Caitlin thought about taking the passenger seat in his Jeep, but climbing into a car with someone who was still obviously over the limit was not something Colonel Murdoch would do. Instead, she sat in the back of a four-passenger Hummer with Musso, driven by the redoubtable Milosz, who seemed unaffected by the ravages of whiskey and cigars. Maybe he really had been suckled on potato vodka as a child.
The direct route between the federal outpost and Blackstone’s seat of power was much shorter than the long and winding detour Musso had taken from the airfield. The transition to the area controlled by the state government could not be missed. The devastation of the Wave and the entropy that ran wild as soon as humankind’s hand was lifted from the world disappeared when they crossed an invisible line south-west of Belton, a small satellite town nestled at the junction of I-35 and Route 190, which ran west to Killeen and the Hood. No rusting car hulks or broken-down machinery marred the landscape here. Out in the fields, hundreds of workers moved along freshly ploughed fields, hand-weeding winter crops. Caitlin wished she had a pair of binoculars. She was certain they all looked like guest workers from well south of this region. Officially, there were no migrants from south of the Rio Grande in Texas.
She settled back into her soft brown leather seat, scavenged from a luxury SUV of some type. The ride was much smoother today, no doubt to the eternal relief of the private rubbing his forehead in the passenger seat up front, who looked like a bullet for breakfast would not have been a bad idea. Each time the radio beeped with traffic, the young man grunted, picked up the hand mike and groaned out a response. Sergeant Milosz ignored him.
Unable to talk openly, Caitlin and Musso were content to listen to the Polish NCO as he gave them chapter and verse on the adventures of his brother’s family on a farm in the Federal Mandate.
‘Is supposed to be cattle farm,’ explained Milosz. ‘But niece has rescued baby lamb and raised it as a puppy because my brother will not have dog in the house. And yet, he allows the sheep, which now goes by the name of Vince, to wander around wherever it pleases. It sits on the couch. Sleeps on children’s bed. And sneaks behind the lounge for purpose of stealthy farting, just like a dog. But with misadvantages of not being trained properly to be in house, and leaving little round pebbles of sheep shit everywhere. Including in my room when I visit. I say to brother and wife they should get rid of this Vince. But they tell me the children love him. I would love him too, with mint sauce and baked potatoes. But does anybody listen to Milosz? No, nobody ever listens to Milosz.’
‘We’re listening,’ said Caitlin from the back seat as they rolled through well-tended fields. The overcast weather of the previous day had cleared, and although it was still cold, the sun shone down hard and bright.
‘Has your family had any problems with the state government?’ she asked as they passed a collection of residences called Cimarron Park. They didn’t appear to be occupied, but a lot of work had gone into keeping down the vegetation and preserving the buildings, giving the impression of a newly built housing estate.
‘Not problems for my brother Radoslaw, no,’ Milosz called back over his shoulder. ‘Resettlement people put them into new strategic village as soon as they arrive and when I visit I have helped them to improve defences. They have seen no road agents. But other families who have been longer tell Radoslaw that agents are fewer now. Have been much smaller pain in ass for maybe three months. Maybe four.’
Musso leaned forward to be heard over the engine noise.
‘Whereabouts are your family based, Sergeant?’
‘They are with six families in strategic village built in old town called Richards. Is north of Houston. Many bandits in there. Radoslaw tells me it was almost as bad as New York for a while. Until the TDF kicked them out.’
‘And the TDF, your brother is happy with the security they provide?’
‘Oh yes, sir. For a bunch of ignorant bigots and rednecks who scrape all the skin of their knuckles as they walk along, the TDF are okay, in the judgment of Radoslaw. Of course, Radoslaw allows Vince the sheep to do stealthy farts behind couch, so perhaps his judgment is not to be relied upon.’
They were deep into the suburbs now, with no sign of any of the security checkpoints or roadblocks. Local traffic had appeared, a smattering of merchants were opening their businesses, and increasing numbers of people were walking the streets, some holding cups of coffee, others carrying bread and milk. It seemed to Caitlin that the Hummer could’ve been touring through a massive, open-air art installation. Life before the Disappearance.
