Drone Command Read online

  “Thank you. I will.”

  Pearce shook his head. “He won’t believe it, though. He lost his men. But tell him anyway. Tell him I said so.”

  The Chinese had been warring against the Vietnamese for more than two millennia, but for the most part, the Vietnamese people, through sheer determination and force of arms, had maintained a relative cultural independence from the Han warlords on the other side of the rugged border. But like Japan, Vietnam had island disputes of its own with the PRC, especially over the Spratly and Paracel Islands in the South China Sea and for much the same reasons as the Japanese: oil, gas, and national sovereignty.

  Pearce had his own run-in with the Chinese a few years ago in the Sahara. Hunted two of them down. Exacted a brutal payback for killing Mike Early and Mossa, the Tuareg chieftain who had helped him find himself again.

  “When we return to Hanoi, I would like you to be my guest at the academy. We now produce six of our own drone systems. I would very much like your comment on them.” She was clearly proud of her country’s achievement. He didn’t have the heart to tell her that he knew their indigenous drones still relied on imported engines and propellers.

  “I wish I could.”

  “Another secret mission for your government?”

  Pearce smiled. Wouldn’t answer.

  “First time in Vietnam?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you must come back. It is not like this all the time. It is a beautiful country with friendly people.”

  That’s what his dad had said, too, in rare moments of reflection. “I definitely want to come back.”

  “Please do. And please call me. My brother and I would be honored to show you our nation at its best.”

  “I just might take you up on that.”

  “Is there anything I can do for you in the meantime? Anything at all?”

  Actually, there was. He explained the situation. Gave her the names.

  “It won’t be easy. I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Thank you.”

  “It’s the least I can do.”

  Pham pulled off her headset and leaned her head back against the seat and closed her weary eyes. She fell asleep instantly.

  Pearce stared into the night, lost in a thousand memories.

  SIX

  PEARCE CABIN

  NEAR THE SNAKE RIVER, WYOMING

  JULY 1987

  He smelled lilacs in her hair.

  Troy held his sister tightly, breathed in the cloying smell of the cheap shampoo. Marichelle’s favorite. She was two years older than Troy and almost as tall. Best friends.

  Troy let go. “Call me when you get there.”

  “Soon as we get to Grandma’s. I’ll call every Sunday, I promise.” Marichelle was teary eyed and snotty. Dark hair and eyes like their dad.

  Troy nodded. “Be careful out there, okay? Any guy messes with you, I’m gonna kill him.”

  She shook her head. “You can’t protect me if you’re not there, tough guy.”

  Her words stung. They were supposed to.

  Thirteen-year-old Troy Pearce was just under six feet tall and a hundred and forty pounds, mostly sinew, with a rebellious lick of jet-black hair falling over his clear blue eyes. The sturdy rough-hewn cabin behind him was small but tidy. His grandfather’s, on his dad’s side. Troy had never met him. His dad said if you knew the cabin, you knew him.

  Marichelle started to say something, but stopped. She wanted to beg Troy to come with them again, but it was no use. They had already fought about it last night.

  He had to stay. Dad needed him.

  She had to go. Mom couldn’t take it anymore.

  And that was that.

  Troy glanced over at his mom leaning against a faded yellow Datsun two-door squatting in the dirt driveway. No hubcaps. A long way to California in a beater car like that. His mother was dark and pretty, with his same blue eyes, but tired. Her arms were crossed, a natural pose. She’d been on defense a long time.

  He caught her eye. She smiled. More tears. She wiped her face with her hand and fell into the car.

  He remembered her promise. “We’ll come back when he sobers up,” she said.

  Troy knew she meant it. Didn’t mean much, though. His dad had his demons.

  The Datsun fired up.

  “I gotta go,” Marichelle said.

  “Send me a picture of your surfboard when you get one.”

  “Yeah, right,” she said, sniffling. “Take care of Dad, okay?”

  “I will.”

  “Take care of yourself, too.”

