Crossing herself and murmuring a prayer for the dead, she stepped deeper into the gloom. Her senses were still amplified after the fight for her life. She could hear rats scurrying deep inside the market building, but nothing larger than that.
The first of her provisions she found in the third aisle. Five-gallon plastic bottles of water. The contents would taste foul after all this time, but water did not go off as long as the seal on the bottles remained unbroken. With no running water in the motel she’d chosen to lay up in tonight, she had no choice but to seek out potable supplies. Food was more of a challenge. On the journey to KC, they had hunted and trapped wherever possible, but occasionally they came across stores of food preserved well enough to use. Sofia knew what to look for, thanks to Trudi Jessup, who had schooled all of them in the shelf life of canned and dried groceries.
Into her backpack went half-a-dozen cans of corn, a tin of peaches, two packets of vacuum-sealed lentils and - the Lord Jesus be praised - one large canned Christmas cake. A real score. She checked the tins for dents and swelling and the packets of dried food for any sign of insect infestation. She would do a more thorough check once back in her room, but as an experienced scavenger, she was confident she’d just secured enough food and water for three days.
Once upon a time she would’ve thought nothing of walking the ten or twelve blocks back to her new hideout. A trip of maybe fifteen or twenty minutes. But returning from the market this night, she was heavily weighed down as she negotiated a treacherous passage through more streets overgrown with vegetation and blocked by wreckage and fallen trees. Advancing in short bursts of movement. Scurrying from cover to cover. Always watching and listening to avoid being discovered, Sofia took over two hours to return to the Economy Inn, a two-storey motel of brown bricks and weather-faded trim on the southern edge of Temple’s town centre. It was close enough for her to feel as though she was in some sort of contact with the federales, but far enough removed from their comings and goings that she didn’t have to remain in hiding every hour of the day.
Despite the chill of the night, she was sweating by the time she got home.
Home.
How sad that she should think of the Economy Inn as her home.
Although a young teen in years, Sofia Pieraro was experienced in the dictates of survival. She did not hurry into the motel; she remained in cover where she could observe from a safe distance. Having killed bandits who returned to their own camp sites without taking the precaution of checking for ambushes laid in their absence, she knew to wait and watch for at least an hour. Even though, in this instance, she was certain long before then that it was safe to enter, Sofia cleaved to the lessons of the past. Only when a full hour had passed with no sign of anybody lying in wait for her did she complete the last, short leg of her return trip.
Even then she was not done with caution. Leaving her supplies at the front desk, she retrieved the AK-47 from where she had stashed it, behind a fire hose in a closet on the ground floor. Without night-vision equipment, she had to fix the little flashlight to the barrel with a couple of thick rubber bands she carried for that purpose. Safety off, finger on the trigger, selector to full auto, she performed the last rite of her careful passage back into hiding: effecting an entry into her motel room, as though she knew it to be occupied by an intruder.
It wasn’t, and after a quick sweep of the few places where somebody could be hiding, she collected her food and water and shut herself in.
First priority was to clean herself up and dispose of her soiled clothing. She wouldn’t waste water on laundry, not when clothes could be scavenged so easily from right here in the motel. She stripped off, washed herself down with a cup of water and a hand towel and soap from the bathroom. Changed into a clean pair of jeans and a dark blue flannel shirt. Bundled up her dirty clothing and tossed it into the room next door. Working by moonlight, she fed herself from the dwindling supplies she had brought with her, leaving it until morning to properly examine the cans and packages she’d taken from the market. Dinner consisted of two muesli bars, a sachet of protein gel, and two cups of water.
She was exhausted but wired, still coming down from the shock of fighting off the pack of wild dogs. Part of her, the weak, unworthy part, longed to crawl into bed and dream of happier days. But there could be no happiness for her, not while there was breath in the body of the man she blamed for the death of her family, perhaps even for her father. The tyrant Blackstone might not have driven the car that ran him down, but he had certainly driven Miguel Pieraro to Kansas City, where he had perished.
