Dan Fesperman - Unmanned

“Still seems like overkill.”

The battered brown Nissan pickup carrying Barb and her fixer arrived an hour later in a cloud of dust. Two people got out of the truck and were escorted to a building outside the compound. Cole recognized Barb from her posture, her walk, without having to see her face. Then two boys scampered across the grounds toward the same building. It sent a shiver up his back.

The explosion, once the attack came, was huge, destroying the main house inside the walls of the compound and leaving two bodies prone on the grounds outside—the old couple who had been standing near Barb. Sharpe clicked ahead to the next exchange between Lancer and Fort1, which came about eighty minutes after the attack.

(FORT1) Getting new reports. Not liking this.

(LANCER) Not liking how?

(FORT1) Wrong man maybe.

Then, fifteen minutes later:

(FORT1) Definitely a misfire. Theories?

(LANCER) Bad intel. Overton?

“He’s blaming Overton Security?” Cole asked.

“That’s what it sounds like to me.”

“But Barb said that’s who Haider worked for. He was one of Overton’s damn sources. Why would they want him rubbed out?”

“Maybe he burned them?”

“Maybe. Either way, somebody got duped.”

“Lancer?”

“Or both of them. Another fuckup, any way you look at it.”

“But Castle must not have thought Mansur was to blame, or why would he have kept working with him? You said they used one of his beacons at Sandar Khosh, right?”

“That’s what Bickell told me.”

“Shit. None of this adds up.”

“Maybe we still don’t know what we’re looking for.”

An hour later, Castle landed in the Pave Hawk helicopter. The screen showed him hopping out of the chopper and heading for the outbuilding where Barb must have still been waiting. That’s when the mission ended.

“Here’s a theory,” Sharpe said. “Lancer knew all along it was the wrong guy, because he was working for IntelPro, Overton’s rival.”

“So he duped Castle, and maybe Mansur as well, just to rub out some of his competition?”

“Exactly.”

“Could be. And Lancer uses this mission to establish contact with Mansur, then starts outbidding Castle on where to place the next beacons.”

“It fits.”

“But how could Castle have known so quickly it was a fuckup?”

“You’d have to ask him, I guess.”

“Fat chance of that now.”

They moved on to the second transcript, Cole and Zach’s recon mission of the town of Mandi Bahar, which he now knew was Mansur’s home village.

To his surprise, he recognized the village immediately, and was struck by the similarity of the setting to Sandar Khosh, even though the two places were miles apart and in different provinces. Each was a small huddle of less than a dozen houses clustered along a dirt road. Each sat next to a small rocky stream, bordering a small grove of gnarled, stunted trees. Shepherd boys took their flocks to and from nearby hills. A child walked out of the trees with a bundle of sticks on his back. A pastoral life, with few signs of warfare or weaponry. They were about to click forward by a few hours when the sight of a figure bursting from a doorway made Cole shout loudly and put a hand on Sharpe’s arm.

“Wait!”

It was the girl, the one in the red shawl, white pants, and blue scarf. She ran into sunlight, and then two small boys followed in quick succession. They disappeared from the frame.

“Back it up. Run that again.”

“Why. What did you see?”

“It’s them. The same three children we saw at Sandar Khosh. The ones we killed.”

Sharpe said nothing, and did as he was told. There they were again, bursting out the doorway.

“Freeze that, then see if you can enlarge it.”

The resolution wasn’t clear enough to see their faces, but it was unmistakably the same three children. No ghosts this time. The real thing, but in the wrong place. And then it hit him.

“Yes! That’s it!”

“What is?”

“I’ve had a feeling from the moment it happened that those kids weren’t supposed to be at that house, the one in Sandar Khosh. I could never say why, because I knew I’d seen them before, in our recon. But it wasn’t the Sandar Khosh recon. It was this one.”

“What does that mean?”

“Keep moving it forward.”

The children moved in and out of the frame several more times during the next five minutes. Then the camera seemed to follow them as they headed back toward the house—or that’s what he thought was happening until he saw the real reason for Zach’s camera work. The sensor’s attention had been drawn by the arrival of a white Toyota truck with orange stripes across the hood. The truck stopped, a door opened, and out stepped a little man who was unmistakably Mansur Amir Khan. So this was his house. And these were his children, the very ones he and Zach would kill with a missile strike five weeks later.

But there must be other members of Mansur’s family, too, ones that remained alive. Why else would he have still been so concerned about their welfare during their conversation at the row house on Pickard Street? What was it he’d said? “Away. My family is away.”

Away where? Did he mean “dead”? Possibly. But now he at least thought he knew why Mansur had moved his family to Sandar Khosh.

“He must’ve been scared Castle would come after him,” Cole said. “After the whole double-cross over the homing beacons. The fuckups and the confusion. So he moved, to get away either from Castle or from Lancer. Then a month later we go and blow up his new house.”

“Except Mansur wasn’t there.”

“But his children were. Most of his family, probably.”

“Then why was it a beacon job?”

“Maybe Bickell was wrong.”

“Let’s look at your recon of Sandar Khosh. It’s the next one in line, a week later.”

Sharpe got it rolling. There were children in this video, too—playing cricket, running errands, tending sheep. But none was the girl or her two brothers. The house, the one they would target a month later, was under construction, but nearly finished. Sharpe skipped around a little while they watched for anything significant.

“Castle never turned up in this one?”

“No. But Lancer did. I only remembered it when Bickell brought up his name.”

“I’ll search it.”

A pause, maybe ten seconds, before Sharpe got a hit.

“Here he is. One exchange only, in the chat transcript, right at the end.”

(LANCER) Need another shot of house under construction, all angles.

Cole’s reply was on the audio:

“Coming right up.”

Zach moved the camera onto the house and zoomed it while Cole slowly circled their Predator to allow for a prime view of all sides, a task that took about ten minutes.

“Got all you need?”

(LANCER) Yes thx.

Not long afterward the screen went blank. Mission completed.

Cole knew what came next, but he said nothing while Sharpe tapped at the keyboard and made a few clicks.

“Your mission with the missile strike is next. Ready?”

“Let’s skip ahead to the other recon job, the one Zach and I almost fucked up. I’m pretty sure Lancer’s on it. Might as well get all we can on him first.”

“Or maybe you just want to avoid the attack as long as possible.”

Cole shrugged.

“That’s my business. What time is it?”

“Almost three o’clock. I’ve gotta pee. And we could both use some water. Unless you want to break for lunch.”

“Let’s keep going.”

“Think we’ll finish today?”

“Don’t see why not.”

“I have to say, it’s been fascinating watching you. During these missions, I mean. The way your face changes, the look in your eye. Almost like you’re back up there in the sky with it, even now.”