Although the sun was almost directly overhead, she was soon running in shade as the side street narrowed dramatically, becoming little more than a crooked shaft bored deep into a squalid mass of tumbledown shacks, hovels and filthy open-fronted bars, wrought out of shipping containers in a fashion not unlike the office complex at Shah’s business premises. Unlike him, however, the owners of these bottom-feeding operations had not a care for good order or cleanliness.
In one place, which seemed to service a purely Chinese market, blood was pooling under the barstools of its patrons, who all turned on their perches to watch her run past. She had no idea where the blood was coming from, or whether it was human. Impassable to road traffic, the undrained passageway doglegged around to the right, between two saloons that appeared to loom over the laneway – this being due to the verandas on their upper floors cantilevering out to such an extent that only a few inches separated them, creating the effect of a tunnel. As narrow as the path was through here, at least it was clear.
She could see why now, even in the gloom. Brass shell cases gleamed in the mud, picking up the reflection of neon lights, and red candlelit lanterns from what she assumed was the door of a Chinese brothel. A man lay dead, face down in the filth. Dark arterial blood leaked from five or more bullet holes punched into his torso. The wound that had killed him, however, was almost certainly a shotgun blast that had carried away the better part of his head, spraying it over the fibrous cement panels of the saloon in front of which he’d died.
One of Shah’s men was waiting for her a short distance ahead, nodding when he saw her and gesturing for her to hurry up. He waited next to a solid steel door that opened onto a gloomy staircase. A short Chinese woman ranted at him in a language neither of them understood, undeterred by the presence of the man’s weapons. ‘They fucked off in here,’ he said.
Jules heard the cough and bark of back-and-forth gunfire from somewhere inside. She could also hear what sounded like the roar of a crowd. ‘What the hell is this place?’ she asked, as she flicked off the safety on her pistol.
‘Fight club,’ he said without further explanation. ‘Come on.’
They plunged into the darkness, past a drunk lying in his own vomit and shit. The stench of him was sick-making.
Shah’s man took the stairs, leading upwards, two or three steps at a time. Julianne’s body was seizing up, her muscles clenching and stiffening painfully after the shock of the crash. She had trouble even raising her head to follow his progress. Nonetheless, she charged after him without hesitation. For the first time in months she felt like she was finally ahead of the play. If they could just lay hands on these fuckers . . .
An automatic weapon coughed in the dark, and her escort lifted off his feet before crashing into the wall and sliding to the floor, leaving a dark organic smear behind. Another man stepped out of a doorway and jumped when he saw her.
Jules dived for cover, pumping rounds down the hallway while ducking through a door into a red-lit room full of candles.
The man roared in pain. ‘Bitch! I’m gonna fuck you up!’
American, she thought. Jules heard his footsteps. Scrambling back to the inside corner of the room, she waited for the asshole to step inside.
The muzzle of his weapon came through first as he charged in without sweeping the area. Jules took her time to line the front of her SIG Sauer up with the side of the bastard’s head and squeezed off a double tap that dropped him like a sack of shit.
She flinched and shuddered as blowback splattered her with skull chips and small gobs of grey matter. Biting down on her revulsion, she scrambled out past the body and checked on the man Shah had left behind to look after her, but his sightless eyes could see her no more. She swore, once, and picked up his G-36 to supplement her handgun.
The confidence she had felt rushing in behind him had evaporated entirely. She’d expected they would sweep in behind a trail of dead men left by Shah and Birendra and their comrades. Where had the guy she’d just killed come from? He was a white male, American. And that’s all she knew. He could have been one of Cesky’s men, a hitter who’d hidden himself to ambush stragglers like her, before doubling back to take Shah from behind. Or he could have been some unfortunate punter, or an employee of this ‘fight club’, who was simply defending his place of business from a pack of murderous buggers who had just invaded it.
Oh, bloody hell, she thought. Nothing’s ever simple, is it?
The deeper she pushed into the building, the louder the crowd noise from downstairs grew. She stepped over two more bodies as she worked her way around a corner, and another one on a stairway leading down to what she assumed was the second floor. This building really seemed to have no coherence or logic to its internal design. Corridors branched off to nowhere. Sometimes doors stood open or closed down these dead ends. Sometimes the hallways literally led nowhere, for no reason.
