Drone Strike: A Joe Matthews Thriller

by David Austin

“By the way,” the mission commander continued, “we’ve been sharing our tracking information with the Kuwaiti Air Force. There are two KAF F/A-18 Super Hornets tracking the contact as well. You’ll want to get clear of the area if they decide to go off book and engage the target.”

  Jamison glanced over at Joe with a look of “I told you so.” on his face. From the pre-mission briefing, they both knew the Kuwaiti Air Force was not thrilled with the CIA’s plan to hack the drone inflight. Preposterous was the word Joe remembered the KAF chief of staff using. The flight leader who would be in the cockpit of his fighter patrolling the skies was more direct, saying their plan was “fucking reckless and foolhardy.”

  Joe found himself agreeing with both men. It would be much easier to shoot the drone down and find some other way to track the Russians. But that decision had been made way above his paygrade. And as if his plate wasn’t full enough trying to intercept the Reaper before it killed King Abdullah and Director Sloan, he also had to worry about being caught in the Hornets’ line of fire if the KAF decided to scrap this harebrained plan and destroy the drone.

  Peering through the darkness, Jamison pointed. “There! Dead ahead at eleven o’clock.” He applied the throttle and pulled alongside the drone, matching the Reaper’s speed.

  Joe had benefited from America’s drone fleet on many occasions, but he had never seen one up close. Looking through the Twin Otter’s window, he admired the simplicity of its design. But his eyes were immediately drawn to the items attached to the underside of the Reaper’s wings. Four Hellfire missiles hung from the pods, waiting to streak toward whatever target the Russian pilot put in their crosshairs. And Joe knew it wouldn’t be long before the motorcade below would be that target.

  Jamison’s voice boomed in his headset, “Anytime you’re ready, sweetheart.”

  Joe unlatched the window and pushed it out and up, locking it into place. Cool air rushed into the cockpit as he extended the directional antennae through the opening and aimed it at the Reaper’s bulbous nose.

  “Alright,” Joe called out to the guys in the back of the plane. “Work your nerd magic.”

  With nothing else to do while Miller and Jackson did their thing, Joe caught sight of the motorcade speeding along an empty King Faisal Road. Having done stints on the DPS off and on throughout his career, he thought about Doug Kelly and the other agents who were depending on him and the two tech wizards to keep them alive. The thought that things were about to go their way vanished when he saw the drone’s position in relation to the motorcade. He felt a knot begin to form in the pit of his stomach as he realized the Reaper was getting in position to fire.

  *

  The video began to flicker as if there was some type of interference with the signal from the Reaper.

  “What’s wrong?” Teplov demanded, pointing at the image on the ground control station’s monitors.

  “I don’t know,” the pilot said, looking to the sensor operator who shrugged his shoulders, indicating he had no idea what was causing the issue. “The controls seem sluggish and the drone isn’t responding as it should. We haven’t experienced anything like this before.”

  “No! Not when we’re this close,” Teplov fumed. Needing answers, he yelled, “Zubkin! Get over here!”

  The aerospace engineer dropped what he was doing and raced to the GRU colonel’s side. Seeing the issue for himself, he said, “Give me a minute to run a diagnostic.”

  “Make it quick,” Teplov snapped, realizing any failure in this mission would fall directly on his shoulders.

  Zubkin moved to a workstation and shoved a technician out of the way. Taking the seat at the terminal, he began typing furiously. Sixty seconds later he looked up from the monitor with a confused look on his face. The satcom link and the ground control station were working normally. Whatever the problem was, it wasn’t with the equipment in this room. He said, “The interference must be coming from elsewhere.”

  Pacing back and forth like a caged animal, Teplov racked his brain searching for a plausible explanation for the sudden malfunction. They hadn’t experienced even the slightest glitch on any of the other flights. Why now? After another couple of laps through the flight operations center it dawned on him. And the realization stopped the GRU man dead in his tracks. It must be the Americans! But how?

