Unmanned (9780385351263) (41 page)

“Mansur,” Cole said.

“Well, that was easy,” Sharpe said.

“Plenty left to do.”

“I’m getting good images. Stay on this side of the house.”

“Have to make a turn here. You might lose him for a second.”

Cole banked up and around to the rear side of the house. When the front came back into view they saw that four more people were walking single file behind Mansur. They seemed to be following the guard toward a gate. Two more people stepped from the house as they watched.

“They must have flown in half his aunts and uncles,” Castle said.

“Getting busy down there,” Sharpe said. “We’ve stirred up the hornets’ nest, and something’s afoot. Look out by the main gate, coming in from the woods.”

An open-top jeep and a military-style cargo truck with a canvas cover pulled up to the gate, which opened to let them enter. A second jeep followed the truck. All three vehicles entered the compound.

“Back at the house!” Keira said. “Cole, you have to see this.”

He tilted the angle of his camera, and there, stepping into the sunlight, was a girl in Afghan peasant clothes and blocky shoes. She was skipping more than walking, the only playful pose in the bunch, but her gait was slightly out of balance because she had only one arm.

Cole opened his mouth, but no words emerged. He drew a deep breath, unable to swallow. For a moment he forgot all about flying, even as she disappeared from his view and he passed back above the forest. When he finally managed a few words, his voice quivered.

“It’s her. Fourteen months and seven thousand miles, and my God, there she is.” No one else spoke, and with the headset on he couldn’t see their faces. For a fleeting moment he wondered if he might have imagined it. “Everybody else saw her, right? With one arm?”

“
The
girl,” Keira said. “Yes. Just like you described her.”

“I’ve lost the shot,” Sharpe said, sounding irritated. “Pay some damn attention to your flying and swing her back around. Something’s happening down there.”

When the clearing came back into view, the truck’s tailgate was down and a canvas flap was open in the back.

“They’re loading them up, taking them somewhere,” Castle said. “God knows where, but we’ve sure as hell spooked them.”

“Any bogeys?” Cole asked. “Sharpe, give a lookout.”

“Checking now. Nothing yet, but that’s subject to change. These guys will have been on the horn by now to the main base. We’re flying too low to miss.”

“Look out,” Castle said. “A couple guards look like they’re about to open fire.”

For a harrowing second or two, Cole thought he meant the guards were about to shoot Mansur and his relatives, the girl as well. Then he realized he meant they were taking aim at the drone—at
him.

“No way they’ll hit us, not with those weapons. But I’ll take her up to six hundred, just in case.”

Everyone from the house was now loaded in the truck, along with an armed guard. The tailgate went up, the flap down, and the vehicles began to move. The procession drove out of the compound onto a narrow gravel road through the woods. Another armed man rode shotgun in the lead jeep. They appeared to be moving at top speed.

“Don’t lose them!”

“I’m on it.”

The convoy proceeded along the road through several curves. The pine forest was dense, but not enough to make them hard to follow, and Cole now realized where they must be headed.

“There’s a gate up ahead on a road that leads out to Route 50. They’re heading for the highway. How are we doing for fuel? What’s our range from here?”

“Another fifteen miles, maybe, before we reach the point of no return.”

“Shit. They could do that in less than half an hour. Keira, call your buddies with the county cops. Get some pursuit scrambled, westbound on 50.”

“Doing it now.”

“Tell ’em to send an ambulance, too.”

“Why an ambulance?” Sharpe said.

“Just fucking do it!”

“They can’t possibly escape,” Barb said. “If worse comes to worst the State Police could block them at the Bay Bridge.”

“You’re assuming the State Police will cooperate,” Sharpe said. “IntelPro might already have this wired.”

“Or maybe they have some closer destination in mind,” Castle said. “Like what?” Barb asked.

“A place for hiding them. Killing them, even.”

“But we’ll see it.”

“We hope. Just stay on ’em.”

Keira had already reached a policeman, who put her through to the dispatcher while he stayed on the line. The convoy had traveled several miles down Route 50 already. They were going at least eighty miles an hour, and Cole was losing ground.

“Fuck!” he said. “They keep this up and they’re gone.”

