Dragonflies: Shadow of Drones (12 page)

“So you
were
paying attention.”

“Some.”

“Do you remember what happened to your father?”

Again the shrug. “Nothing much, really. Everyone said it was all inconclusive.”

“That’s right. Because your father lied about what happened.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I was there. On the ground in that action in Afghanistan when it happened. Your father’s network’s correspondent and his cameraman were embedded with my unit. The correspondent was a good man. He and his producer didn’t realize what that footage revealed about our movements and attack plan until it was too late. They would have never aired that video, but your father overruled them, and two fine soldiers and a helicopter pilot died. The correspondent and the producer were fired. They took the fall while your father got away with little more than some stern words and a slap on the wrist.”

“You’re saying my father was responsible for those soldiers’ deaths?”

“You got it, partner. And people are still dying.”

“What? What are you even talking about?’

He meant the guy earlier in the alley, but decided he better not say anything more.

Derek stared into the video playing on the phone screen for a little longer. “What’s any of this got to do with me?”

“You’ll see. It gets worse for you, Derek.”

“What?”

“I’m going to need you to look at another video before we continue.”

“What? More Senate hearings?”

“Hardly.”

He motioned for Derek to give him back the phone and the young man complied. He took the phone, flipped to a different app he and Raina had set up, and watched as the second video began to play.

He handed the device back to Derek and waited. The kid’s face as he looked at the screen told the story.

At first, Kurn seemed to do a double take, his eyes growing wide as he must have recognized the confines of his own room and even the bed he was sitting on.

“Where’d you get this?”

“Just keep watching.”

As the video rolled on, Derek’s entire demeanor began to dissolve. He suddenly looked like a little boy who’d been caught with a dirty magazine.

“That’s you in the video, isn’t it?”

“No. I mean, you can’t really tell, can you?”

“We know that’s you, Derek. The movie was taken right here in this room.”

“I don’t know, I–”

“That’s you, pal.”

Derek stood up rubbing a trembling hand across the side of his face. “So what if it is? She was asking for it. That video doesn’t show everything. Everything that went on before.”

“Why you cowardly little creep.” Tye grabbed him by his belt, stood him up, and bull rushed him up against the wall, pushing the barrel of the gun against his face.

“No! Please stop it! Let me go!”

“No violence, Tye.” Raina scolded him again. “It won’t look like a genuine confession.”

Tye calmed himself down, let the kid go, and stepped back from the wall.

“Okay. I’m going to ask you nicely. Is that you in the video I just showed you, or not?”

Derek said nothing.

“It’s called date rape, buddy. Is that you in the video or not?”

The kid looked up at him, and for a moment Tye could have sworn he was looking into the eyes of his father.

“I don’t have to tell you anything. You just broke into my room.”

They stared at one another for a long moment.

“The kid’s a hard case,” Raina said. “Looks like he takes after his old man.”

“Copy. You see the kind of things I’ve got to deal with here first hand?”

“What?” Derek said. “Who are you talking to? What is this? Did my Dad or somebody send you?” The kid was no dummy. He was already trying to connect the dots.

“Yes and no,” Tye said.

“What do you mean?”

“Your dad hired me. He wants to try to make this all go away.”

“What?”

“But I’m here to tell you it isn’t going away, Derek. We’ve talked with Stacie Hutchinson. You did this. That’s your room in the video.”

“You think I’m stupid? That video proves nothing.”

“So maybe we should just call in the police and let them sort this all out.”

“Maybe we should.”

“Something’s very wrong, Tye,” Raina said in his ear. “You need to get out of there.”

The roar of an engine could be heard from outside. Tye looked around and tried to think. They also had video of Nathan Kurn paying him off to help cover up the rape. He was no lawyer, but that was obstruction of justice, wasn’t it?

A mobile phone rang from the bedside table, a bass melody that sounded almost like a dirge.

“It’s my father,” Derek said. He started to move but stopped himself.

“How do you know it’s him?”

“It’s programmed. He’s got his own ring.”

“Don’t answer it.”

“What?”

“Don’t answer it.”

The phone kept sounding its tone. They waited until the ringing stopped. But a few seconds later, the phone went off again. Different tone.

“You expecting a text?” Tye asked.

The kid shrugged.

“Go ahead and get it.”

Derek went to the table and retrieved his phone. He pushed a button and sat reading the screen. “It’s from my dad. He’s here. Right out front on the street…and he doesn’t sound too happy.”

