Текст книги "Drone Strike"

Автор книги: Dale Brown

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Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

5

Dreamland

TODAY WAS GOING TO BE A GREAT DAY, TURK MAKO decided as he rolled out of bed. Or at least as great a day as you could have without flying.

Heck, he might get some flying in. His only officially scheduled duty was to sit through a boring engineering session on the nano-UAVs. Then he was officially off-duty, free, liberated, unchained, for seventy-two hours, which would be spent in the delicious company of Li Pike, his girlfriend.

She was flying in this evening. Li, an Air Force A-10 pilot attached to a unit Turk had hooked up with in Africa, had managed to wangle leave from her own unit so they could be together.

Which reminded him—he had to check on the hotel reservation. And the car.

He couldn’t cruise Vegas with the Office of Special Technology Malibu he’d been assigned as personal transportation. A vintage Mustang convertible would be much more like it.

Dinner reservations. He needed to make dinner reservations. A quiet place, not too far from the hotel, but not in the hotel. He didn’t want to seem too anxious.

Turk turned the coffeemaker on and headed for the shower. The “single occupancy/officer/temp duty” apartments at Dreamland dating from the late 1990s were drab and boring. Worse, they had paper thin walls. Not appropriate for how he hoped the night would go.

Turk’s good mood was threatened a bit when he emerged from the shower to find that the coffee machine had malfunctioned, sending a spray of liquid and grinds around the counter area. He managed to salvage a single cup, which he downed while cleaning up. No big loss, he decided: there was always better coffee in the engineering bunkers. The geeks might not be much to look at, but they brewed mean java.

Turk’s spirits remained high as he approached the guards to the Whiplash building. He waved his credentials at them, then submitted to the mandatory fingerprint and retina scan set up just inside the door. Cleared, he sauntered down the long ramp to the main floor, pausing at the small coffee station near the elevator. He’d just finished helping himself to an extra-large cup when Breanna Stockard called to him from down the hall.

“Turk? Can we talk for a minute? In my office?”

“Sure boss, but, uh, I got a meeting downstairs.”

“This won’t take long.” Breanna ducked back inside the doorway to her office.

Turk topped off his coffee and went on down the hall. While Breanna was generally at Dreamland at least once a month, her office there had a temporary feel to it, and was radically different from the high-tech command center she used on the CIA campus. Even her Pentagon office, which was modest by command standards, seemed spacious if not quite opulent compared to the Dreamland space.

“You’re not going to make me pay for Old Girl, are you?” said Turk, plopping down into one of the two stiff-backed wooden chairs in front of her desk.

“Pay?” Breanna asked as she closed the door.

“Just a little joke.”

“You did a great job. The admiral wants to give you a medal.”

“Really? The tight-ass admiral?”

“Turk.”

“I didn’t call him that to his face.” Turk retreated quickly. Blackheart actually had one of his aides buy him a drink, so he wasn’t all bad. For an admiral.

“I need you to be serious, Captain.” Breanna was sitting ramrod straight.

“Yes, ma’am.” Turk took a sip of coffee and copied her posture.

BREANNA HAD AN ENTIRE MENTAL SCRIPT MEMORIZED and rehearsed, but for some reason couldn’t seem to get it started. She looked into his face, found his eyes, and forced herself to talk.

“We . . . have a special assignment. It’s very dangerous,” she started. “It involves . . . flying the nano-UAVs.”

“Flying them?”

“Directing them. As a backup, actually. But as you saw yesterday, we still need someone in the loop in an absolute emergency.”

“Yup.”

“I need a volunteer. I– You’re probably the only one qualified.”

Probably the only one? Breanna silently scolded herself: she hadn’t planned on saying that at all.

“Where is this assignment?” he asked.

“I have to tell you—it’s very dangerous.”

“Great. I’m in.”

“Uh—”

“It’s combat, right? I want in. Definitely.”

“It’s . . . it is a combat operation,” said Breanna, surprised by his enthusiasm, though she realized now she should have expected it. “I can’t give you many details until—unless—you decide to do it.”

“I already decided. Where am I going?”

“It’s in Iran,” she said. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

“Iran? Hell, yes. Hell, yes.”

“You’d have to start training right away. It’ll be intense.”

“Right away when?”

“We have a site in Arizona. We’d need you there as soon as possible. Tonight, preferably.”

“Tonight?”

Finally, she thought, he was listening with his brain rather than his heart.

“You can still back out,” she told him.

“No, no. It’s just, I kinda had plans for this weekend.”

