Drone Threat (4 page)

5

By the time he made it back downstairs she'd already set the breakfast bar in the all-glass nook overlooking the busy street below. As he sat down, she placed a thick Navy mug of steaming hot green tea in front of him and he took a big slurp.

“Bless you,” he said. His plate was heaped with fried home-style potatoes, bacon, and scrambled eggs. His absolute all-time favorite breakfast.

“Dig in,” she said with a hopeful smile. She didn't cook this kind of fare often.

He glanced at her plate as he splashed spicy Tapatío sauce on his eggs. She had just one piece of bacon, a small mound of egg whites, and a few cut strawberries—low-glycemic fruit. She knew her bionic pancreas would compensate for whatever she ate with automated dosing of glucogen and insulin. But she wanted to maintain as much control as she could over her own body and preferred to eat sensibly rather than allow the machine to correct her bad choices.

They ate in silence for a few moments.

“Is it okay?” she asked.

He grinned, his mouth stuffed with food. He swallowed. “Yeah, that's why I'm not saying anything. It's great. Thanks so much.”

“By the way you're wolfing that down, I'm guessing the liquid diet you were on wasn't quite doing the trick.”

Ouch. He deserved that. “Yeah, well, a bad habit from the bad old days. It won't happen again.”

She laid her hand on top of his. “I'm not judging you. I'm just worried, that's all. You said you'd been fighting this battle for a while now. I hate to see you give in to it.”

She was right, of course, he reminded himself. He half blamed the booze for a friend's death in Mozambique, and the bender he went on afterward nearly got another friend killed in the Elephant Bar down by the docks. He went clean and sober after that and hadn't touched a drop until yesterday. Even after what happened at Fukushima.

“I'm no teetotaler, you know that,” she said. “But the drinking is a symptom.”

Troy felt the heat on the back of his neck. He dropped the fork. “What's that supposed to mean?” The words came out harsher than he intended.

Myers set her fork down and wiped her mouth neatly with her napkin, gathering her carefully selected words.

“I know things went sideways on this mission and I'm deeply sorry. I know you did everything you could, but—”

“But shit happens. That's all. Shit happens. Not my first fucking rodeo.” He picked up his cup and took another sip of tea, trying to tamp down his rising anger.

“You told me this had been a pattern in your life and that you were determined to change it. I just want to help you, that's all.”

“I appreciate it, but I've got it under control. It won't happen again. I just needed to blow off some steam.” He set his empty cup down. She filled it back up.

“I get that, I really do. But you said your dad was an alcoholic, right?”

Pearce nodded, then lifted the cup to his mouth.

“And he was a combat vet, just like you. And he brought the war home with him, and he took it out on you and your mom and your sister.”

“That's all water under the bridge.”

“I know you've put all of that behind you. But he drank to self-medicate.”

“Is that what you think I was doing?”

“I'm just asking.”

“He had PTSD.”

“I know,” she said, nodding.

Pearce saw something in her eyes. “Are you saying I have PTSD?”

“Did your dad ever admit he had it?”

“That was different. He was old-school.”

“Maybe.”

“What's your point, Margaret?”

“I think you should see a counselor. Maybe try and sort a few things out.”

“To stop drinking?”

“No. Like I said, the drinking might just be a symptom.”

“It was just a one-off. You know I swore off the booze.”

“I know.”

“I just slipped up.”

“It's a slippery slope.”

Pearce set his cup down, sat up straighter. “And if I don't stop drinking?”

She shrugged and smiled. “Then you don't.”

“And if I get worse?”

She glanced over at the mountain of bottles in the garbage. “I guess I'll have to buy a bigger garbage can.”

Pearce felt a sudden rush in his eyes, blurring them.
I don't deserve this woman.

He stood up. Paced the floor. “I tried, I swear. I really tried. We could've saved them if that bitch from the embassy hadn't shown up—”

“Then you might be dead.”

“But Tariq
is
dead. And so are those women. And it's my goddamn fault.”

“You didn't kill him or those women. Those bastards did. You tried to help.”

