Drone Threat

6

The early-morning rush hour in the underground Metro was jammed as always, even at Dupont Circle.

He could only afford to own the historic brownstone in the popular D.C. suburb because he was a childless six-figured federal administrator and his wife an administrative assistant with twenty-seven years of tenure at the Department of Labor. They’d lived there for more than twenty years, long before it became the hipster-yuppie enclave it was today. Still, it was a great walking neighborhood, with some of his favorite restaurants, shops, and markets.

He loved the Metro because he was a people watcher. Liked to size up folks and guess what they were all about. He was pretty good at it, too. He even liked the peculiar smell of sparking steel and burnt rubber and the feel of the circulated air beneath the big half-dome ceilings. It reminded him of his youthful adventures running around on the metros in London, Paris, and West Berlin on summer holidays from college.

The commuters pressed in closer as the Red Line train slowed out of the tunnel, pushing a blast of warm air onto the platform that tousled his thinning hair. Secretaries and systems managers, court clerks and tourists. The D.C. Metro was the last great democratizing institution in the gentrifying metropolis. Of course, the Metro wasn’t exactly voluntary. Outrageous parking fees, horrific traffic, and subsidized rail passes all conspired against driving a car in the city. Besides, he was just three stops away from his office on 14th and K, and the office reimbursed him for the annual pass.

The federal administrator bumped shoulders with a tall, handsome man in a custom-tailored suit, sporting a hand-tooled leather briefcase and yammering into the Bluetooth jammed in his ear. The douchebag didn’t even bother to look up or say “Sorry,” which would have been the polite thing to do. A typical lobbyist. Probably a litigator, too.

On the other side of him was a twentysomething white kid in a ball cap and dark glasses with his nose pressed against a smartphone. He wore a cheap sport coat with a narrow tie and chinos. A tattered canvas messenger bag was slung over one shoulder. Probably an intern at one of the agencies, he decided. Reminded him of himself some thirty years earlier. Might have even owned the same brand of messenger bag.

An attractive young thing was just in front of him. Her straw-blond hair was gathered up in a tight bun. He was close enough to smell her perfume, floral and sweet. He studied her fine neck and admired the lacy bra straps flashing beneath a thin silk shirt filling out with her full figure. He began to imagine the possibilities with her in an afternoon romp at one of the downtown hotels. If she worked in his office he’d tell her — carefully — to mind the dress code, but down here he was happy to survey the goods if she was willing to show them. He raised up on his toes and tried to glance over her shoulder for a better look at her cleavage, but she moved forward.

The crowd pressed mindlessly closer as the train approached the platform, air brakes squealing. The door to the last car swooshed open and just a handful of people exited. The rest of the passengers in the crowded car, especially the ones in the seats, didn’t budge. Now it was his turn to surge in. The space inside was filling up fast. The twentysomething intern with the smartphone stopped short just in front of the door and turned to the administrator. “Go ahead.”

“You sure?” he said back.

“Yeah. I’m sure.”

The administrator leaped into the car, snagging the last possible square inch of space. He turned around to thank the kid before the doors shut, but he was already back at his smartphone, thumbs flying on the screen.

Just as the automated voice warned that the doors were about to shut, a black four-rotored quadcopter marked with DHS letters on its fuselage and a Department of Homeland Security logo came roaring down the stairwell from the street. A tubular package was slung underneath the drone, marked with bright green dollar signs on both sides.

The quadcopter dashed into the Metro car just above the administrator’s head as the doors slammed shut. The electric-powered blades whirred like angry hornets in the confined space. The railcar lurched as it leaped forward heading for Farragut North station.

People next to the drone reflexively ducked. A heavyset woman screamed as she fell to the ground, knocking people down with her like bowling pins.

The administrator was smashed against the closed doors by the others trying to get away from the spinning blades. His face pressed against the door glass. He caught a glimpse of the intern still working the smartphone, gyrating it in his hands as if trying to run a BB through a maze game.

A black teenager in a hoodie in the back of the compartment shouted, “Hell no!” and took a swing at the quadcopter with his backpack. He missed.

The cylinder exploded with a crack.

The compartment filled with a white gas as the train pulled away from the station. The drone lunged forward, banging into the low ceiling and scraping along it, clouding the rest of the car as it wobbled toward the far end. Screams, panicked shouts, and choking coughs filled the air as the drone finally crashed against the far wall and tumbled to the steel floor, blades spinning, gas still pouring out of the cylinder.

Commuters on the Farragut North platform weren’t paying much attention when the Metro train screeched to a halt. But when the doors of the last car swished open, dozens of passengers surged out like crazed zombies, gasping for air, eyes bloodshot, screaming, coughing, vomiting. Some fell to the redbrick landing while others surged ahead, scattering the startled commuters on the platform, still waiting to board. Someone screamed, and the waiting crowd suddenly panicked at the terrifying sight. More screams and terrified shouts rose up as the mob broke and ran for the escalators.

The panic swiftly spread to the rest of commuters farther up the platform, uncertain of what was going on. They soon quailed at the sight of the screaming mob. In less than a minute fifteen hundred desperate people were kicking, screaming, and clawing at one another in the manic stampede up the long, crowded escalator toward the light.

As the first of them emerged out of the escalator and into the sunshine, clothes torn, gasping for breath, passersby on the street began to notice. The human flood disgorging out of the escalator exit spilled onto the sidewalk, one after another, including a few of the gassed passengers, clothes slathered in vomit, red faces wet with tears and snot, palming their bloodshot eyes. Some cried out in agonizing pain, others gasped for breath. Others retched on the sidewalk or collapsed to the ground. A few of the passersby moved in to help, but most stood around with their cell phones held high like kids at a rock concert. Even more panicked and ran away as whispers of “poison gas” filtered through the injured crowd. Police and ambulance sirens wailing in the distance grew louder as the subway crowd spilled further onto the sidewalk.

None of them noticed the bearded young black man in a ball cap and dark glasses with a canvas messenger bag slung over one shoulder standing across the street, snapping photos with his smartphone, grinning ear to ear.