Sons of Valor Read online

  “C’mon, let’s go,” Chunk said, waving her to follow.

  As she stepped away from the memorial, the moment was gone and she was back beside the two men-children taking turns ripping each other. They led her on a tour of the support facility where she’d be working—including a conference room, a computer center packed with workstations, a break room with a kitchenette, and a hall with individual office spaces.

  “This is you,” Chunk said, opening the door to a modest office with a modern task chair behind a vacant desk. “I’m not sure how much has been explained to you . . .”

  “Nothing has been explained to me,” she said, feeling very much the fish out of water.

  “I figured as much as, uh, technically your job and this organization itself do not exist. But the short answer is that you’re our chief intelligence analyst, and it’s your job to figure everything out so me and my team don’t get killed in the field because somebody in some cube somewhere had to leave early for a chess match, or a cappella practice, or whatever it is that spooks do in their spare time. You’re gonna have a team working for you headed by a Naval Intelligence officer and his four enlisted subordinates. Technically, you’re not their boss, as you’re not in the chain of command, but I’ve made it clear to them that they work for you. You’ll have twenty-four-hour support from them as well as unrestricted access to two cyber experts. We have real-time access to everything percolating at Langley or NCTC, but we try not to rely solely on those data streams. Also of note, Naval Special Warfare now has its own intelligence asset management team, but the network is not as robust as CIA and DIA. You’re not going to be running any assets right out of the gate, but I could see us getting there in the not-so-distant future.”

  “Really?” she said, her head spinning at the idea. “I hadn’t heard that.”

  “Yeah, we’ll get into that more during your full brief.” He looked at his watch. “That’s coming up in just two hours, so we better get cracking.” He pulled her office door closed and led her back to the conference room with its long mahogany table flanked by tall-back leather chairs. Two men in civilian clothes and a woman dressed in khakis with the insignia of a Lieutenant Commander sat in chairs across from them.

  “Is this the SCIF?” she asked.

  Chunk laughed. “Nah, you ain’t read in yet, so the SCIF is still of limits. We’ll take you downstairs later, and you’ll see the rest of the compound.”

  She raised an eyebrow at him. “Downstairs?”

  That explained a lot. Of course there was more than just these three trailers.

  “Later,” Chunk said.

  “Hello, Ms. Watts,” the woman said and rose and shook her hand. The men nodded but stayed seated. “I’m the command JAG attorney and these gentlemen head up the unit’s counter intelligence branch. We’re going to brief you on the details of security for the unit, and I’ll discuss your rights—or more accurately the rights you forfeit—by being fully read into the Tier One unit.”

  “Enjoy your trip down the bunny hole,” Riker said with a laugh. He and Chunk departed, closing the door behind them.

  “Have seat, Ms. Watts,” the JAG attorney said, taking her own seat and opening a thick blue file folder. “We have lots of paperwork for you, but first we have a video you’re required to watch.”

  One of the two CI guys typed something on the laptop between them, and the screen on the far wall lit and music started to play.

  A video, she thought with a silent chuckle, remembering the mandatory video she’d been forced to watch at NCTC that in no way captured what she’d signed on for. Of course there’s a video.

  CHAPTER 8

  five kilometers south of mingora

  swat district of khyber pakhtunkhwa

  pakistan

  1625 local time

  Qasim had never been to Mingora, but a strange familiarity washed over him as he looked at the lush green countryside and the towering mountains beyond. The city was situated in a fertile valley on the eastern edge of the mighty Hindu Kush mountain range, which stretched five hundred miles west across Afghanistan. The last third of the three-hour drive from Peshawar had them on the N-95, snaking along the eastern side of the Swat River. The Swat, like all the life-sustaining rivers originating in the Hindu Kush, was glacier fed and provided irrigation for the six hundred thousand Pakistanis who called the valley home.

  “Did you know that a great and ancient civilization once flourished here?” Eshan said from the driver’s seat.

  “Which civilization is that?” Qasim asked.

