by Bryan Murray
Consequently, the tone of the current meeting was very much a matter of the President making sure that if JOD were planning to make a major retaliatory attack against the US, after all the devastating drone guided attacks of the US and their allies in the desert, he wanted every element of the security blanket around the US Air Force military machine, double checking to make sure there were no repeats of 9/11!
The President, blonde, handsome in his late forties, opened the meeting. “Gentlemen, as you are all aware, intel from a prisoner interrogated in Gitmo indicates that the JOD are planning a major attack in the near future. Exactly when and in which country we don’t have a clue yet.”
He looked at Andrew Grover, the Director of the CIA, slim, dark in his fifties. “So, Andrew, your guys in the Middle East need to work with every informant we have to try and give us a heads-up on what may be about to happen.”
Grover nodded. “Of course, Mr. President. I’ll brief the team as soon as the meeting is over.”
“Thanks,” the President then looked across at Steve Mobley, the Director of the FBI, in his fifties with a grey crew cut. “And you need to do the same domestically, Steve, okay?”
“Yes, sir.” Steve replied.
The President then addressed his Chief-of-Staff, John Mulroney, in his early sixties, hair greying a little. “And what about the military interface here in the US, John?”
Mulroney explained the status. “Well, Mr. President, I asked the Department of Homeland Security to set up a detailed security audit that we can give to each separate aerospace giant and assign them all a top security consultant to handle the audit.”
“And how would this work, John?”
“Well, sir, if the JOD did decide to set up some form of attack here in the US, the security interface between the high-tech vendors and their customers, who are of course primarily the USAF, is of paramount importance. The last thing we need is these bastards commandeering or stealing any of our technology, sir!”
The President nodded. “I agree, so how far are we on with this plan?”
“Well, sir, the top security consultants should be receiving their contracts later today.”
The President turned to the two directors. So, Andy, Steve, can you both please liaise with the Department of Defense and also check that all our bases and embassies both domestically and abroad are in the loop.”
“Yes, sir.” they replied.
The President closed the meeting. “Thank you, gentlemen, let’s keep a lid on this, okay, and let me know if any more intel comes in concerning the plans of these terrorists in JOD. Remember, now that we have approved the international sales of our combat drones to friendly allies, this puts them much closer geographically in many instances to where the terrorists are at their strongest! Please keep me posted on any developments?”
They all nodded before leaving.
After the Vice President, Mobley and Grover left, the President turned to Mulroney. “You know, John, if these guys do decide to make an attack, what would they use for weapons?”
Mulroney was thinking out loud. “That’s a good question, sir. I mean what we can lay on them with our new drone technology far outweighs their M16’s, AK47’s and their ground based technology.”
The President nodded. “Exactly, so let’s make sure our high technology is safely guarded!”
“I agree, sir.”
CHAPTER 2
In the offices of the security consultancy firm of Harrigan and Schaumberg, on the outskirts of Washington DC, owned by Jake Harrigan and his partner and fiancée Sarah Schaumberg, the day had started as usual.
After two cups of coffee and now checking the mail, Jake, a rugged Irish/American in his 30’s, a former CIA assassin, opened an envelope and his eyes widened with a smile.
“I’ll be damned!”
“About what?” Sarah, an attractive, dark-haired Israeli and ex-FBI Agent, looked up from a file she was reading.
“This is from Homeland Security. Remember that proposal we filled out about a security audit job?”
“Yes?”
He grinned. “Well, it looks like we got it!”
They were interrupted by the arrival of their new colleague Steve Caplan, a dark-haired, good-looking man in his early 40’s.
“Got what?” Steve asked, pouring himself a cup of coffee.
Jake read the letter again. “A high profile contract doing a security audit for Homeland Security.”
“Where?” Sarah asked.
Jake checked the letter again. “Looks like we’ve been assigned to Winston Aerospace in Tullahoma, Tennessee.”
“And when do we start?”
Jake carried on reading. “We need to report the day after tomorrow! Damn, that’s short notice!”
Sarah nodded in agreement. “True, but if I remember correctly on the proposal we sent in, we were talking big bucks here.”
Jake grinned. “And then some!”
“And will it be all three of us?” Steve inquired.
“Looks like it,” Jake replied. “Will you be finished with the contract in Richmond by then?”
Steve nodded. “Sure, no problem, I’m mailing them their report later today.”
“In that case, Angela will have to hold the fort while we’re gone.” Sarah added.
Jake smiled. “I’m sure she can handle it.”
With the upsurge in business for the company and the number of high level clients that were now interested in working with H & S, they had been forced to take on a secretary, bookkeeper to answer the phone, take care of billing and collections and in general act as a ‘Girl Friday’ for the busy trio.
Angela had been a top accounts assistant with a law firm in DC and she had welcomed the change of venue. She was an attractive blonde, single and extremely capable with excellent PR skills and her accounting and secretarial abilities were outstanding. She had been recently divorced and looked after her mother in an apartment in the suburbs.
