The Kill Room

satellite view. A photo image of the ground around Reynosa popped up, houses, foliage, roads, stores.
    Looking back and forth from the radar panel to the map, lining up roads and other landmarks, he estimated the Hellfire’s location.
    Christ! The missile was right over another residential subdivision northwest of Reynosa. But according to Google, to the west was a large empty area of beige-and-yellow desert.
    “UAV Three—”
    Shales ripped off his headset and flung it away.
    Right hand back to the trackball.
    Gently, gently—man, it was easy to oversteer.
    Looking from radar to Google, he saw the Hellfire’s path veering away from the houses. Soon the direction was due west, toward what the satellite map promised was nothingness. The nose camera in the missile still showed only haze.
    Then the altitude and speed began to drop fast. The propellant was gone. There was nothing more Shales could do; he’d lost control of the missile. He sat back, wiped his hands on his slacks. Staring at the monitor of the view from the Hellfire’s nose camera. He could see only overcast.
    The altitude indicator showed: 1500 feet.
    670.
    590…
    What would he see as the Hellfire crashed to earth? Empty desert? Or a school bus on a field trip? Farmworkers staring in horror at what was falling toward them?
    Then the haze broke and Shales had a clear view of the missile’s destination directly ahead.
    However loud and spectacular the impact eighteen hundred miles away was, it registered in the NIOS Kill Room as a simple, silent change of image: from a barren plain of dirt and brush to a screen filled with flickering black and white, like a TV when a storm takes out the cable.
    Shales spun back to the drone controls, disengaged the autopilot. He looked at the camera’s monitor, still focused on the courtyard of the safe house. The children were still there, the boy, presumably the brother, gently kicking the ball to the girl, who chased after it like a driven terrier. A woman stood in the doorway watching them both, unsmiling.
    Jesus Lord, he repeated, not wondering or caring who they were or how they came to be in a safe house that the “impeccable” intelligence had assured was occupied only by a terrorist.
    He zoomed out with the camera.
    The garage door was open. Rashid was gone. Of course, he would be. The wary eyes earlier had told Shales that the terrorist suspected what was happening.
    He scooped up the headsets and placed them on his head. Replugged the jack.
    “—opy, Three Nine Seven?”
    “Three Nine Seven to Texas Center,” he snapped. “Mission aborted at operator’s discretion. Returning to base.”

CHAPTER 71
    D O YOU WANT SOME SCOTCH? ” Rhyme asked, from the center of his parlor, near a comparison microscope. “I think you need some.”
    Looking up from her desk in the corner of the room, where she was packing up files, Nance Laurel swiveled toward Rhyme with furrowed brow, wrinkling a crease into her makeup. He suspected a lecture on the unprofessionalism of drinking on the job would be forthcoming.
    Laurel asked, “What distillery?”
    Rhyme replied, “Glenmorangie. Twelve or eighteen years.”
    “Anything peatier?” she wondered aloud, to his additional surprise. Sachs’s too, and amusement, to tell from the faint smile on his partner’s face.
    “No. Try it, you’ll like it.”
    “Okay. The eighteen. Naturally. Drop of water.”
    Rhyme gripped the bottle and clumsily poured. She did the water herself. His bionic arm lacked sufficient subtlety. He asked, “Sachs?”
    “No, thanks. I’ll get something else.” She was organizing evidence bags and boxes, which—even in cases that were falling apart—had to be meticulously cataloged and stored.
    “Thom and Mel?”
    The tech said he was fine with coffee. Thom too declined. He’d grown fond of bourbon Manhattans lately but had explained to Rhyme that drinks that involved a recipe should only be enjoyed on weekends, when no business was likely to intrude.
    Thom pulled a bottle of French Chardonnay from the refrigerator in which blood and tissue samples were often stored. He lifted it toward Sachs. She said, “You read my mind.”
    He opened and poured.
    Rhyme sipped some of the fragrant whiskey. “Good, no?”
    “It is,” Laurel agreed.
    Rhyme reread the letter about Moreno’s renunciation of his U.S. citizenship. He was as angry as Laurel that this technicality had derailed the case.
    “He hated the country that much,” Pulaski