Dan Fesperman - Unmanned

“You saw it? You saw his name ?”

“Not just saw it. Recognized it. I can even describe him for you. I’d helped train him, earlier that year.”

Blood rushed to the end of Steve’s fingertips, the same way it did whenever he was about to do something momentous.

“Wade Castle,” Cole said. “An Agency guy.”

“And you trained him?”

“On Predator stuff. He came to Creech with two other CIA guys. They were setting up their own drone program out of some base across the Pak border, down in Baluchistan. I was supposed to show them the ropes, let them sit in on a few of our missions.”

“And they told you their names?” Steve asked.

“No. They didn’t even say they were CIA. OGA was all we knew—other government agency—not that everybody didn’t know what that meant. The names thing was a fuckup. The asshole in charge, a guy named Lodge, gave them a welcoming gift of Air Force flight suits. Somehow he’d gotten a look at the paperwork, which was a screwup right there, way above his clearance, and he had the suits personalized with their last names printed on the ID patch. I was there when he presented them. They took the things out of the box, laughed kind of nervous and folded everything back up as fast as they could, but everybody saw the names. All three of them. Castle, Bickell, Orlinksy. Later we went strictly by first names, and his was Wade. Then when I saw the file and the same name popped up, everything clicked. It was him.”

“Does the Air Force know you saw it?”

Cole shook his head, then glanced around to make sure no one was eavesdropping.

“I didn’t even tell my sensor, Zach. My attorney, either. Didn’t want to give them any excuse to stick me in some hole in the ground for the rest of my life. You’re the only ones I’ve told.”

“What else did you see?”

“Sorry. That was my admission ticket. The rest comes later.”

Steve looked at Keira, who nodded. Cole was in, at least for now.

“We better get over to the pawn district, start working on that fake ID,” Steve said. “Keira and I are flying back tomorrow. The sooner we get you on a bus, the better.”

But Keira had a question first.

“Those other two agency guys you trained, Bickell and Orlinsky—you remember their first names?”

“Sure. Owen Bickell, Wally Orlinsky.”

She wrote them down and looked at Steve.

“You’re thinking they might be sources?” he asked.

“If we can find ’em. It’s doubtful they’d talk.”

“Unless…” Cole said. “Bickell was near retirement age. He said something once about quitting to go fishing. He’d brought a fly rod and was hoping to get over to Utah, to fish the Sevier River. Said something about a summer place of his, out on some lake back east.”

“Where?” Keira asked.

“New Hampshire, I think.”

“Well, if he is retired…” Steve said.

“Barb’s ex-Agency source?”

“Yeah. I think he could find us an address.”

Steve got out his cell phone and punched in a text.

“I’m betting we’ll have an address quicker than that fake ID. And if that happens, maybe you and I can stop off to see him on the way to Baltimore.”

“You want me to approach him?” Cole asked.

“He knows you, maybe even trusts you. Better than having some scribbler show up on his doorstep. He’d tell us to fuck off. Don’t worry, I’ll draw up a list of questions. All you’ll have to do is ask ’em.”

Cole nodded uncertainly, then looked at Keira, as if seeking verification.

“Look at it this way,” Steve said. “You’re getting a week’s room and board, minimum, plus travel expenses. This way you can start earning your keep, right?”

“I guess so.”

Steve slapped a wad of cash atop the check, then pushed back his chair.

“Time to get moving.”

Everybody stood and turned to go.

“Wait,” Keira said. “He never opened his fortune.”

Steve rolled his eyes, but waited. When Cole hesitated, Keira went back to the table for the cookie. She tore open the plastic, snapped the cookie in half, and fished out the white slip of paper. Then she frowned and dropped it back onto the table.

“Well?” Steve asked.

“You were right. Stupid idea.”

Cole went over and snatched up the sliver of paper. He scanned it and nodded grimly, as though he’d expected nothing less. Then he read the message aloud: “Important people follow your progress with interest.”

Steve again rolled his eyes. They left without another word.

Four hours later Cole boarded a bus with his fake Nevada driver’s license and a pocketful of cash. Keira and Steve waved like a mom and dad sending their son off to college, then watched until the bus disappeared around a turn.

“Think we’ll see him again?” Keira asked.

“Do we really want to?”

“I do. I like his vibe.”

“His vibe ?”

She nodded. “He’ll be good for Barb. For me, too, maybe. That house needs some balance.”

Steve figured she was referring to gender until she elaborated further.

“It’ll be good for all of us. He comes from a different narrative, a fresh point of view. He’s part of the system we’re always butting heads with, the whole warrior mentality.”

“Yeah, and look what it did for him.”

“So maybe we’ll convert him, turn him into an anarchist.” She smiled, then softly punched Steve on the shoulder to make him smile back.

It would definitely be interesting, Steve supposed, the four of them holed up together in a house built for two. Like an experiment in social dynamics, or, if things went wrong, one of those reality TV shows where it was every man for himself.

“C’mon,” he said. “We’ve got planes to catch.”

OWEN BICKELL PULLED BACK the curtain and watched the visitor approach through the trees. Even if he hadn’t recognized the face, the walk would have told him it was a pilot. More swagger than stroll, like they were God’s gift to the heavens. Bickell had seen them strut their stuff on landing strips from Vietnam to Iraq, a high priesthood of arrogance and physicality. And now the defrocked Captain Cole of Nevada was heading up his gravel driveway as assertively as a cop serving a warrant.

Bickell’s security alarm had signaled the arrival. Cole must have tripped the motion sensor at the head of the drive. If he’d parked a car out there, Bickell would be able to get a tag number from the digitally archived images captured by the surveillance camera that he’d installed in a tall pine. Maybe Cole was smarter than that, but Bickell had his doubts. He’d given a great deal of thought to the various approaches an intruder might take to reach his house, and he’d concluded that the best one involved beaching a boat at the end of the peninsula and working your way down the shoreline on foot. But only someone with good tradecraft would try that. Cole looked like an amateur.

Whatever the case, score one for Bickell’s former employers, who had predicted this event only two days earlier. Expect a possible visitation from out of the blue, they said, by that pilot who trained you at Creech. He’ll have lots of questions. Stall him, stonewall him, feed him a line if you want. But follow our instructions to the letter.

The glitch was that Bickell didn’t know what to make of his old employers anymore. They were barely on speaking terms. Not at all like the mutual trust that prevailed when he joined the Agency, way back in ’68. Arriving in Saigon for his first posting only a month after the Tet offensive, Bickell believed everything the old hands told him down at the Duc Hotel, and the wartime routines suited him. Poker and bourbon after dark, maybe a hooker and a toke at bedtime, then a Bloody Mary with your scrambled eggs. Everyone talked a good game, same as now, but it turned out that none of them knew shit, and he had never forgotten the lesson.