Unmanned (9780385351263) (16 page)

“Keira has that gift, making people see themselves more clearly. People want to open up, tell her what they’ve just seen.”

“What about you, what’s your gift?”

“Wasting time and spinning my wheels, apparently. That’s how it feels lately. My specialty is supposedly public records and FOIAs. Freedom of Information Act requests. Paperwork safaris. But I’ve been stuck on zero for about a month now. We all have. That’s why we went looking for you after I dug up those court-martial papers. And maybe it’s working. You gave us Fort1’s name, for one thing. We need to spread that around. Being free and easy with a protected identity is always good for shaking the trees, seeing what falls out. Plus this stuff with Mansur, and now Tangora.” She shook her head, marveling. “Rod and Billy. Pretty amazing you know who did that.”

“Who’s this IntelPro source of Steve’s?”

“He won’t say. I wouldn’t either, if it was me. They meet at some bar out in Baltimore County. Usually on Fridays, so I guess he’s due. But I don’t trust the guy.”

“How can you not trust someone when you don’t even know who he is?”

“Because they’re all part of the same crowd. Castle, Bickell, Steve’s source. All of them are trained to lie when necessary, and to give only one version of the truth. Maybe he’s got good stuff, but we only get part of it, and without the context how do we know it’s leading us in the right direction? But Steve’s solid, Steve’s good. He’ll pin him down on Mansur. For better or worse he’ll come back with another piece of the puzzle. Maybe this will even convince him it’s time for us to move.”

“Move where?”

“Over to the Eastern Shore. Keira’s parents have a summer home near Easton. Rent free, utilities paid. She’s been offering it for weeks and I could rent out this place. We’d save a bundle, enough to buy an extra four months, minimum.”

“Sounds like the middle of nowhere.”

“We’re doing most of our reporting by phone and Internet anyway at this point. And IntelPro’s training facility is practically next door. Two of Castle’s old Agency buddies work there, and the only way we’ll ever have a chance of talking to them is in person. They’re Bickell’s old buddies, too, but I’ll bet he didn’t mention that, did he?”

“No.”

“Like I said. None of these guys ever gives you the whole story. It’s one big process of triangulation.”

There was a footfall above, then a heavy tread moving toward the stairs.

“Steve’s up,” Barb said. “My God, it’s six twenty.”

Seconds later Steve appeared in the dining room, surveying the scene.

“Big doings?” he asked.

“Pull up a chair,” Barb said. “I’ll fill you in.”

Then Keira came down. The cat rubbed against her leg. It was still more than an hour before sunrise. Cole marveled at the hours that this crew seemed to keep. Pilots were often nocturnal, on the job and in the barroom. But that was usually due to the demands of warfare, shift schedules, or orders from on high. The journalists took to it naturally, like vampires, coming alive in the darkness before the glow of their laptops.

“Looks like we have a quorum,” Barb said. “I better make coffee.”

BARB SUMMARIZED WHAT
they’d just done. Steve and Keira seemed impressed, and Steve promised to follow up with his source. Cole was more intrigued by what Barb chose
not
to mention. When she summarized General Bradsher’s place in Cole’s former chain of command, she didn’t cite any of the other links by name. Maybe she wanted to keep them to herself a while longer, so she could start tracking their financial records. Cole considered volunteering the names in the interest of full disclosure, but before he could make up his mind, Barb ambushed him with a fresh demand.

“So, Captain Cole, looks like you’re off to a good start. But as we always say in this business, what can do you do for me now?”

“ ’Scuse me?”

“That file you saw,” Steve said. “That would be a good place to start. You saw Fort1’s name, but what else?”

“Not much of anything really. I was just getting a look at everything when the SPs came through the door, pulled a gun on me.”

“But you said—”

“I know. I lied. Sorry. But I did give you Castle’s name. And I just gave Barb the tip on Tangora.”

“Relax, Steve,” Keira said. “He’s contributing.”

“Then how ’bout some sources,” Barb said. “That’s the one place you could help us most. Now that you’ve got a secure email address you could start reaching out to other colleagues, anybody who might have worked these Fort1 missions.”

