by Mike Maden
“I would be honored if you would wear this,” Mossa said. It was ten feet of indigo cloth. A tagelmust.
“I don’t deserve it.”
“You have fought well. I suspect you will have to fight again before we reach our destination. Since you fight like a brother, you might as well look like one.” Mossa looked at the pile of folded cloth in his hand. “Pretty cool, eh?”
“Damn straight,” Pearce said. He took it and unfolded it, obviously pleased. “Better show me how to put it on.”
53
Tamanghasset Province
Southern Algeria
14 May
The huge transverse sand dunes rolled in great, granular waves. Mossa was right. This was the Sahara of Pearce’s imagination. Straight out of Lawrence of Arabia. As thrilling as any seascape he’d ever seen, but silent as the blinding sunlight glinting on the billions of microscopic bits of quartz.
“Yes, rolling. A good description. These barchans really do move,” Mann said, using the technical term for the huge dunes. “Up to a hundred meters per year.” The German wore a white towel on his head secured with a bungee cord. A primitive keffiyeh. His long nose was painted with zinc oxide. The caravan snaked between the dunes, careful to avoid the steep slip faces, which could avalanche down.
“Nice hat,” Pearce said.
“Not as authentic as yours, but it works.”
“How are the girls?”
Mann had recently settled down with a younger wife. The union had produced beautiful twin girls. They lived in England where most of the nuclear power plant demolition work he supervised was taking place.
“They’re becoming too English. I only speak to them auf Deutsch anymore.”
Pearce hadn’t seen the dark-haired German since the Mexico operation. Missed his company.
“Seems like you and I are always around the sand, one way or another.” They first met years before while windsurfing off the coast of California, not far from Pearce’s beachfront condo in Coronado.
“I forgot to bring my board. You?” The German grinned.
“Didn’t even bring my shorts.”
Truth was, Pearce was in heaven. He’d seen plenty of sand before, especially in Iraq. But somehow there it was a nuisance, a constant grit that got in his teeth and eyes. Sometimes it was so fine it was like talcum powder. And there was no shortage of heat over there, either. But out here, on the dunes of the Sahara, it all felt so clean. Purified. Now he understood, at least a little, why the ancient monks had fled to the desert. But maybe it felt clean because there weren’t any people around. People had a way of ruining things.
—
Six hundred and thirteen meters now,” Salah said. His Chinese-made military binoculars featured a laser range finder. The AQS fighter was perched just below the crest of the dune, his body carefully hidden. Only his head and binoculars were on the crest line—barely—and the tinted lenses were designed to not reflect the harsh sunlight. There was nowhere to hide in the desert once you were seen.
“How many?” Al Rus asked. He was standing in the bed of his Nissan pickup next to the big machine gun, his short-barreled AK still strapped to his chest. Four other armed pickups were next to him, engines off. They were in the flattest part of the trough between two big rollers. Beige camouflage webbing tented over their vehicles, partly to hide, partly for shade. Not nearly as efficient as camels and far louder, the trucks still made the journey easily enough after his men lowered the air pressure in the oversize tires to improve traction.
“Seven.” Salah was still winded from the long, hard crawl up the far slope of the dune. “Six Tuaregs. And one fool wearing a dish towel on his head.”
Al Rus’s men laughed. The oldest, Abdelmalek, said, “That must be Pearce.”
“Quiet! Do you want them to hear us?”
The men hushed.
Al Rus checked his watch. His scout never reported back. No matter. The scout had confirmed Mossa’s arrival at the oasis, and Guo’s intel had been correct. These dogs really were heading for the abandoned Aéropostale airfield. Al Rus had put his team between the oasis and the airfield. What else could he do? The desert was too vast to find a man who didn’t want to be found. Perhaps someday he would acquire one of those devil drones. The Shi’a Persians had them and the Crusader infidels had them, so why shouldn’t he?
“Vehicles?” Al Rus asked.
“None. Only camels.”
Allah be praised, Al Rus thought. He has delivered them into my hands. “Come down, Salah. Carefully.”
