The Drone

by Adrian Magson

  It irritated him that he still didn’t know where in hell this place was. He’d been driven here in the night, busy sleeping off too much drink to care or notice. And while he had a decent sense of direction, he needed some kind of visual aid to make even a guess at his surroundings. But outside this window all he got was rocks, grass and more rocks.

  Could be anywhere in the world, except he knew it was somewhere in the US.

  He dragged on the last of the smoke and dropped the butt into an old tobacco tin, watching as a strand of grey curled into the air, dancing like a spirit before clouding against the ceiling.

  He checked his watch. It was getting late, past six. The top dog of the three men who’d brought him here had told him they’d be back at six. He hadn’t said where they were going nor what they were doing, and Tommy-Lee knew enough not to ask. Most likely praying and getting orders from their mullah or imam or whoever the hell was leading them. Couldn’t do nothing for themselves most of them, without going up the food chain and praying to Allah for guidance.

  Iraq had taught him that much.

  He levered himself off the bed and went over to the bucket and relieved himself. Then he splashed water on his face from a container by the door. It did little to make him feel better about being cooped up in this shitty little place miles from anywhere, but he figured the fifteen-thousand bucks he was being paid for the privilege would be worth it once he got the job done and was out of here and on his way to wherever the hell he felt like going – preferably another nowhere place but with a choice of good bars and bad women.

  He wiped his hands on his pants and stared at his reflection in an old truck wing-mirror tacked to the wall. Saw grey, thinning hair, and skin like tanned leather, and eyes the colour of dried canvas staring right back. It wasn’t a face to be proud of, but then he’d never been pretty, even as a kid.

  He shook his head, wondering how he’d come to be doing a job of work for a bunch of Arabs after his time in Iraq. No way you could account for fate; it just picked you up and dropped you into something with no regard for irony. Not that he’d told them what he’d done in the military nor where he’d been; far as they knew, he was just a working stiff who could get a job done no questions asked. And if it meant agreeing to not showing his face outside while he was here, he could cope with that. Hell, compared with some of the places he’d been, this came close to exciting.

  Probably wasn’t much out there to see, anyway, if his guess was right.

  He stepped to the chair and picked up a large hunting knife in a greasy leather scabbard. He’d stolen it from his pa as a kid forty years ago. The savage beating he’d taken as the only suspect had been worth it, especially as he’d never admitted to it at the time, claiming it must have been a vagrant seen in the neighbourhood. Lucky for him, old Lucy Beckett down the track said she’d seen the man, too. Not that it had gotten him an apology for the beating; toughening him up for life was how his old man would have called it. But getting one over on the old bastard at age fourteen had been his rite of passage, and not long after that he’d walked out and never gone back. Freedom.

  He smiled at the memory, even after all these years. With the first money he’d made from robbing a grocery store three weeks later, he’d mailed his old man a photo of himself holding the knife and wearing a go-suck-on-that-you-evil-fuck grin stretching from ear to ear. With a bit of luck it had given the old bastard a seizure.

  He slid the knife from the scabbard and caressed the bone handle. It was smooth in parts and chipped a little on the edges, but still good to hold. He positioned it so the light shone off the heavy curved blade, and touched the sharp edge with his thumb. Gentle as the touch was, a tiny line of blood spots welled up as the skin parted. He rubbed them off against his forefinger, enjoying the stinging sensation.

  In the hands of his mean-drunk father, this blade had always scared him half to death. Now it was his. And as he’d done a few times, he could use it to scare others.

  He turned his head and for the first time focussed on the other bed. The prisoner was lying on his side, watching him, eyes wide with fear over the strip of grey cargo tape across his mouth, snorting down his nose like a pig in mud. Dressed in a crumpled white shirt, dark pants and once-polished shoes, he looked like he might be a banker or a lawyer. Except this man’s hands were cuffed to the bed frame, the same as his ankles, and he hadn’t moved in over twelve hours.