  “The Gandhara. They occupied the entire Peshawar Basin from the Kabul River to the Swat. This place was the crossroads of Asia,” Eshan explained, “an epicenter of trade, connecting China in the east to Macedonia in the west.”

  “Makes sense,” Qasim said, doing his best to feign interest.

  “They were Buddhists, which is why there are so many ancient stupas in this area,” Eshan continued. “Stupas are dome-shaped temples they built in the mountains. Some people say that a Gandharan teacher named Guatama was Buddha incarnate and that he lived and walked the enlightened path until he was eighty years old.”

  “Oh,” Qasim said. He’d never cared about history, and even less so about Buddhism.

  “What’s wrong? You seem nervous,” Eshan said, eying him.

  “That’s because I am nervous,” Qasim said. “This was a mistake. I shouldn’t have agreed to come.” When Eshan didn’t respond, he added. “Aren’t you going to say something?”

  “What do you want me to say? I can turn the car around if you like, but we’ve come this far. We both know you want to see the drone, and like I told you before, there’s no commitment. Help us with the interface, then you can walk away.”

  I should tell him to turn the car around, Qasim thought. I should do it right now.

  But he didn’t.

  They soon arrived in Mingora, where Eshan piloted the sedan through the city, over a bridge crossing the Swat, and into the Kanju district. With the aid of GPS, he navigated to a dingy-

  looking warehouse on the Saidu Sharif Airport grounds. He parked behind the building and turned off the engine. Qasim’s stomach became an acid bath of nerves. Even in the aftermath of the American drone strike that took his sister and father, he’d not been this frightened. Then, he’d been numb with shock. Now, he was petrified, and primal urges for self-preservation made him want to fling open the door and run away.

  “Before we go in,” Eshan said, his expression turning serious, “some advice . . . Do not say anything to antagonize or potentially offend these men. They are true believers. If they challenge you about your faith or allegiance to the cause, you need to speak with conviction. Speak from the heart. Talk about what you’ve lost. Communicate your pain and suffering and desire for retribution, but be humble. Do not place yourself on a pedestal because of your education, British citizenship, or job. And don’t ask too many questions.”

  Qasim tried to swallow, but his mouth had gone dry. Eshan’s little speech had just confirmed that this entire thing was a mistake. “I want to leave. I-I . . . I can’t do this,” he stammered.

  “That time has passed, Qasim,” Eshan said. “We’ve arrived, and that means they’ve seen us. We have to go in now.”

  Qasim said nothing, just stared straight ahead like a statue.

  “It will be okay,” Eshan said, giving his arm a squeeze. “Now let’s go see that drone.”

  He climbed out of the hired sedan and waited until Qasim did the same before closing his door and walking toward the run-down building, which was in desperate need of a fresh coat of paint. Qasim followed him to a metal door. Eshan rapped three times, and to Qasim’s surprise, the door immediately opened. No challenge-response question, no secret code—just a bearded man wearing a black turban and tunic.

  “Eshan,” the man said, a smile stretching the sun-leathered skin of his face.

  “Bacha!” Eshan embraced the man with a hug, then addressing him in Pashto said, “How are you, my brother?”

  “Good, good,” Bacha answered. “Is this your friend?”

  “Yes, this is Qasim.”

  “An honor to meet you,” the older man said, extending a hand.

  “It’s no trouble,” Qasim said awkwardly in Pashto while clasping the stranger’s hand. “I mean, it’s an honor to meet you too.”

  “Come in, come in.” Bacha waved them inside.

  Qasim followed Eshan, ducking his head to stoop under the low doorframe and into the warehouse. Bacha locked the door, then stepped around them until he was back in the lead. The warehouse was not dark, but it wasn’t well lit either, and Qasim’s eyes took time to adjust. As the world came into focus, he counted four—no, five—men armed with assault rifles watching them from different strategic positions inside the cavernous space. Two of the guards flanked the door they’d just come through. Despite holding their weapons in a relaxed carry, such close proximity to firepower made Qasim nervous, and he crossed his arms.