The young man slid slowly backward down the dune so as not to attract attention by his movement. Once his head cleared the crest line, he turned around and belly-crawled a few feet in the scalding sand, then leaped to his feet and ran the rest of the way, thudding into the side of a truck.
“Idiot!”
“I am sorry, lord,” Salah whimpered. He was the youngest of the group.
“Clear the nets. On my signal, start your engines.”
The men pulled down the nets and stored them in the truck beds as quietly as possible. Sound carried out here. Drivers took their positions, as did the gunners.
Al Rus took the gunner position on his truck, told his other man to drive. “Kill the infidels!”
The engines roared to life and the trucks jumped forward, throwing sand and exhaust as they raced between dunes. The plan was for two of the trucks to break off and attack from the rear, while the other three trucks would charge straight into the single file of camels heading toward them. The animals would break and run, and it would be an easy matter to chase them down.
Just as they passed the first dune, a shadow flickered in the corner of Al Rus’s eye. He whipped around to see a four-wheeled vehicle no more than a meter tall pacing with them a kilometer away. Its cowling was ungodly, the shape of a demon’s head, or an alien, long and smooth and black. His spine tingled. Something was wrong. Al Rus turned around in the bouncing truck bed. Another one of the vehicles was following them, also a kilometer back.
—
Mann showed Pearce his screen. He had just tapped on each truck image on the screen, then assigned a Wraith UGV attack drone to each.
“Ready on your command.”
“Now,” Pearce said.
Mann tapped the automated attack toggle while Pearce signaled Mossa and the others to retreat. Two electric-powered Wraiths sped past the feet of his camel. This was the “team” that Mann had assembled, literally, on short notice. They were the latest example of LARs—lethal autonomous robotics. Each solar-powered vehicle was capable of up to sixty-five miles per hour and each carried a drum-fed twelve-gauge shotgun capable of firing 250 rounds per minute. Mann had loaded each Wraith with 180 shells, alternating between explosive rounds, armor-piercing slugs, and antipersonnel 000 buckshot.
“This should be interesting,” Mann said, clinically. “The first real world test for the new software.” He urged his camel to the crest of the dune where, perched high in the air, he could grab a commanding view of the action.
“Careful you don’t get your head blown off,” Pearce said.
Mann ignored him, intensely studying the action unfolding through his binoculars.
Pearce nudged his camel, joining him at the top. Mossa’s camel trotted up beside the two of them.
“This is what you call war?” Mossa asked.
“This is what we call hell,” Mann said.
—
The six Wraiths swarmed toward the speeding trucks, vainly firing their 7.62 machine guns at the speeding UGVs. Fistfuls of sand spat near the Wraiths’ tracked rubber wheels as they rocketed toward the pickups. When they had closed within range the Wraiths opened up. Heavy slugs tore into the thin steel door panel of the lead truck, splintering the driver’s ribs before they plowed into his lungs. Screaming in pain and terror, the driver panicked
and flipped the Nissan. The gunner was tossed high in the air, then thudded into the sand just seconds before the spinning truck crashed into him, snapping his spine. The Wraith continued to fire, emptying its ammo box in seconds, exploding the upturned Nissan and incinerating the men trapped beneath it. It then sped off to find a secondary target, as instructed by its swarming software program.
Three other trucks broke off and sped in different directions, one racing for the shadowed slip face of the next dune. Big mistake. The front tires dug into the liquid sand as the vehicle tried to climb the steep face heading for the crest, triggering a mini avalanche that quickly swamped the truck’s hood, smothering the engine and trapping the driver inside. The machine gun was fixed to a pivot point that gave the gunner a 180-degree sweep over the front of the truck, but not enough play to turn it completely around. The Wraith tracking it raced up to the bed and spat twenty-five rounds in a second, shredding the gunner along with the rest of the truck. It then sped around to the side, crashed into the truck cab, and detonated.
—
Pearce watched the second Wraith explode, taking out the half-buried Nissan.
“What was the point of that?” he asked Mann.
