Oath of Office

Hyatt watched the missus for six days, logging visitors, building patterns of life, noting how often she made the six-kilometer journey to the other compound, and, more important to him, where the kids were at specific times during the day. Most of his shift was during the nighttime in Afghanistan, so the bulk of his images were ghostly infrared images like something out of a video game. But a kid’s head poking out of a window helped him avoid collateral damage in the event Zamil did show up.

And then the wily bastard just walked out of the house. He didn’t go anywhere at first, he just took a stroll around the inner compound, and then ducked inside. Captain Hyatt had written a report, and Brian, the CIA drone guy, showed up in the middle of the next shift, less than twenty-four hours later. He wore a flight suit like everyone else, but with no nametag, unit patch, or rank insignia, there was no doubt to everyone on base who he worked for.

A good deal of Hyatt’s job could be a lot like watching paint dry — but life got a little more interesting once Zamil actually came into the picture. He was wanted directly in connection to an attack that cost the lives of three American soldiers and fifteen Afghans. This would be a preplanned operation. A targeted killing based on evidence. A team of lawyers checked the law, then policy, and then the boxes to say it was okay to pull the trigger. These suits made certain any proposed strike met the laws of armed conflict, the preordained rules of engagement, and the top-secret instructions known as “spins” put in place by theater command. No laser was aimed and no trigger got pulled until the lawyers at the Air Force head shed signed off on all three.

The CIA had lawyers, too, and their own checklist, but they operated under different ROEs and had a little freer hand to pull said trigger when the time came.

That’s where Brian came in.

“Movement,” Staff Sergeant Deatherage said, toggling the Reaper’s cameras to follow Zamil out of his house to a waiting Toyota pickup. The truck had arrived the day before, a green tarp covering a load of something that was stacked in the bed.

Captain Hyatt tapped his joystick slightly. At twelve thousand feet, it didn’t have to move far or fast to keep up with the pickup. He shot a quick glance over his shoulder, but Brian held up an open hand. “We have a ‘concur’ on the death warrant, but let’s see where he goes.”

“Roger that,” Hyatt said, inching along, unseen, the wrath of God more than two miles above this death-dealing asshole who was about to become one with the yellow dirt over which he now traveled.

“Second truck coming in from the north,” Staff Sergeant Deatherage said, calling out what all of them were seeing.

“A transfer,” Hyatt said, zoned in now. The crosshairs on his console stayed on the Toyota.

The two trucks stopped nose-to-nose in the middle of the deserted road. It was late, a half an hour until sunset. The trucks, along with every rock and pebble, cast long shadows over the orange ground.

“The new guys are wearing shemaghs,” Deatherage said. “Impossible to ID them.”

Brian was standing now, hovering just off Hyatt’s left elbow, as if the extra eight feet of distance would help him see the images on the screen any better. All three men watched as Zamil and his second-in-command walked to the rear of the Toyota. The second man was Omar Khalid, who, though not quite to the level of Zamil, was adjudged bad enough by the head shed that he’d be worth qualifying for prosecution. That was the word they used. Prosecution.

The men in the air-conditioned trailer leaned forward slightly as the two Afghans they’d identified threw back the tarp.

Hyatt stood up without being told, and Brian slid into his seat. Agency rules of engagement were more permissive. Their lawyers said it was okay to fold unidentified third parties in with the death warrant, if those unidentified third parties were doing something illegal. Nobody wanted these guys running around with a dozen new French Mistral MANPADS. Like its American cousin the Stinger, the shoulder-fired Mistral could wreak havoc on coalition aircraft — especially the MQ-9s, which were sitting ducks if they ventured below ten thousand feet.

By the time Hyatt handed off the controls and Brian plugged in his own headset, Omar had climbed into the bed of the Toyota.

“Master Arm on,” Brian said. “Weapons hot.”

“Lasers hot,” Deatherage said.

“Three, two, one, rifle,” Brian said, pulling the trigger. “Missile away.”

Standing behind his chair, Hyatt looked at the instrumentation.

The hard work had been the endless hours of waiting, watching, logging patterns. It was largely academic from this point. A single AGM-114R Romeo Hellfire II missile locked on immediately, flying toward the lased target as if on a wire. Traveling at 995 miles per hour, it took just over seven seconds to make the trip.