Net Force--Eye of the Drone

  An all-new novella in the New York Times bestselling Net Force series, created by Tom Clancy and Steve Pieczenik and written by Jerome Preisler.

  In Munich, a renowned computer scientist dies. Then, his daughter vanishes. Both under mysterious circumstances.

  Kali Alcazar, a master hacker, wants to know why. As she delves deeper into the suspicious events, she spots something in the sky—a rare, advanced drone—and realizes she’s a target herself. A group of mercenary assassins has been assembled with just one goal: to stop Kali from exposing a dark, world-changing secret. Stop her at any cost.

  They’re not the only ones who are hunting Kali. CIA man hunter Mike Carmody and his elite special ops team are hot on her trail. Their task—bring her to Washington as an internationally wanted cybercriminal. But that simple mission suddenly becomes a lot more dangerous than they bargained for.

  In this thrilling novella, the lines blur between hunter and hunted in a battle for tech dominance whose explosive outcome ultimately may decide the future of international security.

  SERIES CREATED BY

  TOM CLANCY and

  STEVE PIECZENIK

  WRITTEN BY

  JEROME PREISLER

  NET

  FORCE:

  EYE OF THE

  DRONE

  A Novella

  Jerome Preisler is the prolific author of almost forty books of fiction and narrative nonfiction, including all eight novels in the New York Times bestselling Tom Clancy’s Power Plays series.

  His latest book is Dark Web, the first novel in a relaunch of the New York Times bestselling Net Force series co-created Tom Clancy and Steve Pieczenik.

  Forthcoming in November 2020 is his next Net Force novel, Attack Protocol.

  Jerome lives in New York City and coastal Maine.

  In loving memory of my grandmother,

  Charlotte “Lotte” Kleinberg.

  “Does not the King of Birds hasten to do your bidding? Or did he find, Heaven to Earth, a distance too forbidding? Oh Supreme Self, who rules over all, who but you can I invoke?”

  —From the eighteenth-century Carnatic raja Nagumomu, composed by Tyagaraja

  “She blinked, and the stars were shattered....”

  —Winifred Boggs, Sally on the Rocks

  Author’s Note:

  This story’s events precede those in Net Force: Dark Web.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Epilogue

  PROLOGUE

  Tessin, Northeastern Germany

  April 2023

  Koenig watched Munsey Bergmann carry the tin of ostfriesentee to the kitchen counter. Fired and painted in Koenig’s ancestral village of East Fricia, the teapot was delicate white porcelain with a pattern of red roses and twining stems. Munsey’s hands, too, were delicate, and graceful as the wings of swans in flight.

  He took care not to damage or blemish them.

  She stood at the black lava counter, her hands busy. Koenig enjoyed seeing her prepare the tea and rarely spoke as she went about the ceremony’s formal, orderly routines. Captivated, he observed her smallest movements, his eyes never deviating although the room’s virtual windows could show limitless real-time vistas from outside—wherever Koenig wanted outside to be. It might be an intersection in a major European city or a village square a continent away. It might be anywhere on the planet, or even all of earth seen from outer space, the video streaming down to him from a constellation of orbital satellites he owned through one of his venture companies.

  This evening Koenig had chosen to open a window onto his immediate surface environment—the same view his security people might see on their monitors when scanning the west side of the mountain. The flat grass outside the bunker entrance, the high, steep valley slopes shagged with aspen and pines, and beyond them the orange sunset bleeding down the horizon. At one point he peripherally noticed the slow, gliding ascent of a hawk in a thermal soar above the treetops. But his conscious attention was on Munsey Bergmann making the tea.

  He thought her very beautiful. Slightly built, she wore her makeup as he insisted—red lipstick, blue eyeliner, rouged cheeks. Her yellow hair was cut square to frame her face, bangs straight over her forehead, with barrettes on the sides. The clipped hair was pulled tight against her temples, loosening up as the strands fell over the ruffled white collar of her blouse.

  Though she was still shy of her twenty-fifth birthday, Koenig felt she looked appealingly younger in the traditional dirndl, the Bavarian peasant dress he had brought her to wear.

  He listened to her move about the kitchen, taking pleasure in the small sounds she made readying the tea. There was the faint clink of the spoon handle against the teapot as she carefully measured out the ostfriesentee, one spoonful per cup, adding a third for the pot. There was the rustle of the long, wide skirt around her knees as she lifted the kettle from the electric range and carried it to the table. There was the sharp hiss of near-boiling water as she angled it down over the teapot.

  Munsey Bergmann poured just enough water to cover the leaves, then reached for a crystal bowl filled with kluntjes, or rock candy, to sweeten the brew. She used gold sugar tongs to place a single large rock into each cup.

  “Liebespuppe,” he said in a gentle voice.

  She turned to him, holding the tongs. The room grew silent except for the whisper of HEPA-processed air filtering into the bunker from discreetly concealed vents.

  “Yes, Herr Koenig,” she said in German.

  “Gunther, today,” he said, taking her hand in his. “Dies ist nicht der Tag, an dem sie so förmlich ist.”

  She looked at him. “Gunther.”

