Being the Big Kahuna of the Special Projects Division came with perks. I now had my own personal jet, a sleek Gulfstream G650. It could carry all seven members of Echo Team, along with two logistics guys and the flight crew. It had a range of seven thousand nautical miles and could hit a maximum speed of Mach 0.85. It was soundproofed and had leather seats, and the interior looked like a yacht that might have belonged to a porn-industry mogul. Gold filigree, expensive paintings bolted to the walls, a full-sized toilet stall.
It had once belonged to a Colombian billionaire who ran a bioweapons shop in the same lab he was using to make coke and heroin. He’d begun providing drug cartels with weaponized pathogens designed to kill ATF and Border Patrol agents and their families. Despite the fact that so many people flew high on his drugs, the billionaire plummeted like a rock when I threw him out of the forward hatch. We’d had a disagreement over whether he needed to remain alive. Apparently, the world could still turn without him. Imagine that.
I loved the jet. I named her Shirley. Don’t ask why.
Usually being aboard her made me smile. Not today, though.
As I climbed the stairs to the hatch, I heard a voice in my ear.
Small.
Distant.
Lost.
So lost.
“Joe…?”
I stopped what I was doing and sagged back against a burned wall.
“Bug,” I said, and tapped my earbud to bring up the volume.
“Joe?” he repeated.
“Jesus, kid, I’m so goddamn sorry.”
It was true, but it was lame. Though, really, what part of the human vocabulary has words that will make a moment like this make sense? Which words, which phrases, actually help? How can sounds pull the knives out of the human heart? What clever catchphrases or wise aphorisms can address in any adequate way the unchangeable reality of death?
Go farther. What can you say to a friend whose mother has been murdered?
Tell me.
What can you say?
He wept. A voice in my ear.
I sank down in one of the leather seats, put my face in my hands, wept for him and with him.
Chapter Seventy-eight
Eglin Air Force Base
Boatner Road
Near Valparaiso, Florida
March 31, 4:46 P.M.
Top and Bunny leaned against the side of a Humvee parked on the grass at Eglin Air Force Base. They had cups of coffee provided by one of Top’s oldest friends, Chief Master Sergeant Dilbert Howell of the Ninety-sixth Test Wing. The sky above them was a flawless dome of dark blue. Around them, the trees of spring were coming alive after a hard winter. The temperature was in the midseventies, and there was a breeze filled with the mingled scents of pine and flowers.
It was the kind of day that could put a smile on a sad man’s face, but none of the men were grinning.
Top had explained why they were there. Even if the ties to Philadelphia were tenuous at best, it soured the day.
Howell sipped his coffee. “Your captain,” he said. “Ledger? He seems like a good man.”
Top nodded. “He’ll do.”
“From what I’ve heard,” continued Howell, “he really got into the thick of it at the ballpark. Took out several hostiles without backup? Is that right?”
“He’s not afraid to get his hands dirty,” agreed Top. Bunny snorted.
Howell nodded. “You guys been with him for a while now?”
“For a bit, Dil,” said Top.
“Aren’t you getting a little old for that kind of stuff?”
Bunny was in the middle of taking a sip, and a single laugh exploded out. He tried to hide it with a fake cough.
Top pointed a finger at him. “You secure that shit right now, Farm Boy.”
Bunny held up his free hand in a no-problem gesture. “I just swallowed the wrong way.”
“I’m just saying, Top,” Howell went on. “You’re almost as old as me, and I stopped doing that yee-haw crap a while back.”
“You ain’t that old, Dil.”
“You know what they say. It ain’t the years, it’s the mileage. These knees can’t take the jumps anymore. Lower back’s a bitch ever since Iraq. And those early mornings? Nah, not for me anymore.”
“Which is why you’re getting fat,” observed Top.
Dilbert Howell had a stomach as flat and hard as boilerplate. He slapped his gut. “Yeah. This is me getting soft.”
