Dan Fesperman - Unmanned

The screen flashed white. Cole wasn’t sure if it was from the impact, a gunshot, or both. Then it went blank, everything gone, no signal at all.

“What’s happened?” Sharpe yelled. “I’ve lost everything, what have you done?”

“Crashed it,” Cole said. “Took him out. I hope. The cops will have to do the rest.”

Sharpe began ranting about his equipment, about waste, about all sorts of incoherent things, but Cole was far from all that. He pulled off his headset, the controls useless now. All he knew for sure was that somewhere out there, maybe fifteen air miles away, Sharpe’s fine new aircraft lay in ruins. Perhaps it had even exploded, although there certainly couldn’t have been much fuel left in the tank.

But it was the girl he wondered about. The girl and her father, Mansur, and all the others, running for their lives just as the three children had done at Sandar Khosh. At the moment he had no clue whether they were living or dead, although he would certainly remember that last sight of them, running, the girl’s stride lopsided as she swung her only arm, pumping it for all the speed she could muster, everyone’s mouth open as they panted for breath.

Perhaps he had saved them. Perhaps he had guaranteed their destruction, triggering their ruin with his pursuit. If so, there would be a new hour of death to add to the daily timetable.

He blinked into the sunlight. The others were still staring at Sharpe’s blank screen, dumbfounded, except for Keira, who was talking rapidly into her phone.

“Where are the cops?” he asked, hearing his own voice like it was someone else’s. “What are they saying?”

“He’s down. They say he’s down.”

“ Who is? Who’s down?”

“I don’t know yet! Wait.” She held up a hand. Everyone was still.

“The shooter. The shooter is down. The drone crashed right into him. The wing hit him, knocked him cold.”

“What about the others? Put it on speaker, goddammit!” Cole’s voice was hoarse.

“And the others?” she asked.

The answer came back crackly and shrill, and in copspeak, but clear enough for all to hear and understand.

“All parties safe. Six adults and one child, female, accounted for. All hostile parties disarmed and in custody.”

Keira beamed at Cole. Now the others turned toward him. They knew his story, and now they knew its conclusion, and they seemed to be awaiting some utterance from him, a summation, especially the journalists, with their usual stock question in this kind of situation already brimming in their eyes: How does it feel?

Cole was too moved to speak. Overcome, he dropped to his knees and cried out, half sob and half laugh as a single thought seared his mind like a missile: A crash, yes, yet it was his greatest flight ever. Failure his salvation, with his eye in the sky now blinded and down.

THE POLICE AT THE county sheriff’s office didn’t know quite what to do with everybody. First they sorted out the rival parties—the IntelPro security guys in one room (except for the one who was out cold, who went to Easton Hospital in an ambulance), the Afghans to another, although no one spoke their language, and even though the little girl who was with them, the one prone to singing and skipping, kept escaping into an adjacent corridor to gawk at the vending machines.

But by the time the crowd from Keira’s—an odd mix in its own right—showed up to start asking and then answering questions, pretty much everyone from the other two groups had been moved out of sight.

Cole ended up in a Captain Kerner’s office, answering bemused questions about his role in the whole affair.

“So you were the one in control of the, uh, the aircraft in question?”

“Correct.”

Kerner shook his head. “Well, from what I’ve been able to piece together from the officers on the scene, your, uh, plane crashed into some fellow from that security outfit, one of the, uh, kidnappers, for lack of a better word, although that’s federal stuff and not for me to decide.”

“Should I be hiring a lawyer?”

“Well, I guess you can if you want. Pay phone’s in the hall, unless you’ve got a cell. But frankly I’m kind of at a loss as to what we might even charge you with, if we were to charge you at all. Bad piloting? Maybe, but that’s probably some kind of FAA thing. Assault with a deadly weapon? Possibly. Although from the descriptions I’ve heard from the other officers at the, uh, the event in question, a crash is pretty much a crash any way you look at it.”

“Pretty much. Like I said, my screen went blank there toward the end, so I’ve got no idea what really happened. If it hit somebody, obviously that’s not a good thing. But by then I’d lost control of her. We were kind of out at the limit of our range, anyway. Maybe Mr. Sharpe could take you through some of the possibilities of mechanical failure. It’s pretty much like I said earlier. We were in pursuit only as a matter of observation, as interested citizens. Which is why we phoned you guys to take care of it.”

“Yeah. Well…” Kerner shook his head, as if uncertain what to say next.

“So am I free to go?”

“Just promise me one thing, how ’bout it.”

“What’s that?”

“No more playing with these toys of yours in county airspace. At least not until you fellows get the kinks worked out.”

“I don’t think I’ll have any trouble keeping that promise.”

Kerner sighed deeply and ran a hand through his thinning hair. “I gotta say, this is one time when we’ll be happy to let the feds horn in to sort things out.”

“Have they asked you to detain anyone?”

“Truthfully?”

“Sure.”

“They haven’t asked for shit. Hell, they can’t even decide among themselves who they’re sending down here, or from how many different agencies. I do know the Bureau’s on the way, maybe because they always get involved. But the rest? After that shooting the other day they had so many guys down here with strange IDs that I kinda lost track.”

“Then I’ll be on my way.”

“Okay, then.”

Cole headed down the hallway toward the waiting room. Some good-byes would soon be in order, but he had already made up his mind about his next destination. He had decided to catch a bus to Saginaw. If his family turned him away, so be it, but he doubted they would. At some point fairly soon, he supposed, he would also have to make amends with the Air Force about his whereabouts and living arrangements. But he had already received some pretty sound advice on that front, from Riggleman, of all people.

He stepped into the waiting room to find Sharpe, seated alone.

“Where are all the others?”

“The scribblers took off. Looking for the Afghans, I think, or doing whatever it is they do in these situations, making a goddamn nuisance of themselves. They were already talking big about a book deal. For two of them, anyway. I suppose that Steve fellow will just have to go corporate. The little Air Force captain—”

“Riggleman?”

“Yes. He was trying to reach his general and wondering if he still had a job. Good luck with that , I told him.”

“Castle?”

“Disappeared. Not long after we got here. Back into the shadows where he belongs.”

Cole supposed that that should bother him. He still had more questions for the man, but doubted now that he’d ever get a chance to ask them. Somehow it all seemed okay, mostly because he was still gliding on a powerful updraft of exhausted elation. For the moment he was happy for any of the others to proceed and prosper however they pleased, even Steve.