“I haven’t seen most of these guys for more than a year. And I’m not likely to get a warm welcome if—”

“C’mon,” Steve said. “You can at least
try.
”

“Maybe it’s better if he eases back into things,” Keira said, “instead of cold-calling like a salesman, especially with people who outranked him.”

“I’m with Steve,” Barb said. “We’re not asking for some Deep Throat with all the secrets. We’ll take anybody, at any level. Preferably reprobates and malcontents, or anybody else who might have thought this wasn’t such a great setup, letting these IntelPro guys run the show.”

Her description immediately brought to mind a likely candidate.

“Well, there was this one Pentagon guy,” Cole said. “Came and spoke to us at Creech. Pretty plugged in, but he was based in Washington.”

“Air Force?” Steve asked.

“Civilian. Some kind of design guru, not just for the Predator, but for all the integrated systems. Worked a lot with outsiders, too. That was one of the things that was pissing him off.”

“Name?” Barb asked.

“Sharpe. Nelson Hayley Sharpe.”

“Three names. Sure sign of a huge ego.”

“The brass kinda thought he was a loose cannon.”

“And you met him?” Steve said.

“He spoke to our attack group. It was supposed to be a pep talk on how we were riding the wave of the future, trailblazers, all sorts of feel-good bullshit. But at the end there was a Q and A, and he sorta ran off the rails. Somebody asked him how much longer before the other side started getting this kind of capability, and what that would mean. He said it had already happened. Not al Qaeda or anything, but the world at large. Friends, enemies, public, private, you name it. He said some of the best tech was being fed straight from the Pentagon to the street, and that as much as we all loved this shit now, in five or ten years we’d be scared to death of it because everybody would have it.”

“And he was civilian?”

“I think that was part of the problem. ‘Not from our culture.’ That’s what our COs were saying afterward. One of them called him a hippie bastard.”

They had a good laugh over that while Barb topped up his coffee.

“So he was what, Pentagon staff?” Steve asked.

“I think so. Some special R and D group.”

Keira, who’d been quiet awhile, was now busy on her laptop, the keys moving in a flurry.

“They fired him,” she announced. “Or he retired, take your pick. Three months ago, it says.”

“Perfect,” Barb said. “No flacks to head us off at the pass. Where’s he now?”

“Doesn’t say. I’ll keep checking.”

“Think he’d remember you?” Steve asked

“Probably. Before his talk he spent an hour inside our GCS, watching Zach and me on a recon. We were showing him how we used all the shit he’d developed, but he knew some of the apps better than we did. Plus, I was the guy who asked the question that set him off.”

“You hippie bastard!” Barb said.

More laughs. More coffee. As if, with enough caffeine, she might jazz out every last drop of his memory.

“Here we go,” Keira said. “Looks like he’s set up a little consultancy. Eclectic mix of services, everything from security software to aerodynamics. There’s a photo. What a face!”

Everybody leaned in for a look.

“Yul Brynner with a hangover,” Steve said.

“Or on quaaludes,” Barb said.

“His website says he’s based in an old farmhouse,” Keira said. “Loudoun County, Virginia.”

“Easy driving distance,” Steve nodded at Cole.

Another clatter on the keyboard while the rest of them watched.

“There’s an email address.” She turned the laptop around, facing Cole. “Sign on to your account, if you want. You can message him right away.”

“Okay,” he said uncertainly, looking at the others. “What should I ask for?”

“A personal audience,” Steve said. “Set that up and we’ll help with the rest.”

“Maybe throw him a hint that you’ve taken his advice to heart, and now you’re trying to do something about it,” Barb said.

Keira frowned.

“Don’t lay it on too thick. If he’s fresh out of the pipeline they’ll still be keeping tabs on him. It might make him wary.”

“Good point,” Steve said. Barb shrugged.

“Whatever. But send it now.”

Cole felt their eyes on him as he began typing. He pecked in Sharpe’s address, paused, then … nothing. Where to begin?

“Want me to write it?” Keira asked gently.

“Sure.”

He turned the laptop around, and for the second time that morning he submitted to the authority of a ghostwriter, marveling again at their ease with language, their ability to move to the heart of things in a few quick sentences. Keira’s message was a model of clarity and humility, asking for assistance and advice even as it seemed to offer the promise of a sympathetic ear.