Wrapping herself around the small, dark furnace of her loathing for Jackson Blackstone, Sofia crawled into bed with the transistor radio, now tuned to one of the two talk stations broadcasting from Killeen. Other local stations played music, and she might well have been able to calm down and sleep while listening to one of them. But she found the talk stations an excellent way of learning about Fort Hood and Killeen. Not so much about the Hood’s interminable feuds with Seattle or its worries about Roberto Morales, Caribbean pirates, migrants and West Coast liberals, all of which seemed to exercise the imaginations of the people phoning in. Rather, she was interested in the calls that gave her an insight into how things actually worked over here.
She knew, for instance, that all the rumours back in KC about only white people being able to walk the streets were wrong. There were many African-American families, Asians and even some Latinos living in Blackstone’s capital. But they were all military people who had joined the Texas Defense Force. Of the settler families who had come here, fewer hailed from all over the world compared with Kansas City. There were no Indians and Pakistanis working on the railways in Killeen. No Arab doctors in the hospitals. No Mexican farmers tending to their own associates, but there were hundreds of them working on government farms that sounded similar, in some ways, to those her family had worked on as refugees in Australia. But very, very different in other ways. On the government farm outside Sydney, they had been free to come and go when not working, whereas here, workers seemed to move only between the fields and the barracks that housed them. Sofia knew this because of callers like ‘Estelle’, who was right then complaining to the host of the midnight shift about the number of ‘beaners’ she had seen walking around, as free as birds, when she’d done her shopping that morning.
‘What I want to know is where were their bosses and foremen, Ray? Where were they? I didn’t see ‘em. I didn’t see ‘em anywhere. Do we let these people run around like this nowadays? Is that how things are now? Just like Seattle, where anything goes? Because you can see what happens when anything goes, Ray. It goes to hell in a handbasket.’
Sofia had heard this complaint a few times in the last day. The good people of Killeen and Fort Hood seemed most put out that they should be inconvenienced by frequent traffic stops and checkpoints, while ‘beaners’ and ‘servants’ seemed to have the run of the town.
Ray assured Estelle that he was certain Governor Blackstone would not condone a situation where anything goes. Governor Blackstone would make sure that Estelle had nothing to worry about. Ray, Sofia had learned, spent a good deal of his time on air assuring Estelle and her ilk of Governor Blackstone’s best intentions.
Estelle seemed unconvinced, but Sofia was satisfied. This was the fourth caller she had heard complaining about unescorted ‘servants’ being allowed to wander around the town unsupervised. That was interesting, thought Sofia. She added it to a growing list of interesting facts she had learned from the radio or gleaned from her conversations with Dave Bowman.
Most interesting of all was the fact that Blackstone lived ‘among his people’. In a simple house on the base.
Yes, that was very, very interesting.
39
TEMPLE, TEXAS ADMINISTRATIVE DIVISION
The alarm woke Caitlin Monroe at six the next morning, relatively late for her. Tusk Musso had been right, telling her not to set it too early. After a tense start to the evening
, the three of them had drunk well into the night. At one point McCutcheon even suggested they pile into a couple of pick-ups - the table had attracted at least a dozen rowdy hangers-on by that point - and all drive over to the Hood for some real eatin’ and drinkin’. That plan went nowhere.
Nobody was sober enough to drive, except for Caitlin, and only she knew that. She’d secretly swapped out her whiskey for iced tea after the second drink. She was tired enough to act drunk, which, in character as the punishing Kate Murdoch, simply meant becoming more taciturn and red-eyed as the night went on. Ty McCutcheon was a natural performer and everybody’s new best friend, encouraging them all to drink up and filling the bar with raucous good vibes and the promise of more to come. Naturally, he made a pass at ‘Katie’ about halfway through the night, but then he made a pass at every woman in the room. Hell, he may even have scored.
When Caitlin excused herself and tottered unsteadily away - a very convincing, if quiet drunk - McCutcheon had two administrative assistants in his lap pouring him tequila lay-backs. The Echelon operator caught Musso’s eye as she was leaving, long enough for him to share a look that told her he thought this might be all for the good. It was a chance for his people to blow off some steam, and maybe to create a little goodwill at the top of the food chain over in Fort Hood. He too switched drinking tactics early in the night, but had resorted to lite beer rather than the complete fake-out she’d pulled. Unless, of course, he’d had ginger ale in those beer cans.