“And how'd that turn out?” He ran his hand through his damp hair, thinking. “Hyssop didn't do us any favors either.”

“It's her job. She was trying to protect the interests of the American government as she saw it.”

“So you're on her side?”

“No, I'm on yours. Always. But I'm trying to help you see hers. She had a job to do and she did it, and as far as I'm concerned, I'm grateful. If she hadn't been there, the Turks might have decided to kill all of you.”

“You know I had to go.”

She nodded. “Of course I do. You explained it. And you're a loyal guy. It's one of the many things I adore about you. But the truth is, you were conducting an illegal operation on foreign soil. It was a risk you were willing to take because you loved Tariq, but a risk is just that—you take a big chance that something might work or it might not. This time, it didn't. But not because you didn't try.”

“What else was I supposed to do?” Pearce headed for the living room. She followed him.

“I don't think there was anything else you could do. We talked about Tariq's situation. President Lane wouldn't have helped—his ‘no new boots on the ground' policy would have prevented any action on the part of the U.S. government, even covert action.”

“That was your policy,” Pearce said. It sounded like an accusation.

“But I'm not the president anymore. He is. It's his administration and it's the law. When you step outside the law, you can't expect the government to support you.”

“Do you think I was wrong?” Pearce stood by a large plate-glass window, staring down at the morning rush hour ten floors below. She came up behind him, wrapped her arms around his waist.

“You did what you thought was right, and you did it for the right reasons. But you were on the outside looking in.”

“Meaning?”

“Sometimes it's easier to get things done when you're on the inside.”

“You mean, go back into government service? The CIA?” His face soured. He'd left the special operations group because he'd lost too many friends in the War on Terror for the sake of political expediency. It was the whole reason why he started Pearce Systems—to pick and
choose battles with a certain moral clarity, and to deploy drone technology to protect his people, and all of it without the intervention of self-serving politicians peering over his shoulder. He'd come to love running his own company and valued his independence after more than a decade of taking orders.

“No. Not that. I just think you should reconsider Lane's offer to head up Drone Command.” Before Myers and Pearce had been dispatched on a secret diplomatic mission to Asia earlier in the year to try to prevent a war between China and Japan, President Lane had offered Pearce the chance to start a new department within his administration. Pearce hadn't turned him down but he still hadn't accepted it, either.

Pearce turned around and faced her. “So you want me to be a suit? Another pencil-pushing bureaucrat?”

“You'd hardly be that. You're the CEO of the world's best drone security company. That makes you uniquely suited to help the United States shape its drone acquisition program in the coming decade. That means you'd be changing America's war-fighting policy more than anything. And policy is where the game is at.”

“I'm used to being in charge now. Kind of hard to put my neck back in someone else's harness.”

“As I recall, you'd be relatively independent, reporting directly to the president. And you'd be building an entire agency from scratch. You'd be setting all of the rules, not following them. It's about as independent as you could possibly be in federal service.”

“Except for congressional oversight, media scrutiny—”

“It would be all black budget. Minimal congressional oversight, total media blackout.”

Pearce scratched his chin. Shrugged. “I'm sure Lane has found somebody else by now.”

“As a matter of fact, his chief of staff called me just last night and asked if you were still interested.”

“Why'd Jackie call you?”

“Because she tried calling you for the last three days and you weren't picking up.” She took him by the hand and led him to the white leather
couch. Pearce remembered another white leather couch slathered in blood on a cold winter day in Moscow. They sat together, still holding hands. Pearce was still processing.

“I remember the first time we met,” Myers said. “I think we both had trust issues.”

“Yeah,” he said. He'd come to loathe politics and, by extension, politicians. Only Early could've persuaded him to meet with then–President Myers who had a job for him to do—off the books. But the two of them took a chance on each other. And she'd proved to him beyond a shadow of a doubt that there were at least a few good men and women in elected government service who could be trusted to do the right thing. President Lane was another one.

