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Kill Decision(32)



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

Influence Operations



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.