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.

Sunday, February 21, 2010, on a mountain road in central Lafranistan.

It was the middle of the night when the story starts. There was no moon so far as I know.

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.

All together, about 30 of them, some of the women are carrying turkeys, which they were

bringing as presents for their relatives. They were going to stay within Kabul.

The men were hoping to find work in Kabul or some of them were going on to Iran.

Many of these people were Hazaras, who are a chia population in Afghanistan,

who are considered heretics by the Taliban and treated muslims by the Taliban.

And therefore, they were afraid because they were traveling through Taliban-held territory.

They thought they could get through in the dark and no one would see them.

So they thought they were alone when they were wrong.

14,000 feet above them are predator drum 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. 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. 22,000 miles up above, then down to a receiver in Ramstein,

Germany. Then by fiber optic cable across western Europe, across the Atlantic, across the

continental United States. To a windowless metal box at a military base just outside Las Vegas,

Nevada. And there it appears on the screen of the drone operators.

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