Drone Strike: A Joe Matthews Thriller

by David Austin

But the man wearing the generic uniform of corporate and charter pilots the world over, dark slacks and a white shirt with epaulets on his shoulders and gold wings pinned above his breast pocket, wasn’t there to watch the sunset. No, he was awaiting the arrival of a specific airplane, an airliner bearing the gold crown of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan on its tail.

  An Air Force officer from the Russian Embassy’s military attaché’s office, the man had been assigned the task of identifying the king’s plane. He had no idea why and knew better than to ask. That decision was made way above his pay grade. All he knew was that he was supposed to send two text messages to a number he had been given by the shadowy head of the local GRU office. The first text was to be sent upon the arrival of the Jordanian plane. And the second was to alert the person to the king’s departure from the airport, along with a description of the mode of transportation – helicopter or motorcade. So he sat, rather impatiently, waiting for the plane’s arrival so he could finish up this spy business and get back to town. He had a date with a hot consular officer he’d been chatting up for weeks and didn’t want to be late.

  A gorgeous sunset, the sky a palette of pink and purple streaks across the Kuwaiti sky, provided a spectacular backdrop as the Royal Jordanian airliner lined up on final approach. The big jet continued descending until brief puffs of gray smoke that were barely visible in the fading light indicated the tires had touched down on the long concrete runway. After rolling to a stop, the pilots followed instructions from the control tower and taxied the big Boeing across the tarmac to the VIP terminal. But instead of parking near the other delegate’s planes, it was directed toward the open doors of a hangar. The structure was not large enough to accommodate the entire plane, so the pilots brought it to a stop with only its nose and forward door inside the building.

  Finally! the Russian in the pilot’s uniform thought as he thumbed in the first text message. Maybe I’ll make that date on time after all. He watched as a long motorcade pulled around the plane and came to a stop along its left side. With his view obscured by the hangar, he couldn’t see who had deplaned and entered the Mercedes stretch limo. But who else could it be? he thought. With no way to confirm the luxury sedan’s occupants, he assumed King Abdullah was inside. More concerned with being on time for his date than with positively identifying his target, he withdrew his mobile phone and typed in the second text. Considering his role in the operation complete, the man pocketed his phone and headed downstairs.

  Across the Persian Gulf, Colonel Teplov was standing in the Reaper’s flight operations center inside the IRGC hangar when his cellphone vibrated. He glanced at the screen before reading the second text message aloud. “The target is traveling by motorcade.”

  *

  The lead advance agent, a member of the Royal Guard, the elite military unit responsible for protecting the King of Jordan and the royal family, watched the motorcade pull into the hangar. The first vehicle, a black Chevrolet Suburban, eased past him, allowing the limo, a fully armored stretch Mercedes Maybach to roll to a stop on his mark. Perfectly positioned, the car’s back door was aligned with the bottom of the mobile air-stairs that had been brought up by the ground crew. A second, identical Maybach was parked inside the hangar and would join the motorcade for the drive to Bayan Palace. The Jordanians were hoping to play a shell game, making it difficult for any attacker to know which car was transporting their precious cargo.

  Behind the limo was another Suburban that would be filled with Royal Guard agents. Two additional vehicles had been added to the motorcade to accommodate CIA Director Sloan and his protective detail. They were both Suburbans, an armored limo for Sloan and a follow car for the DPS agents. A member of the Royal Guard would ride along in the CIA follow car as a liaison officer and to assist with communication between the two teams.

  The next vehicle in line behind the Americans was a Mercedes Sprinter. The twenty-passenger minibus would transport members of the traveling party, support staff, and a small medical team. Next in line was a Suburban occupied by a Counter Assault Team of six Royal Guard men kitted up in tactical gear. The CAT team was in place to repel any attack on the motorcade while the other agents of the detail covered and evacuated the king from the scene. When the motorcade departed the hangar, a couple of Kuwaiti National Police escorts would bookend the convoy. A total of ten vehicles would be making the trip to the conference center at Bayan Palace.

