The Drone

by Adrian Magson

  ‘And the watcher I tangled with at Chadwick’s apartment,’ Ruth reminded him.

  He nodded. ‘Him, too. It’s getting crowded.’

  ‘I wonder why Chadwick didn’t send in the photos when he called in his report,’ Vaslik said. ‘He must have known it would strengthen his claim.’

  ‘Maybe he never got the chance,’ Brasher replied quietly. ‘If this Paul guy was watching him this close, he might have figured that sooner or later he’d talk to us and decided to cut to the chase and take him.’ He stopped as his phone buzzed and excused himself to take the call. He listened for a few moments, making quick notes on his notepad, then told the person on the other end to pull up a file of the suspect, before turning to the others with a mixed look of triumph and uncertainty.

  ‘We’ve got a hit.’ He tapped the photo of the second man, the weightlifter figure seen under the arches at the Transit station. ‘NGI says his name is Bilal Ammar. Aged 28, he’s been here about fifteen years, came over from Egypt with his father, an IT consultant on a work visa and settled in Queens. When his father died of cancer he dropped out of school and became radicalised at a local mosque in Queens. He came to our attention mixing with a known pro-terror support group running a website calling for jihad against the West. Most of the group are hot-heads who like mixing with protest marches and starting fights. Ammar was picked up in connection with two serious assaults on anti-jihadist Muslims who were trying to calm things down at a couple of larger mosques in the city.’

  ‘How come he’s walking free?’

  ‘The usual: they couldn’t prove anything because the victims were unwilling to identify him. In the end they had to let him go, but it was enough to get his face added to NGI.’ He lifted his hands. ‘At least now we know he’s acquainted with this guy Paul, whoever he is… and quite possibly the other guys as well. And if we get the prints off the knife and hardhat, that might give us another one.’

  ‘Great,’ Ruth murmured. ‘So we’ve got a potential terrorist cell.’

  21

  After running the remainder of the DVD Tommy-Lee found sleep was hard to come by. It wasn’t just the prisoner’s first crazed reaction that had rattled him, though; he was thinking about the money he’d been promised and how if he wanted to enjoy it, he had to make sure he could get away from here with his skin intact. Because one thing was certain: the more he came to know Paul, the less likely he could see himself being allowed to walk off into the sunset with a hearty handshake and a briefcase full of cash if things didn’t work out the way the man wanted. No way.

  That meant he either had to cut and run now, before things went bad… or he worked to make himself indispensable to their plans. He had no illusions about what those plans might be, only that he valued the idea of the money more than he cared about the man on the other bed. Whatever James – the name was out there now and couldn’t be unheard – whatever James had done to get himself to this situation, it surely wasn’t anything to do with being in the army and turning in a couple of Paul’s friends to the authorities. It had to be a lot heavier than that. But that was James’s problem and he didn’t want any part of it.

  James had been awake most of the night, too, he knew that. And it didn’t take a college degree to guess why. After watched the rest of the DVD in silence, he’d asked to be allowed to wash and use the bucket. After that he’d asked Tommy-Lee to run the DVD again, this time with the sound cranked right up in case there was a faint message, a background noise – anything he might be able to latch onto. But there was nothing.

  Now it was daylight again and time to get down to business.

  Paul had said they’d be back about six this evening, which was their normal schedule. He’d already worked out that they avoided coming here in full daylight because they didn’t want to be seen. Evenings, however, were easier, and they could always duck out of sight if they had to. But as he was learning fast, that Paul was a tricky bastard and quite capable of pitching up early if he felt like it. And being caught out without having done his job as promised would be one serious mistake to make.

  He stood up and washed his face, opened some tinned fruit and sliced meat and gave some to the prisoner. He’d already sworn that when he got out of here, he was never going to touch sliced peaches, segmented pears or apricots again. Ever.

  They ate in silence, Tommy-Lee standing occasionally to watch as a car or a truck trundled by on the road. He hadn’t actually asked Paul what would happen if anybody decided to stop here and take a look around. All he knew was, if anybody did stop, he’d be over to the prisoner and clamping a hand over his mouth to stop him shouting for help.