  He supposed it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that they had discovered a way to disrupt the satellite link or somehow interfere with the flight controls. After all, his hacker had accessed the drone’s operating system and reprogrammed it for their use. Were the Americans trying something similar to regain control of it? Was it even possible while the drone was in the air? He had to know, so he reached for his phone and scrolled through the contacts until he found Anna Kovaleski’s number.

  As he waited for AK to pick up, Teplov felt the window for this mission’s success rapidly shrinking. Turning to the pilot, he said, “You are weapons free. Take the shot at the first opportunity.”

  CHAPTER 48

  Noticing what looked like a slight loss of stability in the Reaper’s flight characteristics, Joe glanced over at Jamison. “You see that?”

  “Yep. Looks like she’s getting a little squirrely.”

  Over the Twin Otter’s internal com system, Joe asked, “How’s it coming back there, guys?”

  Without looking up from his laptop’s screen, Eli replied, “The program’s working, but it’s taking longer than I anticipated. I’ll need a few more minutes.”

  “How many is a few?” Joe asked, knowing the Reaper could unleash one of its missiles any second.

  “Did I mention something about no one ever having done this before? I’m working as fast as I can.” Succumbing to the pressure of doing this outside the controlled environment of his office, he snapped, “It’ll take as long as it takes.”

  Fuck! “How about you, Fred? Any luck?”

  “I’ve managed to trace the drone’s satcom link to the Russian satellite. But I’m going to need some time to navigate through the satellite and track the signal to its source on the ground.”

  Joe was about to come back with some smartass quip about typing faster, as if that would make a difference, when they hit a pocket of turbulence. Without warning the Twin Otter dropped about thirty feet.

  The plane lost altitude so quickly that Eli’s arms flew up over his head as if he were on a roller coaster. Without his hands on the keyboard to hold it down, the laptop seemed to float in midair. He realized what was happening a fraction of a second too late. In desperation he reached for the computer but missed and was sickened when it crashed into the cabin’s ceiling. As it fell, it bounced off his seat’s armrest, then ricocheted off the corner of the transmitter before landing in the aisle.

  Joe heard Eli let out a scream. Thinking it had to do with the turbulence, he turned to look back into the cabin half expecting to see him puking into a barf bag. But Joe’s eyes were immediately drawn to the fact that there was no longer a computer in his lap. The problem was much worse than Eli losing his lunch.

  Unbuckling his seatbelt, Eli bent down and retrieved his laptop. He turned it around in his hands inspecting every inch of the aluminum frame. There was a nasty looking dent in the palm rest where it had collided with the corner of the transmitter’s housing. But the bigger problem was the spiderweb of cracks that extended across the laptop’s screen. It had gone dark from the impact and Miller held his breath as he gently pressed the Enter key. The screen blinked two or three times, then lit up, his program still running in the background.

  “Yes!” he yelled, giving a fist pump before getting a high-five from Fred across the aisle. If he survived this ordeal, he was going to contact the CEO of the company that made the laptop and offer to buy him a steak dinner. With the banged-up computer up and running again, Eli resumed his work. There was only one problem. They had lost the connection to the drone.

  With that mini-crisis averted, Joe returned his attention to the Reaper. But it wasn’t there
. He looked around frantically trying to find it, wondering where it had gone. It hadn’t dropped in altitude along with the Twin Otter when they’d hit the turbulence. Instead, it had been thrown a similar distance upward. The change in altitudes broke the connection Joe had established with the directional antennae, and he saw the drone had leveled out and seemed to be in stable flight once again.

  Before Jamison could get back in position alongside the Reaper, he and Joe watched in horror as one of the missiles’ solid-fuel engines began to glow. The launch process had been initiated. Milliseconds later, Joe heard the high-pitched scream through his open window as the Hellfire left its underwing pod and streaked toward the motorcade below.

  *

  The Russian pilot noted the sudden change in altitude and was relieved to see the return of clear images on his monitors. Flight controls and responsiveness seemed normal and he updated Teplov and Zubkin. While Zubkin continued to study his diagnostic program, looking for something he might have missed that would explain the disruption, Teplov had moved to a corner of the flight ops center to take the call with Kovaleski.

