Dan Fesperman - Unmanned

“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.”