After a number of successful, high-profile contracts involving top government officials in the US and Israel, during which Jake, Sarah and Steve had done an outstanding job, they were already well known to the US President and his senior staff, the FBI, and the CIA as well as the Israeli Prime Minister and his top Mossad staff.
Jake and Sarah were also well known to the senior government officials and the top MI5 security teams in the UK, but for totally different reasons than working with them as clients.
This had happened the previous year when Jake and Sarah were visiting the UK for the funeral of Jake’s maternal grandmother, not realizing that she had been murdered just to get Jake over to the UK for the funeral.
It had all been set up by an old adversary of Jake’s, Sean Quinn, a vengeful Northern Ireland terrorist, whose two brothers Jake had killed years previously in a military drug intervention in Colombia, when Jake had still been with the CIA. Unfortunately, Jake hadn’t even realized that he had killed Quinn’s brothers in the hectic gun battle that had taken place.
Quinn’s devious plan had been to wear an amazingly lifelike mask of Jake when he made the attempted assassination hit on none other than Her Majesty the Queen, so that Jake would be identified as the killer on the TV videotape, while Quinn and his team slipped away under the radar.
Although the assassination attempt had failed, due to the vigilant UK security forces, Jake was nevertheless wrongly identified on the TV videotape as the attempted assassin and he and Sarah had literally become the public enemies of the entire British population after a media blitz screaming for their heads. Nobody but nobody tries to kill the Queen!
Consequently, they had to try and stay one step ahead of the irate government forces until Jake could figure out who had set him up and why and eventually, they tracked the terrorists to Belfast in Northern Ireland before terminating their group and bringing their leader Quinn to justice.
Needless to say, the embarrassed UK security forces who Jake and Sarah had been successfully avoiding for
days, then realized that they had been chasing the wrong man and they had to apologize to both of them. They were even invited to Number 10 Downing Street for a personal thank you from the Prime Minister on behalf of the Queen.
Word had then got around quickly that Jake and Sarah were an excellent, discreet, results-oriented team. Particularly after their latest assignment, once again assisted by Steve, when they had rescued the sons of the US President and Vice President after they had been kidnapped from a college ski trip by mobsters masquerading as Arab terrorists. Following that, the phone had not stopped ringing.
And so, with Steve’s multi-lingual abilities as well as being a top field agent, they had finally persuaded him to leave the CIA office in Vienna, Austria and join the H & S. team in Washington, DC.
* * *
Jake looked at Sarah and Steve. “Well, I guess we need to start getting ready for a trip to Tennessee.”
Sarah smiled. “Right, I have a few questions.”
“Shoot?”
“First of all where the heck is Tullahoma, Tennessee and what do these guys at Winston Aerospace specialize in?”
Steve was already on his laptop. “Well, in answer to your first question, it’s south of Nashville and just up the road from the huge Arnold Air Force Base,” he kept on reading. “And apparently next to the renowned Arnold Engineering Development Complex, one of the largest aircraft designing and testing facilities in the world!”
Sarah was impressed. “Wow, and what is Winston’s claim to fame?”
“I can tell you that,” Jake replied. “They make the most advanced and successful UAV’s and UCAV’s on the planet!”
Sarah frowned. “UAV’s, UCAV’s, what the heck are they?”
Jake smiled. “To innocent, uneducated bystanders like you, me and Steve, we would simply call them drones! Beyond that, we need to do a whole lot of research and quickly!”
Steve was thinking out loud. “It certainly looks like we landed a top gun for our audit?”
“Exactly,” Jake replied. “So, we need to start packing for the trip. I’d say it’s about six or seven hundred miles south from DC, so, if we could drive down tomorrow in the SUV, we should be there in good shape for the morning after.”
They all agreed and started to make out their check lists for the trip.
* * *
In the arrivals area of Dulles International Airport, the flight arrival announcer advised those people waiting outside the international arrivals gate, that the flights from Dubai and Abu Dhabi had now arrived and would shortly be clearing customs.
In the lines for immigration, the four young American JOD terrorists, who had been visiting with General Al-Amabakhu, stood patiently apart before quickly clearing immigration and heading into the crowded terminal.
* * *
Back in the village where Adila lived near the Iraqi border, it was a sad scene at the burial of the two youths who were murdered by the JOD. As was the custom, the two bodies were wrapped in modest burial cloth and buried in a simple grave facing towards Mecca, the Holy City of Islam. Only the men of the village were in attendance at the burial ceremony.
Adila, her mother and grandparents were devastated at the loss of the two vibrant teenagers and in her prayers, Adila, whose name stood for justice, was fervently praying that at some time in the future, justice would be served on the barbarian terrorist who had murdered her brothers.
CHAPTER 3
On a warm, sunny day, Jake, Sarah and Steve had made an early start. They were heading through the picturesque Appalachian Mountains, going southwest on Highway 81 towards Tullahoma.
Jake was driving, Sarah was admiring the beautiful scenery and Steve, in the back, was updating both of them on their new client. He was extremely impressed as he was reading the corporate profile of Winston Aerospace on his iPad.
“My God, guys!” he began. “This Winston Aerospace is huge. Of all the big boys in this red-hot, new drone technology, apparently these guys are not just the market leaders, they seem to be world leaders!”