  4

  Eighteen hours after talking to Elizabeth Chadwick, Ruth cleared immigration and customs at Newark Liberty International airport. A meeting with Richard Aston, her superior at Cruxys, had confirmed that the search for James Chadwick was moving across the Atlantic, his last known location, and that she was required to help out. As she walked out onto the crowded concourse at Terminal B, she saw her name on a square of cardboard being held aloft by a familiar slim figure.

  ‘Welcome to America,’ said Andy Vaslik with a grin. He dropped the name card onto a passing baggage cart and gestured towards the main exit. ‘Out this way.’ He didn’t offer to take her bag.

  ‘Please tell me this wasn’t your idea, Slik,’ Ruth muttered, ‘bringing me all the way over here.’

  ‘Not guilty.’ He made no response to the nickname, which she’d given him at their first meeting. ‘Aston figured we’d worked together so well last time, and since I was already here in New York on a visit, it made sense. If you don’t agree I can always send you back.’

  ‘Makes no difference to me. Why should it?’ Ruth tried to work out if he was teasing her. They’d last teamed up in London a couple of months back, and after an initial frostiness – mostly on her part, she was ready to concede – had worked well together. It had been Vaslik’s first job since being headhunted by Cruxys. A former New York City cop and then agent with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), he’d proved himself able to adapt very quickly to different environments.

  Richard Aston, the lanky former Parachute Regiment officer and now Operations Commander at Cruxys, had avoided telling her who she was going to be teamed with on this assignment, and she thought she knew why; he liked his teams to spark off each other and not become complacent or comfortable. Typical officer mind games, she decided. But it worked.

  ‘It will be an investigator supplied by the New York office,’ he’d said briskly, handing her an envelope containing briefing notes and flight details, tickets to be collected from the information desk at Heathrow.

  ‘I didn’t know we had one.’

  ‘As of the end of last week. Greenville agreed funding. We’ve already got a senior person from the FBI to set up and run the office, and he’s currently recruiting personnel with suitable backgrounds to staff the office and work in the field. It seems we’re the good boys and girls of the Greenville group at the moment, thanks to your success with the Hardman assignment. They want to follow our operating model more closely.’

  Greenville Inc, was a Dutch-US security and salvage conglomerate. Keen to get more market share in the private security business, they had bought a major share in Cruxys. Things had become complicated with one of Ruth’s previous cases involving a child kidnap by rogue Israeli and American operatives working on an extraordinary rendition exercise against a terrorist banking fund. Thanks to recent American recruit Andy Vaslik and a former Diplomatic Protection Group officer named Gina Fraser, the kidnapped girl had been rescued and returned to her mother. But it had been a close call and for a while the Greenville investment in Cruxys had hung in the balance, the parent company wary of involvement in what had been a messy business with illegal ops implications and questions in Congress.

  ‘So who’s got first call on this?’

  ‘This is a cross-company response because of the twin nationalities. We have primacy because Chadwick’s contract is with us. But you might need to defer to the locals for their expertise and knowledge. I’ll leave that to your judgement. Any problems, call me.’

  There had been nothing more to say, and she had h
eaded for the airport.

  Now Vaslik was leading her to an anonymous rental car at the kerb, being watched over by a Port Authority officer. He helped her stow her case in the trunk, then shook hands with the cop, whom he evidently knew, while Ruth climbed into the passenger seat and waited for him to join her.

  ‘Is this your new posting?’ she asked. It would make sense, since Vaslik now had experience of working with the Cruxys model, and he knew New York like the back of his hand.

  ‘Actually, no,’ he replied, taking the car smoothly away from the kerb, ‘I was due back in London after a few days here, and got the call from Aston to stay on for this assignment. When he told me you were on your way over, how could I refuse?’

  ‘Funny man. So where are we going first?’

  ‘Chadwick’s apartment here in Newark. It’s not far.’