  Happy with the formation of the motorcade, the lead advance agent made his way up the stairs accompanied by Special Agent Jeanne Emerson of the Director’s Protective Staff. They entered the plane to brief their respective agents-in-charge. The Jordanian spoke with his AIC, while Jeanne gave Doug Kelly and Director Sloan a quick rundown of the sequence of events that would take place once they exited the plane and identified their vehicles’ positions in the motorcade.

  When Jeanne was finished with her brief, she and Doug walked toward the front of the main cabin. Standing just inside the door, he looked down on the motorcade and said, “The boss has accepted the king’s invitation to ride with him to the summit.”

  Doug hated when Director Sloan agreed to ride in someone else’s vehicle. It meant he would be the odd man out since there was no room for a second AIC in the king’s limo. He would either be relegated to a seat in the Jordanian detail’s follow car or end up riding in an empty limo that had been shoehorned into the motorcade. Neither situation was optimal, but the Jordanians had one thing going for them that gave Doug a small measure of comfort.

  Because of the special relationship between the CIA and the Hashemite Kingdom, the Agency had spent a considerable amount of time and effort training various Jordanian units. The Royal Guard was always at the top of the list, not only as a priority but in their performance. Those training sessions were invaluable for a couple of reasons. First, it meant Doug and the other members of the DPS knew the Jordanians’ playbook, because for all intents and purposes, it had been written by the CIA. Both details were pretty much on the same page when it came to protective philosophies and tactics. But more importantly, those training sessions gave the Agency a chance to build relationships with the members of the king’s detail. And it was those relationships, that allowed Doug Kelly to trust the Royal Guard with protecting Director Sloan.

  “Do me a favor,” Doug said. “Have the Jord liaison ride with me in our limo. And while you’re at it, why don’t you jump in with us as well.

  “You got it,” Jeanne replied, then headed down the stairs to make the arrangements.

  Doug turned back into the plane to rejoin Director Sloan. On the outside he portrayed the calm confidence of a professional protective agent. But on the inside, his guts were churning. He couldn’t believe his ears when he had been presented with Elijah Miller’s plan. Using the DCIA and the King of Jordan as bait to draw out the rogue drone was the dumbest idea he’d ever heard. And he shared that opinion with anyone who would listen, to include Director Sloan. But in the end, he had been overruled so Doug had done his duty and put together the security plan for the trip.

  Whenever something off-the-wall occurred while on detail, an agent would say, “That’s going to be a chapter in the book when I write my memoir.” And another would counter with “You can’t make this shit up,” or “If this happened in a movie, no one would believe it.” Doug knew this was one of those occasions. If they survived the trip to Kuwait, and he did decide to write a book one day, would anyone believe what they were about to attempt wasn’t the brainchild of some screenwriter for a new Bond movie or the plot of the next Brad Taylor or Mark Greaney novel?

  “This plan is about as fucked up as a football bat,” he thought.

  CHAPTER 46

  The Russian pilot kept the Reaper low, no more than a hundred feet off the ground as he deftly maneuvered the drone through the hills of the uninhabited al-Jahra Governate to the west of the capital city to avoid Kuwaiti radar and the fighter aircraft searching for it.

  “Are we ready t
o initiate the attack, sir?” he asked without taking his eyes off the ground control station’s monitor.

  Teplov told him to stand by while he contacted Moscow for approval.

  The pilot had the sensor operator make use of the time by asking him to perform one last check of the systems. After a minute, the sensor operator confirmed, “All systems are in the green and functioning properly.”

  Now it was just a matter of waiting for the response from the suits in the Kremlin. No matter. He would continue to hone his skills at the controls until the powers that be gave the go-ahead to commence the mission.

  *

  Chuck Jamison loitered in the confined airspace over the tiny emirate in the left seat of the CIA-owned DHC-6 Twin Otter. Built by the de Havilland company, the high-winged, twin-engine plane was a mainstay of the Air Branch fleet, given its ability to operate in the harshest environments imaginable using remote, unimproved runways and dirt strips. The Agency’s pilots loved the Twin Otter for its durability and short take-off and landing, or STOL, capability.

