Drone

A gray Chrysler 300 screeched to a halt behind the dump truck and all four men of the mortar crew—three Bravos and Walid Zohar, Ali’s trusted Azeri sergeant—piled into the vehicle and raced away. They left the Israeli-manufactured Soltam K6 mortar behind because they didn’t have any more shells left to fire, and when the Americans found it, they would only be able to trace the serial number back to the Nicaraguan army depot where it had been stolen from two years ago, along with the shells.

Dallas––Fort Worth International Airport, Texas

The first 120mm shell slammed into the tarmac just short of Terminal A right next to a parked American Airlines 737 being loaded with passengers through a movable jet bridge. The explosion instantly killed three bag handlers and shattered the big starboard Snecma/GE turbofan engine.

Mortar shrapnel ignited the fuel truck loading up the 737, which set off another explosion that immediately engulfed the aircraft and the jet bridge. Alarms began wailing.

The passengers in Terminal A dropped to the floor as security personnel scrambled to preplanned defensive positions. Automated TSA warning messages blared on the overheads. “Remain where you are, stay under cover. Remain where you are, stay under cover.”

Mortars kept falling. Accuracy wasn’t needed, just speed. The targets were thin-skinned commercial aircraft and fragile aluminum-and-glass airline terminals. Round after round slammed down within a quarter-mile radius of the terminal, each strike ripping the air like a thunderclap.

Inside Terminal A, passengers cowered beneath food-court tables or inside the terminal restrooms, alarms still blaring, survivors screaming, moaning, praying in the swirling dust and smoke.

And then the mortars stopped.

Able-bodied survivors finally screwed up the courage to look around. Some tended the injured. Most crossed to the big picture windows—or to what was left of them—shattered glass crunching beneath their feet.

The tarmac was littered with burning aircraft, smashed trucks, and scattered baggage carts, along with shoes, underwear, soda cans, styrofoam cups, golf clubs, and a thousand other artifacts.

And then there was the carnage. Corpses broken, twisted, burning. Limbs scattered like leaves. A few bodies still strapped in their seats, smashed into the tarmac.

It was hard to believe that so much damage could be inflicted in just one minute and eleven seconds.

49

Washington, D.C.

“Yes, I’m watching it now, on Fox,” Myers sighed into her phone. Donovan was on the other end. “It looks like Dante’s Inferno.”

The camera trucks were blockaded from the airport entrances so they could only manage long-distance shots. Black columns of smoke mushroomed into the bright blue Texas sky.

“We’re shutting down all outbound flights around the country until we’re sure this thing is over with,” Donovan said. “We’re also putting every surveillance helicopter we can lay our hands on—metro police departments, military units, executive shuttles, even news copters—on a five-mile radius sweep of every major airport in the nation. There haven’t been any other reports of similar attacks, but there’s no point in taking any chances.”

“Damn it. We’re still playing catch-up with these bastards. We’ve got to get ahead of them, right now.”

“I’m initiating Plan Orange,” Donovan replied. “Unless you’re ready to announce a national emergency.”

“Not yet. But I’m calling in all of the other National Guard units not already activated, just in case.”

“Understood,” Donovan said.

“Looks like we’ll be putting boots on the ground after all, Bill. I just never thought it would be in my own country.”

State of Veracruz, Mexico

Mo Mirza sweated like a pig.

He’d grown up in Westwood near UCLA, his alma mater. Beach weather mostly. Not the smothering heat of a Mexican jungle. But here he had privacy. And his own landing strip.

Mo was twenty-four years old, but looked like he was barely out of his teens. His thin beard was patchy and untrimmed, and his dark short-cropped hair was mottled with blue coloring. With his thick black-framed glasses, red high-top Converse basketball shoes, plaid Tony Hawk skater shorts, and a faded Ramones concert T-shirt, he looked every inch the quintessential American slacker.

He was anything but.

The jungle hangar was little more than a thatched roof on polls, but the natural material was perfect for thwarting optical and infrared surveillance. No walls, but plenty of room for the Reaper’s twenty-meter wing span and the big drums of aviation fuel.

The Bravo airfield was primitive by any measure, but sufficient for the task at hand. Four of Ali’s Quds men with automatic rifles were a grim comfort, but the airstrip’s extreme isolation was their best defense. The locals didn’t bother them. This was a Bravo camp and they knew to stay far away, even if Victor was dead.