“They’re rigged to self-destruct. I assumed I wouldn’t have the means to transport them back home and I didn’t want them to be captured. Besides, I may have just invented the first automated drone suicide bomber.”
“I hope you built seventy-two robot virgins to go with it.”
—
The other two surviving trucks spun in desperate circles and fired their weapons, but Al Rus commanded his truck to turn around and stop. Hitting a fast-moving target like the Wraiths while driving was a nearly impossible task. But the drones weren’t engaged in serious tactical driving. They just came on hard and fast. With his truck stopped and facing down the approaching Wraith, Al Rus easily drew a bead on it with his machine gun. The Wraith sped directly toward him. He opened up with his machine gun. The large-caliber slugs threw up a wall of lead in front of the Wraith that it ran into blindly. Its thin cowling shattered just seconds before the unit exploded in a ball of fire. His driver shouted “Allahuakbar!” as Al Rus gave the order to race away past the wreckage and toward safety, away from his dying friends and the fiendish robots cutting them to ribbons.
Three more explosions rocked the desert.
Al Rus watched the two Nissans explode in fireballs as the Wraiths detonated next to them. His command was dead, but at least he was alive—for now.
The two surviving Wraiths spun around, throwing rooster tails of sand into the air. Their ammo completely expended, they were only rolling bombs now.
Al Rus didn’t know that. All he knew was that the two drones were gaining on him fast and his machine gun couldn’t swing around. He unstrapped his AK-47, braced himself, and fired a series of controlled bursts. Steel-jacketed rounds tore into the Wraiths’ thin cowlings.
Direct hits. The Wraiths exploded. He was home free.
—
Pearce, Mossa, and Mann watched the surviving pickup race away into the desert.
“What happened?” Pearce asked. “You let that one get away.”
“I’ll have to analyze the data later. But all in all, not a bad result,” Mann said.
“We could chase him,” Mossa offered. “At that speed, he will blow a radiator or a head gasket, especially in this heat.”
“He could be leading us into a trap,” Pearce said. “Let him go.”
An angry finger of smoke rocketed out of the sky. It crashed into the pickup truck in the distance, ripping it apart like a fiery fist.
Pearce glanced at Mann.
“Don’t look at me.”
Pearce pulled out his sat phone and hit the speed dial. “Must have been Ian.” The phone rang. Ian wasn’t picking up.
Base Aérienne Arlit
Arlit, Niger
Lieutenant Beaujolais stood in the air-conditioned ground control center, cheering with the French Air Force Reaper pilot and the rest of the operations crew. He had provided the final visual confirmation the commanding officer required before launching the missile. Beaujolais gladly confirmed The Viking’s identity. The Hellfire had just vaporized Al Rus. The AQS scourge of the Sahara was finally dead. Operation Dress Down Six was a success.
The purchase and deployment of American Reaper drones had already paid off handsomely for the French military, especially now that resources for their Africa operations were dwindling. But this new technology had just proven its value in spades. The ability to loiter for hours, identify suspects, and execute them with the push of a button heralded a new era in French antiterror operations in the region.
Corks popped. The commander poured the champagne himself. They raised glasses and the entire command shouted in unison, “Vive la France!”
54
Karem Air Force Base
Niamey, Niger
15 May
Judy was still confined to her quarters. She couldn’t sleep. She paced nervously in the cramped little room. She checked her watch again, as if that mattered. She was due to pick up Pearce in the Aviocar in less than twelve hours and she was still locked up in here with a twenty-four-hour armed guard stationed outside her door.
Ian had promised to call her last night but didn’t. She couldn’t stand it anymore. She fingered the copper-colored carabiner latched to her belt loop. The Security Forces guards didn’t think twice about confiscating it. They couldn’t possibly know it fired aerosolized super glue and pepper oil. Pearce had Rao make it for her, since she refused to carry a gun for self-protection. She could easily use it to disable the lone guard at the door, a really nice kid who was kind of sweet on her. But she couldn’t do it, especially to a soldier just doing his duty.