“Looks like they’re turning onto Hardcastle Road,” Keira said. “There’s not a damn thing down that way.”

“They’ve got another facility out there,” Castle said. “It’s on one of my sat photos, some property they picked up a few years ago, for expansion.”

“Why head there now?” Sharpe asked.

“No idea.”

“Wait! I know this place.” It was Steve, the last person Cole expected to get any help from. “I’ve been there, even.”

“Likely story,” Barb said.

“No. They gave me a tour, the whole facility, and this was part of it. They, well …”—he faltered a second, as if realizing he was about to destroy the last of his credibility—“they had me out there right after I got the fellowship.”

Barb didn’t answer. Cole imagined she was probably shaking her head. But Castle leaped at the opportunity.

“Make yourself useful, then. What’s out there? Why would they be going there?”

“A lot of it’s underground,” he said. “Some kind of big storage area,
acres of it. I remember they were proud of that because the water table’s so high and it was a bear to build.”

“Acres?”

“Yeah, with an entry portal you can drive a truck through. They didn’t take me inside, but I did see that.”

“What the hell’s it for?” Cole asked.

“They didn’t say. Like I said, they didn’t take me inside. Just toured me around the entrance, the perimeter.”

“Well, if they drive in, it’s the last we’ll ever see of them,” Castle said. “They can kill everybody in the truck and no one will ever know. Incinerate the whole damn load, completely out of sight.”

Cole felt desperate, his opportunity slipping away, the girl receding, fading, on the verge of disappearing forever. He would fail her again.

“Keira, where are the police?” Cole asked. “How close are they?”

“On their way. A cruiser and an ambulance. They know it’s Hardcastle Road.”

“They’re not going to make it in time.”

Cole had caught back up to the convoy after the turnoff. He watched the vehicles proceed through an open gate. The leading jeep, already twenty yards out in front of the truck, now accelerated away. Cole could see where the road ended, maybe half a mile farther, at the mouth of a ramp that appeared to lead down to a steel door built into a grassy mound.

“There’s your underground vault,” Sharpe said. “In two more minutes, tops, they’ll be inside. Then we’ve lost them.”

“There’s a keypad entrance,” Steve said. “They’ll have to stop to open it. The jeep must be running ahead to take care of it.”

“Gone,” Sharpe said, the voice of doom.

“Shut the fuck up,” Cole said. “We can do this.”

“Crash it if you have to,” Castle said. “Right at the mouth. Take him out when he’s at the entrance.”

“Then we lose our eyes,” Cole said, “and they’ll know it. They’ll just walk everybody in past the wreckage and finish them off.”

“Dammit, then
do
something.”

“That’s the plan.” Cole was back in command. He felt it keenly, and it emerged in his voice. The cool Virginia baritone, steady. Hand on
the stick, steady. Every thought for what he needed to do, lined up in perfect order. Flying again, what he was trained for.

“They’re just about there. You’re too damn low!”

“I’m on it. Keep shooting your pictures. Steady as she goes.”

Their drone was no more than thirty feet off the ground now, barreling toward the jeep as it began braking for the ramp that led down to the entrance to the underground bunker. Everyone was silent, watching.

“Keira, what’s the word?”

“They’re almost to Hardcastle, going full tilt.”

“So are we. Hold on.”

Cole gave it all the juice he had, overtaking the jeep just as it reached the top of the ramp. On his screen he saw the driver and armed guard leaning down, putting their hands up over their heads to protect themselves from what they must have thought was an imminent crash, and in doing so they lost control of the jeep. Cole pulled up sharply, not yet certain whether his move had done the trick.

“Get us back into view!” Sharpe shouted.

“Doing it.” Calm as ever, the airline pilot asking everyone to please fasten their seatbelts. “Coming around for you now.”

The jeep was jammed against the side wall of the ramp and the metal gate itself, which looked crumpled and was still shut. Smoke and steam poured from the hood. The driver was pinned at the wheel, and the armed passenger staggered as he climbed out. He wasn’t carrying his gun.

“Fuckin’ A!” Castle exulted. “You did it! They’ll never get it open now!”

“We’re not done yet,” Cole said. “Not nearly.”