More gunfire.
More cheering and shouting and rumbling from beneath her.
She followed the gunfire as best she could through the poorly lit space.
The gunfire and the trail of dead.
Another two left turns and she found Birendra propped up against a wall nursing a leg wound. He was sweating and struggling to maintain his composure as he applied a pressure dressing. He started to reach for his gun, stopping himself when he recognised her. Relief flickered over his otherwise impassive features.
‘Ms Julianne,’ he said. ‘Mr Shah has him, one floor down. He wishes you to go on ahead. My wound is not serious. I can tend to it myself.’
Jules answered that with a very dubious look. ‘Jesus Christ, Birendra, at least let me patch you up. You can keep an eye on the corridor behind me. I’m afraid the chap you left to look after me won’t be joining us. Some little munter did for him down on the first floor. Popped out of a room at the top of the stairs and shot him.’
‘A stay-behind,’ grunted Birendra, as she tied off the tourniquet he had fashioned for himself.
‘I wouldn’t have a clue. But I killed him anyway. It seemed the decent thing to do.’
‘Yes,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘Now you must go. We must finish this quickly before any others come . . . Down the hallway, first left, and take the stairs down. You will find Mr Shah through the second door on the right. Ignore the bodies.’
‘Thanks,’ she said giving his shoulder what she hoped was a reassuring squeeze. He hefted his shotgun to point it down the hallway up which she had just come.
Somewhere below her, it sounded like hundreds of men were chanting along in animalistic ritual. The floorboards, possibly the framework of the entire building, was thumping in time to it, as though hundreds of feet were stamping out a beat together. The tempo picked up, building to a crescendo, before erupting into what sounded like applause and shouts of encouragement.
She hurried on, following Birendra’s directions. Another of Shah’s men stood guarding access to the next floor via the stairwell. He watched over three corpses that seemed to have been piled neatly on top of each other. She vaguely recognised him from her visit to the compound the other day. He nodded brusquely and jerked his head in the direction of the doorway a little further down the hall. Julianne safed her weapon, raising an eyebrow in question.
He nodded. It was safe.
‘It’s me, Shah,’ she called out softly as she tapped on the door, fearing to walk in unannounced.
‘Come in, Ms Julianne,’ Shah replied. ‘There’s somebody I would like you to meet.’
47
TEMPLE, TEXAS ADMINISTRATIVE DIVISION
It was a strange assignment, not difficult, but nerve-racking in its own way. Corporal Summers had taken a couple of semesters of high school drama, many years ago it felt like, in the lost time before the Wave. She had no illusions about her acting ability, but then General Musso and Colonel Murdoch assured her she wasn’t going after an Oscar.
Like they still gave those out.
And like Colonel Murdoch w
as a real air force colonel.
In Amy Summers’ experience, USAF colonels were either full-time flyers or full-time paper pushers, especially nowadays when there were much fewer USAF colonels to go around. She’d been happy, even intrigued, by the Kim Possible mission they’d given her on Sunday evening, keeping Colonel Murdoch sober and bagging a set of fingerprints off that asshole from Fort Hood. That had been fun enough, but this was just weird, even a little scary.
‘You’ll be fine,’ General Musso told her, just before giving her a hand-drawn diagram detailing the location of the listening devices in Colonel Murdoch’s room. ‘It’s all audio, no cameras. We just need you to go in, put yourself to bed, and go to sleep.’
And to tell nobody, she thought. That was the real deal. Nobody could know she was pretending to be Murdoch. And Murdoch was . . . well, who the hell knew?
Certainly not Corporal Amy Summers.
*
Master Sergeant Milosz pulled over in the civilian Jeep at their rendezvous point, on the corner of East Avenue A and North 20th Street, in the ashen wasteland of Temple’s western reaches. This part of town had burned sometime after the Wave and the landscape was an eerie wilderness of ruins and scrubby regrowth. Caitlin could hear animals moving through the thickets as she waited in the burnt-out remains of a brick bungalow. She had her pistol to hand, the Kimber Warrior, and Milosz had told her to think nothing of shooting at anything with teeth that got too close.
