Finding himself in the unusual position off not knowing exactly what to think, Jed Culver settled for trying to read Kipper’s reaction instead. He knew the President’s natural inclination would be forgiving rather than punitive, at least of the spear carriers and foot soldiers. The altogether less liberal approach of effectively exiling them into the wilderness for a decade, and allowing tightly controlled access to their wives and children, probably didn’t appeal as much. But then Kip had been initially sceptical of Sarah Humboldt’s plan. Or Humboldt and Ritchie’s plan, he supposed, given how well they’d gamed the proposal.
The President took his time mulling it all over. Nobody spoke while he was deep in thought. Jed used the brief interlude to examine the idea from all the worst possible angles. His main concern was not that a handful of nutjobs would run wild in an empty city. They’d been smashed flat in NYC when they were part of a much larger, well-organised fighting force. No, as individuals rattling around the interior of a nearly empty continent, there just wasn’t much mischief they could get up to, and his reading of human nature led him to believe that Humboldt was probably right - most of these former grunts for hire could be reformed and even assimilated, given enough time. As for the true believers, Baumer’s hard-core jihadi, they had no future here. And Jedediah Armstrong Culver, of the Louisiana Bar, would not rest until they were gone or dead. After all, war crimes trials were in the offing for a number of them. Even the more moderate elements of President Kipper’s Garage Cabinet were agreed on this point, thankfully.
The main threat, however, as always, was Jackson Blackstone. It made your head spin to think about the merry hell he would play with something like this. It was almost a lay-down certainty he’d have his lapdog State House pass a law banning the presence of any former enemy combatants within the borders of Texas and its protectorate territories. Having done that, the sneaky little fuck would probably want to make sure a couple of them actually wandered over the state line … just so he could be seen to hunt ‘em down and string ‘em up.
On the other hand, a merciful, peacemaking gesture would play very well here in the Northwest, especially with Sandra Harvey’s Greens. They weren’t running a candidate in the presidential election. Sandra was smart enough to know she could only ever play the role of a spoiler for Kip’s chances. And for all of her many, many issues with his administration, she regarded the possibility of a Blackstone-led government with visceral horror. He was just running the math in his head on whether a Green endorsement would bring in more votes than it burnt off when Kipper broke the silence.
‘The women and the children should be allowed to stay, with certain … provisos,’ he began. Everybody seemed to lean forward just a little bit. ‘It’s reasonable, I think, that we require of them everything we require of any other settler, and more. English-language proficiency. Civic education. Training in whatever base-level skills we deem necessary. All the usual. And, because of the circumstances under which they came here, we need to ask - no, we need to demand - more of them.’
‘I think loyalty pledges went out with Catch-22, sir,’ said Jed, barely constraining the sarcastic tone he really wanted to use. Kip, as was his style, shrugged it off as the Chief of Staff went on. ‘The last time such measures were tried out was back during the time of Lincoln with former Confederates. It didn’t work all that well back then, and it probably wouldn’t work well in the here and now.’
Aside from the notion that it would do no good, in Culver’s estimation, this was just the sort of thing the Seattle press would sink their teeth into and not let go of. He figured it was best to steer Kipper away from that path.
‘You know that’s not what I’m talking about, Jed,’ the President replied. ‘Let me make myself understood: I’m not in favour of sending thousands of women and children, who themselves have done nothing wrong, back into the wastelands they used to call home …’ Kip held up his hand like a traffic cop to head off any further interruption. ‘And before anybody says anything, I am well aware that some of these people originally set out from Europe, not the Middle East - I do actually read your briefing papers, you know. In those cases, I am open to the argument that they should be repatriated.’ He smiled now. ‘I doubt Chancellor Merkel or President Sarkozy will want them back, but you’ll be pleased to know, Jed, I don’t much care.’
Culver took the ribbing in good faith as Ronnie ghosted in through the door to see if anybody needed a refill on the coffee. He lifted his cup and waggled it at her while Kip spoke again.
