Drone Games (6 page)

“Yikes, that’s scary,” Riley said, extending his arms. “I always did like their French fries. Do you like my fish?”

“It feels like a beanbag,” Creed noted, squeezing it thoroughly before tossing it back. The audience chuckled nervously.

Riley tucked it under his arm. “Those are red beans, Tricia. One more question before we move on. Where does our freedom come from? How is it guaranteed?”

“Um . . . the Constitution. Speech, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. Our freedom is guaranteed by the US Constitution, specifically the first ten amend—”

“
No!
” Riley’s voice boomed into the microphone. The volume was so loud that several people jumped in their seats. The audience gave out a collective murmur.

“Words on a piece of paper do not guarantee a thing. Ms. Creed, you are a highly trained investigator in the field of American aviation, yet thirty seconds ago you admitted that you’re not, what was the word you used . . . familiar with terror tactics? The first thing you need to know is that we
all
need to be familiar with terror tactics. Second, paper documents, rules, regulations, and all that political correctness are totally meaningless. More important, relying on them as some kind of all-protecting shield will kill you and innocent Americans. Freedom against terrorism is guaranteed and maintained through physical force, or lost for the lack of it. A society that clings to a list of paper rights without force is doomed. Most Americans don’t have a clue about what it will take to protect our freedom.”

Riley stared at the ceiling theatrically.

“Our frontline military and law enforcement personnel are doing a great job defending us against terrorism, but they need help—your help. It’s time for homeland civilians to step up. From this day forward, I want each and every one of you to start thinking critically about your jobs, your day-to-day activities, and about every situation or human you encounter. Now, don’t do anything crazy or weird. Just give a little eyebrow raise to the
potential
that whoever or whatever you come across may have some type of terror linkage or relevance. Think on it briefly, file it away, and then move on with your lives. And by all means, if something doesn’t feel right or you hear a little voice, report it. The bad guys out there are getting smarter; they hate us, and they want us dead. Period. Sorry, folks, but I didn’t create this environment. That’s just the way it is. Ms. Creed, you may not believe this, but thank you. Burgers and trains are interesting ideas for terror strikes. Let me share three of mine.”

Riley made his way to the front of the room and placed Shaitan on the podium. He definitely had everyone’s attention.

“On a warm June evening, there’ll be a break-in at a fireworks factory. Small town, no alarms, no guards. The perpetrators will steal forty-eight crates of large air-bomb fireworks slated for the upcoming Fourth of July gala. The crates contain 512 cylindrical cardboard tubes, four inches in diameter. Each air bomb is slightly larger than a baseball. The tubes have no distinguishing marks, but they contain significant amounts of powdered aluminum. There’ll be a brief newspaper article, people will be pissed, and everyone will blame teenagers. Four months later, on a brisk Sunday morning in November, two jihadists will drive into an unguarded private hangar at a quiet US airport and overtake a corporate jet that’s waiting to fly three senior executives to a quarterly governance board meeting. After killing them and the pilot, they’ll load and dump 2,800 kilos of the powdered aluminum onto the cabin floor. One jihadist will strap on a high-explosive booster, a pyro detonator box, and a base canopy parachute. The other jihadist, a trained pilot, will conclude his interaction with departure control and fly that jet out.

“Once airborne, the pilot will claim some type of mechanical failure, descend to a few hundred feet, and then continue off-radar at four hundred knots. After just eight minutes of flight, the pilot will climb to seven hundred feet and then kill the engines and all electrical power. At the apex of that climb, the parachutist will be able to safely bail out. The pilot and the jet will quietly glide down and crash smack in the middle of an open-air football field. Sixty thousand NFL fans, plus millions of television viewers mesmerized by the crash, will see some unknown type of mist or dust cloud fill the stadium. And in a deadly, effective encore, that parachutist will float into that cloud, flip a switch on the box on his belt, and detonate. And that, my friends, will ignite a secondary event called a thermobaric fuel-air explosion.

