A Time for Patriots pm-17 Page 22

  “Looks like they’re getting ready for something,” Chastain said. “Looks like we might need the robots after…” Just then, the image went blank. “What happened?”

  “I told you that might happen,” Jon Masters said. “The lower altitude means more interference.” They waited, but the image did not reappear.

  “Jon, we might have a problem — I’m not getting flight data from Sparrowhawk Two,” Jeff said. “We might have lost satellite contact.”

  “What the hell does that mean, Masters?” Chastain asked impatiently.

  “It’s no big deal,” Jon said. “It’ll orbit the area until satellite contact is restored. If it’s not restored within two hours, it’s programmed to return to the airport.”

  “Send the other drone back over the compound,” Chastain said. “The Knights looked like they’re getting ready for something — I need to know what’s going on.”

  “It’ll have to fly higher than ten thousand.”

  “But we were getting great shots at ten thousand,” Chastain said.

  “We don’t know where the second Sparrowhawk is,” Jon said. “We can’t fly it at the same altitude as the first.”

  “Then fly it at nine thousand.”

  “That’s only four thousand feet aboveground!”

  “I don’t care. Just do it.”

  “It can’t stay on station for very long,” Jeff reminded them. “It’s already been airborne four days.”

  “How long can it stay?”

  Jeff turned to the first Sparrowhawk’s flight-data screen… and his mouth dropped open in surprise. “Uh, Jon…” Jon looked… and found the flight data on the first Sparrowhawk blank as well!

  “What the hell happened?”

  “Not now, Chastain,” Jon said, pushing Jeff out of the way and frantically typing instructions into the laptop. He waited for a few moments, then pounded the desk in frustration. “Get Bidwell and Henderson out there to check the satellite uplink and network connectivity, now, ” he shouted, jabbing a finger at Jeff. “If they don’t find anything wrong, have them hardwire the computer interfaces with the uplink and antenna instead of using the wireless routers. Reboot the computers and run the network and I-O diagnostics before reinitializing the software. Call Las Vegas and have the entire staff stand by — no, better yet, have them send the entire Sparrowhawk team up here.”

  “Masters, what’s going on?”

  “We’ve lost contact with both Sparrowhawks,” Jon said, staring at the blank data readouts in complete bewilderment. “Losing one is bad, but it happens — losing both at the same time is a freakin’ disaster.” He looked at his watch. “We’ve got two hours until they start heading back to base. Make sure the airspace is clear. I’ll talk to air traffic control and see if they have primary radar hits on either one of them.”

  The next two hours was a flurry of activity inside and outside the hangar. As they got closer to the arrival time, Patrick drove Jon and Special Agent Chastain in the airfield operations truck to the taxiway intersection closest to the approach end of the arrival runway and started scanning the sky for the Sparrowhawks. It was not yet sunset, but the eastern sky was dark enough to prevent seeing any aircraft unless its position and landing lights were on. “What did air traffic control say, Jon?” Patrick asked.

  “None of your business, McLanahan,” Chastain growled as he swept the sky with binoculars. Jon lowered his binoculars, looked at Patrick, and shook his head. “How much longer, Masters?” the FBI special agent asked.

  “Any minute now.”

  Chastain’s cell phone rang. “Chastain.” He listened for a few moments, his eyes growing wider by the moment. “Oh, shit . I’ll be right there… find a TV.”

  “In my office,” Patrick said.

  “What happened?” Jon asked.

  At first Chastain wasn’t going to say anything with Patrick there, but he decided Patrick was going to find out soon anyway: “There are news crews at the Knights’ compound,” he said. “The drone crashed.”

  “What … ?”

  “There are pieces of another plane out there too — they’re saying there was a midair collision,” Chastain said. “It’s all over the damned news.”

  They raced back to Patrick’s office and turned on the television. They expected to see pictures of the crashed drone, but instead they were looking at what appeared to be a large area of scorched desert just south of a multilane divided highway that appeared to be Interstate 80. “What is this ? They’re reporting on a brush fire?” Chastain asked.

  They found out soon enough: the caption on the bottom of the screen read: Scene of the second unmanned aircraft crash near Battle Mountain, Nevada.

