PAKISTAN
THE PREDATOR GAINED ALTITUDE, surveying the mountainous terrain below. Considering the aircraft’s size, it packed a formidable punch. With a wingspan of twenty-seven feet and a length of forty-eight feet, the killer was much smaller than a manned fighter, but could easily carry two Hellfire missiles capable of inflicting tremendous damage to a target protected by thick armor, or hidden in caves of thick rock. If the enemy were close by as reported, they would be found by the drone and completely destroyed.
The craft was the king of the drone world and could remain airborne much longer than its manned counterpart, for up to twenty-four hours. Efficient, it was a drone capable of flying over five hundred nautical miles at an altitude of fifty thousand feet. It had incredible vision, using a color nose camera with daylight variable TV apertures and infrared optical sensors. An all weather killer, the Predator could conduct its reconnaissance day or night, and through clouds or haze. Once the target area was located, the Predator would use a quick reaction laser designator to guide in the Hellfire missiles with deadly conclusions. Today’s mission required four Predators and eight Hellfires, the targets – Taliban and Yoorish Shaheed terrorist militants.
Proton and Raza tracked the two Taliban survivors of the mountain firefight for twelve hours, eventually leading the SEAL and his scout up to a hillside enclave of sixty Taliban and Islamic militants. It was just before daybreak when the GPS coordinates of the enemy’s location were transmitted to the Predator team. Located at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan and Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, the team was made up of fifty professionals, including pilots and ground crew, to roll out and recover the four Predator vehicles. The aircraft would be launched from Bagram and be on target in two hours.
A Navy Lieutenant Commander, a drone pilot, sat in front of a terminal console, watching video images displayed on multiple monitors. She was the strike lead. Three other pilots were sitting at similar consoles adjacent to her, each monitoring the same images. U.S. military intelligence and the CIA had coordinated with Pakistan’s Intelligence office, ISI. The position of the Taliban and Yoorish Shaheed operatives was in the southwestern area of the Hindu Kush Mountains, five kilometers east of the Durand line and exactly where Bryan’s team had confirmed them to be. They were just east on the Pakistani side of the border, therefore the unmanned mission was unofficially sanctioned. The green light was given to take the terrorists out.
Both the strike lead and her fellow pilots were maneuvering each respective fighter remotely using joysticks and the computer consoles in front of them, flying via Ku-band satellite data link. The target area was now in site on their monitors. The Predators were flying in sections of two drones each, and honed in on coordinates provided by Proton and Raza. The lead UAV banked toward the target area, the Lieutenant Commander then eased the joystick slightly and leveled the unmanned air vehicle’s wings. The images were coming in clear from a half a world away.
“General, we have acquisition of the target area. Requesting launch clearance,“ the pilot said to the Air Force general standing in back of her right shoulder and monitoring the flights of the MQ-1 Predator system on the large wall flat panels.
“How does it look to you?” The general asked the CIA advisor watching along side him.
“Our man on the ground has given the go ahead. Take out the target.”
“Cleared to engage Commander,” the General advised.
“Roger that sir.” She banked the UAV and began a shallow dive toward the target area. The three other UAVs mimicked her flight path, and moments later two of those broke off into a section flight of their own. The two sections of UAVs now established a bracket of the target area.
Fifty plus Taliban and Islamic Yoorish Shaheed militants were outside of a small stone shelter that also served as a storehouse for weapons and ammunition. Two Predators trained lasers on the doorway of the shelter, as the other two UAVs sighted the entrance to a small cave, an enclave that gave temporary protection for the band of militant militia. A dozen or more other Taliban were collecting what little gear they had, preparing to break camp and move out. By effectively bracketing the target area, a flanking strategy using missiles, the attack should be successful in destroying the weapons cache, and severely damaging the capability of this particular element of Taliban and other combatants, if not killing them all.
At an altitude of ten thousand feet, Predators one and two closed to within one and a half miles of the designated target, each launching a Hellfire 114A missile in succession. Using cursors, the pilots, a half a world away, painted the target and guided the beam riders into the stone shelter, both missiles hitting their mark within inches. Packed with warheads of shaped charges, an extremely high velocity jet of metal, so hot it was in a near plasma state, the explosive moved at hypersonic speeds twenty five times faster than sound. The maximum energy of the explosive was focused directly at the shelter, completely obliterating it.