  “I will.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.” He smiled. “I’ll make another one, too.”

  “What?”

  “I ain’t ever having kids, I swear.”

  Marichelle laughed, wiping her eyes. “Me neither.” She kissed him on the cheek one last time, then scampered to the Datsun. “Bye.”

  Troy watched the yellow car disappear through the trees in a cloud of dust, heading for the distant highway. His heart sank.

  He headed for the cabin, his feet heavy as lead. Pushed his way through the door. Saw his dad passed out at the kitchen table, his forehead perched in a plate of spaghetti, an empty bottle of Jack by his elbow. Another crumpled foreclosure notice on the floor.

  “Didn’t even say good-bye, asshole,” Troy whispered, as he lifted up his dad’s head and gently set it on the table. He snagged up the empty bottle and tossed it in the trash.

  The hell of it was, he’d always wanted to go to California.

  SEVEN

  ON THE STREETS

  HANOI, VIETNAM

  3 MAY 2017

  The teenage VPA private tapped the jeep’s horn to clear his way through a knot of Chinese tourists crossing the busy street. Pearce rode up front with him, but the kid didn’t speak any English and Pearce couldn’t parley in his tongue, either. The Soviet-era UAZ jeep they rode in from the base brought back memories of Cella.

  The first time he saw her was in the reticle of his night-vision scope as her UAZ slewed up a snowy hill in the middle of a blizzard in the Afghan mountains. He wondered how she was doing and where she was. He walked away from her once in order to serve his country in the Global War on Terrorism. It was a miracle he found her again out there in the Sahara all those years later. Strange that he would also rediscover his calling to serve his nation in the same desert with her. He loved Cella, but he loved his country, too, and he was a warrior. He wanted both. It broke his heart that she refused to follow him. She had to be true to herself, she said.

  So did he.

  It was nearly midnight in Hanoi, and Pearce was exhausted after a long damn day that had nearly gotten him killed. The VPA medics on the helicopter had checked him for wounds and injuries, but there were none save for the purpling bruise on his hip about the size of his fist. Sore as hell, but nothing broken. A hot steaming shower and room service was all the doctoring he would need, along with twelve hours of dreamless sleep.

  Hanoi at night was the back lot of a movie studio, an eclectic anachronism clogged with extras and props from a dozen motion pictures. Even at this late hour, there were gawking European tourists with knockoff Gucci purses, peasant women in conical hats toting shoulder-pole baskets laden with fruit, street vendors squatting around open braziers grilling skewers of meat, traffic cops in pith helmets yelling at teenage hipsters racing past on their gleaming Japanese motor scooters.

  The art department had been busy, too. The ancient yet modern city was an absurd pastiche of Communist flags and neon signs, pedicabs and BMWs, KFC chicken franchises and French colonial slums. It was all too much and too familiar to Pearce. He’d grown up poor in the mountains of Wyoming but wound up fighting in the sprawling urban squalor that fueled the Global War on Terrorism. Hanoi was like most ot
her third world capitals he’d been in. He noticed an intense pride in the few Vietnamese he’d met so far. The poor Communist government of Vietnam had won the war against the mighty Americans and the French before them, but clearly capitalism had conquered Hanoi along with the rest of the country. A Pyrrhic victory, indeed.

  Just when Pearce thought the side trip to Vietnam couldn’t get any more surreal, his jeep pulled up to the hotel Dr. Pham had booked for him. It seemed like a bad joke told in poor taste. Or it was corporate marketing at its best. Maybe both.

  The Hanoi Hilton was, technically, the Hilton Hanoi Opera Hotel, built next to the old yellow and white French colonial opera house. From his top-story window, the opera house looked like a garish yellow wedding cake. The hotel itself was nice enough, comfortable and clean like any stateside Hilton with the familiar amenities, granite tops, glass shower, and, most important, a soft bed instead of a cramped and cold tiger cage. When he arrived, he resisted the temptation to ask the bleary-eyed check-in clerk for the Admiral Stockdale suite.

