Unmanned (9780385351263) (31 page)

“But how can the county keep this a secret?” Barb asked.

“With federal permission, of course,” Sharpe said. “With the right kind of contract this installation would have semiofficial status, which
would mean that the contract itself could be classified. Or any sort of plans filed with the county.”

“And you think it’s for drone development?” Cole asked. “Testing new technologies, for private sector applications?”

“And for domestic applications as well. Has to be.”

“Yeah, well,” Steve said. “This is all great stuff, a helluva story. But it’s not
our
story.”

“How do you figure that?” Barb asked.

“Well, what does any of this have to do with Wade Castle?”

“Who says it has to? We take a week, maybe two, to work the hell out of this one. Then we write it and sell it. If anything, we buy ourselves a few more months for the Castle piece.”

“Meanwhile burning half our sources, to the point they’ll never help us again.”

“Your source, maybe. An IntelPro guy who hasn’t contributed anything for a month now, except to piss all over some of our best material.”

“That’s not true.”

Cole watched Keira. This would usually be the point where she would intervene for one side or another, or to advocate for cooler heads and greater civility. This time she looked on with a blank expression, seemingly content to let them fight it out to the death. And that left it to Sharpe, of all people, to bring matters back into focus in his typically blunt manner.

“Shut the fuck up, both of you, and hear me out. This
is
a Wade Castle story. He’s half the reason IntelPro has all these new toys, or at least the means to make them and use them. He’s the key to their whole R and D program.” He hammered the blueprint with his fist. “No matter what he did before, no matter how many fuckups there have been along the way, in my opinion
this
has been the intended endpoint, and if you’ll just pursue the facts at hand to their logical conclusion, I’m sure that’s what you’ll discover to be true.”

“Who asked you?” Steve said. “An interloper, brought in by another interloper, brought in completely against my advice, and all of it has been a mistake.”

“That’s unfair, Steve.” It was Keira, finally speaking up.

“Of course you’d think so. You’re the one sleeping with the interloper. That’s how far off the rails we’ve gone around here, and now we’re sitting around talking about doing illegal shit like flying a drone over half the Eastern Shore to snoop on a bunch of people who could really fuck with our lives if they wanted, when what we ought to be doing is some actual journalism, using the sources we’ve got while continuing to develop more.”

“Too passive,” said Sharpe. “Too damn passive, especially when you have this great new tool at your disposal. I thought you existed to gather information. Well, that’s what these damn things do, and very efficiently.”

“And it’s
illegal
, and could land us in deep shit. We could pay hackers to help us, too, like Murdoch’s people in the UK. Hell, we could even tap some phone lines if we hired the right people. Another great tool.”

Barb, who had been on Sharpe’s side, now looked uncertain for the first time. Keira, stung by Steve’s latest attack, again held her tongue.

“Maybe you’re right,” Barb finally said. “But we should at least sleep on it.”

“I’m good with that,” Steve said. “With a full night’s sleep maybe everyone will come to their senses.”

Sharpe hissed like a snake that had been stepped on and headed straight for the door. Cole, weary of the discord, followed, grabbing Steve’s car keys from a table by the door as he left the house.

“Hey, could you at least ask?” Steve said.

But Cole kept going, letting the door shut behind him. He found Sharpe fuming at the edge of the driveway, headed toward his van.

“We’re doing this,” Sharpe told him. “Be ready at sunup.”

“They don’t sound so sure about that.”

“Oh, they will be.”

Cole thought he had a pretty good idea of why Sharpe was so certain.

“Are you sure about this?” he asked.

“About tomorrow?”

“About tonight.”

Sharpe, for the first time since Cole had met him, looked taken aback. “So you know?”

“I do now, I think. By that look on your face. This is about what’s in that other box, isn’t it?”

Sharpe broke into a grin, but Cole didn’t share his sense of fun and had no intention of hanging around for the follow-up. He held aloft Steve’s keys and headed for the Honda. Sharpe called out to him.

“You’re welcome to join me. You might even learn something.”

“I already know way too much about the fear of God,” Cole said.

