Unmanned (9780385351263) (10 page)

“The Bureau’s in on this, too?” Steve grinned, and shook his head in appreciation. “Good stuff. Really good. You did well.”

“Thanks. It was mostly him doing the talking.”

“You ask about any other ops?”

“I, uh, didn’t get to some of the stuff on the list.”

“What about Castle’s job description, the Agency’s chain of command over there?”

“No. Sorry. He was off and running with this beacon stuff. I never got back to some of the other things.”

“It’s okay. You’re new to this. You did well.”

But Steve couldn’t mask a note of disappointment. It was clear that he felt Cole could have gotten more, and maybe he was right. Probably was.

Steve sat up straighter behind the wheel.

“Whoa. What’s that up ahead?”

A black SUV had just crested the horizon, barreling toward them in the oncoming lane. Smoked windows made a head count impossible. They tensed as it approached, and exhaled as it whizzed by with a huge snatching sound.

“Not hitting their brake lights, thank God,” Steve said, checking the mirror. “Massachusetts tags.”

“Better than government tags. The Agency or the Bureau would be looking for a car with one guy. Bickell thinks I’m traveling alone. Besides, it’s only been fifteen minutes.”

“You actually believed that shit about a twenty-minute head start? Jesus, listen to me. I’m as paranoid as you.”

“Good. Stay that way.”

From force of habit, Cole craned his neck to check the skies overhead. This time Steve was too busy checking the mirrors to notice.

They drove on in silence.

ANY WORRIES THAT
the journalists would abandon him disappeared when he saw Keira waiting at the downtown bus station. A bottle clanked as he put his bag on the backseat of her Datsun. He winced in embarrassment, but Keira either didn’t notice or had the tact to pretend not to. He’d limited himself to only two swallows in the past three hours. Getting there.

From all he’d heard about Barb’s place, Cole had assumed it was a cramped row house in the heart of the city, a bohemian roach trap with on-street parking and a nightly din of sirens and car alarms. Then Keira told him to strap in for a half-hour ride.

“Barb’s way out in Middle River,” she explained.

“On the Bay?” Now he envisioned a yuppified community of waterfront condos, with docked sailboats and European sedans.

“Kinda sorta.” Keira laughed. “Wilson Point Road is sort of a Redneck Riviera. Just down the street from Martin State Airport, so you should feel right at home.”

“Seriously? Do you know what unit’s based there?”

“Some Air National Guard outfit. Mostly it’s a bunch of old planes.”

That certainly ruled out the prospect of gentrification. In Cole’s experience, neighborhoods next to air bases were always a little rough around the edges.

They passed the airstrip shortly after turning off Eastern Boulevard. A chain-link fence topped by barbed wire offered a view of a tarmac with tubby C-130 transports parked wing to wing next to a column of aging A-10 Warthogs, slow and ugly fighter-bombers. Ungainly, but
right then Cole would have given anything to take one up for a spin, especially in the coppery light of dusk.

He missed flying. He’d missed it even more when he was piloting Predators. It was one reason he took his kids out in the Cessna, to give them a taste. A few hours in the sky always worked wonders on his state of mind. By taking off from here you could make a long, low run along the jagged shoreline of the Chesapeake, heading south toward the city center or east across the main channel toward the farmlands and marshes of the Eastern Shore. You’d be right up there with the V formations of geese, the setting sun at your back. Turn south and in less than an hour you’d reach the sawgrass flats of his boyhood in Tidewater Virginia. No one down there worth seeing anymore, not since his parents died. But he could buzz his old high school, or the rooftops of his friends’ old houses. He saw it all in his head now, the bird’s-eye view: duck blinds and fishing holes peeping from between bare trees, reflected sunlight flashing up from the rippled water.

Barb’s street had a similar feel, a jumble of modest frame houses on compact lots. Boat trailers sat in driveways with massive pickups, clunky American sedans, the occasional Harley. It was only the first week of December, but most houses were decorated for Christmas, which made Cole think of his kids, already putting together their lists for Santa. Although not Karen, who’d be too old for that by now. He wondered if either of them ever asked to see Daddy. Maybe not.

