Drone Games by Joel Narlock Read Free Book Online

microphone. The volume was so loud that several people jumped in their seats. The audience gave out a collective murmur.
    “Words on a piece of paper do not guarantee a thing. Ms. Creed, you are a highly trained investigator in the field of American aviation, yet thirty seconds ago you admitted that you’re not, what was the word you used . . . familiar with terror tactics? The first thing you need to know is that we all need to be familiar with terror tactics. Second, paper documents, rules, regulations, and all that political correctness are totally meaningless. More important, relying on them as some kind of all-protecting shield will kill you and innocent Americans. Freedom against terrorism is guaranteed and maintained through physical force, or lost for the lack of it. A society that clings to a list of paper rights without force is doomed. Most Americans don’t have a clue about what it will take to protect our freedom.”
    Riley stared at the ceiling theatrically.
    “Our frontline military and law enforcement personnel are doing a great job defending us against terrorism, but they need help—your help. It’s time for homeland civilians to step up. From this day forward, I want each and every one of you to start thinking critically about your jobs, your day-to-day activities, and about every situation or human you encounter. Now, don’t do anything crazy or weird. Just give a little eyebrow raise to the potential that whoever or whatever you come across may have some type of terror linkage or relevance. Think on it briefly, file it away, and then move on with your lives. And by all means, if something doesn’t feel right or you hear a little voice, report it. The bad guys out there are getting smarter; they hate us, and they want us dead. Period. Sorry, folks, but I didn’t create this environment. That’s just the way it is. Ms. Creed, you may not believe this, but thank you. Burgers and trains are interesting ideas for terror strikes. Let me share three of mine.”
    Riley made his way to the front of the room and placed Shaitan on the podium. He definitely had everyone’s attention.
    “On a warm June evening, there’ll be a break-in at a fireworks factory. Small town, no alarms, no guards. The perpetrators will steal forty-eight crates of large air-bomb fireworks slated for the upcoming Fourth of July gala. The crates contain 512 cylindrical cardboard tubes, four inches in diameter. Each air bomb is slightly larger than a baseball. The tubes have no distinguishing marks, but they contain significant amounts of powdered aluminum. There’ll be a brief newspaper article, people will be pissed, and everyone will blame teenagers. Four months later, on a brisk Sunday morning in November, two jihadists will drive into an unguarded private hangar at a quiet US airport and overtake a corporate jet that’s waiting to fly three senior executives to a quarterly governance board meeting. After killing them and the pilot, they’ll load and dump 2,800 kilos of the powdered aluminum onto the cabin floor. One jihadist will strap on a high-explosive booster, a pyro detonator box, and a base canopy parachute. The other jihadist, a trained pilot, will conclude his interaction with departure control and fly that jet out.
    “Once airborne, the pilot will claim some type of mechanical failure, descend to a few hundred feet, and then continue off-radar at four hundred knots. After just eight minutes of flight, the pilot will climb to seven hundred feet and then kill the engines and all electrical power. At the apex of that climb, the parachutist will be able to safely bail out. The pilot and the jet will quietly glide down and crash smack in the middle of an open-air football field. Sixty thousand NFL fans, plus millions of television viewers mesmerized by the crash, will see some unknown type of mist or dust cloud fill the stadium. And in a deadly, effective encore, that parachutist will float into that cloud, flip a switch