Drone Threat Read online

  ALSO BY MIKE MADEN

  Drone Command

  Blue Warrior

  Drone

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  Publishers Since 1838

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

  Copyright © 2016 by Mike Maden

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  eBook ISBN: 9780698190726

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Maden, Mike, author.

  Title: Drone threat / Mike Maden.

  Description: New York : G.P. Putnam’s Sons, [2016] | Series: A Troy Pearce novel ; 4

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016029298 | ISBN 9780399173998 (hardcover)

  Subjects: LCSH: Special operations (Military science)—United States—Fiction. | Special forces (Military science)—United States—Fiction. | Terrorism—Prevention—Fiction. | Drone aircraft—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Action & Adventure. | FICTION / Suspense. | FICTION / War & Military. | GSAFD: Suspense fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3613.A284327 D78 2016 | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016029298

  p. cm.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  Bernie, Celestin, Mark, Martin, Roger, Scott, Tad and Wes.

  Faithful. Friends.

  CONTENTS

  Also by Mike Maden

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Major Characters

  Abbreviations and Acronyms

  Author’s Note

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  MAJOR CHARACTERS

  THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  Alyssa Abbott

  White House Press Secretary

  Clay Chandler

  Vice President of the United States

  Melinda Eaton

  Director, Department of Homeland Security (DHS)

  Jim Garza

  National Security Advisor

  Jackie Gibson

  Lane’s Chief of Staff

  Stella Kang

  Pearce Systems (security, drone operations)

  David Lane

  President of the United States (POTUS)

  Carl Luckett

  U.S. Army Ranger

  Ian McTavish

  Pearce Systems (IT)

  Margaret Myers

  Former President of the United States

  General Gordon Onstot

  Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS)

  Ilene Parcelle

  Partner, Seven Rivers Consortium

  Troy Pearce

  CEO, Pearce Systems

  Julissa Peguero

  Attorney General of the United States

  Mike Pia

  Director of National Intelligence (DNI)

  Norman Pike

  CEO, Chinook Charter

  Steve Rowley

  U.S. Army Ranger

  Sarah Swift

  Pearce Systems (combat medic)

  THE STATE OF ISRAEL

  Daniel Brody

  Mossad agent

  Tamar Stern

  Mossad agent, former Pearce Systems associate

  Moshe Werntz

  Mossad chief of station, Washington, D.C., head of North American operations

  OTHER NOTABLES

  Abu Waleed al-Mahdi

  Caliph of the ISIS Caliphate; Iraqi national

  Kamal al-Medina

  ISIS unit commander, Iraq; Saudi national

  August Mann

  Pearce Systems (Director of Nuclear Facilities Deconstruction); German national

  Aleksandr Tarkovsky

  Russian Federation Ambassador to the United States

  ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS

  AUMF

  Authorization to Use Military Force

  COTS

  Consumer Off-the-Shelf

  CTE

 
Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy

  IAI

  Israeli Aerospace Industries

  LaWS

  Laser Weapons System

  MALE

  Medium-Altitude Long-Endurance

  MWDSC

  Metropolitan Water District of Southern California

  PTSD

  Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

  ROEs

  Rules of Engagement

  SOG

  Special Operations Group (CIA)

  SVR

  Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation

  TBI

  Traumatic Brain Injury

  TXDOT

  Texas Department of Transportation

  VTOL

  Vertical Take-Off and Landing

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  As with the previous novels in the series, the drone and related systems described in this story are currently deployed or are based on patent filings, prototypes, or research concepts. In some cases, I’ve modified or simplified their performance characteristics for the sake of the story.

  He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.

  FRIEDRICH WILHELM NIETZSCHE, Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 146 (1886)

  1

  ZAKHO DISTRICT

  KURDISTAN REGION

  NORTHERN IRAQ

  The sun’s bloodred halo framed the Christ hanging from his towering crucifix.

  Or so it seemed to Ahmed. He cupped his hands around his eyes to get a better look, his spent RPG launcher heavy on one shoulder and his battered AK-47 on the other.

  Not a Christ. A Christian, and a Kurd.

  It was a kafir they had crucified, he reminded himself. His limp body hung from a utility pole on top of the hill, his arms tied at the elbows to the crossbar with baling wire and duct tape. The kafir wouldn’t submit, wouldn’t renounce his infidel faith.

  He crucified himself, Ahmed thought. He spat in the dust at his aching feet. The boots he wore were too small, taken from a dead Iraqi weeks ago.

  He glanced back up. The blowflies swarmed around the moist tissues of the pastor’s mouth and nose, laying their eggs. The orifices were caked with black blood. The eyes would be next, Ahmed knew. He’d seen it before, in the last village. And in the one before. The hatched larvae would begin their grim feast and in a week the pastor’s skull would be picked clean. Disgusting. Ahmed spat again.

  Brave, this one. Not like the Iraqi soldiers who fled like women when his convoy of pickups arrived in a cloud of dust yesterday, black ISIS flags flapping in the wind, each vehicle crowded with fighters like him. The Iraqis just dropped their gear and ran.

  Well, not all of them.

  Was it the flags that scared the cowards? Or the head of an Iraqi colonel hanging like a lantern on a pole on the lead truck? The Iraqis were probably Shia. Worse than infidels. Cleansing the Caliphate of all such nonbelievers was their sacred duty. Only through such cleansing and blood sacrifice would the Mahdi come with the prophet Isa and defeat the Antichrist. Has the Caliph not rightly taught that all of the signs are pointing toward the Day of Judgment? And was it not their duty to bring this about, one infidel corpse at a time?

