Unmanned (9780385351263) (18 page)

On a closet shelf, well beyond the reach of the coyotes, was a cardboard box stuffed with transcripts of depositions and courtroom proceedings from Cole’s court-martial. It felt providential, his first stroke of luck. Already, the long trip was worthwhile.

Earlier that morning, just before leaving Nellis in the Ford, Riggleman had fired off his first piece of paperwork, an official request to the USAF legal eagles who’d prosecuted Cole, asking for copies of everything they had on the case. But he knew from experience that even in high-priority investigations, these kinds of requests routinely took days, even weeks, to achieve a result. This trove in the trailer, provided it was complete, would save lots of time and bureaucratic aggravation.

Finding nothing more of value inside, Riggleman hauled the box out to the Ford and began scouting the perimeter for a radius of roughly two hundred yards. It was hot, dry work, and the only signs of life were more coyote prints, which seemed to be everywhere, plus some empty cans that they must have carried off from a charred garbage pit behind the trailer. What a way to live.

By the time Riggleman got back to Nellis there was a box sitting on his desk that looked a lot like the one from Cole’s closet. It was the complete record of the court-martial. And when he signed on to his desktop computer there was an email from the legal office, which, based on the time signature, indicated that they’d sent over the box by courier within two hours of receiving his request.

Well, that was certainly a pleasant surprise, enough so to make him slightly uncomfortable. Once again he wondered how many people above him knew what he was up to.

He took the two sets of documents out of their boxes and stacked them side by side, then methodically arranged each set in chronological
order. Each stack contained the same number of documents. He then compared the two versions of every document. Everything matched up there as well until he got to the depositions. The official version of the one taken from Cole’s commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Scott Sturdivant, was lighter and thinner than the copy from the trailer.

Riggleman counted the pages. Twenty-two were missing from the official copy. As if to hide this, whoever had made the duplicates for the legal office had placed the originals in the copying machine in a way that cut off the page numbers from the top. The gap was further disguised by the way one of Sturdivant’s answers ended at the bottom of the last page before the gap, and then a question from a lawyer led off the first page afterward. If he hadn’t known about the missing pages, the document would have appeared to be seamless.

But when he checked those twenty-two pages in Cole’s set, nothing leaped out at him as something the Air Force would want to keep secret. Part of it was a dry discussion of Cole and Sturdivant’s chain of command. Part was a section in which Sturdivant read into the record a chat exchange from one of Cole’s recent Predator missions, in which the only two participants apart from the ones you’d normally expect were two code-name handles—Fort1 and Lancer.

The names were meaningless to him, but he filed them away for possible further consideration. More disturbing was the way in which the missing pages reinforced his nascent sense that there was something eerily different about this case. Enough so that he began to view the subject—Captain Darwin Cole—in a different light.

On the surface Cole was a drunk, a loser, a hermited fuckup in the desert who, by all appearances, had lived in barely human conditions and had disappeared with little regard to the mess he was leaving behind, literally and figuratively. Yet his first moves once he was beyond the squalor of the trailer had left virtually no trace. None that Riggleman had yet found, anyway. That suggested a deceptively careful man, a challenging quarry.

It brought to mind one of Riggleman’s opponents from a wrestling match long ago, a big-eyed boy from the Corn Belt who’d stepped onto the mat looking decidedly flabby for his weight class. Ponderously slow in his movements, too, the kind of slack-jawed victim that
Riggleman usually made short work of by employing a few deft moves. A feint, a pivot, and a leveraged throw, leading to a takedown and then a pin as he slapped the poor fellow onto his back like some bug for a specimen jar. Match over.

But from the moment the match commenced this boy had proven to be almost impossible to budge from any angle, no matter how easily Riggleman was able to outmanuever him. It was as if his feet were welded to the mat, and by late in the second round, Riggleman grew so exasperated that he let down his guard for the briefest of moments to rethink his position. The flabby boy responded in a flash, and within seconds had achieved a takedown. Riggleman avoided being pinned, but lost the match on points, and he still remembered the boy’s eyes as the final whistle blew—a fleeting flash of triumphant intelligence, a mild taunt that challenged anyone to ever underestimate him again.

