War Hawk: A Tucker Wayne Novel (13 page)

Tucker frowned, fearing what this meant, remembering the actions of the drone, how it had seemed to hunt and fire at him all on its own. It must have some autopilot feature, capable of autonomously attacking once a target was acquired.

Tucker knew such robotic drones were currently in various stages of investigation by a slew of military contractors.

Looks like someone is well along that road
.

Tucker examined the CUCS control module. It could be his ticket to escaping this swamp and the hunter in the sky, but he knew nothing about operating drones. With a shrug, he went for the most direct approach: blindly pushing buttons.

What could go wrong?

He tapped the button marked C
LOSE
O
RBIT
ON
S
TATION
. A light blue rectangular box appeared beneath the rows of buttons, along with a miniature keyboard. A flashing prompt appeared, asking for a password.

Hitting this obstacle, Tucker tried tapping the M
AIN
M
ENU
button, but he got the same password prompt.

He sat back on his heels and muttered, “Well, that was too good to be true, wasn’t it, Kane.”

The shepherd wagged his tail.

Tucker rubbed his chin, puzzled by one detail. If this drone is set to fire at will, how did it know
not
to attack this Webster guy or his French partner? He stared down at the portable unit. The most obvious answer was that these CUCS were equipped with a targeting exclusion program, some signal that radioed the drone not to shoot whoever was holding the unit. Which begged the question:
did the device require a command to enable this shielding program?

Tucker stared toward the swamp.

There was only one way to find out.

He gathered what he had taken from Webster, collected his abandoned flashlight, and clipped the MP-5 around his waist. He then headed in the opposite direction from the Frenchman. He reached a broken section of windows on this side and waited for the drone to make a pass and vanish again.

Thirty seconds
.

He boosted Kane through the window, hopped out after the dog, then set off at a sprint for the swamp. He wanted to get under as much cover as possible when the drone returned, just in case he was wrong about the protective shield of this device.

Reaching the swamp, he splashed into the water and aimed for the densest section of cypress trees and tangles of root mounds. A glance at the stars showed him he was still headed on a path that should take him to the country club on the far side of the swamp.

“A half mile to go, buddy,” Tucker promised Kane.

He was counting on the drone backing off once he reached a public space. Whoever was running this campaign certainly seemed to like to keep their secrets.

Tucker continued toward the refuge of trees, waiting for the return of the drone’s engine buzz. As if on cue, the sound rose from the south. Tucker waved Kane toward a nearby root mound.

“H
IDE
.”

Tucker followed the paddling shepherd but he hung back a yard, staying in plain view. He searched the sky and spotted a shifting section of stars, marking the stealth-camouflaged drone’s passage. Ready to leap if it targeted him, he clutched the CUCS in one hand, trying to get it to protect him by sheer willpower.

As he held his breath, the drone whisked overhead—and away. It continued its search pattern, oblivious of its former target. He let out a long sigh of relief. He knew the smartest plan from here would be to make a beeline for that country club. But he knew he had a small window to gather some intelligence about his opponents. So instead he veered at an angle and circled back until he reached a section of bullet-riddled trees.

Using a penknife, he pried one of the rounds free and examined it.

The bullet appeared to be a standard NATO sniper round—7.62 by 51mm—but it sure hadn’t acted like any
standard
bullet. He examined the hole in the trunk, noting the angle of impact—then glanced up. The drone had always fired from
above
the canopy, but the round had entered the tree at a perfectly
horizontal
angle.

Suspicious, Tucker panned his flashlight over the water. After covering fifty feet, he spotted something floating in the water. It looked like a stick, but was too straight and too white for that.

He crossed over and retrieved it. The object—made of some kind of exotic polymer and roughly six inches long—was outfitted with tiny maneuvering fins and had a small bulge on the underside, which he imagined housed a guidance pod.

He glanced over to the tree.

Put
that
round with
this
cartridge, and he suspected what was shot from the drone.

“PGB,” he whispered to the night.

A precision guided bullet.

He turned and stared toward the sky.

What the hell have we stumbled into?

11:48
P
.
M
.

Two hours later, Tucker was back at his motel room and stood under the spray of a blisteringly hot shower, happy to flush the filth and grime of the day away—and to clear his head.

After crossing the last half mile of swamp, he and Kane had slogged out onto the grounds of the country club. He could only imagine the sight they made as they skirted the parking lot: some swamp rat and his muddy dog. Once safely at the club’s valet station, he had called a taxi. From the way the late-night diners at the club’s restaurant had eyed him through the window, he half expected a squad car to come collect them. But a yellow cab had arrived, and the valet was kind enough to sneak them a few towels from the golf locker room to use as makeshift seat cushions.

Their path back to the motel took them past where the SUV had been ambushed. But there was no sign of his Ford Explorer.

Apparently someone had it towed away, likely covering their tracks.

So much for my rental deposit
.

Still, Tucker wasn’t all that worried. As was his habit with rentals, he kept nothing inside that could trace back to him and had used one of three false driver’s licenses and a matching credit card to rent the vehicle. The room was booked under another alias and a different card.

As an extra precaution, before reaching the motel, Tucker had the driver stop at a nearby construction site and acquired a length of two-by-four that was now jammed beneath the door’s knob. Though there was no evidence that anyone had turned over his room, he would change motels tomorrow.

Still, questions nagged at him concerning this ambush.

How had this faceless enemy found him, how did he draw their attention, and how much did they know about why he was here?

