Unmanned (9780385351263) (20 page)

“Drive,” Sharpe said, nodding and looking straight ahead.

Cole glanced back at the pay window, but the girl was already speaking into the mike, oblivious.

“Did you—?”

“Don’t talk. Drive. Take a right out of the lot and do as I tell you.”

Cole put the car in gear. The bag sat in his lap and the loose change rolled onto the floor. He turned right as directed, while wondering if Sharpe had come by car, by bus, or on foot. Was he accompanied? Cole checked the mirrors and nearly ran a red light.

“Are you armed?” he asked.

“This isn’t a kidnapping, for God’s sake. But how ’bout we go a while longer before we talk.”

“Sure.”

The light turned green. Glancing to his right, he saw that Sharpe’s hands were folded in his lap. No weapon, unless it was in his pocket. Cole relaxed a bit and eased into the flow of traffic.

“Up ahead, the turnoff to the right. Take it.”

It was a two-lane road, practically empty, and it ran through farm fields with widely scattered houses. They were at the outer reaches of D.C. suburbia, and this road headed straight into open country. Cole wasn’t sure he liked that. Checking the mirrors again he saw that no one was behind them, which began to feel like a mixed blessing.

Sharpe glanced backward, also checking the road.

“Good,” he said, seeming pleased. Then he lapsed into silence.

They crested a hill, corn stubble in a red clay field to their left. To the right, a weathered empty barn, no doors.

“There’s a turnout up ahead on the right, another two hundred yards. Pull over.”

Cole bumped off the pavement, braking to a stop on gravel. He put the Honda into neutral and pulled up the handbrake, then put his hand on the keys before glancing at Sharpe, who nodded. He shut off the engine. Not a sound, then, except the wind against the windows, whistling at the seams.

“Let’s take a walk up the lane here.”

A narrow gravel road led away from the road at a ninety-degree angle. There was a row of old mailboxes tilted at various angles.

“Okay.”

Cole pocketed the keys and got out. They slammed their doors shut—the only noise for miles, or so it seemed. The icy wind stung his cheeks where he’d shaved that morning. Sharpe gestured up the lane.

“Shall we?”

“Sure.”

They walked, crunching gravel. Sharpe wore rubber-soled black leather shoes, that ugly brand with sunken heels and a fat instep that was supposed to be good for your leg muscles. He needed a shave. His coat, unbuttoned, was a knee-length duster of waxed canvas with a leather collar, as if he was dressed to herd cattle. The bumps on his skull were pronounced in the low-angle sunlight. His mouth was creased into a scowl, but his deep-socketed eyes were in shadow, making it impossible to read his mood with any certainty. He might have been angry, he might have been deep in thought.

Cole, figuring that Sharpe would get down to business when he was good and ready, said nothing. After they’d covered maybe twenty yards, Sharpe stopped and pivoted so they were face-to-face, only a few feet apart. Anyone driving past might have guessed they were either old friends or old adversaries, but they definitely looked like two men with a history.

“Apologies for the dramatics,” Sharpe said gruffly. “The car could be miked, for all I know.”

He reached into a big pocket of his overcoat and drew out one of those metal detector wands like the ones at airport security checkpoints.

“This will only take a second. Arms up.”

Cole, figuring what the hell, obliged him as the wand whooped and wailed, making zipper sounds as it passed up and down his arms, legs, and crotch.

“Turn around.”

Cole did.

“Excellent.”

He dropped the wand back into the pocket.

“You do this to everyone you meet?”

“Can’t be too careful. Not in my shoes.”

“Or in mine.”

“Duly acknowledged.”

He paused, as if to allow Cole a chance for further comment. Then he proceeded.

“So, what does a court-martialed fighter jock want with a pariah like me? More to the point, what reason could I possibly have for wanting to talk to you, other than to suit my own spiteful urge to bite the hand that feeds me? I suppose that’s the only reason I showed up. Your email was perfectly timed, catching me as it did at a moment of absolute pique.”

“Pique?” He’d get along great with Barb.

“Vexation. Animosity. The Pentagon has decided that my days as a productive citizen are over, so they’ve gone about industriously obstructing my ability to make a living. What is it you’re up to, exactly?”