“It’s not a question of being brave,” said Breanna, not quite parsing what he said. “This is voluntary. I mean that. Walk out of my office and I’ll have forgotten the whole thing.”

“No, I’m doing it. It’s tonight, though. That’s all I need. The night. I’ll report first thing in the morning.”

Breanna recognized the furrowed eyebrows and locked mouth—Turk had dug in, afraid that in some bizarre way his manhood was being questioned. She’d seen that look on the face of practically every male pilot she’d ever dealt with, including her husband’s. Once set, there was no way for them to back down.

But he did genuinely want to do it. She could read that as well.

“You can report tomorrow?” she asked gently.

“Deal.” He jumped to his feet and held out his hand to shake. “Thanks, boss.”

Breanna rose. His handshake was firm and enthusiastic.

“I’ll have Lisa make the arrangements,” she told him. “You’ll have a civilian flight to Arizona—the tickets will be in your e-mail queue by this evening.”

“Thanks.”

Oh God, she thought as she watched him leave. Did I do the right thing?

TURK KICKED HIMSELF ALL THE WAY DOWN THE HALL. He could have gotten the entire seventy-two hours off if he’d been smart about it.

But he wanted to get back into the swing of things. Feel the adrenaline he’d felt over Libya. He wanted to get back into combat.

Li wasn’t going to be happy about the timing, though. They’d planned this for weeks—months, since they’d met.

But he’d be back in the thick of things, flying. Controlling the nano-UAVs meant he’d be in the air close to them.

And Iran—this was going be something real.

TURK MET LI AT THE BAGGAGE CLAIM. HER LIPS WERE softer than he remembered, her hug more delicious. Oblivious to the crowd passing on both sides, they wrapped themselves together, merging their bodies in long delayed desire.

By the time their lips parted, Turk felt more than a little giddy. He was tempted to blow off the dinner reservations and go directly to the hotel, but Li’s appetite prevailed. Halfway through dinner at the fancy rooftop restaurant the glow on her face convinced him he’d made the right choice.

But it also made it hard to tell her that he had to leave in the morning.

It got harder with every minute that passed. Turk ordered himself another beer, then a glass of rye whiskey when she ordered dessert.

“It’s a beautiful view,” said Li, glancing toward the window. With the sun down, the rooftop patio was no longer oppressively hot, and when she suggested they have a nightcap at the bar there, Turk readily agreed. Words were growing sparser and sparser, and yet he knew he had to talk—had to tell her what was up. But he felt paralyzed.

Every day at work, testing planes or in combat, he made dozens of decisions, immediately and without hesitation. His life, and often those of others, depended on it. He’d learned long ago that worrying too much about whether a decision was right or wrong was worse than making no decision at all. You were always going to do something somewhere sometime that might be wrong; you did your best to keep those numbers down, but you didn’t obsess. Otherwise you did nothing.

And yet he couldn’t move now.

Just blurt it out, he thought. And yet that seemed impossible.

The alcohol was just enough to make him a little sloppy; he held Li’s hand awkwardly as they sat at a small wooden table near the edge of the roof, staring at the city spread out before them.

“Great night,” said Li.

“Definitely.”

“It’s still early.”

“The hotel is pretty close.”

“Is it?”

Her smile made it impossible to say anything else. Turk paid the bill and led her to the car, and a half hour later they were in bed. Time had completely disappeared, and conscious thought as well—for Turk there was only her skin and her scent, her hair and the inviting softness of her breasts.

He drifted off, only to wake with a start an hour later. He still hadn’t told her. Li was sleeping peacefully. Turk got up, pacing the hotel room—he had to tell her, but to wake her up?

He didn’t even know what time he had to leave. He turned on his laptop, angry with himself—what a fool, what an absolute idiotic, ridiculous fool. A damn teenager. An imbecilic middle school kid.

As he tapped his password into the screen, he suddenly found himself hoping the mission had been called off. When he didn’t see the e-mail among the first few entries, he nearly yelped with joy: maybe he had a few days reprieve. Even twenty-four hours, even twelve, would suffice.

But there it was, down at the very bottom, between a nudist site link a friend had sent and an advertisement for car insurance.

PLANE LEAVES AT 0705. BOARDING PASS ATTACHED. CIVILIAN DRESS.

Turk took a beer from the minifridge and paced back and forth through the room. He had to tell her, and he had to wake her up. And God, how was he going to tell her?

He could lie and say it had just come up. He just got the e-mail—not in itself a lie, actually.