Maybe Cole was that kind of adversary. Deceptively dangerous. A shrewd opportunist.

Riggleman picked up the shortchanged deposition from the pile on his desk. He picked up his phone and began punching in the number for the legal eagle who’d sent him the copy. Time to ask a few delicate questions.

Then he stopped and hung up. It was too soon to be setting off any alarms in high places.

He swiveled back toward his computer, interlocked the fingers of both hands, and stretched them until his knuckles cracked, making a noise like a string of firecrackers. Then he got down to business, already determined not to underestimate anyone from here on out.

He would work fast, work late, and leave no avenue unexplored.

He would get his man, come what may.

STEVE
’
S INTELPRO SOURCE
always insisted on meeting at Tark’s Grill, a watering hole where the happy hour crowd made enough noise to cloak any conversation. He demanded that Steve wear a jacket and tie so they wouldn’t look like such an unlikely pairing. Steve, who’d made the mistake of revealing this detail to Barb and Keira, now kept a blazer and tie in his car rather than tip them off every time he had a rendezvous.

The ground rules for these meetings were simple. Steve could use the Source’s information however he pleased, but it could never be attributed in any way, shape, or form to IntelPro. In other words, under the journalistic rules Steve and his colleagues played by, it was fit to print only if they verified it elsewhere. In addition, whenever possible in these public conversations they avoided using each other’s names, or those of their colleagues, favoring instead a rough code of initials and euphemisms.

Tark’s was just north of the Baltimore Beltway, a long drive from Middle River and a short one from Hunt Valley. Yet it was Steve who was always punctual, while the Source invariably arrived exactly five minutes late, as if he’d been sitting in the parking lot eyeing his Bremont chronometer until just the right moment.

On entry he never failed to convey an air of having reached the southernmost limit of his tolerance for all things urban, as if this was as close to the city center as he ever cared to travel. That was the vibe Steve got from most of Tark’s clientele—old-line locals who had grown up in Baltimore’s best neighborhoods, then migrated to the
’burbs to raise families in exile, comforted by the county’s lower taxes, safer streets, and neighbors who looked just like them. He guessed that at least half the males present had once played lacrosse for a local private school.

This time Steve was running late. He pulled up the parking brake and rummaged in the glove compartment for his tie among maps and repair invoices. Some of the paperwork was from more than a decade ago, when the car was new and so was his marriage. Jill, his ex, lived in Takoma Park with a new husband. Steve sort of kept up with her on Facebook, while wondering if she did the same. Not that he ever posted anything.

The hostess took him to a pedestal table near the bar, where a “Reserved” placard staked out their usual spot in the middle of a yammering mob. The music was deafening. The Source always made a reservation under the name Langley, his idea of a joke. And there he was now, coming through the door with a smile for the hostess, greeting her by name, the amiable and silver-maned Mr. Langley, in a pressed gray suit, white shirt, and red tie, shooting his cuffs as he approached the table. He slid onto the facing chair, ordered an outrageously expensive single malt Scotch—which Steve would have to pay for from his meager budget—and got down to business.

“I take it your natives are restless, Old Pro.”

Steve, unable to hear him over the din, leaned closer.

“What’s that?”

“I said,
I take it your natives are restless
.” He was practically shouting.

“Why shouldn’t they be?” Steve shouted back. “You fucked us over in not telling us about Mansur.”

His use of Mansur’s name was an intentional breach of protocol, for shock value, although the Source took it in stride.

“Did
what
about Mansur?”

“Fucked us over!”

The Source smiled and leaned back, mouthing “Moi?” as he spread his arms wide. Steve was about to answer when the waitress arrived with the Scotch and a bowl of nuts. She disappeared before taking Steve’s order.

“Yes, you,” Steve prodded. “How ’bout an explanation?”

“A what?”