“The waistline’s the first thing to go,” said Top, shaking his head. “Then it’s the hair, man boobs, and suddenly you got no barrel left in your long gun. Keeping in the game is the way to keep Father Time from bending you over a—”
“Hey! What’s that?” interrupted Bunny. He straightened and squinted toward the water tower on the other side of Boatner Road. The others looked, too.
There was a speck in the sky. Bigger than a bird. Much bigger. Nearly airplane-sized. Sleek and silver-gray. It was coming toward them fast.
“That,” said Howell with obvious pride, “is what you boys came here to see.”
“Oh shit,” sighed Bunny. “Tell me that’s not another goddamn drone?”
The drone flew past the water tower and resolved itself into a machine they all recognized. Forty-eight-foot wingspan and a twenty-seven-foot body that was smooth and bulbous and sinister.
“Fuck me,” murmured Top
“Modified MQ-1-AI Super Predator,” said Howell. “We got six of them in last week. Same hull design as the old MQ-1s but with upgraded avionics, an advanced aerial-evasion package, a new generation of the Multi-Spectral Targeting System, that new Robinson-Landau targeting radar. All sorts of goodies.”
“And the Regis-integration software package,” grumbled Top.
“Sure. Which is why it works so damn well,” said Howell. “Only downside is that by using the old hull design, they had to more or less keep the speed the same. It buries the needle at one-three-seven miles per hour. But that more or less works in our favor. Anyone spots it, they think it’s one of the older birds, until this flies right up their ass.”
“Man’s in love,” said Bunny. “Hope you’ll both be very happy.”
Howell ignored him. “All this week we’re testing the AI guidance system.”
Top nodded. “It’s science fiction bullshit.”
“It’s the future of warfare,” Howell said, and seemed to swell with pride. “Artificial intelligence is at a breakthrough stage. These new models are designed for independence and coordinated action, largely without human interaction or remote piloting. You should see them work as a team, communicating with each other at ultrahigh speeds. Sharing tactical data with reaction times that make us look like cavemen. DARPA’s got these birds doing everything but keeping diaries and braiding each other’s hair. They have these things picking their own targets, making decisions to change their own mission protocols.”
The predator did a circle around the water tower and then flew up and over the trees.
“Nimble little minx,” observed Bunny.
“Very. And what you’re seeing is a UAV teaching itself to fly in unpredictable patterns in order to make maximum use of the terrain.”
Bunny looked at him. “Wait, you’re saying there’s no remote pilot at the controls of that thing?”
Howell chuckled. “Settle down, son. This isn’t the movies. It’s not going to suddenly develop a personality and decide that all humans must die. AI isn’t like that. It’s a program.”
“Self-learning,” said Top.
“Sure, but that’s not the same thing as actual consciousness.” Howell nodded at the Predator, which had reappeared sixty yards over the field that ran alongside the road. “There are limits written into the software to keep it from making mistakes. And they installed subroutines that will always give active control back to human remote pilots. And, just in case your nuts are up in your chest cavity, boys, there’s a whole team sitting in a command truck right now, hands on the controls, ready
to throw the right switches. They can remote-detonate it, force it to land, or even cut its engines off and make it ditch into the water.”
“Still scary as hell,” said Bunny.
“Only if you’re the bad guy,” said Howell. “No … these things are safe. You can tell your captain that. He may have a bug up his ass about Regis, but I think he’s looking in the wrong direction. Regis is rock-solid. And the UAV program is going to save American lives. The whole point of using them is to reduce the risk to human life. To make warfare safer.” He turned and pointed to a truck parked on the field. A complex array of antennae sprouted from it. “Mobile command unit. Everything needed to support and manage the Predator fits into four suitcases. Not counting missiles.”
“It’s not carrying missiles now, is it?” asked Bunny. “’Cause I am going to leave a mile long shit stain getting out of here.”
