Drone Threat

35

Kan-Tex was one of the largest independent trucking firms in the United States. It owned and operated a vast fleet of tanker trucks that hauled oil, gasoline, aviation fuel, and other liquid petrochemicals across the entire contiguous United States. It had a number of federal and state contracts, but its primary business was civilian commercial long hauls for refineries and distributors.

When Maria Mejias joined the company twenty-four years earlier, she thought she would spend her entire work life in a cramped, single-wide office trailer, trapped behind an IBM Selectric typewriter filling out dispatches for her boss, Jimmy Haygood, a semi-literate trucker turned businessman. But her boss turned out to be a business genius, building a national trucking empire through the ruthless acquisition of less efficient trucking firms. He also managed to increase his own operating efficiencies through the use of automation, which came relatively late to the trucking industry. Jimmy was famously loyal and generous with his employees, offering great benefits and profit-sharing opportunities. Maria took advantage of his generosity and completed her online bachelor’s degree in management information systems. An online pop-up ad during one of those courses led her to contact a San Diego company specializing in automated dispatching systems.

Maria introduced the San Diego company to Jimmy and he instantly understood the system’s potential. His company had lost a $56 million lawsuit for a fiery school bus wreck caused by a Kan-Tex driver falling asleep at the wheel. Fortunately, Jimmy’s insurance covered the jury award, but his new insurance premiums threatened to eat up his profits along with the sky-high fuel costs he was experiencing at the time. He was desperate for answers, and Maria’s contact in San Diego delivered them on a digital silver platter.

Just two years later, Maria was on the top floor of a brand-new office building, supervising twenty dispatchers sitting at automated terminals. Each workstation monitored up to thirty tanker trucks at a time. It was a real game changer for Kan-Tex. Not only did the new automated dispatching system track every single vehicle through GPS and provide real-time locations, it coordinated delivery routes, driver schedules, and even maintenance programs. Every aspect of the truck’s mechanics was under automated sensor surveillance. Kan-Tex was able to minimize fuel and maintenance costs because the automated system indicated truck speed, fuel efficiency, engine wear, brake usage, and transmission performance.

But driver safety was paramount in Jimmy’s mind, partly because the vast majority of all truck wrecks were caused by driver error. Automated braking systems and automated remote throttle control were installed to prevent drivers from driving too fast or recklessly. Not only did this save expensive fuel, it saved lives and greatly reduced the company’s insurance costs. Mounted dash and rear cameras also broadcast real-time traffic video, giving dispatchers a live-action view of road conditions. The truck cabs even incorporated a driver fatigue monitoring system through eye tracking and blinking analysis. When the computer algorithms indicated a driver was overly fatigued, the dispatcher would be alerted and, if necessary, could take remote control of the truck and drive it from the workstation to get it off the road. It was similar to the Uninterruptible Autopilot system Boeing patented in 2006 to remotely seize control of hijacked aircraft.

In order for the system to work across the nation, every truck was connected by satellite link to the Kan-Tex dispatch center. But the entire computer system was serviced, maintained, and repaired remotely from the computer company’s headquarters in San Diego.

Maria had just finished her cigarette break when she sat down at her desk at noon. Her master monitor was networked into the other dispatching monitors. This allowed her to remotely supervise each dispatcher as well as select any of the 582 vehicles on the road they were all tracking today. She opened up her current favorite romance novel and dived back into the read, but ten minutes later a gentle alarm bell signaled that the entire dispatch system was down.

Maria glanced up at her master monitor and saw the blinking message: SYSTEM DOWN FOR ROUTINE MAINTENANCE. SYSTEM WILL AUTOMATICALLY REBOOT IN 0:33 MINUTES. The other dispatchers all turned around to face her, confused and annoyed. Maria shared their concerns. The system was supposed to shut down for automated maintenance tasks only at midnight, when the fewest number of trucks were on the road. She thought about calling up the San Diego help desk but calculated that by the time she actually got through to somebody to initiate a maintenance program shutdown and a system reboot, the current maintenance activity would have already completed. She made a mental note to send an e-mail to her San Diego contact and ask him to change the maintenance schedule back to Saturdays at midnight.

“Everybody take thirty,” Maria said.

The frowns evaporated as the dispatchers bolted for the break room. Maria glanced at her screen again. Thirty-two minutes to go. She dived back into the novel — it was just getting to the good stuff. She told herself again it was just routine maintenance.

No big deal.

Completed in 1964, the Woodall Rodgers Freeway Spur connected the two busiest traffic arteries in Dallas, U.S. Highway 75 and Interstate 35E. The only significant change the spur underwent in nearly fifty years was to accommodate the burgeoning arts district in downtown Dallas. In 2009 the city planners shut down a portion of the freeway and began turning it into a 5.2-acre urban oasis, the Klyde Warren Park, a pedestrian-friendly complex of restaurants, jogging trails, a dog park, a botanical garden, and other urban pleasures. By digging a massive eight-lane tunnel underneath the park, the highly traveled Woodall Rodgers freeway was able to stay in operation.

Georgia Romero’s forty-foot tanker sped into the Woodall Rodgers tunnel, hauling nine thousand gallons of aviation fuel. The eastbound traffic was mercifully light at 11:05 a.m. CST and she was making good time, cruising at sixty-five miles per hour. She’d been stuck in this exact spot during the five o’clock rush hour in years past. It was a nightmare she wouldn’t wish on her worst enemies, not even her two ex-husbands, both OTR drivers like her. Her thirteen years behind the wheel gave her seniority at Kan-Tex, allowing her to pick the easiest routes, and the new dispatch system was doing a heck of job picking the best times. She didn’t like the idea she was on camera all the time and that the dispatchers could be watching her at any moment. It was like OnStar from hell. They didn’t even like her to wear her sunglasses because it interfered with the driver fatigue system they installed in her cab. She hadn’t had a wreck in eleven years, but the dispatchers wouldn’t relent.

Hank Williams blared on the radio and she sang lustily along. Her voice pinched off in mid-warble when her throttle pedal plunged into the floorboard and the truck lunged forward, snapping her head back against the seat. Before she could react, the steering wheel yanked hard left and the left brakes seized. Thirty tons of liquid payload shuddered violently behind her as the tractor spun left, whipping the long silver tank behind her in a hard swing out to the right. She caught a glimpse of the tank in her peripheral vision as it slammed into the tunnel wall in a shower of sparks and splintering metal. She saw the explosion before she heard it, but an instant later she was vaporized in the crushing ball of fiery gas that filled the tunnel like a thermobaric weapon.