“I was guessing at your head size when I fitted them up last night,” Sharpe said, a hint of pride in his voice.
“They’re perfect.”
The old excitement again, creeping into his veins like before a Viper mission, and even sometimes during Predator flights, if the assignment was interesting enough. He had the cockpit view now, peering down the barrel of the driveway, which Sharpe had already raked and swept. The wind was right, and Sharpe was ready.
“Okay,” he said to Sharpe. “Take her up.”
A whirring noise as the engine amped up, surprisingly quiet for all its oomph. No louder than, say, a weed whacker with an electric motor. Sharpe had built quite a machine, fast and stealthy, and with an intrusive set of eyes. Cole watched from his virtual cockpit as Sharpe handled the takeoff by autopilot, and he got that familiar flutter in his stomach as it lifted off, gained altitude, and then turned gracefully up and across the cornfield. The tree line loomed a few hundred yards away, but they would clear it with ease.
“Okay,” Sharpe said. “Switching her to your control on three. Take her wherever you feel like. Maybe up to seven, eight hundred feet before you try anything fancy.”
“Hey, I’ve got an idea,” Barb said. “Sort of a test mission.”
“Let’s hear it,” Cole said, “I’m open to anything.” And he meant it. This felt good, even this faux brand of flying with two feet on the ground and people’s voices in his ear.
“Find Keira. Get a bead on her car.”
Steve laughed nervously.
“Well, it would give you some practice in tracking a moving object,” he said, warming to the idea.
Then Barb.
“Absolutely. And if Captain Cole’s half the pilot I think he is, he’ll track her down in seconds flat.”
“So there you go,” Steve said, like they were a tag team now.
“Then we’ll find out who she’s really meeting with.”
Cole’s heart sank. Exactly the kind of mission he didn’t want. Not something for the cause, just a random act of intrusion. Give them the power, and right away they abused it. Or maybe he was reacting on Keira’s behalf. Would he have felt the same way yesterday, before last night? Had Keira counted that into the equation, perhaps, seeking his loyalty? Now he was the one being calculating. Leave the pettiness and scheming to them. But of course Barb and Steve would now be expecting him to resist, and that made him want to just go ahead and do it, let them see that it was no big deal. He would prove Keira innocent of their brand of duplicity. Clear the air and actually make things better.
“Okay,” he said, “if that’s what you want. This bird’s certainly got the speed for it, so we’ll do it. We’ll go spy on your friend and colleague.” He was wearing the goggles, watching the treetops zip past below him, so he couldn’t see their expressions. But they didn’t answer, so maybe at least he’d shamed them a little.
Cole easily found her car, heading north on the road toward Easton.
“Are you too low?” Barb asked. “Won’t she see you?”
“Wouldn’t that make it more fun for you?”
“C’mon, Cole,” Steve said. “If you’re going to do this, do it right.”
“If we’re going to do this, you mean. Relax, I’m at eight hundred feet. As quiet as this thing is she’d have to be looking for it, and we’re directly overhead now. It’s a six-foot wingspan, painted white against an overcast sky, a nonreflective finish so it won’t even shine too much if the sun comes out.”
Cole slowed down, keeping pace. Keira was doing about fifty-five. It was flat country, wide open, and there was barely a breath of wind, which made the flying ridiculously easy. This thing handled like a dream. Cole heard footsteps shuffling toward him on the driveway. Sharpe, probably.
“Kick out the stops, man!” Sharpe said. “See what she’ll do!”
“Later. Aren’t you watching my monitor? They’ve got me following Keira.”
“Oh, for Chrissakes!”
“All hope’s not lost. Show them what your other eye can do. The main spycam. I’ll take her up a little and start circling the target as it moves. I’m a little worried about airspace, though. We’re closing in on the Easton Airport. Just a bunch of little private aircraft, but still.”
“I’ve checked the charts,” Sharpe said, still sounding grumpy. “We’re fine.”
“The noise suppression’s pretty impressive. How much did that set you back?”
“Let me worry about the budget.”
It made him wonder how Sharpe had managed to bankroll all this. Maybe Castle wasn’t the only one working for someone other than who he was supposed to be. He wished he could take off these goggles and look him in the eye. Or maybe mistrust was contagious, and he’d picked up the bug from Steve and Barb. The whole idea made him weary, a little depressed. You got the power, you abused it. Human nature. And he certainly wasn’t immune.
Keira had turned onto the Easton bypass and moved through a few stoplights as she negotiated a stretch of road through a series of stripmall developments — fast food joints and big box stores. Cole did a barrel roll and even a loop, half to try it out and half to test their patience, but no one complained, which made him figure Sharpe was doing an okay job of keeping the second camera trained on their quarry.
“I’m putting her into a circling pattern at eight hundred feet and switching back to auto,” Cole announced.
“Fine,” Sharpe said. He sounded preoccupied. “That’ll be another nice test, see how well she holds her patterns. I’m locked in on, uh, the subject.”
He sure was. When Cole took off the headset he saw Keira’s car in startling clarity as it pulled in to a small parking lot outside a red clapboard café, on the bypass near Route 50. Steve and Barb were practically draped over his back, enraptured by the view on his iPad. Sharpe glanced back at him, eyes dark with suppressed fury.
“There, she’s getting out,” Steve said.
“Look,” Barb said. “Someone’s getting out of that other car. The BMW. They’re waving. A woman.”
“Must have been waiting on her.”
Keira met the woman in front of the café entrance, where they hugged briefly before heading inside.
“Seems to know her well. Can you zoom on the tags of the BMW?” Barb asked. “Do we still have enough light? Do you think we can get a number?”
“Easily,” Sharpe said, downcast.
And there it was, clear as life despite the low angle of the setting sun, Barb with her notebook out, writing it down. She fairly sprinted into the house for her laptop and was back in a flash, already with the right webpage up, searching the numbers.
“I knew it,” she said. “Knew it. It’s Felicity Barrow, her agent. That’s her ‘government source.’ Her fucking agent.”
“How long have we been airborne?” Cole asked, wanting to talk about anything but what they were watching.
“Almost twenty minutes,” Sharpe said.
“How’s the fuel holding up?”
“Plenty left. Not an issue.” A monotone. Going through the motions but nothing more.
Cole looked at Steve, who seemed a little torn. A glint of triumph, perhaps, having proved his worst suspicions, but there was gloom, too.