“I’m collaborating with some journalists. Three of them. We’re all in the same house, literally, working a story on Wade Castle.”

“Collaborating with journalists. Now there’s a certain path to mutually assured destruction.”

“It’s pretty much the only path I had.”

“And you’ve concluded that somehow I can be of assistance?”

“Castle was the Agency’s top drone guy. You must have worked with him at some point.”

“Oh, he was much more than ‘a drone guy.’ He was their guru at large for all things technical.”

“See, that’s the kind of information we need.”

“ ‘We.’ That’s your first mistake. Thinking you’re one of them.”

“You sure seemed to like the press back in the days of the three-hundred-dollar hammer.”

“I liked
using
them, that’s true. It’s half their problem. They’re too easily managed and manipulated. Who do you think led us into Iraq? They rise up in dissent when it humors them, but mostly they’re just another tool of the system.”

“These guys seem different.”

“Stockholm syndrome. You’ve been around them awhile and you’ve already bought into their myth—a crusade for the truth with a capital T.”

Cole had to smile, since he’d already been thinking the same thing.

Sharpe eyed him closely.

“You were in on that fuckup at Sandar Khosh, weren’t you? That’s your beef with Wade.”

“If you know that, you probably know other stuff that could help.”

Sharpe looked down at his feet. His right toe scraped a furrow in the dirt, then crossed it, an X to mark the spot.

“Let me tell you what I’d like out of this arrangement. Assuming there
is
one.”

“Okay.”

Sharpe resumed walking, heading further down the lane, so Cole kept pace. Out on the paved road, a car rushed by. Cole glanced back, but Sharpe seemed lost in thought.

“I will become a party to this only if I can hit those bastards where it hurts. Only if I can create a little anarchy in their ranks. Inside that whole public-private nexus—or
axis
, that’s a far better word for it. What Ike used to call the military-industrial complex.”

“We’re kind of focusing on just Castle for now. Him and his fieldwork.”

“But he’s their creation, don’t you see? Wade wasn’t just the Agency point man on drones, or technology. He was at the center of the frame—still is, as far as I know—for all the sharing and distribution of data, of specs, of, hell, you name it. He was involved with my work, the Air Force’s work, everybody’s damn work, from R and D to application. And no doubt he saw what I saw—that everybody’s stuff, from the absolute shit to the absolute gold, was running in one great big pipeline to all the customers. Or at least to every customer with enough juice to tap in.”

“Contractors?”

“In Afghanistan, Iraq. Those aren’t just theaters of war for these people. They’re glorified test labs, proving grounds, marketplaces for the barter of influence and, most important of all, for state-of-the-art technology. Those women and children at Sandar Khosh were guinea pigs in somebody’s ill-advised experiment, and Castle was at Ground Zero for all of it.”

“What kind of experiment?”

“Ask Wade. If you can find him.”

“He’s on the lam. Somewhere not far from here, we’re told.”

Sharpe looked up abruptly. It was clear the revelation had caught him off guard. He wrinkled his brow, then again looked down at his feet.

“Is he back at Langley?”

“Apparently not. He’s at large. Operating on his own. Possibly no longer officially.”

Sharpe thought about this for several seconds. “That’s hard to process. Hard to say what it means.”

“Join the club.”

“Maybe I will. If only so I can shout it from the rooftops once you find the answer.”

“So you’ll help us?”

“I’ll help
you.
If you choose to share with the infidels, so be it. You say you’re living with these people now?” Sharpe made it sound as if Cole had moved into a colony of religious cultists.

“In Middle River, outside Baltimore, but we’re about to move to the Maryland Eastern Shore. One of them has a summer home, some family estate.”

Sharpe’s eyes lit up.

“How many acres?”

“Two hundred.”

He smiled, mulling it over. “Give me a day to do some thinking, some planning. I’ll be back in touch. When are you moving?”

“Later today. Soon as I get back.”

Sharpe smiled again. “Even better.”

He said nothing more as they walked back to where the car was parked. Cole popped the locks but Sharpe made no move to get in.

“Ready to roll?”

Sharpe shook his head. “Go ahead. I’ve made arrangements.”

“Way out here?”

Sharpe waved dismissively, as if the details were of no importance.

