For Good Men to Do Nothing Page 2

  Whoa!

  Sam stopped in her tracks, her boots sliding on the icy pavement. She used her poles to steady herself.

  Across the street at the entrance to the more modern and upmarket Böglerhof Hotel, she spotted a face - more accurately a pair of eyes - that threw up a red flag.

  The eyes belonged to a late middle-aged man, maybe 55; medium height and build, wearing an expensive, black Spyder ski jacket. Someone else was carrying his skis and poles. The eyes wore a blue bobble hat, low down on the head, and a red and black chequered scarf covered the mouth. It was as though the eyes’ owner was hoping to be incognito.

  But Sam recognised the eyes; she knew she did. Even if the rest of the face was doing its best to go unnoticed. She’d seen the eyes in the newspapers some years back. Initially it was a big splash on a broadsheet. Probably The Times. The article ran for several days and it made the telly and the other papers.

  She recognised the eyes for sure.

  Their stares met just as Sam silently mouthed his name. There was a spark. Only briefly. The eyes knew that she was looking at them.

  They turned away from her gaze, the rest of the head following. The head said something over its shoulder to the stockier man who was carrying his skis. Sam was too far away to pick up what was said. The other man (younger, bigger and less expensively dressed - black ski trousers, red jacket with distinctive blue flashes and a white ski helmet she’d easily pick out in a crowd) shot Sam a long look. She blinked, as if to capture the complete image; and was immediately embarrassed for staring.

  No, I’m not embarrassed. Suspicious? Yes, more like it.

  Sam shook her head as if to reset it, had a quick glance at the frozen pavement that was her route and, as only anyone can in ski boots, waddled onwards towards the ski-bus stop.

  Creech US Air Force Base, Las Vegas, US

  Master Sergeant Rick Rodgers tweaked the joystick that, via multiple satellites, instructed the ailerons on the wings of his MQ-9 Reaper to alter its course. He glanced at the airspeed indicator: 143 knots. That would do for now. And the bearing? 169 degrees, magnetic. That was also OK.

  He had four LCD screens in front of him: two 24-inchers, one on top of each other, and two smaller screens side by side lower down. The lower 24-incher displayed the pilot’s view. He could alter the picture electronically as if he were strapped to the front of the drone. Just now he was looking straight ahead, and down about 45 degrees.

  And all he could see was dark jungle. Miles and miles of it.

  He pushed back in the brown leather chair. It rocked slightly. He stretched his neck from side to side, trying to banish the stiffness from the basketball he had played last night with his buddies. He was in good shape. He knew that. But at 36 he wasn’t getting any younger. His recent pilot-training at Pueblo had mostly been about learning to fly the drone. But the instructors also pushed the would-be pilots physically. He was one of four enlists to be given the chance to compete for their drone wings, along with 20 officers. It was the first time the Air Force had allowed enlisted men to train as pilots. He had made it, close to top of the cohort. He was good behind the stick - he’d proved that. But he was also always in the top five of any of the physical assessments. Not bad for an old man.

  But, boy, recovery was so much more difficult nowadays.

  He shot a glance sideways. ‘You got anything, Lance?’

  Captain Lance Travis was his sidekick. He was sitting in the seat next to him. Their ‘cockpit’ was at the end of a small beige, windowless shipping container. The pair of them with their instruments were crammed against the back wall. They shared a central LED which could display any one of their own screens, and Lance had another four of his own. His job was surveillance. And death.

  Their $17 million Reaper was fitted with extra fuel on the internal pylons and four Hellfire IIs, surface-to-ground missiles, further along the wings. Lance’s job was to find the target, designate it and, once Rick had launched - missile launch was always the pilot’s call - check the Hellfire’s trajectory as it found its own way to the target. Subsequently Lance, using the variety of sensors aboard the 3,800-pound unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), established mission success and checked for collateral.

  ‘Nothing. It’s all dark green, getting darker. And it’s all clear. I’ll be switching to infrared in 30 minutes.’