‘Bottom line, anyone who can prove refugee status, by demonstrating they came from one of the countries nuked by Israel - and my understanding is that quite a few of them did - well, in those cases I am open to the possibility of our accepting them in the spirit of forgiveness and reconciliation.’
For Jed, the urge to groan was almost too strong to stifle. He could already imagine how Blackstone was going to play this, and while Admiral Ritchie may’ve been on board, Culver suspected that many of the rank and file in the military were not going to be pleased. The lack of pay, poor treatment in Seattle and the winding back of benefits were loaded onto a platter already overloaded with heavy losses in New York City. Those who remained in the much-reduced US armed forces would not require many more incentives to head to Texas.
‘But I am not a soft touch,’ Kipper continued. ‘I like the idea of some of these characters being made to earn our trust out on the frontier. And I think ten years is a heavy enough sentence to levy on them for the crime of serving in Pharaoh’s army. Admiral, I’m happy to take your advice on how we might structure that program, including how we tweak it in such a way that, for them, getting back into the settled areas to see their family is incentive enough to stay on the straight and narrow. For the non-combatants, the women and children - well, the women, I guess - we really need some way to use them productively, to make them understand that they could have a future here. But that it’s our future, the one we envision, not some medieval theocracy they might’ve signed up for a year or two back. I’m not even going to pretend I know how to go about doing that, but then I don’t have to. That’s your job, Sarah. And yours, Jed.’
‘What?’
He nearly snorted fresh, hot coffee out through his nose. Humboldt looked just as surprised.
Kipper regarded him with a grin that was positively malign. ‘I can see they caught you with your pants down on this, buddy,’ he said. ‘And I know without even looking at you that you think the idea sucks dog’s balls. Excuse my French, Sarah.’
‘That’s okay, Mr President,’ she shot back. Ms Humboldt was still unsettled by the revelation that she’d be working with Jed Culver.
‘I know you’re already being tortured by nightmares about Mad Jack using this against us,’ Kipper resumed. ‘That’s why I want you to oversee the program for me. I have no doubt, Jed, you’ll come up with some way of making it look as though allowing these prisoners to stay is a punishment for them and a boon for us. I dunno, maybe you could find a genuine turncoat in there. Somebody who thought they had permission to wander into New York and take it over. And having been led astray by the devious Emir, he now burns with holy fire to wreak his vengeance and prove his loyalty to the country that gave him a chance and took him in, yada yada yada. You’ll work it out, I’m sure.’
‘But why, Kip?’ he said, perplexed that they would put themselves to so much trouble for no observable benefit. ‘Why help these bastards to get what they wanted in the first place? And after we spilled so much blood to deny them …’
Now the President favoured him with an almost indulgent smile.
‘I’m not going to patronise you by telling you it’s the right thing to do, Jed. By many folks’ way of figuring these things, it’s not. But I believe it is, not for the sake of those women and children, but for us. We have fallen, Jed. We have fallen far and hard, and we are hurting. It would be tempting - even more than tempting, it would be a terrible pleasure - to try to soften tha
t hurt by laying it off on someone else. Particularly someone as deserving as a man who was trying to kill us not so long ago. But that way lies desolation, my friend. The madness of revenge-seeking is seductive, but it’s still madness. We can only think of ourselves as better than them if we really are better than them.
‘I’m not a child. I know a lot of those women hate us with a passion. Even before we took their men from them, they hated us. Or at least the idea of us. What they’d been raised to think of us, and, if truth be known, what they’re raising their children to think of us in the very camps where we hold them captive at the moment. But we can change that. Because we are better than their low opinion of us.’
Kipper’s words gave the impression of him becoming more intense as he spoke, but in fact he seemed to relax and grow almost abstracted. It was as if he was examining an engineering challenge, and because it interested him, rather than because some vital outcome rested upon his solving it.
