Unmanned

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

TRIP RIGGLEMAN CHECKED his notes a final time, stacked them neatly, and slid them into the folder. There were two copies—one for him, one for General Hagan. He was always a little tense before these review sessions, especially the first one, when it was paramount to show signs of progress.

Today there were additional grounds for concern, including some items that he could mention only with the greatest care and delicacy, if at all. His earlier uneasiness over the unusual nature of this case, which he hoped would disperse as he dug deeper, had only intensified and grown more complex. Something was in the air with this one.

“General Hagan will see you now.”

It was Hagan’s secretary, standing in the open doorway, hair pinned up in a ’do straight out of a 1960s sitcom.

“Thanks.”

Riggleman stood, checked the creases of his trousers, the neatness of his shirttail, the position of his spectacles on the bridge of his nose. Everything in place, everything ready. Except for his stomach, which grumbled in warning, a product of nerves and three cups of coffee.

As he entered the office, a squadron of jets roared over the building. The floor trembled, the windowpanes buzzed in their frames. It had been going on all morning at Nellis, and the whole base reeked of jet fuel. Even in here, with the air-conditioning tuned to a crisp 68 on an unseasonably warm morning, there was the slightest whiff of the runway.

“Sir.”

He snapped off a salute, which Hagan returned from behind the desk. The general broke into a slow smile of anticipation as Riggleman placed a copy of his notes on the corner of the desk and slid into a facing chair.

From experience, Riggleman knew there would be no small talk, not for a while yet. Nor would the general offer food or drink. Hagan’s style was to get right down to business. They waited for his secretary to shut the door, then the general cleared his throat.

“What do you have for me, Captain?”

Riggleman knew better than to offer the most important material first. Hagan liked him to save the best for last, and, like any armchair detective, he relished a blow-by-blow of how his favorite sleuth was proceeding.

There was an art to Riggleman’s spiel. A smattering of geekspeak, a few of his own terms. It never hurt to show off a little, and it gave him license to resort to bullshit at points where the material was thin—and there were certainly a few of those points this time.

Cole was proving to be an elusive quarry, a complicated man. A fuckup, yes, or he wouldn’t have washed out to begin with, but a fellow who seemed to be proceeding with caution and deliberation. Not that Riggleman wouldn’t eventually find him, as long as General Hagan gave him the necessary time and resources. And that was part of his job today, to convince the general that he’d earned the chance to finish. That made it all the more necessary for Riggleman to present his findings professionally, smartly, in a manner that would hold Hagan’s attention to the end. He drew a deep breath and began.

“First I took a fresh look at the preliminary findings—credit records, phone records, airport security footage,” he told Hagan. “The legwork was solid but incomplete. I expanded the credit search to include his in-laws and anything under his children’s names. His parents are deceased, but I checked their names as well in case he might have used an older identity. Nothing. He was an only child, so there were no siblings. I did the same sort of sweep for phone records or any other sort of activity that might have raised a red flag. Still nothing.

“I took the available security footage from Vegas International Airport and from Logan and the Portland Jetport and ran it with some video enhancement software and a few facial recognition tools, using images from two fairly recent photos of Cole that were on file with the DOD.

“When that came up empty, I used the same tools to analyze video footage from the identical time period for four additional regional airports here and in the Northeast, plus three Amtrak stations, two local bus stations, and multiple toll facilities on all major highways leading out of Vegas and in the corridor between Boston and Moultonborough, New Hampshire.

“There is very little facial capture at the tollbooths, although sometimes people without E-ZPass capability will lean out their windows enough for a pickup. Admittedly a long shot, but no luck. Most of the footage from the train and bus stations was of such poor quality that it was virtually useless. I did sample a few random public rest stop facilities on theoretical eastward routes for the days in question, but at some point you’re dealing with the law of diminishing returns.”

“Understood. Continue.”