  The Reaper was flying at 32,000 feet, and yet Lance could easily pick out single human targets. And if they were interested, between them they could get close enough and zoom hard enough to read the label on a pair of jeans - in daylight. At night they could establish the make of a truck from its engine’s hotspot and the size of its warm tyres. They lost some resolution at night, but onboard millimetric radar and some state-of-the-art thermal imaging sensors meant that there weren’t many places a hostile could hide - at any time.

  With up to 30 hours’ endurance it wasn’t beyond a Reaper to start its mission circling over Damascus and finish with plenty of AVTUR to spare in Baghdad.

  But Damascus wasn’t their mission. Nor was Baghdad.

  Today, more accurately this evening, they were flying along the Venezuelan/Colombian border. They’d flown the Reaper out of Creech, wheels up at 5.30 pm, and would land back at base in seven hours' time. They were the only operational crew not piloting drones out of al-Udeid in Qatar, or from Bagram in Afghanistan.

  Rick wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

  There were 212 Reapers in service with the Air Force; training told him that about 120 of those were operational at any one point. With average mission lengths of around six to eight hours (beyond that even the sharpest pilots lost their edge), maybe 40 were in the air at any one point. Speaking to buddies and fellow pilots at Creech, most were used for search-and-destroy in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq and lately in Yemen. They were all piloted from Creech, with just groundcrew forward to patch, make up, refuel and rearm the UAVs in theatre. Reapers were remotely-piloted vehicles. At over 6,000 miles from Las Vegas to mid-Asia, Rick thought they were stretching the definition of ‘remote’.

  For the Reapers flying out of Qatar and Afghanistan, he guessed that scores of terrorists were taken out each week, with some crews at Creech notching up over 1,000 confirmed kills in a tour. Afghanistan and certain parts of the Middle East were target-rich environments.

  Yet here, now, he and Lance were loitering above the South American jungle looking for who knows what? Not a badass in sight.

  No, he wasn’t sure how he felt about his assignment.

  He’d been posted to Creech just three months ago. He was delighted to have been selected to fly directly out of training and equally happy to have been posted to 432nd Operations Group, a 25-minute drive from Las Vegas. As an Army brat he had lived all over the world; Vegas was just another notch on his belt. His pop, a tanky, had mostly been based in Hohenfels, Germany. But the family had spent time at Fort Lewis in Washington State among a couple of others. Pop had finished up as a command sergeant major at Camp Blanding, Florida, where he’d finally bought a boat and retired. Rick hadn’t suffered the fate of other army kids, and had managed to restrict himself to only six schools before he’d been old enough to apply for the Air Force. And whilst his pop was initially unhappy about his choice of service (‘Everyone hates the Air Force, son.’), he had beamed a big smile a couple of months ago when Rick had been presented with his wings.

  Not only was he only one of two enlisted men to have passed the course. He was also the only black man. Yup, sure. His pop was pleased about that.

  A couple of weeks later, having moved into the mess at Creech, they were given their aircraft and mission areas. Rick was caught off guard.

  ‘Master Sergeant Rodgers!’, the colonel had called out.

  ‘Yessir!’

  ‘You’re joining Captain Travis. It’s a new mission of which you’ll be briefed later.’

  ‘Yessir!’

  The colonel had continued down the assignment list, with the remaining pilots flyin
g Afghanistan or the mid-east.

  And that was that. He’d hung around after the briefing and tracked down Captain Lance Travis. He was as bemused as Rick. At 31 Lance was an experienced UAV Sensor Operator with 650 confirmed kills, nearly all of them in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He’d been taken off routine search-and-destroy missions that morning, which were his bread and butter. He was none the wiser as to their ‘new mission’.

  They’d made their way to the canteen where, once they’d got their coffee and sat down, a young-looking major had found them and accompanied them to the colonel’s office.

  ‘Bring your coffee. The boss is very chilled.’

