Drone

but only at the last minute—a courtesy call, nothing else. Gunfire wasn’t entirely uncommon around here; the Twentynine Palms Marine Corps Base was just twenty miles up the road.

Castillo’s men had relocated to Yucca Valley to take over a meth lab situated in an abandoned silver mine up in the hills above the town. A pair of surveillance drones had been tracking the three of them for the past thirty-six hours. They normally lived in a big five-bedroom rancher with a saltwater pool closer to town, but tonight they were in the meth lab cooking up a new batch.

Sergio Navarro had actually located a schematic of the operation from an old U.S. Bureau of Mines microfiche that had only recently been digitally scanned and archived. The good news was that there was only one way to access the mine, a single point of entry and exit. Perfect for a napalm attack or even a mass burial beneath the rock and dust. But Cruzalta opted for neither. He and his handpicked team wanted bloody vengeance, up close and personal.

Cruzalta had invited Pearce to come with him on the mission, but only as an observer. Pearce accepted. He wanted to study Cruzalta’s tactics and small-unit operations firsthand. He knew there was always more to learn in the world’s most dangerous game, and Cruzalta was one of the best players around.

The Marinas utilized a German EMT Aladin drone for scouting, a battery-powered plane of similar design to the American RQ-11 Raven that was about the size of a large model airplane and flown with a remote control. The infrared camera indicated that no guards had been posted, but three scrawny coyotes were lingering within thirty feet of the mine entrance.

A Marina sniper took out the three coyotes with his suppressed rifle. They barely yipped as the slugs ripped through their emaciated bodies, shredding their internal organs in an instant. Cruzalta generally liked animals more than people, but he couldn’t take a chance on the feral canines barking once his men approached.

When the point man reached the mine entrance, he checked for trip wires and laser alarms. There weren’t any. He advanced twenty feet into the mine, taking position behind a large ancient Dumpster on skids. He whispered in his mic, “Claro,” and the rest of the squad followed him in.

A corporal set a modified Boston Dynamics RHex rough-terrain robot on the ground and guided the six- legged metal brick into the shaft. Fluorescent lights shone in the distance. Air-venting systems hummed, vacuum pumps rattled, and men occasionally shouted in Spanish above the industrial din. It was a good thing the shaft was noisy. The RHex’s six metallic legs—shaped in half circles and coated with rubber—thrummed like a washer with an unbalanced load. It made too much noise for Pearce’s liking, but the RHex was a reliable, battle-tested drone that could climb up, over, or through creeks, logs, sand, rocks, stairs, drainpipes, and just about anything else you threw at it—in both directions, upside down, or right side up.

The nearly two-foot-long scouting bot chugged along one of the rough-cut walls. Cruzalta and Pearce watched the operator’s face. With fore and aft cameras displaying both infrared and normal vision modes, it was easy enough to navigate the tunnel and locate a secure position from which to observe the occupants. The corporal signaled his target count with the world’s oldest “digital” display—holding up a finger or thumb each time he identified one of the Castillo men or another criminal associate in one of the rooms. They knew there were three Castillo men and seven associates and, judging by the lighting, three rooms in use. Cruzalta needed to know how the men in the rooms were distributed.

The little boxy robot scrunched its way over a pile of tailings on the way to the last lit room. The loose rock on the pile gave way and the bot tumbled down to the floor. Its thirty-pound metal body clanged sharply against a stone.

The voices in the third room suddenly stopped.

Pearce instinctively clutched his weapon tighter.

A shadow emerged out of the far room, a human form backlit by the lab’s fluorescent lamp. The gas mask on his head and his bulky chemical suit gave him an odd, otherworldly silhouette.

Cruzalta glanced over at his corporal.

The corporal signaled associate. He looked back down at his laptop.

The hapless investigator had just picked up the RHex and held it close to his face in the dark, studying its camera eyes.

On the corporal’s IR screen, the man’s face was a white glowing mask, heavily distorted by the lens in such close proximity.

The lab worker shouted over his shoulder to someone in the back room. His chemical suit squeaked as he turned.

“Hey! Look what I—”

Thwump-thwump. A silenced 9mm round tore out his larynx before he could finish the sentence and a second round severed his brain stem. His lifeless hands dropped the robot.

Cruzalta whispered commands in his throat mic before the meth cooker’s corpse hit the dirt. His men rushed forward, MP5s in front of their helmeted faces, silent as cats, tossing flash bangs against the walls that caromed into the rooms. Pearce and Cruzalta followed right behind. The targets screamed as the concussive explosions burst their eardrums and their retinas seared in the blinding light.

The Marinas dashed in. Pearce stood back. He heard six muffled pops—silenced pistols dispatching the remaining workers—and watched three men dressed in chemical suits being frog-walked out into the main shaft, black bags over their heads, howling muffled curses through mouths stuffed with cotton rags and duct-taped shut.

Cruzalta signaled Pearce into the first room. It was definitely a meth lab. Pearce wasn’t an expert but it looked to him like they were just about to begin a cook. Container barrels had been opened and plastic jugs full of clear liquids were stacked in rows on a tarnished steel table. Three corpses with their brains blown out lay crumpled against the far wall, red gore spattered on their bright yellow chemical suits.

“Two more rooms, two more labs. What do you want me to do with the bodies?” Cruzalta asked.

Pearce shrugged. “Leave them to rot. A lesson to anybody who wanders in here.”

Cruzalta nodded. “Food for the rats.” He then pointed at the barrel and jugs. “What about the chemical precursors? Those are very dangerous materials.”

“I’ll call Early. We’ll get a DEA hazmat team to pull them out.”

Cruzalta grinned at Pearce. “Aren’t you curious what I’m going to do with those three pendejos?”

“Not as curious as they are, I’m sure.”

A sergeant appeared out of the dark. He asked Cruzalta a question in Spanish. Cruzalta nodded.

The sergeant lifted a razor-sharp tomahawk, the kind the U.S. military first issued in Vietnam. He crossed over to one of the corpses, stepped on the lifeless forearm, and raised the ax high. The blade tinked on the rocky soil as it cleanly severed the man’s hand at the wrist. The sergeant snapped open a clear gallon-size evidence bag out of a pocket and tossed the hand in. He proceeded to the other body.

Pearce frowned a question at Cruzalta.

“That’s how we collect fingerprints in my unit,” Cruzalta said with a grin.

* * *

Two hours later, Myers got the call from Pearce.

“Cruzalta is a true believer now. He sends his thanks and is awaiting your instructions.”

“Once again, I’m in your debt. Good luck, and good hunting.”

38

The White House, Washington, D.C.

Myers was grateful for Pearce’s phone call but it was anticlimactic. Myers hadn’t been waiting idly for Cruzalta’s approval. She’d always suspected he’d throw in with her. She knew in her bones that a patriot like Cruzalta would do whatever it took to save his nation from its enemies. As soon as Myers and Pearce had broken their Skype connection four days ago, Myers began ramping up so that when Cruzalta did formally agree to join