Unmanned

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

MUCH EARLIER THE DAY BEFORE, on a bright and warm Sunday morning, Trip Riggleman was on the verge of admitting defeat. Everyone else he knew was out Christmas shopping, or at some holiday party, on base or off. He was still working, and still getting nowhere. The allotted weekend was nearly gone, and he was no closer to finding Captain Darwin Cole.

He had done his best, he thought. He was particularly proud of the extra care he’d taken in handling the break-in at Airman Zach Lewis’s apartment. The installation of the necessary software on Lewis’s home computer had gone off without a hitch, ensuring that any emails the airman sent from then on would copy to a new and secret account of Riggleman’s. Even the required “borrowing” of a Security Forces uniform and gear, designed to reassure any nosy neighbors that his entry to the Lewis apartment was authorized, had been accomplished with the utmost discretion. Although he wasn’t looking forward to making good on the promised bribe—a bottle of liquor, plus the hacking of an SF sergeant’s ex-girlfriend’s email account.

But in the hours since then, Lewis hadn’t sent a single email, much less any messages to his old buddy, Captain Cole. Nor had Riggleman made progress on any other front. So here he was, mustering his resolve for what General Hagan had mandated would be his last resort—a telephone call to the mysterious outside source known only as Harry Walsh, occupation and affiliation unknown, and, as far as Riggleman had been able to determine, unknowable.

He picked up his cell phone, a virgin model he’d acquired specifically for this call. Then he set it down. He did this twice more before standing and pacing the floor of his office. The entire building was empty except for a few bored security people. Riggleman tried to come up with a valid reason for postponing the call further, but came up empty. General Hagan’s instructions were quite clear: Don’t report back to me on Monday morning without success unless you’ve first contacted he-who-shall-remain-nameless, i.e., Walsh. And don’t wait until the last minute to do it.

Yet Riggleman remained wary, and with good reason. The moment you sought outside help was the moment you began losing control of an investigation. Maybe Hagan didn’t realize that, but Riggleman sure as hell did. Privileged information, once you set it loose, inevitably wandered off to all sorts of unlikely places, some of them hazardous to your employability, or even to your health and well-being.

Also troubling was that he still hadn’t been able to find out a damn thing about Walsh or the phone number. Zilch. Blank slate, top to bottom. Anyone who could pull off such a thorough erasure of personal and professional data was a little daunting. As for the number itself, the area code was for Alaska, but there was no known match for the rest of it.

Yet Walsh was the only way forward. So he again picked up the phone and quickly punched in the number.

Someone picked up on the first ring, but no one said a word.

“Uh, Harry Walsh, please?”

“Whoa now. Are you calling from a secure phone?”

“Well, mostly. A virgin phone, anyway.”

“Your current location?”

“Nellis Air Force Base, outskirts of Vegas.”

“No. Definitely not secure, so let’s keep this short.”

“Sure.”

“Who’s calling? Name and rank, please, assuming you’re not a civvie.”

Riggleman hesitated.

“Now, or I hang up.”

“Okay, okay. This is Air Force Captain Trip Riggleman.” He then stated his unit, all the while chafing at the idea that he had to give his particulars but Walsh didn’t. Already he had placed himself at a disadvantage.

“Who gave you my name and number?”

“Uh…” He was about to mention General Hagan’s name but didn’t feel comfortable doing so. “I’d, uh, rather not say.”

“Then this conversation is over.”

“What?”

“Name?”

“Well, given the position you’ve put me in—”

“You’re in Hagan’s shop, right?”

“Right.”

“Operating under his orders?”

“His chain of command. That’s all I can say for now.”

“Clear enough. But why me?”

“I was ordered—asked, rather—to contact you if I reached a certain point in my work. I’m now at that point.”

“Are you in some kind of jam regarding Air Force personnel of a certain security clearance?”

“A jam?”

“Are you looking for something, or somebody?”

“Yes, exactly.”

Riggleman sensed a relaxing of tension after his answer, or maybe he was just breathing easier now that they seemed to be getting somewhere.

“Which is it, then?”

“Somebody. An ex-pilot from Creech. Flew Predators until about a year and a half ago. A Captain Darwin Cole. The best I can determine—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Stop right there. Hagan’s after this?”

“Look, let’s not—”

“Yes or no.”

He was in too deep not to keep going. “Yes.”

A long sigh, of either bewilderment or anger.

“This pursuit of yours ends now. Immediately. Understand?”

“I’m afraid that’s not my decision to make.”

“This is nonnegotiable, Captain. I can’t make it any clearer for you. You tell that to your general, and you do it today even if you have to yank him off the fifteenth green, or out of his whore’s honey hole. Understand?”

“I, uh, yeah. I think I do.”

“But first you erase my name and number from your memory, and from all your records and databases, along with any record of this phone call. Better still, destroy the phone. The taxpayer probably owes you a new one, anyway.”

“I don’t think that—”

Then Riggleman stopped talking, midsentence. No use. Walsh had ended the call.

His first impulse was to call Hagan. He had the general’s home number, though he had never dared to use it. But what would he say? “Walsh told us to get fucked.” Not much of a plan. Now he was in a worse spot than before. No progress, and spurned by his last resort.

He considered walking over to the officers’ club, although it was not yet eleven. He could have brunch, a beer, maybe two. Sit there among the Christmas lights and tinsel garlands while he regrouped. Think things out. At best, he’d come up with an idea. At worst, the beers would offer solace. But with his luck the only other patrons would be fighter jocks coming off some ungodly shift, and he couldn’t bear the thought of elbowing between them and their shots of Weed just to order a Bud Light.

