Drone Wars 1: The Beginning

by Mike Whitworth

  I would need to fill the tank again before too long, but filling up with gas at a conventional gas station was a real risk. I knew almost all the more isolated ranches kept an elevated fuel storage tank containing at least a few hundred gallons of gas on site. I wondered if I might find a ranch where they would sell me gas and keep quiet about it. Most of the ranchers I had met over the years have been pretty good about minding their own business.

  Sometimes a risk simply must be taken. Then again, maybe I took the risk because by now I was too tired to think clearly? I drove west out of Ten Sleep and began to look for ranch roads. I passed by a couple and then, after maybe 15 miles, turned onto one that looked a little more rundown than the others.

  The ranch house was about six miles down a very rough and winding gravel road. It was old and a bit run down. There were two barns, or machine sheds, each three or four times the size of the house. I needed the 4WD for the first time on the way to the ranch house.

  I pulled up in front of the house and got out of the truck. I had taken about three steps when a musical voice said, "Hold it right there Mister."

  I half turned to see whom the voice belonged too. There stood a trim and quite attractive lady of indeterminate age dressed in jeans and a western shirt holding an AR-15 rifle. There was a very slight smile on her face. About 30 feet behind her two cowboys were approaching. Both carried AR-15 rifles as well, and they were pointed at me. I figured I was screwed.

  "Search his truck, Jerry," the lady said.

  I slowly put my hands in the air and said, "I don't mean anyone any harm."

  Jerry searched the truck and found the bug-out bag and the rifle behind the seat. He carried them to the lady for her inspection. She glanced at the rifle and shuffled through the contents of the bag. Looking up, she asked. "Are you a prepper?"

  I nodded my head.

  "You in trouble?"

  I nodded again.

  "Ok, hand that pistol in your waistband to Jerry and come inside.” I did as she asked and limped after her into the ranch house. Jerry and the other man were right behind us. Now they had their guns and mine too.

  She motioned to a chair. "Sit there.” I sat. "What happened to your leg?"

  "Gunshot," I said.

  "Who?” She asked.

  "I don't know. It was a drone," I replied.

  Jerry smiled and said "Well, Toni, I think we have a real terrorist on our hands here. What did you do to get shot, fella?"

  "That part I am not sure about," I answered.

  "Are you being followed? Are you wanted?” Toni asked.

  "Yes to both, I suspect."

  Toni turned to the other cowboy. "Will, take his truck and drive it to Boise. Ditch it but good. Jerry will be along in two days to get you. You guys set up a place and time between yourselves."

  "Yes Ma'am," Will replied. He and Jerry conferred for about 30 seconds. Then, Will handed his rifle to Jerry, and walked out the front door.

  Toni looked at me. "You were wise to use an old truck with no GPS."

  I shrugged.

  "Jerry, go get Doc to look at his leg, please."

  "I don't think that is wise," I said.

  "It's OK," Toni said. "He is cool.” She smiled just a little bit. OK, tell me your first name and your story. I don't want to know your last name yet."

  "Plausible deniability?” I asked.

  "You might say that," she smiled a tiny bit more.

  I told her who I was, including my last name—I have always had trouble with authority—most of my history, and about the drones. I didn't mention Susan. It was just too difficult.

  Toni listened and then asked, "Where is your wife?" while pointing to the wedding ring on my finger.

  "She didn't make it.” I choked on the words, but managed to get them out. Toni's gaze softened a good bit, and she didn't ask any more questions. We waited quietly until Doc arrived.

  Doc was about five-eight and a whole lot younger than I thought he would be. He assured me he had graduated medical school, although he had not yet finished a residency. He looked at my leg, re-bandaged it, and gave me a small bottle of antibiotic pills to take twice a day. He also stitched up the nick in my shoulder. He said it took fourteen stitches. I was glad he numbed it first.

  Toni watched the whole time but said nothing.

  When Doc was done, I asked Toni, "Are you going to turn me over to the feds?"

  Doc sniggered, and Toni said, "No, I think you may just be one of us."

  "Who are us?” I asked.

  Toni smiled. There was something in her expression I couldn't get a read on. "People like you," she said. "People just like you."

  Chapter 2: PEGGY

  "Evil is as evil does.” John Debrouillard

  Colorado

  Peggy Bronson slowed down for the stop sign and came to a dusty stop on the dirt road. She waited for the wispy tan dust to settle and, once she could see all was clear, turned right onto the paved road.

  Peggy had been glad to see her sister and her dad. It was more difficult to visit now that she lived so far away, but she managed it twice a year, even though her sister had yet to come visit her. It had been a year since her mom's funeral.

  Peggy thought her dad was handling the loss fairly well. Her sister didn't agree with her. She thought he was handling it poorly. Peggy suspected that might be because her sister, ever the center of attention, didn't like the way their father had become more introverted after their mother's death. Most likely, her sister saw their father’s introversion as an inconvenience.

  Her mom had always been the one who pressured Peggy about finding a good man and getting married. Now her younger sister, though unmarried herself and still living at home, was doing the same thing. That irritated Peggy more than she thought it should. Nonetheless, she was now headed home a day earlier than she had planned.

