Drone - A Sci-Fi Superhero Thriller (The Gift Book 2), page 1
DRONE
THE GIFT
BOOK 2
MARC STAPLETON
Copyright © 2023 by Marc Stapleton
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
To my wife, again.
“You get so used to lying that after a while it's hard to remember what the truth is.”
PHILIP AGEE
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
CHAPTER 1
“Is he laughing? Why is he laughing?”
Something about the letters C, I, and A bouncing around inside my skull are admittedly hilarious to me. The cruel humor of being falsely accused by every soldier, criminal, and citizen here of being in the CIA, only to find they’ve been here all along watching me from afar, and waiting to abduct me.
I strain, hum, and snort under the tape across my mouth. The four men in front of me stand with their hands on their hips with quizzical expressions on their faces. Eventually the man in the shirt and star-spangled tie directs one of them to remove the tape.
He climbs back into the van with me and slowly, tentatively, reaches for the tape on my mouth. Then with one fast, painful action, he rips it away from my lips. The pain is instant, but I can ignore it.
“Kris Chambers,” the man in the tie and black-rimmed glasses – Special Agent Thomas – says. “If that is your real name.”
“At your service,” I reply, without fully considering whether I should try to deny it at first. Something about kneeling in the back of a van with my hands cuffed and a gun pointed at my head tells me I have limited options.
“You’ve made quite the name for yourself. Both here and back home.”
Ah. Back home. I suppose I’ve always known that my dalliances with a bomb-slinging terrorist would catch up with me sooner or later. I don’t answer him, I just scan my eyes across the four men in front of me.
“But,” Thomas continues, “there will be plenty of time to talk. I hope you don’t mind if we take the liberty of accommodating you for a short while.”
Accommodating me? The last I’d heard the CIA weren’t particularly well-regarded for hospitality.
“Sure,” I reply. “I was looking for a ticket out of Aljarran anyway.”
“Can we trust you not to make a whole song and dance about this?”
A song and dance? They’re the guys who just made me dance the electric boogaloo, cuffed me, and shoved me into a van with a bag over my head. Despite this, I nod at him and he directs the man who just ripped the tape of my mouth to let me out of the handcuffs. He quickly moves behind me and unlocks them.
I slowly move my hands in front of me. My wrists sting slightly, but I can’t say I miss the feeling of being bound in steel.
At Special Agent Thomas’ beckoning, I climb out of the back of the van and follow him and the others across the vast concrete floor of the empty warehouse. My knees ache from kneeling and I rub my wrists together painfully.
No-one has said anything about Cantara yet; do they even know?
“We’d like to take you home, more or less. An airbase in a neighboring country. Technically, territory of the United States of America.”
Thomas has a hospitable smile on his face, but his two buddies have hard, stony expressions. We walk to the back of the warehouse where I see another car parked – this one a black 4x4, slightly dusty, but in better condition than most other cars on the road around here.
“After you,” Thomas says, directing me to jump into the back of the 4x4. One of his shirt-clad lackeys is kind enough to open a door for me. I climb inside joined by the two shirted lackeys behind me. One of them still holds the gun, but refreshingly he’s kind enough not to point it in my direction.
Thomas and Salman climb into the front, with Salman driving.
“We’ve been tracking you for a short while,” Thomas says, putting on his seatbelt before noticing that I’m not wearing my own. “Put your seatbelt on please.”
He’s concerned for my welfare; that must be encouraging for my future life prospects, right? I do as he says as I feel the engine judder to a start beneath us.
“An American volunteer, fighting and winning battles almost single-handedly,” he says. “Assassinating generals, saving entire battalions, and retaking entire airbases for the rebel forces. They say you shrug off bullets like raindrops.”
He laughs, stroking his fingers through his neatly trimmed hair. I realize I’m idly twiddling my thumbs. I don’t exactly look like a legendary warrior.
“We in the Central Intelligence Agency have certain interests inside Aljarran, so when an American citizen with your reputation came onto our radar, we just had to take a look at you ourselves.”
We drive out of the warehouse and back onto the roads outside. It’s still the same carnival atmosphere out here; cars honking their horns, and citizens gathered on every street corner, chanting and singing, or otherwise just enjoying the blazing fire in the distance. Darida’s palace, going up in smoke.
“Then we heard about some vague and unsettling claims coming out of our homeland. Something about this domestic terrorist, Alfred Burden, and a supposedly deceased accomplice.”
