Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist Aftermath by Peter Telep Page B

I mentioned, if you can deploy the drone, I’ll remote operate
     it from here. I’ll be another set of eyes and ears.”
    “He’s got soldier envy,” said Briggs.
    “What he’s got is our backs,” Fisher corrected. “Charlie, roger that. Deploying the
     drone.”
    From a custom-designed holster sitting low on his right hip, Fisher slipped free another
     of Charlie’s prototypes: a micro tri-rotor drone even smaller than the first one they’d
     fielded during the Blacklist mission. Fisher simply tossed the UAV into the air like
     a softball. The drone’s rotors automatically unfolded and purred to life. After gaining
     some altitude, the tiny bird boomeranged back toward Fisher, now controlling it from
     his OPSAT. He plucked two CS smoke grenades from his utility belt pouches and attached
     them to the drone’s undercarriage via custom release clips that served to pull their
     pins so the canisters could be deployed down on the enemy. The drone was also equipped
     with a self-destruct system and served as a remote sonar beacon to watch enemy movements.
     The larger model could be fitted with a micro 9mm semiautomatic gun on a pivoting
     mount, but Fisher had chosen the smaller model since the plan here was to go in “ghost,”
     evade detection, and not engage the enemy. The CS gas would both screen them and give
     the Russians a tearful moment of pause as it wreaked havoc with their respiratory
     systems.
    “Okay, Charlie, the drone’s all yours.”
    “Sweet. I bet that S&R team will fast rope into the crash site. The best time for
     you guys to extract would be while they’re infiltrating.”
    “Yeah, in a perfect world,” said Fisher. “Not sure we can get to the LZ in time. You
     keep them busy with that drone. I want SITREPs every couple of minutes or sooner,”
     said Fisher.
    “You got it, Sam.”
    Fisher looked to Briggs. “Take the backpack. Spot anything else?”
    Briggs shook his head. “You know, the bodies could’ve been ejected far away from here,
     could be dangling from trees, hard to spot now . . .”
    “Pilot seats were empty. They weren’t torn free and the seat belts were unbuckled,”
     said Fisher. “Either the pilots bailed out, or the jet was fitted with some kind of
     remote with a pilot on the ground transmitting to the tower while the jet took off.”
    “So they flew it out here and deliberately crashed it? Man, that’s an expensive diversion.”
    “What does he care? He’s got more money than God. Grim, we need to know if the pilots
     bailed out.”
    “I’m already on it, Sam. Best we can do there is gather HUMINT from witnesses on the
     ground who might’ve spotted their chutes.”
    Fisher gritted his teeth in frustration. “I want to know what happened here.”
    Briggs turned around to regard the wreckage. “I still say if Kasperov was really smart,
     he would’ve planted bodies. That would buy him a little more time until the corpses
     were ID’d and ruled out.”
    “Agreed, but maybe he ran out of time. Just like us. Let’s go!”
    Fisher took off running to the west. Their rally point lay .8 kilometers away in a
     depression where the mountainside grew more level and the trees tapered off into a
     more barren belt of ridges and ravines. The LZ—landing zone—was just wide enough and
     just flat enough for their UH-60 Black Hawk with Turkish Air Force insignia and an
     American flight crew to set down. The chopper’s call sign was Paladin Two.
    “Sam, one of the Russian choppers is breaking ahead,” said Grim. “Past the crash site.”
    Fisher glanced up as the whomping troop transport cut overhead like a black cloud,
     running lights flashing. “ETA on our extraction helo?”
    “Another fifteen minutes. We kept him on the ground to avoid being intercepted.”
    “Sorry for the delay, Sam,” Charlie cut in. “I usually have no trouble disrupting
     the Mi-8’s radar system. I’m jamming their FLIR now, sending phantom blips to get
     them