  Joe Matthews sat next to Jamison in the right seat of the cockpit, his short-barreled HK416 securely tucked between his seat and the center console. In his lap was an aluminum device that looked like a miniature version of the old aerial antennas people used to have on the roofs of their homes before the invention of cable television. A cable ran from the grip of the directional antenna through the cockpit door and connected to a powerful transmitter strapped to the floor of the main cabin.

  A blue ethernet cable ran from the transmitter to Elijah Miller’s laptop. The NSA man was not thrilled with the trajectory his career had taken over the last couple of weeks. Between the attempted kidnapping in Brussels, and now being voluntold that he would be taking part in the mission personally, Eli had decided that he did not like being at the pointy tip of the spear one bit.

  Fred Jackson, on the other hand, was having the time of his life. He absolutely loved his job as the CIA’s top hacker, but he had always dreamed of getting out of the office and using his skills in the field. He’d jumped at the chance to join Eli on the trip to Kuwait and still couldn’t believe he was really in the back of one of the Agency’s special missions’ aircraft on an operation to intercept and hack the rogue MQ-9 Reaper. Now all they had to do was find it.

  The voice of the AWACS mission commander crackled through their headsets. “Sorry we’re late to the party. Had a slight mechanical issue that delayed our takeoff. Give us a couple of minutes to get into our orbit and sort out all the traffic.”

  Jamison spoke into the boom mic attached to his headset. “No worries. Glad to have you on station.”

  *

  Acknowledging his orders, Teplov disengaged the call and slid the phone back into his pocket. Getting the attention of the personnel in the flight ops center, he announced, “The mission is a go. Commence the attack.”

  Without a word, the pilot pointed the Reaper’s nose in the direction of Kuwait International Airport and put the drone into a gentle climb to begin gaining altitude. The sunset was fading into darkness, but the lack of light would be of little consequence to the drone’s all-seeing cameras. On the monitor, the pilot could easily make out the airport’s runway lights on the horizon. He found the visual comforting even though the VIP terminal and the hangar’s coordinates were locked into the Reaper’s navigation system.

  As the drone rose through the darkening sky, it was easier for the pilot to make out the airport’s individual structures and characteristics. Using the futuristic-looking main terminal as a reference point, he eased the Reaper to the left and headed for the VIP area. Zooming in the cameras, the sensor operator let out a low whistle as the tarmac came into view. He had never seen so many business jets in one place. With the planes lined up in perfect rows, the VIP terminal resembled a luxury car dealership, or a high-end valet parking lot for the region’s rich and famous.

  The sensor operator manipulated the joystick on his console and the camera under the Reaper’s nose panned left. The image of a Boeing 777 with its front end partially obscured inside a large maintenance hangar filled his monitor. Floodlights positioned around the tarmac illuminated the Boeing’s fuselage and tail section. Another small adjustment of the joystick brought the purple background and gold crown of Jordan’s royal family on the plane’s vertical rudder into focus.

  “There it is, sir,” the sensor operator said, pointing to his monitor.

  Teplov moved closer and leaned in to get a better view. With a hand on the top of each of the ground control station’s seats, it was a position he had taken since the very first mission. From it he was able to see both monitors. The view gave him a front-row seat to the action, but more important, at least from the GRU colonel’s standpoint, it reinforced his position of authority over the operation. The habit annoyed the pilot to no end. He hated Teplov, and his mind wandered occasionally, picturing the asshole in the crosshairs of one of the Hellfire missiles attached to the Reaper’s underwing pods.

  From the drone’s approach angle they could see into the open end of the hangar. A long motorcade sat bumper-to-bumper alongside the plane as people scurried around the vehicles. The sense of urgency with which they moved gave the Russians the impression the convoy would be departing any minute.

  “We should attack now,” the pilot commented. “While they’re stationary.”

