Sting of the Drone

28

^{SATURDAY, DECEMBER 5}

^{DESERT HILLS}

^{NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA}

“Did you buy the house because the street was called Wind Warrior Drive?” Sandra Vittonelli asked Jennifer Parsons. The two women lay poolside in the Parsons’ backyard in North Las Vegas.

“I think it helped me to persuade Erik, seemed somehow job connected,” Jen replied. “He says he is a Wind Warrior, but I think in the comics Wind Warrior was a woman. I haven’t told him that yet. But the truth is that the house was not far from the base, and it was the right price, less than three hundred. It’s a relatively small lot, but we do have the walled-in backyard with the pool, the hot tub, the big gas grill. Great for a quiet Saturday night like this. Glad you finally agreed to come over.”

“I am, too. But beyond the great name of the street, why here? Why not get a ranch out in the desert?” Sandra asked.

“College. The girls went to Dartmouth and Brown, not cheap,” Jen said. “Erik transferred his GI Bill education benefits to the kids, but it still costs a lot. And they both want to go to med school, so we have invested in other things. Real estate just is not the growth ticket it used to be.”

“That’s great they wanted to go to med school like their mom,” Sandra said as she reached for her beer. “Ray went to Brown.”

“That’s the third time today you have mentioned this Ray guy. Is there something I should know?”

Sandra laughed and choked on her beer. “Just because I am lying down on a chaise longue, doctor, does not mean you get to analyze me. No, Jen, you’re right. I am thinking about him a lot.”

“And he’s your boss?” Jen asked.

“Not really, different outfit. But he is higher ranking. Younger, by three years, and higher by about four pay grades. Fucking overachiever, literally,” Sandra laughed again. “It’s the first time since the divorce that I—”

“Did I hear someone say overachiever? Talking about me again?” Erik said as he appeared carrying a platter from the grill. “Two Wagu steaks, rare, for us war fighters and one Copper River salmon for the doctor.” The two women rose from their lounge chairs and followed Erik to the picnic table.

“Did you ever think you would be living in Las Vegas?” Jen asked Sandra.

“No, not in my line of work,” she answered. “Not after Baghdad, Kabul, Dubai. But it’s actually a lot like Dubai here. Desert, high-rises, fancy shopping malls, resorts, nobody’s real home. Vegas just hasn’t put in the Dubai indoor snow ski thing yet.”

“Only a matter of time, boss,” Erik said. “I can see it now, a scale replica of the Matterhorn just beyond the Wynn Encore, overlooking the golf course. They’ll clean up.”

“Speaking of cleaning up, honey,” Jen began, “Did you—” The sudden noise sounded like a thunderclap on top of the house. The windows shook. The picture window shattered into spiderwebs. Erik jumped on top of the table to look around. Jennifer and Sandra turned around toward the direction of the blast in time to see the smoke begin to climb above a house farther down on the next street.

“Whoa,” Erik said as he moved to the wall separating his yard from his neighbor’s. “Four houses down on Loggers Mill,” he yelled back to Jennifer and Sandra.

“Four?” Jennifer asked. “Honey, that’s Patti and Bill’s place.” She turned to Sandra. “The Wongs. He’s one of your pilots.”

Erik vaulted over the six-foot-high stucco wall separating his house from the one on Loggers Mill Drive. He landed by the neighbor’s pool and ran through their gate out onto the street. The houses on Loggers Mill were emptying out quickly, women and children standing in the street staring at the flames and smoke coming from the house at 2704. Several men were running toward the burning house. Erik sprinted up the street. “Calling 911?” he yelled at an older man who stood in a driveway with a mobile phone to his ear.

“Already did. They’re on their way,” the man screamed after Erik.

As he saw the flames coming out of the front window, Erik’s heart sank. It was not the sort of fire that people would likely survive. It had engulfed the whole house in a few minutes and it was fierce. The heat created a force field out in the street beyond the end of the driveway. The Wongs had two little boys, he remembered, maybe aged six and four. There was no sign of any of the family in the group of people that had formed in the street next to the home.

“Did they get out?” Erik gasped as he ran up to the group. No one answered. Bill Wong’s Grand Cherokee was in the driveway, the Creech Air Base sticker on the left rear bumper. Erik pulled off his T-shirt and held it over his face to protect himself from the wall of heat as he approached the Jeep. He used the balled up shirt to grab the doorknob of the Jeep, but still he felt the sting of the hot surface as he pulled the door open. Inside, like all Air Force pilots, Wong kept a fire extinguisher under the driver’s seat. Erik ripped it from its mount and moved into the open garage. The flames had not yet reached the garage, but still it was like walking into a steel mill furnace. He knew immediately that his instinct to enter the house to search for the Wongs was insane. If he even tried to open the door from the garage into the house, he would be committing suicide.

Instead, he kicked open the rear door of the garage, and stepped into the backyard. A blackened body in a skirt was floating facedown in the pool. Patti Wong, he guessed. Near the brick grill was another form, charred and lifeless. There was no need to see if either body was still alive. They had been killed instantly by the blast and flame, then thrown several feet. He stood for a long moment looking at the blackened corpses, realizing that he had never seen the body of a victim up close before, only from the air or on the screen.

The stucco wall that demarcated the end of the Wong’s property had almost disappeared, revealing what had been an empty lot behind them. Now that vacant land was a large crater, a hole that looked like it might have been made by the impact of a fiery meteor.

Erik felt powerless, ridiculous, as he stood there shirtless, in his bathing suit and bare feet, holding the little extinguisher. He heard sirens over the open-throated roar of the fire. He thought of the people whom he had seen on the Big Board, the ones who were always standing by the flaming houses that he had blown up. So this was what it felt like to be so close to the flames and not be able to do anything but watch.

Erik heard the loudest siren stop abruptly as the first fire truck braked outside the house.