“Nothing!” the shorter guy said. “Maybe he really didn’t have time.”
“You saw the signal. He’s lying his ass off.”
“Maybe the signal was bad. You know sometimes in the tests—”
“Shut the fuck up!”
So they had a new weapon now, some sort of sensor that showed when he was online, although Mutt didn’t seem to trust it, and now it looked like Jeff wasn’t so sure.
“You bring my Publisher’s Clearinghouse entry?” Sharpe asked. “It’s the only shot I’ve got at any income if you guys keep this shit up.”
“You know where the mailbox is,” the taller one answered. He sounded discouraged, the zeal gone out of his voice. Without a further word the men left, climbed back into their car, and drove slowly down the driveway. Sharpe tried closing the door, but it wouldn’t latch on the shattered jamb. The strike plate was dangling by a single screw, and there was a pile of splinters on the floor.
“Shit! There goes another fifty bucks.”
He went out to his workshop to see what he could find for repairs.
Two hours later, after a half-assed fix, a long walk to cool his temper, and a cup of tea to clear his head, Sharpe logged back on to his computer, re-upped his passwords and regular software, and then checked the view on his security cams to make sure no one was lurking within immediate range of the house or driveway.
Finally satisfied that, at worst, he had a few minutes to work with, he went back into his email account. There was one new message. Yet another client, one of his best, was asking for a meeting at his earliest convenience “in order to re-assess our current working arrangement.”
Another one bites the dust. At this rate he’d be out of business by the new year. Fortunately, he had another iron in the fire that even the Pentagon didn’t yet know about.
Sharpe noticed the email from the pilot again, and reconsidered his answer. Yet another lonely rebel, discarded by the powers that be. Well, fuck it. How much more trouble could he get into than he was already in? This fellow at least deserved the courtesy of a sympathetic ear. If he’d make the effort to visit, then Sharpe would make the effort to hear him out. If he turned out to be a plant from those assholes at the Pentagon, Sharpe would know soon enough. And if he was legit? Who knew? He might even be useful, a valuable tool for one of his new ventures. He typed a reply that was even briefer and more cryptic than before.
8 a.m. tomorrow, McDonald’s, Bingham Ferry Road, Leesburg. Use the drive-through window.
He had some valuable allies, but it was time to start recruiting a few more, and maybe this fellow was a good place to start. If his enemies wanted to up the ante, so would he. Maybe, as the Mafia liked to say, it was time to hit the mattresses.
He sent the message. Then he retrieved the flash drive from his pocket, shut everything down, and went upstairs to pack a bag.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Trip Riggleman drove slowly down the lonely dirt road leading to Darwin Cole’s abandoned trailer, raising a contrail of dust that must have been visible for miles. He glanced over his shoulder to behold the bleak beauty of it — sort of like a vapor trail from one of those muscular fighter-bombers, a thought that made him wistful.
He was in a hunting mood, airborne or not, and this was his initial sortie. Before he began his online pursuit in earnest he wanted to try to take the measure of the man with a firsthand inspection of his recent home ground.
Riggleman felt strangely vulnerable out here in the open, as if a missile might zoom in from above at any moment, slamming into the modest Ford sedan from the base motor pool and blowing it right off the road, a blackened smudge on the prairie. Those unauthorized Predator photos had spooked him even as they excited him. Someone had already strayed out of bounds in this case, and Riggleman figured that before long he would probably do the same.
But did the earlier interest mean that someone would be snooping over his shoulder as he proceeded? This was certainly the kind of countryside that made you wonder — empty from horizon to horizon, with every glint from above winking like a potential eye in the sky. The feeling of being watched grew so strong in him that at one point, just after Cole’s trailer came into view at the base of a distant bluff, Riggleman braked to a halt and cut the engine. Silence. Nothing moved except the dust in his wake, which settled to the ground like a long brown serpent coiling itself to sleep — or maybe to strike.
He reached down to restart the engine, then hesitated and got out of the car. He walked around to the front, where he sat on the warm hood and peered off toward Cole’s saggy trailer. From here it looked like an encampment for some kind of survivalist cult. Between him and the trailer, not a single sign of life. Looking back in the direction he’d come from, he saw the long line of tire tracks left by the Ford. Over to his left, his own footprints, preserved for anyone who came later. Now he was feeling eerier than ever, so he hopped down and got back under way. He turned on the radio for company but got only static on AM, and nothing at all on FM. Some sort of dead zone, maybe. Nothing to beam your signal to out here anyway.
The trailer sat deep in the shadow of the bluff. The damn door was wide open, swaying in a fresh breeze. An unpleasant smell wafted from the opening like bad breath. Just inside was a pile of animal shit, probably coyote, still fresh enough to have attracted a squadron of green flies, which buzzed in protest as Riggleman stepped across.
A shotgun was propped against the wall near the door. He picked it up. Well maintained. He levered it open. Still loaded. Now that was odd. He propped it carefully back against the wall, wondering how long it would stand there, loaded and ready, until someone else came along. Years, maybe.
The kitchen sink was full of dishes and more flies. Coyotes had torn apart much of the furniture and bedding, leaving claw marks on the upholstery and dusty paw prints across the floor. Unwashed clothes were piled by the bed. The scene emanated an air of a life suddenly interrupted, so much so that he wondered for a moment if Cole might have been abducted.
It was an alarming thought. For one thing, it would cast Cole’s visit to the ex-CIA man in New Hampshire in an entirely different light. Had he been accompanied by others? Was he a hostage to a foreign government, perhaps? A dupe doing someone else’s bidding? Maybe his kidnappers had threatened to harm his family unless he cooperated.
But apart from the coyote damage there was no sign of a fight or struggle. No bloodstains, or broken glass, or clumps of human hair. And there was also the loaded gun, unfired and neatly set aside.
He went back outside. He’d checked the recent meteorological data for the location, and it hadn’t rained out here since Cole’s disappearance. Yet there were no marks on the ground to suggest a scuffle, or the dragging of a body. Just footprints — two sets besides his own. One was man-sized, probably Cole’s. The other was almost dainty, probably a woman. Both led to a second set of tire tracks that presumably had been left by the sedan in the surveillance photo. Riggleman got out his smart phone and took shots of the tread pattern and the footprints. Then he went back inside for a more systematic search.
On a closet shelf, well beyond the reach of the coyotes, was a cardboard box stuffed with transcripts of depositions and courtroom proceedings from Cole’s court-martial. It felt providential, his first stroke of luck. Already, the long trip was worthwhile.
Earlier that morning, just before leaving Nellis in the Ford, Riggleman had fired off his first piece of paperwork, an official request to the USAF legal eagles who’d prosecuted Cole, asking for copies of everything they had on the case. But he knew from experience that even in high-priority investigations, these kinds of requests routinely took days, even weeks, to achieve a result. This trove in the trailer, provided it was complete, would save lots of time and bureaucratic aggravation.