Cole had half a mind to stick around long enough to find out if Sharpe was just blowing smoke. But he didn’t seem like the kind of guy who’d see much humor in that, so Cole climbed into the car and started the engine. He was about to pull out when Sharpe knocked on the window. Cole rolled it down.

“How ’bout we take a little field trip tomorrow, just you and me on the far side of the Bay?”

“Doing what?”

“There’s something I want to show you. It’s not for the others to see. Not yet, anyway. Where’s this farm where you’re staying?”

“Talbot County. Near Oxford.”

He nodded, seemingly pleased. “The place I’ve got in mind is about forty clicks away. We’ll meet halfway, just past Easton on Route 50. Let’s say morning, nine thirty. We’ll make a day of it. Box lunch and a blanket, if you want. Sit down and watch some geeks take this shit to the next level. And with the government’s blessing, my friend. Its complete and benevolent blessing. Then you’ll see how this battle has to be fought. Not with notebooks and quotation marks, the way the scribblers do it.”

“Okay. But what’s—?”

“Great. I’ll email you the rendezvous point. Nine thirty it is.”

He slapped the roof of the Honda and began walking away. Cole wondered what sort of weirdness he’d just committed to, but Sharpe had already reached the shoulder and was headed in the opposite direction from the way they’d come.

Cole eased the car onto the pavement. Checking the mirror, he saw Sharpe raise a hand in farewell without turning around. As he accelerated, Sharpe grew smaller in the mirror. He looked like a hitchhiker on a lonely road, a drifter with no destination.

He looked like trouble.

MOVING DAY.

At dusk they drove east, joining a caravan of headlights streaming across the Bay Bridge. Cole gazed down through the trusswork at container ships, gliding beneath them like sparkling cakes on inky water flecked by whitecaps. He was riding with Barb in her Prius, the radio tuned to NPR. Steve followed closely in his Honda, a two-car convoy. A team, however fractious.

Cole was reminded of how he used to feel heading out on a deployment—excited, a little daunted, but comforted by the shared sense of mission, the knowledge that everyone around him was going through exactly the same thing. He missed that. It wasn’t that he enjoyed going off to war, or leaving his family behind. But there was something to be said for the isolation of a foreign posting, the hermetic life among fellow warriors who were cleared to hear your stories, your operational secrets, just as you were cleared to hear theirs. You ate and slept with the same problems, obsessions, and insecurities.

The Predator assignment at Creech had lacked all that. You came and went from drone warfare the way you would with any other job, commuting home to ball games and cookouts, to bill paying and homework questions, the nightly debate about what to watch on TV. A quiet dinner with Carol was always a nice break in the routine—sex, even better—as long as she wasn’t preoccupied with the children, or chores, or talking on her cell to her family in Saginaw. Not that you could ever say much about your job even when she had time to listen. Events at Creech stayed locked up, bubbling inside your brain until it was time
to return, back to that pixelated world where ghostly characters lived on silent screens, awaiting the verdict of your fingertips.

“You okay?”

It was Barb. She’d turned off the radio and they were across the bridge, less than an hour from their destination.

“Just thinking about the job. The old one.”

“Flying drones?”

“We never called ’em that. Preds. UAVs. Whatever.”

“Some of the stuff I’ve read makes it sound pretty terrible.”

Was it? The job itself? Or was it the back-and-forth that he’d hated more? Entry and reentry, with never enough time for proper decompression. A mental case of the bends that had eventually doubled him over in pain. And with no real flying, which would have at least offered some release. No flying at all. Just a seat in a trailer, rump to vinyl to floor.

Still. The job had its charms, he could still recall them, even in his current detachment. Having had more than a year to think about it he now realized that, yes, there were parts of it that he’d liked, that had even been a little addictive.

“Not always,” he said.

“No? How so?”

“It was important. It wasn’t fun, and it sure as hell was no thrill a minute. But you were up there seeing shit that nobody else saw.”

“Godlike?”

He smiled.

“A little. But it’s more complicated than that.”

She drove on, waiting for more. If it had been Keira, he probably would have continued. But this felt more like an interview than a conversation, so he stared at the road and held his silence. To their right, a strip mall. To their left, a marsh. A vee formation of geese passed overhead.