  He needed that money too bad to let it go just like that.

  When they were both done eating, he dragged the chair close to the other bed and sat down. This time he was holding the knife, what little light there was kicking off the polished blade.

  He took no notice of the look on James’s face, nor the way he shrank back against the restraints; this was business and he had a job to do.

  ‘That DVD,’ he said, talking casually, like he might with a friend. ‘They told me I had to show it to you and make sure you understood what it meant. You got that, right?’

  No reaction. The prisoner was too busy staring at him as if he’d grown horns. But that was good; it showed he’d thrown the guy off-balance, which was a chink in anybody’s armour. On the other hand, Tommy-Lee was used to dumb silence, which most detainees figured was their best weapon against jailers. Little did they realise until the shit hit the fan that silence was only temporary; that after a while and the right ‘treatment’, they’d be singing like birds. True, there was usually a strong element of bullshit to look out for, even downright lies. They’d say just about anything to make it stop, often with just the right element of fact to make it worth checking out and to stop the rough stuff. But in the end the truth always came out.

  Just occasionally one of the detainees would surprise them all by finding some way, some deep-down reserve to help them end it completely. Even with strip-searching and cell checks, there was a way of accomplishing it if they were determined or desperate enough. In his opinion it was no big loss. It just meant a lot of paperwork and everybody scratching around to cover their asses and pretend it hadn’t happened on their watch.

  He reached back for the DVD player and switched it on.

  ‘Sydney Street,’ he said, eyes on the screen. ‘Now, I figure you know where that is, am I right? Looks a nice place.’

  Nothing. Eyes staring right through him like he didn’t exist.

  ‘Come on, does it look familiar to you? Huh? Yeah, I guess it does.’ He forwarded on to the close-up of the door. In interrogation sessions it was important to demonstrate right off that you had absolute control over the situation, in this case to show the prisoner that he, Tommy-Lee Roddick, dictated what would be seen and when. ‘See this house? That’s your front door, right? Nice place. Looks safe. Comfortable. Like, once you’re in there, ain’t nothing can touch you.’ He leaned forward into the prisoner’s line of sight, dropping his voice to a whisper and playing with the man’s imagination. ‘Well, pal, not for much longer, if you don’t stop dicking around with these guys.’

  Nothing.

  He shrugged and ran the film back to the school, where the boys were being shepherded into the big fancy building.

  ‘Now, I know you recognised this place, because this is where you lost it big the last time. It’s a school, I can see that – and a real fancy one, too. I have no idea what a preparatory school is, I admit, but I don’t exactly give a whole lot of shit, either. But something tells me you got a boy there, am I right?’

  This time there was something deep in the prisoner’s eyes, a flicker of light that showed he hadn’t entirely zoned out. He’d known detainees who could do that; they just shut down like robots losing power, as if they’d gone somewhere else and left the body behind, and nothing you did could reach them. At least nothing that didn’t i
nvolve ‘treatment’.

  Then the lights would come back on sure enough.

  He placed the DVD player to one side and picked up the knife. The prisoner’s eyes followed the blade for a couple of seconds, then clamped tight, his lips trembling and sweat pouring down his face.

  Tommy-Lee put the knife down again, and picked up the DVD player. Hard then soft, that was the way to do it; remind them of the threat then come right in with a switch in focus to throw them off-balance. He ran it forward, this time to the bit near the park showing the apartment building.

  ‘Hey, I’m kidding,’ he said, and slapped the man’s shoulder until his eyes flickered open. ‘I’m playin’ with you. Look at this bit here.’ He shoved the player right under the man’s nose. ‘It looks like New York or Chicago or wherever. Now that, I know you know. I saw your face and you recognised it right off. So where is it, huh? Tell me. And who is Valerie DiPalma? She your sister? A hooker? Your part-time squeeze?’

