“Joe Cooley. How’s that?”
“Another pole vaulter?”
“No, but he was on the track team. How’d you know?”
“I never go into a job unprepared. By the way, for our purposes this morning I’m a retired engineer from Black and Decker. I live in Delaware.”
“Is that how you normally get here? In a car with Delaware tags?”
Sharpe ignored the question.
“For the past couple years I’ve been raising chickens for Perdue. I thought it would be a good way to ease into retirement, but instead it’s been a shit sandwich. I also hate the government.”
“Well, at least half of it’s true. Does everybody else lie about their identity?”
“Probably nobody who’ll be there today.”
“So the Grand Dragon is a no-show?”
This at least drew a smile.
“These people are more interesting than a bunch of racist clowns in bedsheets. More dangerous, too. They just don’t know it yet. Turn in to that school up ahead, Joe. Then pull around back, toward the baseball field. Joe. Joe Cooley from Baltimore. You need an occupation.”
“Schoolteacher. Ninth grade algebra.”
“That’ll work.”
“What if they ask for more?”
“Then keep it vague. But they won’t. It’s not what they’re here for.”
They drove around to the back. Five other vehicles were already there — two massive pickups, a couple of SUVs, and a minivan with a dented fender. Five men stood on the diamond, leaving footprints on a dirt infield that was the color of putty. Each carried a laptop or a tablet, and each had some sort of toy aircraft, like oversized model planes, although three of the toys were equipped with multiple overhead propellers.
“What the hell is this?”
“The Delmarva Cyclops Command. One of probably at least a hundred worldwide chapters of a bunch of tinkerers and geeks known as DIY Drones.”
“Do It Yourself Drones?”
“With cameras, in-flight computers, sensor chips, and a whole lot more. All of it state of the art.”
“Is that what’s in the drum case?”
“A quadcopter of my very own. I’m the only one who doesn’t use a laptop.”
“Then how do you—?”
Sharpe brandished his smart phone.
“It’s really all you need anymore to control one of these things. Comforting to know, isn’t it?”
He opened the door and stepped outside. One of the men on the field immediately called to him.
“Lenny! Get a move on, you old chicken plucker, we’ve got birds to fly. Paul’s gonna do his maiden!”
“That’s Stan,” Sharpe said to Cole through the open door. “The mouth of the bunch, but you’ll like him. He’s got a fixed-wing X8 with enough battery power to stay aloft for three hours. He once covered ninety miles, and he’s got a sweet little GoPro high-res camera on board. If he wanted, he could’ve tracked you all the way out here from the moment you left your country estate. Hell, maybe he did. C’mon, I’ll introduce you.”
Everybody shook Joe Cooley’s hand. Sharpe, or Lenny, explained that Cole, or Joe, was a newbie who wanted to see what all the fuss was about. They were cool with it, not the least bit worried. Besides, most of the day’s attention was already focused on Paul, a potbellied day trader from Salisbury, Maryland, who looked as excited as a kid on his birthday. He was gearing up for the maiden voyage of his very own X8, and at the moment he was down on his hands and knees, getting his pants muddy out past the pitcher’s mound as he tweaked and tightened with a mini-screwdriver and a tube of epoxy.
Three other members of the group faced him in a tight semicircle, hands gesturing as everybody talked at once. Paul kept nodding as if to say yeah, yeah, I get it, but he said little. Between adjustments to his aircraft he ran his fingers through his hair and frowned, like he was worried about screwing up.
Cole edged closer, listening to their patter. He picked out a few aviation terms, but the rest was geekspeak.
“Hey, man, did you check your APM settings to see how the elevons respond?”
“Dude, you know you’re gonna crash your maiden, so maybe you should offload some of that high-end gear.”
“Does that software overlay a 3-D HUD on the video when the plane’s flying Gmaps?”
“Paul, what’s your SVGA output?”
Sharpe sidled up to Cole.
“So what do you think, Joe?”
“What the fuck are they talking about?”
“You could learn most of it in about ten minutes.”
“Do these things really do the job?”
“Once you get the hang of ’em. And it’s pretty cheap. Ten times better and cheaper than when people started in on this stuff a few years back.”
“What’s it take to get started, about a thou?”
“A few hundred, as long as you’ve got a laptop or a smart phone. The aircraft’s the big expense, but it’s the chip package that does all the work, and you can buy a pretty kick-ass autopilot for about the cost of two double cappuccinos and the Sunday New York Times.”
“What’s in the package?”
“Oh, nothing but a gyroscope, a magnetometer, an accelerometer, a processor, a pressure sensor, and a temperature gauge.”
“Damn. That’s pretty much everything.”
“Except the camera.”
“I remember hearing about this shit a few years ago. You’d see message boards with all the hobbyists. But it was nothing like this.”
“Smart phones. That exploded it. The same tech that puts all those apps in your pocket helps fit all these controls and capabilities into your very own private spy drone. Not that any of these fine fellows is up to no good.”
“Except Joe and Lenny, the two guys using fake names.”
“Only two? You sure about that?”
“Do you know something?”
“Later. On the drive back.”
Cole reassessed the crowd, trying to pick out who Sharpe might be referring to. Chattery Stan was now busy with his own X8, preparing for takeoff about thirty feet away. The three guys watching Paul — Bert, Wallace, and Leo — all had different models of quadcopters, like small helicopters but with four overhead rotors. Everyone looked harmless enough. Jeans and khakis, down jackets with a comfortable Saturday rumple. Nobody had shaved. A few had coffee in travel mugs. But how else would he expect them to look?
Bert was talking up the idea of payloads. “I figure she can carry maybe three pounds the way she’s rigged now. A few modifications, maybe a little more horsepower, and I’m thinking I can ramp it up to eight, maybe even ten.”
Ten pounds of what? Cole wondered. Anthrax spores? A pipe bomb? A Glock 19, mounted on a swivel with some whiz-bang chip to activate firing? You could fly these things just about anyplace, right past security checkpoints and every metal detector known to man. It would have to be outdoors, of course, but it still seemed like a nightmare waiting to happen. Or maybe Sharpe’s paranoia was rubbing off on him. And maybe that was foolishness. Because out here in the fresh air, with a touch of brine on the breeze and the sound of easy laughter among friends, the whole idea of anyone trying something terrible seemed remote, even laughable.
“Look out!”
He turned just in time. A gust of wind had gotten a hold of Leo’s quadcopter, a metallic green model that veered toward him like a wayward June bug. It buzzed past him, about eight feet to the left of his head, then caught itself in a hover and adjusted, rising twenty feet into the sky.
“Sorry, man.”
“No harm, no foul.”
Leo nodded, smiling appreciatively. Cole already felt accepted, a part of the club, and he might have been anyone, seeking to learn this technology for any purpose. Just like those quiet young men who had enrolled in flight schools in the months before 9/11. He wondered how they would’ve received him if his name was Hassan, or Mohammed. “Hi, guys, I’m Osama and I want to build a drone for my friends.”