He could tell that Hagan was loving it—the thoroughness, the tech at Riggleman’s fingertips, his ease in employing it. In a weird way, the general also seemed to be enjoying the apparent elusiveness of their quarry. Or maybe Riggleman was projecting his own admiration. However Cole had proceeded, he seemed to have shrunk his footprint to the bare minimum. Not off the grid, perhaps, but close to it.

“All of Cole’s current and past email addresses have been inactive for more than a year. Complete radio silence under all known cyber-identities. So I used data mining software to forage all recently created accounts for Gmail, Hotmail, AOL, and other major servers. I swept that material searching for anything that might allude to his own name, his children’s names, or any of his known Air Force nicknames, such as Monkey Man.”

“His Viper call sign,” Hagan said with a hint of fondness. “Remember it well.”

“I focused especially on Internet signatures from Nevada. Again, nothing. I augmented this with a data sweep of message boards, chat rooms, and discussion forums with any topics related to DOD policy on UAVs, Afghanistan, Air Force issues, you name it. A few suspicious entries turned up, but all of them were accounted for.”

Hagan nodded, still a captive audience. But Riggleman had arrived at the delicate portion of his presentation, material that was tricky not so much because of what he’d discovered—precious little—but because of how the process had unfolded.

“Personal interviews were next,” he said. “I began with Owen Bickell, the former CIA man. He declined to be interviewed in person but agreed to speak over a secure line, which I arranged.”

“He was cooperative, I hope?”

Riggleman paused, weighing his words.

“Yes and no.”

“No?”

Hagan had nearly come up out of his chair.

“He was cordial and pleasant. He fully acknowledged Cole’s visit, and he candidly discussed their previous relationship of a few years ago, when Captain Cole trained him and two other Agency officers in UAV operations and techniques, out at Creech.”

“Which we already knew.”

“Yes, sir. But when I asked about the nature of their recent conversation, he referred me to his superiors.”

“Superiors? Hell, he’s retired. He has no superiors.”

“Yes, sir. Nonetheless.”

“Do you think this was some kind of legal precaution, a way to cover his ass until you produced the necessary paperwork to authorize him to speak?”

“No, sir. He made it clear he has no intention of discussing this matter with us under any circumstances. He said any sort of comment would be up to the Agency.”

“Well, hell, did he at least offer an Agency contact?”

“No, sir.”

“No?”

“No name. No number. He didn’t even advise me as to which department or desk to contact.”

“Well, hell’s bells. What in the blue fucking blazes kind of help was that?”

“I posed a similar question, sir. No less forcefully, but in less colorful vernacular.”

“And?”

Riggleman consulted his notes.

“He responded that this was, quote, ‘an Agency matter currently subject to internal review, involving matters of a highly sensitive nature with regard to current and continuing operations, as well as confidential sources and methods.’ Unquote.”

“Do you think that was his way of saying they think Cole’s a spy?”

“That’s one interpretation. It could also mean they still consider him a reliable source and want to keep him that way. For all we know, they’ve reached some sort of working agreement with him, which could also help explain why his movements have been so hard to track.”

“Hell’s fucking bells. That’s all we need.” Hagan ran his hands through his hair.

“In any event, sir, Bickell maintained that the entirety of their conversation would remain classified.”

“Of course it’s classified. All this shit is classified. But you’re cleared. I’m cleared.”

“I reminded him of that. Nonetheless.”

“Goddamn those fucks!” The general was red in the face. He looked like a street fighter seeking someone to slug. He picked up the desk phone, held it aloft for a second, then set it roughly back in its cradle.

“I’ll follow up on this,” he said, nodding vigorously. “This will not be the end of it.”

Riggleman wasn’t so sure that that was a smart idea, but couldn’t think of a diplomatic way to say so.

“Yes, sir.”

“Where were we?”

“My next stop was at Creech, to speak with Cole’s old buddies, his former CO, his sensor.”

