Unmanned

CHAPTER TWENTY

MOVING DAY.

At dusk they drove east, joining a caravan of headlights streaming across the Bay Bridge. Cole gazed down through the trusswork at container ships, gliding beneath them like sparkling cakes on inky water flecked by whitecaps. He was riding with Barb in her Prius, the radio tuned to NPR. Steve followed closely in his Honda, a two-car convoy. A team, however fractious.

Cole was reminded of how he used to feel heading out on a deployment—excited, a little daunted, but comforted by the shared sense of mission, the knowledge that everyone around him was going through exactly the same thing. He missed that. It wasn’t that he enjoyed going off to war, or leaving his family behind. But there was something to be said for the isolation of a foreign posting, the hermetic life among fellow warriors who were cleared to hear your stories, your operational secrets, just as you were cleared to hear theirs. You ate and slept with the same problems, obsessions, and insecurities.

The Predator assignment at Creech had lacked all that. You came and went from drone warfare the way you would with any other job, commuting home to ball games and cookouts, to bill paying and homework questions, the nightly debate about what to watch on TV. A quiet dinner with Carol was always a nice break in the routine—sex, even better—as long as she wasn’t preoccupied with the children, or chores, or talking on her cell to her family in Saginaw. Not that you could ever say much about your job even when she had time to listen. Events at Creech stayed locked up, bubbling inside your brain until it was time to return, back to that pixelated world where ghostly characters lived on silent screens, awaiting the verdict of your fingertips.

“You okay?”

It was Barb. She’d turned off the radio and they were across the bridge, less than an hour from their destination.

“Just thinking about the job. The old one.”

“Flying drones?”

“We never called ’em that. Preds. UAVs. Whatever.”

“Some of the stuff I’ve read makes it sound pretty terrible.”

Was it? The job itself? Or was it the back-and-forth that he’d hated more? Entry and reentry, with never enough time for proper decompression. A mental case of the bends that had eventually doubled him over in pain. And with no real flying, which would have at least offered some release. No flying at all. Just a seat in a trailer, rump to vinyl to floor.

Still. The job had its charms, he could still recall them, even in his current detachment. Having had more than a year to think about it he now realized that, yes, there were parts of it that he’d liked, that had even been a little addictive.

“Not always,” he said.

“No? How so?”

“It was important. It wasn’t fun, and it sure as hell was no thrill a minute. But you were up there seeing shit that nobody else saw.”

“Godlike?”

He smiled.

“A little. But it’s more complicated than that.”

She drove on, waiting for more. If it had been Keira, he probably would have continued. But this felt more like an interview than a conversation, so he stared at the road and held his silence. To their right, a strip mall. To their left, a marsh. A vee formation of geese passed overhead.

“Speed trap,” he said, spotting a patrol car parked on the grassy median dead ahead. A state trooper stood by the car, aiming his radar gun. Yet another camera, relentless.

“Shit.” Barb slowed down, glancing nervously at the speedometer. “I was only doing sixty, we should be okay. Maybe he’ll ticket that rube in the monster pickup that blew by us a second ago.”

“Saw him. Reminded me of my dad.”

She didn’t answer that. Her dad probably never drove a pickup. A few seconds later she turned the radio back on, but the public station had faded. She pressed search and landed on hip-hop, then country-western, then a glitzy pop star screeching her lungs out. She turned it off.

A horn tooted. It was Steve, pulling up on their left. He made an eating motion with his right hand and mouthed the words, “I’m hungry.”

“Damn, Steve, just call me on the cell, you Luddite.”

But she played along, tucking in behind as Steve zoomed ahead, then signaled for a turnoff at the next interchange. They looped back across an overpass to an old-style restaurant next to a motor hotel, with a long counter like in a diner, and a menu to match—meat loaf, crab cakes, club sandwiches, fried chicken. They dug in, seated three in a row along the counter, which wasn’t conducive to talking. Cole overstuffed himself on grease and a milkshake, and within minutes of pulling back onto the highway he sank drowsily into his seat and nodded off.

