The Geneva Trap

Chapter 40

It was good to be able to work alone at his terminal again. For the first few days after the drone briefly went AWOL in the desert of Oman, Dick Cottinger had had company – lots of company. You didn’t have to be Einstein to figure out that this was the result of something going wrong with the new communications system. Which explained the presence of coders, cryptanalysts, plain analysts, the base commanding officer, big shots from the Pentagon, and a host of outsiders from the NSA and CIA and damn near every other Federal agency Cottinger had ever heard of.

But as the trials of the drone continued, entirely uneventfully, gradually all the fuss and seemingly most of the suspicion had faded away. Even his superior officer Colonel Galsworthy had started to leave him alone to get on with the remaining trials. Cottinger had been all nerves after the initial incident, but now his confidence was coming back. He looked around him, and since it was a weekday the desks were almost all occupied. Galsworthy was on the far side of the room, with a coffee cup in his hand, chatting to one of the prettier female clerks.

Now the drone was moving slowly, no more than 100 m.p.h., south towards the Arabian Sea. In the far distance the flat landscape rose sharply to a high escarpment, but much closer – probably less than five miles away – a tall tower-like construction was visible in the flat desert.

Cottinger checked the sequence of instructions on his clipboard and looked at the digital clock on the wall. Ten seconds to go. He counted down, cleared his throat, and leaning slightly forward said, in the clearest tones he could muster: ‘Descend to five hundred feet. Target is ahead of you. Look for anti-air weapons, and take evasive action if you see them. Otherwise, proceed towards the target.’

He watched as the drone began to descend and the features of the drab terrain became distinct – he could see individual outcroppings of rock now. The tower was clearly visible: it must have been fifty feet high, though it looked taller, looming out of the flat sea of sandy gravel bed. It had been put up by a squad of US marines the month before.

‘How’s it going, Lieutenant?’

Cottinger turned to find Galsworthy standing behind his chair. ‘Okay, sir. We’ll be simulating firing in about two minutes.’

‘Okey-dokey,’ he said, and walked away. Galsworthy was pretty relaxed today, thought Cottinger, but then they’d now had days of these exercises without a hitch.

He noticed that the drone had speeded up slightly, and the tower was getting alarmingly big on the screen. It was a simple affair of steel piping, put up purely for the purposes of the exercise.

‘Reduce speed to eighty miles per hour.’

To his surprise the drone accelerated instead, surging to 150 m.p.h. according to his console. ‘Reduce speed to eighty miles per hour,’ Cottinger repeated, his voice rising. He looked at the altimeter dial on the console and saw the drone was also too low – it had descended to three hundred feet and falling. On the screen below the ground was whizzing past in a blur.

‘What’s the matter, Lieutenant?’ Colonel Galsworthy was suddenly back behind him.

Cottinger pointed to the screen. ‘It’s going way too fast.’

‘Well, tell it to slow down,’ Galsworthy said, sounding edgy.

‘I have, sir.’ He leaned forward towards the microphone on the panel at the front of his desk. ‘Reduce speed. Eighty miles per hour.’

By now the drone was flying at close to 200 m.p.h., and the tower loomed less than a mile away. Looking at the altimeter, Cottinger saw the drone was down to fifty feet; on the screen its nose looked to be level with the top of the tower.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Galsworthy exclaimed. ‘What is it doing?’

‘Ascend to five hundred feet,’ Cottinger shouted. Then, forgetting his carefully learned commands, ‘Get up, get up, get up!’ he shouted. He’d left his chair now and was standing up, staring at the monitor, sweat standing out on his brow as the drone hurtled towards the tower. Would it clear it? ‘Ascend to five hundred feet,’ he tried again, but there was no response.

He clenched both fists and waited tensely as the drone narrowed in on the tower. Closer and closer – he closed his eyes for a second. And then suddenly, as the screen filled with an image of steel piping tied together like metal latticework, his terminal screen went blank.

‘What the hell!’ shouted Galsworthy.

Cottinger ignored him and, grabbing his keyboard, typed in a series of commands. The terminal screen refreshed, and a satellite view of Oman filled the screen – nothing came from the drone. The satellite camera zoomed, gradually magnifying. A dark smear appeared in the centre of the screen and grew in size as the camera zeroed in. The smear was an ascending trail of wispy smoke and through it, as the magnification increased, Cottinger could glimpse a tangled mess of steel on the ground where seconds before the tower had stood. Nearby a fire was blazing; he could make out the skeletal remains of the drone burning on the desert floor.

Galsworthy cursed loudly. ‘What happened?’ he demanded.

Cottinger stared at the smouldering wreckage on his screen. He knew the drone was expected to take charge of itself one day, but this had come a lot earlier than expected.

‘Well, sir, how can I put it?’ he said at last. ‘It looks as if our drone just committed suicide.’