The CIA stood outside that particular, and particularly assinine, turf battle. The Air Force had occasionally complained about various armed CIA aircraft to which the CIA had invariably answered “what aircraft?”
So the CIA had Predators. And they were, by God, armed. What’s the point, otherwise? And they used them in various ways, mostly removing high value terrorists that, for other reasons, were hard to reach.
They really didn’t give a damn where they sent their Predators, or the Hellfire missiles they mounted, because if anyone said anything about missiles, or the occasional crashed Predator, they just said: “What missiles? What Predators? We have no knowledge of any such aircraft or missiles.”
The pilot of the CIA Predator was a former Air Force captain who had made something of a career in the Air Force flying Predators. The problem was, if you made it known you liked Predators and thought they were the future of air combat, your days in the Air Force were numbered.
After an Officer Evaluation Report that, in subtle ways, indicated that he might as well hang up his flight suit, the captain had reluctantly left the Air Force.
But before he could ever hit the exit door a nice man in a suit had offered him a job.
Flying Predators.
Armed Predators.
Gosh, the captain had thought, wonder who he works for? Because everybody knows that nobody has armed Predators.
So these days he flew armed Predators for about twice the pay he made as a captain. And the great part about it was, he never had to leave the Northern Virginia area. The Predator could be controlled, via satellite, from anywhere in the world. Oh, the launch teams had to get closer. This one was, in fact, based in eastern Georgia. But he was a pilot. He could do the job from his bedroom.
No more sleeping in nasty barracks in some Third World shithole. No more bad chow — the comissary in this building was, in fact, first rate. And his commute to work was about twenty minutes.
This was the shit.
But some days were better than others.
This mission had some very high priorities. Predator video was routinely pumped to the White House. Sometimes the President watched, sometimes he didn’t. But unless it was a US ground force in action, he rarely got involved. Even then, the most they might get was an occasional minor retask to look at something in particular. This president, thank God, wasn’t Johnson. Despite having a better ability to control things from the safety of the White House, he stayed hands off.
Mostly.
This seemed to be an exception to the rule. He’d been told that this mission was a direct tasking. The fucking Director had called three times, asking when they could get some good video.
Video, though, had been the least of the problems. Flying a Predator was always an exercise in mind over instinct. You sure as hell couldn’t “feel” the plane. All you could do was watch the instruments and the video and hope like hell you didn’t crash.
And the last few hours of flying had dropped his hope level pretty low. Technically, the Predator was an “all weather” aircraft, at least according to his new employers. It had GPS and night vision (night was considered a “weather” condition.) It had instruments to figure out if it was upside down or not. Ergo, it was “all weather.”
But last night, Georgia time, had been anything but realistic flying weather. The Preds had been socked in all night. And flying them back, over the mountains, was a nightmare. Generally you just told them where to go and they went. But the conditions had been so bad he’d had to manual them the whole way back, the most pulse-raising ride he’d had since his last F-16 checkride.
Even now, with the weather clearing and the sun coming up, he was sweating bullets. The winds were hell. The Predator was neither overpowered nor particularly aerodynamic so at times it seemed when he turned into the wind he was going backwards. Flying with the wind was worse since he lost almost all control. Crosswinds had him flying at a slant. Updrafts and downdrafts were all over the place. Conditions just sucked.
But for six sweating hours he’d kept the damned thing on station. Just in time to spot this through a break in the clouds.
“Control, you might want to look at the Pred take,” he said. “We have a situation on the ground.”
“Get them off!” D’Allaird shouted. “Move!”
The Keldara women were already unloading the stretchers, the ripped Keldara men stifling screams at the rough handling. There was no way they were going to scream in pain in the presence of their own people.
As Gregor was loaded on a stretcher, Kacey scrambled out of her seat.
“Chief?” she yelled, running to the rear of the bird.
“Stop,” D’Allaird said, holding up his hand. “Just get back in your seat, Kacey.”
“Fuck that,” Kacey said, pushing by as Tammie came up behind her.
Gretchen was lying against the far door. She had been hit on the upper chest. The round had cut through her armor as if it weren’t there and blasted her chest into ruin. Most of the girl was still held in place by the surviving armor but her head slumped to the side, connected only by a few strands of tissue.
Kacey turned around and threw up, puking up everything in her stomach and then some.
“Oh… fuck,” Tammie said. “When we couldn’t get her on the intercom we… hoped… ”
“Ain’t much hope there,” the chief said, climbing on the bird and picking up the ravaged and remakably light body. He had long experience of bodies ripped by everything from crashes to gunfire. And it always amazed him how much the weight of the body was in blood. Gretchen was pretty much fully bled out.
“Not Gretchen!” Mother Silva screamed. She tried to compose herself but she just couldn’t. She ran to her daughter and cradled the broken body to her breast. “Not Gretchen. Please!”
“Kari,” Mother Makanee said. “You will not do this. We have to clear the helicopter. We go on. We continue the… the mission.”
“Oh, gods, Julia,” Mother Silva said. “First Viktor and now Gretchen!”
“And Sion and Gena was not alive,” Mother Makanee said, pulling the woman away. “We are the Keldara. Our place is in battle. They rest in the Halls. We will join them at the end of all things. They shall fight the final battle in our names and bring us honor as they honor us this day. But you must come away.”
Kacey didn’t know what the women were talking about, but she kind of figured the one crying was Gretchen’s mom. As they carried the little body off she turned to D’Allaird.
“Chief, I’m done taking fire and not being able to do anything about it,” Kacey snarled.
D’Allaird, watching the two women carry Gretchen over to the line of bodies by the hangar, nodded.
“Got just what you need, boss,” he said, gesturing to the hangar. “She’s tanked and armed. And it’s got the ‘special’ package on it.”
“I’m taking it straight to those fuckers in Guerrmo,” Kacey snapped, heading for the hangar.
“Fuck yeah,” Tammie said, starting to follow her to the bird.
“Alone,” Kacey said, holding out a hand. “Chief, load up this bird. The Keldara are getting hammered out there. Tammie, head back as soon as the bird is loaded. Do the drop, do the dustoff. But I’m going this one alone.”