Technically.

“What are you doing?” Li asked from under the blankets.

He looked at her. Her eyes were still closed.

“I, uh—damn.” Turk sat in the chair opposite the bed.

Li opened her eyes. “What?”

“I . . .” He knew he was only making it worse by delaying. He ordered his mouth and tongue to speak—better to blurt it out. “I have to leave in the morning on an assignment. It, um, just came up.”

“Huh?” She pushed herself up, propping her head with her right hand. “What’s up, Turk?”

He hated himself. If he was a braver man, he’d leap out the window and disappear.

“I have—something came up today, something important.”

For a moment he thought he would lie—just show her the e-mail and say nothing else. But he couldn’t lie to her. Something in her eyes, in the look she was giving him: it wasn’t disappointment entirely; there was more—loss and vulnerability. He was hurting her, and lying would only make that worse, much worse. Because he didn’t want to hurt her. He loved her, though he’d never used that word.

“I’ve been putting off telling you. They need me to do something really important. I have to leave for Arizona in the morning. I’m sorry. I should have told you, but I couldn’t. I didn’t want to ruin the night.”

Li slipped out of the bed, naked. She walked across the room and put her fingers to his lips.

“It’s OK, Turk. I understand. I know it must be important.”

She kissed him, and they folded their bodies together, hers warm, his cold. They went back to bed and made love, though their thoughts were already both moving far apart.

6

Arizona, three days later

THIS WAS NOT WHAT HE HAD IN MIND. NOT AT ALL.

Turk kept his head down as he ran through the scrub at the foot of the hill. Two men were following him, but he was more concerned about what lay in the hills. The curve ahead looked like a perfect place for an ambush.

When Breanna told him that he’d start training right away, he assumed she meant working with the nano-UAVs. But he hadn’t seen the aircraft, or any aircraft, since arriving at the “camp” in the Arizona scrubland. Instead, training had been more like SERE on steroids.

SERE—Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape—was the Air Force survival course designed to help prepare pilots who bailed out over enemy territory. It had never exactly been his favorite class. He’d taken the course twice at Fort Bragg, and nearly washed out both times.

This was a hundred times worse. He’d been here five days and trained the entire time; no breaks. The sun beat down relentlessly during the day. Nighttime temperatures dropped close to freezing. The ranch covered thousands of acres, with hills of all sizes and shapes. There was a dry streambed, an almost wet streambed, and a raging creek. Name a wild beast and it was most likely hiding behind a nearby crag.

The remains of ranch buildings abandoned some thirty or forty years before were scattered in various places. Turk had visited them all, running mostly, occasionally under live fire. For a break the first day, he’d spent two hours on a target range with rifles and pistols nearly as old as he was. That was fun, but as soon as his trainers saw that he was a comparatively good shot—he’d won several state marksman competitions as a Boy Scout—they replaced the gun instruction with more survival training.

They were very big on running, especially from armed pursuers, as he was doing now.

Turk slowed as he reached the crease of the hill, trying to catch his breath and listen. He needed to keep moving, but he didn’t want to fall into a trap.

It was morning, or so he thought—his watch had been taken from him upon arrival. Assuming it in fact was morning, he put the sun over his shoulder and faced what he reckoned was north. His objective lay in that direction.

As he turned, he thought he saw something flickering on the ground in the pass ahead.

A trap?

He couldn’t retreat; the two men chasing him were no more than five minutes behind. Going straight over the top of the hill and trying to ambush whoever was hiding probably wouldn’t work either; he’d been caught in a similar situation the day before, ambushed in his own ambush by a lookout.

Turk stooped and picked up a few small rocks. Then he slipped along the face of the slope, moving as quietly as possible. When he was within three feet of the point where the side of the hill fell off, he tossed two of the rocks down in the direction of the trail. Nothing happened for a moment. Then the barrel of an AK-47 poked around the side of the hill, eight feet below him.

He waited until a shoulder appeared, then launched himself.

The gun rapped out a three-shot burst. Turk’s ears exploded. His fist landed on the side of the man’s face and both of them went down, Turk on top. He punched hard with his right fist and felt the other man’s body collapse beneath him. Turk gave him another punch, then leapt for the rifle, which had fallen to the ground.

He had just reached the stock when something grabbed his leg. He flailed back with the gun, gashing the man he’d jumped hard on the forehead. Blood began to spurt. Turk got to his feet as the man collapsed, horrified yet satisfied as well.