  “What in hell … !”

  “ Both Sparrowhawks crashed?” Jon Masters said in a low, stunned voice, almost a whimper. “My God…”

  Chastain’s cell phone was in his hands in a flash. “I want those crash sites cordoned off and all news helicopters kept away,” he said.

  “I’ve got to get out there,” Jon said tonelessly, his eyes wide with disbelief and despair. “I’ve got to find out what happened.”

  “You’re not going anywhere, Masters,” Chastain said, putting a hand over his cell phone’s microphone. “This is still a classified operation.” He turned back to his cell phone. “Jordan, Chastain here. I want…” He fell silent, listening, then veins started to pop out on his forehead. He jabbed a finger at Patrick, then at the door, silently ordering him to get out. After Patrick departed, Chastain yelled, “Get HRTs Four and Five loaded up and on their way out to that compound now . I’ll get Los Angeles and Seattle to send their teams.”

  “What happened?” Jon asked.

  “The damned Knights are dragging pieces of the drone inside their compound,” Chastain said. “The news crews are going in with them. They say they’re expecting the government to respond with force, and they say they’re going to defend themselves and repel all attackers.”

  “You mean they’re stealing my Sparowhawk ?” Jon cried out.

  “Shut up about your damned drones, Masters,” Chastain said. “They’re evidence, and I’m going to get them all back, you can count on that .”

  “Send in the Cybernetic Infantry Device robots,” Jon said. “The robots will get them back.”

  Chastain thought for a moment, then redialed his cell phone. “Richter, I’m going to brief you and Savoy on a mission. Meet me at the drone control desk. We’ll deploy by helicopter in fifteen minutes.”

  They drove back to their hangar, where they met Jason Richter, Charlie Turlock, Wayne Macomber, and FBI agent Randolph Savoy at the Sparrowhawk control center. “Flip back to the last images of the compound,” Chastain ordered. He waited until the right images were displayed. “Okay, here’s where the drone crashed, about two hundred yards outside the main fenced part of the compound, at the edge of one of their crop circles.” He pointed to the machine-gun squads. “Here’s where the terrorists are setting up machine-gun nests, behind cover of these buildings outside the fence. It’s been more than two hours since these pictures were taken, so we’ve got to assume they’ve moved some of these nests closer to the crash site.” He turned to Richter. “Can you pull the wreckage away from the compound?”

  “I’m sure we can,” Jason said. “But if the terrorists are armed with machine guns, we’ll be going into a combat zone. Randolph’s not trained for that, and we have no defensive weapons. Charlie and I will do this mission.”

  “You’re not supposed to have any weapons, Richter,” Chastain said. “First of all, this is an FBI operation, so Savoy goes. That’s what he’s been training for.”

  “Let me go in,” Whack said.

  “Get out of here, Macomber — this isn’t for you,” Chastain snapped. Whack backed up a step; Chastain was going to order him out, but one look at Whack’s dark scowl made him decide to just turn and ignore him.

  “I’ll go in the second CID,” Charlie said. “Randolph and I have been working
together all this time — it’s best to keep us together.” Jason thought about it for a moment, then nodded.

  “Second, I don’t want you to engage with them,” Chastain said to Charlie. “What I’m asking is: Can the robots provide you with enough protection from machine-gun fire to allow you to get in there and drag the wreckage away from the compound so those terrorists can’t take all of it?”

  Charlie thought for a few moments, studying the frozen Sparrowhawk images. “What kind of guns are those, Whack?” she asked.

  “They look like M60 machine guns,” he said after studying the screen for a few moments. “I see a couple others that might be M16s, but bigger. AR-18s on a bipod, maybe.”

  “Well, Turlock?” Chastain urged.

  Charlie turned to Savoy, a look of concern on her face. “The CIDs can take 5.56- and 7.62-millimeter fire at all ranges, even full auto,” she said directly to Savoy. “They can’t hurt you, but you will feel them. It can get really distracting, even disorientating, like bugs or bats flying around your head. You need to—”

  “I can do it, Charlie,” Savoy said. “Let’s go.”

