subconscious flooded his mind with dark images and he had the terrible feeling that the mission he had embarked on was going to get much worse before it got better.
His black mood had started with the bank raid in Medora. The burst of adrenaline that had kicked in when Lonsdale and he had roared away from Lonsdale's extraordinary home had turned into depression when they caught up with the perpetrators at an Arizona Highway Patrol roadblock a few miles outside the city limits.
With good reason, the state troopers were not taking any chances. When the bank robbers had opened fire and tried to run the roadblock, the troopers, hunkered down behind the cover of their cruisers, had returned fire with a vengeance.
The driver had taken a shotgun blast in the face in the first fusillade.
Out of control, the jeep had spun off the road and overturned. One passenger broke his neck in the crash. The two surviving robbers, already wounded, were thrown clear and as they tried to rise, were chopped down almost clinically by a trooper armed with a heavy-caliber sniper rifle.
Fitzduane and Lonsdale had come on the scene seconds later. The dead robbers had weapons in their hands or just beside them. It was a righteous shoot without question, but the rivulets of blood and the destroyed splayed bodies of what had been up till a few moments ago healthy young men caused the bile to rise in Fitzduane's throat. So this was civilization as we approached the twenty-first century. So this was how far we had come.
Fitzduane's revulsion was further increased by his own sense of guilt. It was not what he wanted – indeed, it was what he had run from when he had resigned from the army – but there had been circumstances and he had killed, and he was good at it and he would kill again.
The causes had been just, and doubtless would be just, but still there was a voice inside him saying that he was wrong and there had to be a better way. And then there were the faces of those who had died as a result of his actions, who seemed to take a little piece of his life force with them as the life flickered from their eyes.
An examination of the corpses quickly revealed that all four of the dead young men had been Mexican and had only recently crossed the border. All wore the clothes of itinerant workers. One wore sandals. One wore cheap shoes without socks.
The man who had taken the shotgun blast in his face had a gold crucifix on a thin gold chain around his neck.
The fourth man, killed by the sniper, lay on his back where he had been thrown, his hair, features, and coloring strongly Indian.
'There but for a quirk of fate go I,' said Lonsdale, quietly looking at the body of the fourth man. 'Ninety-odd million Mexicans rammed up against the border of the richest country in the world. What would you do if you were them?'
'Try and make Mexico work,' said one of the state troopers. 'They've got their own country. Some of it is poor, but some of it is rich. They've got oil. Certainly, coming up here to rob and kill isn't the answer.'
'What do you do if you have they have not?' said Fitzduane almost to himself as he gazed at the carnage. 'This thing is not about the U.S. and Mexico. It's about the whole world and how you slice the pie.'
'You hold the line, Hugo,' said Lonsdale firmly. 'You try and do what you can, but you accept the world as it is. Or you're fucked.'
Fitzduane had a last terrible dream as his flight neared its end.
He could see Kathleen lying in a cell. She was blindfolded and chained and her chains were secured to a ring in the wall. Her clothing was ripped and torn. The crude concrete floor was dusty. As he watched, she traced words in the dust. Her fingertips were bleeding as if she had done this again and again. He strained to try to read what she had written. He could just see his own name, HUGO, and then another word beginning with H. He could not read the rest.
Figures came into the cell.
He could not make out their faces. They were indistinct but menacing. One carried something. It was a piece of board like a butcher's block. Kathleen's hand was placed upon it. She was struggling and screaming, but she was held firmly.
The figure of a woman came forward with a long heavy blade in her hand. Its edge glittered unevenly as if freshly sharpened upon a stone. It was a crude instrument, a simple machete, the tool of a peasant, an elemental weapon.
Here is was an instrument of torture.
The figure of the torturer turned toward Fitzduane so that for the first time he could see her face. The features were Japanese. Once beautiful, she was now hideously scarred, but she acted as if still supremely confident of her appeal, of her sexuality, and of her power.
She was half smiling. She could see Fitzduane looking and she was pleased. This was why she was doing it. It was aimed at him. He understood.
She raised the heavy blade and brought it down into Kathleen's flesh. Fitzduane could hear the sound. Kathleen did not scream. But he could see the tears as they welled from under her blindfold and coursed through the grime on her face.
Cochrane was in the underground conference room in the STR Virginia facility in the building they called Son Tay.
As he had got to know the area better, Fitzduane had learned that there were a dozen or more buildings of various sizes in the complex and doubtless more elsewhere on the estate. Most of the buildings were at least partially underground, as best he could determine. They were linked by subterranean passages. Access was on a ‘need to know’ basis. The Task Force and Fitzduane had the run of the first building they had met in and were using it as a base. As to what happened elsewhere, Fitzduane had absolutely no idea.
The whole setup reminded him forcibly of the iceberg nature of power. The average citizen rarely saw the extent of the forces that controlled and guided him or her, and such secrecy was not confined to totalitarian states. Even the United States, the most open nation on earth, kept much hidden. It was in the nature of those who truly understood power to be secretive. Even if you were an insider, there was much that was secret. No one had full access.
But Grant Lamar, in Fitzduane's opinion, had more access than most. Otherwise, none of this made sense.
Cochrane was buttoning up a crisp white shirt as Fitzduane came in. A regimental tie followed. An electric razor appeared out of a drawer. A quick combing completed the transformation. Within a couple of minutes Cochrane, his face drawn with fatigue, was transformed into a reasonable similitude of the whip-sharp chief of staff whom Fitzduane had first met.
'You caught me, Hugo,' said Cochrane briskly, the anger suppressed but escaping as he talked. 'Sprucing up on the run is something you learn in the House. You work long, stupidly long hours, sometimes for remarkably stupid people. Most of your work gets shit-canned, but appearances – boy, they really count. You've got to look STRAC.
'You learn to bathe in a water glass and keep your wardrobe in a drawer in your filing cabinet and fuck between votes. The legacy of the Founding Fathers. Those good ole boys set up a hell of a system. It must have been easier in the days of the Roman emperors. Then you still might be knifed in the back, but at least you didn't have to worry about the people. Frankly, democracy sucks.'
Fitzduane dropped into a chair. 'You look like shined-up shit, Lee,' he said. 'Sleep has a lot to recommend it. What's this about being knifed in the back?'
'Not your problem, Hugo,' said Cochrane grimly. 'You're an Irishman. This is strictly an American political matter. It is an old custom. It is called throwing out the baby with the bathwater. It is also called shitting on your friends.'
Fitzduane smiled. 'The U.S. has no monopoly on either slinging babies out or dumping on the undeserving. So enlighten me.'
Cochrane looked straight at Fitzduane. 'The Task Force on Terrorism has been a highly effective tool of the United States Congress for nearly a decade and a half. Now it is to be wrapped up. It is all part of the lesser government drive being pushed by our new Speaker. It is a good idea, but it is being implemented indiscriminately.
