Drone

by Mike Maden

  Udi led the way up the short flight of rickety stairs and paused at the closed door. An AM radio played scratchy Middle Eastern pop tunes on the other side.

  When the shadow faced away from the door, he gently tried the handle. It appeared unlocked.

  Udi believed in leading from the front. He signaled his men, then pushed his way inside, pistol drawn.

  * * *

  Tamar bit her lip. Wolf’s assurances that the Iranian was an easy target didn’t calm her fears. She’d learned the hard way that nothing was ever easy in this business, but she knew that her husband was a pro. The team had broken in thirty seconds ago, but it seemed like a lifetime to her because she couldn’t see or hear what was going on inside.

  Then gunfire. Like hammers banging on sheet metal.

  Tamar guessed fifty shots, mostly pistols, but at least one automatic rifle firing three-round bursts. As quickly as it had started, the shooting stopped, but Tamar was already sliding down the ladder fireman-style. She dropped the last four feet to the concrete and raced across the street, bursting through the entrance door just in time to see a man at the rear exit turn and open fire at her.

  The door frame shattered by her face and she flinched as a jagged splinter tore into her cheek. She dropped to one knee and fired back, but the man had already fled. Something caught her eye. She glanced up at the office. Wolf’s leg had caught between the stairs. The rest of his swinging torso hung upside down off of the staircase, facing her, arms reaching for the floor, like a man forever falling, chest clawed open, face masked in seeping blood.

  Tamar dashed for the rear exit, ducked low in the frame, and turned the corner, leading with her weapon.

  No one in the alley. Alive.

  Just the wide-eyed corpse of one of the security men, his jaw shot away, belly split open to the fetid air.

  Tamar turned back and raced up the rickety stairs two at a time and dashed into the office, fearing the worst.

  She found it.

  Her Nikes splashed in blood. The other security man was dead on the floor, shredded by large-caliber slugs in close quarters.

  But Udi was gone.

  Coronado, California

  It was still dark outside. Pearce could hear the waves crashing on the beach below, hissing as they raced away.

  He had just put the water on to boil for his first cup of tea when his phone rang. He read the caller ID. Picked up.

  “Tamar?”

  Sobbing on the other end. Finally, “Troy…”

  She filled in the details. Couldn’t find Udi. Couldn’t call the cops. Tried everything. No one else to turn to. “I’m sorry—”

  “Forget that. Are you at the embassy?”

  “No.”

  “Are you secure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Stay put. I’ll call you back.”

  “Udi…”

  “I know.” Pearce clicked off. Speed-dialed Early. “Need a favor.”

  Early knew that tone of voice. “Name it.”

  Pearce named it.

  Early laughed. “Is that all?”

  “Since you’re asking.” Pearce named two more. Called Ian, then Judy. Texted Tamar when and where to meet him.

  Prayed he wasn’t too late.

  30

  On board the Pearce Systems HondaJet

  Thirty minutes later, Judy banked the HondaJet away from San Diego onto a southeastern course for Mexico City. Pearce tapped on the iPad he was using to zero in on his missing friend.

  “So, how did you find Udi?”

  “Uniquely coded carbon nanotube transponder implants. Ian’s jacked into an air force recon satellite and tracked the signature.” Pearce zipped open a small tactical pack. “I’ve implanted all of my people with them for situations like this.”

  “That’s cool.” Then it hit her. “Wait, you just said ‘my people.’”

  “Yes. You have them, too.”

  “I never gave you permission—”

  “Here.” Pearce held out a Glock 19 pistol.

  Her face soured. She touched her stomach. Felt queasy, violated. “How?”

  Pearce pressed the weapon closer to her. “You’re gonna need this.”

  Judy pushed it away. “You know I don’t do guns,” Judy said.

  “We’re not exactly going to Bible study.”

  “Don’t do those, either.”

  Pearce thought about pressing the issue but let it drop. Judy had lost her faith years ago, but not her moral sensibilities. Her only religion now was flying.

  He shoved the 9mm pistol back in the bag. “I don’t make any apologies for protecting my people.”

  “We’re gonna have to talk when this is all over.”

  “ETA?”

  “Ten-thirteen, local.”