Simultaneously, the third and fourth Predators launched two AGM-114N Hellfires at the largest mass of enemy near the entrance of the enclave, using specially designed warheads of thermobaric overpressure charges and metal, optimized to inflict the maximum damage possible on personnel. The pilots and engineers called it, “a shrapnel concussion bomb.” And the black and white images on the monitors spoke for themselves, indicating successful impact and detonation as the screens turned bright white from each of the flashes. Immediately, the Commander and her team fired a second wave of missiles. The devastation was complete, leaving zero chance for survivors. Exultant cheers and handshakes ensued around the control room back at Nellis, and in top secret viewing rooms elsewhere. The drones were flown back to Bagram and landed by the pilots for CIA ground crew pickup.
DJ, a Black Ops officer, turned off his monitor back in London. He’d watched part of the evolution while listening to Led Zeppelin’s “Gallows Pole.”
In Pakistan, Bryan sat down by a rock as the team waited for the Black Hawk and the escort to take them to Bagram. He’d time to use the SATCOM relay and make a quick call on the iPhone Nano.
“Go ahead,” the quiet voice acknowledged.
“Mission here’s complete. I’m RTB at this time and will be back in Dubai within twenty-four hours. I’ll update you once I’ve made it there.”
“Sounds grand. Stay safe and good luck.”
“One other thing – the principal here’s dead.”
“Rehman’s dead?” the voice asked.
“That’s affirm,” Bryan said, preferring not to break protocol by using names.
“Were you there when it happened?”
“Yep,” Bryan said, checking his gear before moving out.
“How do ya know it wasn’t meant for you?”
Bryan thought for a second before answering. “That’s a good question. I don’t.”
A half a dozen other interested parties were also turning off their own flat panels: at Langley, the head of counter-terrorism; at the White House situation room, the counter-terrorism czar; and in London, MI6 and the Home Secretary’s office. In five hours, Bryan would meet with the CIA’s area station chief, the principle in charge of covert operations throughout Afghanistan and Pakistan. Between now and then, he’d try to put it all together.
The pilots put down their headsets, preparing for the post flight debrief and review of the video. The Lieutenant Commander thanked her fellow pilots for a job well done, and got right into the mission’s pros and cons, “Gentleman, as always good mission. All Taliban and militant elements were destroyed as you can see by the video, as well as the complete destruction of the weapons cache. We’ll forward our report to the civilian advisors that were either present during the sortie, or monitored the mission from remote locations.”
After finishing the brief and submitting the necessary post-mission assessments, she called together the mission team members once more. “Just want to let ya’ll know that my husband and I’ll be expecting everybody at our house two weeks from tomorrow. It’s his forty-second. They’ll be steaks, baked potatoes, burgers, hotdogs, beer and wine. All kids are welcome of course. And bring your bathing suits. The new pool’s finally finished. So please don’t miss it. That’s an order,” she said, joking with her flight team.
“Think you’ll be able to drink some of that beer with us Commander?” one of the other pilots asked.
“I sure hope so – it’ll be reason to celebrate even more. See ya’ll tomorrow and be safe,” she said.
She walked unescorted out of the building and to her car in the parking lot. A Lexus SUV. It was only a twenty-minute drive back home to the house in the suburbs of Las Vegas. Traffic was light. Arriving home, she pulled into the garage, got out and went inside. Her first stop was the refrigerator. She was hungry. Dill pickles and vanilla ice cream sounded good. She mixed them together in a bowl to enjoy while she relaxed on the sofa in the family room.
“I’m so tired,” she said, the empty bowl resting on her pronounced belly. She couldn’t see her feet. Looking sideways she caught her profile in a mirror, shook her head and smiled.
“Street – you’ll be lucky to get through the next week without going into labor,” Lieutenant Commander Crystal Sizemore said to herself as she felt a kick.
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