The Sound of Distant Engines

First Sergeant, Colin Matheson a hero and the poster boy for a new kind of warfare in America’s endless Middle East conflicts when he is photographed using a smart rifle to kill from miles away. A lifetime later, he is an old man taking VA meds to keep anxiety and the ghosts at bay. He spends his days quietly resisting the government he has come to symbolize using illegal technology to restore an 80-year-old car. All that is complicated by the arrival of his daughter and her 13-year-old son. The daughter has hidden motives. The boy has issues at his faith-based public school. When the Reverend Sibley shows up, it becomes clear, all the problems are related to the unveiling of a statue to honor the moment Matheson became famous—and to his refusal to participate. Before his family can be used against him to coerce participation, Matheson uses the car he calls Layla to create a distraction. As the pressure mounts, Mathson's ghosts and the feelings of impending change they bring, drive him to a lost love and a lost nation. Matheson finds himself becoming a new symbol in his run through the Mid-West. Pursued by police and skirting state surveillance networks, he learns about himself and his guilt from the shades that become more active in his life. Do the meds help him or are they another aspect of state control creating spirits from his violent memories? His only chance at freedom is to create a new image to represent the truth of his life. Matheson makes a last run to confront his past and make a new future he will never see.