  Pearce glanced at the instrument panel. Judy’s Polaroid was missing. He hoped that wasn’t a sign of things to come.

  Benito Juárez International Airport, Mexico City

  Judy taxied to a stop inside a private hangar just as Tamar rolled up in a beater Chevy Impala with rusted Durango plates and a scorpion sticker plastered across the rear window.

  “Perfect,” Pearce said. He’d trained his people to steal old cars. No GPS or OnStar systems to track them.

  Judy piled into the backseat, wiping the greasy fast-food wrappers and crushed beer cans onto the filthy carpet with a sweep of her arm. Pearce tossed a mil-spec first-aid kit and a duffel bag loaded with rifles and ammo next to her. Within minutes they were on Avenue 602 heading east out of town, Tamar behind the wheel. Pearce was glued to the tablet while Judy watched Mexico City slide past through the grimy windshield. The car had no air-conditioning. It was going to be a long, hot ride.

  * * *

  Forty minutes outside of Mexico City, Tamar turned onto a rutted dirt track leading back into farm country. Against her instincts, she had to slow down as the rocks thudded sharply against the car’s undercarriage. No telling what damage they were doing. They had to roll their windows up against the clouds of dust they were throwing up.

  All three of them wore ear mics, linked to one another. Pearce had other channels open, including Ian’s.

  “In a hundred meters, pull off to the right,” Pearce said. “Let’s get a visual.” The air force satellite Ian had access to was only a signals intelligence unit. It couldn’t provide video surveillance.

  Tamar pulled over and killed the engine. A small berm gave them some cover from the small farm thirty meters off of the road. Udi’s signal had been flashing from there since Ian had found it earlier that morning.

  They unloaded quietly and scoped out the ramshackle farm. The house was barely more than a shack. In the front, a couple of goats chewed on grass and a half dozen chickens wandered around a tractor that hadn’t moved since the Carter administration. Off the near side of the house, five huge sows shouldered against one another in a muddy pen, grunting as they fed greedily from a trough, fat stinging flies buzzing in their flicking ears. Otherwise, no other sounds or movement.

  “There.” Pearce pointed at a dirt bike dropped in the grass.

  Three yards from the bike, a body.

  Tamar gasped.

  “Not Udi. Too young. Let’s move.”

  Pearce carried a short-stock M-4 carbine. Tamar gripped her Mini-Uzi. Judy hauled the medical kit.

  The three of them crouch-walked past the motorcycle. Key still in the ignition. Smell of gas. They reached the body. A teenage boy, fourteen, maybe fifteen. Single gunshot to the side of his head. “He tumbled off the back and the bike kept rolling,” Pearce whispered in his mic.

  Judy felt for a pulse. Knew there wouldn’t be one. “Dead awhile.” She shooed the flies off of the boy’s head wound.

  “Wait here,” Pearce said to Judy. He nodded at Tamar, gave her a hand signal. Tamar sped around back, keeping low to the ground, as Pearce approached the front door.

  “Another body back here,” Tamar whispered. “Probably the boy’s mother. Throat cut.”
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  “Bastards,” Ian hissed in Pearce’s ear.

  Pearce reached the porch. The door was shut, but a front window was open.

  “In position,” Tamar said.

  “Hold,” Pearce replied. He pulled a four-inch-long Black Hornet Nano helicopter drone from his pocket and activated the flight software on his iPhone. The half-ounce surveillance drone featured a small camera. No telling what or who might be waiting inside. Pearce powered up the unit and tossed it through the window. Forty seconds later, the Norwegian-built drone had circumnavigated the two-room shack. No trip wires, no bad guys.

  “All clear,” Pearce said. “But stay frosty. Go.”

  Pearce and Tamar burst into the two-room shack at the same time. They cleared the shack.

  Cigarette butts on the plywood floor, ashtrays overflowing on the card table. Dirty dishes in the filthy washtub. Christ on the bedroom wall staring down at the unmade bed tangled with bloody sheets.

  Pearce pocketed the Hornet.

  “Clear.”

  “Clear.”

  Tamar’s eyes posed the obvious question.

