Just then a tall, stern-looking air force colonel wearing ABUs marched into Jordan’s workspace. “What the hell’s going on, Lieutenant?”
Jordan stood and saluted along with Sergeant Lazzo. “Colonel, sir. Unidentified Reaper above Karbala. No IFF. No tail number. We’re still trying to ID it.”
The colonel pointed at Lazzo. “Get CIA on the line, and find out why the hell I didn’t know about this.” He then gazed up at the screen as several other techs were now doing. “Christ on a cracker, this breaks half a dozen airspace restrictions, and I’m not about to take the heat for it. Where is it now?”
“Roughly three clicks south of the Imam Husayn and Al Abbas shrines.”
“How did it get this far undetected?”
“No idea, sir. AWACS only alerted us a few minutes ago.”
“Find out who’s controlling that drone.”
Jordan grabbed a phone and glanced at Lazzo, who simply shrugged in confusion as he manned a phone as well.
As the colonel and other nearby airmen watched the screen, the view rotated. Their Predator was falling behind the faster, more powerful unidentified Reaper drone. Up ahead, they could see the golden domes of the twin shrines gleaming in the sunlight. Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims filled the open squares around them. The Reaper was silhouetted, coming in low, like a spiked hornet against the city.
The Predator pilot’s voice came over the intercom. “MCR, heads up. Target One appears engaged offensive. It’s sparkling the shrine. Repeat, cyclops is sparkling the shrine.”
Now everyone was standing up, gazing at the overhead screen. Jordan lowered his phone receiver. “Which shrine is it lasing?”
“It could be prepping for a missile launch.” The colonel turned on Jordan and Lazzo. “Give me that goddamned phone!”
Lazzo shook his head. “CIA says it’s not their drone, Colonel.”
“Bullshit!”
Just then a Hellfire missile burst forth from the left wing of the Reaper in a puff of smoke, screaming skyward in an arc. A whole section of DCGS-1 staff gasped as the missile continued its trajectory, rising, and then suddenly arced straight down above the Imam Husayn shrine. By then two more missiles had launched and were beginning their upward arcs as well.
“MCR, heads up. Ripple!”
Lazzo called it out. “We’ve got multiple missile launches.”
Jordan was stunned by the magnitude of what he was watching. As his eyes went wide, the Predator’s optics focused in on the packed crowd in the square. The first missile impacted, spreading a visible shock wave through the air—quickly followed by a sustained fireball that in turn sent an even more powerful shock wave through the crowd—disintegrating them. Pieces of human beings flew in all directions.
“Lieutenant!” The colonel turned to Jordan. “New picture. Shoot that drone down! Take it down!”
Jordan came back to his senses and immediately got AWACS on the line. “Bandsaw-one-six. Bandsaw-one-six Sprint! Sprint! Sprint!”
As he spoke, he could see the remaining missiles roaring forward from the hard-points on the Reaper wings, raining down in a broad pattern among the pilgrims.
The colonel and most of the staff stared in disbelief. They had seen horrible sights on “Death TV” before, but this one was off the chart.
Lazzo stared at the explosions silently blasting holes into the dense crowds. “The bastards are using thermobarics. How could they just . . .” His voice trailed off as several technicians around him covered their mouths in horror.
The Predator’s optics played across the huge crowds roiling like ocean waves as they fled from the gore in the square between shrines, trampling each other in terror. Some of the DCGS staff actually howled in outrage.
“MCR, recommend Target One be destroyed immediately.”
The colonel looked truly livid—his face red, his eyes blazing.
“Sir, we have Falcons inbound. ETA three minutes.”
“Well, the damage is goddamn done already, son! I want that drone tracked, and I want to know who’s operating it! Get me some goddamned ELINT, and find out where it’s being controlled from.”
As the smoke and flames rose above the city, they could see the Reaper banking away and descending even farther—having let loose every missile it had.
“MCR, Target One turning to new heading . . . two-one.”
“Kodar Tree, MCR copies.”
They could now see the silent flash of small-arms fire from the crowds below. Their vantage point was still over a mile above the mystery Reaper—most likely their own Predator was still unseen by the crowd below, but the Reaper was in full view of hundreds of thousands of people.