  “This way,” Bacha said and set off toward a tarp-covered object in the middle of the warehouse floor that could only be one thing.

  Without hesitation, Eshan followed. Qasim froze for a second, his legs leaden, but a reproachful backward glance from Eshan got him moving.

  “Welcome, gentlemen,” a confident voice said in a British accent colored with Pakistani undertones.

  Qasim turned in the direction of the voice and saw a man, no older than thirty, approaching. He was dressed in casual modern clothes, something a Pakistani college student might wear out with his mates. His face was bearded but undeniably youth
ful, and he walked with confidence.

  “Eshan, it’s good to see you again,” the man said, extending a hand.

  “You too,” Eshan said, shaking hands.

  The man turned. “And you must be Qasim.”

  “Yes,” Qasim said.

  “Welcome. My name is Hamza. I understand that you’re an aerospace engineer.”

  “Yes. Well, actually I’m an aerospace engineer and avionics software specialist,” Qasim said, uncrossing and recrossing his arms over his chest.

  “You’re with British Aero in New Malden?”

  Qasim hesitated. “Yes . . . Do you know the area well?”

  “Certainly not.” Hamza laughed. “But I have traveled to London.”

  “I see. Your English is excellent. From your accent, I might have thought you’d lived in Britain,” Qasim said.

  “I was educated in the private school system in Saudi Arabia, then later here in Pakistan,” Hamza said with a smile. “I’ve been fortunate to have very good teachers . . . Well, you didn’t come all this way for idle small talk. Let’s take a look, shall we?”

  Hamza ordered that the tarps be removed from the drone, and a minute later Qasim was staring at a sleek gray fuselage. It was astonishing how similar the Pterodactyl looked to the iconic American Predator B. Like the Predator, it had a fairing blister on top of the nose to house its synthetic aperture radar and SATCOM hardware, and beneath hung a gimbal-mounted infrared optics and targeting system. The craft was supported by a retractable tricycle landing gear, sported a V-shaped tail, and had a three-bladed propeller at the rear. At nine feet tall by thirty feet long, with a wingspan of forty-five feet, the Pterodactyl was no child’s toy. Despite being incrementally smaller than the Predator, the Chinese-made UCAV still took up most of the open floor space of the building.

  Hamza looked at Qasim expectantly, asking the question with his eyes.

  “This is a Wing Loong Pterodactyl drone, if I’m not mistaken. Designed and manufactured by Aviation Industry Corporation of China, which is the same aerospace conglomerate behind the J-20 fifth-generation stealth fighter,” Qasim said, his first move in what he assumed would be a dance to prove his expertise.

  “That is correct,” Hamza said with an approving nod. “What do you know about this aircraft?”

  “Well, it’s the second generation, with improvements in instrumentation and the satellite array comms package. This one you have here looks like the GJ-1 variant, because you’ve got the reconnaissance and targeting pod under the chin and a hard point on each wing for carrying payload.” Qasim walked in a slow circle around the drone, lightly dragging his fingertips across the carbon-fiber reinforced polymer skin. “Twenty-two-hour endurance, twenty-thousand-foot operational ceiling with a hundred-and-fifty-knot top speed and an operational range in the neighborhood of twenty-five hundred nautical miles.”

  “I’m impressed. You certainly know your drones, Qasim.”

  Qasim nodded. “How did you manage to acquire—” But then he caught himself. Eshan had told him not to ask questions, and he suddenly understood why. Regardless of how these men got the drone, it was not information that Hamza would be keen on sharing. In fact, knowing such information arguably made Qasim a bigger liability than his knowledge of the existence and location of the drone. He tried to unwind the error. “I’m sorry, what I meant to say was this is a very impressive piece of hardware. Have you had an opportunity to take it up?”