  After the attack on the airbase in Syria, she had returned to Moscow and was sitting at her workstation in APT28’s office, sipping a venti Starbucks. Exasperated with the GRU jackass, she said, “Slow down. You’re not making any sense. Start from the beginning and tell me exactly what you saw.”

  Teplov took a deep, calming breath, then explained what they had experienced, including Zubkin’s diagnostic test that had come back negative. Setting the cup down, AK went to work on her keyboard, logging in to the software she had used to reprogram the Reaper. Reviewing the data being livestreamed from the drone, it took her only a couple of minutes to determine what was happening. And the realization took her breath away.

  “The Americans are conducting a two-pronged attack on the drone’s systems. They appear to be attempting to gain access to its flight controls.” Stunned that they had the audacity to try something so complex while the drone was in the air, she paused to take a closer look at the code.

  “What is it?” Teplov demanded, annoyed with the delay.

  “Whoever wrote this code is a fucking genius. I’ve never seen anything so intricate. It’s…beautiful,” she added with an admiring tone in her voice. What she wouldn’t give to have a couple of hours to sit down with this programmer and pick his or her brain.

  “I don’t give a shit if it’s the digital equivalent of the fucking Mona Lisa!” Teplov fumed. “What do we do about it?”

  AK thought it over for a minute before responding. “They must have a powerful transmitter nearby and that’s what’s causing the interference. My guess is that it’s either on the ground and they’re using a television or radio antennae, or they have a plane with a transmitter onboard shadowing the drone. I’m not an aerospace engineer like Zubkin, but at this point I’d say your best bet is to gain as much distance from the transmitter as possible.”

  Teplov reached up and massaged his temples with the thumb and middle finger of his left hand. “You mentioned this was a two-pronged attack. What’s the second part?”

  His question made AK smile, a fact she was sure would have infuriated him had they been in the same room. “The Americans have traced the communication link from the drone to the satellite. Now they’re probably working their way through the satcom to follow the signal from the satellite to the ground control station.” That last part made her thankful to be in her Moscow office, four thousand kilometers from the action.

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning, that in a matter of minutes, the brainiac who designed the code is going to pinpoint your location and know exactly where you are.” She felt the smile on her face expand as she added, “If I were you, I’d get the hell out of there.”

  There was silence on the other end of the call as her words sank in. In a panicked voice, Anna heard Teplov shout, “Take the shot. Now!”

  CHAPTER 49

  With no way to know which of the Maybach limousines King Abdullah was in, the Russian drone pilot was forced to make a choice. Following his gut, he chose the first one in line. After all, the Reaper had three more missiles onboard and he would just hit the other one if the motorcade continued to roll.

  Placing the laser designator on the roof of the lead limo to guide the Hellfire to its target, he moved his thumb ever so slightly and pressed the fire button on the joystick. Seconds later the image of the missile appeared on his monitor as it rode the invisible laser toward the armored vehicle below. Once it was destroyed, the pilot decided he would hit the second Maybach for good measure. Better safe than sorry.

  *

  Doug Kelly hated not being in the limo with Director Sloan. Even though they were only two car lengths back, it seemed much farther. But having Shane Janzen, Sloan’s driver, behind the wheel and Jeanne Emerson in the car with him provided a small measure of comfort. Still, he would be in a much better mood once he was reunited with the man he was charged with protecting.

  The motorcade made the sweeping left and headed north toward the massive cloverleaf that would take them under Jassem Mohammed Al-Kharafi Road. Doug could see the outlines of the sprawling 360 Mall to his right and was about to say something about a restaurant where he had dinner the last time they were in Kuwait when Joe’s voice came through his earpiece. What he heard made his blood run cold.

  “Doug! The Reaper launched a Hellfire! Missile inbound!”