And here, as far as Riggleman was concerned, was where things had again felt strange, the same way he’d felt when the official transcripts of the court-martial had landed on his desk so speedily, yet with an artfully concealed gap of twenty-two missing pages.

At Creech he’d expected to run the usual gauntlet of PAOs and legal officers. Instead, an MP escorted him straightaway to an empty staff room reserved for his interview sessions. It was equipped with a tape recorder, a legal pad and pencils, a full thermos of hot coffee, a basket of sweet rolls from the officers’ mess, and a printed timetable of all scheduled visitors—everyone he’d requested, plus two volunteers. Each of them obediently trooped in to see him, right on schedule, most of them with smiles on their faces. And there was none of the usual checking of watches or interruptions by impatient COs to say, as was often their custom, “Son, I hope you’re about to wrap this up, ’cause we’ve got a war to fight.”

Maybe Hagan had smoothed the way. Maybe someone else had. And maybe he was foolish to regard this as a problem instead of a blessing. But there it was, all the same. Doors were being opened before he even knocked, and he had yet to find out why.

Earlier that morning, Riggleman had debated whether to mention these suspicions. Now, in studying the general’s face, he concluded that doing so would be a bad idea. Instead he proceeded straight to his findings.

“No one had any particularly helpful leads when it came to Captain Cole’s current whereabouts. But the most interesting of these contacts, sir—in fact, to my mind the only interesting one—was his sensor, Airman Zach Lewis.”

“How so?”

“He was very protective, very reluctant to say anything. He was the only one who demonstrated that attitude, the only one who was less than cooperative.”

“Well, they were fellow crewmen for almost a year. It’s a bond, I’d imagine, like the bond between a pilot and his wingman.”

“I’m aware of that sir. This was different.”

“Not having been a pilot, I’m not sure you’re in position to know that.”

Riggleman felt himself flush. So there it was again, the same old class distinction, the same old shit. You’re not really full-blooded Air Force if you’ve never been a pilot, the stratospheric royalty, the jockocracy. Well, fuck that. He gripped the sides of his chair and pushed on.

“With all due respect, sir, if you’ll let me explain my reasoning.”

“Proceed.” Hagan leaned back, frowning, skeptical.

“At first he was fairly relaxed. A little adversarial, but nothing out of the ordinary. Everything changed the moment I asked whether he’d had any recent contact with Captain Cole. From that point on, no matter how I phrased the question—personal contact, by phone, by email, by letter—he began employing classic avoidance and evasion techniques. For every denial he would look off at some point over my shoulder, or down at his lap. He was moving his hands awkwardly, blinking rapidly. He was lying, sir. They’ve been in touch, I’d bet money on it. And if I had to guess, it was contact with a direct bearing on whatever is at the heart of Captain Cole’s disappearance.”

Hagan leaned forward, interested once again.

“Then pull his phone records. His email.”

“I did, sir. Nothing.”

“Well, you see?” Hagan frowned and leaned back.

“No, sir. It’s not that simple. Airman Lewis had recently erased all contents of the Trash folder in his personal email account.”

“Nothing unusual about that. It’s good op-sec. I must do that once a week.”

“Agreed, sir. But he’d gone to rather extraordinary lengths, sir.”

“Explain.”

“Well, when most of us empty the Trash folder, it may empty the folder, but it doesn’t wipe those emails from the hard drive.”

“No?”

“No, sir. So I remotely checked the contents of his hard drive, scanning for whatever it was he’d been so eager to get rid of—on the very morning of our interview, I might add.”

“And?”

“Nothing. And while I can’t verify this without actual physical possession of the hard drive, from all signs it would appear that he has wiped it clean in a manner suggesting a level of technical knowledge not normally possessed by casual users like Airman Lewis.”

“How do you know he’s a casual user?”

“His Internet usage profile, sir. Online history, browsing patterns, everything. None of it suggests that he has the expertise to clean those emails from his system. Not without someone else telling him how to do it.”