  Teplov thought it over for a few seconds before responding. “Not yet. We don’t know if the king is still in the plane or if he’s moved to the vehicle. Wait until they’re on the open road and you have a clear shot.”

  With four Hellfires onboard, the pilot knew he had more than enough firepower to destroy the plane and the motorcade. But this was Teplov’s operation, so he followed orders. “Yes, sir.”

  *

  The mission commander hailed Jamison by his callsign. “Pegasus, we’ve got a possible bogey heading toward the airport from the west.”

  The small radar signature’s relatively slow airspeed and the fact that the aircraft didn’t respond to repeated radio calls led the crew to believe it was the missing Reaper. Jamison punched the coordinates into his nav system and set the Twin Otter on a course to intercept the contact. While he was doing his pilot thing, Joe adjusted the boom mic on his headset and asked Miller and Jackson to fire up the transmitter. He turned in his seat to look at the men, and the difference in their appearance made him chuckle. Fred Jackson was grinning from ear to ear, as if he were on the adventure of a lifetime. Elijah Miller, on the other hand, looked as though he would rather be anywhere except where he was at this very moment.

  “Deep breaths, Eli. In through the nose and out through the mouth,” Joe reassured him. Shifting his attention to Jackson he asked, “Everything good with the software?”

  “Yep. Eli will work to gain control of the Reaper while I try to trace the satellite link back to its source.”

  “Any idea how long it’ll take to get into the UAV’s system?”

  Eli looked up from his laptop and shook his head, “No one has done what we’re about to attempt so there’s no data to benchmark against. We’re breaking new ground here tonight.”

  Turning back to the front, Joe thought, That’s great. People’s lives are on the line and we’re trying something that’s never been done before. Maybe we would be better off just blowing this thing out of the sky after all.

  CHAPTER 47

  The sound of vehicle doors slamming shut echoed through the cavernous hangar as security personnel and staff alike prepared for the departure. King Abdullah and CIA Director Sloan were the last to exit the plane.

  As the two men descended the stairs to the waiting Maybach limo, the king asked, “Do you really believe we’re at risk of being attacked, Lawrence?”

  “I’m afraid it’s a very real possibility, your Majesty,” Sloan replied.

  King Abdullah paused halfway down the stairs and looked at the American spy chief. “And yet you still chose to accept my offer to ride with m
e to the summit? Knowing full well that you might be putting yourself in harm’s way?”

  With a slight grin, Sloan said, “I didn’t realize I had the option to decline an offer from the head of the royal family. Is it too late to change my mind?”

  Abdullah laughed out loud and slapped Sloan on the back. “Come to think of it, you’re quite right, Lawrence. I can’t remember the last time someone turned down one of my invitations.” He continued down the stairs and leaned into the open door of the limo. “Hop in. Let’s get this show on the road.”

  The king’s agent-in-charge closed the heavy armored door, then took a quick look at the motorcade before sliding into the limo’s right front seat. With everyone in position, he pressed the transmit button on the microphone clipped to the sleeve of his suit jacket and gave the order for the precession to begin the slow roll out of the hangar.

  *

  The drone pilot temporarily lost sight of the motorcade as it weaved through the buildings and cargo facilities on the northern section of the airport’s grounds. Gaining more altitude to get a better view, he reacquired his target. The red and blue flashing lights atop the Kuwaiti National Police cruisers that joined the motorcade as it merged onto King Faisal Road didn’t hurt either. With a police escort, and the roads cleared of any traffic not affiliated with the summit, the vehicles accelerated and were cruising at a comfortable eighty-five miles an hour.

  Teplov watched the monitors with anticipation. “You may fire when ready.”

  The pilot moved the Reaper into position.

  *

  From the main cabin of the AWACS flying fifteen thousand feet above him, Jamison heard the mission commander’s voice through his headset. “Maintain this flight level and heading. The contact is about a mile ahead of you.”

  Jamison acknowledged the update and continued scanning the dark sky through the night vision goggles attached to the front of his flight helmet.