Unmanned (9780385351263) (2 page)

Sometimes Cole is overwhelmed by all there is to keep track of at his cramped workstation. He has two keyboards—one for typing flight commands, the other for chat. Occasionally he reaches for the wrong one. Apart from the screens for video and chat, four others display maps, flight telemetry, and masses of other information that change by the second—readouts for velocity, altitude, fuel levels, oil pressure, wind speed and direction, missile paths, air traffic, weather conditions, terrain. It is a neural nightmare, a bit like trying to conduct five trains at once as they careen toward the same station.

The ruins of the house swing into view.

“Holy shit,” Zach mutters.

“Easy as she goes,” Cole says, hoping to soothe him.

The damage is complete. Roof collapsed, everything in a heap. The floor plan, roughly thirty by forty feet, was big enough to hold a lot of people, and here and there Cole spots arms and legs, bright clothing, smears of blood, the fleshy blur of faces with fixed and open eyes. In the calamitous jumble it is impossible to say whether the bodies are male or female, adult or child.

From an operational point of view he supposes that the most important
consideration, perhaps the only one, is that their HVT—high-value target—is now dead, along with whoever came to meet him. A nasty gathering, according to Colonel Sturdivant at the briefing. A worthy target. But that’s what they always said, or why bother to shoot?

(FORT1) Move closer.

What could Fort1 be searching for in this mess? Lewis zooms to the camera’s limit, but there is little more to see. Cole finds himself scanning for toys. Seeing none, he is relieved, until he recalls that these children almost never possess anything beyond a slingshot, a cricket bat, and the clothes on their backs. During their earlier reconnaissance of Sandar Khosh his overriding impression was that of a quiet hamlet of farmers, armed only with the occasional stray Kalashnikov, which are as common as pitchforks in these hills. No one even carried a grenade launcher. By local standards the village is as quaintly pacifist as an Amish homestead. Dirt farmers, in other words—their slang for the jetsam of the countryside. Sandar Khosh, the land that both time and terrorism forgot, no American soldiers within miles.

Yet here they were with their Predator for the second time in a month.

Why?

Not his job to ask, nor Sturdy’s to answer.

One of Cole’s occupational hazards is that he has begun to wonder what it would be like to lead a life in which every action was observed from on high for hours at a time. How would he function under those conditions? What must it be like to become an image lodged in the memory of some secret database, your digital signature retrievable by anyone with the proper clearance? More than ever before in his life, Cole now notices all the cameras that seem to be mounted almost everywhere he looks—at stoplights and in convenience stores, in school hallways and Walmarts, shopping malls and parking decks. At toll plazas, the ATM, the branch library. In elevators and hotel lobbies. There is even one installed in the top rim of the screen of his wife’s laptop, right there on the kitchen table, open to the world. Here at Creech, cameras are everywhere. No escape except the desert, and even there you’re an easy mark for the satellites, especially at night,
when a man shows up as a throb of thermal brightness marooned on an empty cooling sea. Zach told him all about it.

The chat screen blips.

(FORT1) Any squirters?

Escapees, he means. So called because on infrared they display as squibs of light, streaming from the action like raindrops across a windshield. Before Cole can respond, the screen flashes again.

(FORT1) Check out back. Someone couldve gone out window.

Cole counts to three, then relays the order in his steadiest bedtime story voice.… 
And a quiet old lady who was whispering hush …
 Zach moves the camera. No one is behind the house, but a pair of legs in green pants protrudes from beneath the fallen rear wall.

(FORT1) Hold her there.

Why does this body interest him more than the others? Is this the HVT? Zach holds the close-up for several seconds, then, on his own initiative, pans back toward the front of the house. Cole braces himself as the three small bodies slide back into view. His eyes are drawn to the girl.

Incredibly, her body twitches.

She is alive.

(FORT1) Check the house again.

Fuck that.
Did Cole say that or just think it? Zach stays on the girl. Her right arm is severed and lies a foot from her shoulder, with blood pooling in the gap. She struggles to rise, trying to prop herself on her left elbow. Cole watches but says nothing. Zach is also silent. The girl slowly raises her head.

(FORT1) I said the house.

