21st Birthday (Women's Murder Club #21)(92)

And I get back to work, something suddenly bothering me, something I can’t quite figure out.





BASE OF THE HUNTSMEN TR AIL

Mount Rollins, New Hampshire





In the front seat of a black Cadillac Escalade, the older man rubs at his clean-shaven chin and looks at the video display from the laptop set up on top of the center console. Sitting next to him in the passenger seat, the younger man has a rectangular control system in his hand, with two small joysticks and other switches. He is controlling a drone with a video system, and they’ve just watched the home of former president Matthew Keating disappear from view.

It pleases the older man to see the West’s famed drone technology turned against them. For years he’s done the same thing with their wireless networks and cell phones, triggering devices and creating the bombs that shattered so many bodies and sowed so much terror.

And the Internet—which promised so much when it came out to bind the world as one—ended up turning into a well-used and safe communications network for him and his warriors.

The Cadillac they’re sitting in was stolen this morning from a young couple and their infant in northern Vermont, after the two men abandoned their stolen pickup truck. There’s

still a bit of blood spatter and brain matter on the dashboard in front of them. An empty baby’s seat is in the rear, along with a flowered cloth bag stuffed with toys and other childish things.

“Next?” the older man asks.

“We find the girl,” he says. “It shouldn’t take long.”

“Do it,” the older man says, watching with quiet envy

and fascination as the younger man manipulates the controls of the complex machine while the drone’s camera-made images appear on the computer screen.

“There. There she is.”

From a bird’s-eye view, he thinks, staring at the screen. A red sedan moves along the narrow paved roads.

He says, “And you are sure that the Americans, that they are not tracking you?”

“Impossible,” the younger man next to him says in confidence. “There are thousands of such drones at play across this country right now. The officials who control the air-space, they have rules about where drones can go, and how high and low they can go, but most people ignore the rules.”

“But their Secret Service …”

“Once President Matthew Keating left office, his daughter was no longer due the Secret Service protection. It’s the law, if you can believe it. Under special circumstances, it can be requested, but no, not with her. The daughter wants to be on her own, going to school, without armed guards near her.”

He murmurs, “A brave girl, then.”

“And foolish,” comes the reply.

And a stupid father, he thinks, to let his daughter roam at will like this, with no guards, no security.

The camera in the air follows the vehicle with no difficulty, and the older man shakes his head, again looking around him at the rich land and forests. Such an impossibly plentiful and gifted country, but why in Allah’s name do they persist in meddling and interfering and being colonialists around the world?

A flash of anger sears through him.

If only they would stay home, how many innocents would still be alive?

“There,” his companion says. “As I earlier learned … they are stopping here. At the beginning of the trail called Sherman’s Path.”

The vehicle on screen pulls into a dirt lot still visible from the air. Again, the older man is stunned at how easy it was to find the girl’s schedule by looking at websites and bulletin boards from her college, from something called the Dartmouth Outing Club. Less than an hour’s work and research has brought him here, looking down at her, like some blessed, all-seeing spirit.

He stares at the screen once more. Other vehicles are parked in the lot, and the girl and the boy get out. Both retrieve knapsacks from the rear of the vehicle. There’s an embrace, a kiss, and then they walk away from the vehicles and disappear into the woods.

“Satisfied?” his companion asks.

For years, he thinks in satisfaction, the West has used these drones to rain down hellfire upon his friends, his fighters, and, yes, his family and other families. Fat and comfortable men (and women!) sipping their sugary drinks in comfortable chairs in safety, killing from thousands of kilometers away, seeing the silent explosions but not once hearing them, or hearing the shrieking and crying of the wounded and dying, and then driving home without a care in the world.

Now, it’s his turn.

His turn to look from the sky.

Like a falcon on the hunt, he thinks.

Patiently and quietly waiting to strike.