Empire

Torrent proceeded to enumerate the business holdings Verus had divested over the past two years. “He had plenty of money out of ordinary profits to fund the design of these weapons. But our weapons experts say that to get them from prototype to production, the big expenditures would have begun about two years ago. And that’s exactly when he started selling off these companies.”

“He can’t outspend the Defense Department,” said Cat. “Nobody has that much money.”

“He’s a better manager of his money than the Defense Department,” said Torrent. “He doesn’t have to maintain bases or pay the salaries of thousands of soldiers in Korea and Germany. He doesn’t have to please Congressmen. And he doesn’t have to match our military strength—he only has to have a credible enough force to cause us trouble.”

Torrent gave them copies of the report on the probable cost of manufacturing the mechs and the hovercycles. “We’ve run the numbers. Assuming he pays his soldiers comparably to U.S. soldiers, and assuming that only one out of five of the mechs is internally manned, while the others are controlled by a computer operator at a remote location, and comparing that with the money we know he got from the sales of directly-owned assets, our estimate is that a possible force configuration is 250 mechs, a thousand hovercycles, and an additional thousand soldiers who run the focused EMPs and handle routine foot patrol.”

“Don’t forget that he might have plenty of funding that isn’t his own money,” said Cat. “There’s all that Hollywood cash.”

“That all had to be put into tax-deductible organizations. The only American money he can spend without public accountability is his own,” said Torrent.

“But he might have tapped into Iranian money,” suggested Benny.

“Possibly. Or Russian or Chinese. But I don’t think so. If Verus accepted even a dime of foreign money, and it became known, then he’d lose vast amounts of his support. His cause can’t look like it’s sponsored by foreigners, period.”

“Okay,” said Cecily. “Let’s just say it’s Verus, and he has the force you estimate, what then?”

“Satellite photos of the forces deployed in New York City indicate fewer than fifty mechs and only a couple of hundred hovercycles.”

“A fifth of your estimate,” said Drew.

“Exactly,” said Torrent. “Where’s the rest of it?”

Arty immediately said, “He’s got stashes all over the country. Look how fast mechs and hovercycles popped up when they were chasing Cole.”

“Six mechs and a dozen hovercycles,” said Torrent. “Near the nation’s capital, at a time when they were needed to keep Major Malich’s PDA from getting into our hands. But I don’t think there are stashes all over, and you know why.”

“Secrets are hard to keep,” said Drew.

“Don’t divide your forces,” said Cole.

“Both,” said Torrent. “Verus can’t afford to have lots of hiding places, because these things are hard to hide. Especially the soldiers. It’s hard to disguise garrisons, especially if you’re training them to keep them in top form. And he doesn’t want tiny forces scattered around where he might never need them. He needs to have most of them in one really terrific hiding place. A place from which he can disperse them as needed.”

“Where?” said Cole.

“I don’t know,” said Torrent.

They all showed their disappointment.

“But you don’t know it’s Aldo Verus, either,” said Cecily. “So where do you think it is?”

“That’s why I had you bring in your map,” he said. “Just as Verus is the obvious guy, the place is obvious, too.”

Cecily lifted up the map and propped its frame on the end of the table. “I’ve been looking at it for weeks now, and it’s not obvious to me.”

“First, let’s look at what he needs,” said Torrent. “Rough terrain. A place where big things can easily be hidden. Which means forest or mountains. Or both. Iowa need not apply.”

The soldiers nodded.

“Then he needs it to be close to where he’ll need it. He isn’t planning to conquer the whole U.S., he’s going to try to win over and protect territories that are largely sympathetic to his cause.”

“Blue states,” said Drew.

“No,” said Torrent. “Because you know that ‘blue states’ and ‘red states’ are a lie. Most of the blue states are blue because the city vote overwhelmed the rural vote. But he can’t hide these things inside a city, can he?”

Again they agreed with his reasoning.

“Then he needs isolation. Unsettled territory. Few neighbors. That practically rules out the whole East and Midwest, doesn’t it? The land is too heavily settled, too constantly observed. Even in the wildest part of the mountains of New York State—ignoring how Republican those areas are—there are thousands of overnights and too much traffic on the roads.”

“So he goes west,” said Cole.

“Not California. Again, too populated and too many conservatives. There are only two states with wide open spaces, Progressive political dominance, and conservatives who feel so hammered they’ve practically given up.”

“Ecotopia,” said Mingo.

“Washington and Oregon,” said Torrent. “That’s right. Now look at Mrs. Malich’s map.”

Until that point, Cecily had seen it all as a web of shipments crisscrossing the country. But if you looked only at Oregon and Washington, Oregon was practically empty of endpoints. “It has to be Washington,” she said. “But where? It’s a big state.”

“He needs to be near a major highway,” said Torrent. “But he has to be in very rugged country.”

“Most of the rugged country is on the west side, in the Cascades,” said Cecily. “Which is also the most Progressive part of the state.”

“It fits his recipe,” said Torrent. “Assuming we’re right.”

“But haven’t you already looked at the satellite photos?”

“Of course,” said Torrent. “And there’s nothing. But there’s nothing anywhere in the world. Teams in the DOD have gone over the whole world looking for a place where these things might be built and stored.”

“So you think he went underground,” said Drew.

“We think that one of these mountains is probably riddled with caverns. Aldo Verus is smart enough to learn from Al Qaeda’s tunneling. Only he’ll do it on a larger scale, and totally high tech.”

“What about the dirt?” said Mingo. “I’ve worked construction, man. I’ve dug tunnels. You get a shitload of dirt and it shows up on satellites, believe me.”

“Not if it isn’t on the surface either.”

“You can’t dig a hole and hide the dirt in the hole you dug,” said Mingo. “Then it ain’t a hole anymore.”

“I thought of that,” said Torrent.

“I’m not surprised,” said Cecily.

“You dig the hole and hide the dirt underwater.”

“So it’s on the coast?” asked Arty.

“Somebody would have seen it if he were loading dirt onto boats and dumping it offshore. But Washington has a lot of lakes. Natural ones and artificial ones. Here’s what I think. Verus used his funding of politically active environmental groups to get them to withdraw their opposition to building a dam somewhere. It just sails through. A dam in a canyon is going to form a really deep lake. So what if Verus owns a mountain right by the lake, and while the lake level is rising, his people are dumping rubble from their tunnel-building into the water? From the satellites, it just looks like the water level is rising higher and higher. Nobody’s boating on it because the lake is still being filled. Nobody sees anything.”

“Is Verus that smart?” asked Cole.

“Maybe not. Maybe it all happened in Russia or China. Maybe it isn’t even Verus. But I think it is