Riggleman walked over to his window and stared out at the other drab buildings on the base. A high of eighty degrees was predicted for later that day, and here it was nine days before Christmas. Happy fucking holidays.

From across the room on his desk, his laptop emitted two sharp beeps, and he perked up right away. It was the signal he’d set up to notify him whenever Zach Lewis sent an email. Probably nothing, he told himself, hurrying over. A quick shout-out to a friend, or a reply to something from weeks ago.

When Riggleman opened the email his whole outlook changed. The recipient was an unknown Gmail address, and Lewis had sent several attachments. Each was a video file, taking up a pretty hefty chunk of megabytes. But for the moment the best part was the message itself:

Merry fucking Christmas, after all.

So he’d been right all along. Lewis had known something, and his hunch had paid off big-time. But who was this “Lancer dude,” and why was the name so familiar? He remembered now. Lancer had been mentioned in the censored part of the deposition taken from Cole’s CO, Sturdivant, during Cole’s court-martial proceedings. That told him that the brass—maybe Hagan, maybe someone higher—hadn’t wanted him poking into any corners where Lancer might be lurking, whoever he was. He filed away that item, mentally adding it to his collection of leads.

Armed with the new Gmail address, he easily hacked his way into Cole’s account. He then identified the Internet Protocol address for the computer that had been used to set up the account and send its only two emails—one to Zach Lewis, another to some computer in Northern Virginia, an address he set aside for checking later. He then began tracking down the most recent online activity for Cole’s computer, as well as for the various servers and wireless networks the computer had been using. This led him first to Barb Holtzman, a journalist whose name and details he already had. Evidently Cole was using her machine.

The last known server that she or Cole had used was a wireless network operating for a Comcast subscriber named Edward C. Lyttle, with a billing address on Nightingale Road in Oxford, Maryland. The address would be easy enough to pinpoint, but what was Edward Lyttle’s connection to Cole? He Googled the name, only to find that Edward Lyttle was some sort of agribusiness executive, with a full-time residence in upstate New York. Maybe the Oxford address was a vacation home. Had Cole simply broken in, taking squatter’s rights?

Riggleman checked the location on Google Earth. Huge spread, lots of waterfront. Farm fields, a forest, and hardly a neighbor within sight. Not a bad place to hide out. But all that space made it an easy place to infiltrate and surveil, too. Riggleman was already contemplating his next move.

He searched for any overlap between the names Lyttle and Darwin Cole, and he scored right away with a Boston Globe profile of Cole from several years earlier, datelined in Italy and written by Keira Lyttle. From there he quickly established that Keira Lyttle was Edward Lyttle’s daughter.

So there was a third journalist, then. The guy, Steve Merritt, plus Barb Holtzman, who was letting Cole use her computer, and now Lyttle. All three of them wrote about military affairs and national security issues, and he was betting that all three were now holed up together and plotting to do God knows what from that big waterfront property owned by Lyttle’s father on the Maryland Eastern Shore.

Riggleman checked his watch. Not yet noon. With some quick footwork online he could arrange an afternoon flight to Baltimore or Washington that would put him in the area by nine or ten. Well after dark, but for what he had in mind, darkness was desirable. The more darkness, the better, in fact, especially if he was able to procure some night vision equipment. It would be a recon job, plain and simple, and the location seemed to offer ideal space and cover. With any luck Riggleman would be able to secure a positive ID of Cole and the exact coordinates of his whereabouts by the time General Hagan arrived at the office tomorrow morning for his first cup of coffee.

He immediately began setting up the logistics to put his plan in motion. Flight reservations and the rental car were a snap. So was the motel, a motor court out on Route 50 near the Easton bypass. He reserved it for two nights, just in case, then made a list of items to pick up on the base, and then at home, on his way to the airport: Boots, for clomping around in mud and underbrush. A camouflage uniform? Might as well. Plus some greasepaint for glare. Or would that be overkill? He’d take some and decide later. A sidearm, because you just never knew. Fortunately he still had a Beretta M9 in his possession as part of the borrowed SF gear. The SF Taser might also come in handy, so he put that on the list.

Within half an hour he was ready to roll. The last thing he did before heading to the airport was to shoot an email to Hagan, to let the general know about his plans. Immediately he wondered if it was a bad move. Hagan, not exactly the kind of guy who stayed plugged in at all hours, probably wouldn’t see it until Riggleman had completed the job. But what if, for whatever reason, he saw the message sooner and ordered a halt to Riggleman’s op? After all the hinky stuff that had cropped up already, it certainly wouldn’t be out of the question.

Or, worse, what if Harry Walsh, or whoever he was, spent the rest of his Sunday contacting his connections and otherwise moving heaven and earth to stop him. Get this fucker off the case, now! And if Hagan had Walsh’s private number, there was a decent chance Walsh had Hagan’s.

So Riggleman shut down his laptop, shut down his smart phone, and even shut down his new cell phone, the one he had used only once. But he didn’t destroy it as Walsh had demanded. Something told him he might yet need a record of that call, if only for his own legal protection.

For the next twelve hours at least, he was going to be officially out of touch.

He locked his office door and set out for the parking lot. It was time to go operational. Time to get Cole in his sights and shoot him down. Figuratively speaking, of course.