‘This is for what I am supposed to be doing tonight,’ he’d said. ‘Hunting vermin and dog packs. People will expect gunfire, and this part of the town, everything east of 14th Street, is off limits.’
It made for a decent enough pick-up point. According to Caitlin’s watch, Corporal Summers would be climbing under her blankets right about now.
As Milosz cranked on the handbrake, Caitlin emerged from the shadows of the ruined dwelling. She holstered her weapon and slung a small backpack over one shoulder, throwing up black puffs of dust and ash as she picked a way through the front garden out to her ride.
‘So, Colonel Murdoch, I see you are PFC Murdoch now, yes?’
‘I’m still the same girl inside, Sergeant,’ she replied as she climbed in.
‘So probably not Colonel Murdoch then.’
‘Probably not, Sergeant Milosz, formerly of GROM. I’m sure you know the drill.’
‘Like the fat Sergeant Schultz of Stalag 13, I know nothing,’ he said with a grin. His teeth gleamed white in the darkness of the cabin. ‘Mr Musso, he asks Milosz to undertake special mission for him. Milosz is happy to comply. Anything to escape tedious discussion of football which is not football back at hotel.’
The Ranger was in BDUs, as was she, although her uniform was slightly different, being that of a private first class in the Texas Defense Force – her battered winter-weight camouflage with the proper tags sewn on. Tusk Musso had seen to that personally. Her shoulder patch marked her as a combat veteran of the now defunct 1st Armoured Division. The triangular patch was similar to the one on her other shoulder, representing the 49th Armoured Division, now of the TDF. She knew enough of a potted history of both to breeze by anyone who might stop her briefly.
‘For purposes of propriety, ma’am, what should I be calling you?’ the Polish non-com asked, as they pulled away from the kerb.
The roads in this part of Temple had been cleared a few years ago, but neglected ever since. They were not impassable, but nor was Milosz able to drive at speed. He had to manoeuvre the Jeep carefully back to Adams Avenue, which was regularly cleared.
‘“Kate” will do,’ she said. ‘So, Sergeant, you ready to drive me back into the lion’s den?’
‘Of course, Miss Kate. I have chosen route that will avoid usual patrols of TDF knuckle-draggers. Is long and winding road, like song by English Beatles, but it will put you within easy walk of lion’s den. I shall wait for you for extraction.’
‘I may not get back to a rendezvous,’ she cautioned.
Milosz shrugged. ‘I fought in Iraq and New York. Nothing in life is certain, Miss Kate. Not for you, not for Milosz, not for anyone. But I shall wait. I have foraged some literature, and some mandarins, which I found in Killeen this morning. Mandarins,’ he repeated with evident satisfaction, ‘they are much more convenient than oranges.’
He handed her a brown paper bag filled with three examples of the convenient fruit and a copy of The Great Gatsby. The affable Pole kept a stash of mandarins in a separate bag for himself, she noted.
‘This book I read in New York, during the battle,’ he continued. ‘It survived with me and so now I think it charmed. Irrational, stupid, but I cannot let it go. It is listed as a great American novel, which I suppose it is, although I still do not understand this Gatsby man. Perhaps, if you take this book, it might be of luck to you too. And you might be able to explain this Gatsby to me when next we meet.’
Caitlin took the paper bag, finding herself unexpectedly touched by the soldier’s gesture. ‘Why thank you, Sergeant,’ she said. ‘I promise I’ll read this book again. It’s been a long time. Not tonight, of course, but I will read it.’
Milosz’s face lit up as they pulled on to Adams and began to speed up.
‘So you are familiar with this Gatsby character? Who is he, do you think, Miss Kate? He appears to be a little shady to me. Perhaps one thing, perhaps another.’
The Jeep began to eat up the tarmac as they headed for the Dodgen Loop. The break in the clouds sealed itself up again, plunging the ruined landscape outside the car back into darkness.
‘Well, let’s see,’ replied Caitlin. ‘As I recall, Gatsby is us, Sergeant Milosz. All of us. As you say, perhaps one thing, perhaps another. Not really to be trusted.’