“So you think Cole told him how?”

“Or whoever Cole’s working with.”

“Bickell?”

“Possibly. Among others. As you’ll soon see. In addition, anyone with that level of security consciousness would almost invariably erase his browsing history as a matter of routine as well, but Airman Lewis left his intact.”

“I see. Interesting, I’ll grant you, but it’s not exactly conclusive.”

“Agreed, sir. But I would argue that at the very least it makes him worthy of continued scrutiny.”

“So go to it, then.”

“It’s just that, at this point I may need to use some, well, extralegal means.”

“Well, hell, not to ask the wrong question, but hasn’t that already been the case?”

“Yes, sir. But not to the extent I’m proposing. This would require a tweak that could be effected only by gaining direct physical access to his personal computer, sir. Preferably while he’s on shift. And it would leave behind a distinctive programming footprint, possibly traceable by a qualified investigator.”

“Let’s not sugarcoat it, Captain. You’re proposing a B and E?”

“Preferably under some sort of SF cover.”

Hagan frowned. He puffed his cheeks and slowly blew out the air. “I hate to complicate matters unnecessarily.”

“My sentiments as well, sir.”

“Would the Security Forces have to be in the loop on this in any way?”

“Absolutely not, sir.”

“Still. It’s a delicate affair, doing it this way.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And because of that, I’m not going to authorize in any way, shape, or form your pursuit of this course of action.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What I’m going to do instead is to instruct you to use your own best judgment and discretion and proceed in whatever manner you see fit. Understood?”

“Perfectly, sir.” All too well, in fact. Hagan was covering his ass, in case he ever had to testify under oath to either a court-martial or a congressional investigation.

“Okay, then. There’s more, I hope.”

“Yes, sir. One last item. Our best breakthrough to date.”

This finally coaxed a smile out of Hagan.

“Proceed.”

“The car, sir. The one in the aerial surveillance photo. It’s generated some promising leads.”

Hagan’s eyes lit up.

“I thought there was no tag visible?”

“There wasn’t, even with digital enhancement. Not even a partial. But the model was clear, a 2011 Chevy Cruze, silver, standard issue tires, which matched the tread pattern I found at the scene. Four different rental companies serving LVI use that make and model, so I checked every rental of a 2011 Cruze during the three days leading up to and including the date of the photo. There were seventeen in all. Based on footprints I found between his trailer and where the car must have been parked, I focused first on female renters. Only three of the seventeen were women.”

“Good.”

“But none of them came up as a suitable match. There was a pharmaceutical sales rep from Tulsa, a girls’ getaway weekend group from Bakersfield, California, and a great-aunt out of Spokane who’d flown in to see her niece and nephew. None of them even recorded enough total mileage to make the trip out to the trailer and back. That left the fourteen men. Four stood out as possibilities due to occupations alone, but I was able to immediately eliminate two because they turned in their cars at least an hour before the time signature on the surveillance photo.”

“Excellent.” Hagan looked as pleased as he had all morning.

“That left Wilson Corey, age thirty-one, former Marine and Iraq War veteran now employed as a corporate security officer for Rimbaud Solutions, a developer of data mining software from Palo Alto, California; and Stephen Merritt, age thirty-eight, a freelance journalist with a specialty in national security reporting, from Baltimore, Maryland.”

“A reporter? That’s worse than a goddamn spy.”

“Yes, sir. And I’m afraid he’s the one. Corey’s business in town checked out as legit. So I focused more on Merritt, and when I ran the Visa card he used to pay for the Chevy Cruze, I got a hit on a second car rental two days later at Logan Airport in Boston. That was only a day before Captain Cole visited Owen Bickell in Moultonborough, New Hampshire.”

“I’ll be damned. Bingo. So you think they’re traveling together?”

“By car, at least. Cole never showed up on any flight manifests, or on any of the security at either LVI or Logan. Meaning they probably linked up somewhere near Boston.”