  Pearce checked his tablet. The transponder signal still flashed. It was only accurate to ten meters. “Better check outside,” he said.

  He stepped off of the porch into the blinding sun, heading for the far side of the house. Clothes already sticky with sweat. Tamar took the opposite tack and headed for the animals. Judy was still crouched low by the boy, shooing flies. She’d covered his lifeless face with a square of gauze from the medical kit.

  Pearce checked the side of the shack. A rabbit cage with three fat rabbits and a rusty rake leaning against the wall. Farther back, an outhouse. Flies. Stink.

  A bad kind of stink.

  Pistol up, Pearce opened the door. A corpse. Pants down around his ankles. Bled out. Pearce didn’t have to raise the slumped head.

  Must be the dad, he told himself.

  Tamar screamed.

  Pearce bolted toward her. She stood near the pig trough, clutching her horrified face in her hands.

  It was Udi.

  Pearce recognized the mop of hair and the thick hands, but not much else. The pigs had gutted him. Had devoured his face.

  Tamar howled, crazed with rage. Her Uzi split the air, slugs slapping the huge pig bellies. The swine screamed as if possessed, charging and slipping through the mud and gore, dropping one by one, as 9mm rounds sliced through their spinal cords and brain stems.

  Tamar stopped firing, pirouetted, arms flailing. The Uzi sailed through the air as she spilled into the grass, her shoulder painted red.

  A shot rang out. The bullet zooped like an angry bee past Pearce’s ear. He dropped to one knee, trying to see where it came from.

  Judy ran full throttle toward Tamar, despite Troy screaming in her ear, “Down, down, down!” until she dropped by her friend’s side with the med kit. She began unzipping it when a geyser of dirt leaped up between them.

  “Let’s go!” Pearce shouted as he grabbed Tamar’s shirt collar and dragged her toward the tractor, Judy close behind.

  Pearce lay Tamar behind the shelter of the big rear steel wheel where Judy could safely work on her. Pearce crouched behind the small front wheel. Another rifle crack. A round spanged against the tractor.

  “Status!” Ian shouted.

  Judy tore open the med kit and ripped open bandages.

  “Tamar’s hit. Judy and I are under cover.”

  “I’m calling in support—”

  “Stand down, Ian. I need that guy alive.”

  “But Troy—”

  “That’s an order.” Pearce tapped his earpiece, cutting Ian off. He pulled his Glock from his holster and handed it to Judy. “Take this.” And he added, “Just in case.”

  Another bullet hit the tractor. The steel fender rang like a church bell.

  Judy shook her head as she applied pressure bandages to Tamar’s shoulder wound. “Forget it. Just go!”

  Pearce glanced through the tractor. Two hundred yards away, sunlight winked off of a scope. A man stood in the bed of a pickup truck using the roof as a rifle bench. Too close for comfort, especially with a scope.

  Judy was right.

  Just go.

  Pearce dashed back toward the motorcycle in the grass. He’d seen the key in the ignition. He prayed there was still enough gas in the tank. Dirt puffed next to his foot. Pearce pumped the kick-starter twice and the engine roared to life. He gunned the throttle hard, popping the clutch and shifting gears as fast as he could. The bike tore up dirt clods behind him as he raced toward the berm. He took the hill at an angle and jumped it easily, crashing both tires into the dirt road just a few feet behind the pickup, fishtailing ahead of him, racing away. The man in the back of the battered gray Dodge crashed to the steel deck, dropping his rifle in the bed. Otherwise he could’ve shot Pearce dead without even aiming.

  The truck picked up speed, throwing dirt and rocks behind it. Pearce could feel the grit blasting against his face; his Oakleys saved his eyes. He kept the throttle full-on with his right hand while he slid the M-4 sling around with his left. He raised the carbine up and fired three three-round bursts, trying not to hit anyone.

  Slugs sparked on the tailgate, then shattered the rear glass. The truck didn’t slow down—in fact, it kept gaining speed, but the man in back ducked down. The bike Pearce was on was only 125cc, too small to keep up with a big V-8 truck engine running full bore. He fired again, twice, aiming for the tires. He missed. Fifteen rounds left.