  For the first time the prisoner showed a definite physical move: he shook his head. But Tommy-Lee recognised it as a sign of inward denial. He wasn’t responding to the DVD or Tommy-Lee’s questions, but to his own predicament, trying to shake the whole thing loose like a bad dream that wouldn’t go away.

  He put the DVD player down and placed one foot on the bed rail, easing the chair up onto its back legs like he had all the time in the world. The ancient wood creaked loudly in the room, making the prisoner blink. ‘So. What are you thinking here, huh? You gonna do what they’re asking which, fuck me I ain’t kidding, I have no idea what that is? Or are you gonna wait for the head man to come in here later today and use that big semi-auto he keeps tucked in his pants to blow your stupid head off? And, by the way, it’s a forty-five so it would do that easy, no problem. I just hope I’m not in the room when he pulls the trigger, know what I mean?’

  This time there was a definite flicker of the eyes.

  Yes. It was the sign Tommy-Lee had been waiting for. It showed he was getting through and that the man wasn’t completely away with the birds. He pitched his weight forward, slamming the chair back onto its front legs and making the shed tremble so that a thin curtain of dust rained down from the ceiling. When he spoke, it was loud and angry and threatening and damned if it didn’t make him feel good for the first time in years.

  ‘Come on, get with the program, my friend!’ he yelled. ‘You know what he’ll do? He’ll make a call to his boys, the same ones who took the footage of the house and the school and the apartment where Miss DiPalma lives, and tell them to go on in and start cutting! You want that on your conscience? Huh? Tell me, Goddammit!’

  With that he stood up, kicking the chair away and grabbing the knife, and stepped over to the window to stare though the glass at the nothing scenery outside. He was breathing hard through his nose, like a bull wanting a fight, and could feel the blood pounding in his veins. Man, he hadn’t felt like this in a long time; knowing you were within an ace of getting a response from somebody who didn’t want to talk but would do so eventually, anyway. It was almost better than sex. True, it might be a bullshit answer full of lies and distortion, but any response was an opening. Create that and you had a way in. Sooner or later, they’d crack.

  ‘You really don’t want them to do that, my friend.’ This time his voice was low and soft, the voice of a friend. Which was bullshit, of course, but it worked more times than it didn’t. ‘You don’t want to let them crazy ragheads loose on your nice little house and your cute little family, I’m telling you. Because they will, I know. I’ve seen ’em do it. Not these three who brought you here, but others just like them, in Iraq. They waste entire families to get what they want. Sometimes they do it just to show they can. Wives, daughters, sons… girlfriends – anybody and everybody.’ He turned and lay down on his bed without looking at the prisoner, like he didn’t care. It was time to let the message sink in.

  ‘It’s your choice, my friend. Your choice.’

  * * *

  ‘I know what they want from me.’ The words were just loud enough for Tommy-Lee to hear and he lifted his head and checked his watch.

  ‘Say what?’ He’d had his head down for nearly an hour, drifting in an out of sleep. Fifty-eight minutes for the prisoner to decide to say something voluntarily rather than having it forced out of him. Not bad considering the circumstances.

  ‘I know what they want. Can I have some water, please?’

  ‘Sure.’ Tommy-Lee swung his feet to the floor and grabbed a bottle of water from the diminishing supply against the wall. The food was getting low, too, he noted, and wondered if it was a sign that they hadn’t got long to go before they could all be out of here.

  He tipped the bottle so the prisoner could take it at comfortable pace, and lowered it when he began to cough. But it wasn’t like before, when he looked as if he was about to croak. This time he seemed calm and in control, although his skin was the colour of uncooked dough and he looked clammy all over. Smelled bad, too.

  ‘Come on, then. What do they want?’

  ‘First your name.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Tell me your name. You know I’m called James.’

  The statement seemed to give the prisoner a tiny boost, and Tommy-Lee swore silently to himself. Shit, there it was again: he’d been suckered into entering the one circle you never went into with detainees – the one where you knew their names. Once you had that they became more than numbers or codes on a roster sheet or a cell door; they became people, with history and family and stuff.