  She drove for a while, alternatively thinking about an algorithm she was working on for her employer, and trying to come up with a killer comeback the next time her sister asked her about getting married. She slowed down to navigate an abrupt curve in the road thinking that it wasn't her fault she had not yet found the right man—or was it? Was she being too picky? Was she refusing to settle for a less than perfect man? She didn't think so.

  As she rounded the curve, she saw what looked to be a small predator drone swooping down toward a red car coming her way. She had seen pictures on the internet of the predator drones used by the military and the president when he assassinated terrorists overseas. She had always thought they were much bigger than this one. This drone was only about as long as a car. As best she could tell, it had a wingspan of about 12 feet.

  She stared in both amazement and horror as the drone fired a missile. The exhaust trail was unmistakable. It looked just like it did on the movies. The missile hit the red car while it was still moving. The car was almost completely demolished by the explosion and what was left of it slid to a stop. The flames were dancing six feet above the hulk of what had been the car.

  Peggy was afraid any people in the car were dead or horribly injured. She swerved off the road to avoid the wreckage and came to a stop only 75 feet from the burning car. She could feel the heat from the flames as soon as she opened her door. Debris from the blast had pinged off her car and even pocked the windshield in two places.

  Just in case anyone in the car was still alive, she put her car in park, got out, and walked cautiously toward the wreckage despite the heat. She was afraid of what she might see. She had read where some of the terrorists who were targeted overseas were torn limb from limb by drone strikes. She wasn't sure she could handle seeing something like that. As best she could tell, there was no way anyone in the car could possibly have survived.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed the drone was returning. That scared her. She ran back to her car, got in quickly, started the engine, and drove away. The drone followed.

  She hoped the drone had carried only one missile. She couldn't see
a second missile attached to the bottom of the drone, but she randomly swerved the car hoping to avoid a missile impact in case she was wrong. After a couple of miles, she decided that either the drone had carried only one missile, or she was simply under surveillance.

  Peggy considered herself just a normal citizen. She was not politically active, nor had she ever been arrested for anything. In fact, she had never even had a speeding ticket. She was, however, like most people she knew, at least somewhat distrustful of the government.

  She knew that many politicians seemed far more concerned with pleasing large corporations than protecting citizens. Why else would the feds stand behind GMO corn after that scientific study showed lab rats developed tumors when they ate it? She also knew that the government was prone to cover up things the powers that be did not want the public to know. Therefore, she began to worry that witnessing the drone strike made her a target. From what she had read, drones like this one cost too much for anyone except the government to operate.

  One of Peggy's friends, Alec Davis, a retired shopkeeper who was overtly anti-government, although in a non-violent political activist fashion, once told her that the powers that be were perfectly willing to incur collateral damage to achieve their goals. Alec explained to her that collateral damage was the death of citizens and the destruction of private property. Alec was a solid citizen and had always proven himself to be trustworthy. She believed him—especially now.

  Peggy saw an intersection coming up and turned left onto a county road. In her rearview mirror, she watched the drone follow her. Of course, it was possible that the government might let her go—maybe with only a warning to not say anything about what she had seen. However, she wasn't at all sure of that. Her friend Alec had informed her that 4,500 innocent civilians had been killed by U.S. government drone strikes overseas. If those innocent civilians didn't concern the government, she doubted they would care about one insignificant American citizen such as herself either.

  She drove faster. The drone picked up it's pace as well. That was when she knew she was in trouble. She decided that she needed to evade the drone if she didn't want to become collateral damage. Luckily, she knew the area, having been raised in the general vicinity, and was able to navigate the back roads without a map. Peggy knew there was a national forest about eight miles from her present location. She thought that the forest might be a good place to lose the drone.

  The drone followed her every turn. Peggy drove faster and faster. Her hands gripped the wheel so hard they hurt. She concluded that the government might send another drone, this one with a live missile, to kill her. She was hoping she would have time to reach the national forest and evade the drones under cover of the forest canopy before that happened.

  Peggy wasn't sure what, if any, remote sensing equipment the drones carried beyond a camera. She hoped the drones were not equipped with infrared scanners that would allow them to follow her under cover of the forest.

  Just as Peggy entered the national forest, she glanced in her rear view mirror and saw another drone coming to join the one that was still following her. Peggy pushed her accelerator closer to the floor. The tires now squealed around every turn she made climbing the forested mountain. Here, the forest cover was still patchy. Gradually, the tree cover increased, but she still caught glimpses of the drones following her. Now the second drone, clearly armed with a missile, had taken the lead. She saw the first drone turn and fly away.

  Peggy decided she had an urgent need to convince whoever was behind the drone's cameras that she was dead before the drone made her so. That was when she decided to crash her car; her brand-new Lexus that she had wanted so badly and saved five years to buy. However, Peggy wasn't a fool. She knew her life was worth more than any car, at least to her. She watched for her opportunity.

  The road grew steeper and continued to wind up the mountainside in increasingly abrupt hairpin turns. To her left the slope began to drop off almost vertically. That left Peggy in a quandary. To escape the car she needed to exit the driver's door, yet that was the side of the road closest to the steep slope that dropped several hundred feet or more down the mountain. After going around an inside bend, the answer came to her.