Howell shook his head. “It has dummies. Same weight as four AIM-92 Stingers and six Griffin air-to-surface missiles, but no warheads. And even the dummies are bolted on so they won’t drop during testing. Ditto for the guns. Ammunition is deadweight, nothing hooked up to fire. They’re testing aerodynamics with simulated full weight of armament but with zero threat in case of error. Hey, I’ll never claim that the air force is sane, but we’re not so crazy we arm self-guided drones on a test flight. Not yet. And when we do, we won’t let them fly around like this. It’ll be a test range with no one loitering around where they can get their wieners blown off.”
“And this sort of thing will never slip the leash and bite us on the ass?” said Bunny with obvious skepticism.
“Could be worse,” said Howell. “They’re retrofitting a bunch of F-16s to turn them into UAVs. They call ’em QF-16s. You heard about that?”
Top nodded. “Sure. Back in 2013.”
“Still doing it. Got a mess of them. They’re doing that down at Tyndall.”
Top nodded. He’d been to a demonstration of the F-16 drones at the air base near Panama City. “I thought they were using those birds for target practice. So pilots could fight real jets but without anyone getting killed.”
Howell gave him a knowing look. “Don’t believe everything you read on Wikipedia, Top. The QF-16s are aerial targets, but the QF-16Xs are what we’re calling superdrones. It’s a new class. They call them Pterosaurs. You boys know what that means?”
“Sure,” said Bug. “Flying dinosaurs.”
“Don’t confuse flying dinosaur with something old and clunky. These Pterosaurs can fly right up your colon and deliver air-to-air, air-to-ground, and air-to-ship missiles and then drop Paveway IIIs and Gator mines. And they have M61 Vulcan six-barrel Gatling cannons.”
“You don’t need to sell us, Dil,” said Top. “We’re not shopping for Christmas presents.”
“Just making a point, fellows. Everyone hopes that we can put these birds in the air as fully functional, totally autonomous frontline fighters.”
“Jeeee-zus,” said Bunny.
“We got a bunch of them ready to go into actual combat,” said Howell with pride. “Some at Tyndall and a whole flight of them up at Beale in Marysville, California. They’re running tests around the clock up there.”
“Even today?” asked Bunny, appalled.
“Especially today,” said Howell. “If this is going to turn into another 9/11, we need a response that delivers a new kind of shock and awe. And one that doesn’t put a lot of U.S. servicemen in the fucking ground. We want the bad guys to start digging graves, because we’re going after them with a fully armed, automated response.”
“Yeah,” sighed Bunny. “I know. Not a fan of that, either.”
“What’s wrong with you, son?” asked Howell. “Would you rather put American pilots and ground troops in harm’s way instead of a couple machines?”
“Oh, don’t get me wrong,” said Bunny. “I’m all for the drone program. Predators and Reapers have saved my ass more than once. I have friends who are alive because drones were in the air. There are a lot of bad guys who have been sent to the showers because of drones. And don’t get me started on surveillance, low-risk intel acquisition, and using them to find lost troops. No, I’m good with drones. I loves me some drones.”
“So…?”
“I just don’t want to be a day player in the next Terminator film. That whole self-guided, self-determining thing? Not a fan. I’d rather see Uncle Sam offer employment to a whole shitload of remote UAV pilots. Keep a human being at the stick. At least on anything flying around with fucking missiles on it.”
Howell shrugged. “Opinions differ. Case you haven’t checked, we’re more than halfway through the second decade of the twenty-first century. Science marches on.”
“Yeah, yeah, wave of the future,” Bunny said, shaking his head. “I get it. But I don’t like it. There are too many things that can go wrong.” Howell began to say something, but Bunny added, “And before you tell me that I don’t know what I’m talking about or I’m behind the learning curve of military science, trust me when I tell you that we’ve”—and here he jiggled his cup to indicate Top, and by association all of the DMS—“seen what happens when this shit goes off the rails. That’s our day job, and it is not pretty. Worst-case scenario is pretty much our job description.”
“Put it in park, Farm Boy,” said Top quietly.
“No,” said Howell, “it’s okay. I don’t entirely trust this stuff myself. That’s why we’re here to test it. We’re going to put these birds through the wringer to make damn sure that they work exactly and only as intended.”