“Look okay?” she asked.

Her question was for Cole, but Steve and Barb also wanted to see. After a few tweaks and tugs, the request to Nelson Hayley Sharpe for a meeting at his earliest convenience was soon hurtling into the ether.

By then it was nearly eight o’clock.

Soon afterward, Keira left for downtown to check property records at the courthouse for the row house on Pickard, and Steve set off for points unknown. Barb refilled her mug and went back to her laptop.

Cole watched her from the couch. After a few clicks she entered an almost trancelike state. From the flashing of the screen he could tell she was surfing through a wide array of archival sites.

A community of loners
, Cole thought. Even when everyone was here, the house felt strangely hollow, emptied of almost everything but secrets—their own, and whichever ones they’d pried loose from others. Or maybe he was just tired and out of sorts. He missed his children, his home, his old life back in the ’burbs of Vegas. He missed flying, too, the feeling you got when you were up there alone, soaring above everything.

Feeling drained, he rinsed out his mug at the sink while looking out the window at the gulls circling above Stansbury Creek in the morning
light. He set the mug on the draining board and returned to the couch. With a stab of shame he briefly inspected the stained sheets. Then he pitch-poled onto the cushions and pulled up the blanket, hoping to steal a few more hours of sleep. Barb’s keyboard clattered on.

This time he slept without dreaming.

NELSON HAYLEY SHARPE RUBBED
the bumps on his shaved head and considered his options.

He could shut the gate and activate the lock, so they’d have to get out of their car and walk the last half mile. Or, as always, he could let them drive straight to his door, clomping into the house with their lawyerly warnings and institutional arrogance, hiding behind aviator shades as they pawed through his papers and clicked at his mouse, searching for God knows what sort of bullshit.

Choosing the former would make them more ornery than usual, but he’d at least have the satisfaction of watching them stumble and swear as they worked their way uphill through the stubble and cow patties. Because lately they were really pissing him off. They’d even started poking around among his clients, issuing vague warnings and generally endangering his ability to make a living. Three customers had already cancelled. Even Stu over at Whitethorn, who never let anything rattle him, had begged off.

“Nothing personal, Nellie. Ingenious stuff, as always, but I can’t have the feds breathing down our necks, know what I mean? Maybe later, when you’re not such a hot commodity.”

And so on, until the flow of checks dwindled to almost nothing and the bills began to pile up.

His finger hovered above the mouse as he continued to deliberate while watching their progress on the desktop screen. The government-issue car bounced slowly in the ruts, field sparrows fluttering from its path. A few seconds later they passed through the open gate, deciding the issue for him.

“Fuck,” he said to himself. “This is getting really old.”

He knew what had brought them here—a statement he’d made yesterday to CNN. The reporter had interviewed him for twenty minutes. The irony was that he’d talked mostly about how the drones were a
good
thing. Compared to the so-called surgical bombings of the past, drone combat was far more efficient, and despite the occasional mistake, it killed far fewer civilians, largely because it allowed you to be more deliberate and precise in your targeting. He was proud of that. But those weren’t the quotes they used. They seized on his final comments, when he sermonized briefly about how recklessly we were forging ahead with drone technology, making up the rules as we went along—if indeed there
were
any rules—heedless of the toll on our privacy, not only in war zones but potentially in every nook and cranny of our own country. Except that he forgot to say “potentially.” The quote the Pentagon probably would have hated most had, of course, been the one CNN liked best, and the reporter used it not only in the news segment but also in the promotional tease at the top of the hour: “What should really scare you is that right now they’re employing only a fraction of their capabilities. Soon they won’t just be looking down your chimney. They’ll be flying down it, too, with aircraft the size of hummingbirds, or smaller. I know, I helped develop them, at a testing ground right around the corner from where the Wright Brothers used to work.”

So here they came, to tell him yet again in their own by-the-book fashion to please shut the fuck up, as specified in his severance agreement. Or else he’d pay a price. As if he wasn’t already.

He stood, waiting for the door to open. He was a craggy monolith of a man whose angular peaks and hollows had grown more pronounced with age. Shaving his head had only made his big brown eyes look bigger. He could’ve passed as a distant cousin to those bug-eyed space aliens depicted in so many wacko fantasies.