Empire

President?

No, no. That’s too twisted and deep a game. Torrent showed them the reasoning that led him to those lakes in Washington.

Showed it to them. Demonstrated it. Made the trail clear. He knew where it was all along, but couldn’t tell them until they had gathered enough information that he could show them a rational path leading to the conclusion.

No proof. Probably not true. Probably.

But if it was true, then what mission were Cole and Load and Benny and Mingo and all the rest on, what were they really doing? Was it a wild goose chase? If Torrent was honest and he really had deduced the location the way he showed them, then in all likelihood it was simply wrong and they’d find nothing there.

If it was real, though, and Aldo Verus—or somebody—had an arsenal and a garrison underground in those mountains, then was he sending the jeesh into a trap? Had he used them for his purposes and now no longer needed them? Was he planning to have them killed and the incident made public to discredit President Nielson and swing more of the country toward the Progressive Restoration?

No, it couldn’t be that. Because Torrent had just thrown in his lot with President Nielson. Not that he’d become a Republican, necessarily—he was still noncommittal about that—but he had declared for the Constitution and against the rebels. Plus, if the mission to Chinnereth led to a public relations disaster, it would be a disaster for Torrent, too. His fingerprints were all over the mission.

Her mind leapt to another connection. Was it possible that both Torrent and General Alton were agents provocateurs, secretly part of the rebel conspiracy, with a mission to destroy the constitutional government by embarrassing it and providing justification for the Progressive Restoration?

It put everything in a new light. Or perhaps into a new darkness. It was too convoluted. So many things could go wrong with such a plan. You don’t pin your revolution on the actions of people who are, essentially, actors.

Not actors. Moles. Espionage services do it all the time.

Still, she could not believe Torrent was some sacrificial lamb playing a part. As Cole told about it, General Alton had been so obvious that he was almost certainly putting on an act—that’s what they all assumed now. His mission was to try to get LaMonte to commit the folly of imposing martial law, without the support of the Army but thinking that he had that support. Was Torrent also putting on an act?

Was he so self-sacrificing that he would bring himself into a position to play for the presidency exactly at the time that he was launching the incident that would bring this government to disaster?

Well… yes, maybe. Who knew? Being the newly appointed Vice President would make his sponsorship of the provocative incident in Washington all the more damaging to President Nielson and to the Constitutionalists in general.

Her hands were trembling on the wheel. I don’t know any of this, she thought. It’s not true. It’s absurd. Torrent is brilliant. He’s also very full of his own views and opinions, and has the books to prove it. He is simply unbelievable as the self-sacrifice of somebody else’s ambition.

Unless he’s a true believer in the cause. DeeNee certainly never gave a clue of her deep hatred of all things military and/or conservative. Then again, DeeNee kept it a secret by never talking about herself or her views on anything. Torrent talks all the time. Has it all been a lie? Starting when?

Not possible.

Okay, possible, but hard to believe.

And it’s not as though she could go and ask him. By the way, are you a treacher? Are you going to treach my husband’s loyal friends, these fine soldiers?

If he was part of the conspiracy, then he had performed brilliantly. He had fooled everybody. If he was part of the rebel movement, then part of his act had been to send out missions that led to the deaths of many of the rebel soldiers and the thwarting of many of their plans.

She might as well imagine that Cole and the others were part of the conspiracy too, and didn’t really kill anybody, but rather faked the battles and planted the evidence and…

That way lies madness. She knew better. She knew these guys, and how Reuben had met them, and there was no double-dealing there.

And Torrent was no doubt exactly what he seemed to be—a brilliant professor of history who had been entrusted with the chance to help shape history during a time of national crisis that he had nothing to do with causing.

But as she drove northward toward Gettysburg, she began to lay out her own plan. She wouldn’t wait—she’d get a Farsi speaker in Gettysburg to identify the notes from Torrent’s classes and translate them for her right away. Maybe she’d learn something from Reuben’s notes that would either set her mind at ease or give her leads to follow up, the way his PDA records had.

And she would research Torrent’s own life. Find out whom he knew. Who had taken his classes. Who had sponsored and attended his lectures. The press would be involved in exactly this research, but she knew something about the laziness of reporters, about their tendency to find only what they were already looking for. She couldn’t count on them turning up anything, whether it was there or not. She would find it herself.

Chinnereth

Concealment and active defense are not compatible strategies.

Before they got close enough to Chinnereth and Genesseret to need to cut off cellphone use, Load briefed them all on what he saw during his first driveby. Both National Forest Roads 20 and 21 had been gated off because of the dam, with electronic keycards required for entry. But not road 48. “Which is odd,” said Load, “because it switchbacks up the mountain and 4820 cuts off and skirts around it, way above Chinnereth. Overlooking it. Nothing you do at Chinnereth wouldn’t be completely visible to somebody on 4820.”

“Doesn’t sound odd, if there’s nothing going on there except a couple of dams,” said Cole.

“Except that they had to build awfully high and expensive dams to contain the amount of water those lakes can hold,” said Load.

“Either they aren’t there,” said Cole, “or they think their concealment is so good they’ve got nothing to fear from being observed.”

“Or,” said Load, “they’ve got patrols up there to make sure nobody sees anything and lives to tell the tale.”

“So what do you think?” said Cole. “Go in at night, dark? Or still play tourist like we planned?”

“Your call,” said Load.

“Why me?” said Cole. “It’s our mission, not my mission.”

Load didn’t answer.

“We’ve all led missions.”

“You’re active duty,” said Load. “And you’re the one Rube picked.”

“He didn’t even know me,” said Cole. “Three days.”

“But we know you now,” said Load. “We voted you our abun.”

It meant “father” in Arabic, but it had come to mean “boss-man” among the Special Ops troops that went in-country in the Middle East.

Cole didn’t waste time arguing when he was only talking to one guy anyway. “I think we go in dusk,” he said. “Some daylight, but gone before we unload the truck. The seven of you come in with only two cars. We rendezvous low on 48. To unload the ordnance. We don’t want it to look like a parking lot, and we don’t want to try to take this U-Haul up a winding mountain road. You go in first, Load, and pick the spot, out of sight from the valleys with the