  ‘There’s no trace of him, I take it?’

  ‘No. He’s dropped right off the map. I called his employers but they haven’t heard from him, although they claim that’s not unusual within their corporate structure. Like most of their consultants, Chadwick’s pretty much his own man; as long as he completes ongoing projects and brings in regular business, they don’t keep real close tabs on him.’

  ‘That’s not helpful.’

  ‘I know. That’s why we have a meeting with them later.’

  Something in his tone of voice made her turn her head. ‘That sounds significant.’

  ‘I’m not sure. The woman I spoke to was guarded, as if she didn’t want to say much. If I had an employee go missing, I’m pretty sure I’d want as much help as I could get. I figured it would be better to see them face to face.’

  ‘Makes sense. What about his home addresses?’

  ‘He doesn’t seem to have been the world’s greatest mixer; I checked both places but came up empty. His neighbours either don’t really know him or haven’t seen him in a while.’

  ‘He was a busy man, according to his wife.’ She gave him a summary of what Elizabeth Chadwick had said, and the state of their marriage.

  ‘Is it possible he could be off somewhere having an extra-marital fling?’

  ‘You mean revenge sex?’ Ruth shook her head. ‘He doesn’t sound the type. Too intent on his job for any hanky-panky.’

  He looked across at her and grinned. ‘Do people actually say that – hanky-panky?’

  ‘Well, I do. But I’m quaint like that. If you’ve already checked his apartment, why are we going again?’

  ‘Because there’s something I want you to see. I need your take on a situation.’

  He refused to say anything else, and soon they were driving through a residential district of Newark, with apartment blocks either side. It looked a little run down in places, which possibly explained Elizabeth Chadwick’s initial reaction on hearing the location. But the streets were wide and full of activity, and no worse than a lot of other cities Ruth had seen.

  They passed a large hospital and Vaslik turned off the main road and pulled up in front of a neat, cream-clad apartment block with balconies on each floor. The street was quiet, lined with trees and the area looked prosperous and pleasant, another indication that James Chadwick wasn’t short of money.

  ‘Chadwick’s apartment is on four. He’s been here a little over six months, according to the super. Travels a lot, keeps to himself but seems pleasant enough.’ He jumped out and led the way into the building. They took the elevator to the fourth floor and he led her along a short landing and stopped outside a door, where he produced a key.

  ‘Is this legal?’

  ‘I borrowed it from the super, so yes.’

  He pushed the door open and Ruth followed him inside. They were in a small lobby area with wood-block flooring, a shoe rack, a row of coat hooks and a side table. Neat, unfussy. But the air smelled musty, as if the place hadn’t been used in a while.

  She waited for Vaslik to say something, give her a hint about what she should be looking for. But he merely gestured ahead towards the main living area. She stepped forward and stopped dead.

  The place had been trashed.

  A small tornado might have made less damage, but not by much. Cushions had been gutted, fabrics slashed to ribbons, a small television lay disembowelled and drawers had been emptied onto the floor. A large Afghan-style rug had been tossed aside and even a couple of the wooden floor blocks had been dug up and left where they lay.

  She looked at Vaslik. ‘Should we be in here?’ To any civilised police force in the world this was now a crime scene and by standing here they were importing all manner of contamination from the outside.

  He nodded. ‘True enough. But I wanted you to see it with no preconceptions.’ He took two pairs of disposable plastic overshoes from his coat pocket, and they slipped them on. ‘I already gave it the once over,’ he said. ‘But I don’t think a forensic search will show anything we can’t figure out for ourselves. Carry on looking and tell me what you think.’

  Ruth stepped through the debris into a small kitchen, an even smaller shower room and toilet and two single bedrooms. Whoever this had been designed for, it wasn’t a family or anybody who liked a feeling of space.