  ‘Tommy-Lee,’ he said finally, and felt like it had been torn out of him. ‘It’s Tommy-Lee.’

  James didn’t say anything for a few moments, as if allowing the knowledge to sink in. Then he said, ‘They’re planning something. Something bad.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly. But I’m pretty certain it involves UAVs.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Unmanned aerial vehicles. Drones.’

  Tommy-Lee looked closely at him, trying to figure out if the guy had lost the plot or was fooling with his head. ‘What? You mean like Reapers and stuff?’ It didn’t sound likely, he knew that; the only people with that kind of weaponry in the US was the US military.

  ‘Not those. Smaller, commercial grade models. Radio-controlled, fitted with cameras. They’re used in land surveys and aerial photography, law-enforcement and checking out pipelines and fences. Have you heard of quad-copters?’

  ‘No, can’t say I have. But why would these guys be interested in drones? And what for? And why go to all this trouble?’ He waved a hand to include the box, the beds and themselves. ‘It don’t make sense.’

  ‘It doesn’t have to make sense, Tommy-Lee. Not to them.’ The prisoner turned and looked at him. ‘They’re terrorists. They’re planning to kill people.’

  22

  ‘How long for those fingerprints to be run?’ Ruth asked. She was on the phone to Brasher, who had been called away to a progress meeting on one of his other cases. She, Reiks and Vaslik had eaten snacks that they didn’t really want, if only to keep up the sugar levels if something kicked off and they had to move fast. Now time was ticking by and they were all getting jumpy.

  ‘Not long,’ he said. ‘They told me they’ve got plenty, on the hat and the knife, so if the prints are anywhere on the system, they’ll shake out sooner or later.’

  She went back to staring at the map while Vaslik ran through the iPad to see if anything stuck out. An alternate pair of eyes might throw up something others had missed.

  In the end she sat back in frustration and spoke at the ceiling.

  ‘Correct me if I’m wrong but we appear to have a former USAF spook with expertise in unmanned aerial vehicles who’s gone missing, possibly taken by another man or men who allegedly want him to help them fly drones or quad-copters for an obviously bullshit reason. We have at least three men in the mix, one identified as a violent extremist with jihadist leanings. This man,
Chadwick, seems to have been researching airfields or locations in remote places, which must be tied in in some way to drones, but we have no idea why.’

  Vaslik nodded. ‘That’s all I’ve got, too.’

  ‘Pardon me for saying so, Slik, but you don’t seem that frustrated by the lack of information.’

  ‘You reckon? Maybe I’m just better at hiding it.’ His phone rang and he picked it up, pushing the iPad to one side. He listened for a couple of minutes and made some notes, then cut the connection and turned back to Ruth with a blank look.

  ‘A thought occurred to me while you were out,’ he announced. ‘Where are the drones this man Paul was talking about? We don’t know if he already has them or has yet to acquire them, where they are or anything like that.’

  ‘True. So?’

  ‘I did some research on the subject earlier. There’s a ton of regulations you have to go through if you want a top-level drone that isn’t just for flying around your kitchen or back yard and amusing the kids. If you’re serious you have to get licences and do a training course and lots of other stuff. It takes time and money.’

  ‘And leaves a trail.’

  He nodded. ‘Most of all, it leaves a trail. And if this Paul and his buddies are what we think they are, they wouldn’t want to do that.’

  ‘Which is why they may have kidnapped an expert in drone technology, thus avoiding licences, training and paying a pilot.’

  ‘Right. That solves some of their problems, but not all. It still leaves the drones themselves.’

  ‘Good point.’ With everything else going on, Ruth hadn’t given it much thought. ‘Where would he get them – it? He’d have to steal one.’

  Vaslik smiled again. ‘That’s another thing, if you were planning something, would you rely on a single machine… or would you have backups in case something went wrong?’

  ‘I’d have backups. Even with somebody like Chadwick helping to teach them, they couldn’t guarantee they wouldn’t screw it up or the machine didn’t malfunction. The same question holds, though: where would he get them?’