Nickel City Storm Warning (Gideon Rimes Book 3) by Gary Ross (i can read books TXT) 📕

to bet Drea’s life on it. I had forbidden her to attend the remaining plenary sessions. Now, I explained what I had learned last night, without giving up Eli Aronson.

“What the hell is a Babyhawk?” James said.

I handed the explanation off to Mark with a gesture.

He tugged his beard as he took a breath. “An unmanned aerial vehicle, sir. A drone.”

James was quiet a moment. “Military-style or like the weather cam?”

“Closer to the weather cam,” Mark said. “Nobody will be firing rockets at the hotel, but even small drones can pose a serious threat. Remember how Heathrow was shut down?”

“That’s the other side of the ocean. I thought drones were supposed to be registered as aircraft here in the States. Can’t we check that out, like a firearms registry?”

“Like there are unregistered guns, there are unregistered drones.” Mark paused as James shook his head. “But yes, a drone has to be registered with the FAA if it’s two hundred fifty grams or more, essentially half a pound. Anything under that is considered a toy.”

“So we might be attacked by toys? Like something out of a comic book?”

“Mr. Torrance,” Rafael said. “We arrested two men yesterday who were going after one of Mr. Rimes’s associates. They had homemade plastic explosives, crude but effective, and a military-style knife. The man behind all this got a bad conduct discharge from the Marines—for what we haven’t found out yet. But we believe he is capable of making explosives and packing them in at least one flying toy. Maybe more.”

Before James could respond, Mark took the floor. “Babyhawk is a brand name for racing drones the size of your hand, but there are lots of similar brands. Quad copters, with four sets of rotor blades. Fast. Agile. A flying time of, say, three to eight minutes, a range of four hundred feet or so—all depending on total weight and the type of battery.”

James bit his lip. “How much damage can they do?”

Mark shrugged. “Depends on the size of the explosives. But you could pack enough to cause serious hurt. Weight is the key.”

“Be more specific, Mark,” James said. “What kind of damage?”

Mark took out a folded sheet of paper. “The average Babyhawk is between eighty and a hundred grams. If you pack too much additional weight, it won’t fly as far or as long. You can replace some of the drone’s weight with plastique if you remove the propeller guards and two of the four screws that hold each rotor to its motor. Some models have cockpits, which can hold extra weight. They all have cameras that can’t be removed if the operator wants to see where he’s flying. Sometimes he wears special goggles. Sometimes he’ll pair a camera to a smartphone that can be attached to the flight controller and linked to a detonator. That means he can look into your eyes from hundreds of feet away before he sets off his bomb.”

Mark unfolded the printout and handed it to James, who smoothed it out on his desk to study pictures of Babyhawks, other drones, goggles, and controllers.

Mark shifted into a mini-lecture on plastic explosives, describing how blocks could be cut and shaped to direct the force of a blast in a desired direction. Plastique was stable and wouldn’t explode if burned or shot. It required a detonator. Ball bearings, nails, other metals, and glass could be packed inside and sent flying outward at more than twenty-six thousand feet per second. “Depending on the height of the blast radius,” he said in conclusion, “ten or twenty grams of plastique could kill or injure the people closest to it.”

“How do we stop this when you don’t even know which drone he’ll use?”

“We know the range of frequencies he’ll use.” Travis took a step forward and offered James Torrance a smile. “I’m a transplant from Syracuse PD, Mr. Torrance. A lot of UAV companies are there. I’ve had special training in drone jammer technology similar to what Metropolitan Police used at Heathrow. I put in a call this morning. One of the newest jammers will be here by early afternoon. But by itself, that won’t be enough.”

James furrowed his brow. “Why not?”

“I can jam the signal,” Travis said. “Depending on the UAV itself, it’ll most likely drop to the floor without exploding or return to its starting point. But that’s all I can do.”

“Which means he could still use a cell phone to activate the detonator,” Mark said.

The few seconds the room was quiet felt like five minutes.

“We don’t want it to come to that,” I said. “We don’t know if Wally Ray can afford a fleet of Babyhawks. If Drea is still his primary target, he may have only one he’s saving for her. This isn’t a suicide mission. Trust me, he very much wants to get out of this alive. He wiped his prints off everything he used at PAUSA Art House the other night and didn’t tell his friends to do the same. His game here is more than simple revenge. This kind of surgical kill could make him a legend in white supremacist circles. But because the range is limited, he will have to be close enough to turn on the drone and send it toward the target.”

“He has to wear these weird goggles, right?” James said, tapping the printout. “Or hold something with a cell phone hooked up to it? Wouldn’t somebody notice?”

“Not if he’s in a restroom or up on the catwalk.” I looked straight into James’s eyes. “In all likelihood, Mr. Torrance, Wally Ray Tucker already knows where he’s going to be. That’s why we’re here, to request Torrance Towers human resource records. There’s a good chance he’s been here for a long time, using an assumed name and working in your hotel.”

34

Carter John’s smartphone had a hundred ten contacts, more than five hundred pictures, an empty calendar, an email account, text message chains with nine different individuals, a playlist that included rock and country music as well