The Polish sergeant, Milosz, who was one of the first to gatecrash the table, had hauled out a stash of Cuban cigars as his calling card. One of the worst hangovers Caitlin could ever recall, from her college years - and she could only dimly recall it - involved whiskey and cigars. It had been her first and last two-day hangover. An experience she was more than happy to avoid repeating by bailing early and taking a shower to wash the smell of alcohol and smoke out of her skin and hair. Tired, not just from work and travel, but from the constant strain of maintaining cover, she fell asleep soon after pulling up the covers, and before her thoughts could turn to home.
Outside now, she could hear a platoon of Rangers going through their morning physical training, shouting cadence without the usual level of enthusiasm. A glance out the window revealed more than a few of last night’s revellers struggling to go through the routine of side-straddle hops, squat thrusts and the hello dolly punctuated by frequent commands to drop into the front leaning rest for another round of push-ups.
‘So glad I didn’t chose the army for my cover,’ she said to herself. It was just the type of pointless, dumb-ass physical training she hated. They’d probably follow it up with a ten-mile run to sober up all the alcoholics. No doubt, out at Fort Hood at this very instant, the same ritual was taking place. Or maybe not. As Musso said, it wasn’t the regular army anymore.
She’d woken up feeling refreshed, at least, but hungry. There had been a promise of dinner with Musso and McCutcheon, she remembered, but after a few drinks that promise turned into an untidy pile of corn chips and peanuts. An orgy of trashy carbs and additives she’d decided to skip.
After changing into exercise clothes and hitting the gym, she logged a long session of high-intensity cardio intervals, strength training and the Tensho and Saiha kata of the Kyokushin ryu, before searching out breakfast. Returning to the hotel bar, she found the whole area had been thoroughly cleared of the debris de partay before the caterers set up the morning buffet. She wasn’t surprised to see a lot of fried meat on offer, most of it the fruit of the pig. Caitlin indulged herself in one half-rasher of bacon, but stuck to her usual breakfast of oatmeal with berries, two eggs on a piece of wholemeal toast and a cup of black coffee. She would have liked some citrus, but there was none to be found.
‘Impressive effort, Colonel. I wouldn’t have imagined any human being could face poached eggs the morning after besting a bottle of single malt in close-quarter combat.’
Looming over her table, Tusk Musso was holding a plate of sausages and scrambled eggs and waiting for an invitation to sit down. He caught her with a mouthful of food, necessitating some awkward hand gestures as she juggled a knife and fork and her cup of coffee. Musso took the seat opposite.
‘Saw you in the gym this morning, as I shuffled past,’ he chuckled. ‘I’m afraid I don’t practise the combat arts as much as I used to. I’m getting a bit old and brittle for it. Most dangerous cripple in America, that’s me.’
‘You don’t look like you’re about to fall over,’ replied Caitlin, smiling. ‘Unlike some this morning.’
The general grinned with the appreciative malevolence of somebody who hadn’t drunk too much. ‘I don’t imagine Ty McCutcheon will be putting his head in there or here anytime soon,’ he said. ‘Last I saw of him, he was being dragged off to his room by a couple of Rangers.’
So he didn’t score. Useful to know … Even gossip could be useful to know.
‘Well, you know the air force, sir,’ she joked. ‘The hardest drinkingest service of all. Although, I’ll give you your due. For a Leatherneck, you didn’t do too badly last night.’
Musso started in on his scrambled eggs, bulldozing them up with a piece of beef sausage. ‘Do you think it helped?’ he asked, ignoring the troll bait.
It was the sort of question he would ask of his military liaison officer, but of course they both knew that she was nothing of the sort. Caitlin wondered whether he was genuinely curious about her reading of the night, or just playing to her cover.
