Dan Fesperman - Unmanned

“It’s a landing strip.” Cole said. “That’s part of it, anyway.”

Sharpe practically sprang up out of his armchair.

“May I see the item in question?”

Keira handed him a blueprint, which he spread open on the coffee table.

“Exactly what I expected,” he said, smiling now. “And these outbuildings, three of them. Little hangars, probably, places to park all their new hardware, out of the elements and out of sight, except when they’re using it. Even when they start flying, they’ve got enough acreage to take anything up to a higher altitude, well beyond view, before they ever leave the premises. And look.” He jabbed a bony forefinger at the plans. “Here’s the location in relation to the rest of the property, the exact coordinates. Perfect.”

“Think you can fly over for a better look?” Keira asked.

“I can program the location right into the flight plan. Once we’re there, Captain Cole can make any adjustments we’ll need. My cameras will easily do the rest. This is a gold mine. No wonder they’re suppressing it.”

“But how can the county keep this a secret?” Barb asked.

“With federal permission, of course,” Sharpe said. “With the right kind of contract this installation would have semiofficial status, which would mean that the contract itself could be classified. Or any sort of plans filed with the county.”

“And you think it’s for drone development?” Cole asked. “Testing new technologies, for private sector applications?”

“And for domestic applications as well. Has to be.”

“Yeah, well,” Steve said. “This is all great stuff, a helluva story. But it’s not our story.”

“How do you figure that?” Barb asked.

“Well, what does any of this have to do with Wade Castle?”

“Who says it has to? We take a week, maybe two, to work the hell out of this one. Then we write it and sell it. If anything, we buy ourselves a few more months for the Castle piece.”

“Meanwhile burning half our sources, to the point they’ll never help us again.”

“Your source, maybe. An IntelPro guy who hasn’t contributed anything for a month now, except to piss all over some of our best material.”

“That’s not true.”

Cole watched Keira. This would usually be the point where she would intervene for one side or another, or to advocate for cooler heads and greater civility. This time she looked on with a blank expression, seemingly content to let them fight it out to the death. And that left it to Sharpe, of all people, to bring matters back into focus in his typically blunt manner.

“Shut the fuck up, both of you, and hear me out. This is a Wade Castle story. He’s half the reason IntelPro has all these new toys, or at least the means to make them and use them. He’s the key to their whole R and D program.” He hammered the blueprint with his fist. “No matter what he did before, no matter how many fuckups there have been along the way, in my opinion this has been the intended endpoint, and if you’ll just pursue the facts at hand to their logical conclusion, I’m sure that’s what you’ll discover to be true.”

“Who asked you?” Steve said. “An interloper, brought in by another interloper, brought in completely against my advice, and all of it has been a mistake.”

“That’s unfair, Steve.” It was Keira, finally speaking up.

“Of course you’d think so. You’re the one sleeping with the interloper. That’s how far off the rails we’ve gone around here, and now we’re sitting around talking about doing illegal shit like flying a drone over half the Eastern Shore to snoop on a bunch of people who could really fuck with our lives if they wanted, when what we ought to be doing is some actual journalism, using the sources we’ve got while continuing to develop more.”

“Too passive,” said Sharpe. “Too damn passive, especially when you have this great new tool at your disposal. I thought you existed to gather information. Well, that’s what these damn things do, and very efficiently.”

“And it’s illegal , and could land us in deep shit. We could pay hackers to help us, too, like Murdoch’s people in the UK. Hell, we could even tap some phone lines if we hired the right people. Another great tool.”

Barb, who had been on Sharpe’s side, now looked uncertain for the first time. Keira, stung by Steve’s latest attack, again held her tongue.

“Maybe you’re right,” Barb finally said. “But we should at least sleep on it.”

“I’m good with that,” Steve said. “With a full night’s sleep maybe everyone will come to their senses.”

Sharpe hissed like a snake that had been stepped on and headed straight for the door. Cole, weary of the discord, followed, grabbing Steve’s car keys from a table by the door as he left the house.

“Hey, could you at least ask?” Steve said.

But Cole kept going, letting the door shut behind him. He found Sharpe fuming at the edge of the driveway, headed toward his van.

“We’re doing this,” Sharpe told him. “Be ready at sunup.”

“They don’t sound so sure about that.”

“Oh, they will be.”

Cole thought he had a pretty good idea of why Sharpe was so certain.

“Are you sure about this?” he asked.

“About tomorrow?”

“About tonight.”

Sharpe, for the first time since Cole had met him, looked taken aback. “So you know?”

“I do now, I think. By that look on your face. This is about what’s in that other box, isn’t it?”

Sharpe broke into a grin, but Cole didn’t share his sense of fun and had no intention of hanging around for the follow-up. He held aloft Steve’s keys and headed for the Honda. Sharpe called out to him.

“You’re welcome to join me. You might even learn something.”

“I already know way too much about the fear of God,” Cole said.

Then he kept right on walking.

COLE DROVE FAR too fast up the dirt lane, throwing gravel against the undercarriage like a hailstorm from below. He didn’t slow down until he reached the narrowest stretch, where branches raked the Honda’s sides like the claws of a raptor, screeching and groaning against the metal.

“Shit. Sorry, Steve.”

He let up on the gas and exhaled deeply. It would be highly uncharitable to ruin the man’s car, even though he was exasperated with all of them. He drove the ten miles into Easton and stopped at the first booze store he could find, where he gazed longingly at the amber rows of bourbon before proceeding to the glass refrigerator cases in the back. He picked up a six of Bud, paid in cash, and cracked open the first one while seated behind the wheel in the darkness of the parking lot, facing a sign on the wall of the store that said no drinking on premises.

A long, deep swallow and he felt better. Then a second. Better still. Although if a cop came along he was toast. One check of his fake ID and the whole operation would crash and burn. Or his part of it, anyway. Big fucking deal.

Christmas lights flashing from the eaves bathed him in a continuous cycle of red and green, making him look full of fury one moment, queasy the next.

Some Christmas.

Better than last year’s, though, out there alone in the chilly trailer where there was no Star of Bethlehem hanging among the firmament in a massive sky. No beasts at the manger, either. Just a couple of coyotes rummaging through the trash.

Then he leaped back another year, to the one before his collapse. Carol’s family had trooped out to Summerlin for the holidays, and they’d enjoyed themselves immensely. Golf on Christmas Eve, tennis every afternoon. An hour after dinner on the big day, everyone piled into the van to drive over to the Strip, where they watched the water show from the fountains at the Bellagio, booming cascades swaying to a soundtrack of Sinatra. Carol’s dad had won two hundred bucks on the blackjack table at Harrah’s, then treated everyone to steaks at Vic & Anthony’s in the Golden Nugget. The in-laws adapted to the idea of a Vegas Christmas quicker than he had, although Cole had gotten a kick out of seeing holiday lights strung from palms and cacti, not to mention the weirdness of Christmas tree lots sharing corners with pawnbrokers and nickel slots.