  The briefing was just them, the colonel, the major and a middle-aged man wearing a suit, who looked stern and business-like. Rick thought he was possibly State Department or from General Atomics who manufactured the Reaper (maybe they were going to test-fly a new UAV?). Or he could be CIA or Homeland Security. He quickly dismissed the latter; both organisations had their own Reapers.

  Whatever, he stood at the back of the room and wasn’t introduced.

  ‘Gentlemen, you’re going to fly a Reaper from Creech. South. Across the Gulf of Mexico and into Venezuela.’ The colonel smiled a knowing smile, as if he were sharing the biggest ever secret. ‘All of the work we do here at Creech is secret. But this is especially so. You’ve been chosen, not only because you are good at what you do, but because we need to rely completely on your integrity. Do we understand each other?’

  Rick wasn’t sure what to think. Lance may be an old hand, but he was hardly an experienced pilot. Maybe there was something about his background; the fact that he was a recently commissioned enlist making him seem more trustworthy?

  Less inclined to ask questions?

  He wasn’t sure.

  ‘Yessir!’, rang out in unison.

  The colonel had walked around the room, staring out of the window as if gathering his thoughts. He turned to them.

  ‘You’ll be given a mission summary before each flight. Flight paths will be tight, and you’ll have little discretion with route planning. I will personally check all of the details before you fly and either I, or the major here, will always be on base should there be issues or questions mid-mission. Is that clear?’

  We’re going to fly a Reaper into Venezuela, a country on the edge of civil war, and one we have subjected to black ops for half a century? Are you sure?

  ‘Yessir!’, from Lance. Rick had been deep in thought and blurted out, ‘Yessir!’ a little too late to appear completely compliant.

  The colonel paused, shooting Rick a quizzical look.

  ‘Good. Good. Details of your first mission will be emailed to you within two hours. You’re flying tonight.’

  That had been it. Rick had glanced at the civvy on the way out of the office, but hadn’t caught his eye.

  Four hours later he was staring at jungle.

  And this was their seventeenth mission. Seventeen dreary flights scouring the western jungles of Venezuela looking for ‘new activity’.

  ‘New activity’ was defined in the mission statement as: recent clearings, new or resurfaced roads, new or refurbished buildings, and any changes to water courses. After the first flight he and Lance had spent the following morning redefining ‘new activity’ to see if they could expand the list - if nothing else to make their job slightly more interesting. The first mission had been very dull. Their path had covered about 850 square miles of jungle, using a zig-zag pattern, south to north. They’d entered Venezuelan airspace at 36,000 feet, dropping to 32,000 once they were away from habitation. They’d left Venezuelan airspace two-and-a-half hours later. None the wiser.

  On mission 15 late into the evening, Lance had found a new road branching from some old blacktop. It led to a clearing in the jungle that could have been big enough for a short airstrip. Or a decent-sized poppy plantation. Lance had picked it up using the drone’s thermal imager, the strip darker where the surrounding jungle had kept its heat for longer. Rick had put the Reaper into ‘loiter’ whilst Lance checked the most recent mapping and satellite photographs. After a second run Lance confirmed what he had seen and that he had taken plenty of footage.

  As Rick flew the Reaper back over the Gulf of Mexico, Lance top-and-tailed the imagery and emailed it to the colonel. They’d had nothing back from him.

  Tonight they were running close to the Colombian border. The mission was an hour longer than usual as the flight path had to take in the contorted line of the border. The colonel was clear: under no circumstances were they to stray into Colombian airspace. That made flying slightly more fun. But, he felt for Lance. Almost 100 hours in the air and only an airstrip to report.

  No badasses. The Hellfires went out with them. And they came back again.

  Shit!?

  A red light flashed on his console. The Reaper, currently on autopilot, veered left, the pilot’s LED struggling to keep up with the speed of turn - a blur of greens and blacks. Rick’s balance went as his brain struggled to rationalise the sudden movement on the screen. He obviously felt no g-force, but like a video roller-coaster it didn’t stop your brain being fooled by the imagery.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing, Rick?’ Lance’s screens were also awash with moving pictures as the sensors followed the airframe.

