Angels of Vengeance

can live with them.’

‘Tusk Musso’s a patriot,’ said Jed. ‘And he worked a goddamn miracle down at Gitmo. But the Corps, they dropped him like a turd at a tea party because he ran up the white flag. I got him that job in Temple, running the Federal Centre there, because it’s not all that different from what he had to do in Cuba, dealing with a hostile power hunkered down just outside his fenceline. The President didn’t need much convincing, I might add. He thought Musso did a great job too. Bottom line - you can trust Musso, he knows the score. But only him, okay? He won’t be your overwatch authority, but you can go to him if you need to.’

‘And you’re cool with this, Wales?’ asked Agent Monroe. The familiarity between them wasn’t lost on Jed. He was very much the outsider here. That made him vulnerable. He could use these people, but he couldn’t trust them.

The deputy director didn’t look happy, but he shrugged.

‘We don’t have the luxury of time with this, Caitlin,’ he said. ‘You spent years building your case file on Baumer, but —’

‘But we don’t have years,’ Jed put in. ‘We don’t have months or even weeks. Every day that Mad Jack sits down there getting stronger is an affront to the Republic and a hazard to its future. I think he fucked us in New York. And I intend to fuck him back, severely and without consent. With your help, Agent Monroe.’

‘It will be my pleasure.’ Caitlin smiled. It was a thin smile, which only hardened her face.

She should have fangs, he thought.

‘Your pleasure will be finding shit out and doing nothing about it,’ Culver emphasised. ‘Do you understand? You will bring any evidence you discover to me. And I will ensure that Mad Jack Blackstone pays with his life for this treason. But you won’t be taking that life. It is owed to the American people. Is that clear?’

Caitlin Monroe nodded. Slowly. Once.

Jed leaned back. Spent. He had rolled the dice on the largest bet he’d ever made in his life. Indeed, he may well have just bet his life on the outcome.

25

ARDMORE, OKLAHOMA

Traffic on Interstate 35 picked up as they approached the Oklahoma-Texas border, their small convoy augmented by another three trucks they’d picked up in Wellington. The snow thinned out too, revealing a layer of grey-brown weeds beneath the icy slush. Sofia had long ago lost interest in gawking at the vehicle wrecks strung along the side of the highway and the charred ruins of towns that had burned down to war-torn streetscapes. She focused her thoughts instead on Fort Hood.

Snuggled up in the SpongeBob blanket, warm inside the surprisingly comfortable steel cocoon of Mary Lou‘s cabin, she dozed on and off, roused only by the grinding of gears or a particularly nasty bump. The convoy wasn’t able to risk going much faster than thirty-five miles an hour on some stretches due to ice, snow and giant potholes.

Cindy French had passed the early leg of the journey talking about her family in a bit more detail. The interior of the cab was plastered with pictures of her ‘grandbabies’. Dozens of images, following the lives of five little tykes from baby blankets to sleep-outs in the back yard. And then, of course, the pictoral history stopped. From time to time, Sofia caught the trucker looking at one of them, tearing up before wiping her eyes and waving her hands to drive the sadness away. The teenager wondered if she herself might one day feel something other than a cold background rage.

Cindy had the truck’s short-wave tuned to a station playing endless loops of old comedy, all from comedians who, like her family, had not survived the Wave. It was a uniquely American type of humour, which often lay well beyond Sofia’s comprehension. Jokes about bodily functions, jokes about private sexual things, and so many jokes about the insecurities of the comedians themselves. Some were funny, but most were just embarrassing. She shuddered to think what the nuns would’ve thought of them.

She asked Cindy once, as they drove past the wreckage of a downed passenger jet, whether they could pick up any news stations.

‘We’ve got the real world all around us right now, kid,’ the truckie replied, chewing on a drinking straw. ‘Whenever I listen to the news, all I hear is “Blah, blah, blah.” Ever watched Charlie Brown, the cartoon?’

‘Yes,’ said Sofia. She’d seen a video of the cartoon dog Snoopy in the refugee camp in Sydney. It was funnier than the comedians she was forced to listen to in Cindy’s truck, that was for sure.

‘And ever noticed how all the adults sound muffled, like “Wah-wah-wah”? Well, that’s what the news is like for me. Can’t stand it. Wah-wah-wah.’

Okay. No news, Sofia thought. A pity. She was hoping to start building up her knowledge of life in Texas under Blackstone, especially within the limits of Fort Hood. She knew from listening to the news in Kansas City that you couldn’t always trust the radio to tell you the truth about things. Or about the details, anyway, and the meaning behind those details. But even the broad outlines could be useful to know.

She craned her neck to follow the flight path of a pair of gunships that hammered overhead as afternoon settled across the bleak Oklahoma landscape. They surprised her, completely unexpected. Cindy hit her horn three times, snapped off the short-wave and turned on her CB. ‘Ardmore, coming up. We stopping?’

‘Reckon so,’ Dave said. ’Time to stretch the legs, get a late lunch, and the like.’

They didn’t go into Ardmore proper, though, the ruins of which Sofia could see as Cindy pulled into yet another Flying J truck stop, this one on Cooper Drive, just off the highway. Unlike so much of the Midwest, Ardmore appeared to be marked for resettlement and redevelopment. Sofia had passed through here on the way north, late in the spring, and the town then had been deserted. They hadn’t even stopped for salvage, preferring to move quickly after having encountered signs of bandits on the trail the previous day. If those ne’er-do-wells had made their camp in Ardmore, as her father suspected, they had obviously been driven off in the months since Sofia had last been here. But by who? Her heart beat a little heavier inside her rib cage as she wondered whether she might be about to encounter the TDF for the first time. They used the same equipment as the US Army, of course, so there was no way of telling if those helicopters had belonged to Blackstone or President Kipper.

‘Is this a Blackstone settlement?’ she asked, trying to keep her voice steady.

Cindy smiled. ‘No. We ain’t quite in the belly of the beast yet, my friend. Seattle runs this here burg. Those were air force birds flew over us before. You can unpucker for now - nobody’s gonna press you into a work gang here, Sof.’

The Kenworth rolled slowly into a parking bay, crunching and hissing down through the gears before jolting ever so slightly to a complete stop.

‘Come on, hon, let’s go get us some supplies.’

‘Cindy … I only have a few dollars,’ Sofia confessed, feeling unexpected shame. She had taken so much from this kind woman, and all under false pretences.

‘Ppfft!’ The trucker blew off her worries. ‘Look, there’s a federal salvage depot across the road from the J. Anything you need, you can pick it up there. Is there something you need?’

A shrug.

‘I would like a map of Fort Hood and of this place Temple, where the federales are,’ she said. ‘And a small radio, if I could. I should’ve thought to get one earlier, in Wellington when we stopped and met those other lady drivers.’

‘Well, come on then. We’ll get fed and head on to the depot before we light out. See what we can do. I don’t know about the radio, but they’ll have maps for sure.’

Sofia followed the blue-clad truck driver’s lead and hopped out of the cab, with her spirits lifted slightly, glad to be able to stretch her legs and empty her bladder. Her breath fogged up again, but the cold was nowhere near as unpleasant as Kansas City had been. The borrowed jacket was more than enough to ward off the chill.

A tall, thin man approached from the rear of Cindy’s rig. She’d met Dave Bowman back at Emporia. He was a little strange, she thought, and unlike so many of the middle-aged drivers here, he didn’t have a potbelly. Dave seemed to glide across the cement surface.

‘Coat still warm enough for you, young lady?’ he asked.