Dan Fesperman - Unmanned

Keira had put a hand to her mouth, as if she’d just witnessed a terrible accident. Steve looked horrified. The only sound was the scratching of Barb’s pencil as she captured the last of Castle’s words for posterity.

Cole stepped over to a chair and sat down, letting the whole awful story settle around him like a mist. He knew he should keep asking questions, but for the moment he was stalled, unable to move forward. So Barb took over.

“So why did IntelPro move him? Mansur, I mean.”

“It was the only way to keep him away from me. After Sandar Khosh I put the word out that I wanted him alive, because I wanted to burn them. Find out everything he knew. They decided to burn me instead, by moving the evidence. Then they started pushing their cover story, to Steve, to guys like you. I was the fuckup, the bad apple, the disease that had to be exposed and then wiped out. And you bought it, all of you.”

“Why not just kill him?”

“Lancer wanted him alive. Figured his connections were too valuable, and they could use them later. So they brought him here. Trained him up for a while, right over at the facility, to make him more useful. The plan was to send him back overseas once they got me out of the way. But they couldn’t track me down, and once they got word I was stateside they must have decided to just use him as bait, lure me in, because they knew I still wanted him. It’s why they left him so out in the open in Baltimore. Then you guys blew his cover, so they brought him here and started working on Plan B.”

“Which was?”

“Bring in their freelance asset Lancer. Wait for me to come looking for you guys, then have him take me out.”

And they all knew how that had ended.

“What about you?” Cole asked. “Are you freelance now?”

“Not really. But I’m not Agency anymore. For the moment I’ve been reassigned.”

“FBI?” Barb asked. “Homeland Security?”

“An element of the national security apparatus that shall remain nameless. But it’s legal.”

“To a point that includes murder?”

“Self-defense isn’t murder. What’s important right now is that I think I know where they’re keeping Mansur in their thousand-acre wood. And with that drone of yours we can find him.” He turned to Sharpe. “Think you can squeeze me into your flight plan?”

“Absolutely.”

“Then let’s put our heads together, because in eight more hours we’re going to war.”

CASTLE AND SHARPE SPREAD their maps and plats on the dining room table and studied them like generals. Cole edged up behind them, feeling that his moment to shine had finally arrived. It was an hour before dawn, and he hadn’t been this pumped for a mission since Kosovo, back when he still flew Vipers.

The reporters, as if realizing their own role had been diminished to that of observers, stayed well out of the way and were mostly silent. Barb, as always, had her notebook out to record the proceedings, while Keira seemed to be studying each of the participants in turn, as if gauging how well they would react once events were in motion.

Steve had an air of banishment, a man under house arrest. He slumped in a chair in the corner, sipping lukewarm coffee and reading a day-old newspaper, although even he couldn’t resist an occasional peek toward Castle, Sharpe, and Cole as they pointed in growing enthusiasm toward points on the maps.

Castle showed them satellite photos of the area he wanted to surveil, a small compound with two buildings inside a fenced perimeter, tucked in an isolated corner of the woods. He said he’d infiltrated the training grounds twice already during the past week, but not deeply enough to scout out the compound.

“They’ve secured it pretty well. For them, anyway. Most of their people generally suck at what they do. It’s the best-kept secret of these contract outfits—gross incompetence. Signing them up to track your HVT is like hiring an overnight security guard to find a mass murderer. But they’ve positioned a lot of personnel near the compound. If it is Mansur, then he’s not going anywhere without some help.”

“Keira said the locals think some kind of foreign family has moved in,” Cole said. “Groundskeepers, that was the theory. A Latino family, that was their other guess.”

“Probably the cover story IntelPro floated. Or maybe the neighbors just saw beards and skin tone and filled in the blanks. Family, though—that part fits.”

“How many of his people did they bring over?” Sharpe asked.

“Never heard an exact number. His wife and kids didn’t survive, as you saw.” Cole flinched. “So this must be extended family, the usual Afghan village lineup. It’s a good way to keep him settled and quiet. Cousins, aunts and uncles, maybe a brother or sister. I really don’t know. He’s the only one that matters.”

Sharpe had already briefed Castle on what he hoped to find in their recon of the new airstrip—evidence that IntelPro was working to cash in on its high-level access to cutting-edge drone technology, and its most sophisticated applications.

“Hell, what’s to learn?” Castle said. “This shit’s everywhere now, isn’t it? They’ll be delivering pizzas with these things before long.”

“True enough. But the stuff they’ll have is top shelf, and then some. Super-advanced. The stuff money can’t buy. Not yet, anyway. But when it does go up for sale, they’ll have it ready to offer, fully applied and field-tested. And all because your people gave away the store.”

“Yours, too,” Cole said. “And mine, judging by the arrangements Barb uncovered.”

“Guilty as charged, all of them,” Sharpe said.

Adding to their sense of urgency was the approaching winter storm. As the first gray light of dawn lit the eastern sky, the gray talons of its leading edge curled from the far horizon, reaching westward across the Bay.

Sharpe frowned as he looked out the window.

“We should get set up,” he said. “We’ll have enough light for our first approach in about half an hour.”

“Won’t you need better light for video and photos?” Castle asked.

“By the time we’re at altitude and within range, we’ll have it. This thing’s fast for a drone, but it’s not exactly hypersonic.”

Keira edged up to Cole’s shoulder.

“How are you planning to approach it?”

“On first pass we’ll make an overall assessment,” he told her. “Find our two targets, design our approaches. With everything that’s been going on around here the last few days they’re likely to be a little jumpy, with heightened security, so we’ll probably recon the airstrip first. We’ll get whatever video we can, then take it from there. And hope we’re not pursued.”

“Pursued?”

“By any of their drones. Sharpe figures there’s liable to be some pretty hot stuff over there. Hotter than what we’ve got.”

“So just like a real mission, then?”

“Hey, this is as real as it gets.”

He fleetingly remembered the last time that thought had crossed his mind, at a moment when he was watching black crosshairs hover on a mud rooftop, seconds before impact.

“You okay?”

“I will be.”

“Ghosts?”

“A few.”

“You’ll handle it.”

A hand on his shoulder, a light squeeze. Then she backed away, leaving him to his work.

“Into the fray, Captain Cole!”

Sharpe was beaming, eager. Cole followed him and Castle out into the cold, where the drone was already perched at the head of its makeshift runway, freshly raked. The long slender wings cast low shadows across the gravel. The wind stirred in the pines.

“Two hours, tops, before conditions go all to hell.” Sharpe held a finger to the breeze. “You’ll need to do some actual piloting as this shit closes in. The Bay’s already whitecapping.”