‘Depends,’ she said. ‘On how straight he was with us. On how much influence he has with Blackstone. Maybe even on whether he wakes up with sailor’s nuts and gets pissed off he didn’t get to have his end away with those two cuties he was bouncing on his knee last night.’
A look appeared on Musso’s face that was a little confused, but mostly inquisitive.
‘Have his end away? You sound like you spent some time in England, Colonel Murdoch.’
Caitlin mopped up some runny yolk with a piece of toast on the end of her fork. The eggs looked to be free range, from the rich, bright orange of the yolk. She wondered where they sourced them. They reminded her of the farm in Wiltshire.
‘That’s how I missed the Wave,’ she said, dropping into the background story of her mission jacket. ‘I was on a posting with the RAF. Only supposed to be there six months. Ended up staying nearly three years in all the confusion. Never developed a taste for warm beer, but I did get some schooling in how to drink whiskey during a stint up in Scotland at RAF Leuchars.’
A few people were beginning to drift into the repurposed bar for their breakfast, but nobody she recognised from last night.
‘That’s good,’ replied Musso. ‘Because you’ll need your wits about you today, even if McCutcheon doesn’t have his. We have a meeting with Governor Blackstone at 0900 hours.’
‘We?’
‘Indeed. We, including my new buddy Tyrone.’
‘Somebody had better go wake him up then. Bags not me.’
‘You have been over the pond a while, haven’t you? Don’t worry about McCutcheon. I’ve already put Sergeant Milosz onto that hazardous duty.’
She cocked her head a little. ‘You know, General, Milosz didn’t look like he was going to be much better off this morning, last time I saw him.’
Musso shrugged. ‘I think they gave Sergeant Milosz potato vodka instead of baby formula at whatever collectivised communist childcare facility he was raised in. He was probably up before you with the rest of the Rangers, giving them a metric ton of shit for their unmanly inability to hold their liquor. Probably worked Melville into his cadence, too. His guys love him, but they hate it when he tries to improve them.’
Caitlin washed down the last of the toast with black coffee, ready to face the day.
‘I ran into him yesterday,’ she said. ‘Seemed a good guy. He was partly why I went in so hard at the start of last night. I wanted to knock McCutcheon off balance, get a concession from him before we even go
t things under way. I hope you’re okay with that. You looked a little taken aback.’
The former Marine shook his head, dismissing her concerns. ‘You did take me by surprise, but McCutcheon was a lot more surprised. And it worked. Or it seemed to, anyway. I guess we’ll see about that today. I’m going to send a few people over to pick up some basic supplies at the PX. We’ll see whether or not the chickenshit is persistent.’
He finished his breakfast, placed his knife and fork next to each other on the plate, and leaned back, giving Caitlin a calculating once-over.
‘Is it your intention to go in against Blackstone the same way, Colonel?’ he asked. ‘Because I don’t know if the same tactics would be as successful with him. He is a prickly character.’
She could see a number of stress lines working away under the surface with Musso. It was real now. She was in play. But of course she was running more than one play, and while Kipper’s man in Texas had pledged to support her, he was also aware that his people would bear the consequences of any miscalculation by Colonel Katherine Murdoch. Even if Caitlin’s real mission was a washout, ‘Katherine’ could still have great influence over the next couple of days, for good or ill, and Tusk Musso was alone in knowing that she was largely unqualified to do what everybody else was expecting of her. Namely, to create a bridge between contending powers.
Musso knew, as did she, that creation was not her forte. Caitlin Monroe’s special gift was for destruction.
‘I’ll deal with the man on his merits,’ she assured him. ‘But I won’t be dissuaded from doing what I have to.’
*
A small convoy of Humvees followed by a solitary M35 cargo truck proceeded from Temple to Fort Hood, led off by a very seedy-looking Ty McCutcheon, who was undoubtedly still too drunk to drive his Jeep Wrangler, but who insisted on doing so anyway. Nobody was going to be pulling Governor Blackstone’s right-hand man over to the roadside for a breath test, and he wanted to take point to make sure there was no problem when they started hitting the ubiquitous checkpoints.
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