The truck had stopped maybe twenty yards short of the ramp. There was a burst of movement in the back. The flap went up and the tailgate down. Then a man ran out, a fast but awkward gait. Mansur, going hell for leather. Then four more adults. They must have somehow overpowered the guard in the back. But where was the girl? Had there already been gunshots? Without sound, he had no idea. Cole swallowed a bubble of panic and banked the drone to come in straight down Hardcastle toward the unfolding scene.

There she was now at last, jumping out into the winter sunlight from the back of the truck in pursuit of the others, her off-balance skip turning into a full run. But the trailing jeep, which had wheeled around the truck to inspect the damage at the gate, was now doubling back toward them, and the armed guard on the passenger side was standing from his seat, rifle in hand, like a sniper rising from cover.

“Here come the cops,” Barb said.

They must have seen the police arriving on Sharpe’s camera, because Cole, coming in low and fast, and straight down Hardcastle Road, was focused solely on the man with the rifle, who was now shouldering his weapon.

“No!” Keira said. “He’s going to shoot!”

The gunman tilted his head, taking aim. Cole was closing fast, the drone almost at ground level now. Then the man paused, ever so briefly, to wave someone out of his line of fire, but by then his body loomed massively on Cole’s screen.

The screen flashed white. Cole wasn’t sure if it was from the impact, a gunshot, or both. Then it went blank, everything gone, no signal at all.

“What’s happened?” Sharpe yelled. “I’ve lost everything, what have you done?”

“Crashed it,” Cole said. “Took him out. I hope. The cops will have to do the rest.”

Sharpe began ranting about his equipment, about waste, about all sorts of incoherent things, but Cole was far from all that. He pulled off his headset, the controls useless now. All he knew for sure was that somewhere out there, maybe fifteen air miles away, Sharpe’s fine new aircraft lay in ruins. Perhaps it had even exploded, although there certainly couldn’t have been much fuel left in the tank.

But it was the girl he wondered about. The girl and her father, Mansur, and all the others, running for their lives just as the three children had done at Sandar Khosh. At the moment he had no clue whether they were living or dead, although he would certainly remember that last sight of them, running, the girl’s stride lopsided as she swung her only arm, pumping it for all the speed she could muster, everyone’s mouth open as they panted for breath.

Perhaps he had saved them. Perhaps he had guaranteed their destruction, triggering their ruin with his pursuit. If so, there would be a new hour of death to add to the daily timetable.

He blinked into the sunlight. The others were still staring at Sharpe’s blank screen, dumbfounded, except for Keira, who was talking rapidly into her phone.

“Where are the cops?” he asked, hearing his own voice like it was someone else’s. “What are they saying?”

“He’s down. They say he’s down.”

“
Who
is?
Who’s
down?”

“I don’t know yet! Wait.” She held up a hand. Everyone was still.

“The shooter. The shooter is down. The drone crashed right into him. The wing hit him, knocked him cold.”

“What about the others? Put it on speaker, goddammit!” Cole’s voice was hoarse.

“And the others?” she asked.

The answer came back crackly and shrill, and in copspeak, but clear enough for all to hear and understand.

“All parties safe. Six adults and one child, female, accounted for. All hostile parties disarmed and in custody.”

Keira beamed at Cole. Now the others turned toward him. They knew his story, and now they knew its conclusion, and they seemed to be awaiting some utterance from him, a summation, especially the journalists, with their usual stock question in this kind of situation already brimming in their eyes:
How does it feel?

Cole was too moved to speak. Overcome, he dropped to his knees and cried out, half sob and half laugh as a single thought seared his mind like a missile: A crash, yes, yet it was his greatest flight ever. Failure his salvation, with his eye in the sky now blinded and down.

THE POLICE AT THE
county sheriff’s office didn’t know quite what to do with everybody. First they sorted out the rival parties—the IntelPro security guys in one room (except for the one who was out cold, who went to Easton Hospital in an ambulance), the Afghans to another, although no one spoke their language, and even though the little girl who was with them, the one prone to singing and skipping, kept escaping into an adjacent corridor to gawk at the vending machines.

But by the time the crowd from Keira’s—an odd mix in its own right—showed up to start asking and then answering questions, pretty much everyone from the other two groups had been moved out of sight.