“Hey,” said Bunny, “I didn’t mean—”
He stopped as the faint buzz of the drone’s engine suddenly changed. They all turned to look at it.
“Uh-oh,” said Bunny. “Is it supposed to be doing that?”
The drone was accelerating and was now flying toward them at a much higher rate of speed. It whipped over them at nearly a hundred miles an hour. Forty miles short of its top speed, but fast enough to drag a lot of air behind it. The gust fluttered their clothes, and three of the four men ducked. Only Howell didn’t move, though his grin dimmed a bit. The Predator hurtled off into the distance, diminishing to the size of a condor, then a hawk, then a sparrow, and then it was gone, circling wide and low behind the trees.
“Christ!” gasped Bunny. “Is it supposed to buzz noncombatants?”
“Does that fancy AI software give it a smart-ass personality?” asked Top.
“Nah,” said Howell. “It wouldn’t buzz us unless someone in the control vehicle took over and is deliberately screwing with us.”
“Cute,” said Top. “I’d like to deliberately kick that person’s ass.”
“Hooah,” agreed Bunny.
“Oh, don’t get your panties in a bunch, big man,” said Howell, “that’s not SOP. Don’t worry, I’ll find out who the joker is, and I’ll kick his ass for you.”
“I’d appreciate it.”
“Not ’cause of making you shit your pants,” continued Howell. “He’s flying too close to the road. Big no-no. I expect someone in that truck is telling him about that right now. They’re just messing with the hotshot special ops pistoleros. But … have no doubts, he will get read the whole riot act. That bird will be heading over to the test range to fly an obstacle course.”
“Really?” asked Bunny, pointing with his chin. “’Cause here it comes again.”
Howell was smiling when he looked up to see the Predator circling back toward the road. It dropped down to fifty yards and leveled off, cruising right over the centerline on the blacktop. His smile faded slowly and, like a burned match, went out.
“What the hell…? It’s not supposed to be over the road.”
Suddenly the air was split by the shattering blare of warning sirens. Doors burst open, and people erupted from half a dozen buildings. The rear hatch of the big mobile-control vehicle flew open, and an officer jumped out. He pointed up to the drone while yelling over his shoulder at whoever was inside the truck
.
“What’s happening?” shouted Bunny.
“Nothing good,” replied Top, unsnapping his sidearm.
Chief Master Sergeant Howell glanced up at the drone, back at the vehicle, at the people running out of the buildings, and back at the drone. “Stay here,” he snapped, and then bolted across the road toward the command vehicle.
The drone accelerated, its motor buzz rising to a scream.
“Oh … shit,” said Bunny. “It’s coming right at us.”
They started to disperse, but Top stopped him with a hand on his arm. “No, it’s turning.”
He was right. The drone veered sharply from the road and rocketed above the lawn. Howell was pelting across the field toward the truck.
“It’s following Dil!” he shouted. Top drew his M9 Beretta and brought it up.
“You can’t hit it from here,” warned Bunny, though he brought his gun up, too. The drone was forty yards above him and three hundreds yards behind.
They began running.
Hard.
Tearing across the field. All of them yelling, even though their cries were lost beneath the crushing weight of the alarm sirens.
Across the field, the officer who had exited the truck stood frozen in horror.
Howell turned and looked up as the drone closed the distance in mere seconds.
The Predator could not fire on Howell. It could not launch missiles at the truck. It carried no live weapons.
What it did instead tore screams from Top and the others.
It swooped down to the field so that its landing legs were five feet above the grass.
Top could not hear the sound of the drone’s engines firing to maximum speed as the machine came up behind his friend at 135 miles an hour.
But he could see the effect.
It was sudden.
It was red.
And it was unspeakable.
The front landing leg hit Dilbert Howell in the back, directly between the shoulder blades: 2,250 pounds of mass traveling at high velocity impacted two hundred pounds running at eight miles an hour. The body of the running man seemed to fly apart. To become inhuman in a terrible instant.