Unmanned (9780385351263) (22 page)

Steve said something about Keira’s book agent, another topic that didn’t bode well. An interval of dark laughter followed, like the kind you’d hear after a joke told at someone else’s expense. Then the clink of ice as someone set down a tumbler on a tabletop.

“Good night,” Steve announced clearly.

Cole quickly backed into the deeper darkness of the foyer, where he remained while Steve’s footsteps headed up the stairway toward the bedrooms. Barb, the night owl, had presumably remained behind.

He wondered if she was thinking of those photos she’d left behind, the terrified boys in their bloodstained clothes. If his own experience was any guide, she didn’t really need the pictures to remind her. Those images would never disappear, or even fade. The photos, he knew, were only her way of telling others what she’d endured, and was enduring.

He heard another tumbler being set down on a table, and the sound of liquid gurgling from a bottle, the rattle of ice, and then a deep, mournful sigh.

Cole departed the house as quietly as possible and threaded his way back to his room.

It was another two hours before he was able to sleep.

SOMEONE WAS RAPPING LIKE
a woodpecker on the passenger window of Steve’s Honda.

“Open up, flyboy!”

It was Sharpe, who once again had materialized out of nowhere just as Cole was dozing off. Cole was parked outside a convenience store on eastbound Route 50, their designated rendezvous point. He checked his watch and rolled down the window. Cold out there. Sharpe smiled craggily, but Cole wasn’t in the mood for it.

“You’re half an hour late.”

“I’m right on time, Captain Cole.
You
were half an hour
early
.”

“You said nine thirty.”

“I know what I said. I was giving you enough extra time to lower your guard. Which is exactly what happened, sleepyhead. Now unlock the doors so I can load the freight.”

“Freight?”

“You’ll see.”

Cole popped the locks. Sharpe opened the rear door and hefted a black hard-shell suitcase that looked big enough to hold a bass drum. He tried awkwardly to wedge the case onto the backseat, bumping and scraping against the door frame.

“No damn way, not with this Jap go-kart of yours. Unlatch the trunk.”

“What the hell’s in there?”

“Unlatch the trunk!”

Cole did as he was told. He watched Sharpe in the mirror, the bald
head barely visible above the raised lid. There was some jostling and swearing, a lot of bumping around, then a slam. Sharpe walked around to the front and climbed in, his scalp beaded with sweat. There were only two other cars in the parking lot, and both had been there when Cole arrived.

“Where’s your car?” he asked.

“How do you know I came by car? You need coffee?”

“No.”

“Then let’s get moving. East on 50. I’ll direct you from there.”

“I’m sure you will.” Now he was wishing he’d grabbed a coffee, although the blast of cold air had braced him up.

They pulled onto the highway. It was midmorning on a Saturday. Waves of Christmas shoppers would soon be heading for the nearest malls and big box discounters, but for now traffic was light. Cole figured Sharpe would tell him what was up soon enough. Instead he pulled out a smart phone and began tapping commands onto the touch screen. Five minutes of this was all Cole could stand.

“Mind telling me where we’re going?”

“I’m going to show you that rare phenomenon: a genie escaping his bottle.”

“Then what, you put him back in?”

“Nobody puts him back. Once he’s out, it’s all about who owns the bottle, who rubs the lamp.”

“What’s this have to do with Wade Castle?”

“Wade is the Agency’s keeper of the lamp. Or was. For all I know, he might be the genie by now. If you want to find him, or know what he’s been doing, then you better get a good look at the lamp, don’t you think?”

Cole waited for more of this cryptic bullshit, but Sharpe went back to work on his phone, as intently oblivious to their surroundings as a teenager texting his friends. Or so it seemed until ten minutes later, when, without looking up, Sharpe announced, “Take a right up ahead, by that old farm stand. Three more miles and we’re there.”

“Okay.”

“You’re going to need a name to use this morning. An alias. So think of one. I’m known to this crowd as Len Baker. They like calling me Lenny. So try for something a little different.”

“There’s a crowd?”

“Not a big one. Select company. Invited guests only. C’mon, pick something. We haven’t got that much time. And don’t use the names of any of your Air Force buddies. Too risky. Might be a way of tracking you.”

