UAV Read online

  UAV

  A Novella By

  Lincoln Cole

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  No part of this work may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Lincoln Cole, Columbus, 2015

  [email protected]

  www.LincolnCole.net

  Cover Design by M.N. Arzu

  www.mnarzuauthor.com

  Reviews for UAV

  "This book is fast-paced and action-packed, with multiple interesting twists." - Valerie Thomas, author of Auburn

  "UAV is reminiscent of a James Rollins adventure, and I found myself staying up with it into the night, until I finished it." - Richard Becker, author of The Catch

  “No price is too high. In a game of high stakes there will be casualties.” - Ian Welch, author of Target

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Epilogue

  “It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.”

  Albert Einstein

  Chapter 1

  Lahore, Pakistan

  1

  “Do you think they are staring at us because of how we smell?” William asked.

  Victor Cross blinked, wondering if he should laugh or groan at the ridiculous question. He was sitting on a park bench outside of a quiet little shopping center in Lahore, Pakistan, twirling a pair of Chanel sunglasses in his hand and trying to appear inconspicuous; a task made all the more difficult by his bumbling compatriot on the other end of the bench.

  “What?” Francis asked in disbelief, just as confused as Victor.

  “You know,” William explained, “like hamburgers. Do you think we smell like hamburgers?”

  Victor decided groaning was the proper response.

  “What the hell are you going on about?” Francis reiterated. “Why would we smell like hamburgers?”

  Francis was Victor’s second in command, the only person Victor would trust with his life. Unlike brutish William, Francis Umstead was lithe and plain, standing barely over five feet and thin as a rail. His accent was thick cockney, difficult to understand on the best of days. He wasn’t at all intimidating.

  His size was deceptive, though, and Victor would prefer facing William in a fight, the three-hundred-and fifty-pound bull of a man, over Francis. Francis was the most brilliant tactician Victor had ever met, and he knew every dirty trick for disabling and crippling opponents. They might be allies, but he had no doubt that his second in command had a plan to deal with him if it ever came to a fight.

  While Victor built his reputation, and became famous as an international mercenary for hire, Francis was always there at his side keeping him out of trouble. They both worked for JanCorp, a mercenary company that ran jobs for governments, corporations, and private citizens. Francis was brilliant and dangerous.

  William, on the other hand...

  “You know, like in that movie,” William elaborated, completely missing Francis’s objection to his insane question. “The one where soldiers keep eating Chinese food so they don’t smell like Americans when they sneak in to shoot people. Everyone here keeps staring at us, and I was wondering if it’s because we smell like strange food to them. Like it’s seeping out of our pores or something?”

  “Do you ever run out of stupid things to say?” Francis asked.

  “No joke, man, all the attention is starting to creep me out,” William replied. He was staring at the passing crowd and tapping the side of his leg. His gun was strapped there, beneath the robes.

  “Don’t do that,” Victor said casually. “No sense drawing attention to yourself.”

  “Okay, boss,” William said, folding his arms.

  It was an oppressively hot day in the Lahore, Pakistan, and Victor couldn’t stop sweating. Places he hadn’t even known could sweat were swampy and uncomfortable.

  He was less worried about his own comfort, however, and more about his gear: heat was brutal on electronics, and too much time in the sun could fry the hardware. His laptop sat open on the bench beside him, and he was using it to monitor the timeline and details of his plan.

  Francis stirred beside him, glaring over at William.

  “You don’t think they might be avoiding us maybe because you’re a gigantic freak?” Francis asked.

  William continued, keeping his voice low and ignoring Francis. “I mean, you wonder if they can smell meat on our clothing or something. Do you think it makes them mad since cows are sacred?”

  Francis stood in stunned silence, and Victor couldn’t help but laugh. A minute passed as Francis sought a reply.

  “That’s Hinduism, you moron,” Francis said breathlessly. “These are Muslims.”

  William hesitated. “Oh.”

  “In his defense, we just left India,” Victor offered.

  “When’s the last time you even ate a hamburger?” Francis asked. “Just how long do you think it stays in your system?”

  William was red-faced and confused. He didn’t take taunting well.

  “I was only wondering...”

  “They are on schedule,” Victor said, ending the conversation. “We have a little under two minutes.”

  “Why do they want him alive?” William asked. “It would be a lot easier just to kill Imran.”

  “That isn’t our job,” Victor said.

  “They want to hold him responsible for his crimes,” Francis added.

  “What crimes?” William asked. He shifted. “The guy hasn’t even done anything yet.”

  “No,” Victor agreed. “But the people would follow him if he asked. So they are going to hang him publicly and make an example of him for everyone to see.”

  “Won’t that just make people hate their leaders even more?”