  “If it’s a heavier caliber, like a fifty-cal or twenty-millimeter, at close range with sustained automatic fire, it could damage a muscle joint or sensor, especially in the head,” Charlie went on. “If they use heavier weapons — and your sensors will alert you to the weapon size, direction of fire, and range — you’ll have to protect your forward sensor with your forearms. Try not to use just your hands, because the armor’s not as tough. If you feel heavy automatic fire on you, you have to move right away so you don’t get sustained impacts on one section of armor. The robot’s sensors will tell you if you’re taking damaging fire… sheesh, we’ve hardly talked about the sensors and helmet warning and malfunction readouts—”

  “I understand them pretty well,” Savoy said. “I’m ready.”

  “We haven’t talked at all about a helicopter insertion.” She turned to Chastain. “We can’t do this, Chastain. He’s not ready.”

  “I am ready,” Savoy repeated.

  “Is he ready or not, Turlock?” Chastain growled.

  Charlie looked at Savoy with concern, but nodded. “I’ll be right beside you,” she said. “The best thing to do if you get pinned down by several nests is to run away.”

  “Got it, Charlie,” Savoy said. “Let’s go.”

  Charlie looked at him carefully once more, then nodded at Chastain. “Let’s go.”

  While Charlie and Savoy mounted inside their CIDs, an Army National Guard UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter was flown over to the hangar. The UH-60 was a long-range medevac model with an external fuel tank on a short pylon on each side mounted above the entry doors, plus protective skids surrounding the landing-gear tires. With the helicopter hovering, Charlie showed Savoy the exact place to hold on to the pylon. “You can fend yourself away from the landing gear,” she radioed to him, “but don’t squeeze the pylon, because you’ll snap it right off. Grab onto this cross-member on the pylon, circle your fingers around it, and keep your fingers closed. Don’t squeeze.”

  Minutes later, they were airborne — and the moment they lifted off, Charlie heard a loud CH — CHUNK! on the other side of the helicopter. “Randolph? You okay?”

  “I might have grabbed the pylon a little too hard,” he admitted.

  “You copy that, pilot?” Charlie radioed. “You might lose the left fuel tank.”

  “They’re both empty,” the pilot radioed back.

  “Roger,” Charlie said. “If you feel it coming loose, Randolph, just let it bounce off your back.” She hesitated for a moment, then added, “And if you fall… well, have a nice ride down. You should be okay when you hit.”

  “ ‘Should be’?”

  It was a short flight to the Knight compound. From a hundred feet aboveground and two miles away, Charlie could easily see the Sparrowhawk’s crash site through her telescopic imaging infrared sensors. The residents had several pickup trucks surrounding the crash, with headlights helping workers pull pieces of wreckage free and throw them into the trucks. “Base, looks like they’ve just about got the whole thing — we’re too late,” Charlie said. “There’s four pickups around the crash site full of debris, and it looks like they’re loaded up and getting ready to head back. I recommend we—”

  At that instant Charlie saw a long, thin flash of yellow fire winking from a few dozen yards west, followed by another several yards north. “Ground fire!” she shouted. “We’re taking heavy machine-gun fire! Pilot, break right !” The Black Hawk swung hard to the right at sixty degrees of bank…

  … and as it did, the entire left pylon snapped from the sudden g-loads and broke free, disappearing into the darkness.

  “We lost Savoy!” Charlie shouted, and she let go of the right pylon and fell to earth.

  Her landing on the desert surface wasn’t her best, because the helicopter had been in such a violent turn when she released, and she rolled and skidded across the hard-packed sand and dirt for about twenty yards before regaining her armored feet. She crouched low and scanned the area. The machine guns were still firing into the night sky. Seconds later, her electronic sensors located Savoy, just fifty yards away, and she dashed toward him. He was facedown, motionless, his arms and legs splayed in unnatural directions.

  “I’ve located Savoy,” Charlie radioed. “Randolph, can you hear me? Damn, he looks hurt.” No response. She checked his physiological readouts. “He’s alive but unconscious.” She picked him up in a fireman’s carry, then scanned the area. Several pickup trucks were heading from the west toward them, headlights bouncing wildly as they raced across the desert. “They’re after me. I’ll move east away from these jokers.”

