CHAPTER 110

The trailer was a smoking wreck. The rocket had blown right through the door and detonated inside, tearing a hole through the far wall and kicking up part of the roof, as if some drunken giant had taken a can opener to it. Rodriguez had entered shooting, taking no chances, but no one was alive inside.

The technicians had been stabbed or shot at their stations before he ever took the rocket launcher to the door, so only the kid had died in his assault. His body was sitting placidly in one of the office chairs, miraculously still balanced in place though the blast had taken half of his head away. A couple of the computers were still up and running, but Rodriguez and Piloski had not been able to get past the grinning death’s-head screensaver Specs had apparently installed. Most of the equipment was irreparable, but there was still power running and some of the comm unit might be stirred back into life.

“Can you fix it?” said Rodriguez.

Piloski tore his eyes away from the kid and studied the smoking hardware.

“You sure screwed this good,” he said.

“Can you fix it?” said Rodriguez.

“It’ll take time, but yeah, I think so. The radio is dead, but we can wire through the satellite dishes.”

“Do it,” said Rodriguez.

There was no difference in rank between the two men, and Piloski had the neater record, but Rodriguez was in charge.

It took half an hour, Piloski working the cables and checking readings from his laptop while Rodriguez held the flashlight and checked his watch. Neither spoke. When it was done, Piloski merely said, “Let’s give it a try,” and clapped the headphones to his head. It took a further five minutes to isolate the band and raise HQ.

“Okay,” he said, passing the headset to Rodriguez. “You’re up.”

Rodriguez gave his name and rank brusquely, cutting through all queries about why someone of his standing was using the comm system.

“We just launched three Predators,” he said. “They are going to make one hell of a hole in the wrong place unless you can get them down.”

He said it twice and then there was a long silence.

The drones had been up fifty-two, seventy-seven, and eighty-four minutes respectively. With haste, a Navy FA-18 from the aircraft carrier CV-63 Kitty Hawk, currently deployed in the Philippine Sea, might intercept the second Predator exactly twelve minutes before its scheduled beach strike, and the third twelve easy minutes later.

But the first drone, which had left the airbase twenty-five minutes before the others, was already out of range. They couldn’t stop it.