  Ahmed turned around. A line of utility poles marched down the long sloping hill. He counted ten more bodies hanging on them, including three children.

  The pastor’s children. Children of iniquity.

  Dirty work, that, Ahmed thought. Glad he wasn’t asked to do it. He would have, of course. Allah commands it. And if not, Kamal al-Medina ordered it, and he was more afraid of his commander here on earth than he was of the Exceedingly Merciful on His heavenly throne. He’d never seen Allah behead a screaming kafir with a serrated combat knife nor listened to him sing while he did it.

  Such zeal. It is to be admired, he thought.

  A Dodge Ram pickup honked behind him. He turned around as the truck skidded to a halt in the dust. A sharp-faced brother called out from the cab. He was a twenty-five-year-old Tunisian from Marseille. A French national like Ahmed, though Ahmed was a lily-white redhead of Norman stock and only nineteen.

  “The commander has called for you,” the Tunisian said in French. He threw a thumb at the truck bed. “Hop in.”

  Ahmed felt his stomach drop and the back of his neck tingle.

  “But I’m on guard duty.”

  “I’ll take your place after I drop you off.”

  “Why does he want me?”

  The Tunisian lowered his voice. “Does the Black Prince consult with lowly commoners like us?” He flashed a crooked smile.

  The pejorative reference to Kamal al-Medina’s royal bloodline would have earned the Tunisian ten lashes with a whip if Ahmed reported the slur. He wouldn’t, of course. Ahmed used it, too. They all did. And they all admired Kamal al-Medina as much as they feared him. The Saudi had given up everything—palaces, gold, power—to fight for the Caliphate and the ummah.

  “No, he doesn’t.” Ahmed unslung his RPG launcher and rifle and clambered into the back of the Dodge. He slapped the cab roof and the truck whipped around, speeding toward the center of the small village of squat cinder-block houses, well kept and brightly painted in hues of red, blue, and yellow. Most doors were defaced with a spray-painted red Arabic N for Nasrane. A slur for Jesus the Nazarene and his followers.

  It was also a mark for death.

  Their truck sped past still more utility poles with a Christian corpse hanging from each, their sightless, downcast eyes keeping silent vigil over their lost village. The long shadows they cast were quickly fading in the dimming light. It would soon be time for the brothers to wash for evening prayers.

  If only these Christians had submitted, Ahmed thought. Submitted to the will of Allah and signed the dhimma contract and paid the jizya—perhaps that would have kept them from death. Easier still, they could have just lied to save their lives and fight another day. Was taqiyya not permitted in their book as well?

  He liked this village. It was neat and well organized and surrounded by fertile fields. A village not much different from the one he came from in Normandy. He wondered how soon before those utility poles back home would be filled with Crusader corpses, too. He hoped he would live long enough to see it and to see even the whole world under the great Caliphate of God.

  Inshallah.

  —

  THE PICKUP SKIDDED to a stop in front of the church guarded by two jihadis, an almond-eyed Kazakh and a graying Uzbek. Both good fighters, Ahmed knew. And zealous.

  Ahmed leaped out of the truck bed and the Dodge sped off. Ahmed stood a moment, unsure of his situation. Had he sinned? The commander’s zeal for God knew no bounds. Just last week he punished a brother who kept smoking cigarettes in secret. Sharia forbade it. Smoking was haram. “There are no secrets here. God knows all and he will not honor us if we don’t keep his law,” al-Medina proclaimed before personally delivering the forty lashes to the brother’s back with a thick leather whip.

  Ahmed weighed his chances against the two guards. There were no bullets in his battered rifle and his RPG had no grenade—not that he could’ve used either in close-quarters combat. He had his grandfather’s old folding knife in his pocket, but that wasn’t much of a weapon, either. Both guards were well armed and could kill with their hands. He’d seen it himself. Perhaps he could run, but then they would shoot him in the back like a dog.

  The Uzbek nodded a
dour greeting and pushed open one of the two front doors and signaled him to follow.

  Ahmed hesitated before the open door. He hadn’t stood in a Christian church since he was a child—his first communion. The small stone church in his village had long since been abandoned by the last Catholic faithful and converted into a bike shop. Still, he wondered what judgment might be waiting for him inside this holy place after a day of slaughter. The sun had fallen beneath the hills and the long shadows had given way to a general gloom.

  “He’s waiting for you,” the Uzbek said. “Follow me.”

  Inshallah, Ahmed said to himself again with a shrug. He followed the Uzbek in. The old fighter limped heavily on his left foot into the broad expanse of the sanctuary and down the rows of mostly empty pews. The aisles were littered with chunks of broken plaster, half-melted candles, torn hymnals, and spent cartridges. A few of the brothers were passed out on the long benches, snoring from exhaustion. Three unit subcommanders stood on the raised platform and used a communion table to study a map they had laid upon it. A few dim bulbs in a chandelier overhead threw a sickly yellow light around them. A black ISIS flag hung from the rafters.

  Ahmed’s eyes drifted to the smashed ceramic Christ crunching beneath their feet, broken into a dozen pieces and tossed like garbage around the floor. This pleased him. A false Christ these kafir worship, and an idol at that.

  The Uzbek led Ahmed to another door to the side of the sanctuary. He knocked on it. “Enter!” boomed from the other side. Ahmed recognized al-Medina’s commanding voice.

  The Uzbek nodded curtly to Ahmed, then hobbled away.

  Ahmed took a deep breath, then pushed open the door.