“Hey!” Turk started to yell, his shout was cut off by a thick arm that grabbed him around the throat and began choking. He kicked, then remembered one of the techniques he’d been taught on day two. He grabbed at the elbow with both hands, pushed his chin down, then tried to hook his leg behind his enemy’s, turning toward the arm holding him. But his attacker anticipated that and managed to move around with him. Turk kept trying, shrugging and pulling his shoulders as the other man tightened his grip. Finally, the uneven ground became an ally—they fell together. Turk tried rolling away but the other man’s arm remained clamped to his neck.

“Knock it off! Knock it off!” yelled Danny Freah, appearing above them. Freah was the head of Whiplash’s special operations ground unit and ostensibly in charge of the training, though Turk had only seen him on the first day, and then for about thirty seconds. “Knock it the hell off! Now!”

Turk’s attacker gave him one last squeeze, then pushed him away. Turk coughed violently as he caught his breath. Meanwhile, two men in black fatigues ran out from behind the hill and began attending to the man Turk had bloodied. The man was sitting upright, his entire face a thick frown. As soon as the medics saw he was OK, they started teasing him.

“Pilot beat the shit out of you good, Jayboy,” said one.

“The geek owns your ass now,” said the other.

“Fuck yourself,” said Jayboy. He was in green and brown digi-camo, like the man who’d been choking Turk. “Both of you.”

“I’d say you gentlemen are doing a good job.” Danny put his hands on his hips. “An excellent job. A Delta Force job.”

Jayboy grumbled a curse under his breath. Turk offered his hand to the man who’d been choking him. The soldier frowned and brushed past, joining the knot of soldiers who’d been trailing him and were just now catching up.

“Hey, Grease, no hard feelings,” Turk yelled after him. “You taught me that release. I almost got it.”

Grease—Jeff Ransom—didn’t answer. That wasn’t uncharacteristic, and in some ways was even an improvement: the six-six Delta Force sergeant first class was generally openly antagonistic. But it peeved Turk—in his mind, he’d fought to a draw against big odds. That meant he had gotten the better of his trainers, finally, and the soldiers ought to admit it. They’d sure ranked on him when they had the advantage.

Jayboy—his real name was Staff Sergeant Jayson Boyd—knelt with his head back now, clotting the bleeding in his nose. Turk went over to him and apologized.

“I’m sorry I bashed you,” said Turk.

“Forget it,” grunted Jayboy.

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m getting better, huh?”

“Fuck you, Pilot.”

“Turk, you’re with me,” shouted Danny. “Everyone else, knock off for the day. We’re done.”

Finally, thought Turk. Playtime is over. Now I get to fly.

Tired and sore but floating on a wave of triumph, Turk fell in behind Danny. He walked as fast as he could manage but quickly lost ground. His clothes were sopping with sweat and every muscle in his body ached.

He’d considered himself in good shape until this week. The Delta trainers had ragged him about that: “Come on, Pilot. You’re in good Air Force shape. Now it’s time to live with real standards.”

Pilot.

It was the first time Turk had ever heard that used as a slur.

When Danny reached the Humvee, he waved the driver out of the vehicle and got in behind the wheel. He backed the Humvee into a U-turn and waited for Turk.

“I see you’re getting the hang of things,” Danny said as Turk climbed in.

“I didn’t mean to bash him so hard.”

“Hell no, hard is good.” Danny smiled as he put the Humvee in gear and sped away. They skipped the turnoff for the cafeteria—a barn that had been very slightly modified—and headed toward the county highway that divided the property in half.

Maybe we’ll get lunch someplace nice, thought Turk. But when they reached the road, they went straight across, driving along a scrub trail.

“Pretty country,” he told Danny.

“Very nice.”

“So I guess you’re going to tell me what’s going on soon, right?”

“We’ll be there in a few.”

Minutes? Hours? Danny didn’t say. Turk knew better than to press the colonel any further, and contented himself with gazing out the window, looking for the rabid coyotes the Delta boys had warned him about. The parched scrubland became somewhat greener as they drove south along the trail, the hilly land husbanding runoff in underground aquifers. About halfway through the pass, the road narrowed and the sides of the hills sharpened. A week before, Turk would have looked at the etched sandstone and thought how pretty it looked; now he saw it as a perfect place to ambush someone.