Milosz nodded sagely. ‘I see. I thought he was filthy rum Johnny who made free with other men’s women. Good thing for him to be shot in pool at end of book, no? It is what makes America great to be weeding out his sort.’
‘Who’s to know, Sergeant?’ Caitlin said as they rounded the corner and sped up, heading for Fort Hood. ‘Who’s to know?’
48
DEARBORN HOUSE, SEATTLE, WASHINGTON
James Kipper was still uncomfortable hearing his own voice on the radio. He couldn’t help thinking of Kermit the frog addressing issues of national importance.
‘Oh, just get over yourself,’ Barbara told him. ‘You have a nice, deep presidential voice. You’re just not used to hearing it like everybody else.’
‘She’s right,’ said Culver, as he swirled a small measure of brandy in a crystal balloon. He was leaning an elbow on the mantelpiece over the drawing room’s fireplace. ‘You sound fine, Mr President.’
It wasn’t unusual for the Chief of Staff to still be working through the middle of the evening, but it wasn’t every night he joined the First Family in their private quarters either. He was here tonight at Kip’s insistence. Jed was one of the few people he could trust not to let due deference to the office get in the way of calling ‘Bullshit!’ when the call had to be made.
A brief fanfare of trumpets on the radio announced the start of his weekly fireside chat, which this Monday night they really were huddled around a crackling fire to hear – as were most people in Seattle and beyond, with wood- or coal-fired heaters. Now into the third week of December, you could smell the smoke in the air at night.
The trumpets still irked Kip. Every couple of weeks he tried to sell the producers on the idea of introducing his weekly pep talk with one of his favourite tracks: ‘Takin’ Care of Business’ by Bachman-Turner Overdrive. ‘But it’s appropriate,’ he’d protest when everybody said no. As always, the supreme executive power of the President of the United States of America turned out to be not so supreme after all. He’d eaten plenty of pizzas with way more supreme than he could ever call on. So trumpets it was.
‘Hi everybody,’ said Kipper on the radio, while Kipper in real life finished off the last two bites of his toasted ham and cheese sandwich. The President started the
broadcast, as always, with a discussion on events of the last week. It wasn’t just a political catch-up. Kipper liked to chew over ‘the goings-on’ all around the country, and overseas if necessary. He liked to think that listeners might pay attention to him while he was talking about the budget or some legislative vote after they’d heard him discuss that week’s sports results, unusual weather and any WTF items in the news. Jed Culver was strangely indulgent about this, generally letting him have his way on the basis of ‘connecting with the average asshole’. Not how the former city engineer would’ve put it, but then Jed’s phrasing rarely was.
‘I hope you’ve all been keeping safe and warm during the weather we’ve been having,’ he told his listeners. ‘And looking after each other, too. Whether you’re in the city or out on the frontier, if you have a neighbour or a family member or friend you think might need help, don’t sit around wondering. Reach out and find out.’
In the drawing room at Dearborn House, Kipper took a sip from his beer to cover another wince of discomfort. He did mean what he said on the radio, but he always felt awkward putting it into words, and even more awkward when reading the lines that Jed had added to his notes for the show. Fucking ‘reach out and find out’, who spoke like that? His Chief of Staff seemed able to read his mind, and shook his head as if dismissing any concerns before Kip had even voiced them.
Finding he’d finished his beer, and seeing his wife needed a top-up on her wine, Kip excused himself and hurried through to the kitchen. He didn’t need to hear himself mouthing platitudes about ‘reaching out and finding out’, but he did want to get back in time to listen to that week’s correspondence. It was his habit each week, again encouraged by Jed, to read three or four of the many letters written to him by his listeners, or as Jed insisted on calling them, voters. Although, since many of the letters came from children, that wasn’t entirely accurate. He grabbed a fresh Red Hook Ale from the fridge, and the ass end of a bottle of some French chardonnay that Barb had been working through, before hurrying back. He returned just as his radio self was finishing reading a letter from a small boy in Kansas City, an Indian migrant, who wanted to know why people at school were so unkind.
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