“We’ve got major problems,” Raina said. “The cops don’t seem to be moving at all on this, and the kid’s telling the truth. His dad’s walking up the front lawn with what looks like some security guards in tow. You need to get out of there, Tye,” Raina repeated.

The music from the party across the hall abruptly stopped and the walls ceased to vibrate. The sound of boxes being moved and voices came from down the corridor.

Derek looked up with concern.

“The party’s over. Open the window,” Tye told him.

“What? I thought you were a cop or something.”

“Hurry up. Give me the phone and go open the window and pop out the screen.”

“Whatever you say.” The young man went and did as he instructed. Then he turned back to Tye. “What now?”

A minor commotion could be heard from down the hall. The security guards were probably rounding up a few overly zealous revelers on their way to arrest not Derek Kurn for rape but Tye for trespassing.

“Hover angel has left the building. Looks like we’ve got security people starting to circle around from the front of the house.” Raina’s voice carried a lot more tension. “There’s a brick wall that will slow them down, but not for long. You need to hurry.”

No time to argue. He pointed the Beretta at Derek Kurn again. “It may be adios for now, Derek, but you haven’t heard the last from me.”

He made for the open window and managed to scramble through it for the short drop into the bushes. The sudden cold of the misty night air slapped him like a wet towel.

Heavy footfalls could be heard thumping down the hall from inside, followed in quick succession by a loud pounding on the room door.

Tye turned to run up the alley with Raina’s voice thundering in his ear.

“Go! Go! Go!”

23

Seated behind her console at the deserted construction site where she and Tye had set up the van, Raina was so intent on watching Tye escape the frat house she almost didn’t notice the headlights from the pale sedan pulling into the alley displayed on her exterior security video screen.

She was in for trouble. Before she before even recognized the occupants of the sedan, she knew it had to be Homeland. What she didn’t expect to see, zooming in, was Lance Murnell seated in the front passenger seat and a car full of agents with him.

She hoped her com link with Tye was still secure, but she couldn’t be sure. She would just have to risk it.

“I’ve got a problem,” she said.

Nothing for a moment.

Then: “Tell me about it. Little busy at the moment trying to keep from being arrested.”

She could see him running now, crossing a vacant lot between rows of houses. On her other screen, the pale sedan was entering the alleyway and heading straight toward her.

“I’ve been compromised. Homeland’s here. Have to dump data before they get to me. Signing off.”

“What–?”

She pulled the plug off her headset and cut the main power, her screens going dark. Spinning her server box around, she flipped a set of levers and jacked out the two big hard drives. Next to the console was a set of tools in a canvas bag Tye had been using earlier; along with it a heavy hammer.

She pushed back from her chair and flung the hard drives on the desk. Turning, she picked up the hammer and brought its weight down with all her strength on the drives, crushing their metal housings. She struck them again and again, the memory components breaking apart and pieces flying through the air and scattering across the desktop. With her arm, she swept the remaining fragments to the floor. She kicked at them with her good foot, sending them sliding and sailing off into various nooks and crannies of the van.

She heard the Homeland vehicle pull up beside her rear door. Not much time. Rifling through the bag of tools, she found a pair of heavy scissors and began cutting and sawing at the server’s main power cord; she managed to cut cleanly through it just as a loud bang hit the door. . Smoke filled the air, burning her lungs and stinging her eyes. The door slid open.

Coughing and gagging from the smoke, Raina looked out to see Lance Murnell standing in the darkened alley illuminated only by the glow from his car lights. He wore a light ski jacket and blue jeans and was accompanied by three men, two of whom she thought she recognized, despite the fact they’d been wearing masks the first time she been taken.

“What the hell are you doing blowing up my van?”

Murnell smiled. “Well, well, well, if isn’t our good friend CWO Sanchez. Still playing for the wrong team, are we?”

She looked at him. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m doing some field studies here for my friend’s university project.”

“A friend, huh? And field studies? And I suppose there’s a reason you need to gather data hidden among construction equipment in the back of an alley in the middle of an unfinished shopping center development.”

She shrugged. “It’s a good place to study rats.”

Murnell said nothing. He motioned to the men beside him who stepped into the van to forcibly if gingerly remove Raina from her chair.

“I thought I screwed up. What do you want with me now?”

She was afraid they might think she already knew too much, and if that was the case she really was in trouble.

“We’ve got something specific in mind for you,” Murnell said.

“Am I under arrest?” She was pulled to her feet and guided from the van.

