“Anything else before I push the button?”
“If you push it.”
“Oh, I’m pushing it. Because you want me to.”
True enough.
“Ask him if he remembers any missions where a guy named Lancer popped up in the chat audience. And if he does, then send those, too.”
The keyboard clattered.
“Done.”
For all their precautions, it took his breath away when she clicked Send. He was already in trouble for disappearing. In the hands of a military prosecutor, his request to Zach might look like attempted espionage. The instructions telling Zach how to cover his tracks, while sensible, would look even worse.
He sipped the bourbon while his thoughts wandered farther afield. If he could risk a message to Zach, why not one to his kids, or to Carol? If only to let her know that he was sober, and as stable and safe as he’d been in ages.
The look on his face must have given him away.
“You miss them, don’t you.”
“My family?”
She nodded.
“I do now. Out in the desert it got to where the only kids I ever thought about were the ones we killed. I’d kind of blank out for days at a time. Then, almost the second Keira came into the trailer, I knew I had to get out, get away. She looked up at me and all I could think about was the total emptiness of everything out there.”
“Keira has that gift, making people see themselves more clearly. People want to open up, tell her what they’ve just seen.”
“What about you, what’s your gift?”
“Wasting time and spinning my wheels, apparently. That’s how it feels lately. My specialty is supposedly public records and FOIAs. Freedom of Information Act requests. Paperwork safaris. But I’ve been stuck on zero for about a month now. We all have. That’s why we went looking for you after I dug up those court-martial papers. And maybe it’s working. You gave us Fort1’s name, for one thing. We need to spread that around. Being free and easy with a protected identity is always good for shaking the trees, seeing what falls out. Plus this stuff with Mansur, and now Tangora.” She shook her head, marveling. “Rod and Billy. Pretty amazing you know who did that.”
“Who’s this IntelPro source of Steve’s?”
“He won’t say. I wouldn’t either, if it was me. They meet at some bar out in Baltimore County. Usually on Fridays, so I guess he’s due. But I don’t trust the guy.”
“How can you not trust someone when you don’t even know who he is?”
“Because they’re all part of the same crowd. Castle, Bickell, Steve’s source. All of them are trained to lie when necessary, and to give only one version of the truth. Maybe he’s got good stuff, but we only get part of it, and without the context how do we know it’s leading us in the right direction? But Steve’s solid, Steve’s good. He’ll pin him down on Mansur. For better or worse he’ll come back with another piece of the puzzle. Maybe this will even convince him it’s time for us to move.”
“Move where?”
“Over to the Eastern Shore. Keira’s parents have a summer home near Easton. Rent free, utilities paid. She’s been offering it for weeks and I could rent out this place. We’d save a bundle, enough to buy an extra four months, minimum.”
“Sounds like the middle of nowhere.”
“We’re doing most of our reporting by phone and Internet anyway at this point. And IntelPro’s training facility is practically next door. Two of Castle’s old Agency buddies work there, and the only way we’ll ever have a chance of talking to them is in person. They’re Bickell’s old buddies, too, but I’ll bet he didn’t mention that, did he?”
“No.”
“Like I said. None of these guys ever gives you the whole story. It’s one big process of triangulation.”
There was a footfall above, then a heavy tread moving toward the stairs.
“Steve’s up,” Barb said. “My God, it’s six twenty.”
Seconds later Steve appeared in the dining room, surveying the scene.
“Big doings?” he asked.
“Pull up a chair,” Barb said. “I’ll fill you in.”
Then Keira came down. The cat rubbed against her leg. It was still more than an hour before sunrise. Cole marveled at the hours that this crew seemed to keep. Pilots were often nocturnal, on the job and in the barroom. But that was usually due to the demands of warfare, shift schedules, or orders from on high. The journalists took to it naturally, like vampires, coming alive in the darkness before the glow of their laptops.
“Looks like we have a quorum,” Barb said. “I better make coffee.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Barb summarized what they’d just done. Steve and Keira seemed impressed, and Steve promised to follow up with his source. Cole was more intrigued by what Barb chose not to mention. When she summarized General Bradsher’s place in Cole’s former chain of command, she didn’t cite any of the other links by name. Maybe she wanted to keep them to herself a while longer, so she could start tracking their financial records. Cole considered volunteering the names in the interest of full disclosure, but before he could make up his mind, Barb ambushed him with a fresh demand.
“So, Captain Cole, looks like you’re off to a good start. But as we always say in this business, what can do you do for me now?”
“ ’Scuse me?”
“That file you saw,” Steve said. “That would be a good place to start. You saw Fort1’s name, but what else?”
“Not much of anything really. I was just getting a look at everything when the SPs came through the door, pulled a gun on me.”
“But you said—”
“I know. I lied. Sorry. But I did give you Castle’s name. And I just gave Barb the tip on Tangora.”
“Relax, Steve,” Keira said. “He’s contributing.”
“Then how ’bout some sources,” Barb said. “That’s the one place you could help us most. Now that you’ve got a secure email address you could start reaching out to other colleagues, anybody who might have worked these Fort1 missions.”
“I haven’t seen most of these guys for more than a year. And I’m not likely to get a warm welcome if—”
“C’mon,” Steve said. “You can at least try.”
“Maybe it’s better if he eases back into things,” Keira said, “instead of cold-calling like a salesman, especially with people who outranked him.”
“I’m with Steve,” Barb said. “We’re not asking for some Deep Throat with all the secrets. We’ll take anybody, at any level. Preferably reprobates and malcontents, or anybody else who might have thought this wasn’t such a great setup, letting these IntelPro guys run the show.”
Her description immediately brought to mind a likely candidate.
“Well, there was this one Pentagon guy,” Cole said. “Came and spoke to us at Creech. Pretty plugged in, but he was based in Washington.”
“Air Force?” Steve asked.
“Civilian. Some kind of design guru, not just for the Predator, but for all the integrated systems. Worked a lot with outsiders, too. That was one of the things that was pissing him off.”
“Name?” Barb asked.
“Sharpe. Nelson Hayley Sharpe.”
“Three names. Sure sign of a huge ego.”
“The brass kinda thought he was a loose cannon.”
“And you met him?” Steve said.
“He spoke to our attack group. It was supposed to be a pep talk on how we were riding the wave of the future, trailblazers, all sorts of feel-good bullshit. But at the end there was a Q and A, and he sorta ran off the rails. Somebody asked him how much longer before the other side started getting this kind of capability, and what that would mean. He said it had already happened. Not al Qaeda or anything, but the world at large. Friends, enemies, public, private, you name it. He said some of the best tech was being fed straight from the Pentagon to the street, and that as much as we all loved this shit now, in five or ten years we’d be scared to death of it because everybody would have it.”