  “I want to ask about your father again...about where he stored the information,” he said, his light blue eyes on her face. “But first, the tea. We mustn’t forget that it is steeping.”

  Munsey nodded, finally withdrew her hand, and set down the tongs in her other hand. She turned back to the range, picked up the kettle again, and filled the rose-patterned teapot to the top with steaming water. Finally, she poured the tea over the sugar rocks through a strainer.

  First his cup, then hers.

  Koenig watched as she set down the pot and spooned a dash of sweet cream into each cup. It was his strict instruction that the cream sit out until it was room temperature. He did not like it chilled right out of the refrigerator, since that would too quickly cool the tea and ruin its complicated blend of flavors.

  Coming around to him, she set his cup and saucer down on the tablecloth, the china rattling slightly in her hand. Then she sank into her chair, staring at him over her own cup.

  Koenig took his time raising the cup from the table. He saw the dread in her eyes and paused with the tea below his chin, looking down at the cloud of white cream at its center. Then he looked back up at her face.

  His eyes on her eyes, he listened to the hum of sterile, temperature-controlled air.

  “Tell me where he stored the data,” Koenig said at last. He gave her another sad, sympathetic smile, his lips parting slightly now to show a flash of white teeth. “Tell me.”

  She stared at him for another long moment, her lips trembling. Her head shook from side to side.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I swear—”

  “No,” he interrupted. “I don’t believe you. Now give me the truth, or I’ll have to punish you again.”

  Munsey blinked, twice, her eyes moist
and bright. A moment later she began to cry, then sob heavily. He saw a blue-black discoloration on one of her pale, white cheeks where the tears had washed away the red rouge.

  “Stop,” he said. He did not want to see the bruising and swelling under her makeup. “Stop it.”

  But she did not stop. She kept crying, her chest and shoulders heaving as she pulled in short, moist breaths between convulsive sobs.

  A cold ball of anger filled Koenig’s chest. He slammed his teacup down onto the saucer and lunged forward over the table, shooting out his right hand to grab her wrist. The cup overturned with a rattle and the saucer broke into two large pieces, his tea spilling onto the tablecloth to stain it a dark brown.

  He heard the liquid dripping from the table onto the floor, the sound mingling with her uncontrollable sobs to mar the room’s silence.

  “You have ruined the tea,” he said, reaching out and twisting her lips with his fingers. “Ruined everything with your lies. You know what that means.”

  Pain and terror leaped into her eyes. He twisted her lips again and she cringed with a muffled whimper.

  Koenig stood up without letting go of her, rising to his full six-foot height. Thick-necked, broad-chested, he had the bulky physique of someone who diligently bench-pressed heavy weights.

  He took two wide, sliding steps around the table, his hand still clamped around her wrist. Then he moved behind her chair, using his muscular body to prevent it from crashing backward to the floor as he effortlessly lifted her to her feet. He felt her warm tears flowing over his hand, felt her suck in breath after breath between his lipstick-smeared knuckles.

  Ruined, he thought. The tea ceremony, his entire evening. Ruined and broken. And still no information. But he would not leave it at that. He could not.

  He leaned forward so his mouth pressed against her ear, looming over her, bending her arm behind her waist.

  “You will tell me where to find the information,” he said. “Sooner or later, you will tell me.”

  Munsey Bergmann struggled to break free of his grip.

  Koenig did not let go.

  I

  Munich, Germany

  May 2023

  Kali Alcazar glanced briefly upward on the way back to her motorcycle, careful not to betray her awareness of the moving object in the sky. A black, pinprick-sized dot against the blueness overhead, it had followed her from the Airbnb on Ruppertstrasse, staying with her even after she parked near the Sendlingler Tor, the medieval gate on the south side of Munich’s Old Town.

  She had first caught sight of it three days ago.

  Kali’s eyes snapped downward and she crossed the plaza without missing a step. Her dark, violet-streaked hair clipped loosely up from her neck, she wore fitted black leather riding gear, a red silk competitive racing scarf, a ribbed sweater, and lace-up ankle boots. A Bluetooth helmet hung from the lightweight nylon backpack on her shoulders. Warm inside her market bag was a fresh, thick-crusted loaf of bread from a local bakery.

  The backpack contained her laptop computer and tablet, two postal cartons—one small, one midsize—and a twelve-inch shipping tube. She had used an alias credit card and buyer’s account to make the online purchases, engaged a mail forwarder in Lichtenstein to overnight the packages, and claimed them at a mailbox office on the Bahnhofplatz.

  It was a little past eight o’clock on a crisp, sunny spring Saturday morning. Only a handful of early birds were strolling about the broad cobbled square, and traffic on the bordering streets was sparse. Oven smoke from the bakery where Kali had picked up the holzofenbrot rode the breeze.

  She enjoyed the scent as she passed under the weathered brick arch of the Tor.

  Slotted into a row of otherwise empty spaces, her bike was a sleek Ducati Diavel Carbon with a red frame, black front fork, black seat, black bumpers, and red fiberglass fuel tank—the coveted 2014 edition enthusiasts simply called the Devil, upgraded to toggle between automatic and manual transmissions. As she reached it, Kali slipped her phone out of a discreet zippered shoulder pocket, which had a microthin aluminum-alloy liner to block GPS trackers. A simple custom app of her design would utilize the phone’s near-field antenna and magnetometer to detect any active bugs planted on the chassis.