  Just as she started to run, her sensors picked up a burst of heavy machine-gun fire on her armor. “Those bastards have a heavy machine gun mounted on one of those pickups!” she radioed. “Might be a fifty-cal!” The fire was pretty sustained considering she was running and the trucks were bouncing all over the place — those pricks were pretty good gunners, she thought. Savoy, on top of Charlie’s shoulders, was taking most of the hits. “They’re catching up to me,” she radioed. “These guys are driving like maniacs.”

  “We’ve got you in sight,” the Black Hawk pilot radioed. “Keep on coming.” Charlie spotted the Black Hawk in front of her, not more than thirty feet aboveground, heading straight for the pickups.

  “They’ve got a big machine gun,” Charlie radioed. “Break off!”

  “Just keep coming,” the pilot said, as calm and cool as if he were sipping a beer. Moments later, the Black Hawk zoomed overhead, flying better than eighty miles an hour.

  Charlie could hear the machine gun open fire, but no rounds were hitting her. Were they firing at the helicopter? They must have night vision to be able to see it! Just then she saw a flare of light similar to the machine-gun muzzle flashes, but this one was directed down at the ground. Moments later in the sky she saw a burst of fire, followed by a brief trail of fire and loud pops of metal. The roar of the Black Hawk’s engines seemed to surge, then hesitate, then surge again. “Are you guys okay?” she radioed. “Are you hit?”

  “We took some hits — that last one felt like a missile or RPG,” the pilot radioed, still as calmly as before, “but I got it, I got it, I—” And at that second there was a brilliant flash of light, an earsplitting explosion, and a sharp vibration that rolled through the earth under Charlie’s armored feet. She turned and saw a massive fireball blossom across the sky.

  “Oh God …” She ran in the direction of the crash, less than half a mile away, even though she began receiving “POWER 50 PERCENT” warning messages. But as she got closer, she could see the Black Hawk fully engulfed in flames. Soon several pickup trucks surrounded the wreckage, and men began shouting and shooting automatic weapons in the air in celebration.

  “One cannon backpack — that’s all I need,” Charlie said. Angrily, reluctantly, she turned away from the wreckage and
the extremists and headed across the desert to safety.

  Washington, D.C.

  The next morning

  “This is without a doubt one of the most flagrant and outrageous misuses of power since Japanese internment camps during World War Two,” former president Joseph Gardner said. Gardner, a tall and impossibly handsome character bred for politics, was a longtime Washington power player — secretary of the Navy and ardent sea-power advocate, who parlayed his steep buildup of naval forces after the American Holocaust into a successful campaign for president of the United States on a strong national defense platform.

  “Who would have believed,” Gardner went on, “that Ken Phoenix would order the FBI to use military hardware to secretly spy on American citizens, over American soil?” Gardner went on, deliberately not using Phoenix’s title when talking about him. “And then, in an even greater assault on personal freedom, they send two of those manned robots in to attack that community. It’s unthinkable .”

  “Why do you say it’s military hardware, Mr. President?” the morning talk-show interviewer asked. “Unmanned aircraft are used by police and Border Patrol agencies, not just the military.”

  “Both drones were built by a company called Sky Masters, Inc., which is a small but well-known developer of military hardware of all kinds, including weapons, satellites, and aircraft,” Gardner said. “The drones that crashed were called MQ-15 Sparrowhawks. They are capable of carrying up to a thousand pounds of sensors or weapons, including laser-guided missiles, and they’ve been used in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq. That Ken Phoenix actually ordered the FBI to fly potentially armed aircraft over the United States to target innocent American citizens is criminal. And those robots belong to the U.S. Army and are armed with cannons and missile launchers — clearly, military technology, designed to kill. Someone has to be held accountable for this outrage, and the buck stops right on Mr. Phoenix’s desk.”

  “A spokesperson for the Department of Justice said that suspects residing in the compound where the drone crashed were linked to the recent attacks in Reno and southern Nevada,” the interviewer said. “Shouldn’t we be using all the resources we have to investigate such extreme terrorist activity, Mr. President?”