of her blood. Shining in the light of a low-hanging chandelier, smelling of earth and copper and corruption.
She was the only thing moving in the room. The TDF squad had entered and now stood gawping at the scene. Baumer leaned against the bookshelf, waves of loathing coming off him like heat. Blackstone sat like a fat, aged monarch in his dressing gown, holding McCutcheon’s pistol on her. Nine men watched the sole woman in the room without comment as, grinding her teeth against the agony, she contorted her lower body to slip her good leg, then her injured limb, through the handcuffs. Her head swam and dark red spots filled her vision as she did so. She moved slowly, and nobody tried to stop her. A childhood memory arose, of a small dog, its back legs and half its spine crushed by a car on the road in front her house on another military base. Edwards AFB, where her father was stationed when she was six. The neighbourhood kids all stood there silently, watching the dog as it struggled to drag itself off the tarmac, unable, in the end, to escape the anchor of its crushed innards holding it in place. Surrounded by armed and hostile men, she felt like that poor animal.
Twenty-five years ago, Caitlin Monroe had walked through the ranks of mute, staring children and crushed the head of that little dog with one, fierce stomp. She was crying as she did so, distraught that such a hard mercy should fall to her when larger, older children stood by, doing nothing.
She would be damned if she’d die crippled and immobilised. If Blackstone wanted her to stop, let him finish it with a bullet. Once she had her hands in front of her again, she tore one of the sleeves from her uniform to fashion a bandage.
The gunshot had torn a chunk of flesh from her thigh about the size of half a tennis ball. She could see bone lying white in a crater of shredded muscle and meat. Dark, swirling whirlpools tugged at her consciousness, trying to drag her under, but Caitlin swore under her breath and poured all of her will into not passing out as she tended to the wound. She was intimate with pain and fear in a way that most human beings were not. She held the moment close to her, controlled it. She was pain. She would become death. This was life in the raw. Existence itself. Unyielding, unforgiving and inescapable. She knew that endurance was a matter of degrees, of inches, of pushing herself for a few more breaths, or heartbeats. All would pass.
‘Outstanding!’ cried Blackstone, clapping loudly in approval. ‘By God, that’s the spirit! Honestly, Caitlin, if only we had more Americans like you.’
‘There’d be fewer Americans like you,’ she said through clenched teeth, continuing to bind her wound, staunching the blood flow.
His laughter was rich and generous.
‘Maybe so, maybe so. But that’s not how this is going to be. You’ll leave in a few minutes with our other guest. Frankly, I’ll be glad to see the back of you both. Mr Baumer has had me at a significant disadvantage since he and Ozal duped us into supporting what I thought was a perfectly reasonable chance to inconvenience Kipper in New York. As far as I knew, Ozal was an honest pirate. He promised to tie up Kipper while we consolidated during a difficult interlude down here. I’m afraid I am as much a victim of Mr Baumer as you.’
‘So why don’t you just shoot him and do us all a favour?’ Caitlin seethed. She was shivering and sweating as she tightened the bandage on her wounded leg. ‘Or even better, give me the gun and I’ll do it. Promise.’
She levelled a glare at Baumer loaded with almost as much violence as the kick that shattered his cheekbone. His face was swelling, one eye socket disappearing behind a mound of bruised flesh. Like her, however, he was regrouping and found it within himself to sneer back. She could tell from the way his eyes twitched that the gesture hurt him.
Blackstone chuckled indulgently. ‘I’m sure you would. And don’t believe that part of me wouldn’t enjoy watching you. Right before you turned the gun on me. But I need Mr Baumer alive. Unlike you, he has proven himself to be competent. Not so much at running a holy war, but certainly at covering his ass afterwards. I’m afraid he has a small mountain of incriminating documents, unlike you, and they are protected by a dead man switch. If he should expire, the documents would be released into the wild. And we couldn’t have that. It would prove fatally embarrassing.’
Inwardly, Caitlin was recalculating her chances. This loser obviously had no idea she’d successfully sent the data to Wales. She might well be better off leaving with Baumer. She had his measure.
