without a machete; and even then, she’d have been hacking and slashing away with all her might to advance very slowly through the thornbushes and wait-a-while vines. In places, the road was almost completely overgrown and it was only her driver’s familiarity with the track that kept them on the crumbling tarmac. The Hummer jumped around as it fought for traction, clambering over giant tree roots and the occasional monster vine that had snuck out over the road.
‘Was this trip really necessary?’ she asked, only half joking.
‘As inconvenient as it might be, Colonel, this route’s still better than waiting at a roadblock for an hour while they check my credentials, believe me.’
‘Seriously? It’s that bad?’ Caitlin noticed her voice was warbling with the violence of their passage.
‘Depends on whether he’s sending a message on any given day,’ said Musso, as he steered them off the old road surface and around a fallen tree.
Scorch marks blackened the blasted stump where it had been felled by lightning, around which the vegetation had been burnt to a cinder for about fifty yards. On the far side, however, the path opened up again.
‘If I manage to get on Mad Jack’s grade-A shit list, or if Seattle does something that aggravates his indigestion, he’s not above placing checkpoints at every intersection between Fort Hood and Temple. He’s really been on our asses of late. I think it’s his idea of turning up the heat on Seattle because they won’t take him seriously about Morales. It can turn a half-hour’s drive into a day-long adventure.’
‘Must play hell with his own people, no?’ she suggested.
‘The spot checks are random,’ replied Tusk Musso. ‘But they always seem to randomly select vehicles with federal plates and tags. So I send a couple of Hemmts through here every few days, just to bash down the scrub and keep a way open. It’s a rat run, a long way out of my way, but it means we have an alternative route to the airfield.’
The windshield began to spot with drizzle as they finally swung off the southern heading and began to track gradually back to the north, taking them past an old sand-mining operation. A petrol tanker had left the road and driven straight into a tailings dam, presumably on the morning of the Disappearance. Caitlin could tell at a glance that Blackstone had made no effort to restart the operation of the mine. She wondered what would happen to Musso’s rat run when he did. Would there be checkpoints every couple of hundred yards along here as well?
‘You’re not rocking my world, sir. I need to gain the trust of these people, but it doesn’t sound like they’re going to let me get to first base.’
Musso flicked on the wipers as the rain thickened up. Past the old sand mine, the forest on either side of the road grew so dense again that she couldn’t see more than a few yards into it. Every now and then, however, Caitlin spotted the remnants of driveways, completely overgrown, but not as thickly as the scrub around them, or glimpsed slumping buildings otherwise hidden by vegetation.
‘Oh, I think you’ll be okay,’ the general assured her. ‘After all, I’m just Seattle’s step’n’fetch-it bitch. You, though, have something Blackstone actually needs. Or he thinks you do.’
‘You mean the report I’m supposed to be putting together for Jed Culver on the military threat from the Federation?’
‘Supposed to be, yes. Don’t worry - I’ve already written it for you. You won’t have to do any real work while you’re going through people’s garbage cans and reading their mail when they’re not looking.’
‘And is there a military threat?’ she asked. ‘A credible one?’
‘Depends what you mean by “threat”. Could Morales make life down here distinctly unpleasant? Of course he could. He already is. He doesn’t have the force projection capabilities to take and hold significant ground, but that hasn’t stopped him from making a damn nuisance of himself at the edges. It’s no coincidence that we get an upturn in banditry and insurgent activity down in Panama every time he sends his ambassador up to demand we turn over control of the Canal to the Federation. Most of the piracy in the Caribbean is almost certainly down to him. Plus, when he started stitching his little bandit kingdom together, Roberto didn’t make the mistake of trying to maintain all the capabilities he’d inherited - he just cherry-picked the best bits and concentrated on maintaining them.’
‘There’s a lot of talk in Vancouver about the
‘Talk’s all it is,’ Musso replied. ‘One deployment to the Gulf with two frigates is not enough to cause me to lose any sleep at night. He’s demobilised most of his obsolete combat aircraft, sticking with the F-16s he inherited. Bad news for Morales is that we’re sitting on most of the spare parts for that plane. He’s got a pretty large navy on paper, once you add up all the frigates, subs and Peru’s old big-gun cruiser, but most of those tubs spend their time in port, for want of funds to operate them. Much like ours do, I might add.’
‘So, he shouldn’t be taken too seriously?’
The big old Marine shrugged. ‘I know there’s some pro forma concern up in Seattle about his capability and intent. And down here, concern turns to howling paranoia, let me tell you. But for now, most of his attention is directed towards internal control. He’s built up his army, but it’s not an expeditionary force. Five, ten years from now, that might be different. But five years from now, hopefully, our own situation should be much improved too.’
He slowed right down as the rain reduced visibility to some hundred and fifty yards.
‘As long as Seattle and Fort Hood don’t decide to get into Civil War re-enactment in a big way,’ said Caitlin.
‘Yeah,’ he agreed in a flat voice. Musso was concentrating fiercely on the road now, what little he could see of it. He didn’t look directly at her as he spoke, but he spoke very carefully. ‘That’s why I worry about your investigation, Agent Monroe.’ It was the first time he’d used her real name. ‘I had to fly back to Seattle to receive a personal briefing about your mission from Jed Culver. He gave me to understand that knowledge of what you’re doing goes no higher up the command chain than his office. The President knows nothing of this.’
Caitlin nodded. ‘You would also know, sir, there’s nothing unusual about that. Presidents don’t know everything. It’s often better that they don’t.’
Judging by his stern facial expression, Tusk wasn’t much impressed with that line of argument. ‘You can serve me up that horseshit on the finest bone china, Ms Monroe,’ he shot back, ‘but I’m still not going to eat it.’
‘And yet you agreed to allow the mission to go ahead with the support of your office, General.’
‘No,’ he corrected her, ‘with
They had slowed almost to a crawl as Musso picked his way through a section of road where the tarmac had been partially washed away.
‘If this goes wrong,’ said Caitlin, ‘I doubt congressional inquiries and criminal charges will be the worst of it. Getting out alive will be the first challenge. And as for the prohibition on operating within the boundaries of CONUS, that applies to start-up and stand-alone missions. But I didn’t start working on Baumer when I got off that plane just now. I’ve been on his case since well before the Disappearance. He may be dead, and his network may no longer constitute a clear and present danger. But the investigation of that network and how it effected its operation in New York - which killed a couple of thousand American personnel, you may recall - is ongoing. That’s why I’m here, sir. I have no doubts about the legality of this mission or the justness of this cause.’
Musso smiled slowly as they cleared the ruined stretch of road. ‘From what I know of you, Agent Monroe, you very rarely have doubts about anything.’
‘Then you don’t know me at all,’ she said quietly, but not unkindly. ‘So, why? Why did you agree to this? If you had your doubts, and you obviously do, why not just take them up the command chain? All the way if needs be.’
They’d reached a major intersection with I-35. Musso took the northern entrance and accelerated as soon as he’d left the difficult conditions of the market road behind them. The highway had obviously been properly cleared and was well maintained. The weather wasn’t much improved, though.
‘I still have my doubts,’ he replied. ‘But probably not of the sort you’d imagine. Frankly, I find the idea of anybody cosying up with the likes of Ozal or Baumer to be anathema. Let’s just get that out in the open. If Blackstone thought to gain some advantage by creating a tactical difficulty for us in New York - and by “us” I mean