The name on his fake ID, Floyd Rayford, probably wasn’t a good idea. Too many Orioles fans around here. So, Cole thought back to his high school days, maybe because they were driving through similar country—the straight tree lines, the plowed flatness, the shimmer of creeks and inlets, peeping from the margins.

“Joe Cooley. How’s that?”

“Another pole vaulter?”

“No, but he was on the track team. How’d you know?”

“I never go into a job unprepared. By the way, for our purposes this morning I’m a retired engineer from Black and Decker. I live in Delaware.”

“Is that how you normally get here? In a car with Delaware tags?”

Sharpe ignored the question.

“For the past couple years I’ve been raising chickens for Perdue. I thought it would be a good way to ease into retirement, but instead it’s been a shit sandwich. I also hate the government.”

“Well, at least half of it’s true. Does everybody else lie about their identity?”

“Probably nobody who’ll be there today.”

“So the Grand Dragon is a no-show?”

This at least drew a smile.

“These people are more interesting than a bunch of racist clowns in bedsheets. More dangerous, too. They just don’t know it yet. Turn in to that school up ahead, Joe. Then pull around back, toward the baseball field. Joe. Joe Cooley from Baltimore. You need an occupation.”

“Schoolteacher. Ninth grade algebra.”

“That’ll work.”

“What if they ask for more?”

“Then keep it vague. But they won’t. It’s not what they’re here for.”

They drove around to the back. Five other vehicles were already there—two massive pickups, a couple of SUVs, and a minivan with a dented fender. Five men stood on the diamond, leaving footprints
on a dirt infield that was the color of putty. Each carried a laptop or a tablet, and each had some sort of toy aircraft, like oversized model planes, although three of the toys were equipped with multiple overhead propellers.

“What the hell is this?”

“The Delmarva Cyclops Command. One of probably at least a hundred worldwide chapters of a bunch of tinkerers and geeks known as DIY Drones.”

“Do It Yourself Drones?”

“With cameras, in-flight computers, sensor chips, and a whole lot more. All of it state of the art.”

“Is that what’s in the drum case?”

“A quadcopter of my very own. I’m the only one who doesn’t use a laptop.”

“Then how do you—?”

Sharpe brandished his smart phone.

“It’s really all you need anymore to control one of these things. Comforting to know, isn’t it?”

He opened the door and stepped outside. One of the men on the field immediately called to him.

“Lenny! Get a move on, you old chicken plucker, we’ve got birds to fly. Paul’s gonna do his maiden!”

“That’s Stan,” Sharpe said to Cole through the open door. “The mouth of the bunch, but you’ll like him. He’s got a fixed-wing X8 with enough battery power to stay aloft for three hours. He once covered ninety miles, and he’s got a sweet little GoPro high-res camera on board. If he wanted, he could’ve tracked you all the way out here from the moment you left your country estate. Hell, maybe he did. C’mon, I’ll introduce you.”

Everybody shook Joe Cooley’s hand. Sharpe, or Lenny, explained that Cole, or Joe, was a newbie who wanted to see what all the fuss was about. They were cool with it, not the least bit worried. Besides, most of the day’s attention was already focused on Paul, a potbellied day trader from Salisbury, Maryland, who looked as excited as a kid on his birthday. He was gearing up for the maiden voyage of his very own X8, and at the moment he was down on his hands and knees, getting his
pants muddy out past the pitcher’s mound as he tweaked and tightened with a mini-screwdriver and a tube of epoxy.

Three other members of the group faced him in a tight semicircle, hands gesturing as everybody talked at once. Paul kept nodding as if to say
yeah, yeah, I get it
, but he said little. Between adjustments to his aircraft he ran his fingers through his hair and frowned, like he was worried about screwing up.

Cole edged closer, listening to their patter. He picked out a few aviation terms, but the rest was geekspeak.

“Hey, man, did you check your APM settings to see how the elevons respond?”

“Dude, you know you’re gonna crash your maiden, so maybe you should offload some of that high-end gear.”

“Does that software overlay a 3-D HUD on the video when the plane’s flying Gmaps?”

“Paul, what’s your SVGA output?”

Sharpe sidled up to Cole.

“So what do you think, Joe?”

“What the fuck are they talking about?”

“You could learn most of it in about ten minutes.”

“Do these things really do the job?”