He didn’t awaken until the tires were bouncing off the pavement onto a narrow gravel lane. Steve was still in front, the Honda throwing a dust cloud into the beams of their headlights. Cedars hugged the lane from either side, brushing the doors like a car wash. Steve’s brake lights flashed.

“This must be the gate,” Barb said. “Not even closed, much less locked.”

“Maybe she wanted us to be able to get in.”

“Still.” They rolled through. “Doesn’t even look like there is a lock.”

“That’s what hardware stores are for.”

“If she’s even been to one. You like her, don’t you? I can tell by the way you always defend her.”

“I don’t know about always. Don’t you like her?”

“Sure. But you know what I mean. You should be careful. Her track record with men is not the greatest. Certain men have been known to die for her sins.”

So there it was again.

“What’s the story behind that?”

“It’s a long one. Maybe she should be the one to tell you.”

“Then maybe you and Steve should stop bringing it up.”

“Point taken. But there you go again.”

He was glad she couldn’t see him blush in the dark.

They emerged from the cedars into open country. The moon was up, and even at night the view was impressive. Fields stretched off into the distance on either side. Long rows of corn stubble, no houses in sight. Out toward the horizon were lines of bare trees. Dead ahead, a forest and another field, with the roofline of a large house and a couple of outbuildings looming against a distant sparkle of water. Lights were on in a few of the windows, but it was still quite a way off. The driveway seemed to roll on forever. They’d already gone half a mile and didn’t seem a whole lot closer.

“Oh. My. God. Look at this place,” Barb said. The glow of the dashboard light gave her eyes a fierceness Cole had never noticed by day. “Now this is money. Big money.”

“Looks like land to me.”

“Same thing down here, especially if it’s waterfront. Cheney and Rumsfeld both have places near here, you know.”

“That ought to keep the goblins away.”

“Or attract a whole new breed of ’em.”

“Whoa! Speaking of goblins—”

A huge owl flapped across the driveway just ahead, caught momentarily in their beams as it pursued a mouse or mole, or maybe they’d startled it from its perch.

“Double, double, toil and trouble,” Barb said. She laughed, giddy. “So I guess this is what’s it like to really have it.”

“You sound resentful.”

“Not at all. Envious? You bet. But not resentful. Not as long as I get to stay awhile. I’ve decided to pretend I’m attending a writers’ retreat. Cocktails before dinner. Therapy runs before breakfast. Bonbons and soap operas for lunch. Maybe we can hire a masseuse.”

Cole smiled, and noticed that the fierceness was gone from her eyes. Every time he started to dislike Barb, she won him back, usually by not trying so hard to have an edge.

They parked and unloaded in the dark until a porch light flashed on. Steve was about to knock on the door when Keira opened it.

“Welcome!” she said, as they filed in past her. She carried a stack of folded linens that smelled fresh from the dryer, and she was flushed.

“Beautiful spread, Keira.” Barb sounded like she meant it. She leaned over and gave Keira a peck on the cheek. “Thanks for having us.”

“Did I see a boathouse on the way in, with a couple of kayaks?” Steve sounded as excited as a kid at summer camp.

“There’s a day sailer, too, if you want to launch it. Although the sail hasn’t been out of the bag in years, so I have no idea what kind of shape it’s in.”

Cole stayed quiet, but he couldn’t help feeling caught up in the excitement. It was like arriving at a resort, even though they had plenty of work to do. The house was newer than he’d expected. Twenty years old, if he had to guess. He wondered if her parents had torn down some older farmhouse to build it. It was a solid colonial, two stories, with three upstairs gables along a slate roof, and working shutters on mullioned windows. Conventional, but seemingly solid. It would have to be to withstand some of the storms that blew in off the Bay. The back wall was no more than twenty yards from the shoreline, and he’d noticed that out by the water most of trees were stunted on the windward side, just like on mountaintops and blustery capes. Even now there was a stiff breeze, with a raw brackish tang.

