Unmanned
A novel
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3.9 • 9 Ratings
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
From the widely acclaimed author of The Prisoner of Guantánamo and The Double Game, an electrifying, timely, psychologically gripping descent into the hidden, expanding world of drone warfare. • “Timely and disturbing…. An exciting story, expertly told.” —The Washington Post Book World
As an F-16 fighter pilot, Darwin Cole was a family man on top of his world. Now, he’s a washout drunk, living alone in a trailer in the Nevada desert. Haunted by what he saw on the display of the Predator drone he “piloted”—an Afghan child running for her life—he reluctantly joins three journalists seeking to discover the identity of the anonymous, and possibly rogue, intelligence operative who called the shots in his last ill-fated mission. On the trail of this operative, Cole and his new allies will discover the dark heart of our surveillance culture, with connections to intelligence, to the military, and to the unchecked private contractors who stand to profit richly from the advancing technology…technology not just for use “over there,” but for right here, right now.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
At the outset of this timely thriller, Capt. Darwin Cole, a Predator drone pilot comfortably ensconced at Nevada's Creech Air Force Base, discovers too late that children have entered his target area in eastern Afghanistan. The missile strike leaves two children dead, and Cole, devastated, spends a year in self-abnegating seclusion in the Nevada desert. Journalist Keira Lyttle finds Cole and persuades him to help her and two of her colleagues investigate the high-level misuse of government drones by a rogue CIA officer. As Cole and the reporters follow a trail through ex-CIA agents, intelligence contractors, and military technocrats, Fesperman (The Double Game) delineates the capabilities of modern drone aircraft in details that evoke wonder as well as chills at their disturbing implications for personal privacy. Though the characters never completely gel and the action sags in places, the technical information will keep readers turning the pages up to the rousing conclusion.