  Pearce planned on using the extra day layover to recoup and process. The president’s office had already rescheduled everything Pearce had painstakingly arranged back in Japan before he had even landed back in Hanoi. He owed the president a brief on his mission today, but Pearce’s CIA training told him to assume his room was wired. His experience with Jasmine Bath taught him that nothing and nowhere were safe. Pearce would lay out the details of his Vietnam adventure to the president when he got back to Japan. There wasn’t much to report. The Vietnamese confirmed what Lane already knew from his intel sources. China was pushing the limits of international civility, to put it mildly. And the Vietnamese weren’t interested in parting with the Chinese hardware that Dr. Pham had retrieved from the crash site. It was all probably stolen American technology anyway.

  A quiet and efficient room service had set his covered food tray on the dining table by the time Pearce emerged from the steaming shower wrapped in a buttery soft but undersize microfiber bathrobe. Pearce had chosen the fragrant Australian beef baked in bamboo for his entrée, accompanied by a bowl of pho chicken and noodles and a sweet taro dumpling in coconut milk for dessert. He could’ve ordered a bottle of Yamazaki 12 single malt from the bar for the price of a small car, but he’d laid off the booze since Mali. He went for the bottled water and green tea instead.

  After wolfing down his food, Pearce stood on the balcony with his tea and watched the traffic below, still thrumming at the late hour. Another city that doesn’t sleep, he thought. Another reason to hate cities. He missed his cabin in the woods. Wondered if he’d ever see it again.

  His mind drifted back to the wiry VPA sergeant on the mountain and the way he had glowered at Pearce, hatred flaming his eyes. Pearce understood that kind of rage. It usually got the better of him, too. He hunted down and slaughtered Zhao and Guo for killing his friends Early and Mossa. He’d dropped many more bodies on a few other continents for lesser offenses over the years. Too many. Even if they were sonsofbitches.

  He lost a lot of friends, too. People he’d served with, bled with, loved. Early. Johnny.

  Annie.

  He figured he was just getting old. It was getting too hard to keep losing people. It was a helluva lot easier to not let anyone back in. An occupational hazard.

  Pearce wondered how many of the sergeant’s relatives had been killed by American troops and planes, shot or bombed or napalmed into oblivion. More than a million North Vietnamese soldiers and Viet Cong fighters had been killed by allied forces. Tens of thousands of civilians, too, if not more. No wonder that sergeant hated his guts.

  But then again, how many of his father’s friends had been killed by the NVA and the VC? Those vicious bastards had murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians during and after the war. The Vietnamese Communists were just as ruthless as the murderous Pol Pot regime and all the other killing machines that had marched under the red banner over the years. Lenin, Stalin, Mao. Mao, the bloodiest of them all.

  Now America and Vietnam, former combatants and ideological enemies, were trading partners and burgeoning allies. All that blood and death apparently couldn’t stem the tide of strip-mall capitalism. Why did all those people have to die in the first place? Why can’t the politicians cut out the killing and the bullshit and just get straight to the money and leave the rest of us alone?

  The bile rose in the back of his throat. Pearce hated politics. He suddenly felt the urge to bail out of there and hightail his ass back to Wyoming. He’d lost too many friends in Afghanistan and Iraq because of politics. Annie’s death was the worst. And his dad. Agent Orange probably caused his dad’s brain cancer, but it was the lousy VA hospital service that actually killed him.

  But Pearce knew he wouldn’t run away. He’d made a promise to Myers and Lane to serve again. More important, he’d made the promise to himself. He loved his country despite its faults, most of them connected to the idiots running Capitol Hill. Most Americans were decent, hardworking people. So were most Vietnamese or Iraqis or even Chinese, for that matter. In the U.S. it was the elected representatives and the high-dollar lobbyists and the Wall Street bankers who kept pissing in the punch bowl.