The man is obsessed, either with death or with rubble. Cole opts for life and continues to ignore him, despite a growing sense that there will be consequences—for himself, for Zach, for everyone involved.

An old woman crosses onto the screen from the left. Reaching the
girl she bends stiffly to the ground. Her mouth opens wide, and so does the girl’s. Cole’s imagination supplies the soundtrack—two voices in awful harmony, a cry that is keening and forlorn, as if someone had torn open a tender and damaged part of the earth and this is the unbearable sound that issues from within.

The time signature at the bottom of the screen flashes to 04:00, but his mind is still lodged at 3:50, the moment of impact.

Cole blinks. In four hours his shift will end. He will exit the trailer, dodge the chaplain, brush aside the shrink. Then he will drive home on an empty highway with only these images for company. After thirty miles or so he will ease into the dense weave of Vegas traffic and take the exit for his suburban refuge. He will click the remote to open the garage and enter the kitchen door with a smile for his wife. Then, while cartoons blare and the neighbor starts his mower, he will eat Saturday pancakes with his children.

No one but him will know what has happened.

(FORT1) Still need more from the house.

Don’t we all
, thinks Cole, mesmerized.

Fourteen months later

A CONTRAIL OF DUST
marked the car’s progress, undulating like a brown caterpillar across the wide expanse of the desert floor. The car was a mile away, maybe two, but there was no mistaking its destination. The only person up here was Darwin Cole, seated on a lawn chair at the door of a sagging trailer in the shade of a sandstone bluff.

Now he could hear the laboring engine, the ping of gravel in the wheel wells. Silver Chevy, practically brand-new. Meaning it was either a rental or government issue. The latter prospect made Cole reach inside the trailer for the loaded 12-gauge he always kept handy. He sat back down and laid the shotgun across his lap like a hunter in a blind, waiting. Then he squinted into the morning sky to check the position of the December sun. Almost nine. Early for company. Early for bourbon, too, but he took another warm swallow from his tumbler of Jeremiah Weed.

The Chevy disappeared into a dip, then reemerged before stopping a hundred yards out, engine idling. The chrome grille smiled up at him like a salesman. Somebody wanted something, but Cole wasn’t in a giving mood. Nothing to give, anyway, except flies, scorpions, a few cans of stew. Plus all those memories, circling like buzzards.

The engine stopped. Everything was silent as the last of the contrail silted to the ground. A door clicked open and a woman got out from the driver’s side. That surprised him. Roughly his age, but not his wife. White blouse, pressed black slacks, brown hair, windblown. She walked around to the passenger side, facing him. Sunglasses hid her eyes, although just as he was thinking that, she took them off.

Her face was vaguely familiar, stirring a warmth that was only skin deep and faded within seconds. He opened his mouth to speak, then thought better of it. Let her go first. Besides, he was unsure of his voice. He’d stopped talking months ago, even to himself, which at the time he’d regarded as a sign of progress.

“You’re not going to shoot me, I hope.” She smiled uncertainly. Cole cleared his throat and reached back for something extra, not wanting to croak.

“Depends on who you are, what you’re here for.” The old baritone seemed fine. Nice to know some things were still in working order.

“That would be easier to explain face-to-face. Then, if you still don’t like me, I’ll go, easy as I came, and nobody will be the wiser. The Air Force doesn’t seem to know you’re up here, if that’s what’s bothering you.”

“Oh, they know where to find me.”

Cole nodded at the sky, as if that explained everything. Instead of answering, she watched, hesitant, while the silence grew between them.

“I’ve got news of your family,” she said. Her voice was a little timid. Cole got the impression she’d been hoping to hold that item in reserve but now had nothing left. “They don’t know where you are, either. I wasn’t planning on telling them unless you want me to.”

Was there a threat in that statement? Or maybe in the one about the Air Force?

“State your business. I’ll decide if it’s worth your while to come any closer.”

“Fort1 is my business. Mine and two other people’s. It’s kind of a club—people who want to know all about Fort1 and everything he’s done. We heard about what happened to you, so we figured you were a prime candidate for membership.”