  Hamza glanced at Eshan—who Qasim realized had been uncharacteristically quiet—before responding. “I agree it is very impressive, but unfortunately we have not been able to deploy it. As you might imagine, doing so poses significant risk to our operation. There is a very high probability that the maiden flight will be its only flight. The Pterodactyl is not a stealth drone, as it does not evade radar. Also, it requires a runway for takeoff and landing, and communication and control pose a counter-detection risk. Which leads me to the reason that you are here, Qasim.”

  Qasim stopped circling the drone and looked at their host. For the first time since their arrival, his fear seemed to fade into the background, ceding control to the analytical part of his mind. Epiphany struck, and he suddenly understood the quandary Hamza and his masters undoubtedly found themselves in. They had acquired a truly powerful military asset, undoubtedly at great financial cost, only to realize the crippling constraints on their ability to use it. An American Predator drone was not a formidable weapons platform because of its inherent capabilities; it was formidable because of the infrastructure that the American military had created to support it: Kandahar Air Field provided a dedicated runway for operations and maintenance. Creech Air Force Base in Nevada housed an untouchable command-

  and-control center on the other side of the world. The US global satellite communications network allowed control of the drones from space and provided a virtually unlimited operational footprint. And the American global supply chain allowed for the transport and armament of UCAVs as required to adapt to changing tactical and strategic conditions in the field.

  Hamza and his bosses had none of these things. What they had was an aircraft with a forty-five-foot wingspan that was difficult and risky to transport, store, maintain, and most importantly, to operate without being seen.

  “I understand the predicament you’re in,” Qasim said, then proceeded to communicate all the liabilities and problems he’d just mentally outlined to Hamza.

  A flicker of a smile crossed the man’s face. “My expectation was that you would quickly recognize our constraints. You have not disappointed.”

  “Did the Chinese sell you the mobile ground control station?” Qasim asked, feeling suddenly and brazenly confident enough to violate Eshan’s advice about not asking questions.

  “We have access to a unit,” Hamza said vaguely, “but it is presently being kept in a different location for security purposes.”

  “The Pterodactyl variant you have here is SATCOM capable, but I can’t imagine the Chinese are going to give you uplink and transmission authorization on their network.”

  “That is correct.”

  “So you’re limited to using a line of sight data link?”

  Hamza nodded.

  “At maximum ceiling, what sort of operational radius are we talking about?”

  “You tell me. You’re the drone expert.”

  “Hmm,” Qasim said, rubbing his chin. “At max altitude of five kilometers, I would estimate a two-hundred-kilometer operational radius, but that gives you only a one- or two-degree angle of elevation. If we were in a flat desert, maybe you could maintain control without interference, but here in the Hindu Kush, there are mountains in the way. Worse, the Afghan border is probably a hundred fifty kilometers from here. Even without the mountains to contend with, you couldn’t engage targets in Afghanistan so long as you are operating from Mingora.”

  “Exactly,” Hamza said, frowning. “And the mobile command center is containerized. It is ten meters long. There is a difference between mobile and portable. We need another way. Can you help us?”

  Qasim looked from Hamza to Eshan and back again. “I . . . I think so. The Chinese copied the Predator command center design. Like you said, these units are mobile, but they were designed to be parked on a military base or airport tarmac. Functionality and reliability were the governing design criteria, not portability and simplicity. But in theory, every function performed by the command center could be performed on a laptop computer connected to a Thrustmaster aviation simulator joystick and a portable antenna array with enough power to transmit line of sight over long distances.”

  “Could you do this?” Hamza asked, his voice hopeful. “If I provided you with the materials, could you make a highly portable control unit for the drone?”

  “In an ideal world, yes,” Qasim said, “but I would need a programmer who was fluent in English and Chinese. Also, it would take time, potentially a lot of time. This is not something that can be accomplished in an afternoon.”

  “How much time?” Hamza pressed.

  “I don’t know. Two weeks minimum, but it could be two months. It all depends on how the system is configured and how much code the Chinese pirated from the Predator program.”