Six structures dotted the grounds, with three large buildings serving apparently as living quarters. There were two other buildings that had a fair number of women and children going in and out, and then a long, single-story garage with four, twenty-foot-wide raise-up doors. Somewhere in the complex there was an access to the underground command post used by Almasi and his pilots. It’s just that no one had a clue which building it was in or how complex the maze of tunnels and chambers would be.
Xander had been assured that the huge Goliaths were nimble enough to navigate tight quarters, especially when transitioned to ground-mode. The much smaller Panthers wouldn’t have any trouble — they were designed for close-quarters combat. Reality would depend on the widths of the corridors in the underground labyrinth.
Without a doubt, Almasi would also have a hidden cache of defensive drones somewhere nearby. These didn’t necessarily have to be on the property, and could be in one of the surrounding houses or shops. So besides having to seek out and gain entrance to the true heart of the compound, Xander knew they’d also be fighting off a whole horde of rabid defenders.
In addition, Nathan Hall had been correct when he pointed out the strategic location of the compound. The hospital next door wasn’t big, but it did have a steady stream of patients and workers entering and exiting at all hours. And the school to the west of the property was a kindergarten to high school equivalent, with hundreds of children present during the day. The timing of the attack had been set for early morning, just at sunrise in Pakistan, so there shouldn’t be too many schoolchildren on the grounds at the time.
Xander had no illusions that the team could get in and out without at least some collateral damage, either caused by his people or by Almasi’s. Yet the stakes were too high not to take the risk. Let the chips fall where they may, but this was the head of the snake, and it desperately had to be severed.
The press of humanity in the underground command chamber was incredible, and with a smell to match. Over the past half-day, Almasi had had additional control stations moved in and hooked up, and now he had over eighty pilots crammed into the room, which included a mixture of Arabs, Persians, and Russians, along with a few Koreans thrown in for good measure.
With access to ninety-two RPAs scattered throughout the bushes, fields and culverts of Northern Virginia, it was imperative that he get as many of these units into the battle as soon as possible. With battery levels already below optimum, he was operating under a severe time constraint. Even though the drones were disposable after the battle, they still had to maintain charge throughout. Therefore the raid had to be quick, overwhelming, and decisive.
The outcome of this battle — which now encapsulated his entire war against America — would be known in less than half an hour. His entire legacy now rested on the efficiency of his strange mix of drone pilots. He also had the element of surprise on their side. After all, who would expect him to launch a major attack on a force of advanced drones that only a day before he didn’t even know existed?
He felt his lips stretch out into a weak smile. His face wasn’t used to the expression, and he didn’t do it out of joy. It was a grin of inevitability. He knew that if this mission failed, the Russians would not allow him to live. He was too much of a liability, as was his entire organization.
So not only did his legacy rest on the events of the next thirty minutes. His very existence was at stake as well.
The cargo plane had descended to ten thousand feet when the cargo chief opened the rear door. The three-man crew was bundled in thick coats to protect against the cold, while the attack force sat stoic and unaffected by the temperature. These drones were rated down to minus twenty below Fahrenheit. In fact, the colder it was, the faster their circuits fired.
The thirty combat drones were resting on a wide conveyor belt. When activated, the belt began to rotate towards the rear of the plane. The first row of drones unceremoniously fell out the back, tumbling in the crisp, clear air without the aid of parachutes. Row after row fell out the back, until seven seconds later the cargo bay was empty.
The UAVs became tiny dots in the sky, dispersed over a wide area and falling at a rate of one hundred twenty-two miles per hour. Then the first of the automatic stabilizers kicked in. Rotors began to spin, and within a second the internal gyroscopic controls took over. The drones stopped tumbling, even though they were still falling freely towards the ground. Slowly, so as to not overstress the props, the drones began to brake their descent. As the seconds passed, their rate of fall declined, until the units were in controlled flight and gathering into a large bird-like formation.
Xander and his pilots had debated whether or not they would use the FPV goggles during the freefall. It was finally decided they wouldn’t. The tumbling, dizzying effect would have been disorienting, and might have interfered with their effectiveness at the controls. Yet when the units stabilized and gained upright flight postures, goggles were slipped on and suddenly Xander and the others were halfway around the world and falling fast toward the blue water of the Arabian Sea below. Not less than a few deep inhales could be heard in the hangar as the pilots adjusted to their new perspective.
There was a thin cloud layer below, and the turbulence within caused some of the drones to wobble and break formation. But as they broke into the clear again, the skill of the pilots corrected the flight paths with perfection.
At two thousand feet, the pilots — seated in an aircraft hangar seven thousand miles away — steered their charges toward the shore and the looming mass of structures ahead. Karachi was a huge city that dominated the coastline of southwest Pakistan. A mostly Muslim population of over thirty-million called the city home. Its ports were the lifeblood of the region, including not only Pakistan, but Iran and India as well.
It would take thirty second to reach the shore, and by that time the Panthers would be radar visible, even as the Goliaths remained hidden.
Xander was counting on confusion to give them time to enter the city and get lost in the megalopolis. The confusion would be on the part of radar operators and air traffic control personnel at the local international airport. The signal on their screens would be like nothing they’d seen before: a thin cloud of contacts with no strong, individual central point. It would be like a large flock of birds, yet all with light metallic coatings. Hopefully, this strange mix of data would be enough to create a hesitation before reports were sent. By then, Xander and his force would be beyond the defensive perimeter and inside the city itself.
Tiffany Collins had stepped outside the hangar for some fresh air, as the hundred or so pilots and techs that occupied the huge single room were engrossed in their individual tasks. She wasn’t one of them, and she felt conspicuously like the proverbial fifth-wheel.
It was a few minutes past nine at night when the operation got underway, and she was briefly shocked and revived by the thirty-degree temperature of mid-December. She had spent considerable time in the area reporting on various stories, yet her tenure in L.A. had spoiled her to near-perfect year-round weather. Even then, this was just what she needed to get things back into perspective.
The two hangars which Nathan Hall had commandeered as his temporary operations center were located at the south end of the western runway at the Andrews Joint Military Base, about five miles southeast from the horrific scene of destruction along the Washington Mall. Tiffany walked to the edge of the building and looked in that direction. There was an abnormal glow over the area, as repair and rescue crews worked long into the night under brilliant floodlights. The damage caused to the buildings would take years to repair — the damage to the American psyche… much longer.