“Status?”
“Looks like I lost my upper weapons package. I can still fly, but I only have the five-mils on the sides and a single block of twenty missiles.”
“Circle around the building and find that asshole with the RPG.”
“With pleasure. Just watch out, it’s obvious these superdrones can be hurt.”
The air above the compound was suddenly thick with smaller UAVs. With his trained eye, Xander could tell that a good two-thirds of them were auto drones, tasked with defending the compound using attached bombs and bullets, striking anything that didn’t fit their pre-programmed profiles. Whether the sensors could pick up the Goliaths with enough confidence to make a determination remained to be seen. But the Panthers would be targets. This also told Xander that Almasi didn’t have a lot of extra pilots to assign to the RPAs. He was keeping them manning the drones whizzing around outside the hangars.
Charlie Fox and the pilots of nine Goliaths placed their craft in the space between the perimeter of the base and the hangars. If the Goliaths were the targets, the attacking drones would have a hard time taking them all out, even with over ninety approaching units. Yet the other way to neutralize the DARPA drones — and frankly the easiest — would be to take out the pilots first. Then the units would be sitting ducks. So as Charlie and the others watched the first wave of former RDC combat drones closing on them, they knew they were both an assault force and a defensive line. And for Fox, he had exactly forty-eight seconds of flying experience on the quarter-million-dollar UAV.
Fortunately, he didn’t have time to worry about his predicament before the two forces joined and instinct took over.
For piloting a supposedly stealth combat drone, Fox was startled at how accurate the fire was from the attackers. The first few seconds of the engagement was spent dodging incoming fire rather than singling out targets to strike.
He aimed his camera at where he knew other Goliaths were in the air, and that’s when he noticed an obvious glowing and flickering in the dark sky to his right. “Damn it, they can see us!” he announced. “We glow in the dark. Break off and pursue. Stealth is not going to cut it this time.”
In his first strafing run on the incoming hijacked RDC drones, Fox was able to shred six of them before he detected buffering from his tail end. He scanned his aft camera and saw at least ten of the red, white, and blue painted UAVs coming up behind him, filling the air with missiles and gunfire.
The rear view camera went black, and he noticed a slight pitch to the left as something else went flying off the Goliath. Now with a full minute of experience under his belt, Charlie Fox decided to go for broke. He aimed the craft straight up and gunned the motors. The drone shot off into the dark sky, leaving his adversaries far behind. He watched on his heads-up display as his speed jumped past one hundred seventy miles per hour, which was faster than any drone he’d ever piloted. He let out a soft whistle, just as he began to pull the drone over in a large looping maneuver.
He sent the drone screaming toward the ground, passing two hundred miles per hour in a flash. Below him he saw a cluster of enemy units streaking after a faint object that was glistening in the night. Charlie locked his guns on ten targets simultaneously and with a press of the trigger unleashed a torrent of hot lead. The Goliath slowed noticeably from the recoil of the guns, but soon regained forward momentum. All the targets splintered into a thousand pieces.
“Anyone keeping count?” he asked into the comm.
“Still over sixty active signals,” an unknown voice stated. “Concentrations to the north, circling back in and headed your way.”
“Much thanks, Mr. Wizard. Keep us informed.”
A series of bright flashes assailed his night-adjusted eyes to his right. He glanced down and saw a line of missile flame headed for the eastern hangar.
“Command hangar, missiles incoming, impact eastern side! Take cover!”
It was only two seconds between warning and impact before the entire side of the metal hangar exploded. Flames lashed out and half the roof bent over toward the main runway. Then a series of even brighter explosions appeared further off to his right, over the vast open expanse of the flight line. But this time is was from exploding drones and not from missile fire.
“Mr. Wizard, you still with us?”
“Yep, I’m in the control tower. Looks like another eight hostiles just bought the farm.”
“Thanks for the update.”
Fox guided his drone down toward the crumpled east side of the hangar. He zoomed in the focus of the forward camera to get a better look inside the building. There were people running about, helping the injured and dragging away the dead, but as far as he could tell a good half of the interior was still intact. Huge tractors used in towing aircraft had been lined up near the east wall of the hangar and had absorbed much of the explosive force. Even then, that entire side of the building now stood open and vulnerable to a second attack.
“Calling all Goliaths, this is Fox. Looks like the strategy has changed, they’re going for the hangars now. Help form a shield around them. If they take out the pilot hangar, the mission in Pakistan fails, and all of this will have been for nothing. Oh, and by the way, we’ll be dead too. Let’s not let that happen.”
There was chorus of acknowledgements from the other Goliaths, which now numbered seven in total, two having been destroyed or rendered inoperable from enemy fire.
“A new wave is coming up from the west and south,” reported Mr. Wizard.
“I see them. Nothing gets past, okay? Now let’s do some engaging!”
“We must take out their command hangar,” Abdul-Shahid Almasi was saying. “Once we do that, the drones outside will fall from the sky.”
“Unless they take us out first,” said General Burkov.
“Our center is underground and fortified, theirs is out in the open and unshielded. And our defenders here are now on-site. We should prevail.”
“Yet you did not anticipate being under attack yourself.”
“What is your problem, General? Since when are the Russians the smartest military minds on the planet? I did not hear you voice any concerns for such an attack, not until you employed your incredible powers of hindsight. Not every event can be predicted, and your second-guessing and snarky criticisms are getting tiresome. I would welcome some constructive suggestions for a change, though I doubt you are capable of formulating any.”
The fat Russian officer flared with anger and took a step in Almasi’s direction. In a blurred motion, the slender, wiry terrorist produced an eight-inch long combat knife and placed it against the pale, flabby skin of the general’s neck. He pressed the Russian against the back wall of the huge chamber, in the shadows where they couldn’t be seen.
“I have personally beheaded no fewer than sixteen men in my time, Nikolay, and four of my bombs have taken the lives of invading infidels… just like you. Do not push me further. I have real blood on my hands. You only have reports and paperwork as proof of your warrior fire. You are in my world now, and it is so much more savage and primitive than you can ever imagine.”
Almasi withdrew the blade and backed away. The Russian general, having never experienced his potential death so intimately, was stunned into silence, sweat forming on his forehead.
After a moment, he took a deep breath and tugged at the bottom of his green service jacket to pull it down tight over a protruding belly. “I will allow you this one indiscretion, Almasi, but be assured I do not favor threats or physical assault.”
“Then you are in the wrong business, General. This is what the real face of war looks like. If you cross me one more time, I will hack at your fat neck until your head rolls at my feet. Do not doubt me.”