With activation of this sophisticated control system, his drones were responsive to his every command.
Charlie surveyed the three computer screens attached to the Broad Area Maritime Surveillance, Unmanned Aircraft System (BAMS/UAS) workstation. He put on a head set with half-inch earphones and a quarter-inch microphone on the end of a thin wire. He flipped the switch and began to talk. “Colonel Edwards, are you with me?”
“Yes sir, Alpha Charlie.”
“Do we have a secure vocal transmission?”
“That’s an affirmative, sir. The audios are so protected, the only people that know they exist are our aircraft crews in Kandahar, and Creech Air Force base in Nevada.”
“Do I have control of everything now?”
“You’re A-OK to go from there. Your new chair is connected to everything now, your Global Hawks, the Reapers, and your Predators.”
CHAPTER SIX
Nicole Banzar’s father purchased the missiles when they were decommissioned from Russian service, after the 1987 Nuclear Disarmament Treaty. Since then they’d been stored in a warehouse at the end of a pot-hole infested road, lost in rows of other old warehouses.
A week earlier, Nicole Banzar had received a five-word text: TARGET IS SOUTH OF YOU.
Her reply had been, simply: UNDERSTOOD. SEND HELP.
She’d quickly recruited eight “soldiers,” most of them from a Chicago Al Qaeda splinter group eager to get into some “real action.” If she were able to assemble maybe five more, she would have thirteen — maybe fifteen, if she got lucky — soldiers and operatives for the attack against Alpha Charlie.
To prepare for the operation, she’d sent four men ahead of her to the warehouse.
A rusted Chevy truck filled with four uncomfortable-looking men made a path through the high weeds that had taken over the crumbling parking lot. The pickup stopped at a building with flaking paint and an old rusty sign that said, “Property of J.J. Hussam Import Furniture.”
The four men didn’t give a damn about the doors of the place. They weren’t coming back. Using crowbars, they tore off the heavy boards that had been nailed across the front of the warehouse and drove their truck into the building. Twenty, tarp-covered boxes and a dusty tractor-trailer were sitting alone in the large empty space.
The four men quickly exposed the boxes and took inventory. One grabbed a toolbox from the pickup and lifted the hood of the vintage Mack truck. Another carried two, 5-gallon containers of diesel fuel to the truck’s cylindrical tanks and began refueling. A message was quickly texted, and soon a Pontiac Grand Prix with dented fenders and crackled blue paint drove in behind the pickup. Two men in dungarees and soiled white T-shirts got out, followed by Nicole Banzar.
Nicole had tousled black hair, big brown eyes, and wore tight black jeans that hugged her long legs and slim hips. A pink camisole contained her full bust, but her age was belied by fine lines on the deeply tanned skin of her face and arms.
Nicole’s soldiers began loading the heavy boxes on the truck. Their voices echoed in the large building. Nicole knelt beside a stack of six boxes, all of them covered in Chinese lettering. Only two words were written in English, in a position where the sender would be listed: Astana, Kazakhstan. Inside, lay the parts for a Silkworm missile.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The ICU was starting to come to life. More people were coming and going as another busy day was in full swing. Keyes was finally awake, which made me feel better. She’d been out for a long time.
I still hadn’t had a wink of sleep. I stood at the nurse’s station, propped up, while Harris stood off to one side, talking on the phone to his people, going over the details of the previous night.
Standing there, I was suddenly overcome by the very strong feeling that there was something going on with my patient, but I was worn out, fuzzy, and wasn’t sure what to think. I could hear an attendant back there, talking to her. “Here, honey,” he seemed to say, “Take these pills. You’ll feel better.”
The attendant suddenly slipped through the parted privacy curtains and then walked out the door. He was an enormous man, gigantic, with a blond ponytail. His sudden appearance and disappearance definitely caught my attention, and though I was still unsure about what was going on, I called to the nearby attending nurse to follow me in to check on Keyes.
We parted the curtains and started to run our typical checks. I took Keyes’ pulse. It was slow, only 48. I tried to awaken her. She didn’t respond. Her breathing became slower, as did her pulse. I shook her shoulder to arouse her. No response. Something was wrong. I looked at the vitals screen: Her oxygen was only eighty percent, her blood pressure a dangerously low seventy over thirty. Her skin was gray. Keyes was in trouble.
I threw back the privacy curtains and shouted, “Where’s this patient’s ICU doctor?”
The doctor in charge of the ICU, Stewart, and two nurses, came immediately.
“When I was here an hour ago, my patient was awake and talking to me. Now, she’s totally unresponsive. What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” Stewart answered. “When I checked her thirty minutes ago, she was responsive and her vitals were normal.”
“Why the hell didn’t the attendant who was just in here notice this patient was decompensating?”
“Which attendant?”
I looked around but didn’t see him.
Stewart called the head nurse on duty. I described to her as best I could the person I’d seen leaving Keyes’ room just as I’d arrived: tall, muscular, wearing green scrubs, a surgical mask, and having a blond tail of hair hanging down.
“Not one of mine,” she said. “I haven’t seen anyone like that here today — or ever.”
Stewart turned to me and through clenched teeth said, “Maybe the real question here is: What did you smack her with in your surgery center? It must’ve been potent stuff to last this long.”
“What did her drug screen show when she came in last night?”
Dr. Stewart pulled Keyes’ chart from the rack at the foot of the bed. “Hmm. You’re right. The nurse’s reports show she ‘came around’ after admission. Toxicology shows she had only a trace of Demerol and no Valium upon arrival, certainly not enough to do anything but make her a little groggy.”
“I know. What medications has she been given since then?”
“Absolutely none. She’s received no medication from this hospital since being admitted last night,” Stewart responded.
Then, frowning, he looked me in the eyes and said, “This patient was just fine a little while ago. What’d you do, give her something strong to shut her up?”
I resisted the urge to tell him to go screw himself. Instead, I appealed to his sense of reason. “Look, forget the finger-pointing and let’s help her. She’s in trouble. She’s overdosed on something or there’s something else going on here; this is not a delayed reaction to yesterday’s meds. Repeat those blood studies. Check her out neurologically. Rule out a cerebral vascular accident. And find that tall male attendant with blond hair. He might have given her something.”