Unmanned

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

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.”

The plane kept circling, widening its arc, but Paul pointed the camera out toward the road, then zeroed in on a red sedan cruising past the school. You could see the driver’s face through the window, completely unaware. Just like those Afghan dirt farmers, oblivious.

Paul punched in some commands and his drone soared higher, zooming off toward the open skies of the eastern horizon.

Over at the edge of the field Cole saw a silver BMW sedan pull into the school parking lot and come to a stop among the other vehicles. It sat for a minute or two with no sign of movement behind the smoked glass. Then a door opened and a silver-haired guy, maybe in his fifties, got out. He wore a shiny cordovan leather jacket, unzipped, and a blue oxford shirt with the top buttons undone. He nodded toward the group, and several of them nodded back. He went around to the trunk and unloaded a drum case a lot like Sharpe’s, then wrestled it awkwardly across the grass to the edge of the dirt infield, where he set it down. He made no move to open it. Instead, he eased back a few steps, as if to say that was enough activity for now. Then he folded his arms and started watching the others.

Cole would’ve guessed he was a stranger to the group if not for the reactions of the others, who seemed perfectly comfortable with his presence. After five minutes or so, he began to find the man a little unnerving.

“Who’s the guy in the Beemer?” he asked Bert.

“Oh, that’s Derek.” He smiled, like it was some sort of inside joke.

“Man of mystery,” Stan chimed in, making Bert giggle.

“He never does much flying,” Bert said. “I think he’s too worried he’ll screw up. So he mostly just soaks up the atmosphere, watching the rest of us crash and burn.”

“But he’s got some pretty hot birds,” Stan said. “On occasion.”

“When he actually gets ’em out of the box. How many do you figure he’s actually flown down here with us?”

“Five?” Stan guessed. “Maybe six. But never for long. Hot stuff, though, like I said.”

“Payload obsessed.”

“That’s for sure.” Stan laughed.

“Payload?” Cole asked.

“Always wants to know what your stuff’s capable of carrying — weight and volume, the impact on the aerodynamics, all kinds of related shit.”

“Do his birds ever carry anything?”

Bert and Stan exchanged questioning glances.

“Not that I’ve ever noticed,” Stan said.

“Leo says he’s seen him load up some stuff. Dummy weights, I think he said.”

Stan laughed again. “Typical Derek. Hey, Paul’s doing okay!”

He was indeed. Cole watched the X8 do some fairly nimble maneuvers off in the distance, out over a bare lot. Five minutes later Paul brought it back toward the baseball field. A low trajectory carried it across the chain-link fence in left field, and it zoomed down the foul line like a throw to the plate. It bounced once on its plastic wheels, then a second time, before planting nose-down in a sudden blat of prop and wing that stopped the engine and tumbled the plane onto its back about halfway between third and home.

“Out by a mile!” Stan yelled.

“Shit.” Paul trotted over, brow furrowed, expecting the worst.

“Yep. That’s a maiden,” Bert said, which triggered muffled laughter and a few gentle words of condolence.

“She’ll fly again, Paulie.”

“Duct tape, baby. Duct tape and epoxy and she’s good as new.”

Nice guys, he thought again. Fun to be around. And he could tell Sharpe liked them, too.

But something about the setup kept him off balance, and as he looked around at the barren expanse of the dirt infield he felt almost wobbly, as if he was back in the desert, gazing up past his trailer into a threatening sky as he listening for the telltale buzz. At that moment it was easy to imagine this same crew milling around on some postapocalyptic dreamscape, scalded and empty, yet they were still chattering, pointing, playing with their winged tools of intrusion. Watching all their fellow survivors from afar.

“Wanna try ’er, Joe?”

It was Bert, snapping Cole out of his morose reverie with a welcoming grin. Cole blinked and looked around. It was a baseball field, nothing more. Fresh footprints and the chatter of humans.

“You okay, man?”

“Yeah, sure. What was your question again?”