Then he kept right on walking.

COLE DROVE FAR
too fast up the dirt lane, throwing gravel against the undercarriage like a hailstorm from below. He didn’t slow down until he reached the narrowest stretch, where branches raked the Honda’s sides like the claws of a raptor, screeching and groaning against the metal.

“Shit. Sorry, Steve.”

He let up on the gas and exhaled deeply. It would be highly uncharitable to ruin the man’s car, even though he was exasperated with all of them. He drove the ten miles into Easton and stopped at the first booze store he could find, where he gazed longingly at the amber rows of bourbon before proceeding to the glass refrigerator cases in the back. He picked up a six of Bud, paid in cash, and cracked open the first one while seated behind the wheel in the darkness of the parking lot, facing a sign on the wall of the store that said no drinking on premises.

A long, deep swallow and he felt better. Then a second. Better still. Although if a cop came along he was toast. One check of his fake ID and the whole operation would crash and burn. Or his part of it, anyway. Big fucking deal.

Christmas lights flashing from the eaves bathed him in a continuous cycle of red and green, making him look full of fury one moment, queasy the next.

Some Christmas.

Better than last year’s, though, out there alone in the chilly trailer where there was no Star of Bethlehem hanging among the firmament in a massive sky. No beasts at the manger, either. Just a couple of coyotes rummaging through the trash.

Then he leaped back another year, to the one before his collapse. Carol’s family had trooped out to Summerlin for the holidays, and they’d enjoyed themselves immensely. Golf on Christmas Eve, tennis every afternoon. An hour after dinner on the big day, everyone piled into the van to drive over to the Strip, where they watched the water show from the fountains at the Bellagio, booming cascades swaying to a soundtrack of Sinatra. Carol’s dad had won two hundred bucks on the blackjack table at Harrah’s, then treated everyone to steaks at Vic & Anthony’s in the Golden Nugget. The in-laws adapted to the idea of a Vegas Christmas quicker than he had, although Cole had gotten a kick out of seeing holiday lights strung from palms and cacti, not to mention the weirdness of Christmas tree lots sharing corners with pawnbrokers and nickel slots.

But that was ancient history. The kids were two years older now and living in another house, decorating someone else’s tree. Santa was some guy in a mall in Michigan. Cole didn’t even know what their school looked like, who their teachers were, or what kind of haircuts they had. If he were to burst through the door uninvited, would they even know him?

He asked himself why was he bothering with all of this shit. Why had he even come here, an awkward appendage to a trio of journalists, writers who probably saw the world in a completely different light from the way he did, and now with an oddball engineer thrown into the mix. He could leave this instant, he supposed. Drive away, either back to the desert beyond Vegas or, hell, maybe even take a wild chance by heading up to Saginaw. Arrive clean and sober and contrite, begging for forgiveness and throwing himself at the mercy of the in-laws. A Christmas miracle fit for the Hallmark Channel.

Wasn’t that his real goal in this, once you got to the bottom of all the baggage? Purge all his ghosts by figuring out what had really gone wrong, maybe while getting some payback along the way. Then he could finally move forward, an inch at a time, toward something that might resemble a workable future.

Saginaw. Cold and unwelcoming this time of year, and probably at least six hundred miles away.

He could drive Steve’s car to a bus station, mail him the keys. And then what? Phone Sharpe and the journalists later, from out on the
road? Ask them what they’d found out, to see if there were yet any answers? Because he would definitely want to know.

So there it was, then. He still wanted—
needed
—answers. Without them, he would never move forward. And some degree of retribution was still necessary, just as it was for Sharpe, for Barb, maybe for all of them. Meaning there was work yet to be done, and his role was vital. It would be his most important mission in ages, perhaps ever. Is that what was scaring him?

“Fuck,” he said.

The beer was empty. So was a second one, and a third. He’d been sitting here drinking for more than an hour, maybe two. A wonder he hadn’t been arrested.

He crumpled the empties and stuffed them into the bag atop the rest of the six-pack. Then he opened the car door and set the package on the pavement, a gift to whoever pulled in next. He started the engine and pulled out of the lot, heading back in the direction he’d come from, toward Keira’s place.

