurt; dizzy, he thought he was falling from his bed in a dream.

  His confusion lasted only a second. A jet passed somewhere above, nearby and low.

  “Grease!” Turk sputtered.

  Grease pulled him up by his shirt. “We have to move,” said the sergeant. “Come on.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Turk started putting the control unit into the pack.

  “Let’s destroy it,” said Grease. “We don’t need to carry it.”

  “There’s still one more UAV overhead,” said Turk. “Which way is the truck?”

  “We can’t get it. There are troops watching it,” said Grease. “We’ll circle around and take one of their vehicles.” Holding his rifle in one hand, he started down the slope, half sliding, half walking.