Drone Threat (10 page)

15

Pearce smelled the tobacco stink on Tanaka's breath. The man's bulging eyes were just inches away, mouth twisted in a rictus of hate, arms trembling with exertion.

The dim blue LED barely lit the black void they fought in. Tanaka's fingers dug deeper into Pearce's throat. He panicked, but not from the fight. The closed space was a coffin with the lid nailed shut. He couldn't breathe.

Pearce gripped Tanaka's fingers and twisted with all of his strength, but they were steel bands, unyielding. Pearce was bigger and stronger but Tanaka's hate was stronger still. He felt the man's murderous rage coursing through his quaking hands, cutting off the last air in Pearce's throat.

Now he really couldn't breathe. The oxygen was gone. His lungs burned. Pearce's strength gave way. He strained every muscle to break Tanaka's iron grip. Useless.

Pearce's heart thundered in his ears. Pain exploded inside his skull. The light snapped out.

Pearce shuddered. Tried to scream.

Nothing.

—

PEARCE
'
S EYES SNAPPED
OPEN
. It was dark but not completely, thanks to the blue glow of the digital clock.

3:17 a.m.

His heart raced. He breathed deeply to push away the panic. He
rolled his head to the side. Myers was still asleep. Thank God. Sometimes his nightmares woke her and she could never go back to sleep.

He lay as still as he could, waiting for his heart rate to drop. Reminded himself it was just a dream. The same dream that came to him night after night. There were others, too, but this one was the worst.

He shouldn't have killed Tanaka the way he did. His anger always got the best of him. He fought angry. Always had. Since he was a kid. And all the way through the cage fighting in college. And in the war. Especially the war. Didn't know any other way. He could turn the rage on like a fire hose. Instincts cut in, fear melted away. Early called him the Zen master in battle. Pearce always appeared calm, cool, emotionless. There was machinelike efficiency in his target selection and dispatch. But that was on the outside.

He quit the war, but the fury remained, a smoldering ember deep inside. The slightest breath, and it became a roaring fire.

Tanaka lit the flame when he killed Pearce's old friend Yamada. In his mind's eye he saw Yamada's butchered corpse again, and just like that, the rage welled up like a flash fever.

3:18 a.m.

Pearce tamped the fury back down. Willed his friend's corpse away. He took a deep breath. Told himself again that he shouldn't have killed Tanaka the way he did.

Shouldn't have buried Tanaka alive.

It was the worst death he could imagine, but Tanaka deserved it for the crime he had committed. But then again, who was he to end a life? And who was he that he could end Tanaka's life in such a terrible way?

Pearce sighed. Myers stirred. He froze. Waited for her breathing to slow again. Lying here wouldn't do any good. The dream had dumped adrenaline into his bloodstream like the crack of a large-caliber bullet zipping over his head.

He carefully worked his way out from beneath the sheets and gently lifted himself out of bed. Might as well get prepped for a damned long day. He glanced over at Myers's nightstand. Her bionic pancreas was on the wireless charging pad. The levels looked good.

Pearce went into the walk-in closet to grab his robe. Technically, they still weren't living together, but she'd bought him a few more things since he was there a lot of the time anyway.

Yeah, she was old-fashioned, for sure.

—

PEARCE STO
OD BAREFOOT
in the kitchen as he watched the last of the boiling water disappear in the pour-over filter. It took longer to make coffee this way but it tasted better. He was getting tired of everything he put into his mouth first having to run through plastic tubes. Steel and glass were better. The aroma of the rich, dark roast reminded him of cramming for his comps at Stanford, and of nights hovering over a smoking fire in the stone-cold mountains of Afghanistan. He'd been drinking green tea for years for health reasons, but lately his mouth was watering for coffee again, black and strong. He was wide awake but he knew he'd need the caffeine kick before going back over the mountain of pdfs Grafton had loaded into his secured e-mail folder. No point in showing up to the Spanish Inquisition unprepared. If they were going to burn him at the stake, let it be for telling the truth, not for being stupid.

At least the end of the day would be pleasurable. A drive in the Maryland countryside would be a nice diversion. It would be an important meeting with an old friend developing a new anti-drone system that could prove to be very interesting. But he didn't dare get his hopes up. Building drones turned out to be a whole lot easier than knocking them down.

Tanaka's screaming face flashed in his mind again. Not the dream face. The real one, raging with terror in the fish-eye camera Pearce had installed in the cylinder. In his mind's eye he saw the light snap off again and heard Tanaka's feral screams in the dark.

Pearce tossed the filter and grounds into the trash can and pulled down the biggest coffee cup he could find in the cupboard. He filled it up halfway and took a sip. A smooth, dark roast on the edge of burnt. Perfect.

He set the cup down gently and listened for Margaret. She was a light sleeper but she was exhausted when they came to bed and she had taken a Tylenol PM for a splitting headache.

Certain she was still asleep upstairs, Pearce knelt down in front of the sink and opened the cabinet. He reached far behind the rows of cleaners and detergents until his fingers wrapped around a slim half-pint bottle. He carefully removed the whiskey. He stood and cracked the cap on the brand-new bottle. He sniffed the open mouth. Not the best label he'd ever had, but it was the right size and good enough for a brace against the day ahead. He listened once again for Margaret stirring upstairs. Nothing. He poured until the coffee reached the brim of the cup, then sipped hot coffee down halfway. He set the cup down and poured in some more booze, then sealed the bottle carefully and returned it, closing the cabinet door as quietly as possible. He promised himself he wouldn't buy any more after this one ran out. He wouldn't need it after today anyway, one way or another.