‘So you’ve been protecting him since New York?’ she said, stringing out the encounter as she turned over all the options, working the possible angles and combinations like a Rubik’s cube.
She and Baumer exchanged another look of mutual loathing.
‘He has not been protecting me,’ said the jihadist. His voice was muffled by the injury and swelling. ‘He has been protecting himself.’
‘And what, you’re going to give up your hold on Blackstone for passage out of here with me?’
Baumer carefully constructed a grin from the remains of his face. It was a tenuous thing, held together by force of will. ‘Not just out of here, but out of America. With you, Caitlin. And with Mr McCutcheon, who will take possession of the New York documents when I am safe.’
‘Road trip.’ McCutcheon’s motor mouth was back. ‘Gonna be fun.’
‘You gotta be fucking kidding me,’ said Caitlin. ‘You got suckered by this whackjob in New York and now you’re trusting him
‘Maybe later,’ replied Ty. ‘Clocks a-tickin’ right now, though. Governor?’
‘We’re not trusting him, Agent Monroe,’ Blackstone said, ignoring his aide for the moment. ‘But, yes, we are dealing with him. And he with us. Sometimes in war, you have to make alliances, however temporary, with one enemy while you face another.’
For a second or two, she was blank. She had no idea what he was talking about. And then …
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake … Morales? You’re still obsessing about that bean-eating fuckwit?’
‘Not obsessing, Agent Monroe. Preparing.’
She shook her head, convinced now beyond doubt that she was talking to a madman.
Blackstone started to respond but he didn’t get a chance. His next words were cut off by the deafening trip hammer of a machine gun fired from just outside.
Training and instinct took over as Caitlin rolled for cover behind a large leather couch. She heard glass shattering. Wood splintered. Men screamed and died in a storm of automatic fire. Ignoring the shrieking agony in her wounded leg, she crawled away from the sound of the gun, scuttling after Baumer, who had dropped, like her, at the first report. He was heading for the door of the library, towards the hallway. She moved slowly, constrained by the handcuffs and her leg wound. Even the grating of her cracked ribs added to the pain and difficulty.
Confusion and riot was all around. Caitlin could no longer place anyone in the room. Baumer. McCutcheon. Blackstone. Or any of the TDF troopers who had been standing by the French doors. In her memory, she saw a stuttering replay of at least three soldiers dancing a disjointed, bloody jig as dozens of rounds chewed through them. The staccato uproar of an AK-47 unloading an entire magazine on automatic drowned out the screaming.
At the end of the lounge she stopped. McCutcheon was crouched behind another chair on the far side of the room. She locked eyes with him for half a second before he moved, launching himself towards the exit through which Baumer had just disappeared.
The gun roared. She saw McCutcheon’s head fly apart in a kaleidoscope of blood and horror. A handgun fired unsteadily, coughed back weakly at the snarl of the Kalashnikov. Blackstone firing uncontrolled, emptying his clip, but to no effect. Caitlin could not see him directly without exposing herself to the shooter, but she could make out the Governor’s reflection in a window on the far side of the room. He had been hit, like her, in the leg. But the round that had taken him was larger and travelling much faster. He groaned pitiably as he tried to lever himself up out of his chair.
Then the firing stopped, and the whole world changed in just seconds.
Caitlin heard the metallic chunking sound of somebody swapping out a magazine. She risked a furtive peak over the furniture. The arms of the lounge chair were split and torn. Stuffing spilled from them like yellow fairy floss. As she pushed herself up, the gun fired again and an evil wind swept over Blackstone, shredding his dressing gown, punching huge gobbets of meat and gore out of his body, and throwing him backwards into his bookshelf.
Caitlin found herself struck dumb and paralysed by the shock of recognition.
She knew this girl. Knew of her anyway.
The Mexican refugee. From the murdered settler family. In the madness of death and violence, Caitlin couldn’t remember the name of the girl’s father. The man who’d been run down in Kansas City. But she thought she
