Authors: Margaret Vandenburg
“Anne’s dad came to talk about his job,” Maureen said.
“That’s nice,” Rose said. “What does he do?”
“He’s a plumber.”
“A noble profession,” Todd said.
“What does that mean?”
“Your father was joking.”
“No I wasn’t.”
“He fixes toilets.”
“I rest my case,” Todd said. “What could be more noble than that?”
“What do you do at work, Daddy?”
Before Max’s diagnosis, Todd dreaded the day his children would grow old enough to ask this question. Afterward, he feared that Max might never develop the language skills necessary to ask it. In any case, the answer was classified top secret.
“Everything but fix toilets. We bring Anne’s dad in for that.”
“What about dripping faucets?”
“Yup. That’s my job.”
“For heaven sake, Todd,” Rose said. “Do you want Maureen to tell her friends at school you fix faucets for a living?”
“Why not? Like I said. It’s a noble profession.”
“Not as noble as defending your country.”
Todd shot Rose one of their coded parental looks, which, in layman’s terms, meant what’s your goddamned problem. Rose knew better. She was usually a model military wife, steering clear of her husband’s profession, which was way too explosive for table talk. Her capacity to dredge up innocuous topics of conversation was unparalleled. But once in a while she buckled under pressure, especially when they’d already exhausted their old standbys during the salad course.
There were only so many times you could talk about Max’s sessions with his behavioral therapist. They had discussed what they hoped was a breakthrough for the past two weeks, analyzing it from every possible angle. Max had suddenly started not only noticing but miraculously grabbing a kaleidoscope ball Sasha had ordered online from the autistic version of Toys
Я
Us. You’d have thought he’d learned how to play catch, they were so excited. Then, just as abruptly, he was oblivious to the ball. Sasha remained sanguine. Two steps forward and one step back. Rose worked through her disappointment with her Facebook friends. Todd was still devastated.
The further they immersed themselves in the PCA lifestyle—Parents of Children with Autism—the less there was to talk about. An old friend had called that morning, inviting them to spend the weekend at their cabin, but Rose decided against mentioning it. No need to tempt Todd with an invitation they couldn’t possibly accept. Gossiping about the extended family used to be mildly entertaining, especially Max and Maureen’s quirky grandparents. But they had stopped visiting even before Max’s diagnosis, and since then they rarely called. Rose’s father said he was getting too old to travel. He wasn’t too old to bowl two nights a week, presumably because no one in the league was autistic. Rose was too relieved to call his bluff. Every visit felt like a prolonged accusation in the guise of trying to be helpful. Her father in particular meted out advice like an implacable headmaster. All Max needed was some good old-fashioned discipline. If his mother couldn’t control him, Todd should haul out the strap. Todd’s parents were even worse. They flat out didn’t believe in autism. It was a fad, not an epidemic. Talk about a conversation stopper.
Rose’s comments about Todd’s mysterious profession, in all its patriotic glory, hung in the air. She mimed a chastened expression to signal her willingness to drop the subject, even though the idea that she was threatening national security was patently ridiculous. Todd could be such a control freak sometimes, especially lately when Max’s condition made him feel so out of control. He pretended to ignore Rose’s body language, the better to deflect Maureen’s attention. They both assumed their table talk was too generic to arouse her curiosity, more like something you’d hear in civics class than a deep dark family secret. But Maureen was a classic eldest child in more ways than one. She was precocious, above all, in her ability to manipulate family dynamics, usually to her advantage. When she saw an opening, she pounced on it.
“Matt says you kill people for a living,” Maureen said.
“Who’s Matt?”
“My nap partner.”
“Your nap partner is a boy?”
“Daddy doesn’t kill people,” Rose said. “He protects our country against bad guys.”
“He doesn’t kill them?”
“Only the bad guys.”
And sometimes civilians. And sometimes their children. It hadn’t been a good day at the office. Not that it ultimately mattered a whole hell of a lot in present company. The answer to the innocuous question—How was work?—could never be innocuous enough to share with his kids. What could he say?
It was great. I killed three al Qaeda operatives
. And that was a good day.
“How can you tell the difference, Daddy?”