Sarah was curious. “So, what’s all this UAV stuff?”
Steve continued reading. “Apparently, this is where you start to separate the men from the boys!”
“How come?”
“Well, UAV stands for ‘Unmanned Aerial Vehicle’, in other words a drone that can fly without a pilot on board because the pilot is probably hundreds of miles away, controlling the reconnaissance drone remotely.”
Sarah was getting the picture. “Right, so you don’t need boots on the ground to find out what the enemy are doing.”
“Exactly,” Steve replied. “Apparently the drone pinpoints the target, sends back intel on how many hostiles are there, what artillery they have, etc.”
Jake nodded. “And then the F16’s can go in and blow them away!”
“Correct, but apparently there are some slight problems with even the latest versions of the UAV’s.”
“Such as?” Sarah inquired.
“Apparently they’re pretty slow.”
“What d’you call slow?” Jake asked.
“Oh, about eighty to one fifty miles per hour.”
Jake nodded. “You got that right. Enemy fighter jets would eat those things for breakfast!”
Steve smiled. “Correct, always assuming that those same jets can fly at the same high altitude as the UAV’s, and this is where the billion dollars that good old Uncle Sam fronted Winston Aerospace, comes into play.”
“To do what?”
“To design and build the ‘Death Dart’ UCAV Drone. This is apparently the big daddy of them all. Winston’s version of the UCAV which stands for ‘Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle’. It’s the ultimate fighting vehicle in air warfare. It has stealth capabilities, so that it can’t be detected by enemy radar, it carries two impressive high-impact vaporizing combat missiles, and here’s the kicker, this lightweight ghost of a plane, that only weighs around 6,000 lbs fully loaded, has a range of a thousand miles travelling at the speed of sound! It has amazing targeting capabilities and the pilot could be sitting safe and sound over a thousand miles away, controlling this deadly aircraft!”
“My God!” Jake gasped. “And have they sold any of these?”
Steve checked his screen. “Absolutely, mostly to the US Air Force but since the landmark legislation now allows the US to sell to the Brits, Israel and other close allies in the Middle East and Europe, sales have literally gone through the roof. And get this, Winston also design and build the state-of-the-art vaporizing missiles, two to each drone, so imagine the megabucks that brings in as well.”
Sarah was thinking out loud. “So, that’s why they’re located next to the Arnold Engineering and Development Complex - perfect location for getting all their design work checked out by the experts.”
“Exactly. No wonder Homeland Security are anxious to check that none of the bad guys get their hands on one of these little puppies!” Jake added pensively. “I have a feeling this ain’t gonna be no cakewalk of an assignment guys!”
Little did he know how prophetic that statement would be.
CHAPTER 4
After a long day’s drive, Jake, Sarah and Steve checked into their hotel for the next few days, just a couple of miles from the Winston facility, where they were due to report to the CEO Doug Mulgrave and his senior staff the first thing the following morning.
After freshening up, they all met in the bar for a drink prior to having a quiet dinner together.
As usual, Sarah had to know what the game plan would be the following day. Jake saw that certain look in her eye and smiled at her affectionately. “Okay, you want to know what happens tomorrow, right?”
She looked at him surprised. “That obvious, huh?”
“Kind of,” he began. “So, going back to the original proposal document we signed, Homeland Security want us to check all the potential areas where a security breach could come back and bite us in the ass and they want to know about it now!”
“Su
ch as?” Sarah was curious.
“I guess we’re just going to have to split the load and each take a share.”
“I’m listening?” she still looked apprehensive.
Jake continued. “First of all there’s employee security. Are all the employees thoroughly checked before they are recruited and currently each time before they enter the facility? That’s a biggie, Steve, so maybe you could have a shot at that. We need to get you hooked up with their HR manager and see how that goes.”
“It’s a start,” Steve replied. “What else?”
Sarah was now getting into the spirit of things. “Then there’s product security. Everything that comes in and out of the plant must be monitored. Let’s face it, these guys are no dummies and aerospace companies probably have better materials and product traceability than any other kind of manufacturer.”
Jake nodded. “Exactly and inspection reports and their follow-up are also a part of that. Maybe you can get involved in that, Sarah?”
“No problem. And what about you, oh fearless leader?”
He smiled. “Where they are most vulnerable in my opinion, is when a completed drone is going through its final testing and presumably the pilots of the buyer get to operate them. Most of them would be our own military personnel, but others could be from clients overseas, some military and some private sector.”
Sarah looked at him. “Private sector?”
“Hell yeah,” he replied. “These guys may make the Big Kahuna of combat drones, but they also have a good market in the UAV’s, many of which are not even used in reconnaissance, they could be involved in things like crowd control or finding lost climbers in the wilderness, you name it.”
Sarah’s mind was already working overtime. “Now you’re beginning to scare me, Jake!”
“I am?”
“Yeah, dealing with a group of disciplined military pilots is one thing, but trying to keep tags on a crowd of over-zealous cops or forest rangers, that’s a whole new ball park!”