16

CAPITAL YACHT CLUB

WASHINGTON, D.C.

The thirty-four-foot Carver cruiser was docked at the end of the pier. Boating in the Potomac was usually done in the evenings or weekends. The only people who could afford the big boats generally worked during business hours. Nobody was around at this time of the day. That's why nobody noticed the sudden whir of six electric engines exploding into gear and the triangular foam FireFLY6 aerobot lifting gently off the rear deck like a helicopter. The small drone was painted red, white, and blue and looked like a hobby store toy.

The VTOL airplane inched forward until it cleared the Carver's bridge, retracted its landing gear, and rose thirty feet in the air. Its six engines—four on two-engine mounts on the leading edge of the wings, two on a single mount in the rear—were in the vertical position. The FireFLY6 increased its speed marginally as it made its way across the Washington Channel, where it hovered for a just a moment above the East Potomac Tennis Center, its first waypoint. As soon as the autopilot program coordinated with its inertial and optical navigation systems, three servos rotated the six engines into the horizontal position, converting the helicopter into an airplane. It sped effortlessly northwest toward the Tidal Basin, where it reached its next waypoint, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial, then turned north toward the World War II Memorial, the third coordinate in its program. From the World War II Memorial to the target was less than half a mile to the northeast.

It took just two minutes and thirteen seconds for the VTOL aircraft to reach the airspace over the South Lawn of the White House.

—

WASHINGTON
,
D
.
C
.,
AIRSPACE
is the most restricted and protected in the United States. Maybe even the whole planet.

The first line of defense was a layered array of surveillance and detection devices—dedicated satellite, mobile radar, stationary cameras, and acoustic mics around the district and on the White House campus—designed to locate and track conventional aerial assault long before it reached the president's official residence and work office.

The second layer of defense was kinetic. Air defense systems, including mobile antiaircraft missile and machine gun platforms, combined with dedicated combat air patrols circling overhead twenty-four hours a day, were tasked with neutralizing aerial threats like a sea-launched missile or a hijacked passenger jet.

The White House grounds were similarly armed with a variety of antiaircraft systems. As a final defense, hundreds of Secret Service agents and Capitol Hill police guarded the White House grounds, and they had access to a wide variety of weapons—rifles, machine guns, shotguns, semi-auto pistols, and even shoulder-launched antiaircraft missiles—that might conceivably be deployed in a last-ditch effort to take down intruding aircraft.

Unfortunately, none of the layered air defense systems worked if the object itself couldn't be located electronically or visually, typically a problem with smaller, nonconventional airframes like drones. Two solutions to this problem were put in place.

The first solution was the FAA's recent requirement that manufactured consumer off-the-shelf (COTS) drones feature navigation firmware automatically preventing drone vehicles from entering the airspace of airports, military installations, important national monuments and buildings, and other sensitive locations around the country, including Washington, D.C.

The second defense solution was more active. Following a number of accidental drone landings on or near the White House grounds in recent years, a limited electronic shield was installed. It amounted to a dome of signal-jamming radio waves blanketing the likely approach routes of errant vehicles to the White House compound. Once either a radio-controlled or GPS autopiloted drone entered the invisible dome, the signal from the radio controller or GPS satellite signal would be disrupted. In both cases, COTS drone systems were designed to land immediately.

That morning, both solutions failed.

Once the FireFLY6 VTOL crossed the outer White House fence, its servos turned and the engines reoriented to their helicopter position and the landing gear extended. Moments later the aircraft landed dead center in the outdoor basketball court due west of the South Lawn Fountain, scaring the hell out of the groundskeeper emptying a trash bin.

Per security protocols, the groundskeeper immediately radioed the Capitol Police, who, in turn, notified the Secret Service. The basketball court was cleared and cordoned off, and a specially equipped panel van arrived. The drone seemed harmless enough. An accidental flyaway, most likely. The special agent in charge (SAIC) wasn't concerned but she was a stickler for procedure. You just never knew.

Twenty minutes later a remote-controlled ground unit approached the red, white, and blue drone. Infrared and optical cameras, a Geiger counter, and a battery of electronic sniffers found no traces of dangerous explosives, chemicals, or biological or radioactive elements. It appeared to be exactly what it was: a harmless hobby store drone.

It was getting late and the crowd of first responders was growing. Since the drone was most likely harmless, there was no point in drawing attention to it. If the SAIC wasn't careful, a reporter with a camera would show up, and this thing would be all over the nightly news and her ass would be in a sling. She only had six more years until she could draw retirement, and now was no time for a reprimand for wasting scarce Treasury resources. The White House was gearing up for a round
of important visits later that day and the Secret Service detail was already stretched to the limit.

The SAIC told the others at the van to stay back as she snapped on a pair of latex gloves. She walked over to the drone, hoping like hell her instincts were correct. She knelt down and gave it one more visual inspection. No unusual wires or canisters. No suspicious or provocative markings or badges. A digital camera was located in the nose, confirming her theory that the drone was just an expensive toy that got away from some knucklehead with a radio transmitter and too much time on his hands. She lifted the lightweight drone as she stood. She turned it over. On the vehicle's underbelly was another downward-facing digital camera. But what caught her attention was the four-inch square hatch door and a latch marked with a directional arrow and
OPEN
embossed in the plastic.

She took a deep breath as she turned the latch. The door popped open.

She should've stuck with procedure.