The view from the foyer was of the living room and a den off to the left, with a hallway beyond. The furnishings were neither showy nor garish, but to Cole’s untrained eye everything from the light fixtures to the curtains looked like top quality, if a bit bland. Off-white walls, oriental rugs, silky upholstery. There was a big fireplace with a grand oaken mantelpiece in a natural finish, which faced a massive earth-tone couch. Oil landscapes, mostly tidewater scenes, hung from the walls.

“Wow,” Steve said. “Do we get a tour?”

“If you want. I thought you might want to get your bags squared away first.”

“Sure. How many bedrooms?”

“Four. Not counting the one out in the pool house.”

“There’s a pool house?” Barb asked.

“It’s the de facto guest house. For longer-term visitors.”

Steve hefted up his bag. “Where do you want us?”

“Upstairs. I thought I’d put Cole and you on the west side, Barb and me on the east.”

“And Colonel Mustard in the study with a candlestick,” Barb said.

Steve gave her a look. She made a face at him. “Sorry. This is fun. The whole idea of being here is fun.”

“You know,” Steve said, “maybe Captain Cole would like some extra privacy. Would it be okay if he bunked in the pool house?”

The suggestion caught Cole off guard. He immediately took it as a snub, and he knew that reacting against it would make it seem like more of one. He’d already picked up his duffel and taken a step toward the stairs, but now he reversed course, stepping toward the door.

“I’ll be comfortable anywhere you want me.”

Keira seemed taken aback, but she didn’t challenge it. Maybe after getting her way on the move she felt she owed Steve a few smaller victories. So it was left to Barb to speak up, and as usual she wasn’t shy.

“Getting a little prickly about living with the help, Steve?” It wasn’t clear from her tone whether she was joking.

“Hey, I just thought that he might like—”

“It’s no problem,” Cole said, wanting to head off any further disagreement. “I’m fine with it.”

Steve had sounded sincere. Maybe he was. But their arguments were becoming too much like the ones his parents used to have, which made him feel about fifteen. He continued toward the door to signal that the matter was settled.

“I’ll get you the key,” Keira said meekly.

He looked over at Steve, who seemed crestfallen, embarrassed by his faux pas. But the deed was done, so Cole hefted his bag and headed back out the door. The pool house was flush against the woods, some forty yards from the left side of the house. The pool itself was covered by a tarpaulin stretched as tight as a trampoline, with fallen leaves on top. The furnishings inside were comparable to what he’d already seen, and if anything, the pool house was probably a few years newer, although the air was musty and the heat was off. Keira brought along linens and a pair of towels.

“The thermostat’s here, by the door,” she said. “It shouldn’t take long to heat up. Let me make the bed for you.”

“I can do that.”

“You sure?”

“Really. It’s okay. I’m fine with it.”

Her shoulders sagged.

“Here.” She handed him a pair of keys. “If it’s privacy he wants for you, then you’re the only one who gets a key for this place. Plus one for the main house, of course. I hope we’ll be seeing you at breakfast.”

The key for the main house looked brand-new.

“You get these today?”

She nodded.

“Four copies.”

“Did you get a lock for the gate? Barb was already wondering.”

“Shit. Knew I was forgetting something.”

“I can take care of it tomorrow, if I can borrow a car. I’m meeting Sharpe up on Route 50, out past Easton.”

“Steve told me. Sharpe sounds like a piece of work. But I guess we should be glad he’s being careful. Any idea what he’s cooked up for tomorrow?”

“None. A bunch of geeks doing weird stuff together, by the sound of it. Probably worthless, but if I humor him maybe it’ll pay off.”

She touched his arm, her fingers warmer than anything in the room.

“See? You’re contributing, and you’ll keep contributing. It’s why you don’t really belong out here, so don’t feel like a stranger, and don’t act like one. Breakfast, okay? Don’t drift away on us.”

“Sure.”