  Before the words had a chance to register in his brain, Doug caught a streak of movement in the night sky and followed its trajectory with his eyes. Seconds later, he watched as the lead Maybach erupted in a fireball and the remnants of the armored vehicle blasted outward in every direction. A jagged piece of the limo’s hood shattered the rear window of the Kuwaiti National Police car leading the motorcade and decapitated the two officers in the front seat. The driverless police cruiser veered to the right and shot across the shoulder. Deep sand between the highway and a frontage road slowed the vehicle, but not enough to keep it from slamming into the cinderblock wall surrounding a community center. The flaming remains of the Maybach’s chassis drifted to a less spectacular stop in the left lane of the highway.

  Years of training kicked in, and the Jordanian agent driving the king’s vehicle didn’t miss a beat. He swerved to avoid the wreckage, then mashed the gas pedal to the floor. The sedan’s V12 engine roared as it accelerated up the highway, getting its occupants off the X as fast as it could. With the combined detail in full-on protective mode, the rest of the motorcade matched his speed.

  Doug breathed a brief sigh of relief, knowing it was the decoy limo that had just been obliterated. But he realized it wouldn’t be long before the drone pilot would have the car carrying the king and the director in his crosshairs. They were too damned exposed on the open road and had to get off the highway.

  “The mall!” Jeanne suggested from the back seat while looking at the map application on her phone. “We can take cover in the parking garage. It’ll keep us out of the drone’s line of sight.”

  Doug agreed and told the Jordanian liaison agent to relay the message to the king’s AIC.

  *

  “Direct hit. Target destroyed.” the sensor operator confirmed for the group in the flight operations center.

  “Again!” Teplov ordered. “Destroy the other one!”

  The pilot was about to carry out the command when the distortion returned and the images broadcast from the Reaper began to jump all over his monitor. Try as he might, he could not get the targeting laser to settle on the roof of the remaining limo. And without the laser to guide it in, the pilot gave the missile a fifty-fifty chance of hitting its target. When he relayed that to Teplov, he received a stream of expletives in return. So he followed the order, even though he thought it was a waste of a perfectly good Hellfire, and once again pressed the button on the joystick.

  *

  “How much longer?” Joe demanded, knowing the Russian pilot was in the proc
ess of locking in on the second limo. With the directional antennae re-engaged, he just hoped the interference was severe enough to affect the accuracy of the shot.

  Fred was the first to reply. “I’ve narrowed down the general location of the ground control station but need a few more minutes to determine the precise grid coordinates.”

  “What about you, Eli?”

  Miller was so engrossed in the data on the screen of his laptop, that he didn’t hear Joe’s question. Fred leaned across the aisle and nudged Eli with his elbow. Annoyed at the interruption, he snapped, “What?”

  Joe repeated his question. “How much longer?”

  But before Miller could answer, a second Hellfire leapt from the Reaper’s underwing pod.

  “Fuck!” Joe screamed in frustration. “Doug, you’ve got another one headed your way!”

  Doug cursed, then relayed the information to the Royal Guard officer riding with them. Keying his radio, the Jordanian rattled off something in Arabic to the rest of his detail.

  Moments after the radio call, the roof hatch on the Jordanian Counter Assault Team vehicle slid open and the upper torso of one of the operators emerged. He reached down into the cabin of the Suburban and pulled a long, olive-green, cylindrical tube through the opening. Hoisting the thirty-three-pound Stinger antiaircraft missile onto his right shoulder, he began scanning the sky for the Reaper.

  The unguided Hellfire bore down on the motorcade as it sped under the enormous interchange at Jassem Mohammed Al-Kharafi Road. A massive explosion rocked the vehicles as the missile struck one of the elevated roadways and detonated. Debris peppered the motorcade, battering the vehicles’ armored shells and pockmarking their bullet-resistant windows, but the convoy continued along its route. No one was more surprised that they were still alive and moving than Doug Kelly

  Seeing the surviving limo with the Jordanian follow car and the two CIA vehicles on its tail shoot under the crumbling overpass, Joe couldn’t believe his eyes. The elevated roadway had intercepted the Hellfire, saving King Abdullah and Director Sloan, as well as those of their respective protective details. The rest of the motorcade wasn’t so lucky.