“That’s such an ugly word–don’t you think? I try never to use it. But we do have a special test for you.”

“A test? What kind of test?”

“You’ll see. Your country is really hoping you pass it.”

“I think I already passed enough tests for my country, don’t you, Murnell?”

“Touché. You most certainly did...”

The men on either side of her pulled her toward the sedan. She decided not to struggle or make a fuss. They would just drug her again, and then what good would she be? She hated leaving Tye with no back up or eyes in the sky, but there was nothing she could do about it at the moment.

“What’s your game, Murnell? If you’re planning to throw me in jail for doing something wrong, why don’t you just get it over with?”

“You pass this test and we’ve got something much better than jail in mind for you. And remember,” he said, “It’s Lance.”

24

Tye was several blocks from the fraternity, away from the campus and walking along the edge of an empty field fronting the capital beltway, before finally feeling like he was relatively safe. He tried talking to Raina again. She failed to respond.

He tried calling her cell phone again, too, and got the same result. Something was definitely wrong. The construction site where she’d set up shop in the van was only about a quarter of a mile ahead. He broke into a hard run.

A couple of minutes later, from a vantage point on the wooded hillside across from the construction project, he crouched beneath a darkened rocky overhang to catch his breath. He could see the front of the alleyway. The complex was lit by rows of new streetlights that, outside of the alley at least, illuminated the areas around the nearly finished buildings as well as daylight. He didn’t know exactly what was happening, but Raina’s warning had been clear enough: Homeland was onto her and had apparently found the hidden location where she was piloting the MAVs.

The van was also supposed to have offered Tye a means of escape if things went bad. Well, they’d gone bad all right. The van was no longer an option. He could only hope Raina had been able to destroy as much of her equipment and data as possible to escape Homeland’s prying eyes.

He continued to watch as a white car slowly emerged from the alleyway with several people inside. Tye wished he had a set of binoculars. He raised his smart phone camera to point at the scene, turning the display brightness as dim as possible so as not to generate much light, and used its zoom function to try to get a better view of what was happening across the way. The image was grainy and the car kept jumping out of frame, but he thought he could make out Raina in the back seat surrounded by a group of men. The car stopped just outside the alley and was soon joined by a second car and a dark colored Ford Expedition EL with blacked-out windows. One of the men wore a blue ski jacket. He got out of the first car and was soon joined by three or four others from the different vehicles. Blue jacket appeared to be the leader.

So this was Raina’s new friend. How cute. The guy didn’t even look like he could bench press his grandmother. He took out his phone and punched in Williamson’s number, put it to his ear and waited. If ever he needed some kind of aerial support of the type Williamson seemed to be able to provide it was now. Would the man make a move against Homeland, if that really was where these people were from? No better time to find out.

The phone rang again and again and again with no response. Something wasn’t right. He tried it again, but Williamson was still not picking up. Just great. Maybe he and Raina were being hung out to dry.

Tye swore under his breath and shut down the call.

Across the way, the man in the blue jacket was talking to the others and gesturing down the alleyway. The car with Raina in it looked like it was preparing to leave and the man was giving instructions to some kind of forensics or follow up crew who would for sure be all over Tye and Raina’s van.

Tye scanned the sky overhead. He figured he was mostly safe from aerial surveillance, at least for the time being. Any drones overhead would carry thermal imaging cameras, but in the cool night air the rock around and above him would retain some of its heat from the day; Tye’s heat signature would meld with that from the stone, making him virtually indistinguishable from the boulders. But without help from Williamson, he couldn’t stay here long. He was on the run, and he had no idea how many people might be looking for him. He needed transportation, a way to go after the white car below. At least he still had the loaded Beretta and a spare mag he’d slipped in a pocket just in case.

His eyes swept over the terrain around them and the complex below. The sizable construction project took up several square blocks and was flanked on either side by other, established shopping centers, mostly quiet at this time of night, but with the distant neon and halogen of their retail stores still glowing. His hillside formed a graceful curve at the back of the new commercial development; staying in the trees and following its spine would bring him much closer to the alleyway, and there were several construction vehicles parked along side the building that could also provide cover.

The night was growing colder, the air crisp and sharp. His nose ran and his breath turned to steam. The lights of the surrounding suburban campus, crisscrossing streets, and highways lit up the night sky while a siren blared in the distance, reminding him he was being hunted.

Tye measured the risks. It was ground combat tactics 101. Pinned down and potentially flanked on all sides, there was only one course of action left to him.

Attack.