  “That isn’t our concern,” Victor replied. “Our job is clear: take Imran alive. Whether or not they kill him isn’t our concern.”

  “Helen won’t like that,” Francis said softly, looking pointedly at Victor.

  He gave Francis a long look. “Helen doesn’t need to know. As far as she’s concerned, Imran is getting a fair trial.”

  “Of course,” Francis replied smoothly. “Do you think she knows?”

  “She doesn’t have the slightest clue,” Victor said.

  “And what if she figures it out?”

  “Then I’ll take care of it,” Victor replied. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

  Victor’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He glanced up at the streetlights around him. It was the middle of the day in bright sunlight, but those lamps were flickering to life with a telltale yellow glare. It was their cue from the fourth and hidden member of their team that the convoy was under a minute away.

  “That’s our signal,” he said, closing the laptop and standing up from his bench, “time to work.”

  2

  Helen Allison typed a sequence of commands into her keyboard and glanced out the window at the street below. She was on the third floor of the Siddiq Trade Center, overlooking Jail Street
where Victor and the rest of the crew were assembled.

  She was average height, attractive if a bit skinny, with brunette hair and soft features. She rarely bothered to wear makeup or fix up her hair because she spent most of her time with computers.

  She was also the newest member of Victor’s team, this being only her second time out in the field. She had worked with Victor before while contracting with JanCorp as a hacker, but from a distance usually in a lab with other analysts. Those jobs had also taken place while her sister was alive.

  She had offered to join Victor out in the field because he had been the one running the operation when her sister was killed two weeks ago. There hadn’t been a lot of information released to Helen from JanCorp about exactly what happened, nor any pictures or body. Only a report that her sister was dead from an explosion. Helen wanted to know what had happened to her big sister, and no one seemed to know outside of Victor’s team.

  Maybe, if she got close enough, she could get the truth. For now, she would play along, pretend to be oblivious, and get her answers.

  She glanced out the window and tried to locate Victor or Francis in the sea of people. They were somewhere below. Had they seen the lights? She hoped so because none of the team were in her view. All she could see was a throng of locals going about their daily lives like nothing was wrong.

  How many will die today?

  She didn’t want to think about that. If things went well, none would. Not civilians, anyway.

  Her phone started ringing. She glanced at it, then clicked the connect button.

  “Mom, this isn’t a good time.”

  “Helen,” her mother said. “Where were you?”

  “I’ve been working,” Helen replied. “I couldn’t make it.”

  “You couldn’t make it to your own sister’s memorial service?”

  Helen felt a tightness in her chest. “I was busy.”

  “You’re still working for that company, aren’t you? You promised your sister that you would quit.”

  “I know,” Helen said. “But there isn’t much point in that now, is there?”

  “She didn’t want this life for you,” her mother said. “I don’t either.”

  “We don’t want a lot of things,” Helen said. “I need to—”

  “Is this how you honor her memory, by risking your life like she did? You always looked up to her, but that’s no excuse for getting yourself killed.”

  Helen was silent for a moment. When she spoke, her voice was icy. “There was no reason for her to get herself killed either. Look where that got us?”

  “Helen...”

  “Mom, I need to go,” Helen said, hanging up the phone.

  She let out a deep breath and tried to clear her mind, pushing the concerns away. She felt unsettled with an aching feeling in her stomach. It had been two weeks since her sister had been killed, and she hated being reminded of it. Her older sister, her perfect sister, her dead sister.

  She pushed the thoughts away. She needed to focus on work.

  Down the road less than a quarter of a mile away was the approaching convoy. The vans were bulletproof and insulated, with the sole intention of transporting Imran Hyderi safely through the city of Lahore to an important business meeting.

  She didn’t know what Imran’s meeting was about. Didn’t want to know.

  This would be Imran’s first trip into civilized territory in six weeks, and there was no telling when he might reappear if they missed him today.

  She was out of radio contact with her team—Imran’s convoy traveled with jammers that blocked electronic communication within a half mile—so she would have to trust that they held up their end of the plan. Her job was to hack the security systems of this shopping center, disable the power grids and set off fire alarms.

  With luck and a little encouragement, panic would ensue and civilians would flood the streets. After a few seconds, she would reroute power, turn everything back on, and cover any trace she’d been mucking around in their security system. Certain people would know that the system was hacked, but the government would play it off as a random system glitch.

  Helen was depressed with how easy this job was turning out to be. She had a toolkit with wires and connectors to hack directly into an internal feed if that was necessary. She thought, at least, the critical systems would be off the grid.

  Instead, she’d managed to hack the entire system through Wi-Fi from a coffee shop on the second floor. Her tools sat unused, and the entire hack had taken under thirty seconds. A simple script she downloaded from the Internet had gotten through all of their firewalls using backdoor proxy servers and web kits. It made her feel like a script kitty.