“So I need you to trust me on this.” She kissed the back of his hand. “You're one of the most remarkable men I've ever known, and everything I know about you tells me that your heart's desire is to serve this country. You've sacrificed a lot, and you've lost a lot of dear friends for reasons that don't make a lot of sense.”

“My dad, too.” Long since dead of a brain tumor probably induced by Agent Orange. Or more accurately, the lousy VA treatment he never actually got for it.

“But you said that Mossa helped you find your way back.”

He nodded. It took a long, strange trip through the Sahara with a Tuareg chieftain to remember that he was a warrior and that his ultimate purpose was to fight for his country—even though his country was too often governed by half-wits and hustlers on both sides of the aisle. Fortunately, President Lane was neither.

“And you've been trying to do things your own way for a long time. I get that, I really do. But maybe it's time to stop and reassess. Or at least try something different.”

“You mean counseling?”

“For a start. I mean, give it a try. If it doesn't work, walk away. Whatever you need to do.”

Pearce's breathing slowed. He was trying to process everything Myers had said.

“Let's just both sell our companies and run away,” he finally said. “See the world.”

“Sounds like heaven. I think we'd both love it for at least a month or two. But then what?”

“I dunno. Just . . . live. Like normal people. Let the world run itself for a while.”

“And the next time a friend calls and asks for your help? Will you tell him you're too busy cutting the lawn?”

“Maybe I'll get rid of my phone.”

“Yeah, right.”

Pearce scratched his head. Point taken.

Myers curled up against him. “The next time someone calls, you'll be on the inside. The world's too complex and too dangerous to try and fix it on your own.”

“Maybe.”

“I'm not saying to rush into anything, but at least give Jackie a call. See what Lane is actually offering. If you don't like it, walk away with my blessings. And if that's what happens, we'll try it your way. Maybe we'll even buy a sailboat.” She snuggled in closer. He stroked her hair.

“Okay. I'll call. But you better start looking for that sailboat.”

6

The early-morning rush hour in the underground Metro was jammed as always, even at Dupont Circle.

He could only afford to own the historic brownstone in the popular D.C. suburb because he was a childless six-figured federal administrator and his wife an administrative assistant with twenty-seven years of tenure at the Department of Labor. They'd lived there for more than twenty years, long before it became the hipster-yuppie enclave it was today. Still, it was a great walking neighborhood, with some of his favorite restaurants, shops, and markets.

He loved the Metro because he was a people watcher. Liked to size up folks and guess what they were all about. He was pretty good at it, too. He even liked the peculiar smell of sparking steel and burnt rubber and the feel of the circulated air beneath the big half-dome ceilings. It reminded him of his youthful adventures running around on the metros in London, Paris, and West Berlin on summer holidays from college.

The commuters pressed in closer as the Red Line train slowed out of the tunnel, pushing a blast of warm air onto the platform that tousled his thinning hair. Secretaries and systems managers, court clerks and tourists. The D.C. Metro was the last great democratizing institution in the gentrifying metropolis. Of course, the Metro wasn't exactly voluntary. Outrageous parking fees, horrific traffic, and subsidized rail passes all conspired against driving a car in the city. Besides, he was just three stops away from his office on 14th and K, and the office reimbursed him for the annual pass.

The federal administrator bumped shoulders with a tall, handsome man in a custom-tailored suit, sporting a hand-tooled leather briefcase and yammering into the Bluetooth jammed in his ear. The douchebag didn't even bother to look up or say “Sorry,” which would have been the polite thing to do. A typical lobbyist. Probably a litigator, too.

On the other side of him was a twentysomething white kid in a ball cap and dark glasses with his nose pressed against a smartphone. He wore a cheap sport coat with a narrow tie and chinos. A tattered canvas messenger bag was slung over one shoulder. Probably an intern at one of the agencies, he decided. Reminded him of himself some thirty years earlier. Might have even owned the same brand of messenger bag.