  The same scene of destruction had been visited on each room, and whoever had done this had taken their time and missed nothing. Broken lights, crockery and mirrors; books, magazines and DVDs; woodwork ripped apart, even the sink panels torn open and the waste pipes wrenched away from their mountings. The refrigerator was lying on its side, the carcass bearing signs of boot damage and a white patch where water had spilled out and dried. The door was open with the cooling system humming desperately, but there was nothing inside for it to cool down. In fact it looked unused, and she could only conclude that Chadwick didn’t spend much time here.

  Lucky for him.

  She wondered if the neighbours were deaf; all this damage must have made a hell of a noise. She checked the flooring in each room and the walls. But there was no sign of the one thing that might have existed had James Chadwick actually been here at the time of the search – blood. No smears, no splatter, nothing to suggest a struggle might have taken place.

  Bizarre.

  She returned to the front lobby, where Vaslik was bending to pick up something lying in the corner behind the door. It was a slim address book.

  ‘I didn’t notice this before,’ he said. ‘They must have missed it, too.’

  Ruth looked at it. Maybe it hadn’t been considered important enough to trash, or they’d been interrupted and forced to leave in a hurry. She took it from him and opened it.

  As she did so, three of the pages fell loose. She turned them over.

  The first page was from the ‘E’ section. It held the entry for Elizabeth Chadwick, her cellphone number and the London address. It had been outlined several times in bright, vicious red, the paper torn where the pen nib had dug into the page. Ruth felt a tug of alarm and checked the second page. It was from the ‘B’ section and listed the phone number and address of Ben Chadwick’s school. It was also outlined in red.

  ‘They didn’t miss it,’ she concluded. ‘This was deliberate.’ She turned over the third slip of paper with a feeling of foreboding. It was a blank page for notes, and carried a chilling message:

  Do as we say or lose them.

  5

  The prisoner had been sedated, one of the men who’d brought him here had told Tommy-Lee. It was the same man who’d got talking to him in a down-town Kansas City bar just a couple of days ago. He’d sounded American, talked football like he knew the game and drank nothing but Pepsi. A real all-American kind of guy. Tommy-Lee hadn’t thought much about the non-drinking bit; he’d known a few guys who’d hit the wagon over the years. They’d always seemed fine, although he reckoned they sounded kinda sad, too, like they’d lost a bit of spark along the way and couldn’t figure out why.

  This guy – he’d introduced himself as Paul – had called himself an entrepreneur. Tommy-Lee didn’t really know or care what that was, only th
at the guy was buying drinks which was fine by him. He could call himself Buddha if he wanted, long as he kept paying.

  About an hour later, after more drinks and Tommy-Lee had mentioned he was looking for work, Paul had asked him if he wanted to earn some ready money, no questions asked.

  As liquored as he was becoming, Tommy-Lee knew right away that it had to be something a little off-the-wall. Guys in bars – especially in Kansas City – didn’t throw money around if they were into a legitimate line of work. Just didn’t happen. And there was something about this Paul guy that gave off a vibe that was down deep and dark.

  But Tommy-Lee was near broke and he’d said yes, right off. Fact was, he had no immediate prospects, so any money was fine by him as long it was legal tender. Didn’t mean he had to like the man paying him, though.

  ‘It’ll be easy work,’ Paul had explained, leading him over to a corner table where they could talk in private. ‘You seem a pretty solid kind of guy, I can tell. Just had a run of bad luck, that’s all. Can happen to anybody.’ He leaned forward, his breath sweet. ‘Fact is, I overheard you talking to a pal of yours in here a couple of days ago. See, I know you have no love for the military or Uncle Sam. Am I right?’

  Tommy-Lee gave the man one of his looks. Normally that was enough to shut down an unwelcome line of conversation; but this Paul just seemed to absorb it and shrug it off without a flicker. He didn’t much like knowing he’d been watched before now; that was definitely creepy. But since the guy was offering paid work, how much did it matter?

  ‘I’ve had my run-ins, sure. Ain’t ashamed to admit that. So what?’