Dan Fesperman - Unmanned

“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:

Monkey,

Sorry for the delay. Waited for the weekend so there wouldn’t be many people around. Got everything you wanted plus an extra on the Lancer dude, but this’ll have to be it for a while. Some pencil pusher is nosing around, asking everybody and his brother about your “possible whereabouts.” Worst part is that Sturdy and the whole chain of command is pressing us to tell all. Brass, huh? So keep laying low. Later, your bro Zach

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.