Every other night that week, Todd would have shrugged off the whole misguided conversation. His defenses were down. He tried not to slam his fork down too hard, but everyone except Max jumped anyway.
“I’ll get the dessert,” Todd said.
His napkin dropped to the floor as he stood up. Rose smiled at Maureen, pretending nothing was happening as she bent over to retrieve the napkin. Maureen smiled back, hoping to avoid getting into trouble for asking too many questions. Neither of them noticed that Max was watching his father storm out of the room. His face was blank, but his eyes were intently focused.
* * *
Technically it wasn’t Todd’s fault, which made little or no difference. He was the flight commander, such as it was, but not the pilot of the actual plane, which wasn’t actually a plane. It was a drone and Brown was in a virtual rather than real cockpit. The official report cited a control glitch, which was nominally responsible for identifying the wrong target. Whether the error was human or technological remained unspecified, if not obscured. One way or the other, accountability was a real problem in drone warfare. All the more reason for Todd to guard against pretending that all of these contingencies let him off the hook. They made little difference to him and no difference to the dead Afghan family.
Todd’s squadron spent most of their time tracking down targets. Sensor zooms were so powerful they could read license plates from optimum cruising altitude, miles above unsuspecting drivers. Their computers automatically ran checks to see if the cars and trucks in question had been involved in hostile encounters. These high-tech innovations were indispensable. The enemy didn’t bother wearing uniforms, let alone deign to drive official military vehicles. Even ambulances had been commandeered by sectarian militia. Surveillance drones could be preprogrammed to monitor potentially high-value targets. But armed Predators and Reapers still needed pilots, guys like Brown pulling triggers from the safety of air-conditioned trailers almost 8,000 miles from the nearest potential enemy. The air force made a big deal of calling them remotely piloted aircraft rather than drones, as though the latter term were misleading and derogatory. Todd was a straight shooter. He called a spade a spade and figured drones by any other name were still drones.
Todd had done his best to train his pilots to be battle ready. None of them had ever seen real action. This was the new air force. If virtual warfare required the ability to walk and chew gum at the same time, they were ready enough to fly drones. Todd had to admit they were more adept at processing information than he was. They could simultaneously monitor up to seven computer screens, assessing flight coordinates, real-time video feeds, infrared imaging, crosshair targets, and constant streams of intelligence from boots on the ground. But they were still more like professional multitaskers than real pilots. Traditional pilots also made mistakes from time to time. Civilians still accounted for a significant number of casualties in the war on terror. But with so much logistical information at their fingertips, virtual pilots should have been better equipped to steer clear of innocent bystanders.
Todd had spent the afternoon floating from one virtual cockpit to the next, feeling more like a systems analyst than an air force officer. The army may have been willing to let Nintendo nerds fly armed Predators, but USAF drone squads were supervised by seasoned pilots like himself. After several hours of routine surveillance, they had finally been tasked with an actual combat mission. A marine platoon in the Nawa District needed aerial support. Nobody on the ground had been able to pinpoint the source of the threat that was pounding Alpha Company with short-range missiles. If a specific target was identified by the time they heard the drones overhead, they’d retreat and let Reapers finish the job with laser-guided bombs. At the very least, Todd’s squadron could provide aerial intelligence.
Often as not, there were too many civilians in the vicinity to accommodate air strikes, even in the mountainous regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Todd never relied exclusively on ground intelligence to make this determination. Or computer intelligence, for that matter. A Predator had eyes in the back of its head, quite literally. If you made judicious use of technology, virtual combat could actually save innocent lives. But only if you partnered with drones, augmenting their intelligence with your own. Distinguishing between enemy combatants and civilians was easier said than done, especially when suicide bombers wore burqas and terrorist cells were housed in family homes.
Visibility couldn’t have been better, especially since the local time was 0700 hours. Todd and his squad had been working late almost every day since the recent surge in drone strikes. They were used to watching Afghans eat dinner and bed down for the night. Longer shifts meant they also watched them get up and get going in the morning. Senior al Qaeda leaders didn’t necessarily keep regular hours. But their wives and children did, as did the families of Taliban warlords in tribal areas, everyday people living everyday lives under constant surveillance.
