The Grim Reaper watched the barge as it passed… and grinned.
The Reaper hovered three thousand feet above the Hudson River, its nocturnal eyes piercing the darkness as it hungrily searched for any humans attempting to escape Manhattan.
Thirty-six feet long, with a sixty-six-foot wingspan, the MQ-9 Reaper was a five-thousand-pound unmanned aerial drone designed to provide its operators with long-range intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. Larger and more powerful than the MQ-1 Predator, the Reaper was classified as a Hunter-Killer, its reinforced chassis armed with AGM-114 Hellfire missiles, GBU-12 Paveway II laser-guided smart weapons, and GBU-38 Joint Direct Attack Munitions.
The “Reapers” had arrived at JFK International aboard a C-130 Hercules transport plane, accompanied by a dozen technicians, four two-man flight-control teams, a mobile trailer containing two advanced cockpit ground-control stations, and Major Rosemarie Leipply, a former drone operator and the unit’s commanding officer.
It took two people to fly a Reaper aerial drone — a pilot using real-time imagery provided by infrared sensors and a sensor operator who controlled the aircraft’s cameras, sensors, and laser-guided munitions. Major Leipply’s trainees were neither commandoes nor pilots, they were the future of military combat: Generation Xers — video-game wizards whose reflexes and hand-eye coordination made them exceptional candidates for operating remotely controlled drones, their lack of flying experience actually an asset.
Leipply’s star pupil was Kyle Hanley, his military bio typical among her crew. Poor grades in school. Anger issues. Impregnated his girlfriend at seventeen. Stole a car. Enlisted in the Army as an alternative to a jail sentence. Lasted two weeks before going AWOL. Sent to military prison, where he demonstrated superior reflexes in a video game called World of Warcraft — bringing him to the attention of Major Rosemarie Leipply.
Kyle was stationed on Reaper-1 as the drone’s sensor operator. Before him was an array of monitors featuring night-vision and thermal scanners, the latter able to distinguish a warm-blooded human from the icy waters of the Hudson. Kyle called out instructions over his headset to his pilot, Brent Foehl, a three-hundred-pound behemoth wearing an old Brian Dawkins Philadelphia Eagles football jersey. “Two more jet skis. Zooming in on Camera One. We’ve got two passengers each. Descend to three hundred feet.”
“Roger that. Descending to three hundred feet, coming about on course one-eight-zero… that should put you right in their path.”
“Munitions locked and loaded.”
“Targets are splitting up.”
“I see ’em. We’ll take ’em north to south.”
“Roger that. Range: fifty meters. Reducing speed to forty knots. Hit ’em, baby. Let ’em feel the rain.”
The hail of white bullets across the dark screen cut a lethal broadside swath through the first Jet Ski, instantly killing forty-eight-year-old South Carolina native Cindy Grace and her husband, Sam before homing in on their in-laws. A sudden blast of white light momentarily blotted out Kyle’s thermal imager as the second jet ski’s gas tank exploded.
“Four more in the hole.” Kyle leaned over and high-fived his pilot.
“Enough!” Major Leipply felt her insides quaking, her undigested rations threatening their return. “Those bogeys are not monsters on a video game or enemy combatants, they are human beings. American citizens!”
“We had to make a game of it, Major,” retorted Brent Foehl. “You think we could do this if we actually thought about what we were doing?”
“We’ll try to keep it on the down-low,” Kyle promised, bowing his head.
“That would help, thank you.” She glanced at the digital clock posted above their station. “Finish your shift, I’ll check on your relief.”
Kyle waited until Major Leipply left. “Those bogeys are not monsters on a video game… blow me, Major Hypocrite. Funny how you never had a problem with it when we were picking off locals in Pakistan.”
“Amen, brother. Eddie baby, what’s the score?”
Sensor operator Ed White leaned out from his station on Reaper-2. “Six minutes, assholes. We’re still up by fourteen kills.”
“Don’t start spending your winnings yet, hotshot.” Brent launched Reaper-1 into a steep climb before following the Hudson to the south. “Coming to course two-seven-zero. Let’s see if anything’s brewing down by the remains of the G.W.”
Kyle leaned over to whisper to his pilot. “Yo, man, the Hudson’s a no-fly zone until 2300 hours.”
“So says you. I was told anyone escaping Manhattan could infect the rest of the world with plague. No one’s going near the Harlem River for at least another half hour, and I ain’t losin’ this bet. I don’t care if it’s a rowboat, a scuba diver, or a bunch of whores on a dinghy… as far as I’m concerned, if it leaves, it bleeds.”
“True that.”
Brent altered the Reaper’s course, banking to the southwest, keeping the drone four hundred feet above the Hudson River’s eastern shoreline.
Kyle scanned the four screens mounted above his control console. As the drone passed the George Washington Bridge, a large wake appeared on his Synthetic Aperture Radar, a remote-sensing device that used microwave electromagnetic energy to create two-dimensional images that pierced both dense cloud cover and the night.
“Got something, partner. Big-ass bow wake and two wave trails. Come to course two-three-three. Target is 3.7 kilometers south of the bridge, moving south at twelve knots. Way too big to be a cutter. Drop us to five hundred feet so I can get a thermal reading.”
Brent homed in on the coordinates, reducing his airspeed as he maneuvered the Reaper on a steady descent. “Forget it, it’s just a garbage scow.”
“A garbage scow… loaded with people! Dude, check out the thermal imager. We hit the mother lode!”
Eric White climbed out from his station console to take a look. “You’re out-of-bounds, girls. The Hudson’s no-man’s-land until 2300 hours.”
“Ignore him, Kyle. What’s your body count?”
Kyle scanned the data scrolling across his thermal scan. “Two hundred and twenty-eight people… along with seventeen dogs and a few hundred rats.”
“Man your weapons, partner, it’s time to toast vermin.”
Kyle typed in commands on his monitor, his pulse racing. “Locking and loading one Hellfire missile. Been waiting all night to launch one of these babies.”
“Twenty seconds. Hurt so good… c’mon baby, make it hurt so good. Here we go, sweetheart… Four… three… two—”
Kyle grinned. “Time to light the night.”
There was no telltale sound of engines, no warning, simply a white-hot blinding phosphorescent burst of energy that ignited night into day, followed by a thunderous explosion that unleashed a blast wave of heat across the river, expanding in all directions.
Patrick collapsed to his knees and covered his head. Purple blotches clouded his vision, his eardrums rang as he was consumed by a wave of intense heat—
— followed by a blistering hail of shrapnel. Scalding hunks of garbage sizzled as they struck the Hudson’s tainted waters, charred lumps of human flesh plopping down on the melting snow around him like burnt marshmallow spewed from a roaring campfire. Not until the debris stopped sleeting did he dare raise his head to gaze at the sinking island of fire.
The flame’s diminishing glow revealed another spectator standing to his left. The Grim Reaper tilted its robed head back, the creature’s bony arms spreading its wing-like cloak wider, as if the supernal being were inhaling the souls of the incinerated passengers.