She sat forward too now, her turn to quiz their Polish raconteur. ‘Do you mind if I ask, Sergeant - the other families in the settlement with your brother, do you know where they come from?’
‘Two from Poland, good people,’ replied Milosz. ‘Two more came from refugee camps in England, the working farms. And the others I am not sure. From Seattle, maybe.’
She said nothing in response, preferring to mull over that in private. The families who had arrived from England probably came off a farm not unlike hers and Bret’s. The other Poles would’ve been people like Milosz’s family, descended from hardy peasant stock and selected for the resettlement program because of their familiarity with agricultural work. They might have gained extra points towards selection if they had a relative, like Fryderyk Milosz, who had volunteered for federal service. The final two, from Seattle, she could not guess at.
‘One more question,’ she said. ‘These families down in Richards, are they all white?’
‘Oh yes,’ said the Ranger, without a trace of discomfort. ‘No nig-nogs or sand bandits in my brother’s village.’
*
It took them thirty minutes to cover the distance from Temple to the gates of Fort Hood. As Milosz moved onto other topics, Caitlin pondered Jackson Blackstone.
It made sense, she supposed, for Blackstone to have set himself up in the former headquarters of Fort Hood. The base itself was more easily secured than the civilian town centre, to its east. He had actively recruited among former members of the military for his own migration and resettlement program. The base’s infrastructure had survived well, and with thousands of disgruntled, footloose, former US military personnel to draw on, ramping the place back up to becoming a functioning facility would have been a lot easier than the task Musso faced over in Temple. An additional argument could be made that the Hood was simply too valuable to leave unattended, given that it was the largest existing US Army installation in North America. Roberto didn’t have power projection capability yet, but he would have everything he needed if he were able to get to Fort Hood first.
Still, it said a lot about Mad Jack that his first thought was to go for the guns. There was plenty of evidence, if you wanted to look, that Texas under Blackstone was a militarised society, and nowhere more so than here at the heart of his administration. TDF armed squads patrolled the streets in armoured Humvees, and although McCutcheon kept to his word and their convoy wasn’t stopped, Caitlin noted the telltale signs of semi-permanent checkpoints at least six times before reaching the base perimeter. She had no doubt that random roadblocks could be thrown up almost anywhere within the greater city of Killeen at a few minutes’ notice.
The residents she saw on the drive through Killeen into Fort Hood seemed to care not at all. They had none of the beaten-down, furtive air that usually hung around the subjects of a tyrant. Sparkling under the morning sun, still wet with yesterday’s rain, the new capital of the Texas Administrative Division presented as an advertisement for Arcadia. A white, heavily armed, middle-class Arcadia.
Milosz stuck close to McCutcheon’s Jeep, tailing him through the enormous military facility, a city within a city. The other vehicles in the small procession had peeled off earlier to seek out some basic supplies, fresh fruit being one item much needed back in Temple. McCutcheon had mentioned that the Post Exchange had a good supply, but he’d never said where it came from. Caitlin was hoping they might score some oranges or t
angerines.
Like the air force bases her father had served at, a lot of Fort Hood could have passed for any patch of American suburbia, with a smattering of warehouses and industrial centres dropped into the mix. Brick barracks that looked more like college dorms were faced by large multi-bay garages where TDF and civilians went about the task of salvaging and maintaining the massive fleet of military hardware. A cluster of soldiers took a break at one motor pool, gathering around a light-tan food truck, purchasing sandwiches, sodas and other products from the fried, fat, salt, grease and sugar food groups.
Any thoughts that the Hood was simply an office park in uniform were dispelled, however, by the sight of an Abrams tank at an intersection close to the 1st Cavalry Division Museum, on Headquarters Avenue. The modern tank stood in stark contrast to the collection of mostly olive, drab vehicles from the US Army’s past. The crew waved at McCutcheon, receiving a hand wave in return.
‘The tanks are a bit excessive, aren’t they?’ Caitlin asked.