“The mix of oxygen and explosive aluminum dust will create the fuel and framework for a blast hundreds of times more powerful than conventional explosions. A fuel-air bomb’s power has been compared to that of a nuclear weapon without radiation. Temperatures will reach 4,500 degrees Fahrenheit. The blast wave overpressure will be so great that eardrums will rupture and internal organs will be sucked out of people’s mouths, along with all the air in the stadium. Thousands will perish from asphyxiation. The final fatality counts will reach numbers unlike anything the United States or even the world has seen since the large-scale bombing campaigns of World War II. Victim identification alone will take weeks. The physical carnage will compare to Hiroshima. And we’re not done yet.”

Riley guzzled half a bottle of water. “What I’m about to show you is a fuse—one that will ignite the mother of all terrorist actions. More than twenty-three times deadlier than 9/11. You can count on it. My friends, this attack will be short, unimaginably brutal, highly coordinated, and most of all, purposeful. It will have extreme significance, and it will involve the smallest military invasion force in history—one hundred and forty soldiers to be exact—who in just thirty minutes will attempt to destroy the freedom of the United States of America. And they will succeed. Why? Because we’re vulnerable. And more important, because our Constitution guarantees it.”

Riley motioned to the projection screens. A list appeared.

KOMODO ONE

Disney’s Animal Kingdom—Lake Buena Vista, FL

Six Flags St. Louis—Eureka, MO

Kings Island—Mason, OH

Universal Orlando—Orlando, FL

SeaWorld—San Antonio, TX

Disney’s Hollywood Studios—Bay Lake, FL

Busch Gardens—Williamsburg, VA

Six Flags Great America—Gurnee, IL

Epcot Theme Park—Lake Buena Vista, FL

Six Flags Over Georgia—Austell, GA

Playland Amusement Park—Rye, NY

Disneyland—Anaheim, CA

Six Flags Over Texas—Arlington, TX

Magic Kingdom—Lake Buena Vista, FL

Universal Studios Hollywood—University City, CA

SeaWorld—Orlando, FL

Six Flags Magic Mountain—Valencia, CA

Luna Park, Coney Island—Brooklyn, NY

California’s Great America—Santa Clara, CA

Six Flags Darien Lake—Darien Center, NY

Six Flags New England—Agawam, MA

Knott’s Berry Farm—Buena Park, CA

Worlds of Fun—Kansas City, MO

Cedar Point—Sandusky, OH

SeaWorld—San Diego, CA

“Twenty-five theme parks. You know these places. You’ve packed up your families and traveled there. Perhaps you’ve even seen some identified as potential terror targets. But you’ve never imagined the tactics.

“On the perfect date, let’s call it K-Day, one hundred guests across the United States will simultaneously enter these theme parks. Did you catch that? Not terrorists, not soldiers, not enemy combatants . . . guests. One-zero-zero. Four in each park. And trust me, none will comply if asked to hand over the weapons strapped under their clothing. One MP-5 machine gun, two automatic handguns, and one thousand rounds of .40 caliber ammunition in fast-load magazines. For those of you who at this very moment are so anal as to want to calculate the ammo weight, I’ll save you the trouble—approximately forty pounds. Easily concealed and carried. Two pairs of shooters in each park. One pair protects the other. At a precisely coordinated time, they’ll open fire and continue until all ammunition is spent. Ever hear the expression ‘shooting fish in a barrel’? These fish will include women and children, young and old. At the end of this random killing spree, seventy thousand Americans will be dead or wounded.”

A new list appeared.

KOMODO TWO

Wrigley Field—Chicago, IL

Fenway Park—Boston, MA

Yankee Stadium—New York, NY

Oriole Park at Camden Yards—Baltimore, MD

Coors Field—Denver, CO

Progressive Field—Cleveland, OH

Turner Field—Atlanta, GA

Dodger Stadium—Los Angeles, CA

Safeco Field—Seattle, WA

Rangers Ballpark in Arlington—Arlington, TX

“Precisely timed with the theme park attacks, forty fans will enter these ten baseball stadiums. Four-zero, same weaponry. They’ll take seats near the home and visitor dugouts. They’ll enter the field of play, calmly open fire at both bench and active players, and then continue targeting general stadium fans until their ammunition is spent. You can add another ten thousand to the casualty list . . .” Riley paused. “And twenty major-league baseball teams will cease to exist.”