Spending more time cooped up in the trailer obviously had its downside. But there was one big payoff. The squad actually got to see more action. Even at night infrared sensors made everything visible in an incandescent, ghostly way. Surprisingly few dark places were left on the map anyway, given the ubiquity of electricity. But nocturnal surveillance still paled in comparison with what they saw in the early morning light. When the sun started rising over mountain peaks, they switched from infrared to regular high-resolution cameras. The landscape was breathtaking, a femme fatale of natural beauty whose countless cliffs and gullies provided cover for enemy combatants. Surveilling mile after mile of undifferentiated desert in southern Afghanistan, boredom blunted their vigilance. Here, the danger was sensory overload. There was almost too much to take in.
Spring was the only time of year the Sulaiman Mountains seemed to call a truce with nature. It was deceptive, of course, like everything else in the region. Wildflowers sprouted from rocky soil in the wake of receding snow banks. They scarcely had time to bloom before the punishing suns of summer withered their roots. The more inhospitable the landscape, the better it suited militants and terrorists. No one saw them resume their positions in bunkers concealed in caves on the craggy peaks. They seemed to thaw along with the snow, sprouting like sinister flowers from the landscape itself, ready to resume the fight each spring.
Todd was supervising Poindexter, the weakest pilot in the squadron, when Kucher let out a whoop. He had a keen eye and almost always identified visual anomalies before anyone else.
“There they are,” Kucher said.
Todd rushed over to his cubicle just in time to see a cluster of helmets hunkered down in a makeshift dugout. What looked like tiny puffs of smoke kept obscuring their location. On the ground, the puffs were lethal mortar blasts landing dangerously close to a squad of marines.
“Verify the coordinates of the rest of the platoon,” Todd ordered.
“They’re way out of range behind that ridge, Major Barron.”
“Any word on the origin of the threat?”
“It’s coming in now.”
A high mountain village zoomed into view. Dusty footpaths connected a dozen stone dwellings. Suspicious dark specks traversed the adjacent hillside. A third monitor scoped them. A herd of goats scattered, spooked by concussive shell fire blasting from a house on the southern perimeter of the village.
“Last one there is a rotten egg,” Brown said.
Brown was the class clown. Todd could tell from his tone of voice that he was closing in on the target. He couldn’t resist hotdogging, even though it violated regulations. Unless someone kept an eye on him, he performed celebratory dances in his chair every time he scored a hit. This time he cut it short without being reprimanded. The customary hooting and hollering wasn’t forthcoming either. Todd thought maybe Brown was finally starting to grow up.
“Fuck!”
Brown jumped to his feet and stared wild-eyed at his monitor.
“What’s going on?”
Todd rushed over to Brown’s cubicle. The words
enemy target
were still flashing on the weapons activation screen. A laser-guided Hellfire missile had wasted an Afghan family. A mother’s shredded burqa smoldered in the wreckage. One after another monitor zoomed in on miniature body parts slick with blood. A howling dog had survived the explosion, but nothing and no one else. Mortar fire still streamed from the house on the southern perimeter. Some glitch somewhere had misidentified the target.
* * *
Todd recovered his equilibrium in time to put the kids to bed. Rose had already read bedtime stories. Todd covered the swing shift, tucking them in a second time to make sure everyone understood that they were one big happy family. Maureen always wanted him to read another story, but he hated children’s books. They were either saccharine or preachy. Even Dr. Seuss, who was refreshingly imaginative, couldn’t resist slipping in Marxist propaganda every chance he got. If Yertle the Turtle hadn’t toppled the tyrant tortoise, the pond probably would have spawned wage slaves rather than polly-wogs. Enough already.
Todd preferred making up his own stories. Maureen didn’t object as long as they had plenty of ribbons and bows in them. She loved carriages and ballrooms and princes and princesses in gowns with lots of ribbons and bows, none of which Todd felt qualified to weave into a plausible plot. But every time his tales strayed too far away from Disneyland, she pouted. He was forced to do the best he could with ribbons and bows. Fortunately, they were portable and surprisingly versatile.