Then by fiber optic cable across Western Europe, across the Atlantic, across the continental United States.ĪRABLOUEI. Then down to a receiver in Ramstein, Germany.ĬOCKBURN. Twenty-two thousand miles up above.ĪRABLOUEI.

Below its belly, a sensor with cameras tracked their every move, snapping infrared heat-sensing images and transmitting them to a satellite orbiting the Earth.ĬOCKBURN. And they were wrong.ĪRABLOUEI: Fourteen thousand feet above them, a predator drone as big as a three-story building flew between the clouds, virtually invisible to anyone looking up at the night sky, like a giant hawk circling its prey. They thought, you know, they could get through in the dark, and no one would see them. Hazaras, who are a Shia population in Afghanistan, who are considered heretics by the Taliban and treated mercilessly by the Taliban, and therefore they were afraid because they were traveling through Taliban-held territory. The men were hoping to find work in Kabul, or some of them were going on to Iran.ĬOCKBURN. Some of the women are carrying turkeys, which they were bringing as presents for their relatives they were going to stay with in Kabul. It was also very cold, and a group of poor people who were crammed into these three very rickety vehicles were headed to Kabul - men and women and children, altogether about 30 of them. Before we get started, we want to let you know that this episode contains reenactments of violence and language that might be upsetting to some listeners.ĪBDELFATAH: Sunday, February 21, 2010, on a mountain road in central Afghanistan.ĪNDREW COCKBURN: It was the middle of the night when the story starts.

Weapons of the third era