I shift around nervously in my seat. This seatbelt feels more like a constraint than a safety feature all of a sudden. I wait for him to continue – to say that the budding leader of a new and free Aljarran is dead, suspected murdered by the mysterious American – but despite my mounting anxiety it never comes. Instead, there’s just an awkward silence.
“I can explain,” I finally tell him, without yet figuring out exactly how I can explain. “I’ve been, uhh, busy I guess.”
Busy? I shouldn’t try to be coy. I’m not very good at it.
I watch us pass a rapidly decreasing number of cars. Before long we’re outside the city, racing toward the darkness of the desert. Every light I see in the distance quickly disappears behind us.
If Thomas hasn’t mentioned Cantara yet, then maybe the news hasn’t reached him. If the news hasn’t reached him, that surely means that sometime soon it will. And when that happens, what’s going to happen to me?
Of course, I’d much rather be in the custody of the CIA than Aljarran’s rebel army right now, but that’s like saying I’d prefer to be in the frying pan than the fire. I should bail while I’m not in handcuffs. I look across to the shirted lackey with the gun; he’s an Aljarrian man with nervous eyes and sweat patches all over his white shirt. The gun rests peacefully on his lap; I wonder how long it would take for him to pick it up.
“We need to take a short flight,” Thomas says, consulting a large digital watch on his wrist. “It should be comfortable enough.”
“Cool,” I reply. “Am I allowed to know where we’re going?”
He looks back at me and smiles wryly. Then he turns back to the road.
We take a right-hand turn onto a dirt road and come to an apparent security checkpoint. Thomas flashes his ID and the rifle-toting soldier manning the barrier waves us through. Then we make it onto concrete, and lit by the headlights in front I see our carriage: a large cargo plane, presumably military in origin.
It’s a dark shade of gray with four jet engines on its wings and a large ramp leading to the back. The sound is deafening; it seems ready to fly already.
“Here we are, Mr. Chambers,” Thomas announces as Salman pulls up beside the airstrip. It’s nothing like Haramat airport, although that shouldn’t surprise me. One large concrete airstrip and one small hangar beside it. The runway seems to be lit by faint floodlights and there are small tufts of yellowing weeds growing from it.
I
“Isn’t this just grand?” he asks, motioning toward the cargo plane. I see for the first time that Salman is speaking on his cellphone. He looks at me menacingly, but before I can do anything about it Thomas speaks again. “Our own first-class travel. No other job in the world would get you this, God bless the CIA.”
Salman looks at me again in that menacing, accusatory fashion. His eyes narrow and I can see his muscular frame begin to tense up. Does he know? Did someone just tell him I’m Aljarran’s most wanted man?
I look over and Thomas’ friend is still holding the pistol. That stun-gun is probably still lurking around these parts too. I look across the tarmac and see nothing but darkness. Do I take a punt on running for my life and trying to brave a night alone in the desert? Or do I wait to try out whatever ‘accommodation’ the CIA have in mind for me?
We begin to walk over to the cargo plane – the man with the pistol walking purposefully behind me – and I see Salman stroll over to Thomas and whisper something in his ear. I nervously tug at my collar; it’s beginning to feel more like a noose around my neck.
We make it to the back of the plane, and I can see up high into the bowels of the cargo deck. Unlike the passenger flights I’ve been on, there aren’t many seats – just a few vehicles strapped inside the back and a shiny new, blue shipping container. The interior is well-lit, and the floor is a steel lattice of handles, rails, and bolts to secure the cargo.
We pause at the bottom of the ramp and Thomas turns back to me again.
“Mr. Chambers, I have to apologize,” he says, as I feel his lackeys behind me drawing closer. Awkwardly close, in fact – they’re practically breathing down my neck. It feels like someone turned up the heat in the frying pan. “I’m sorry, I know I said first class, but—”
I scream; I feel that pain again. Every muscle in my body painfully contracting at the same time. When I open my eyes, I’m on my back on the tarmac with the gun pointed at my head and the stun-gun hurtling toward me one more time.
Another jolt of pain, another high-pitched yelp leaving my lips. And then darkness. I feel them tightening the bag around my head again, and the cuffs going back on my wrists.
Out of the frying pan and into the raging volcano.
CHAPTER 2
At least we’re leaving Aljarran.
