Game of Drones Read Free

responsible.”
    A hush fell over the room as the President got to his feet and stood before the center window of the three behind his desk. He looked out over the nighttime D.C. skyline as he spoke.
    “Cells are here in the homeland. There’s a reason why we need to keep our enemies close. Watch all Internet sites, all telecom lines. Get all agencies involved to monitor insurrectionist thinking and attitudes. Identify those willing to use this event as an excuse to take up the march in the name of Allah. We're always funding those research grants to develop software to identify these people before they strike. Now's the time to put those apps into practice. Is all that clear?”
    There was a chorus of agreements, mumblings really.
    The president went on. “We have al-Zawahiri, and because we do we need to be at the top of our game. He may be the key to bringing down al-Qaeda for years to come.”
    He turned away from the window to face his audience of friends, people whom he had come to trust with his ideas and agendas over the term of his presidency. “There will be retaliation,” he stated evenly. “So let’s not forget who we are and what we’re capable of.”
    VP Madison nodded smartly. “Understood, Mr. President.”
    “Keep me posted.”
    The Secretary of State spoke before everyone moved to leave.. “This is a great victory for us, yes?”
    Carmichael nodded. But deep in the back of his mind he knew that victories could be short-lived. It was the war that they needed to win, not a single skirmish. And the capture of Zawahiri certainly had the potential to be earmarked as the start of a violent chess match.
    The next move was al-Qaeda’s.

CHAPTER TWO
    Bolling Air Force Base. 0211 hours
Approximately 30 Hours after the Extraction of al-Zawahiri
    Aasif Shazad had served the U.S. military for sixteen years, earning the rank of Lieutenant Commander in the Navy, serving as an executive officer for SEAL teams before he disappeared amidst his own rising fundamentalist beliefs. Born in Dearborn, Michigan and raised in Detroit, he found religion to be more of a crutch in his youth than a mainstay of beliefs, attributing his wayward attitude to the influence of American culture at the time.
    Then the world changed as did his cultural landscape when the twin towers fell on nine-eleven. It was also the day that his sense of neutrality began to gravitate towards his Muslim roots, finding religion the salve of healing for the sudden and painful vilification he had suddenly come under, despite his loyalties to the American banner.
    In time he had grown inwardly hostile and angry as his repugnance matured into intolerance, his intolerance then evolving to fundamentalism, and finally his fundamentalism becoming the burning hatred of all things not Muslim.
    Two years ago, while stationed at the JBAB, the Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling, a military installation located in Southeast Washington, D.C., he absconded from service with vengeance in his heart.
    He had become nameless and faceless inside American borders, working simple jobs to stay under the radar when he was, in fact, developing a cell made up of the most seasoned warriors who abided by the same intolerances toward the ‘infidels’ as did he. When the U.S. military employed around 20,000 Muslims as part of their fighting force, recruits were easy to come by. So in the two years that he’d gone missing, Aasif Shazad had become a conduit working through a network of mosques on U.S. soil, eventually becoming the eyes, ears and mind of al-Qaeda on the D.C. front. With ties to two cultures and the vision to see as his enemy does, and with tactical training by way of the U.S. military, Aasif Shazad would become much more than just an enemy of the state.
    He would become the scourge to a superpower in the name of Allah.
    When he was contacted twenty-four hours ago regarding the extraction of al-Zawahiri from Islamabad--presumably with the influence of the American