Flashback

the pillow to her chest.

But her lovely back and lovely backside are bare, and Nick presses himself against them, putting his left arm around her, his forearm encountering only pillow. “I’m sorry I’ve been so busy…”

She reaches back over her head and touches the top of his head with her fingers. “It’s stupid. Forget everything I said, Nick. I’ll explain… when I can. Soon.”

He kisses her neck.

And, he realizes floating above the conversation at the end of this fifteen-minute flash, he almost had forgotten the entire conversation. He still didn’t understand what she’d been talking and crying about. Something at work—her work—obviously had been bothering her for some time.

“Shall we take that nap we came in for an hour ago?” whispers Dara, turning back toward him. Her breath is sweet from tears.

“Sure, let’s take a short snooze,” says Nick. “I’ll lock the door in case Val gets home from the birthday party before we wake up.”

The Summit of Raton Pass was only 7,834 feet, but Major Malcolm’s headquarters was in a military trailer set a few hundred feet higher on a low peak just to the west of Interstate 25.

The major obviously knew that Sato was coming and that he represented the Advisor, so Malcolm treated Nakamura’s security chief with that minimum of obviously irritated you’re-wasting-my-time-but-I-have-to-do-this respect that military officers are so good at projecting. Sato had introduced Nick only by name—no explanation of his presence—and Major Malcolm’s nod had been totally dismissive.

There’d been a time when Nick would have been insulted by that attitude, but now he found it convenient. He wanted to think his own thoughts and not be involved.

Also, he was tired. He’d done flashback most of the night, getting less than an hour’s sleep. Not a smart strategy for a day when he knew he might need all his survival skills—whatever he had left—but he didn’t have time enough not to have spent the hours under the flash.

They were in the trailer and the major was gesturing toward one screen on a wall of screens, pointing at what seemed to be tiny dust puffs swirling against a textured and three-dimensional tan-and-brown wall.

“These dust fountains,” said Major Malcolm, stabbing his blunt finger into the 3D images, “are what’s left of the Republic of Texas’s Third Armored Division, retreating toward their initial staging area in Dalhart and Dumas. These…”

His hand disappeared into the raised images as he touched the screen where darker, broader smudges rose. “This black wall here is actually more than a thousand smoke plumes between Wagon Mound and Las Vegas, a lot of them near the old Fort Union National Monument… and beneath those plumes are hundreds of burning tanks, APCs, and other armored elements, mostly Texan. The battle lasted ten days and some of our historians are already saying that it was the largest tank fight since the Battle of Kursk in late summer of nineteen forty-three.”

“Who won?” asked Nick.

Major Malcolm looked at him as if he’d farted. “Strategically speaking, the Russians, because they stopped the German Blitzkrieg,” said the major. “Although the Soviets lost more than six thousand tanks and assault guns against the Germans’ seven hundred or so in the whole battle, the Wehrmacht had to retreat. They’d lost the initiative on the Eastern Front and it was the last strategic offensive Hitler managed to mount in the east.”

Sato cleared his throat. “I believe what my colleague is asking, Major, is who won this particular battle—the Mexicans or Texans?”

“Oh,” said Malcolm, not visibly embarrassed. “The spanics and cartels beat the R-oh-Ts back with significant losses for the Texans. That’s what I meant when I used the word ‘retreating.’ ”

Colorado’s southern border, effectively the southern border of the United States, was protected by National Guardsmen, but their commander and this unit at Raton Pass were regular Army. The real regular Army was too valuable serving as mercenaries to the Japanese and others—one of America’s few sources of hard currency—to waste on mere American security issues. Nick made an informed guess that Major Malcolm had taught military history at West Point or somewhere before he’d been ordered here to watch the weekend-warrior doofuses who were watching the border.

None of it mattered.

“Are these satellite or drone images?” Sato was asking.

“Satellite,” said Major Malcolm. “We buy time on the Indian and civilian sats. The Nuevo Mexican forces knock down our drones.”

“The reconquistas control all airspace south of here?” said Sato.

Malcolm shrugged. “Technically speaking, the Texans have controlled the airspace the last year or so… they even use piloted aircraft. But in the last three months, the Nuevo forces have brought in Iron Dome and Magic Wand mobile antimissile solid THEL laser batteries. It’s given the reconquistas multiple- point defenses against Texan Republic IRBMs, but it’s also cleared the air of anything that flies… including our drones.”

“But the reconquistas have not put up their own aircraft?” asked Sato, his massive forearms folded in front of him.

Malcolm shook his head. “The Texans have airborne versions of the old Israeli Nautilus Skyguard that can take down anything in eastern New Mexico airspace from two hundred miles behind the Republic of Texas border. Trust me, Mr. Sato… no one owns the air down there.”

Sato shot a glance at Nick, but Nick had no idea what the security chief might be trying to tell him. That it would have been a bad idea to try to fly to Santa Fe? Nick looked at the multiple screens, all filled with smudged plumes that meant moving armored divisions or burning vehicles and men. It’s sure in hell not a good idea to try to drive through that, he thought.

“The air corridors from L.A. to Santa Fe are still open, aren’t they?” asked Nick.

Major Malcolm squinted at Sato as if to say Who is this guy? “Those narrow air corridors to the west from Santa Fe are open,” admitted Malcolm. “Too many millionaires, movie producers, and actors who need access via private plane to their second homes in Santa Fe to close those routes.”

Nick sighed softly. If Nakamura had been willing to spend a little money to fly us to L.A. and from there direct to Santa Fe in some transponder-friendly movie producer’s plane, we could avoid all this crap.

“Sir, with all that fighting along the I-Twenty-five corridor,” Sato was saying to the major, “would you suggest we take Highway Sixty-four to Taos and down?”

Nick knew Highway 64. He’d driven it in a police convoy the last time he’d gone to Santa Fe, more than ten years ago. It had been a nightmare then—bandits in the hills, dropped bridges, roving paramilitary units of every nasty persuasion—but at least the Duchess of Taos, a great-granddaughter of some socialist fiction-writer who’d lived there since the 1960s, sent patrols out forty miles or so, almost half the distance between Taos and Raton, to keep things a little sane. From Taos it was only a couple of hours along the Low Road to Santa Fe.

“Actually,” said Major Malcolm, “I can’t recommend to you or the Advisor that you go either way now.”

When Sato said nothing, the major put his hand back into one of the screens. “The only civilian traffic that’s tried to get to Santa Fe in the past two weeks was a twelve-truck convoy—Coca-Cola and Home Depot teaming up—with three military-vehicle outriders for protection. We lost touch with them shortly after they passed our barricades, they never got to Santa Fe, and we think this is them right… here.”

Nick leaned forward the better to see the orange-and-black smudge under Malcolm’s pointing finger. About halfway between the tiny towns of Springer and Wagon Mound, which looked to be about twenty miles apart on the high plains along I-25.

“We have to go, sir,” said Sato. “Would you recommend the I-Twenty-five route or the canyon road to Taos?”

Malcolm dropped his arm and shrugged. “To be honest, I-Twenty-five may be the slightly better bet this week. Gallagos’s cannibals have extended their raiding circle from the old Philmont Boy Scout camp near Cimarron along the canyon highway. The Duchess’s cavalry hasn’t been clearing the last thirty miles of Highway Sixty-four of obstacles and bandits the way she usually has them do… some say she’s died. Maybe in all the confusion after the