Cole took a deep breath and stood slowly, still holding the shotgun. Then he remembered her face. A journalist. He’d met her during a deployment, years ago. Aviano Air Base, in Italy, a reporter from Boston back during the air war over Kosovo. She’d interviewed him in the canteen while a PAO hovered nearby, making sure Cole didn’t misbehave. She’d charmed him for an hour, then written a puff piece that made all the generals happy.

“You’re the reporter, aren’t you? Keira something?”

“Keira Lyttle, yeah. Thought you’d remember.” She sounded relieved, her shoulders relaxing. “So what do you say?”

In the car, something moved behind the smoked glass, which reminded him why he didn’t trust reporters. They hid things—motives, opinions, the stuff they already knew. And, like the brass, they were always eager to either piggyback on your success or hang you for your mistakes.

“Who’s in the car?”

“A colleague. His name’s Steve.”

“I don’t want him taking my picture. Does he have a camera?”

She shook her head.

“I want to see him.”

Lyttle knocked on the passenger window. “Steve, roll it down.”

The window hummed open. He was about the same age as Lyttle, hair clipped short. He nodded but didn’t speak. No sign of a lens, but that didn’t mean anything.

“Steve Merritt,” the man offered. “Pleased to meet you.”

“He’s part of the club,” Lyttle said. “He didn’t feel comfortable letting me come up here alone.”

Cole looked down at the gun in his hands. Feeling a little foolish, he propped it against the trailer. The standoff was making him weary. His inclination was to send them away, tell them to forget it. But the mention of Fort1 had hooked him somewhere deep and painful, so he stepped forward, feeling older than his years and wondering if he was ready for this. Shifting his weight from his right foot to his left, he announced his decision.

“Just you. He stays in the car. No cameras, no tape recorders, and no laptops.”

“How ’bout this?”

She held up a small notebook.

“Fine. Long as you got your own pencil.”

She held that up, too, then started climbing the rise toward the trailer. A shadow crossed between them and they flinched, but when Cole looked up he saw it was only a hawk hunting its breakfast. His memories began descending from their holding pattern, and in the
vanguard as always was the girl in the red shawl, white pants, and blue scarf, with two boys edging forward from the shadows behind her. Just above them was the black vector of the crosshairs, emblazoned on the mud rooftop like the mark of Cain:
Strike here and incur the wrath of God.

“Ready?” Lyttle asked.

She’d materialized in front of him, notebook in hand.

“Not out here.” He nodded at the sky. “They’ll see us. Inside.”

Lyttle turned and waved toward the car, as if to signal the all-clear, although to Cole her smile looked forced.

“You first,” he said, nodding toward the door.

Her lips tightened, but she did as he asked.

They disappeared into the trailer.

STEVE MERRITT WATCHED
the door shut, then checked his phone for a signal. Three bars, even way out here. Barb Holtzman was a late sleeper, but back in Baltimore it would be almost eleven, and she’d want to know. He punched in the number.

“Hi. We made it.”

“You found him?”

“Keira’s in the house as we speak.”

“He has a house?”

“A dump. Trailer in the middle of fucking nowhere. Broken windows, bottles in the yard. If you can call the desert a yard.”

“Charming. Is he lucid?”

Lucid.
Another of Barb’s words that worked better in print than in conversation.

“Hard to say. He looks like a horror show.”

Steve glanced at Keira’s newspaper clipping on the front seat, with its old photo of a young Darwin Cole. He’d been a fighter pilot then. Flew F-16s, hottest bird in the sky. Switching to drones must have been like going from a Maserati on the Autostrada to a stationary bike in a mildewed basement. The picture showed a clean-shaven young man in a flight suit, clear-eyed and handsome, a soldier who wasn’t too macho to smile. Maybe Keira had been the reason. She still tended to have that effect on men of a certain age. Steve wasn’t immune, but he kept it under wraps for the sake of teamwork. Most of the time, anyway.

The story itself was a blow job, the kind of piece he would’ve written
only if he wanted something in return. Keira said she’d been angling for better access to Air Force intelligence sources, but it hadn’t worked out. Today maybe she’d finally collect on her investment. He hoped so. Come up empty on Cole and they might soon reach a dead end.