Bert held aloft his quadcopter.

“Was wondering if you wanted to try ’er. You looked like you were feeling a little left out. And she’s practically indestructible. Has to be, the way I fly ’er.”

Cole smiled.

“Then I guess she’s the perfect one for me to try out. What’s the drill?”

In addition to an iPad, Bert had rigged up a headset control with goggles that offered a bird’s-eye view from the camera, and an optional function that let you control the flight by tilting your head. Otherwise, the autopilot did most of the work. It took Bert only a few minutes to explain it, and Cole was up and running in almost no time. He marveled at the smoothness of the setup. For probably no more than a few hundred bucks, Bert had developed a ground control station miles better than anything Cole had ever used in piloting a Predator.

“Jesus,” he exclaimed, “your GCS is better than—” He stopped himself.

“Better than what?”

“Better than, well, just about anything I’ve seen.”

“I’m still working out some bugs, but, yeah, it’s not bad.”

Cole was transfixed by the images on the goggles, which made him feel he was up there with the machine, an illusion of flight that lifted his spirits and made his stomach do little bounces and flutters with every movement of the aircraft. It felt great. He was out there over the edge of a marsh, then speeding along above farmland, the sun to starboard as he soared toward points unknown.

“Looks like there might be some sort of power plant coming up. Down by a river.”

“Oh. Better steer clear. They might not like us buzzing their stuff.”

Cole did as Bert asked, veering gracefully away from the sun toward the open water of the Bay. Bert was monitoring his progress via the display on his iPad.

“You’re good at this,” Bert said. “Instinctive. Ever done any real flying?”

“Oh …” What would Sharpe want him to say? “Just simulator stuff. I’ve thought about taking lessons.”

“You should do it. Looks like you’re a natural. Not that this is all that tough, once you’ve got the right components.”

“Do you fly?”

“Nah. Took some lessons, but it was costing a bundle and my wife hated it. Kept thinking I was going to crack up, come home in a box. So I do this now. Gets me up in the air and I survive all the crashes. Hey, look at that guy. You see him?”

He did. Cole was back over dry land, above a fallow field. Below was a hunter carrying a shotgun, marching across the mud toward a distant blind tucked at the edge of a tree line.

“Think he’ll take a shot at us?” Cole asked.

“Hey, it happens. In Texas, anyway. But I doubt this guy can even hear us. I just installed some noise suppression gear. Plus, you’re up pretty high.”

“How high?”

“Maybe six hundred feet. That camera’s on full zoom, pretty much.”

“Oh, sorry. Isn’t there some kind of altitude limit for this stuff?”

“The FAA says four hundred feet, unless you’ve got a permit. But why bother? And way out here who’s gonna give a shit? Especially if they don’t know.”

Cole switched back to autopilot and took off the goggles, handing them back to Bert, who then took command via the iPad.

“Thanks. I enjoyed that.”

“Looked like it. So, Lenny says you’re thinking of getting into this?”

Who was Lenny? Oh, right. Sharpe.

“Maybe. Looks pretty cool.”

“As long as you don’t mind a lot of crack-ups and false starts.”

Cole glanced over to see what the others were up to, and saw Derek in his ugly leather jacket. The drum case was still locked up tight, but Derek held out a smart phone and seemed to be shooting video of Cole and Bert. Cole quickly turned away. He felt foolish for doing so, but he didn’t turn back around. No sense ending up with his face on somebody’s footage that might go up on Facebook within the hour.

When he glanced back over a few minutes later, Derek had put away his phone and was chatting amiably with Leo, both of them with their hands on their hips, at ease with each other, which made Cole feel better.

After another ten minutes, Bert brought his drone in for a smooth landing near home plate.

Sharpe walked over. “Joe? Time we got moving. We’re on a schedule today, Bert. Just wanted to give him a taste of it.”