It was chilly out, but Cole rolled down his window to inhale the familiar bouquet of brine, boat fuel, and wet leaves. Not at all like the lay of the land at Bickell’s place, where the lake was hemmed in by hills. This was tidewater country, with an open horizon and a lunar cycle. Mudflats at low tide, shallows at high tide, with the baitfish jumping. A long way from the desert.

He spotted Barb’s place from a block away, pegging it by the lack of decorations and the make of the cars in the drive—a Toyota Prius and a Honda Civic. The house was a funky little cottage with whitewashed cedar shakes and a single gabled window on the second floor. The lot, out toward the end of the point, backed up to Stansbury Creek, with a view of a grassy marsh, a stand of pines, and a marina with bobbing boats.

Steve was waiting for them just inside the front door.

“Good timing,” he said. “Five minutes later and you would’ve missed me. I’m headed off to an interview, but I’ll help you get squared away. Let me take your bag.”

He turned and called toward the back.

“They’re here!”

A petite redhead in jeans and a white peasant blouse emerged from the kitchen with a wooden spoon in her right hand.

“So you’re Darwin Cole.” She held aloft the spoon, coated with red sauce. “My night to make dinner, so I hope you’re not too hungry.”

“You must be Barb.”

“Holtzman. Couch or cot?”

“Excuse me?”

“Your choice of sleeping accommodations. Crash on a cot in Steve’s room, or take the couch down here.”

She was certainly direct.

“Couch, I guess.”

Steve nodded, looking relieved. Cole surveyed the room, barely decorated apart from a threadbare oriental rug and a brass Middle Eastern coffee set on an end table. The furniture looked straight out of an IKEA showroom, lending the place a faintly nomadic air, as if to convey that she could pick up and go at a moment’s notice.

Barb, brandishing the spoon like a bloodied swagger stick, pointed toward an alcove in the back.

“The dining room is where we work.” Three laptops were open on a small table.

“The nerve center,” Steve said, sounding a bit self-conscious. For all his initial reluctance about Cole at the beginning, he now seemed determined to make the arrangement work smoothly, the obliging host who only wanted everyone to get along. Barb led Cole to the couch, where she cleared away a pile of newspapers and shooed a fat orange cat from the cushions.

“Scoot, Cheryl, you’ve got company.”

The cat bared its teeth, but jumped to the floor and trotted off toward the kitchen.

“Sorry, Kitty,” Cole said.

“It’s all right. Cheryl’s the neighborhood slut. I just happen to be her pimp for the week.”

Cole wondered if that’s how everything was in Barb’s life—stray animals and sublet friends, coming and going like the tide but not nearly as reliable.

“Keira, why don’t you make him a drink while I finish up. Make me one, too. Gin and tonic. Although I hear you’re a bourbon man, Captain Cole.”

Fair enough, he supposed.

“I’ve been cutting back.”

“Don’t mind Barb,” Keira whispered, touching his shoulder in passing. “She’s just nervous. We all are, I guess. Who knows how this will work out?”

Steve, watching from the doorway, wondered what Cole must make of their odd little household, and of Barb in particular. She was one of those rare redheads without freckles, deeply appealing when she bothered to smile, although that wasn’t often. Journalistically she was easily the best digger of the threesome, a Jack Russell terrier for whom no hole in the ground was too narrow or deep for her to tunnel to the end, or at least until she sank her teeth into the flanks of her quarry. Their skills were fairly complementary. Keira’s greatest asset was her personal touch, a gentle schmoozability, not in the unctuous way of a lobbyist or a salesman, but out of a natural ease and curiosity. Plenty of reporters only pretended to be interested in their interview subjects. Keira really wanted to know what made them tick, a quality that had helped pry loose secrets from distraught refugees, suspicious bureaucrats, and soldiers of all nations. Steve ranked himself somewhere in the middle on the scales of both doggedness and empathy, which probably explained why he often ended up the designated peacemaker. If the chemistry ever failed, he’d blame himself.

Yet, being a fairly typical male, he occasionally found himself contemplating the group’s sexual possibilities, speculating on what circumstances might be required to turn their arrangement into a complicated but gratifying—for him, at least—lust triangle. He always came to his senses. Each of them knew firsthand the hazards of sex in the workplace. And when the workplace was also your home, well …

“Back shortly,” he said, twirling the car keys. Then, calling out to Barb, “Save me some chow.”