An attractive young thing was just in front of him. Her straw-blond hair was gathered up in a tight bun. He was close enough to smell her perfume, floral and sweet. He studied her fine neck and admired the lacy bra straps flashing beneath a thin silk shirt filling out with her full figure. He began to imagine the possibilities with her in an afternoon romp at one of the downtown hotels. If she worked in his office he'd tell her—carefully—to mind the dress code, but down here he was happy to survey the goods if she was willing to show them. He raised up on his toes and tried to glance over her shoulder for a better look at her cleavage, but she moved forward.

The crowd pressed mindlessly closer as the train approached the platform, air brakes squealing. The door to the last car swooshed open and just a handful of people exited. The rest of the passengers in the crowded car, especially the ones in the seats, didn't budge. Now it was his turn to surge in. The space inside was filling up fast. The twentysomething intern with the smartphone stopped short just in front of the door and turned to the administrator. “Go ahead.”

“You sure?” he said back.

“Yeah. I'm sure.”

The administrator leaped into the car, snagging the last possible square inch of space. He turned around to thank the kid before the doors shut, but he was already back at his smartphone, thumbs flying on the screen.

Just as the automated voice warned that the doors were about to shut, a black four-rotored quadcopter marked with DHS letters on its fuselage and a Department of Homeland Security logo came roaring down the stairwell from the street. A tubular package was slung underneath the drone, marked with bright green dollar signs on both sides.

The quadcopter dashed into the Metro car just above the administrator's head as the doors slammed shut. The electric-powered blades whirred like angry hornets in the confined space. The railcar lurched as it leaped forward heading for Farragut North station.

People next to the drone reflexively ducked. A heavyset woman screamed as she fell to the ground, knocking people down with her like bowling pins.

The administrator was smashed against the closed doors by the others trying to get away from the spinning blades. His face pressed against the door glass. He caught a glimpse of the intern still working the smartphone, gyrating it in his hands as if trying to run a BB through a maze game.

A black teenager in a hoodie in the back of the compartment shouted, “Hell no!” and took a swing at the quadcopter with his backpack. He missed.

The cylinder exploded with a crack.

The compartment filled with a white gas as the train pulled away from the station. The drone lunged forward, banging into the low ceiling and scraping along it, clouding the rest of the car as it wobbled toward the far end. Screams, panicked shouts, and choking coughs filled the air as the drone finally crashed against the far wall and tumbled to the steel floor, blades spinning, gas still pouring out of the cylinder.

—

COMMUTERS ON THE FARRAGUT NORT
H
platform weren't paying much attention when the Metro train screeched to a halt. But when the doors of the last car swished open, dozens of passengers surged out like crazed zombies, gasping for air, eyes bloodshot, screaming, coughing, vomiting. Some fell to the redbrick landing while others surged ahead,
scattering the startled commuters on the platform, still waiting to board. Someone screamed, and the waiting crowd suddenly panicked at the terrifying sight. More screams and terrified shouts rose up as the mob broke and ran for the escalators.

The panic swiftly spread to the rest of commuters farther up the platform, uncertain of what was going on. They soon quailed at the sight of the screaming mob. In less than a minute fifteen hundred desperate people were kicking, screaming, and clawing at one another in the manic stampede up the long, crowded escalator toward the light.

As the first of them emerged out of the escalator and into the sunshine, clothes torn, gasping for breath, passersby on the street began to notice. The human flood disgorging out of the escalator exit spilled onto the sidewalk, one after another, including a few of the gassed passengers, clothes slathered in vomit, red faces wet with tears and snot, palming their bloodshot eyes. Some cried out in agonizing pain, others gasped for breath. Others retched on the sidewalk or collapsed to the ground. A few of the passersby moved in to help, but most stood around with their cell phones held high like kids at a rock concert. Even more panicked and ran away as whispers of “poison gas” filtered through the injured crowd. Police and ambulance sirens wailing in the distance grew louder as the subway crowd spilled further onto the sidewalk.

None of them noticed the bearded young black man in a ball cap and dark glasses with a canvas messenger bag slung over one shoulder standing across the street, snapping photos with his smartphone, grinning ear to ear.