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Juan walked over to Murph and handed him Lieutenant Dominguez’s phone memory card.
“Before you show off your pyrotechnic skills, the first priority for you and Eric is to decrypt this.”
Murph turned it over in his hands. “It feels damp.”
“I had it in my pocket when I went into the drink. Linc has a laptop for you as well, but that should be nice and dry.”
“Too bad,” Murph said. “I like a challenge.”
“I have a hunch our new friend Admiral Ruiz doesn’t want us to find out what’s on this memory card. I want to know what else she’s up to.”
Panama City, Florida
It was the first time Major Norm Miller had seen every single pilot station occupied inside Tyndall Air Force Base’s Gulf Range Drone Control System facility. Most of the time, only one target drone was being flown, but this morning was the final test flight before the actual mission the next week. Everything had to go perfectly or the demonstration could be scrubbed. Miller had no intention of letting the slightest detail be overlooked, not with his promotion to lieutenant colonel on the line.
“Give me system status,” he said, and each station responded that all systems were operating in the green and ready for takeoff.
“Excellent. Then let’s begin. Quail One, radio the tower for clearance to taxi.”
Miller, a former fighter jockey with sunbaked skin and thinning hair, drank a Diet Coke while he watched the drone’s camera feed as it eased toward the runway. He didn’t have a chair in the room, preferring instead to spend his time moving between the stations to keep tabs on the operators. Each of the six simulated cockpits was occupied by a two-pilot team to handle the increased mental workload imposed from the lack of tangible feedback that an onboard pilot would experience. Normally, the computer, preset with the mission parameters, flew the plane, with manual backup ready to take over in case the computer malfunctioned. The ultimate fail-safe was the detached warhead of a Sidewinder missile installed on the drone. In the event contact was lost, the unmanned aerial vehicle would self-destruct.
The lead drone taxiing on the tarmac turned so that the camera on the following drone got a good side view. It was a modified F-16 Fighting Falcon, now called a QF-16 to distinguish the sleek fighter as a target drone destined to be destroyed someday by another plane or ship. Its tail and wingtips were painted a bright orange, and an external fuel pod was slung under its belly.
Miller never could get used to seeing a plane that had been designed for a human pilot take off with an empty cockpit, but that’s exactly what Quail 1 did now, its afterburner spewing a glowing red tail behind it. Quail 2 continued
the procession. Circling above were two manned F-15 Eagle chase planes armed with air-to-air missiles. They would act as escorts during the mission for observation purposes and as a final backup in case something went wrong with one of the drones.
This mission was not the typical flight out over the Gulf of Mexico test range. The eight planes—six drones and two escorts—were part of a live-fire drill for the UNITAS joint combat exercise carried out annually by nations in the Western Hemisphere and select NATO countries. Surface ships from the U.S., Great Britain, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and a dozen other navies would be converging in the Caribbean southeast of the Bahamas in a few days to simulate war games and undergo training on how to cooperate as a multinational task force. The highlight of the exercise was a live gunnery and missile drill against surface and aerial drones.
The QF-16s were to make a precision flyby to demonstrate their pinpoint navigation and handling prowess. Then one drone would peel away and serve as an elusive target for the Aegis guided missile destroyers in the fleet. The goal of Miller’s team was to keep the drone flying for as long as possible before it was brought down. He aimed to make it a long day for the swabbies.
Today, they were simulating the long duration of the mission by flying the same course, but over the Gulf of Mexico. Everything went smoothly until an hour in.
“Major,” Quail 4’s lead pilot said, “I’ve got something odd here.”
Miller answered. “What is it?”
The pilot hesitated and looked at his copilot before responding. “It seems we lost the link to the plane for a few moments.”
“It seems you did? Did you lose telemetry?”
“No, the telemetry was nominal. But I could have sworn I saw the plane waggle its wings.”
“‘Waggle its wings’? Weren’t you on autopilot?”
“Yes, sir. That’s why I don’t understand it.”
“You’re sure?”
“I was moving my eyes to the camera feed when I saw it.”
Miller frowned and turned to the copilot. “Did you see the plane execute any unplanned maneuvers?”
“No, sir. I was checking the GPS data at the time.”
Quail 4 was the rearmost plane in the formation, so none of the other drone pilots would have been able to see it. Only the leftmost chase plane would have a view of it.
Miller radioed the pilot. “Chase One, we have a report of an unintended maneuver on Quail Four. Did you see anything unusual?”