The most obvious answer to these questions was one Tucker didn’t want to believe. Only one person knew about his presence here and the reason behind it.

Frank Ballenger.

Tucker reached back and twisted the shower knob from hot to cold. The freezing water jolted him, steeling him for what was to come.

Tomorrow I’ll settle that score
.

10

October 14, 10:02
A
.
M
. CDT

Huntsville, Alabama

The next morning, Tucker put his house in order. He cleared out of his motel, rented a new SUV—a silver Dodge Durango—under a false ID, and headed out to Athens, some twenty miles west of Huntsville. There, he checked into another motel, the Stone Hearth Inn. As Kane sniffed out every corner of the new room, Tucker called Frank Ballenger and arranged to meet for lunch a few miles from the Redstone Arsenal military base.

On his return to Huntsville, Tucker took a detour to the country club and retrieved the confiscated MP-5 rifle he had hidden in some hedges after exiting the swamp last night.

He was taking no chances with this meeting.

As an additional precaution, Tucker arrived at the restaurant an hour early. He canvassed the immediate area: searched the parking lot, noted all the exits and entrances to the establishment, and mapped out the surrounding streets. He then spied upon their meeting location from a Starbucks across the street.

The Cotton Row Restaurant stood on the southwest corner of the city’s courthouse square, occupying a former cotton exchange building. It was a three-story brick structure with patio seating under taupe-colored awnings and a second-floor balcony lined by black iron railings.

Frank Ballenger arrived promptly at noon and sat at one of the outside tables shaded by an awning. Tucker kept watch for a full fifteen minutes, making sure the man hadn’t been followed. Only then did he walk across the street with Kane.

Frank stood up, shook his hand, and smiled down at the shepherd. “I thought maybe you two were standing me up.” He then frowned at Tucker’s arms, which were crisscrossed with scratches and pointed to the small bandage on Tucker’s ear, where a round had nicked him. “What in God’s name happened to you?”

“Got lost in a swamp,” Tucker replied stone-faced.

“What are you talking about? How?”

The man’s shock seemed genuine. Tucker normally trusted his snap judgment of people’s reactions, leaning on his innate talent to read people, but after last night, he remained wary.

“Frank, did you burn me?”

“What?”

Tucker sat down, drawing Frank with him. “After leaving the pub, I got ambushed near the swamp.”

“Ambushed?” Frank leaned back, his eyes rounder. “And you think I . . . Tucker, I wouldn’t do that. Not on my life.”

Tucker stared into the man’s eyes. The other’s gaze didn’t waver.

“First of all, I’d never betray a brother,” Frank insisted. “Never. Second, even if I wanted to, who would I call? I don’t know anybody like that.”

“Could you have inadvertently alerted someone, said something out of hand?”

Frank thought for a moment, then slowly shook his head. “I can’t see how. I didn’t even make any calls about Sandy Conlon until this morning.”

So he couldn’t have accidentally tipped someone off
.

None of this made any sense.

Frank leaned forward. “You gotta believe me.”

Tucker sighed, reading nothing but a sincere genuineness. “I do believe you.”

“Then we’re good here?”

“We’re good.”

Frank let out a long breath, then settled back. “Tell me what happened.”

Tucker recounted the electrical malfunction that had stopped his Ford Explorer on the empty road and the subsequent firefight that drove him into the swamps.

“Hmm,” Frank murmured. “I’m guessing they must have used some sort of remote kill switch to incapacitate your vehicle. Nice.”

“It wasn’t
nice
from where I was sitting. But is such a thing doable?”

“Easy enough. It’s just a matter of wirelessly hacking into a vehicle’s CAN bus.” Frank read Tucker’s wrinkled brow. “Stands for controller area network. Everything on modern cars is digital nowadays, meaning they’re hackable.”

The waitress appeared and took their orders.

Once she left, Frank continued. “I now get why you suspected me. Occam’s Razor: the simplest solution is usually right. But I know it wasn’t me, so how did they get on to you?”

“And who are
they
?”

“Exactly. Who else knew you were down here?”

Tucker wasn’t comfortable mentioning Jane, even to Frank, at least not yet. “Just the person who sent me,” he offered lamely.

Frank seemed to understand his reticence. “And you trust this person.”

Tucker nodded.

“Then they must be tracking you somehow. Maybe your phone.”

“I doubt it. It’s deeply encrypted.” His satellite phone was a gift, courtesy of Ruth Harper at Sigma Force . . . in case she ever needed to reach him or vice versa.

“Let me see it.” Frank held out his palm.

Tucker considered for a moment, then handed it over.

Frank proceeded to efficiently examine the phone: pushing a series of buttons, studying the screen, even opening the back panel and removing the SIM card. He spent a full minute poking around the innards with a plastic pick from a ridiculously complex Swiss Army knife—then he finally reassembled the phone and returned it with a low whistle of appreciation.

“I’m not even going to bother asking where you got it. It’s damned sophisticated, but even this device could be tracked. Though I’ll admit that it’d take some serious know-how.”

“Even if you’re right, it doesn’t explain
how
I got on these hunters’ radar in the first place. They’d have to know about me to think to track me.”

“True. Which brings us full circle back to who else knew you were down here. Could this person who sent you to Huntsville have told someone else?”

Tucker couldn’t imagine Jane doing that. Her level of paranoia when they met in Montana had been sky high. “I don’t think so.”

“Then what about
after
you got down here? Who besides me have you run into? Could someone have tagged you locally?”