Those days just after 9/11 were heady times, and he’d finally had a chance to shine. But as always, time marched on and new people with new skills followed the path he’d blazed. Drones were high profile now. Before long he found himself politically outmaneuvered by younger, more technologically adept Ivy Leaguers. The Garden Party set. His age-old nemesis.
When he looked back on his career, that had been the one consistent theme: being outmaneuvered. His ex- wife had called him timid, even though he’d spent half his life in war zones. Now here he was in Karachi again. Right where he’d started-and he’d been a lot more adventurous back in his twenties. Now he just kept worrying about oral-fecal disease transmission and kidnapping.
The colonel tapped Warner’s knee and laughed, shouting over the diesel engine of their armored car. “You should not be anxious, you know. Everything has been arranged for maximum safety.”
“Whenever you say things like that, Anil, you make me nervous. It sounds suspiciously like tempting fate.”
The colonel laughed uproariously. “Fates be damned, my friend. You will be very happy. This will put the whole bin Laden issue behind us. You will see.”
He’d known the colonel for twenty-five years-way back when he’d been a CIA paper-pusher, and Anil had been an ISI liaison. Back before Warner’s expertise and long-standing connections made him a valuable consultant. Now both in their fifties, they saw the prospect of retirement just over the horizon. A low-end condo on the Texas Riviera was never far from Warner’s thoughts. Now was the time to swing for the fences. One last pay grade boost before going to the consulting side.
The four-wheeled armored BRDM-2 slowed down, and Warner took a deep breath. They were cutting in on Tannery Road. From here things would only get dicier. This was PPP territory. Crawling through traffic would make them a sitting duck. One RPG at close range, and the passenger compartment would get punctured by a white-hot jet of molten metal that would ricochet around until everyone inside looked like undercooked meat loaf. He’d seen the tiny holes those armor-piercing warheads made in the hull of a tank. Why blast a huge hole when all you want to get at is the juicy center? But then, the convoy still seemed to be making good time. And they weren’t dead yet.
He peered out the portal again, and judging from the numerous heavily armed police he saw on the streets outside, Warner realized that the roads must have been blocked to civilian traffic. So much for the element of surprise…
In a few minutes their vehicle slowed again and swerved right, down a tight lane. Warner’s view became a blur of passing masonry through the side portal. The sharp knock of a business sign being struck and bent back as they rolled past a shop front. All he could hear were sirens, car horns, and the rattle of the BRDM’s diesel engine. They were effectively blind. If someone hit them now, they’d never see it coming.
But no harm came to them, and in a few moments the vehicle rolled to a halt.
Kayani clapped Warner on the back. “We are here, my friend. I have something very special to show you.”
A soldier opened the heavy metal door, and what should have been fresh air flowing in was instead the familiar smell of the Third World-smoke, rotting garbage, and raw sewage. It was an odor Warner didn’t wax nostalgic about. If only he’d been young when 9/11 happened. What sort of career would he have had then? All these young guys out here now with their high-tech equipment. The contractors with their expense accounts and liberal rules of engagement. It still paid to work relationships, though. He still had some advantages the tech wizards did not.
Kayani motioned for Warner to follow as they passed a gauntlet of worried-looking soldiers training G3s at the upper stories of tenements all around them. There nonetheless were hundreds of curious faces peering from ledges and window frames down on them. Faces whispering to each other.
Warner ducked down and hoped his tan from years of deep-sea fishing would conceal his nationality long enough for him to get to cover. But by now it had to be apparent he was some sort of VIP on a tour. A glance ahead showed that Kayani was leading him through the corrugated tin gate of a warehouse/garage. It was a ramshackle place, with garbage strewn in the alleyways and near the entrance. As he entered, Warner had to slide between rusted Bedford trucks, covered in dust. They still retained some of their outrageously ornate decorations, but parts had been cannibalized. Here the smell of oil and rotting wood overcame the reek of sewage.
Just beyond these trucks lay another doorway, a subdoor within another larger gate. This is where Kayani stood beaming next to half a dozen soldiers. Warner could see bright work lights inside.
“This way…” Kayani entered, and Warner stepped through behind him. Inside he saw a surprisingly large workshop-easily fifty feet long and nearly as wide, with a tall ceiling hung with chains and winches. What rooted him in place was that the entire workshop was littered with the wreckage and components of what appeared to be American drone aircraft. Disembodied wings with American markings leaned against the far wall. There were entire drone sections, fuselage components, and electrical and optical assemblies, stretching along heavy wooden tables covered in clear plastic tarps.
“Holy mother of…”
Warner walked along the tables past oscilloscopes, soldering irons, and assorted tools littered across half a dozen workstations. Wrecked fuselage sections were in various states of disassembly, their components arrayed like the results of an electrical autopsy. Legal pads with scrawled notes in Arabic-not Urdu or Pashto, but Arabic- along with hasty diagrams were visible on the workbenches. He flipped aside a plastic tarpaulin and saw the rear section of an MQ-1 Predator, the downward-angled fins and propeller twisted from crash impact. He ran his hands along the ground power panel in the side of the fuselage, wiping away dirt and dust. Given the political waves this discovery would make, Warner had to be certain this was the real thing-absolutely certain.
He examined the panel. There was the release consent switch, still set to armed. The battery-off button, manual engine start switch, ground power. He pulled the tarp farther back to reveal the front section of the same or perhaps another MQ-1, the fuselage smashed, with dirt and pieces of branches confusing things even more. He tried to get his bearings, tapping each subassembly as he found it: the synthetic aperture radar antenna, a damaged Ku-band satellite dish. The APX-100 IFF transponder was missing and so was the video recording unit, but he found the primary control module, partially disassembled. Glancing up at the rest of the shop he saw at least four more MQ-1s.
Colonel Kayani smiled broadly. “Did I not promise it would be worth the trip, my friend? Of course, the Pakistani government has no reason to hide this from you. We have no use for American drones because we have our own Mukhbar and Burraq drones-of more advanced design.”
Warner stared at the walls in open wonder. And there, in front of him, hung what looked to be a large wiring schematic indicating the individual subsystems of an MQ-9 Reaper drone. The diagram was roughly quarter scale, and printed on professional blueprint paper. Warner could see the computer workstations and color plotters close at hand. They had the plans for an MQ-9. A Reaper.
This was a full-scale reverse engineering operation. He was nearly speechless.
“Well, what do you think?”
Warner, still wide-eyed, spoke without looking at Kayani. “I think I just got promoted.”
CHAPTER 9
Henry Clarke undid the buttons on his Balmain jacket as he cast an arm over the back of a leather sofa in Marta’s K Street corner office. The tall windows had an expansive view over the broad intersections of Vermont and K Street, just off McPherson Square. It was a beautiful, sunny winter day, and he wondered where he should eat later-and with whom.
Marta, as usual, stood behind her desk, no chair in sight, pacing as she listened to someone on the phone, interjecting with the occasional “No. Yes. Yes.” She glanced up at the far wall in measured intervals.
Clarke’s gaze wandered to a dozen flat-panel television screens occupying the wall across from Marta’s desk, in between bookshelves and framed vanity photos of her standing alongside senators, presidents, and celebrity
