Fatal mistakes

ACHTUNG!

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You stare at the screen. Gray dots are moving across the surface.
With a small movement of the joystick, you let the MQ-9 Reaper fighter drone descend. Then you hear the familiar alarm sound: the drone has targeted one of the dots.

“That’s him!” the general says excitedly.

Indeed! It’s the person you were looking for, he’s boarding a truck fully loaded with ammunition….
What about the other dots? You can’t tell whether they’re carrying any weapons, everything’s too blurry.
And that small figure behind the truck? A child?

The people on the screen look so fake, as if the desert floor they’re standing on doesn’t belong to a country on the other side of the globe, but to a planet on the other side of the universe.
It’s like a computer game. Just a game.
“Fire!”

The code is written, the program is ready to run.
Your finger hovers over the enter key.
In a few minutes, Ramstein Air Base will completely collapse, the systems hacked by a refugee from Yemen who no longer wants to watch the killing.

You thought Germany was a peace-loving country.
But they allow the U.S. to kill people in your country from their soil. Time to put an end to the haunting – “Have you gone mad?”
Your husband storms into the room.

“Stop that right now! What you’re doing is irresponsible.” He looks at you pleadingly.

“Please! We risked so much to make it to Germany! If anyone finds out who shut down Ramstein, our lives will be in danger! They’ll kick us out, send us back to Yemen, or kill us right now!”

“Please!” your husband repeats, “Think about the children!”
Something convulses inside you.
Images flicker through your head: your own children, they are at school, and the nameless children in Yemen, they are starving or being threatened by bombs.

You see the drone circling in the sky like a raptor. Where is Ayasha?
Everything is happening way too fast. The shots are hitting all around you. They hit the old truck, which explodes with a deafening bang.
You are unable to move as people fall to the ground around you. The drone turns away, the dust settles.

Ayasha! No! You see the girl with severed limbs lying lifeless on the desert floor a few meters away from you.
The world around you collapses. “Ayasha! My child…you monster…!”
You kneel down next to your daughter, start screaming, yelling the injustice to the world, but your pain doesn’t subside.

It’s 11:55 p.m. and the mood in the club is approaching its peak. You order another drink.

Tomorrow you will have to kill again, eliminate terrorists on the other side of the world. But for now, it’s time to party. Your field of vision blurs, the laughter around you reaches its peak.

You don’t notice a hooded person entering the club and unlocking his rifle. By the time the shrieking from the crowd reaches you, it’s already too late to escape.

As you look into the eyes of the young woman in the wheelchair, you are surprised by the calmness in her gaze.
No trace of hatred, although she has lost all her limbs due to your drone.
You spent 10 years looking for her because you couldn’t get the image of the exploding truck and the apparently dead girl out of your head.

“Is there anything I can do to help you forgive me?” you ask.
“You destroyed my childhood,” she whispers, “My country is in ruins. Father died a few years ago. The people of Yemen are suffering, and your country has quietly left…”
“You can’t change all that. But there is one thing you can do: Help me get the government to finally close Ramstein!”

The city looks deserted: The residents who were smart enough have fled a long time ago.
Others who didn’t want to leave their homes are now buried under their former houses. When you were a drone pilot, war always seemed like a game to you.
Now you find yourself in the middle of this game of life and death, as part of the U.S. ground forces on the front lines.

Since Ramstein has been regularly crippled by hacker attacks, the U.S. is once again relying on the direct deployment of soldiers.
You’ve been promoted, you’re fighting for the nation’s values and security, and you’re earning a decent salary.
But that doesn’t change the fact that you could be shot at any moment by a Taliban lurking behind the collapsed houses.

You need to find your squad before it gets dark. You won’t survive a night alone in a Taliban-controlled city.
You carefully make your way through the mountains of rubble when you sense movement ten meters to your right. Your heartbeat accelerates.
Something is lying on the ground, twitching convulsively. A wounded Taliban?

It was a Taliban ambush.
Almost at the same moment as the shot breaks the silence, you are surrounded by fighters holding their guns on you.
You know what is now going to happen.

It’s your comrade, covered in blood. He has lost consciousness. But his radio is still working! You are saved.
Half an hour later, you are sitting in the helicopter, which is moving swiftly away from Kandahar and heading for your base. You look at your hands, which are covered in your comrade’s blood.
Will another US soldier die for a war that has no end and in which there are no victors?

“General!” When you refused the order back then, you never expected to get promoted.
But after it emerged that the man identified by the drone was not the wanted warlord at all, but the father of a family of seven children, the public put on the pressure.
You are now in the National Security Department and have command of the missile interceptors on the West Coast.

“General! A call from the National Aviation Authority! It’s urgent!”
The young soldier holds the smartphone out to you. Worried, you press the device to your ear. “We have a problem with a plane: Boeing 747 from Aden to San Francisco,” says the voice on the other end of the line, “Our system has lost the plane.
Contact with the pilots is not possible. It should still be about half an hour away from San Francisco.”

Aden. That’s in Yemen. “How many people?”
“About 400 refugees. A US government rescue program.”
“Ok, we- ” The young soldier comes running up to you and drags you to one of the surveillance systems in the control center. The radar shows a plane approaching the northwestern coast of the USA.

A red number flashes: 911. The Golden Gate Bridge appears on the screen with the San Francisco skyline behind it.
You guessed it. Today marks the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center – perfect for a second attack.
Your thoughts are racing as you watch the plane approach its destination without breaking.

You must not allow 9/11 to repeat itself.
It is almost certain that the plane was hijacked and that the terrorists are targeting the bridge.
But it is just as certain that there are 400 innocent people on board.

Chaos breaks out at the head office. “Inform the president!” someone shouts.
“Quiet!” you yell. You have no more time. The plane’s speed is high, far too high for a landing approach.
In a few seconds it will have passed through your aircraft launch system. Then it will be too late for San Francisco.

You have been a judge at the military court for a very long time, but you have never had to decide such a serious case.
The accused had a passenger plane shot down more than a year ago, which was suspected of carrying out a serious terrorist attack on the Golden Gate Bridge.
The plane crashed into the sea, most of the occupants drowned.

But the survivors deny that their plane was hijacked by terrorists and incriminate the accused of killing their families.
According to witnesses, the Yemeni pilot suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and briefly lost consciousness, but that the co-pilot had eventually brought the situation under control.