The Detachment

“Two things. First, during one of his revolving-door stints outside of government, Gillmor headed up a DARPA-funded company called Novel Air Capability. Usually called NAC.”

“Okay.”

“What I’m telling you is top secret SCI-”

“Give me a break.”

“Sorry. I guess it’s a habit. Anyway, NAC has created a prototype drone. They call it the Viper.”

“That’s a scary name.”

“Well, they needed to come up with something good to match the Predator and the Reaper. Anyway, this is an extremely versatile aircraft. Component parts, thirty minutes assembly time. It’s small-with the wings folded, it’ll go in a truck about the size of the one I got you. Vertical takeoff and landing; stealth configuration; twenty-four hours loiter time; capable of carrying and firing two Hellfire missiles.”

“Shit.”

“It gets worse. The ground control system is radically simplified and mobile. They call it the Viper Eye.”

“Why am I not surprised?”

“You ever see someone flying a radio-controlled plane?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s pretty much what we’re talking about. The only real difference is that this one is operated by video rather than line-of-sight. That’s because of the distances the Viper can travel, and so that the operator gets a bird’s-eye view of whatever he’s targeting. But the control system itself just looks like a ruggedized laptop with a couple of joysticks attached. You don’t need the kind of training a traditional Predator or Reaper ground station operator gets. You really only need a few runs to acquire fundamental competence with the system. They’re marketing it to domestic law enforcement.”

“Without the Hellfires, I hope.”

“Yeah, as a domestic spy drone. But the point is, it’s designed for ease of transport, ease of training, ease of use.”

“Let me guess. One of them has gone missing.”

“That’s right.”

“You think that’s what they’re going to use on this school.”

“This school, and if that doesn’t do the trick, on others.”

I didn’t answer. I was remembering my conversation with Treven in the truck, when I’d told him I thought schools were going to be the next thing. I realized I hadn’t fully believed it at the time. Hadn’t accepted, deep down, that anybody would go that far. But of course, that was naive. The triumph of hope over experience.

“You there?” he said.

“I’m here.”

“Anyway, I think the plan is for Gillmor’s unwitting false flag team to get into the school auditorium and shoot it up with automatic pistols. If Horton is right, and it’s only a four-man team, some people will get out. Four’s not enough to lock down the whole school, just enough to do major damage once the team is inside. So there will be some witnesses. And while the team is in the building, Gillmor’s going to level the place with two Hellfire missile strikes. The survivors will talk about a bunch of crazed Islamic terrorists screaming Allahu Akbar, and the working assumption will be they used pre-positioned high explosives to go out like martyrs.”

I considered. “Are you sure of your information?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Because if that’s the plan, there are a lot of problems. First, you’re going to have witnesses describing a strange airplane. Maybe with rockets flying off the wings.”

“You think that’s a problem? It’s barely relevant. First of all, Iran has publicly announced the development of its own drones. So even if there’s a sighting, a senior White House official calls up a pet reporter and ‘leaks’ that the government thinks it was Iran. The public is already prepped to hate Iran like some kind of nation state version of Emmanuel Goldstein, so when the pet reporter reports the anonymous government ‘leak,’ it slots perfectly into an existing narrative, and the public swallows it as fact.”

“If I didn’t know better,” I said, suppressing a smile despite everything else, “I’d think you had your own roster of pet reporters.”

“Hey, in this town, it’s more important than an entourage. Anyway, forget about Iran. The bottom line is, anytime there’s a major event, you get a certain number of witnesses describing strange pre-and post-incident occurrences. The corporate media’s been trained to ignore it unless they’re told otherwise.”

“What if someone shoots video with a cell phone?”

“People have shot video of UFOs. Of the Loch Ness Monster. It’s always explainable.”

“Are you telling me the Loch Ness Monster is real?”

“I can neither confirm nor deny.”

“What about the debris? The FBI will pick through the place. Forensics teams will be able to tell what caused the explosion.”

“Look what the FBI did on the anthrax investigation. They’ll be instructed to tell the public what the public needs to hear, and to close the case. And outside of a few blogs the establishment media will be instructed to marginalize, that’ll be the end of it.”

“But we’re talking about physical evidence. On the scene.”

“John, listen. You don’t get it. The country is traumatized. People want to believe in their leaders, so they will. They won’t be able to believe the truth. Look, it doesn’t matter whether the CIA killed Kennedy. It doesn’t matter whether nine-eleven was an inside job. Even if you could prove such things, the proof would be ignored, because as a matter of almost religious faith, the country can’t accept such notions. Especially at a time like this.”

“But Horton’s whole plan is to expose this thing for what it was. More or less.”

“That’s different. Or at least, I hope it is. Horton isn’t a nobody with a cell phone camera and a conspiracy theory. He’s an insider, with a reputation he’s carefully stage-managed. That reputation he’s created-his brand-is essentially a counternarrative. He’s undermining ‘I can’t believe Americans would do such things’ with ‘I’m an American, and a hero, too, and you know I’m honest.’ Horton is one communications-savvy bastard, I’m telling you.”

I couldn’t help smiling a little. “I guess it takes one to know one.”

“You’re right, it does.”

“Okay. Let’s assume your information is good. Can you stop this thing?”

“Maybe. With your help.”

“How did I know you were going to say that?”

“Because it’s true.”

“Why can’t you just call the Lincoln police?”

“And tell them what? I heard someone’s going to bomb a school?”

“Yeah, that.”

“Assuming they would even take me seriously, and assuming I didn’t get disappeared to a black site for doing it, the plotters would just divert to a secondary target. Remember, this is just four guys with machine pistols and a monstrously portable drone. There’s no pre-positioning and there’s almost no planning. The whole thing is nothing but a fire-and-forget exercise-if they want, they can just choose another school. And, absent the shooters-who they won’t need after the first one because the Allahu Akbar witnesses will already have been created and will already have insured the proper narrative structure-they can repeat as necessary. We have to stop them in the act.”

“Well, then send some people in.”

“Who? I don’t have that kind of juice with the paramilitary branch. Besides, who’s going to gear up and parachute into Lincoln, Nebraska, on my say-so?

“Goddamn it, stop manipulating me.”

“I may be manipulating you, but I’m telling you the truth.”

Christ, he sounded just like his mentor, my late friend Tatsu. For a moment, it made me sad. Tatsu would have been proud of his protege.