Maybe she was worried he would drink out here, or maybe she just liked him. It was also possible that she would say such things to any guest, simply because it was in her nature to do so. Whatever the reason, she was right on point. It would be a bad idea to drift. He had purposely left behind his last bottle of Weed, still a quarter full. The craving lost a little more of its edge every day, although it was usually sharpest around this time of day, a few hours after nightfall. Backsliding would be an easy choice out here, so he would need to be doubly careful. Tomorrow he would probably drive past several liquor stores, just as he had on the trip to see Sharpe. Each was a temptation, but he’d resisted. He must maintain discipline. Pit stops only for the hardware store, to buy a lock, and for lunch. Maybe he’d be better off packing a sandwich.

Cole showered, which calmed him. Later, after a walk, he thought of Keira as he climbed beneath the crisp new sheets, which didn’t exactly help him settle down. He tried another tack, thinking about Carol, his children, but that was even worse. He got out of bed. What the hell, it was still pretty early. There were some books on a shelf, cheap paperbacks mostly, but none captured his interest. It was damn quiet out here, with only the wind in the trees for company. He opened the curtains on the bedroom window, with a view of the moonlit woods. Bare limbs and underbrush, the icy pinprick of winter constellations. At ten o’clock he climbed back into bed.

He wondered whether he should set the alarm on his watch, but the peace of repose was beginning to get the better of him, so he stayed put, watching the night. There was life out there in the trees, he knew, restless and prowling but posing no threat to him. Footfall of deer and fox. Wing beat of owl and hawk. The forest primeval. Those were the thoughts that finally dragged him under.

Three hours later he sat up in bed, wide awake. He had a vague impression that something had bumped against a wall, but soon realized that everything was still. Maybe a limb had blown off a tree. But now he was restless. He remembered seeing an entire library of books in some built-in shelves in the main house, so he decided to go look for something to read. In the back of his mind was also the knowledge that somewhere over in the house there was probably a liquor cabinet. And if everyone had already gone upstairs to bed, well…

No, don’t even think about it.

He pulled on his clothes and picked his way across the dark lawn, negotiating a winding path between boxwoods and juniper bushes. The door was locked but he had the new key from Keira. He made as little noise as possible, figuring they’d all be jumpy on their first night. Easing the door shut behind him, he heard a murmur of voices from the back. Dim light spilled from a doorway. It sounded like Barb and Steve. He moved toward them, stopping just out of view. They were in the very room where he’d seen the books and, he now admitted to himself, a cabinet that had seemed the likeliest home for any alcohol. There’d been a tray on top with a set of glasses and an ice bucket.

Out of the question now, although he supposed it would still be okay to interrupt long enough to grab a book. He was close enough to make out some of their words, and just as he was about to step into the open he heard his own name, then Keira’s, which stopped him.

He could only decipher enough for a vague sense of the conversation, but their tone wasn’t happy. The word “smitten” jumped out at him from Barb, and he supposed it was true enough, if a little embarrassing. What was more disturbing was the idea of factions forming and hardening, rifts and wrinkles that could create bigger problems later on.

Cole sensed that he had altered their chemistry for the worse, and it dismayed him. He had seen these dynamics before—in poorly managed fighter squadrons, and in flight school, closed societies where everyone was hyperconscious of the pecking order and someone was always scheming to change it. The results were never favorable. He caught a whiff of Scotch, which only sharpened his craving.

Steve said something about Keira’s book agent, another topic that didn’t bode well. An interval of dark laughter followed, like the kind you’d hear after a joke told at someone else’s expense. Then the clink of ice as someone set down a tumbler on a tabletop.

“Good night,” Steve announced clearly.

Cole quickly backed into the deeper darkness of the foyer, where he remained while Steve’s footsteps headed up the stairway toward the bedrooms. Barb, the night owl, had presumably remained behind.

He wondered if she was thinking of those photos she’d left behind, the terrified boys in their bloodstained clothes. If his own experience was any guide, she didn’t really need the pictures to remind her. Those images would never disappear, or even fade. The photos, he knew, were only her way of telling others what she’d endured, and was enduring.

He heard another tumbler being set down on a table, and the sound of liquid gurgling from a bottle, the rattle of ice, and then a deep, mournful sigh.

Cole departed the house as quietly as possible and threaded his way back to his room.

It was another two hours before he was able to sleep.