‘Revenge is the pleasure of a small and feeble mind - I read that somewhere back in college. It rang true then, and even more now. Nothing good ever comes of it. How many of the true believers, the real holy warriors, who came here and died, did so to revenge themselves on an America that doesn’t even exist anymore? Where are they now? Are they an example worth following, do you think? No, let’s take these people in, the ones we have some hope of saving. And let’s have our revenge on them by turning them into something they once hated. Into us. Because we are better than them.’
Jed Culver found himself in an unusual position. He was lost for words.
4
FORMER URUGUAYAN-ARGENTINIAN BORDER REGION, SOUTH AMERICAN FEDERATION
She had logged four guards now. Her two indolent latte drinkers still lounged under the thick portico of the former police station. They had switched from caffeine to cigarillos and appeared to be engaged in an argument about soccer. Every few minutes one of them would stand and laboriously work through a pantomime of some disputed passage of play, while the other theatrically dismissed his efforts with glorious excess, smacking hands over eyes, throwing arms into the air, and calling out ’!No no no!‘ so loudly she had no trouble hearing them. Two other guards wandered out at random intervals, the first to bum smokes, the second to watch the theatrics and add a few dismissive words of his own. None of them looked like A-listers, but she worried about the unseen men.
Her briefing notes were clear. This was a small detention facility, run by the local Federation militia. It was more of a way station, where prisoners were often held before transfer to the fleet base for interrogation by the Oficina Seguridad, Roberto’s personal gestapo.
The jail was staffed by a militia commander, a deputy and four other men. Given the air of neglect, the sloppiness and general dereliction of duty that seemed to characterise ‘Facility 183’, Caitlin did not imagine the commander to be a bright and shining star of the regime. It was unlikely he’d have adequate security in place, relying instead on the fearsome reputation of Roberto’s security apparatus to dissuade anyone from interfering with his little fiefdom. As a militia enforcer, he was probably a former gang member who’d thrown in his lot with Morales as the dictator grew ever stronger during the post-Wave chaos. La colapso, as it was now known across most of South America.
Chances were, the CO was the one wielding the blowtorch, tyre iron or whatever it was that had reduced the screaming man to such a pitiable state. Caitlin swallowed on a dry mouth as memories of her imprisonment and torture in Noisy-le-Sec tried to break out of a small, black box at the back of her mind. She attended to her craft, as she always did when needing to put aside unpleasant realities.
The Echelon agent reached into her khaki backpack and checked her notes of when the guards had appeared from inside the crumbling stucco building. No patterns. She scanned the entire compound again, using her binoculars, searching for entry and egress points, logging at least three. She plotted her approach: mentally rehearsing the stealthy advance down the hill, under the cover of the forest canopy; her emergence from the brush; the possible scenarios that might play out as she engaged the guards. She was particularly concerned about the thick, stone pillars holding up the red-tiled roof of the portico that shaded the front of the building. They would provide good cover to anyone firing at her. She spent some time pondering how to turn that tactical disadvantage to her favour.
She had no schematic of the building’s interior, but made her best guestimate of the layout based on what she could see of the rough, L-shaped block. The door through which the two wandering guards, the smoker and the soccer expert, sometimes appeared undoubtedly led into the facility’s reception area. Caitlin couldn’t make out any details through the windows at that end of the building, but the fact that the windows were glass and unsecured told her there were no cells behind them. There might be an open-plan office perhaps, like a detectives’ bullpen. There might be a warren of rooms. But the cells where she would find Luperico were undoubtedly at the other end of the structure. There, small, mean windows - just holes in the adobe no larger than a man’s head, all of them barred by iron grilles - looked out over a motor pool. Two of the vehicles there were civilian, but Caitlin noted an ancient-looking police car from the building’s previous life. The rust-streaked sedan had sunk down on deflated tyres and a thick bed of weeds. It obviously hadn’t moved in years.
