on. Especially the unfortunates who wore eyeglasses and carried clipboards. Yes, this was the sort of target Cole liked best. Or so he thought until he heard the rest.
“His final posting was right down the road at Creech.”
“Creech, sir?” Riggleman was stunned. “He made a combat kill in a Viper, and they assigned him to a Predator wing?”
“Yes, soldier, he was flying Predators. If that Xbox bullshit can really be called flying.”
Now the man had his pity.
When Riggleman had first heard about the drone program, he’d loved everything about it. Part of the appeal was plain old schadenfreude. It was deeply satisfying to see jocks stripped of their dreams just as abruptly as he had been stripped of his. He also appreciated the way drone technology represented the triumph of brains over reflexes, cunning over muscle. The very people who the frontline showboats had always derided as REMFs—rear echelon motherfuckers—were now the very people who were winning the war.
But the longer it went on, and the bigger it grew, the less he liked it.The pilot talent pool was being drained into banks of windowless trailers. The very thing that had once attracted him to the United States Air Force—the dash, the glamour, the whole edgy idea that every time you went up you might not come back—was being bled from the skies, pilot by pilot, and it felt like each of them was a lesser man for it.
“Creech was where Cole crashed and burned,” Hagan continued. “Figuratively speaking, of course. Little more than a year ago.” The general skimmed the particulars of Cole’s court-martial. “The full transcript is available, but it’s under lock and key, so you’ll have to file an official request. All you need to know for the moment is that, following his discharge, Cole moved to a trailer in a uninhabited sector about halfway between here and Creech. Goddamn road isn’t even marked on a map.”
He slid a glossy photo across the desktop, a shot of Cole’s trailer taken from ground level with a long lens. It looked like something from an old black-and-white film about a down-and-outer who’d turned to crime.
“No car, as you can see. No electricity, no cell phone. Not much of anything out there but empty bottles of Jeremiah Weed. Maybe that explains why they took their eyes off him. In any case, sometime before last weekend, the former Captain Cole seems to have up and disappeared. At first there was speculation he might have just wandered off into the desert to die, but a thorough search of the area has dispelled those hopes.”
Hopes? They
wanted
that to happen?
“Then this image turned up from last Thursday.”
He tossed another photo Riggleman’s way. It was also a shot of the trailer, but taken from high above. A dark compact sedan was parked nearby.
“The tags aren’t legible, but we suspect it’s a rental, so I suppose that’s a sort of lead already.”
“Is this from satellite surveillance, sir?”
“No. We used our own hardware.”
“A Predator? But wouldn’t that site be outside of—?”
“Draw your own conclusions, soldier.”
Riggleman already had. Someone was flying a drone beyond theproscribed limits, and they’d compounded the crime by taking photos. He knew better than to ask what sort of secrets Cole was harboring. Besides, he had his own ways of checking on such things. He would put in a few calls—discreetly, of course—then cover his tracks. That’s one thing people like General Hagan always failed to realize about people like Riggleman. Tell them to find out one thing and they were almost certainly going to find out other things as well, including stuff you didn’t want them to know. Given Cole’s key role in classified ops abroad, the possibilities seemed limitless, all the way up to espionage. A little spot on Riggleman’s spine began to tingle. He picked up the surveillance photo.
“May I keep this, sir?”
“You can keep the whole damn dossier once we’re done
“His final posting was right down the road at Creech.”
“Creech, sir?” Riggleman was stunned. “He made a combat kill in a Viper, and they assigned him to a Predator wing?”
“Yes, soldier, he was flying Predators. If that Xbox bullshit can really be called flying.”
Now the man had his pity.
When Riggleman had first heard about the drone program, he’d loved everything about it. Part of the appeal was plain old schadenfreude. It was deeply satisfying to see jocks stripped of their dreams just as abruptly as he had been stripped of his. He also appreciated the way drone technology represented the triumph of brains over reflexes, cunning over muscle. The very people who the frontline showboats had always derided as REMFs—rear echelon motherfuckers—were now the very people who were winning the war.
But the longer it went on, and the bigger it grew, the less he liked it.The pilot talent pool was being drained into banks of windowless trailers. The very thing that had once attracted him to the United States Air Force—the dash, the glamour, the whole edgy idea that every time you went up you might not come back—was being bled from the skies, pilot by pilot, and it felt like each of them was a lesser man for it.
“Creech was where Cole crashed and burned,” Hagan continued. “Figuratively speaking, of course. Little more than a year ago.” The general skimmed the particulars of Cole’s court-martial. “The full transcript is available, but it’s under lock and key, so you’ll have to file an official request. All you need to know for the moment is that, following his discharge, Cole moved to a trailer in a uninhabited sector about halfway between here and Creech. Goddamn road isn’t even marked on a map.”
He slid a glossy photo across the desktop, a shot of Cole’s trailer taken from ground level with a long lens. It looked like something from an old black-and-white film about a down-and-outer who’d turned to crime.
“No car, as you can see. No electricity, no cell phone. Not much of anything out there but empty bottles of Jeremiah Weed. Maybe that explains why they took their eyes off him. In any case, sometime before last weekend, the former Captain Cole seems to have up and disappeared. At first there was speculation he might have just wandered off into the desert to die, but a thorough search of the area has dispelled those hopes.”
Hopes? They
wanted
that to happen?
“Then this image turned up from last Thursday.”
He tossed another photo Riggleman’s way. It was also a shot of the trailer, but taken from high above. A dark compact sedan was parked nearby.
“The tags aren’t legible, but we suspect it’s a rental, so I suppose that’s a sort of lead already.”
“Is this from satellite surveillance, sir?”
“No. We used our own hardware.”
“A Predator? But wouldn’t that site be outside of—?”
“Draw your own conclusions, soldier.”
Riggleman already had. Someone was flying a drone beyond theproscribed limits, and they’d compounded the crime by taking photos. He knew better than to ask what sort of secrets Cole was harboring. Besides, he had his own ways of checking on such things. He would put in a few calls—discreetly, of course—then cover his tracks. That’s one thing people like General Hagan always failed to realize about people like Riggleman. Tell them to find out one thing and they were almost certainly going to find out other things as well, including stuff you didn’t want them to know. Given Cole’s key role in classified ops abroad, the possibilities seemed limitless, all the way up to espionage. A little spot on Riggleman’s spine began to tingle. He picked up the surveillance photo.
“May I keep this, sir?”
“You can keep the whole damn dossier once we’re done
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