“And he was civilian?”
“I think that was part of the problem. ‘Not from our culture.’ That’s what our COs were saying afterward. One of them called him a hippie bastard.”
They had a good laugh over that while Barb topped up his coffee.
“So he was what, Pentagon staff?” Steve asked.
“I think so. Some special R and D group.”
Keira, who’d been quiet awhile, was now busy on her laptop, the keys moving in a flurry.
“They fired him,” she announced. “Or he retired, take your pick. Three months ago, it says.”
“Perfect,” Barb said. “No flacks to head us off at the pass. Where’s he now?”
“Doesn’t say. I’ll keep checking.”
“Think he’d remember you?” Steve asked
“Probably. Before his talk he spent an hour inside our GCS, watching Zach and me on a recon. We were showing him how we used all the shit he’d developed, but he knew some of the apps better than we did. Plus, I was the guy who asked the question that set him off.”
“You hippie bastard!” Barb said.
More laughs. More coffee. As if, with enough caffeine, she might jazz out every last drop of his memory.
“Here we go,” Keira said. “Looks like he’s set up a little consultancy. Eclectic mix of services, everything from security software to aerodynamics. There’s a photo. What a face!”
Everybody leaned in for a look.
“Yul Brynner with a hangover,” Steve said.
“Or on quaaludes,” Barb said.
“His website says he’s based in an old farmhouse,” Keira said. “Loudoun County, Virginia.”
“Easy driving distance,” Steve nodded at Cole.
Another clatter on the keyboard while the rest of them watched.
“There’s an email address.” She turned the laptop around, facing Cole. “Sign on to your account, if you want. You can message him right away.”
“Okay,” he said uncertainly, looking at the others. “What should I ask for?”
“A personal audience,” Steve said. “Set that up and we’ll help with the rest.”
“Maybe throw him a hint that you’ve taken his advice to heart, and now you’re trying to do something about it,” Barb said.
Keira frowned.
“Don’t lay it on too thick. If he’s fresh out of the pipeline they’ll still be keeping tabs on him. It might make him wary.”
“Good point,” Steve said. Barb shrugged.
“Whatever. But send it now.”
Cole felt their eyes on him as he began typing. He pecked in Sharpe’s address, paused, then … nothing. Where to begin?
“Want me to write it?” Keira asked gently.
“Sure.”
He turned the laptop around, and for the second time that morning he submitted to the authority of a ghostwriter, marveling again at their ease with language, their ability to move to the heart of things in a few quick sentences. Keira’s message was a model of clarity and humility, asking for assistance and advice even as it seemed to offer the promise of a sympathetic ear.
“Look okay?” she asked.
Her question was for Cole, but Steve and Barb also wanted to see. After a few tweaks and tugs, the request to Nelson Hayley Sharpe for a meeting at his earliest convenience was soon hurtling into the ether.
By then it was nearly eight o’clock.
Soon afterward, Keira left for downtown to check property records at the courthouse for the row house on Pickard, and Steve set off for points unknown. Barb refilled her mug and went back to her laptop.
Cole watched her from the couch. After a few clicks she entered an almost trancelike state. From the flashing of the screen he could tell she was surfing through a wide array of archival sites.
A community of loners, Cole thought. Even when everyone was here, the house felt strangely hollow, emptied of almost everything but secrets — their own, and whichever ones they’d pried loose from others. Or maybe he was just tired and out of sorts. He missed his children, his home, his old life back in the ’burbs of Vegas. He missed flying, too, the feeling you got when you were up there alone, soaring above everything.
Feeling drained, he rinsed out his mug at the sink while looking out the window at the gulls circling above Stansbury Creek in the morning light. He set the mug on the draining board and returned to the couch. With a stab of shame he briefly inspected the stained sheets. Then he pitch-poled onto the cushions and pulled up the blanket, hoping to steal a few more hours of sleep. Barb’s keyboard clattered on.
This time he slept without dreaming.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Nelson Hayley Sharpe rubbed the bumps on his shaved head and considered his options.
He could shut the gate and activate the lock, so they’d have to get out of their car and walk the last half mile. Or, as always, he could let them drive straight to his door, clomping into the house with their lawyerly warnings and institutional arrogance, hiding behind aviator shades as they pawed through his papers and clicked at his mouse, searching for God knows what sort of bullshit.
Choosing the former would make them more ornery than usual, but he’d at least have the satisfaction of watching them stumble and swear as they worked their way uphill through the stubble and cow patties. Because lately they were really pissing him off. They’d even started poking around among his clients, issuing vague warnings and generally endangering his ability to make a living. Three customers had already cancelled. Even Stu over at Whitethorn, who never let anything rattle him, had begged off.
“Nothing personal, Nellie. Ingenious stuff, as always, but I can’t have the feds breathing down our necks, know what I mean? Maybe later, when you’re not such a hot commodity.”
And so on, until the flow of checks dwindled to almost nothing and the bills began to pile up.
His finger hovered above the mouse as he continued to deliberate while watching their progress on the desktop screen. The government-issue car bounced slowly in the ruts, field sparrows fluttering from its path. A few seconds later they passed through the open gate, deciding the issue for him.
“Fuck,” he said to himself. “This is getting really old.”
He knew what had brought them here — a statement he’d made yesterday to CNN. The reporter had interviewed him for twenty minutes. The irony was that he’d talked mostly about how the drones were a good thing. Compared to the so-called surgical bombings of the past, drone combat was far more efficient, and despite the occasional mistake, it killed far fewer civilians, largely because it allowed you to be more deliberate and precise in your targeting. He was proud of that. But those weren’t the quotes they used. They seized on his final comments, when he sermonized briefly about how recklessly we were forging ahead with drone technology, making up the rules as we went along — if indeed there were any rules — heedless of the toll on our privacy, not only in war zones but potentially in every nook and cranny of our own country. Except that he forgot to say “potentially.” The quote the Pentagon probably would have hated most had, of course, been the one CNN liked best, and the reporter used it not only in the news segment but also in the promotional tease at the top of the hour: “What should really scare you is that right now they’re employing only a fraction of their capabilities. Soon they won’t just be looking down your chimney. They’ll be flying down it, too, with aircraft the size of hummingbirds, or smaller. I know, I helped develop them, at a testing ground right around the corner from where the Wright Brothers used to work.”