  She stood near the bike a minute as if checking her email on the phone. Finding its electromagnetic emissions clean, she returned the phone to the sleeve pocket, stowed the bread and market bag in a saddlebag, put on her helmet, and mounted the bike from the left side. She stood it up, balanced it between her legs, and pushed the red switch on the right handlebar to turn on the LED dash strips and other onboard systems. Kicking up the side stand, she thumbed down the switch to expose the start button and depressed it for two to three seconds.

  The Ducati shivered like a cat awakening from a nap. With the Lindwurmstrasse clear of cars, Kali squeezed some juice into the engine and darted into the thoroughfare’s wide westbound lane, leaving the Sendlinger Tor and Old Town behind her.

  She streaked past the south entrance to the Nussbaumpark, a public green space in the long shadow of St. Matthew’s church. On its main lawn, people were setting up for a weekend expo at outdoor booths, tents, and canopied tables. A colorful hand-painted banner hanging above the entrance announced:

  Selbermacher Messe München

  .6/.7 Mai

  Kali glanced over her shoulder toward the corner of Ziemssenstrasse, the cross street running along the west side of the green. She saw exhibitors busily unloading their trucks and vans in the parking spaces bordering the park.

  Most years, she arrived at the do-it-yourselfer fair to chat with its tinkerers and inventors, browse the vintage and homemade video games that were its unique staples, and meet up with a dear old friend. This time she had come to Munich for different reasons. The death of her old friend Eric Bergmann and his stepdaughter Munsey’s subsequent disappearance were only part of it.

  She throttled up to catch a traffic light and went roaring through.

  * * *

  A short distance up Ziemssenstrasse, in a diagonal parking spot, a plain white commercial van trembled from the thunder of the Ducati’s engine. The closest of the sellers’ vehicles to the corner, it was nosed under a row of shade trees, its doors and rear hatch shut. There were no windows or writing on the sides of its cargo section.

  Three men occupied the van. Two were in the rear behind a thin metal bulkhead. The one in the cab was holding a black coffee in a cardboard cup and smacking his lips. He had just finished his second glazed chocolate croissant of the morning.

  “Best I ever tasted,” he said to the others through the bulkhead, turning to look outside as the Ducati roared past. “Like a bite of heaven.”

  The pair in the cargo section were too busy to comment. Mike Carmody was tall, broad-chested, and muscular, with brush-cut blond hair and average features. He wore a long-sleeved olive T-shirt, black chinos, and a Sig 226 9mm pistol in a sidearm holster. Peeking up above his shirt collar from his left and right clavicles were the upper edges of tattoos that, if fully visible, would be recognized as stylized, exquisitely rendered sets of latitudes and longitudes—the two on the right side corresponding to the locations of the Great Pyramids of Khafre and Menkaure, the left coordinates matching up with the largest of the pyramids, Cheops, known for its proximity to the colossal Sphinx. The tattoos were part of a tapestry of body art telling a story Carmody had never fully shared with anyone.

  The other man in back, Dixon, was dark-haired, thick-featured, and in similar well-honed shape. He wore virtual reality glasses, a white tee, and Levis. The large gold medallion on his necklace was engraved with the Special Warfare trident of the United States Navy SEALs.

  Both of them were perched on stools at a workstation running the length of the cargo section. Several flat-panel monitors were secured to the side of the van above their computer consoles. One of the screens showed the str
eaming aerial drone video that was being transmitted from the UAV to an orbital satellite, and then bounced to a shark-fin directional antenna on their roof.

  The drone’s VR-compatible cameras continued to follow their target as she roared west down Lindwurmstrasse on her motorcycle.

  “Think she spotted our bird?” asked Dixon, watching her through his VR glasses.

  Carmody studied the same image on the flat panel, preferring it in two dimensions. He had hetrochromatic eyes—one iris brown, the other hazel, with faint brown lines radiating from the pupil. The hazel eye tired easily.

  “Maybe,” he said after a moment.

  “Gut feeling?”

  “Our girl has good taste in bread.”

  “She ought to try the croissants,” said the guy up front. His name was Schultz.

  “And the kind of bread she likes matters why, exactly?” said Dixon.

  “It might not,” said Carmody. “But maybe it does. Or will.”

  Dixon considered. His team leader would never be accused of wasting words.

  “I think she noticed something,” he said, trying to loop back around to his original question. “Right before she hopped onto the saddle.”

  Carmody was quiet. On loan from the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, Germany’s principal domestic security agency, the crab-shaped hexacopter was flying at two thousand feet, lower and easier to notice than he preferred. But Munich’s legal limit for drone flights was five hundred feet, and the local authorities had already issued his team an exception allowing for its present height. He did not want to strain their patience by pushing any farther into airspace used by planes and helicopters.

  “If she made the bird, we’ll deal with it,” he said.

  “You don’t sound too concerned,” said Dixon. “Especially considering how often she’s given us the slip.”