Unmanned (9780385351263) (27 page)

Cheryl gave an aggrieved yowl. He stroked her neck and whispered back.

“You and me both, girl. Let’s get you fixed up and get me a drink.”

There was a medicine chest in the powder room off the kitchen hallway. He put a folded towel on the lid of the toilet and laid the cat on top. Then he got a tube of antiseptic cream and a roll of gauze. He had never been a cat lover, but the animal’s vulnerability reminded him of long ago nights when he’d tended to his children after they awoke with a fever or a cough. He sighed. He was homesick, lonely.

“Easy now.” He squeezed out some ointment. “This might sting.”

The cat took it in stride, eyeing him with what looked like trust.

There was a footfall on the stairs. Barb, probably, their resident prowler. But the voice from the hallway was Keira’s.

“Oh, no,” she whispered. “What happened?”

“Got in a fight, by the look of it.”

She wore a flannel robe, emanating warmth and slumber.

“Can I do something?”

“Maybe hold her? I was going to wrap this gauze on her leg. Otherwise she’ll probably just lick all the goop off.”

Cheryl purred at Keira’s touch. No doubt about who she belonged to, no matter who’d taken her in.

“There’s a vet on the Oxford Road,” Keira said. “I could take her there tomorrow.”

“This’ll do for now.”

“You’re sweet to take care of her.”

He let the remark hang in the air, liking its judgment, and he felt himself relax. He realized that he’d been on edge all week, still in a mode of audition, of proving his worth, as exhausting as his first days back at the Air Force Academy, or in flight school.

“I’ll make some tea. Herbal, so it won’t keep you up.”

So much for that drink he wanted, but tea was probably a smarter idea.

He laid the cat on the counter while Keira put the water on to boil. She lifted the kettle just as it began to whistle, then poured steaming water into a pair of mugs.

“Let’s take these to the pool house, so we can talk without waking everybody up. I’ll bring the cat.”

Cole picked up the mugs and followed, wondering if he should say anything about the eerie sense of an intruder he’d picked up a few minutes ago. But now the idea seemed alarmist, especially with steam rising from the mugs with a hint of cinnamon. He watched the shadows all the same, and listened closely. No movement. No noise out of the ordinary. Yet he was palpably relieved when they shut the pool house door behind them.

“Did you hear that owl?” Keira said. “Sounded kind of upset. Wonder if that’s what went after Cheryl.”

“I doubt she would have survived if it was. Those talons can crack a cat’s skull like an eggshell.”

“Ouch.”

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to be so graphic.”

Keira laughed. “I don’t mind. That’s something I’ve always loved about this place. It’s so elemental. Just you and nature and whatever boat happens to be drifting by. It makes matters of life and death seem like things that don’t have to be forced, or even endured. They just happen, the way they’re meant to.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not sure Cheryl feels that way right now.”

“No. Maybe not.”

The cat curled up on the foot of the bed. Keira took a seat by the pillows, leaning against the headboard as the mug steamed into her face. Cole remained standing, transfixed as she tucked her bare legs
beneath her, a gesture of coziness that also happened to clear a space for him on the bed, if he wanted it.

Under other circumstances he would have happily seized the opportunity, and probably would have then pursued the customary male ritual of touch and advance, testing his way toward an embrace, ready to keep going as far as she’d let him. But that was exactly what Steve and Barb would expect from him—the randy, uncultured pilot, forever on the prowl—so he sat down in the armchair catty-corner to the bed.

Keira sipped her tea, and he couldn’t help but watch her. Her skin was ambered by the glow of the bedside lamp, an attractive woman on his bed wearing a flannel robe and God knows what underneath. Maybe nothing. And now she was talking, and not a word of it had registered.

“I’m sorry. I zoned out. What was that?”

“I said, why don’t you come over here? You look so forlorn, like a lost boy who got left at school.”

He did as she asked. And she was the one who began touching. Her hand on his ankle, then his thigh. Touch and advance. A brush of her fingers across his cheek, a caress. He moved closer and she leaned forward, the bed creaking, the heat of her skin warm on his own. She was kissing him almost before he knew it.