  The rest of her time waiting consisted of a bagel and two cups of Turkish coffee to stave off nervousness.

  Two cups, it turned out, had been a bad idea. Now she was writhing in her chair, afraid to leave her post.

  “Come on, come on, come on,” she groaned, bracing herself for the ensuing power outage and blaring alarms. She didn’t enjoy loud and repetitive noise, so she was as far from the speakers as she could position herself. “Hope you boys are ready.

  With an anticipatory grimace, she typed the activation command into her laptop.

  3

  The streetlights turned off again, but that was the only sign that anything was amiss during the first few seconds. Most of the civilians didn’t notice the streetlamps at all, and only a few glanced over as Victor and Francis meandered away from the benches toward the roadway.

  William had disappeared into the shopping center a few moments earlier, milling near the sliding front doors and waiting for his moment to push them down.

  The convoy was in sight now, less than two hundred meters away. If Helen blew the alarm too early, the caravan would stop and detour down another street. If she blew it too late, the reinforced and defensible vans would slip past before there were obstacles in place to hinder them. In either scenario, they would have no hope of capturing Imran. Timing was everything.

  A little more than one hundred meters away, Victor heard the alarms blaring from inside the shopping center. He watched the approaching vans out of the corner of his eye and turned his attention to the sliding doors behind him. They were sensor operated, and without power couldn’t function, but they were built on safety hinges for disasters.

  Pushed off the hinges, they would swing safely out of the way. Victor was certain that civilians would figure out how to open the doors eventually on their own, but right now he didn’t have time to wait. That was where William came in.

  A group of confused people milled at the door. A few seconds after the alarms began, William pushed the glass door in a rush, knocking the sliding doors off of their hinges and escaping into the sunlight outside.

  Victor noted with dismay that only one doorway swung open and the other hung at an angle, blocking passage.

  Behind William in the mall, civilians were milling in a state of uncertainty, but when they saw the large man knock open the emergency exit their confusion shifted to fear.

  They swarmed outside through the single door, but Victor knew the stream of people wouldn’t be fast enough. He needed more, and the small opening with only one doorway had turned into a bottleneck. They were afraid but only afraid enough to go outside. No one was panicking.

  Not yet, at least.

  “Stop the convoy,” Victor mumbled to Francis, walking toward the open door. He pushed through the oncoming crowd, fighting into the mall. Hundreds of people were vacating stores and filling the antechamber, confused.

  The vans were close, and without more people rushing into the streets, Imran would disappear past without any problem.

  Francis nodded and turned to face the road, pulling his hood up to cover his face. Victor fought to the double doors of the shopping center, grabbing the blocking door and yanking it out of the way.

  He began waving his hands and pointed frantically at the windows above them.

  “A
ag!” he shouted in Punjabi.

  “Nar!” he added in Arabic, just in case some shoppers weren’t local. “Aag Lagana!”

  At the declaration of fire, confusion shifted to terror, and seconds later other people were screaming as well. It took Victor only seconds to incite real panic among the shoppers, but those were precious seconds he hadn’t expected to waste.

  He wasn’t worried, though, not yet. They might have to improvise, and he had to hope something would present itself. Victor slipped through the crowd and worked his way back to the edge of the road.

  He picked his target out of the line of oncoming vehicles. He was responsible for neutralizing the third van in line, but he was fairly certain it wasn’t the one Imran would be traveling in. The delegate would be in the middle or front van.

  Victor scanned the crowd for Francis as he moved down the street. The convoy was fast approaching and right now it would have no difficulty bypassing the impromptu blockade of milling civilians.

  He caught a momentary glance of his second in command, ducking in the crowd near the edge of the street. He hoped Francis had a plan to stop the vehicles, or this would all be for nothing.

  Whatever he is doing, Victor thought, he’d better do it fast.

  4

  “Where is your mother?” Francis asked in Punjabi, kneeling next to a young child and speaking slowly.

  His dialect was precise but unpracticed, and he was forced to enunciate the words to ensure she would understand. The little girl was terrified, and Francis felt bad for what he was about to do.

  Bad, but not enough to stop. She was young, between five and seven years old, and had no idea what to do in this situation. And, of course, things were worse for her than they should have been: Francis had circumvented the crowd as it dispersed outside the broken doors, separating this young girl from her mother and guiding her several dozen feet away without anyone becoming aware.

  Now she was lost, disoriented, and wanted nothing more than to find her mother. Francis heard the mother in the distance as the crowd dragged her along in the undercurrent, begging to be reunited with her child.

  Unfortunately, that wasn’t what Francis had on his agenda. His plan relied on the humanity and generosity of his enemy. Woe to this girl if they didn’t have any.