Collateral (Tier One #6)

Ember Tactical Operations Trailer (TOT)

Tampa, Florida

0950 Local Time

“What do you mean you’ve lost all comms?” Casey said, rising from his chair to pace—a luxury he never had as the CO of the Tucson, where his stateroom was so small he could barely turn around.

“Just that, sir.” Over the encrypted communications Wang’s voice sounded strained, but also rife with static. To Casey, it sounded like the cyber kid was running his voice through some ’80s rock synthesizer. “Everything is down, boss—encrypted radio, encrypted GSM, even LOS using the Predator. I can’t raise anyone on the team on any channel.”

“Is it your equipment on the Boeing?”

“Negative, sir. We’re being jammed, but it’s not like anything I’m even remotely familiar with . . .”

Casey waited through the strained silence as Wang worked the problem. He’d learned long ago how to read a room. Good leaders knew when to ask questions, when to give orders, and when to shut the hell up and let people work. This seemed to be one such time.

“Damn it,” Wang said, his frustration mounting. “I can’t access anything in the target zone—Wi-Fi networks, police scanners, pedestrian mobile phones—anything that transmits or receives over the air is down. It’s like a ten-block radius suddenly got shoved under a lead bucket or some shit. We have a Predator overhead,” he said, referring to the drone providing their video stream, “but I get nothing but snowy static back from the feed. What the fuck?”

Casey looked over at Baldwin, eyebrows raised.

The Signals genius pursed his lips. “Hmmm, curious. Not like anything we’ve seen.” Baldwin held his fingers to the earpiece in his left ear. “Richard, stream your feed directly to me.”

“You’re seeing what I’m seeing—or not seeing, I guess.”

“Yes, yes, I know. That’s not what I’m saying. Share your direct feed with me for analysis.” Baldwin shrugged and raised his eyebrows. “Chip and I will figure it out.”

Casey rubbed his temples. What was he overlooking? “Where was SAD when we lost contact?”

“Their last position was turning onto Buhaivska Street,” Wang answered. “They’re less than five minutes from the target.”

“Assuming no obstacles and normal low-suspicion speeds inbound, they will be on target in . . . three minutes and fifty-five seconds,” Baldwin said.

“Yeah, okay, so four minutes,” Wang grumbled.

“And now they’re blind and deaf,” Casey said. As he had learned to do long ago, he swallowed down his anxiety, and instead of cursing, he said simply, “Very well.” In his mind, he started playing out different scenarios for how the SAD team might adapt to this new wrinkle. “Will they continue on mission, or will they pause to sort out the problem?”

“Pause?” Wang laughed out loud. “Uh, no . . . that word does not exist in John Dempsey’s vocabulary.”

“Yeah,” Chip replied. “There’s no stopping them now.”

“I concur,” Baldwin said with less bemusement. “They will use their last, best intelligence and continue to pursue their mission objectives. They will expect us to deconflict the comms problem, while they adapt and overcome. In the two plus years I’ve known him, I’ve yet to encounter a scenario in which John believes he cannot execute his mission. Case in point, when Ms. Allen was being held hostage in Syria, we lost comms with John and he single-handedly—’

“I get the point,” Casey said, cutting Baldwin off. “So, knowing that, what assets do they have available for ISR that do not require our network to operate?”

“They took the PIXIE case with them,” Wang said, his voice still strangely distorted, like something from an old sci-fi film.

Casey looked to Baldwin. “What is the PIXIE case?”

“Microdrones, but it would be difficult to use them in broad daylight. They operate as a swarm and would be rather conspicuous, but they would be able to operate in a disruptive EM environment.”

“How’s that?” Casey asked. “They don’t transmit?”

“Bluetooth is their primary channel, but they use artificial intelligence to navigate and are capable of communicating entirely over line of sight via IR flashers. They were conceived for situations like this.”

“Interesting,” Casey said. “I’m not familiar with the PIXIE program.”

“Well, you wouldn’t be.” Baldwin chuckled. “It’s something we developed internally, with a little help from DARPA.”

Why does that not surprise me? Casey thought, and looked to Chip, who clearly had something he wanted to say.

“I bet they’ll just go old school,” Chip said, his voice as much a question as a statement. “They’ll loop around the block a few times, set Grimes up in a window where they can see her, that sort of thing.”

“Okay, but that doesn’t help us. What do we know from earlier ISR on the target area? I don’t want them walking into another trap like they did in that rail yard in Mariupol. We don’t have F-35s at our disposal this time to bail them out.”

“The Predator saw plenty of thermals, but this warehouse is located in a heavily populated area. I had signatures everywhere, but nothing that overtly appeared to be spotters, snipers, or a QRF . . . Still, Zeta is like us; they know how to hide in plain sight.”

“Okay,” Casey said, rubbing his chin.

“We could send in the Marines?” Chip asked hopefully.

“No,” Casey said. “We need to keep this black.” He looked at Chip and Baldwin, then over at Allen, who had just entered, concern on her face at the pulse she had taken of the room. “Dempsey and his team are professionals—the best in the business, I keep being told. They’ll improvise. So, let’s work the problem, people, and figure out how to get our eyes and ears back.”