“Is this all right with you?” she said.

“I was about to ask the same thing.”

“Don’t ask anything. Just act.” Her voice went straight down his throat. He again did as she asked, and it was better than in any dream. They moved softly, slowly, and then gave way to urgency. Cole couldn’t stop looking at her face, his eyes open until the very end, when he finally vanished from the world into the briefest oblivion. When he emerged on the other side he was gasping and alive. Keira smiled, then buried her face against his neck, her heartbeat fluttering on his breastbone.

A minute or so later she stirred.

“The cat,” she said, with a note of worry. But Cheryl was still curled on the spread at the foot of the bed, sleeping off her ordeal, ignoring them. Keira sank back into his arms. He was speechless. Happy, yes,
but uncertain what to say next, about her or anything. A few more moments passed in silence, and she spoke first.

“So tell me about your wife, your family.”

Cole was so taken aback that he didn’t know what to say.

“Don’t worry. I’m not being judgmental. You needed this. I did, too. And now is probably the time when you’d be the most open-minded about your thoughts, and about your wife.”

“Or the guiltiest.”

“No. Really, that wasn’t what I intended.”

He studied her, the sincerity plain on her face.

“You’re very different.”

“Maybe so. But don’t take that to mean that I’ve got everything figured out. My life’s probably as fucked up as yours.”

“Well, thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“Oh, c’mon. That place you were living? The state you were in? You can’t leave all that behind in a matter of days.”

“No. That’s true.”

“So your wife, then. Now that you’re back in civilization, don’t you find yourself thinking of her more?”

“I’ve been dreaming about her. Nothing that’s, well, erotic or anything.” He couldn’t believe he was telling her this. Keira’s powers in full force, he supposed. “Just daily life, stuff we used to do around the house, or with the kids. The good and the bad.”

“That’s a start.”

“Towards what?”

“Getting back to them?”

He shook his head. “That’s over. My fault, but over.”

“You’d be surprised how forgiving people can be. Especially when something matters to them.”

“That sounds like the voice of experience.”

She shrugged, lowered her eyes. “Sometimes the people who could forgive you are no longer around to do it.”

“Barb said something about a guy you were with, a photographer.”

“He was married. I’m sure she mentioned that part, too.”

“Yeah, she did.”

Keira sighed, then eased away from him just enough that he wished he hadn’t mentioned it.

“That’s the problem with the three of us living together,” she said. “We’ve become too interested in identifying each other’s weak spots. Sometimes I think Barb’s building a dossier on all of us, you included.”

“Sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“It’s all right. I’m nosy enough myself. He was killed in a plane crash. He was on his way to Paris to see me. I talked him into it. A weekend getaway.
Guilted
him into it, really. And helped him cook up a story idea he could tell his wife for cover. Then he was gone, like a big gust of karma had come along and blown his plane right into the Channel. And when his wife found out I was the one who ID’d his remains …”

She looked away, staring at the window.

“I can go back to the house, if you’d like,” she said. “I probably should anyway, before the others wake up.”

“Not yet.”

She nodded, then reached across him to switch off the lamp. Darkness. Outside he could hear the trees in motion, windblown, the night forest still full of presences that Cole could only imagine. But now, with this strangely frank woman folded in his arms—warm and alive, yet alone with her regrets—he felt that they were both shielded, protected. He sank into sleep.

“SOMETHING’S OUT THERE.”

Keira whispered it as she stood by the window with the shades pulled back, peering into the dark. The wind was down, the owl silent. Cheryl stood next to her, back arched, fur raised, a sight that was somehow as alarming as anything Cole had seen all day.

He sat up in bed.

“What did you hear?”

She shook her head, held a finger to her lips. She was naked, skin a silvery blue in the starlight. By now the moon was below the horizon, drowned in the waters of the Bay. The moment felt especially eerie because he’d just been dreaming of something he would have preferred to forget, another replay. Bad vibes then, goose bumps now, with both moments feeling related.