‘Probably there for your benefit,’ Musso said. ‘This checkpoint is normally manned with Hummers. It’s just Mad Jack putting on the ritz.’
The III Corps Headquarters came into view across a browned-out, wide-open parade field. Caitlin half expected to see troops marching back and forth, but apparently they had better things to do. A single soldier made his or her way across the field, destination unknown. Headquarters itself could well have been any building in any industrial park throughout North America, although the silver-grey structure was certainly distinctive enough, with its three-wing design. A banner hanging across the facade under the III Corps name proclaimed the following: Welcome to Fort Hood. Provisional Capital of the State of Texas.
They pulled up behind McCutcheon as he swung down from the Jeep, a pair of Ray-Bans in place to protect his bloodshot eyes from the glare of the morning sun.
‘Sergeant,’ he said, addressing Milosz, ‘we’ll probably be a couple of hours. If you and the private here are feeling peckish, you can get yourselves fixed up on base, or if you’d be more comfortable in town - and as long as your boss is fine with that, of course - I can recommend the breakfast burger at Greybeard’s, back in Willow Springs. That was the last little shopping village we rolled through before hitting the base. But if General Musso wants you to stay close, there’s also the Burger King down the road, although it doesn’t quite serve the old-fashioned Whopper we all remember and love.’
‘Is not to be worrying,’ replied Milosz. ‘I have seagull’s breakfast today. A drink of water and a look around.’
‘Go get yourself a coffee and a proper feed,’ Musso said, dismissing his escort after checking that both men had cell phone coverage.
Caitlin wore the uniform of the day - a winter-weight battle dress outfit designed for the forests of Cold War Europe. It was infused with enough starch that she imagined it could deflect bullets and knife strikes at the right angle. In many respects, Echelon’s undercover operative blended in with the Texas Defense Force personnel, who retained the same BDUs as the United States armed forces. Only the blue embroidery of her name tag and collar rank marked her as an outsider. She would’ve preferred to have worn the lighter, summer-weight BDUs she sometimes donned for field work, but they were too ripped and faded for use here. There would be no explaining how Colonel Murdoch had got them so scruffy-looking, sitting behind a desk in the UK.
Musso seemed to have deliberately dressed down, opting for a pair of hard-wearing boots, jeans, an old polo shirt and a jacket that looked like an insulated rain slicker. She wondered if he was drawing from James Kipper’s style guide. Sending his own message.
‘All righty then,’ declared McCutcheon, clapping his hands together as though hangovers weren’t something he had to worry about. ‘Let’s go see the big bad wolf.’
40
FORT HOOD, KILLEEN, TEXAS ADMINISTRATIVE DIVISION
Low clouds, heavy with the threat of freezing rain turned the wasteland between Temple and Killeen darker than one of the lowest, most benighted levels of Hades. But that suited Sofia Pieraro’s purposes just fine. She was used to moving through the night quietly, unseen. The unpleasant conditions would also keep Blackstone’s troopers inside their guard houses, nursing cups of cocoa, possibly fortified with a shot or two of something stronger. Or they would gather around oil drums and small bonfires, stamping their feet against the cold, their night vision wrecked by the flames. More than once, on the long trek from Texas to KC, they had encountered bandits who made the same mistakes again and again. Some of them had died for it. Some of them at Sofia’s own hand. For now, however, she glided on.
All of the local radio stations, which she had monitored so diligently, trumpeted the recent lifting of roadblocks between the state and federal settlements as a reassuring sign of improved relations between the Kipper and Blackstone administrations. Sofia hoped not. She would hate to think that what little faith her father had invested in the President had been completely misplaced. But for her, right now, the loosening of security was a godsend. The road ahead of her began to climb up a gentle hill, and she stood on the pedals of the salvaged mountain bike to bring more of her strength to bear. The shoooosh of the bicycle’s tyres, and her own steady breathing were the only sounds she could hear beyond the call of an occasional night bird.
She strained in the dark to pick up anything that might warn her of danger nearby. Voices. Vehicle noises. The clink of bottles or cutlery. Anything that might indicate the presence nearby of TDF troopers, or indeed of anybody who might attempt to interfere with her plans.