  She slowed down as she drove into a tight bend to the right that was well covered by overhanging pine trees. She carefully opened the driver's door with her left hand and held it just barely open.

  As she turned left into the next curve in the road she kept her car as far to the right as she could. Once she was well into the curve she opened the door, turned the steering wheel hard left, rolled out of the car, and slammed the door behind her in one fluid movement. She had always been athletic. Now she was very glad of her ability.

  The gravel was hard. She cried out in pain as she hit and rolled almost to the drop off. The car swung to the left ahead of her and went over the edge. She heard it crashing through the trees below.

  She quickly got up and managed to scramble into the bushes and worked her way up the steep mountainside a few feet. Settling behind a thick bush and making herself as small as possible she saw the armed drone fly by and dip down the mountain. She was shocked when she heard the explosion.

  It took her a while to understand that the drone had fired on her car where it came to rest below on the mountainside. She had been hoping that this was all in her imagination, and the drone was not really after her. Now, she knew differently. She was relieved to see the drone fly away. She was so scared she was shaking.

  Ten minutes later she realized that she better do something. The only thing she could think of was to hide deep in the woods. She was sure that government police would be along at any minute. And if they caught her, she was sure they would kill her.

  Her purse and her cell phone were still in what remained of her car, so she couldn't call anyone. Fortunately, she was wearing jeans, a thin red plaid flannel shirt, and tennis shoes instead of a dress and heels, but she had nothing in her pockets and no food, no water, and no means of communication. It would be dark in about six hours. It was going to get cold after the sun went down, probably below freezing, especially up here on the mountain.

  DIS Drone Base No. 3, Oklahoma

  Clayton Jackson sat in a comfortable chair. He liked to think of it as a real pilot's seat. The wrap-around-screen in front of him required his complete attention. The video from the on-board cameras filled the screen so well that it seemed as if he was sitting in an actual cockpit in the drone, even though the drone had no cockpit.

  It was good to be operating so close to the front again. Flying a drone located halfway across the globe was a bit difficult because of signal latency, or delay. It worked OK for intel flights, but was less than satisfactory to him for strikes.

  He liked the strikes. Man, how he liked the strikes! He loved the feeling he got when he loosed a missile on target and then saw the explosion. He loved the feeling of knowing he had killed someone, or maybe even more than one. His best to date was six confirmed kills with a single missile. He thought of that mission every single day. Every single day he also thought he had the very best job in the world.

  He had heard of the new quad-copter assassin drones armed with either semi or full auto .40 caliber guns. Man, how he wanted to operate those. Rumor was that the pilots of those drones could actually see the blood splash from the bullet strikes. He wanted that so bad he could taste it.

  He focused on following the car. He couldn't see the driver, but the message that had flashed across his screen 30 minutes ago said to acquire the target at drone 8947's position and eliminate the driver of the dark blue Lexus. The message said the driver was a 36-year-old blonde woman of medium height. He again wished that they would tell the pilots the names of the victims. He would love to know the names of the 103 people he had killed. Somehow, it seemed it would be so much more satisfying to know their names.

  Following the car as it climbed the winding road up the side of the mountain, he held off firing his missile for two reasons. F
irst, there was tree cover over most of the road. His on-screen computer indicated that he had a 70% chance of striking his target with the intermittent tree cover. Standard operating procedure required a minimum of 95% before firing. Second, the map of the terrain that flashed on the top of his screen showed that soon the road would exit the trees. There, with no cover, his chance of a successful strike would closely approach 100%.

  He was surprised when the car swerved out from under heavy tree cover, went off the road, and down the mountainside. He quickly flew the drone into position and released the missile just as the car came to rest. It was a perfect hit, as always. His many years of computer gaming had not failed him yet.

  He couldn't officially count the kill until the review team looked at the mission imagery, but he was sure he had fried that blonde bitch to a crisp. It gave him a warm feeling inside. He wondered what this one had done against the government. They never told him, but he imagined various terrorist plots and assassination attempts.

  He whipped the drone out of its dive and climbed until he could fly above the mountain back to base. It would take him about 45 minutes to fly the drone back to base and land it. If he were lucky, he would immediately have another assignment and another drone at his command. Once, he got to fly five complete missions in his eight-hour shift. Most days it was one or two—but he could hope. He had another five hours to go on his shift.

  And nothing. Not even a surveillance run. That sucked. Thirty minutes before his shift ended, his screen flashed a command for him to report to supervisory control. That didn't sound good at all, he thought. Usually, they just flashed congratulations for the confirmed kill across the screen.

  He got up and ambled toward the door to supervisory control, nodding occasionally to another pilot when they were unoccupied enough to notice him. The room was wide and long. The dull roar of the heavy-duty air conditioning created a deafening background noise. He was used to that now, and it didn't bother him. However, after eight months as a drone pilot, he was still amazed at how many pilot stations there were in the room. He had estimated over 400 once, and a couple of times the stations had been completely occupied. Today, pilots filled only about 30% of the chairs. It must be a slow day.