“Once you get the hang of ’em. And it’s pretty cheap. Ten times better and cheaper than when people started in on this stuff a few years back.”

“What’s it take to get started, about a thou?”

“A few hundred, as long as you’ve got a laptop or a smart phone. The aircraft’s the big expense, but it’s the chip package that does all the work, and you can buy a pretty kick-ass autopilot for about the cost of two double cappuccinos and the Sunday
New York Times.
”

“What’s in the package?”

“Oh, nothing but a gyroscope, a magnetometer, an accelerometer, a processor, a pressure sensor, and a temperature gauge.”

“Damn. That’s pretty much everything.”

“Except the camera.”

“I remember hearing about this shit a few years ago. You’d see message boards with all the hobbyists. But it was nothing like this.”

“Smart phones. That exploded it. The same tech that puts all those apps in your pocket helps fit all these controls and capabilities into your very own private spy drone. Not that any of these fine fellows is up to no good.”

“Except Joe and Lenny, the two guys using fake names.”

“Only two? You sure about that?”

“Do you know something?”

“Later. On the drive back.”

Cole reassessed the crowd, trying to pick out who Sharpe might be referring to. Chattery Stan was now busy with his own X8, preparing for takeoff about thirty feet away. The three guys watching Paul—Bert, Wallace, and Leo—all had different models of quadcopters, like small helicopters but with four overhead rotors. Everyone looked harmless enough. Jeans and khakis, down jackets with a comfortable Saturday rumple. Nobody had shaved. A few had coffee in travel mugs. But how else would he expect them to look?

Bert was talking up the idea of payloads. “I figure she can carry maybe three pounds the way she’s rigged now. A few modifications, maybe a little more horsepower, and I’m thinking I can ramp it up to eight, maybe even ten.”

Ten pounds of what?
Cole wondered. Anthrax spores? A pipe bomb? A Glock 19, mounted on a swivel with some whiz-bang chip to activate firing? You could fly these things just about anyplace, right past security checkpoints and every metal detector known to man. It would have to be outdoors, of course, but it still seemed like a nightmare waiting to happen. Or maybe Sharpe’s paranoia was rubbing off on him. And maybe that was foolishness. Because out here in the fresh air, with a touch of brine on the breeze and the sound of easy laughter among friends, the whole idea of anyone trying something terrible seemed remote, even laughable.

“Look out!”

He turned just in time. A gust of wind had gotten a hold of Leo’s quadcopter, a metallic green model that veered toward him like a wayward June bug. It buzzed past him, about eight feet to the left of his head, then caught itself in a hover and adjusted, rising twenty feet into the sky.

“Sorry, man.”

“No harm, no foul.”

Leo nodded, smiling appreciatively. Cole already felt accepted, a part of the club, and he might have been anyone, seeking to learn this technology for any purpose. Just like those quiet young men who had enrolled in flight schools in the months before 9/11. He wondered how they would’ve received him if his name was Hassan, or Mohammed. “Hi, guys, I’m Osama and I want to build a drone for my friends.”

Sharpe walked over to the huddle around Paul’s X8. Cole headed back over to see what was up.

“Paul, the time has come.” Sharpe said gruffly. “It’s put up or shut up.”

Paul evidently agreed. Only seconds later he stood and stepped out toward second base, holding the slender body of his drone just behind the wings. Everyone gave him room. He set the engine running and buzzing, then extended his arm, posed like a kid with one of those rubber-band balsa gliders that Cole used to buy in dime stores, with wings that fell off every time it landed.

Paul flung it forward. The X8 rose sharply without stalling, just as it was supposed to.

“How’s he flying it?” Cole asked. “He’s not even at his laptop.”

“The autopilot takes over,” Sharpe explained. “The damn chips. He programmed in a flight path. If he wants to change it, fine, he can do it with a few clicks. All he really has to do manually is land her, so it’s a pretty easy guess where he’s going to screw up.”

Cole walked over to check the image on Paul’s laptop. It was alarmingly good. Brown fields, a tree line, all of it crystal clear, an HD display as good as an NFL broadcast. Then, as the plane banked, there they were, all seven of them below, gazing up at the X8.

“Can you zoom it?”

“Sure,” Paul answered. “I can change the view, too.”