  Rick switched off autopilot and regained control. He checked bearing, altitude and pitch. All was calm, except a red light flashed continuously on one of the lower monitors. He pressed a button and checked the error code: navigation sync error.

  ‘Wait …’ He put his hand up to stop further questions from Lance.

  He racked his brain.

  Navigation sync error. A disparity between GPS readings and the inboard gyroscopes. The latter was a fall-back navigational system if the GPS went down. It used their wheels-up coordinates and a series of sophisticated gyroscopes to track and report current location. It wasn’t as accurate as GPS and became less so the further away they got from their start location. Pilots could reset the gyroscopes’ start point in flight if they were confident with the GPS readings.

  He pressed a couple of other buttons on a keypad.

  Error: 23.57 miles.

  What the hell is happening?

  The autopilot had started to correct the error. It used the GPS as the primary source of navigational information, unless the pilot told it otherwise. It thought they were off course. And had started to sort it out.

  Why was the GPS reading over 20 miles out? All of a sudden?

  ‘I’ve got a GPS error.’

  ‘I can see that. Do you know why?’ Lance was leaning across the central console.

  ‘No. It happened suddenly, as if the bird had been flying using gyroscopes, and then it suddenly picked up a GPS signal. Doesn’t make sense?’

  ‘Where are we headed?’

  ‘Shit!’

  Rick knew then that the Reaper was no longer in Venezuelan airspace. They had been running very close to the border when the navigational system had gone haywire. The Reaper’s autocorrect had sent them west. They were now in Colombian airspace. In the minute or so of confusion he’d taken his eye off the ball.

  At 160 miles-an-hour they might have strayed maybe ten or 15 miles across the border. But Rick knew that that was ten or 15 miles too far.

  He threw the joystick hard left, checked the bearing was due east and upped the airspeed.

  Inneralpbach, Austria

  Sam twisted both heels, pushing her weight down through her knees. Her skis cut into the top layer of freshly-pisted snow, forcing out a spray of white powder. She skidded for about a metre and came to a halt. She leant forward on her poles and took in the view to the village of Inneralpbach a mile or so below. It was perfect skiing weather. Cold and crisp - the early morning sun glancing through the trees, picking out the water crystals that were frozen in the air - like suspended silver slivers in a recently-shaken snow dome.

  She was a third of the way down the Red 8, resting on a thin shelf,
ready to launch herself down the next slope which lay beckoning downwards between dark green pines. It was a good morning. One of the best.

  The deep cutting sound of approaching snowboarders caught her attention. She turned to look back through the gap in the trees from where she had just come. Two young lads, no a boy and a girl, expertly carved their way onto the shelf and, without a pause, jumped off the lip and, with a holler, sped down the next part of the run. Even though Sam was a good skier, there was no way she could have kept up with the momentum of a pair of deft snowboarders who had age on their side.

  Another swoosh and an older female skier stopped a few metres from her on the ledge. She was dressed fabulously in black trousers and a cream-white top with fake fur around the hood. She looked at Sam and smiled. And then, with the grace of a local who had skied all her life, dropped over the ledge and carved her way fabulously down the slope.

  For no other reason than infatuation, Sam followed the woman, matching her turns as best she could.

  Swish, swoosh. Swish, swoosh.

  The woman with the cream parka made it look easier than it was, and it wasn’t long before Sam missed a turn and she had to push a bit harder to keep up. But it was fun - mesmerisingly so.

  She was so entranced chasing her quarry that she failed to hear the skier behind her who was moving quicker than her, in a straight line - without slowing turns. A blunt object on a collision course.

  Smack!

  Ouch!

  Oi!

  As she tumbled she sensed the other skier was a man. Possibly 30 kilos heavier than her? Out of control? Shit happens.