But there was nothing. Not this far out from Killeen and Fort Hood. She calculated that she was well within the territory of the state government now. The fields on either side of the road were sown with winter crops, tended by indentured workers from the south. They would be locked up in their barracks now, and the attention of the guards focused in on them, not out towards the night.
Approaching the crest of the small hill she slowed, stopped, and dismounted. The figure of the young teenage girl, diminutive in the vastness of the empty land, remained so still and quiet for so long that she disappeared into the background. While Sofia waited, and allowed her senses to flow outwards, searching for any sign of threat, a long-eared jackrabbit hopped onto the road not ten yards away from her. With its filthy, matted fur it was difficult to see at first, even with her dark adapted eyes. But she caught the movement in her peripheral vision as it hopped across the tarmac. Were she on the trail, as she had been so long ago in another life, she might have shot the rabbit, or used a hunting bow if stealth was in order, to secure her meal for the day. But she had eaten well before leaving Temple, and had no need of sustenance.
What she needed was to pass through Blackstone’s defences and into the heart of his lair.
After a few minutes, satisfied that she remained alone on the road, she pushed off, soon cresting the gentle rise and coasting down the slope on the far side. The moderate elevation provided her with a view of Fort Hood for the first time. It seemed to blaze in the night like a fierce jewel, but she knew that to be an illusion. So used was she to travelling through the haunted ruins of America that even a few hundred houses lit up, and a few streetlights strung between them, were enough to create the impression of bountiful life and energy in the midst of an almost infinite wilderness.
She slipped down towards her destination, applying the handbrakes occasionally lest she accelerate to a speed at which she could not stop in a controlled fashion whenever she wanted. Sofia tried to relate the small, sparkling jewellery box of the city ahead of her to the maps she had memorised, and which she carried in her backpack. It was not easy. Not cloaked as she was in obsidian darkness. But again, she did not allow any sense of uncertainty to undermine her determination. She had already chosen the place in which she would lay up and wait for an opportunity to present itself. She had a rough, working idea of how she might use the city’s terrain to her advantage.
And if
that idea proved to be ill-founded, she would adapt.
She had learned that from her father and her friends. To survive, to get what you needed, you had to adapt.
The road levelled out and she began to pedal again.
41
FORT HOOD, KILLEEN, TEXAS ADMINISTRATIVE DIVISION
Polished floors, fresh paint on the walls and crystal-clear windows filled the Territorial Capital Building of Texas, formerly US Army III Corps Headquarters, with an unnaturally pure level of sunlight. Caitlin’s saluting arm got a workout on the approach to the building, greeting one Texas Defense Force soldier or officer after another. She essayed a casual salute, not sloppy, but not parade-ground perfect either. Good enough to do the job. Those she encountered seemed respectful. Then again, she was dressed in almost the exact same uniform as the TDF troopers. By the time the soldiers figured out she was a fed, it was too late to retract the salute or try on any disrespectful behaviour.
Once indoors, the saluting stopped, for which Caitlin was grateful. Like all formality, it grew to be a tiresome exercise.
‘Kate,’ Musso said. He pointed at her standard-issue BDU hat.
‘Oh, sorry. Thanks,’ she said, removing her cover.
Small, stupid mistakes like that would be her undoing. She killed soldiers, but she didn’t live around them, her husband being the sole exception, and Bret was long past caring to maintain a soldierly disposition. She stowed her hat before the overly hung-over Ty McCutcheon could notice the gaffe.
As soon as they were inside, she began taking sight pictures of the building’s layout. She had blueprints of the original design, including the security net, courtesy of Echelon field services, but there had been some structural and quite a bit of cosmetic work done since the Blackstone administration had moved in. She noted as best she could where the fundamental layout had been changed, and where the obvious surveillance devices - CCTV, infra-red traps, motion sensors and so on - were to be found. The building was secured, but no more than she would have expected of a civilian government facility, which is what the Territorial Capital Building was, in spite of the military trappings. The main defences seemed to be the two civilian guards at the concierge station.
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