“So where is this reporter fellow now? Can we bring him in?”

“It’s not that easy, sir. He has no fixed address at the moment, and he seems to be moving around a lot.”

“Well, who’s his employer?”

“Up to a year and a half ago it was the Baltimore Sun, and he was living in an apartment on Clement Street, South Baltimore. Then he took a buyout, began freelancing. Three months ago he moved out of the Clement Street apartment, but left no forwarding address.”

“None? What about family?”

“He’s divorced. No children, and no family in the immediate area. His parents are deceased. He has two sisters, one in Chicago, the other in Plano, Texas.”

“He must be paying his bills from somewhere.”

“He switched to electronic banking at the time of his move, so he can pay from anywhere.”

“Well, hell. Maybe he’s the spy.”

“I contacted his ex-wife, living in Takoma Park, Maryland. She hung up on me. I got in touch with some former colleagues at The Sun. No one seemed to know where he was living, but all of them believed he was still around. One thought he might have shacked up with another Sun reporter who’d taken a more recent buyout, at about the same time he vacated the Clement Street address. Her name’s Barbara Holtzman, age thirty-nine. She also covers national security issues, and as recently as last year she was accredited to cover coalition forces in Afghanistan.”

“Two of ’em. Jesus Christ.” Hagan shook his head.

“She owns a house in the Middle River area just east of Baltimore, but as of two days ago she’d placed an order to have her phone and electricity disconnected. Neither the power company nor the phone company had a forwarding address.”

“Fuck. A step ahead of us. You think they know you’re on to them?”

“Doubtful. I’ve kept a very low profile. I used a cover for the calls to their colleagues, and only made contact in the past day and a half, and by then she’d already put in the orders to shut off her utilities.”

“So where does that leave us?”

“I ran their vehicle records. Merritt owns a 2001 Honda Civic, Holtzman a 2006 Toyota Prius. Both are registered in Maryland, and both are associated with E-ZPass accounts with the Maryland DOT. Yesterday afternoon at”—he paused to check his notes—“at five eighteen p.m., both cars were recorded making E-ZPass payments at the toll plaza for the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, heading east.”

“Away from Baltimore.”

“Yes, sir. My assumption is that they’re still somewhere on the Maryland Eastern Shore, although they also could have gone north from there, toward Delaware, or south into Tidewater Virginia. The latter location is where Captain Cole grew up, although his parents are deceased and he no longer has relatives living in the vicinity. They also could have returned undetected to Baltimore, since there is no toll plaza for the westbound crossing. But I do know that, as of an hour ago, neither car had recorded a further hit on the E-ZPass network, which means that unless they’ve changed their means of transportation, they’re probably within a relatively short drive of where they crossed yesterday.”

“Good. But do you think Cole is still with them?”

“There is always the chance that they’ve parted ways. But the coincidence of Merritt’s location with rental cars in both locations where Cole was present suggests that he is likely to be continuing to provide transportation for him. I think it’s a safe bet they’re still traveling in tandem.”

“But for what purpose?”

“Some sort of journalistic exposé would be my guess.”

“Mine, too, and that’s a serious problem. Most of Cole’s work—hell, pretty much all of it—was classified. If he’s telling all, then he’s become a danger to national security.”

“Yes, sir.”

“That means we need more than what we’ve got, and we need it now. You’ve done good work, Captain, but it’s not sufficient.”

“I agree, sir. And that prompts me to inquire about the possible availability of another tool.”

“Yes?”

“UAVs, sir.”

“In civilian air space? Over Maryland?”

“It’s already done routinely, sir, especially on the Eastern Shore. Training flights from Air Force bases and the like. We’d just be expanding our range a bit. As long as we notified local Civil Air authorities I doubt it would be a problem, or would even attract much notice. And our cover would be easy—a training exercise.”

“The notification alone would attract unwanted attention.”