They said their good-byes. Everyone invited him back. Under other circumstances he might even have accepted. In some ways it was the same dynamic as in the fraternity of pilots. A similar kinship, albeit without the dangers. And at least they were out in the open air, not in some damn trailer, running other people’s missions while people barked at them on a chat screen. He would have enjoyed sticking around for a beer or a bourbon afterward, although he doubted their drink of choice was Jeremiah Weed.

Sharpe loaded his gear. He had made only the most cursory of flights with his quadcopter, just enough of an exercise, perhaps, to show that they weren’t there only to gawk. Maybe he’d been too intent on watching Cole to indulge in his usual level of play. They drove out of the parking lot. Cole was about to speak when Sharpe held up a hand to silence him and said brusquely, “Open your window.”

“What?”

“Roll it down. Stick your head out and tell me what you see.”

Cole eased off on the gas and lowered the window. Glancing back, he saw one of the fixed-wing X8s buzzing angrily in their wake, maybe thirty feet overhead.

“Jesus. Who’s doing that?”

Sharpe laughed uproariously.

“Fucking Stan. Always follows the first one to leave, then stalks him back to Route 50.”

“Why?”

“To show that he can. Flip him the bird for us, they’ll enjoy it. Go on.”

Cole held out his left hand for a good five seconds while steering with his right. They heard a faint outburst of good-natured cheering. Then he shut the window. Stan’s X8 zoomed out in front of them and veered west, waggling its wings good-bye while Sharpe bent over the dash for a better view.

“Well, if you were trying to freak me out, it worked.”

“Good. Your former employers fully support this kind of thing, you know.”

“The Air Force?”

“DARPA. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The brain bin Ike created after everybody freaked out over Sputnik.”

“Shoulda known.”

“Drones are their pet project these days. A couple years ago they posted a public challenge, with a hundred-thousand-dollar reward. Lots of specs and guidelines, but basically they were asking the DIY crowd to build the world’s perfect little spy drone. Crowd sourcing. Smart move. Their way of tapping in to the wisdom of the mob, all those armchair geniuses. A thousand bad ideas for every good one, but still. Nobody met the specs by the deadline, but they picked up some good stuff along the way.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, that’s classified, of course. You wouldn’t understand half of it anyway.”

“You would.”

“Would and do. Give enough free time and resources to enough quick, creative minds and they’ll always solve some problems for you. Most of the really hot shit DIY chapters are out west or overseas — Australia, Indonesia, you name it. But this little bunch of ours has been identified as a group that can hold its own. Once that happens, you’d be surprised how many interested parties will want to tap into the brain pool.”

“Like who?”

“We had a newcomer a while back. Nice guy, kind of like you. Came for a few weekends, asked a zillion questions. Everybody liked him. I ran the tags on his car, made a few checks, but never told anybody what I found out. Turns out he was some kind of engineering supervisor with Aerostar Dynamics. And I know firsthand that other defense contractors have seeded some of the other groups. Quite openly, in some cases. Let’s face it, it can be a helluva lot of fun. And perfectly legal, of course. But you can see why I like to be careful with my name and all that.”

“What’s the story with Derek?”

“Piece of work, isn’t he? Always brings shit — good stuff, too — but hardly ever flies it.”

“He was taking video of me.”

“He seems to do that a lot.”

“Maybe you should run his tags.”

“Maybe I have.”

“And?”

Cole waited. Got nothing.

“Is Derek even his real name?”

“Yes.”

“What else?”

“Maybe you don’t need to know everything I know.”

“So what was this little excursion really about, then? I get the whole ‘genie out of the bottle’ shit, but why did I need to see this?”

“Because another interested party who showed up in mufti a while back was a hired gun from IntelPro. Claimed he was an insurance salesman from Kent County. Ran his tags, too. And this is the kind of thing, really, that goes straight to the heart of what Wade Castle is up to. In my humble opinion”

“Drones and IntelPro?”

“Something like that.”