  But Myers was different. He knew that the moment he met her. Thank God Mike Early begged him to come on board and help her administration. He quit the Global War on Terrorism because self-serving politicians made decisions that benefited only them and killed people he cared about, including Annie. Myers was a politician, too, but not like the others. She put her country ahead of her own political career. That was rare. That was worth throwing in with. Yeah, she was something else. Remarkable, really. Pearce was grateful that he’d gotten to know her better since then. Not many people could say they were close friends with an ex-president. Especially a damned good president like her.

  President Lane was a good one, too. Myers had introduced them. It was easy for Pearce to throw in with him as well. Without public servants like Lane, the United States was doomed—the world’s largest banana republic. Men and women like Lane and Myers needed all the help they could get from guys like him. “Ask not” was Lane’s campaign theme. Lane was mocked and derided for it, but he really believed it. So did the people who had voted him into office.

  So did Pearce.

  He offered to lend Lane a hand. Wasn’t sure what that entailed. He figured it would be connected to his war record, his drone expertise, so he wasn’t surprised when Lane asked him if he wanted to revive Drone Command, but Pearce held off. Heading up a vast new federal bureaucracy sounded like slow torture. Pearce knew how fast and nimble he could operate as a private contractor. The thought of all of those self-serving congressional committee chairmen peering over his shoulder pining for pork barrel handouts made him cringe.

  But Lane and Myers said they also needed some help on a political matter. Pearce demurred, said he wasn’t a politician. Said yes anyway.

  Duty and all that.

  Standing on the balcony, sipping the last of his tea, he knew his real mission had barely begun and that he’d already nearly gotten killed doing it.

  He could only imagine what was waiting for him out there in the dark. Didn’t matter. That was the job.

  EIGHT

  TANAKA’S PRIVATE OFFICE

  THE KANTEI

  TOKYO, JAPAN

  4 MAY 2017

  Tanaka sat behind his desk in Japan’s version of the White House, the ashtray in front of him crowded with butts. He flicked a gold-plated Dunhill to light another cigarette as his personal cell phone rang. He recognized the incoming number. A vice president of TEPCO, the Tokyo Electric Power Company. He took a long drag before picking up.

  “Yoshio! How are you, my old friend?”

  “I’m well, Tanaka-san. Sorry to bother you.”

  Tanaka didn’t like the worried tone in his voice. “What’s wrong?”

  “That American wa
s snooping around again. Asking more questions.”

  “The Issei? Yamada?”

  “Hai. Dr. Yamada, from the University of Hawaii. I confirmed with an associate at the Ministry of the Environment. Unofficially, of course. Dr. Yamada’s story checks out. An environmentalist group contracted with Dr. Yamada and his research team.”

  “More Fukushima nonsense?”

  “Hai.”

  Tanaka took a thoughtful drag. “What did Yamada want to know?”

  “The usual. I assured him personally that our cleanup efforts were proceeding according to plan. He said he was well aware of our efforts. Very strange.”

  “Strange? How so?”

  “He said he was friends with one of the foreign deconstruction crews. August Mann’s team, with Pearce Systems.”

  “Pearce? Troy Pearce?”

  “Hai.”

  “Anything else?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Keep me posted if this Yamada character shows up again. And keep your eyes on the Pearce Systems people.”

  “Is there a problem? Should I dismiss them?”

  “Not yet. But have your internal-security people pay close attention to them.”

  Tanaka hung up the phone and stabbed out his cigarette. More Westerners snooping around the Fukushima facility. Either environmentalists or spies. Japan didn’t need either, especially meddling do-gooders. Humiliating. Japan would fix the problems. His country needed energy independence and nuclear power was the key.

  And this Pearce fellow. Ito informed him that he brought Pearce Systems in for a drone demonstration, but he wasn’t aware Pearce was involved in Fukushima as well. He knew that drones and robots were being deployed in the hazardous cleanup. Pearce Systems had the best drones in the world, so it made sense. But this was quite a coincidence.

  Tanaka lit another cigarette. Picked up the phone and called an acquaintance in the intelligence service. Time to find out more about Pearce.