“You heard me.”

The Source leaned across the table.

“You know how it works between us, Old Pro. Give some to get some. A two-way street.”

This was another ground rule, one that Steve had never dared mention to Barb and Keira. As part of the arrangement, Steve provided updates on the progress of their investigation, including a summary of what his colleagues were up to. It made him uneasy, but it was the only way the Source would agree to keep talking.

“Not much to report, other than the arrival of the pilot,” Steve said. “B ran the tags on your vehicle. That’s how we learned it was your guys holding Mansur.”

“We were transporting him, not holding him. Important distinction.”

“And now you’ve moved him. K checked this morning and the whole place was cleared out, furniture and everything. They even left the door ajar.”

“Of course we moved him. You’d compromised his safety.”

“So a reporter can scare him away, but not the FBI?”

“They know where to find him.”

“That’s not what we heard.”

“Use your head, Old Pro. It would hardly be a secure arrangement if the Bureau wasn’t in on it.”

“Secure from what?”

“From whom would be the better question.”

“Our main man?”

“It’s all right. These drunks will never notice if you use his name.” He grinned smugly. “Even his real one. Wade Castle.”

So the Source had known the name all along. It rankled, but it would be useless to complain, so Steve instead pushed for more.

“An Agency source of ours doesn’t seem to think Mansur is being held for his own protection. And he’s pretty certain the Bureau doesn’t know about it.”

The reference to Bickell’s information was also supposed to raise an eyebrow, but the Source again took it in stride.

“What makes you so sure the Agency really wants to find Mansur, much less old Wade Castle? Tell me, on your little visit to Lake Woggawogga, or whatever they call it up in New Hampshire, did your friend with the dirty fishing boat surprise you by being more helpful than expected?”

Who had told him all this? Somewhere there was a leak, either among themselves or among their sources.

“How do you know about that?”

“I know all sorts of things. The hidden ball trick. How to smash a trachea with a rolled-up newspaper.”

“Then why should I tell you anything?”

“Because that’s our arrangement. You haven’t answered my question.”

“Yes, he was helpful.”

“Which should tell you what?”

“Disinformation?”

“Eureka. You begin to see the light. People like him are very squeamish and virginal about people like me. He probably ranted on and on about green badgers and blue badgers, didn’t he?”

True enough. But Bickell’s info on Mansur had certainly been more helpful than any recent offerings from the Source. The problem, Steve supposed, was that both men might have good reason to lead a trio of journalists astray. The Source leaned forward again, this time until their foreheads were almost touching. The music rose to a throb, and there was an explosion of laughter from the bar.

“I can see that you’re conflicted, Old Pro. Totally at sea. Let me clarify the situation. The story is the same as it’s been from the beginning. Wade Castle has gone rogue, and his employers are still covering for him. So please get your partners—carnal or not—into line on that as soon as possible.”

“My colleagues will pursue any line of inquiry they choose, and we’re not fucking.”

“You should freshen your drink, Old Pro. You get testy when you fall behind.”

“Stop calling me Old Pro. And the waitress never took my order.”

The Source frowned.

“My goodness. You’re absolutely right.”

He held aloft his right hand and nodded.

“It’s not important,” Steve said, but she was already on her way.

“A beer for this gentleman, please. Something worthy and on tap.”

She smiled and disappeared.

“Bickell said Castle’s in-country,” Steve said.

“So even they’re admitting it, now? Interesting.”

“You knew that?”

The Source shrugged.

“We hear things. Sometimes it’s hard to know what to believe.”

“He seems to think Castle’s been misunderstood, that he’s a whistleblower on a crusade.”

“More damage control.”

“Bickell didn’t seem like the type to spout the company line.”

“It’s part of his charm. The wronged man, so therefore he must be telling the truth. And to his mind I’m sure it feels that way.”

“A lot of it adds up.”

“Cover stories usually do. Tell me, when’s the last time you heard of an Agency asset—a legitimate one—working a domestic operation?”

“Point taken.”