“But they’re not an aerospace contractor. They’re security. All they build is private armies.”

“True. But commercially speaking, this field is about to explode. Right now the FAA is choosing six nationwide test sites. Places to try out every sort of drone application you could imagine. By the end of 2015 they’ll be coming up with a whole new set of rules for what drones can and can’t be used for. IntelPro, like plenty of other kids on the block, is positioning itself to cash in. Thanks to their many friends in government they’re in great shape to do so, and Wade Castle has been one of their best friends of all.”

“But—”

“Let me finish. All that tech that’s out there on the cutting edge — the secret stuff from my shop, and yours? It’s all been thoroughly field-tested on those foreign battlefields where you used to operate, and in the nation’s best-secured laboratories. And all of that—all of it — has been handed to IntelPro and a handful of other firms like pieces of candy, candy they’ve quietly begun to resell, still in its wrappers, to their new friends in aerospace. So that’s one part. Down at the other end of the food chain, they’re preparing to employ every possible application for domestic surveillance and security. They want to become as big on the home market as they are abroad. Why do you think they’ve tied themselves so closely to all the people flying Predators and Reapers overseas? Because they’d like to use the same shit here.”

“In U.S. air space? Even I don’t think they’ll get approval for that.”

“Who needs approval when you’ve got the PATRIOT Act? And they’ve definitely got the juice in Washington to influence those new FAA rules. Add it up, and you’ve got a pretty damn lucrative business model, plus the power to look inside every window in America. And if nobody can hear it or see it up there at twelve thousand feet — well, I don’t need to tell you what that means.”

No, he didn’t. Especially considering what Cole already knew about certain parties who were already willing to cheat beyond the supposed limits.

“How is Castle part of this?”

“From what I always heard he was one of the people pushing the envelope overseas on IntelPro’s behalf. A great advocate of sharing — sources, flight access, chat access, and just about any and all the tech they want to load up on. The way he saw it, the more people looking for bad guys, the better.”

“Do you think they were in it together on the fuckups, too? Like mine?”

“One way or another.”

“Then why would they be trying to ruin him now?”

“Maybe he spoke up. Maybe he’s just a scapegoat. Or maybe they realize he’s already a known quantity, so why not use him to divert a little attention, a little misery. To clear their own path to a more prosperous future. They also know the Agency won’t ever talk about anything, except for the cryptic stuff Bickell’s peddling. That makes Castle the perfect foil, and it would explain why they’re feeding your friends all that bullshit about how he’s back in the neighborhood. A means of scaring you, to throw you off the real story. Or this whole smear campaign could be cover, to help keep the Agency off their backs while they keep Castle under wraps.”

“In other words, you really have no fucking idea.”

“Which is another reason for bringing you here. To show you how we might find the answer. Because I’m convinced that Ground Zero of IntelPro’s drone program is out in those woods in the middle of their training acreage. And your reporter friends, with their new waterfront location, offer the perfect vantage point for taking a peek from above. That farm can be our passport into IntelPro’s great unknown.”

“You want to launch a drone from there? A spy drone?”

Sharpe smiled.

“Keira’s place must be thirty miles from the training center.”

“By road, yes. All those twists and turns, the bridges, a ferry, up one peninsula and down the next. But as the crow flies? Or a drone? Seven miles, tops.”

“What’s the range of your quadcopter?”

“Oh, hell, that thing? That’s a toy, and a damned noisy one. I’m way beyond that.”

“So you’ve got another one.”

“Of course. Too big to fit in any damn Jap car, even when I break it down. But I’ll bring her tomorrow, you’ll see. A range of fifty, sixty miles, air speed about seventy-five, max, with state-of-the-art noise reduction and stabilization. And it’s got two cameras. One mounted where the cockpit would be, so the pilot can see where he’s going, what’s ahead, with a one-hundred-eighty-degree range of visibility side to side. Pretty much what you’d see if you were flying it yourself, right up there in the sky. The other one’s below the nose cone, just like with a Predator. Full turret action and a complete field of vision, and it displays on my iPad. The pilot camera displays in a pair of goggles, sort of like the ones you were using to fly Bert’s quadcopter, only better.”