“I thought I heard somebody moving around, but maybe it was an animal. Too big for a fox, though. And too steady and regular for a deer, or that’s what I thought. It sounded like someone measuring his steps, being careful.”

“Deer can act that way. Sometimes.”

Cole could still see the afterimage of his dream, a view from an infrared camera in which six men were bright green blobs moving toward a huddle of prone bodies in the wake of a firefight, their weapons still aglow from recent use. It was his last mission before he fell off the edge.

He eased out from beneath the sheets and moved to the window. The cat leaned against his ankle, purring now, becalmed. He felt the
rub of her bandage. Keira sat down on the bed and pulled up the blanket around herself. She stared at the window as if it were a campfire that might warm them. He sat beside her, and Cheryl hopped up to join them.

Keira studied his face. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“How do you do that? How do you always know?”

She shrugged, unimpressed with herself.

“I was dreaming about my last mission.”

“In the Predator?”

“A recon. A real screwup. I thought I’d erased most of it from my memory, but now it’s clearer than ever. Like one of the video archives I asked Zach to send me.”

“Have you heard from him?”

“He said he’d try, but that it might take a while. I should probably check back.”

“Was that the mission mentioned in your court-martial?”

“It was more complicated than they said. A lot freakier. It happened my first day back after Sandar Khosh, right after we watched those kids running out of the house, the one we blew up.”

“They were killed?”

“The two boys were. We saw their bodies. One right behind the other. The girl lost an arm. She was about the same age as my daughter. I don’t know if she lived or not, but I’ve never stopped thinking about her.”

“How horrible.” The same words Carol had used. It sent a tremor up his backbone.

“Yeah. Pretty much. The next time out we drew recon duty. We were supposed to escort a Special Ops outfit into position for a raid, their eye in the sky. They were going to hit some insurgent hideout. The intelligence said the bad guys were only active late at night, so the plan was to close in just after dark, preferably while the bad guys were preparing dinner.”

“Sounds important.”

“It was the one part of the job I kinda liked, taking care of units in the field. Shepherds, watching o’er their flocks by night. Sometimes we just hung around to watch ’em sleep, securing their perimeter. Kind
of like being in your kid’s room when he’s gone to bed. You just stand guard, make sure no one comes to harm.”

There was a godlike aspect, too, like Barb had said. But Cole never liked admitting that. He enjoyed being a benevolent presence in the sky, but with the power to protect also came the power to smite, should the need arise.

“The whole op was supposed to take ten or twelve hours. Normally Zach and I would’ve handed off to another crew before the raid even took place, but about eight hours in we got a readout from our bird of impending engine failure. We’d gotten similar warnings before which never amounted to anything, and we figured that would probably be the case this time. But there was no way we were going to hand off now.”

“Why not?”

“It’s a hot potato. It’s just not done.”

“Why not call in another Predator?”

“It was too late. They’re so damn slow. Wouldn’t have made it in time. So we went overtime, in it for the long haul. The sun went down and we switched to infrared. There were maybe a dozen guys in the unit, deployed just to the east of a small forest of pines. The bogeys were in a house on the opposite side, by a stream. We’d reconned the house and everything was quiet. There were lights in the windows, men inside. Then Zach spotted something up in the woods. Three bodies on the move and some optic clutter.”

With the dream still fresh in his head, Cole remembered the rest with ease, recalling that he immediately got on the radio to Gray Goose, the call sign for the commander of the ops unit. His own call sign was Redbird.

“Gray Goose, this is Redbird. We’ve got three possible bogeys in the trees, northwest quadrant. Do you copy?”

“We copy, Redbird.”

“Taking her down to eight thousand for a closer look. They appear to be headed away from you, up toward a path on the northern edge of the woods. Zoom it as we go, Zach. I’ll angle east so we won’t be looking through the trees.”

As the infrared image sharpened, Cole realized something that almost made him shudder.

“Looks like children,” he said. Zach said nothing.

And three of them, too. How appropriate. In the green tint of the infrared image their eyes were cool dark spots on luminous faces, ghostlike—their victims from the previous day, out on a haunt as they tended a small flock of goats.