  The shooter in the back of the truck sat back up, aiming his gun. Pearce ducked low as he swerved the bike side to side. The big semiauto rifle thundered.

  Pearce felt the heavy rounds blow past his head even with the wind and the dust whipping his face. He raised his gun again, firing at the tires.

  The left rear truck tire blew. It must have been a retread. The tire unwound like a strip of tubular dough and wrapped itself around the rear axle. The truck bucked and swerved as the driver lost control. The big Dodge plowed into a ditch on the side of the road and flipped over.

  Pearce dropped his carbine to downshift. He was still a hundred yards back and didn’t want to come racing up to a hail of bullets. The rifle cracked again. Pearce ducked off the side of the road and dropped the bike, finding cover behind a rock. A bullet shaved a fleck of stone just above Pearce’s head. He shifted to one side of the rock and opened fire, emptying his mag.

  WHOOSH!

  The truck erupted in a cloud of fire and steel. Shrapnel whistled past. The pressure wave rocked the trees overhead.

  “I SAID I NEEDED THEM ALIVE!” Pearce screamed.

  “Wasn’t us, boss. Still haven’t armed the missiles,” Stella said. She had been on overwatch with an extended-range Reaper drone temporarily “borrowed” from an air force maintenance hangar. A $14 million favor, courtesy of Mike Early. Pearce wasn’t stupid enough to think he could handle the mission without a Hellfire angel on his shoulder.

  Pearce tapped his earpiece as he raced toward the burning hulk. “Ian. Are we alone out here?”

  “All clear.”

  “Must have been a suicide bomb,” Pearce said. “Damn it.”

  Pearce stopped. Stood as close to the flames as he could stand. No survivors. “Judy, how’s Tamar?”

  “The bullet passed clean through the shoulder, but she’s in shock. I’ve stopped the blood flow and got her on a plasma drip. She’s stable for the moment, but she needs help now.”

  “Ian, call in a medevac.”

  “Already on the way,” Ian said. He’d notified a private air-ambulance service out of Veracruz on standby. “ETA two minutes.”

  “Can she talk?” Pearce asked Judy, running back to the bike.

  “She’s out.” But knowing Pearce, added, “I know she’d tell you this wasn’t your fault.”

  He almost believed her.

  Washington, D.C.

  Britnev sat in one of the computer carrels at the Georgetown public library. He hated compu
ters, at least for this kind of effort. He’d been trained in the early ’80s in the traditional methods of tradecraft—dead drops, brush passes, and one-time pads. Britnev believed that using any kind of electronic communications was the clandestine equivalent of walking around with his fly open. But in this case, it couldn’t be helped. His contact in Mexico refused to communicate with anyone but him and this was the best arrangement they could make.

  After covering the PC’s webcam with a sticky note—he always assumed a computer’s webcam was hacked—Britnev logged in under his fake identity and pulled up a coded e-mail in his Dropbox account left there by his Mexican contact, Ali Abdi.

  Britnev memorized the jumble of numbers and symbols in the e-mail message—they would have looked like gibberish to anyone passing by—then deleted both the e-mail and the Dropbox account.

  He took a short but sweaty walk to a nearby Starbucks and ordered a venti black iced tea with lemon, no sugar, and took a seat in the back, away from the windows. Britnev pulled out a pen and deciphered the code in his head, scratching each letter onto a napkin. Ali had already informed him last week about the Castillo decapitation strike. What Ali hadn’t been able to find out was who was behind it.

  Until now.

  Britnev was a little queasy. The intel had come from the Israeli Ali had tortured and killed in Mexico. He knew what terrible things Ali had done to get it, but he pushed the butchery from his mind and finished the transcription. The first letters on the napkin spelled a name.

  Troy Pearce.

  Britnev transcribed the rest. A request from Ali for intel on Pearce and Pearce Systems. Britnev took a sip of tea, crumpled the napkin, and pocketed it.

  Ali had found his trigger and handed it to Britnev. Now it was up to him to pull it.

  31

  Texas City, Texas

  The Estrella de la Virgen was a privately owned twenty-five-thousand-ton Mexican oil tanker ported out of Veracruz but sailing under a Panamanian flag and captained by an American, Gil Norquist.