The SF guards had given her cell phone back after her interrogation. Of course, they’d bugged it, or so Judy had to assume. She’d pulled the battery and the SIM card out and stored them. Besides getting tapped, Ian had taught her that a smartphone could also be remotely activated and used for both audio and video surveillance. But the SFs hadn’t taken her analogue aviator watch, which actually wasn’t just a watch. She flipped up the face and tapped the touch screen. It was meant only for extreme emergencies. This felt like one.
Ian answered.
Judy dashed into the bathroom and turned on the shower to mask her voice from the guard outside her door. “Thank God, Ian. Where have you been? You were supposed to call me.”
“Busy, love. What do you need?”
“What do I need? I need you to get me out of here. I’m trapped.”
“I know. I’m working on it. Working on lots of things. Sit tight.”
“What about Troy?”
“Working on that, too. Bye.” Ian ended the call.
“Ian! Ian!”
Judy growled, frustrated. She thought a very, very bad word but couldn’t bring herself to say it. Her dad would have been ashamed if she had.
Malta International Airport,
Luqa, Malta
One of the smallest members of the European Union, Malta was a strategic three-island archipelago south of Sicily, some two hundred miles east of the Tunisian coast, in the heart of the Mediterranean Sea. The Armed Forces of Malta (AFM) was a very small volunteer force comprising land, sea, and air elements whose primary task was defense of the islands and safe-passage guarantees for the high-traffic commercial shipping lanes passing through its waters.
With a minuscule budget and few human resources, the AFM recently turned to drone technologies to enhance its capabilities. With the aid of an EU grant, the AFM engaged the services of Dr. T. J. Ashley, the former head of Drone Command during the Myers administration but now the CEO of her own private consulting firm. With the assistance of Dr. Rao and Pearce Systems, she had put together an air-sea rescue drone system package based on a highly modified Boeing
A-160T Hummingbird VTOL aircraft and fitted with four external covered litters, like one of the old M.A.S.H. helicopters, just without a pilot.
Ashley’s improved thirty-five-foot-long A-160X airframe could carry a 2,500-pound payload over 2,200 nautical miles at a speed of up to 165 knots. With a rotor diameter of just six feet, it was perfectly suited to land on flat decks and helipads, where wounded sailors or injured merchant mariners in the Mediterranean Sea could be loaded on—in theory—and transported back to almost any hospital in Europe, even London.
Ashley’s initial field tests were encouraging. She’d managed to fly seven consecutive Hummingbird missions fully loaded with life-sized dummies on missions over five hundred miles without incident. The AFM wanted only a three-hundred-mile mission capability, but Ashley wanted to push the performance envelope as far as possible. The United States Marine Corps had successfully tested the Hummingbird as a supply vehicle over much shorter distances. If human cargo was going to be put at risk, she wanted to be damn sure that the machine was capable of transporting them safely. As a former Navy officer, Ashley knew how important air-sea rescue operations were and she was proud to be pioneering one of the first drone programs that could save sailors’ lives at sea.
Ashley’s short-cropped hair was buffeted by the strong predawn coastal winds, but she didn’t mind. It was going to be another warm day beneath a brilliant blue Maltese sky, and the Hummingbird had just been prepped for its last test mission. If her luck held, she’d be heading back to Texas next week.
“Dr. Ashley?”
Ashley turned around. “Yes?”
“My name is Stella Kang. Ian sent me.”
Aéropostale Station 11
Tamanghasset Province, Southern Algeria
Pearce, Mossa, and the rest of the caravan crested the last of the small dunes. A decrepit air station shimmered in the heat down below them. It looked more like an abandoned Howard Hawks movie set than a failed airport. A two-story-tall cement tower was flanked by two squat buildings, a pump house, and a generator room. A third building, the largest, was the hangar. The three buildings all faced the cracked but serviceable concrete runway and stood on the north side of it. A rusted pulley clutching a shredded halyard tinked against the flagpole on top of the tower, buffeted by a nearly imperceptible breeze. Sun-bleached painted letters on the dusty hangar wall read “Aéropostale.”