The audience sat stunned.

Riley stayed silent for a full fifteen seconds.

“The shooters will drop their gear and disappear into the chaos, and believe me, there’ll be chaos. Authorities will never be certain of their exact number. Within the hour, al-Qaeda will publicly reaffirm their February 23, 1998, declared fatwa calling on all Muslims to kill Americans wherever they are found. K-Day. It will be quite historic, for at that precise moment, we’ll all need to sign up for Yiddish class. America will have become Israel on steroids, complete with military curfews, roadblocks, checkpoints, and religious persecution. Anyone with dark hair and a suntan will feel racial mistrust and bigotry so severe it’ll make slavery in the old South seem like, well, Disney World.

“In the aftermath, Americans will start making life-altering decisions to avoid major cities in a rationalized attempt to live and raise their families in terror-free environments spelled r-u-r-a-l. People will establish virtual safety zones, and any outings beyond those zones or into crowds will carry overwhelming tension and suspicion. Fear will bear on every decision involving congregating in large numbers or traveling, and millions will simply stop doing either. For how long is anyone’s guess.

“In the next segment, we’re going to examine why K-Day will happen, why we won’t or can’t stop it, and why the incomprehensible violence and subsequent threat of open warfare in our beloved country are only a means to an end. Remember, I said Komodo is only the fuse. I haven’t explained what it leads to. But first I suggest we all take a break. Based on your facial expressions, it looks like some of you could use one.”

Milwaukee, WI

General Mitchell International Airport

MILWAUKEE’S AIRPORT was quiet, filled with only a handful of business travelers, a few young people, and a custodian and his cart. Shop lights flickered on. The terminal smelled of fresh-baked goods and coffee mingled with an occasional wisp of jet fuel that had sneaked through the jetways. The TSA security lines were empty.

Sitting at a Starbucks kiosk, WITI local Fox 6 News reporter Neela Griffin booted up her laptop and opened a Microsoft Word folder named
Carly Simon
. She scrolled through the document list and opened
YoureSoVain.doc
. She stared blankly at the 1973 hit song lyrics and sipped her extra strong Americana. Her senses steadily improved, and she spotted her camera operator, Terry Lee, at the checkout counter. He was rolling his T-shirt sleeve over his bicep, exposing a new Celtic sunburst tattoo to a young female server.

Lee was twenty-eight years old, with rugged, dark features, and his unshaven beard and unkempt hair rang GQ. He had natural on-air confidence and occasionally expressed interest in the opposite side of the lens. Sadly, the average news viewer might never get past the body ink.

Lee’s official union title was Remote Broadcast Specialist, a new breed of electronic news gatherer. His oversized, cable-free backpack could capture and transmit live news video over cellular networks, completely eliminating the need for a typical HD satellite truck. Finished with a shot, correspondents could manipulate a scene themselves via laptop or upload the raw footage for studio editors.

Lee set his breakfast on Griffin’s table and flopped into a chair as though he had been slapped. He held a bottle of apple juice up to the light and shook it vigorously.

“Are there any normal babes in this world?” he lamented. “I asked where she hung out, and she said she’s in hot water a lot. The last thing I need is somebody with a criminal record.”

Griffin chuckled. “For your information, Hot Water is a dance club on Water Street downtown. It’s rated as Milwaukee’s best.”

Lee stared at his coworker. “I hate mornings. My head hurts, my arm is sore, and everything just feels out of sync.”

“I’m surprised you had any bare skin left. How many tattoos is that now?”

“Nine,” Lee said, peering at Griffin’s laptop screen. “I think I’ll do my name next. A letter on each knuckle like my cousin. Then I’ll be obsessed too.”