“Two sets of eyes.”

“It’s the way I wanted to configure the Predator. But I was overruled, of course. I’ve only got one problem, but it’s a big one.”

“What’s that?”

“The autopilot’s fine, as far as it goes. But without knowing the lay of the land over at IntelPro I’ll have to do most of the flying myself, and, well, I’m pretty damn awful at it. This thing needs a professional hand.”

“So you want me to do it.”

“It’s what you’re trained for. Hell, you even flew Bert’s wobbly little copter right off the bat, no problem at all. He was impressed, I could tell. So what do you say, Captain Cole? Ready to get back in the saddle? And believe me, this will be ergonomically better than any damn setup the Air Force ever built for you, and that’s the gospel. When they put together that shitpile of a GCS you ended up with out at Creech they ignored every last one of my recommendations. But what else is new.”

“You’re serious about this.”

“Hell, yes, I’m serious. I’m bringing it over tomorrow for a test flight, so you’d better prepare your friends for my arrival. While you’re at it, have someone make a bed for me at that country estate. My own house is going to be out of the question for a while. Too risky to go home now.”

“Oh, they’ll love that.”

Sharpe laughed.

“They’ll tolerate me, once they see what I can give them. A bird’s-eye view of forbidden territory. A reporter’s dream come true. No more public relations gatekeepers to bar the door.”

“And if they don’t go for it?”

A smile spread across Sharpe’s face and stayed there.

“What? What are you thinking?”

“Maybe your friends need to have the fear of God put in them to make them go for it.”

“What the hell’s that mean?”

“All in good time, Captain Cole. All in good time.”

Sharpe’s smile widened, as if the film version of whatever he was thinking was playing out across the windshield.

Whether the journalists would welcome the idea or not, Cole wasn’t sure he was ready for this. The old emotions from his Predator days were already stirring. Anxiety and edginess, the pressure to not fuck up, the long and lonely aftermath when you couldn’t tell anyone what you’d seen, what you’d done, what it felt like. The dying girl, propped on an elbow, mourning the loss of her arm. A scream emanating from the center of the earth.

“Pull over up here,” Sharpe said.

“Where?” They were back on Route 50, ripping along through farm country at sixty-plus, but they were nowhere near the convenience store that had served as their rendezvous point.

“Anywhere, goddammit!”

Cole looked in the mirror, wondering if Sharpe might be responding to someone in pursuit. Maybe Stan’s X8 was out there, buzzing along in their wake. But the sky was empty, the traffic routine. He braked and pulled onto the shoulder.

“Here?”

“As good a place as any. I’ve made arrangements.”

Just like before.

“Tomorrow you won’t have to ferry me around anymore. I’ll be driving a van, someone else’s. And I sure as hell won’t be using E-ZPass.” Sharpe gestured toward the white plastic transponder stuck to the windshield of Steve’s Honda. “They don’t call it a transponder for nothing, you know. If they ever connect you to the journalists, which I’m betting they’ve already done, it will only be a matter of days before they track you down.”

“Shit.” Cole stared at the device, wishing he’d thought of that himself.

“All the more reason for us to act quickly. Unlatch the trunk.”

Sharpe went to the back and hauled out his big drum case. Then he slammed the lid shut and began lumbering down the highway with his quadcopter, like an overage member of some washed-up rock band, hitching his way to a concert.

Cole pulled back onto the highway and slowly accelerated. He watched Sharpe recede in the mirror until he was no more than a dot. Then he floored it for home. Okay, so “home” wasn’t the right word. But for now it was all he had. And tomorrow it would become his new place of work, his own little air force base with its own mini-Predator. Back in the saddle, indeed. He took a deep breath and drove on.