The Humvee kicked up a good cloud of dust as they came through the pass. Danny turned to the right, leaving the trail and driving through a flat piece of land. Boulders were sprinkled amid the thigh-high grass; Danny veered left and right to avoid them, navigating to a dry creek bed. Here he turned right, following up it a hundred yards before finding a trail on his left; the trail led to a road, dirt but hard-packed and relatively smooth. Finding the going easier, he sped up.

A sharp curve took them to the head of a valley. A house spread out along the crest of the hill ahead rested like a giant with its arms saddling the rocky top. The sun, now almost directly overhead, glinted off the massive window at the center, the rays pushing aside the massive wooden beams that framed the facade and held the green steel roof and its solar panels in place. The exterior was all glass and logs, though the place could not be called a log cabin without a great deal of irony.

The road stopped about a third of the way up the hill. Danny turned right across a stretch of rough rock bed, bumping his way up a slight incline and around another bend until he came to a driveway of red gravel. This led him toward the house in a series of switchbacks, until at last the back of the structure appeared. An immense portico shaded a cobblestone driveway that circled around the entrance.

Danny parked in the center and got out. Turk followed him into a wide hallway, where they were met by a man in black fatigues. Though imposingly large, the man had no visible weapons, not even a sidearm; he gave Danny an almost imperceptible nod as they moved through a small room and into a narrower hall, passing steps on either side and a pair of bathrooms before entering a large great room faced by the windows Turk had seen from the Humvee.

Four massive couches with attendant armchairs and tables failed to fill the room. The floor’s large flagstone tiles, irregularly shaped and each covering at least five square feet, were overlaid by hand-woven rugs. A pair of fireplaces, each large enough for a man to stand up in, flanked the sides of the room.

Ray Rubeo stood in front of the fireplace on the left, arms folded, staring at the tangle of unlit wood in the iron pit.

“Hey, Doc,” said Danny, walking toward him.

Rubeo turned slowly, apparently lost in thought. The scientist headed a private company, Applied Intelligence, one of the Office of Special Technology’s prime contractors. It was responsible for the AI that guided the Hydras, but that was far from its only contribution to either the command or its Whiplash subcomponent. Rubeo had personally worked on a number of projects Turk had been involved in, including the Tigershark II and the Sabre unmanned attack plane. He was an austere man, peculiar in the way geniuses often are. He was also, as far as Turk knew, rich beyond his needs. But the scientist seemed deeply unhappy, constantly frowning, and acerbic even when generous levity would have been more appropriate.

Rubeo stared at both of them for another few seconds before finally offering a greeting.

“Colonel.” He nodded. “Captain. Have you eaten?”

“I haven’t,” said Turk. “I’m famished.”

“We have a tight schedule,” said Danny. “Things have been pushed up.”

“Yes,” said Rubeo, in his usual withering tone. He was the only man Turk had ever met who could make yes sound like a curse word. “You can eat while I talk,” Rubeo offered. His tone was nearly magnanimous, certainly in contrast to what had come before. “Let’s see what Wendy can make for you, and then we’ll go downstairs.”

RAY RUBEO HAD ASKED IF THEY WANTED FOOD AS A way to delay the briefing, if only for a few moments, but now as he watched Turk Mako eating the turkey sandwich he couldn’t help but feel worse, as if he were watching a condemned man’s final meal.

At least in that case the man would have deserved his fate.

“How much have you figured out on your own, Captain?” asked Rubeo, walking to the side of the basement conference center, a secure area dug deep below the main floor of the house. The building belonged to one of Rubeo’s companies, as did the range where Turk and the Delta team had been practicing. Occasionally used by Special Technology to test out equipment, the property was mainly leased to Delta and SOCCOM, the U.S. Special Operations Command, for various training and practice exercises. It had once been three separate ranches; Rubeo bought them all and merged them to make a property large enough to keep the curious far at bay.

“I’ve been too busy to make guesses,” said Turk. “They’ve been running me nuts. But if we’re talking Iran, I assume we’re going to strike their nuclear facilities.”

“One facility,” said Rubeo. “Just one.”

“This one is special,” said Danny. “It’s hard to get to, and it’s their newest facility. We need to move quickly, while we still have a chance. Even more quickly than we anticipated a week ago.”

“OK, sure,” answered Turk.

Rubeo rubbed his earlobe. There was a small gold-post earring there, its tiny surface smooth from his habit of touching it whenever he encountered a difficult moment, large or small. He waved his hand in front of a small glass panel on the side wall. The lighting dimmed and the wall at the front of the room turned light blue, a presentation screen appearing as lasers in the floor and ceiling created a visual computer screen that took up most of the space. “This should answer most of your questions. It will show the target and the general theory. Please wait until it has finished to ask questions.”

