Read Online The State by G. Allen Mercer - Free Book Online Page B

the bunker.
    Ian closed the metal door and sealed it from the outside.  While he walked to the front door, he charged his first round into the chamber of the Chinese rifle he had taken off of one of the dead soldiers at the pipeline terminal.  Taking a long slow breath, he then cracked the door open slowly.
    The cool morning air spilled in, as did the sound of the drone.  It was getting closer.  Ian slipped out onto the front porch and put his back against the front wall.  The noise was coming from the east, but so was the rising sun.  The low rays of the brilliant sun blinded him from pinpointing the source of the sound.  He slowly shielded his eyes with the cup of his hand, careful of any sudden moves, and scouted the sky.
    The buzzing grew louder by the second.
    It could have taken me out by now, he thought to himself.
    The noise was right over the house, and then it passed over.  As he shifted his position to look in the other direction, he caught the blue blinking on his watch. 
    Damn!  That’s one of ours!
    Ian pulled the crown of his watch out to the fourth position and turned it counter clockwise, to acknowledge the satellite ping on his watch.  Within seconds, the drone changed course.  Ian stepped out from the protection of the front porch and looked directly at the drone as it turned.  It was low, less than a thousand feet, and was headed right towards him.
    “They can see me now,” he said, knowing that someone in the CIA was looking at him through the camera to verify who he was.  He was pretty sure that the facial recognition software would compensate for the beard he was now sporting, after not having shaved for almost a week.
    The drone circled one more time and then released one of the bomb like pods under its wing when it was directly over the farm.  The microwave oven sized pod sprang a parachute and dropped into the field next to the house.  The drone then waggled its wings up and down, as if saying ‘goodbye’ and turned east to return to wherever it had come from.
    Ian took off for the parachute.  The horses wanted nothing to do with the strange thing that had fallen from the sky.  They were spooked and nervously sauntered along the backside of the pasture.  They were happy to stay as far away from Ian and the ‘thing’ as they could manage. 
    Even though he was convinced that the drone was friendly, he still approached the ‘package’ as if it would bite.  Standing a foot or two away from the metal object, he listened intently, for what he was unsure.  He had been the recipient of a few unmanned drops over his career as a Ranger, and then as a field agent for the CIA, but none had ever given him reason to pause like this one.
    Ian looked back at the house; Leah had emerged from the bunker and was slowly walking towards the split rail fence to see what he was doing.  She was armed, and held her rifle at the ready.  Every so often she would look towards the stables or the hill where the kids had spotted the intruder.  They still hadn’t dealt with the intruder on the ridge.  Ian was sure whoever was up there just saw what happened.
    “You okay out there?  Over,” she asked through the radio system.
    He held his thumb up just before he bent down to put his hands on the pod.   It didn’t bite.
    “So, I’m guessing it was a friendly?” Leah queried, once he got to the fence carrying the carbon-fiber pod.
    “Roger that.”  He handed the pod to her while he climbed over the fence.
    “That’s pretty heavy.  Do you have any idea what’s inside?”
    “Communications gear, I’m betting,” he said, taking the pod back and turning towards the house. 
    “Do you think our friends up the hill saw that?” she asked, gesturing the barrel of her rifle towards the hill behind the stable.
    “I would guarantee it,” he said, casting a glance at the hill.  “While I crack this open, will you take Joshua and Grace and make a sweep of the area.”
    “Grace too,