As she took another sip of water, a new player appeared. His uniform was neat, and he moved with purpose and some grace. A thin man with a widow’s peak on a high forehead, he barked a few commands at the two guards on the front veranda. They scrambled from their chairs, one almost falling over as he lost his balance. Caitlin focused on the officer through her binoculars.
He was in an altogether different class from the men he was busy bossing around. She recognised the bearing of somebody used to giving orders and being obeyed, even feared. He lashed at his underlings with his voice, but never raised a hand in their direction. This guy was no former gang-banger, but he was a militia officer.
Ex-cop? Ex-military maybe?
She wondered if he was the facility’s commander or deputy. Or possibly an outsider come in to supervise the questioning of Ramon Luperico.
She warned herself off personalising his back story. Just because Luperico was important to her, it didn’t necessarily make him important to the regime in this part of the world. The fact that he’d ended up in this backwater, rather than being tortured by professionals down south at Puerto Belgrano, implied that the Seguridad had not clued in to Luperico’s potential value.
Steam was rising from the undergrowth as the sun climbed higher with the morning’s passing. Caitlin was sweating inside her brush camouflage. She wished she was closer - take down this officer and the two unfortunates flinching under his harsh commands, and she’d almost certainly draw a couple more guards out the door, scratching their heads and squeezing their dicks, wondering what the hell was going on. With her brand new HK-417 providing kick-ass moral support, she’d wipe out most of the opposition and force an entry in just a few seconds. She pondered the odds.
The Heckler & Koch had been selected as Echelon’s long arm for non-urban field work, just five months earlier. Bearing some similarities to the M4 carbine on which it was based, it had been re-engineered by the old German gunsmithing firm primarily for use by special forces. A proprietary short-stroke, piston-driven system kept the weapon’s interior free of combustion gases, making it much more reliable than the impingement systems used in the M16 and the M4.
Dozens of other tweaks, some major, some minor, had gone into the design of the 417 to craft an exemplary killing implement. Added to which, Echelon had provided an unusually hefty flash and sound suppressor, courtesy of the agency’s engineering shop in the London Cage. It fitted snuggly onto a bespoke barrel for those occasions when operators such as Caitlin Monroe needed to send a withering bullet storm down-range, into the body mass of some ne’er-do-well. Discreetly; in a quiet, voiceless reproach.
But her observation post now was too far removed for such precipitate action. She watched, chagrined, as all three men returned to the dark, unknown interior of Facility 183.
*
Two hours later, with the noonday sun burning through the canopy, she lay on her stomach, concealed by a thicket of brightly coloured foliage; all waxy green leaves and startling pink and red flowers that formed giant cups in which rainwater collected so deeply that dozens of tiny frogs had colonised the self-contained ecosphere. The former police station was directly across the road from her new position.
The screaming had stopped abruptly an hour earlier, giving her a few moments of concern that these clowns had killed Luperico, if indeed that was who the torture victim was, before she could ‘debrief’ him herself. But nothing else indicated anything untoward. No bodies appeared, being manhandled by the dishevelled guards, and the movement she had glimpsed inside the front windows spoke of no urgency. Quite the opposite. The militia troops moved about with languorous sloth. She saw cigarettes glowing and once or twice heard raucous laughter. She wondered when they might eat lunch, and whether any of them would sneak away into a quiet corner afterwards for a siesta. That fucking ramrod-straight funcionario didn’t look the type for napping on el Presidente’s dollar, but the hapless slobs under his jackboot surely did.
At half past twelve, smoke drifted up from a small chimney pipe she’d previously observed at the rear of the facility. She couldn’t see it now, lying in this shallow, overgrown depression by the side of the road, but she knew there was only one such stovepipe, protruding from the roof of a small annexe at the administrative end of the building, well away from the cells. It carried scents of wood smoke and meat. Caitlin had last had a hot meal nearly twenty-four hours ago and her mouth watered now at the rich smells. She spat quietly into the brush mulch on which she lay.
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