“OK.” Turk took another bite of his sandwich.

Rubeo folded his arms as the video presentation began. There was no sound; he supplied the running narrative.

“The target is accessible through a set of air shafts, utility conduits, and hallways. The main obstacles are at the mouth and a pair of air exchange mechanisms about fifty meters into the facility. Once you navigate past those, the rest becomes easy.”

The screen showed a louvered metal air scoop about three feet high by eight feet wide. The next image showed a mesh screen behind the louvers; this was followed by a schematic.

“We haven’t actually seen the face of these,” added Rubeo, hitting pause by pointing at the lower left corner of the screen. An infrared camera read his gestures. “Due to some technical problems with detecting fine mesh. That means it’s possible there will be no screen. But we are planning for a screen.”

He lowered his finger and the video continued.

“The first thing you’ll do is blow a hole through the screen,” said Rubeo. “There are no electronics in the area of the intakes, and we assume therefore that there are no detection devices, and the explosion will go unheard. In any event, it’s doubtful that there are any measures they can take to stop the attack.”

“I’m hitting it with missiles?” Turk asked.

Rubeo halted the show and glanced at Danny.

“The nano-UAVs,” said Danny.

“That’s why you’re here,” said Rubeo. “Why did they say you were chosen?”

“The Hydras are still being tested.”

“They’re the only weapon that can destroy the bunker,” said Rubeo. “Because of the configuration. You’re going to fly them right into the deepest part of the facility and blow it up.”

TURK LEFT THE REST OF HIS SANDWICH ON THE PLATE as Rubeo continued. The mission he was outlining was radical in the extreme. A small group of nano-UAVs would enter through air shafts hidden in a cave. After breaking through an air exchanger and flying down a series of conduits, they would enter the work space and find a room with the targeted equipment. When they ignited, they would set off a large explosion, weakening and hopefully destroying the entire structure.

There was an incredible amount of intelligence behind the presentation Rubeo was moving briskly through. The amount of detail on the air shafts was stunning—dimensions, material, even details on soldering flaws. Turk could see that the operation must have been in planning for months.

Even so, the intelligence had not been perfect. Danny made it clear they were pushing up the timetable.

“What am I flying these from?” Turk asked. “The Tigershark?”

“No,” said Rubeo. “That’s too risky. You’ll get a helicopter in Iran.”

“A helicopter? I can’t fly one. I mean, I can learn—”

“You’re not going to fly it,” said Danny. “We have a team in place to help you.”

“It’s regrettable,” interrupted Rubeo, “but the UAVs have a very limited control range, as you know. In a few months, we will have that solved. But for now . . .”

He shook his head.

“I have to fly them into the facility?” asked Turk.

“You are not actually flying them, Captain. Your only function is to guide them if there is trouble. You are the override.” Rubeo’s lips curled in a smirk. “Their roles and routes will be preplanned, but if there is a problem, or a contingency we haven’t planned for, we will need you there. You have done this before.”

“I’ve done more than that.”

“You’ll have to get within five miles of both sites,” said Danny, interrupting. “A Delta team is already in-country to help assist you. They’ve been scouting the sites.”

“Five miles is the absolute limit of your range,” said Rubeo. He looked over at Danny. “Closer would be better. May I continue?”

Danny nodded. Neither he nor Turk interrupted again.

RUBEO SPOKE MOSTLY ABOUT THE CONTROL UNIT AND how the modified UAVs differed from the ones Turk had worked with. The technical aspects were far from Danny’s domain, and he felt like a bystander. And in fact he was, removed from even the actual attack itself.

The plan was the latest of a long campaign to thwart Iran’s dogged efforts at building a nuke. It was the most recent variation in a line of contingencies aimed at taking down the hidden installation. It was better protected than any of the others involved in the Iranian program, deeper and more cleverly constructed. The team inside Iran hadn’t been sent to plot the nano-UAV strike; they were actually in place to assess the effects of a nuclear strike if the President ordered it to proceed. This attack was a recent brainstorm; it had been proposed by Rubeo after he was asked to consult on the analysis of some of the Iranian equipment detected at the site.

Because of that, the ground operation remained a Delta Force show. That meant there would be no Whiplash people at all on the mission. Danny had no doubt about Delta’s professionalism or capabilities; while by design Delta avoided publicity, its handpicked members represented the elite of the world’s military. He himself had worked with Delta on several occasions, with very good results.