I’m still bathed in darkness, listening to Vega’s snide remark, with the bag securely over my head. My wrists are painfully secured behind me and I’m back on my knees. The sound is earsplitting; a great, overwhelming booming of four jet engines, and every beam, bolt, and surface of this cargo plane vibrating and rattling as we hurtle through the sky.
“And they didn’t bother taping my mouth shut this time.” I’m confident they can’t hear me. It’s way too loud in here.
From what I can gather, they picked me up and forced me into that shipping container. I guess this is the coach to their first-class. I’ve been gripping the chain on my handcuffs as before, waiting for them to break. Thomas said this would be a short flight; not too short, I hope.
When you arrive at your destination, you don’t know what sort of resistance you might face. If it’s a United States overseas army base, like Special Agent Thomas said, then there might be hundreds of armed, trained soldiers there. It might be better to bide your time and pick the right moment to escape.
Part of me knows Vega is right; I could jump off this plane as soon as we hit tarmac and run straight into a hail of bullets. Then again, another part of me is sick and tired of being tied up, bagged up, and humiliated like this.
I let go of the chain on the handcuffs, at least for now, and sink to my ass with my hands unhappily resting behind me.
“What do you think?” I ask Vega after a pause. “Do you think they know what I did to Cantara?”
I would consider it likely, Vega replies. However, we don’t know the full story. Maybe the hivemind at the CIA is no fan of Cantara. Maybe you did them a favor.
I straighten my posture. I hadn’t considered the possibility that the secretive monolithic US spy agency might be happy I killed a world leader in cold blood.
“This doesn’t make it any easier to explain the apparent fact I died in a domestic bombing back home.”
Yes, that is going to be tricky to explain.
I hear the jet engines go down a gear; we must be beginning our descent. I exhale deeply, feeling my hot breath against the fabric of the bag over my head, and I wait.
I hear buzzing and brief sirens sounding out elsewhere in the plane. Then, after another 10 minutes or so we hit the ground with a jolt. My body is catapulted downward into the steel flooring, and my bones rattle around unhappily inside my limbs.
I hear the wheels beneath us spinning, slowing, and finally coming to a halt. There’s a layer of sweat on my brow, and I can’t yet tell if it’s there due to the heat I’ve been breathing into the bag or if it’s my nerves.
Funnily enough, I don’t feel that nervous. Perhaps I’m numb to it all by now, or perhaps I’m slowly coming to the realization that I’m far better off explaining myself to a CIA officer rather than a murderously angry Aljarrian general.
Besides, I’m one to talk of being murderously angry. Within in the black bag – its prickly hot in the lonesome darkness – I see her face from time to time: Dina. The last time I saw her she was sleeping peacefully. I can’t bear to wonder what happened to her after that…
I hear a metal bolt sliding across a latch with a squealing grind and feel a warm rush of air as the door to the shipping container is slid open.
“Mr. Chambers, we’re home.”
It’s Thomas again. I look up to try and meet the source of the voice, but quickly feel hands gripping my forearms, painfully dragging me to my feet again. I comply, springing up and allow them to guide me out.
I feel the downward trajectory of the ramp, springing back and forth slightly with each footstep, and then I feel the hard concrete of the airstrip. All I can hear are the jet engines behind us winding down, and I let my captors guide me onward.
We walk something like 100 yards until there’s a perceptible change in air pressure and bright light begins to shine through the bag. I hear a door close behind me, but the hands don’t let go and I keep on walking.
Another couple of doors later and there’s silence. I’m escorted to what feels like the edge of a table, and with a couple of hands atop my shoulders, forced down onto a chair.
Then I feel the bag being loosened around my neck, and in one swift, rapid motion, it’s whisked off my head and I’m subjected to a blinding white light. It’s so bright I can barely keep my eyes open.
“Mr. Chambers, can I call you Kris?”
It’s a new voice. It’s deep and nasally but has a jovial quality to it, like he’s trying his hardest to sound chipper.
I rub my eyes and try to open them again. In front of me are three men: Thomas, who I recall from earlier, a man wearing a tan camouflage jacket and pants holding a rifle with both hands, standing at the back of the room beside a door, and one more man sitting at the table across from me.
“You can call me whatever you want,” I reply, closing my stinging eyes again. When I open them, I see that Thomas is on his way out of the room. The door slams closed behind him.
