The Geneva Trap

Chapter 19

Dick Cottinger yawned. It had been a rough night. His old schoolfriend Joey Pettleman was getting married, and the stag night had been an hour’s drive to a club south of Las Vegas. They’d gone in a rented minivan so nobody had to worry about driving. It had been a lot of fun, until one of the guys had vomited all over a lap dancer and the manager had thrown them out, but it would have been better if it had been any other night than Friday since Cottinger had drawn the short straw and was working the Saturday/Sunday shift.

He looked around to see if there was anyone he could cadge an Advil from, but none of the nearby seats was occupied. This station at Creech Air Force Base was 24/7, but the weekends were kind of slow. A far cry from when they’d first started these tests three weeks before. Then this vast communications room, the size of half a football field, had been full of top brass. At the briefing he’d learned that he was helping to test some new software that regulated communications between him, a pilotless drone thousands of miles away, and a ComSat orbiting 250 miles above the surface of the earth.

Cottinger sat in the second of three rows of desks that swept almost the entire length of the room. Mounted on the wall in front of him were banks of oversized television monitors, but now he stared at his own terminal screen, which was showing a map of the earth. He double-clicked his mouse and the screen shifted at once to a real-time view taken from the nose of a drone, which the console told him was flying at an altitude of 1,000 feet. The view from the drone’s camera was over 120 degrees, extending from the surface of the terrain below to the thin clouds in front of and above the aircraft. When Cottinger nudged an icon on his touch screen, the focus automatically sharpened.

The trials of the drone were taking place somewhere deep inside the Gulf state of Oman – Cottinger could have supplied the precise coordinates of its location but it didn’t mean a hill of beans to him. On the screen, Oman looked as parched as his throat right now – an endless expanse of gravel-coloured desert. The only vegetation visible was the occasional patch of desert grass, little more than large ink dots on his screen; in ten minutes of watching, Cottinger hadn’t seen a single tree, or a human being.

He knew that one day soon he wouldn’t be able to tell the drone what to do, but for now he was still in charge. Which would have suited Cottinger just fine, if his head weren’t throbbing so much.

‘Stay at one thousand feet,’ he said into the mouthpiece of the mic strapped around his neck.

Now came the one interesting manoeuvre of the exercise – a sharp turn and a communication with a unit on the ground, three soldiers shaded from the blazing sun in a small bivouac in the packed gravel and sand of the Omani heartland. ‘Alpha One, turn ninety degrees west and stay at a thousand feet.’

He watched as the drone turned sharply, its long, wide wing dipping to facilitate its turn. He started to nod, but then he realised that the drone had turned completely the wrong way and was descending rapidly. ‘West,’ he said sharply. ‘Ninety degrees west. Not east.’ He realised he was talking to the vehicle as if it were human, but after all, that was the point of the exercise. Around him in the open-plan surroundings everyone had gone quiet.

He watched as the drone ignored him and headed east towards the sea – and towards the nearest habitations. It was still descending, without losing speed; in ten minutes it would be on the ground – crashed most likely, it seemed, since it showed no signs of lowering its landing wheels.

‘Alpha One, go back to a thousand feet. Climb!’ he commanded, resisting the temptation to stand up himself. That wouldn’t do any good. To make matters worse, Colonel Galsworthy was striding towards him, red in the face, and already shouting. ‘What is it? Cottinger, what’s wrong?’

But Cottinger barely heard him. He was busy on his keyboard, entering the drone’s current coordinates, its airspeed, and then the calculated rate of its descent. Within seconds a small window appeared at the corner of his screen, showing a magnified area of the corner of Oman, marking one point in particular with a large red star. The projected trajectory of the drone had it landing in eight – no, now it was seven – minutes, smack in the middle of Salalah. Population 197,169, read a small line in the window on his screen.

Christ, thought Cottinger. At least the drone was unarmed. But even so, for it to land on some house or shack or hovel – Cottinger had only the haziest idea of how Omanis lived – would be disastrous. Three tons of polymer and a tankful of fuel – the explosion and resulting fire could kill dozens of people. Innocent people, completely unaware that their government – in fact the Sultan himself – had lent their homeland like a game board for the Americans to play war on.

He continued talking to the drone, trying to put urgency into his voice, as if an unmanned aircraft would sense that its master was saying, enough was enough, you’ve had your fun, now cut it out. He realised Galsworthy was standing next to him, and one glance showed that his commanding officer had seen the little window on his screen and taken in its ominous forecast. ‘Can we shoot it down?’ he asked, his voice only faintly hopeful.

‘No, sir. The Omanis didn’t grant additional air space. If the drone makes it to the Arabian Sea, we could send something from a carrier, but there wouldn’t be much point if it’s going to crash in the water anyway.’

‘How much time have we got left?’

Cottinger looked at the digital clock on his terminal. ‘Five minutes, maybe six.’

‘Oh, God,’ said Galsworthy helpfully. ‘I’d better go call the Pentagon.’

He moved off at speed, and Cottinger kept talking: ‘Back off, Alpha One. Turn around, Alpha One.’ Then, in frustration, ‘Behave, you goddamn’ drone!’

Suddenly, like a naughty child that finally listens to its parent, Alpha One lifted a wing sharply, and began to turn round. Cottinger watched sceptically and decided not to give any orders for a moment. His hopes started to rise, and soon he began to smile in relief – Alpha One was on course again, heading back at speed for the safe environs of the desert.

Three minutes later, now gradually descending, the drone sent a message to the sweltering trio of American soldiers camped out below it, a message which they successfully relayed back to Cottinger at base. And ninety seconds after that, wheels down, the drone landed smoothly on the hard-packed temporary runway created by the Army Corps of Engineers six weeks before.

In relief, Cottinger put a hand on the back of his neck and found it covered in sweat. He turned to Galsworthy and said, ‘I don’t understand. One minute it was out of control, then suddenly it was a pussycat again.’