“Possibly, sir. But not nearly as much as that Global Hawk drone that crashed near Salisbury, Maryland, just a few months ago. That was also a training flight. Or that was the official version, anyway.”

“Are you doubting the official version, Captain?”

“No, sir.”

“Too risky. Even if we got approval, we’d be looking for what, a needle in a haystack?”

“You’d be surprised what sort of filtering and ID capabilities you can wring out of state-of-the-art cameras and the newest image recognition software, especially if you can program in image data for a car’s specific make, model, and color. These are the same tools scientists are using to pick out endangered seals from all the other black dots on the Arctic ice cap, sir.”

This at least made Hagan pause. But only for a second or two. Then he shook his head.

“No. I’m not ready to go there. Especially when we’re not even sure they’re still on the Eastern Shore.”

“Yes, sir. Although one other piece of evidence suggests that they are still there, sir.”

“Yes?”

“It concerns Steve Merritt. In searching various records and databases I uncovered a tenuous connection to the DOD contractor IntelPro. Probably a little unconventional, for a journalist, but I guess it wasn’t all that surprising because he’s done several past stories referencing them, or some of their people, one of them as recently as six months ago. But it was intriguing to me for two reasons.”

Hagan didn’t look particularly pleased, but he remained silent, so Riggleman kept going.

“For one thing, the company’s training facility is on the Maryland Eastern Shore. They sometimes host journalists for various dog and pony shows, so that could be a potential destination, at least for the journalists. Find them, and we probably find Cole. Secondly, as I’m sure you’re already aware, sir, IntelPro has connections to several aspects of the Air Force UAV program, particularly in overseas theaters. That would be another reason that Captain Cole might seek them out.”

“That’s a dead end.”

“Excuse me, sir?” Had Riggleman heard him correctly?

“I said that’s a dead end. It’s not worth pursuing.” Hagan looked down at his desk, pushing some stray papers into a pile. “I’m…” He paused, searching for a word. “I’m acquainted with some of their people. Or with some of their methods, to put it more accurately. And if Captain Cole or, well, anyone from the Air Force attempted to establish any sort of unauthorized contact with them, they’d let us know. Immediately. So you can consider that base covered.”

“Yes, sir. But if he’s using an alias—”

“Besides, Captain. You already have an additional tool at your disposal. The one I gave you last time.”

Riggleman was pretty sure he knew what the general was referring to, but it wasn’t a topic he was eager to pursue, especially not when he was already feeling rattled. Never before had Hagan told him that an avenue of inquiry was off-limits. It was yet another first for this strange investigation, and now he was about to be asked to telephone a source who, try as he might, he knew virtually nothing about.

Riggleman had spent two hours the previous day searching for any information at all about the name and number that the general had given him at their initial consultation. He had come up empty. Completely. That, too, had never happened before, and he was not at all comfortable with the idea of seeking help from someone who was practically invisible.

“Well, come on, Captain, surely you know what I’m talking about?”

“Harry Walsh, you mean.”

“No need to say the name aloud. We’re both aware of it. But I believe the time has come to put his services to use.”

“Unless—”

“Unless what, Captain?”

“Well, I do have a few other possibilities. A couple of eggs I’ve been sitting on that are just about due to hatch.”

Actually, he had nothing of the sort. He’d briefed the general on everything he’d learned and every stratagem he’d employed to find out more. But maybe with a little extra time he could come up with a new lead. Anything seemed preferable to seeking help by calling into a void, an abyss, a deep shadow in which almost anything might be hiding.

Hagan thought it over for a second, folding his hands on the desk. Then he nodded.

“All right then. I’ll give you the weekend, Captain. But you’d better have some results for me by first thing Monday morning, preferably conclusive results. Otherwise, you’d better have already contacted the source we, uh, previously discussed. And I don’t want you waiting until the last minute before you see me to do so. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Get moving, then.”

“Yes, sir.”

He left, feeling more pressure than ever.