Unfinished business was calling.

The main house was dark, and he parked by the pool house so the noise of the car wouldn’t wake anyone. Stepping into the night, he looked up through the trees at the stars. Now he wished he’d kept the rest of the beer, because he didn’t yet feel like sleeping. Maybe a walk would help. Down the lane and back, a two-mile round trip, or perhaps that was a stupid idea out here in the cold and the dark.

He was still trying to decide when he heard the first scream, a woman’s cry of terror emanating from the house.

Cole broke into a run, covering the ground in seconds, only to find the door locked. There was another scream, and a light went on upstairs, illuminating the porch as Cole fumbled for the key. He heard Steve now, or some strung-out version of Steve.

“What the hell is happening?”

The fear of God, indeed. What was Sharpe doing to them, and where was he?

Cole unlocked the door and stepped inside. The first thing he heard
was buzzing—thrumming, to be more precise, like the sound hummingbirds make as they dart and weave among themselves, competing for nectar. He reached for a light switch as Steve came lunging toward him from the kitchen doorway, a chef’s knife in his hand.

“It’s me!” Cole shouted.

Steve stopped in the sudden glare, barefoot and waving the knife at something as it buzzed past his head. Barb was coming down the stairs two at a time, flapping her hands around her head as if plagued by a cloud of gnats. A second buzzing object, then a third, did a quick revolution around her before whizzing down the stairs ahead of her. They joined the one that had harassed Steve, and then, like a squadron of UFOs in some demented sci-fi movie, they flew in formation toward the living room, where three more were already hovering. Barb, Steve, and Cole eased through the doorway and watched in stunned silence as the six tiny craft formed into a V, the way geese did in migration. Steve raised the knife and went for them like a madman, shouting as he hacked at the air. But they were too nimble for him, dispersing in all directions and then re-forming along the back of the couch before making a beeline toward the fireplace on the far side of the room. They cleared the top of the screen, then disappeared one after the other up the black tunnel of the chimney.

Keira had now joined them, wearing only a T-shirt, hair in disarray, her eyes like full moons. They all looked at each other. Steve gently laid the knife on a side table and exhaled, muttering under his breath. None of them seemed to believe what had just happened.

The front door opened. It was Sharpe, his bony head in profile against the depth of the night. He stepped into the light of the foyer, grinning, holding an iPad in one hand and one of the dainty little drones in the other.

Steve opened his mouth to shout something, but Cole silenced him with an upraised hand. Barb just shook her head. Sharpe, holding the floor, began his remarks with the air of an orator addressing the well of the Senate. It was a snatch of seasonal poetry, a famed bit of verse, and as Sharpe declaimed he raised the little drone on high.

“To the top of the porch! To the top of the wall! Now dash away, dash away, dash away all!”

Then, in a quieter voice, and with an admiring gaze at the little drone, he concluded: “And away they all flew, like the down of a thistle.”

Barb was the first to recover from the shock of it.

“Merry Christmas, asshole. Was this really your idea of a sales job?”

“That was just the sound and light show,” Sharpe said. “The warm-up act. The sales job is just beginning.”

“Fuck you,” Steve said. “You’re done here.”

Sharpe looked toward Keira as if appealing the verdict. When she spoke, her voice was hoarse but steady.

“What is it you want to show us?”

“All of the reasons you can’t possibly quit now.”

Sharpe’s tone was now deeply earnest, almost humble. The change seemed to have an effect. Keira nodded and backed away, as if to clear room for his approach. Barb looked at Steve, who shook his head but surrendered, at least for the moment, although there was still fury in his eyes. Cole followed them to the couch, where they continued to stand while Sharpe set his iPad on the coffee table and activated a video.

It was shot in infrared and appeared on three split screens at once, starring all of them in their respective bedrooms, green blobs sleeping beneath the sheets. Keira reached for the tablet, and Sharpe had to snatch it away.

“We’ll take your word for it that you caught us all unawares. I thought you had a point to make. But if voyeurism is your whole message, then we get it.”