Unmanned

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

“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.

“Jeebus,” Zach whispered.

“Creepy, isn’t it.”

“What’s that, Redbird? I don’t copy.”

“Just kids, Gray Goose, and they’re moving off. You fellas can stand down.”

Now he saw the goats emerging from the woods, just ahead of the children.

“Looks like they’re taking some animals home for the night. Out kinda late, but nobody’s armed.”

“Glad to hear it, guys. Keep me posted.”

Zach spoke up, off mike.

“Should I move on?”

“What?”

“Back to our stakeout disposition?”

“In a minute.”

Cole wanted a better look at the children, some sign of recognition that they really were flesh and blood. Or was he hoping against hope that they would be the trio from Sandar Khosh, miraculously resurrected in a far valley, miles from home? Who was watching out for them? he wondered. Who would protect them from land mines and ambush at this advanced hour? Where were their parents, their elders?

Zach obliged his whim. Or maybe he, too, was in the same frame of mind. It was a distraction, no doubt, but after nine hours in the saddle at the end of a long and terrible week, they’d earned the indulgence.

Gray Goose shouted into his headset.

“Gunfire! We got gunfire, Redbird! Where the hell are you?”

Shit!

“Looking for your bogeys, Gray Goose. What’s the vector on that firing?”

“What the fuck?” Zach asked frantically. “I can’t find ’em!”

The camera moved jerkily, too fast. In panning back toward the unit Zach overshot the position and was having to adjust, all while battling against the usual two-second delay.

“Calm down, Zach. Scan her slowly.” Now Cole could hear the gunfire, probably on the pickup from Gray Goose’s headset.

“Have you got that directional yet, Gray Goose?” He hoped to hell no one had been hit. “You there?”

“Sorry, Redbird. Just taking cover. It’s coming out of the west. Where the fuck were you?”

Cole felt his face redden, but he responded calmly.

“Got distracted, Gray Goose. My bad, but the cavalry is here.”

“Got ’em!” Zach announced.

“We have your bogeys in sight, Gray Goose. Four figures, still on the move but maybe two hundred yards west-northwest of your position.” The attackers were crouched, so their shapes were barely human. “They’re out of the trees. No cover, far as I can tell.”

He heard more shots on his headset. The muzzles flashed bright white on the infrared.

“So you’ve got a fix?”

“Affirmative, locked in. What’s your pleasure, Gray Goose?”

“Throw down the God light.”

“Consider it done.”

He nodded to Zach, who made the necessary command to activate the infrared beam. Two seconds later the four crouching figures were lit up like dancers on a spotlit stage, even though to their own eyes they were still cloaked in darkness. On the ops unit’s night vision goggles, the attackers would now be easy targets.

Zach panned back for a wider field of vision. A stream of gunfire poured out from the ops unit, blazing across the screen. Cole heard shouting in his headset, and the sharp report of the weapons. Someone in the ops unit shouted in Pashto, probably telling the attackers to surrender. Three of the four were already hit, and two of those were deathly still. The fourth stood straight up and dropped his weapon, hands in the air. Three Americans surged forward. It was over within seconds.

Cole wondered if the gunfire had alerted the hideout to what was coming. He doubted it. The hut was over a small rise, and the sound of gunfire was hardly uncommon in this part of the world. Zach checked the house, just in case, but there was no sign of new activity. The windows were still lit, and the heat signature of smoke pouring from the chimney glowed on the screen.

But Cole was shaken. His hands trembled. If the attackers had been more patient and a little smarter, they might have killed several of the Americans before Zach and he even knew what was up. They had failed. Check that—he had failed, needlessly preoccupied with the three children as they followed goats down a mountain path.

“You okay, man?” Zach asked, off mike.

“Not really. You?”

“That whole thing with the kids gave me the heebie-jeebies. They even glowed funny on the IR.”

And for whatever amalgamation of reasons, that mission had proven to be Cole’s tipping point. A haunting vision, followed by an error in judgment. Plenty of other pilots had endured far more harrowing moments and had emerged emotionally unscathed, or so it seemed. But Cole had collapsed. Crumpled. He hadn’t been up to the challenge.

“You’re too hard on yourself,” Keira said, bringing him back to the present. God knows what he must have been mumbling.

“Maybe.”

“Besides. It was the whole week that got to you. The children who died. That would get to anyone.”

“I guess. Wade Castle’s mission. And that guy Lancer, whoever he was.”

Then Cole’s memory seized on another moment from that final mission. Had he dreamed it tonight, or had it really taken place? It was real. He recalled it clearly now, a brief exchange of chat dialogue long after the firefight occurred.

“What is it?” Keira asked. “What did you just think of?”

“That call name. Lancer. He turned up on the recon, too. Later, right after the raid. He had some questions or something for one of the ops commanders.”

“What kind of questions?”

“I don’t know. I can’t remember. But I know his name came up, in the chat. And it wasn’t the CO he was talking to. It was the second in command. It was kind of hinky, really. I remember feeling that even then.”

“How so?”

“The way the ops guy talked. The language he used when he spoke with me by radio. The second in command, I mean. It was enough to make me wonder if these guys were some kind of hybrid unit. Maybe with an Agency component, or even privateers. Like the stuff Bickell was talking about. I guess I’d blotted all of this out.”

He wondered if flying those toy drones this afternoon had stirred up these memories. Watching the images on the goggles had been a little bit like being back in the trailer, sitting in front of the pile of video screens with a stick and rudder at his side.

“You should sleep now. This is wearing you out.”

He said nothing. He tried to remember more about that day, the dialogue, the players. Then Keira moved suddenly on the bed, startling the cat.

“Shit!” she said.

“What?”

“The house. Look out the window.”

Lights were on.

“Barb’s room. Downstairs, too. Fuck. And I left my door open, so she’ll know I’m gone. I should go now.”

“Take Cheryl with you, show her the bandages. Maybe then she’ll—”

“She’ll know. She always knows.”

“Then we’ll just have to live with it.”

“Yeah. We will.” She kissed him, but in a hurry, like a wife trying to get out the door for work. Then she pulled on her robe, belting it as she eased toward the door.

“See you at breakfast?” she asked.

“Yeah, sure. Might as well take the heat with you.”

She smiled and shut the door behind her, leaving Cole alone and uncertain, already wondering what to make of the whole episode. Across the room, the cat yowled, a low strange cry that was almost a growl, and when Cole turned he saw Cheryl arching her back like some Halloween cutout. Eerie.

“Wrong holiday, girl. You’re supposed to know it’s almost Christmas.”

Then he checked the time, which threw him further off balance.

It was exactly 3:50 a.m.