“No guarantees!” Barb shouted from the kitchen. “Yon pilot hath a lean and hungry look.”

Steve thought so, too, but not necessarily from an appetite for food, and for a fleeting moment Steve felt more concerned for Barb and Keira than for Cole. How well did they really know this man, after all? He hoped they were doing the right thing.

Cole sipped his bourbon and settled onto the couch, avoiding the furry spot the cat had left behind.

“I’ve got some work to do upstairs,” Keira said. “But welcome to our zoo.” She pulled the ever-present notebook from her hip pocket and disappeared up the stairway with an appealing little wave.

The only noise then was the banging of pots and pans from the kitchen, where it sounded like Barb was at war with their dinner. Cole reached into the pile of newspapers for the sports section of
The Sun
, hoping for news of any off-season transactions by the Orioles, the team he’d rooted for as a boy. Finding only Ravens coverage, he tossed it back on the pile, then stood. After the long bus ride his legs needed stretching. Maybe he’d go look at the Warthogs. Or maybe not, since there were probably cameras mounted along the base perimeter. He wandered back to the cluttered dining room, their de facto office, where the last light of dusk illuminated a pair of framed photographs hanging from the wall. They were easily the most striking items in the house.

The first one showed two boys, roughly the same age as Karen and Danny. They were all smiles, natural charmers. Afghan, probably, judging by their clothes and skin tone. In the second, which seemed to have been snapped only moments later, the same two boys were wide-eyed and wailing, terrified by something that must have just happened. The focus was slightly blurred, as if the photographer, too, had been taken by surprise. The effect was stunning, a yin-yang pairing that seemed to perfectly sum up the chaotic and unpredictable way of life in that part of the world. Leaning closer, he noticed that in the second photo the boys’ clothes were spattered with dark droplets. He reached up to touch them, as if they might still be wet.

“Blood.”

Barb’s voice made him jump.

“Sorry,” she said. “Didn’t mean to sneak up on you.”

“They’re amazing,” he said.

“Fort1’s handiwork.”

“
He
took them?”

“I took them. He provided the backdrop, so to speak. The motivating drama. Or so I found out later. It’s why I’m on this story. Eight killed. And two of them were standing ten feet away, right next to where I was taking those pictures. I turned around and there they were, an old man and his wife, bleeding out at my feet. I never could get the stains out of that pair of shoes. Blood and viscera. Brain matter, probably. The shoes are upstairs in my closet if you want a look.”

“No thanks.”

“I hung up those photos the day we set up shop. For motivation.”

“I keep mine up here.” He tapped a finger to his forehead.

“So I’ve heard. Sounds like Owen Bickell was worth the journey.”

Presumably Steve had told them all about the meeting in New Hampshire, which was a little unnerving. Cole wasn’t accustomed to a culture where people played so fast and loose with privileged information. The Air Force always kept things within the tightest possible circle. Op-sec, compartmentalization, need-to-know. Tough habits to break.

“Yeah, he was. I probably could’ve gotten more. First-timer. I was kind of fumbling around.”

“Sounds like Steve got after you,” she said.

“Not really. Or nothing he said, anyway.”

“Oh, he’d never say it. It’s that look he gives you. All of us do. All of us like to think we could’ve squeezed more juice from the fruit than the next guy. Most of the time we’re full of it. The point is, this guy Bickell knew you, trusted you. He wouldn’t have said shit to any of us. Besides, you’ll have another chance to prove yourself soon enough. Steve’s got a little mission planned. A recon of that taco joint where Mansur was last seen.”

“Great. Might as well get to it.”

She smiled for the first time since he’d arrived, then turned back toward the kitchen.

“Soup’s on in ten minutes.”

From upstairs he heard the soft burble of Keira’s voice, filtering down the stairwell as she laughed with some source on the phone, or maybe just a friend. Charming his socks off, no doubt. For some reason, Cole was almost certain it was a he.

IN THE DESKBOUND WORLD
of Captain Trip Riggleman there was a time, not so long ago, when the opportunity to bring down a target like Darwin Cole would have been the best possible motivation for getting up in the morning. Being an Air Force man, Riggleman would have preferred to go after Cole the old-fashioned way—by shooting him out of the sky. A fireball in the clouds, the enemy vanquished in an instant. Now
that
would have been perfect, not to mention cathartic.