“Heading is two nine zero degrees,” the red-haired woman replied.
“Yeah, that’s what I’ve got. I can’t bring the damn thing around.”
The pilot gently pivoted the joystick in his hand, but the Reaper refused to respond.
“Run a diagnostic check for me,” he told his female counterpart.
“Flight systems green, navigations systems are green, uplink is… We have uplink failure.”
“This piece of shit,” he swore. “Sentinel 3, Whiplash 14, be advised that we have uplink failure. I say again, we have no control of the drone.”
“Whiplash 14, I copy. Be advised you are leaving your operation box.”
“What’s going on?” Renee asked.
“Something is interfering with the drone. It’s not responding,” the female captain replied calmly.
“What in the hell?” General Swift bellowed from across the room. “Why am I getting calls that my Reaper is leaving the ops box?”
“The drone isn’t responding,” Renee replied.
“I can see that. Why is this happening?”
“No idea, sir, we are running diagnostic checks right now. Something is wrong with the signal,” the male captain replied.
“Get that piece of shit back online, I don’t need this right now.”
“Whiplash 14, Sentinel 3, we are clearing the airspace until the drone gets back online. How copy?”
“Whiplash 14 copies.”
“The frequency’s jammed. It won’t let me override it,” the woman said, typing furiously on the keyboard in front of her.
“Where is it going?” Renee asked.
They ignored her as the drone leveled out and then gently waggled its wings back and forth. “Diagnostics are good, it’s not a software problem.”
A red alert prompt popped up on the Reaper’s heads-up display. It read, “UPLINK TERMINATED.”
“Someone has hacked the feed.”
“Is that thing armed?” Kevin asked.
“Yes, it has the usual complement of Hellfire missiles,” the woman replied.
The general snatched a phone off the cradle and violently punched in a number. He impatiently waited for someone to answer while yelling orders across the TOC. “Can someone find out where the hell this million-dollar piece of shit is going?”
“Can you disable the flight link?” Renee asked.
“No, ma’am, it doesn’t work like that. If the guidance link is severed, they are programmed to return to base.”
“Is there anything you can do? I mean, there has to be something in the manual.”
“No, ma’am, someone is going to have to shoot it down.”
“This is General Swift. I need to speak with the officer in charge. No, I can’t wait, get him on the phone.”
“Sir, it looks like the drone is heading to Highway One,” a lieutenant said from the map attached to the wall.
“Yes, who is this? Captain Otto, we have a nonresponsive drone two kilometers west of Highway One. I need an immediate intercept with authorization for a shoot-down.”
Renee could see Highway 1 appear on the horizon where it snaked toward Pakistan like a dull gray serpent.
“Bird’s inbound, time to intercept five minutes,” the general yelled without taking the phone from his ear.
“Whiplash 14, we have two F-15s moving in for intercept. ETA five mikes, how copy?”
“Roger, Sentinel 3,” the pilot responded.
“What’s that on the road?” Kevin moved forward to get a better look at the screen.
A line of SUVs appeared at the upper edge of the feed. The vehicles were moving at a high rate of speed and bunched tightly together.
“Sir, we need to find out if we have an asset on the road,” Renee said.
“I’m on the phone with Bagram, waiting on an answer,” another officer said from his desk.
Renee realized that her fists were clenched in anticipation, and she forced herself to relax. Her palms were red from where her fingernails had dug into her skin, and she wiped her clammy hands on her pant legs.
“Sir, it’s Hamid Karzai’s convoy.”
“Shit. I need those birds expedited, now.”
The Reaper cruised lazily at fifteen thousand feet, where it was invisible to anyone on the ground.
“Pilot, we have sixty-degree target lockout. Weapon and laser spin up,” the sensor operator said.
Renee wasn’t sure what was going on, but it didn’t sound good.
“Sensor, check weapon and laser status.”
“Status complete, weapons are hot. Laser and auto track are coming online. Laser status complete, laser is hot and tracking on heading three five zero.”
“Initiate auto-destruct.”
“Pilot, access denied. Master arm is hot, we have missile launch.”
The reticle of the high-definition camera was focused over the second vehicle in the convoy. The feed showed where the infrared targeting laser was locked on to one of the vehicles as it moved unsuspectingly down the road.
“Pilot, impact in three, two, one.” The missile appeared in the screen for a split second as it slammed into the roof of the target vehicle. The explosion obliterated the vehicle and washed out the camera in a giant orange burst of flame and black smoke. Before the smoke cleared, the sensor operator was speaking again.
“Pilot, laser is hot. Master arm is hot, missile away.”
“Oh God,” Renee whispered as the second Hellfire went streaking toward its target.
A deathly silence fell over the TOC as everyone focused on the unauthorized strike unfolding before their eyes. In the background someone aboard the AWAC was trying to confirm the first missile strike, but the pilot wasn’t answering.
Renee was amazed at the sensor operator’s cool. She reported the drone’s functions with an unattached professionalism, void of any emotion.
The drivers of the convoys had been trained by American Special Operations and went into immediate evasive action on the road. Assuming they had hit an IED, the trucks sped through the kill zone. If they stuck to their training, they would stop and take up a defensive perimeter once they were clear. There was no way for them to know that a second Hellfire was hurtling toward them.
Renee had seen countless drone strikes in her time, but never one like this. The state-of-the-art UAV seemed to be functioning autonomously while losing none of its lethality.
“Pilot, impact in three, two, one,” the woman said again.
The laser designator tracked its target as the vehicles sped down the road. It was two hundred meters away when the second Hellfire detonated. The impact tossed the vehicle in the air, where it tumbled like a scrap of tin before slamming into the ground in a ball of flames.
General Swift silently lowered himself into a chair, the phone cradled to his ear, forgotten.
“Sentinel 3, I confirm two unauthorized missile launches. We have two hits at grid…”
Renee wasn’t listening. She looked over at the general, who’d buried his head in his hands in disbelief.
The feed suddenly shuddered and the picture violently corkscrewed on the screen as the drone tumbled toward the ground. The last thing they saw was an air force F-15 shoot past the Reaper after successfully hitting it with its twenty-millimeter cannon.
“How do you hijack a drone?” Kevin asked from her side.
“Someone has to be very familiar with our operating systems,” Renee replied.
The enormity of the situation filled the room and slowly settled on the silent witnesses like an invisible weight. Everything had just changed.
“Sir, I just received another message on the secure network,” one of the men said from his desk.
“What?” General Swift asked weakly.
“Another video, sir.”
“Put it on the screen,” Renee ordered, taking the initiative.