After America (17 page)

Most of the territorial administrators, such as the military commander of the British base on Cyprus, a major relocation hub, had simply moved them on again, at gunpoint if necessary.

“So what’s the current thinking?” she asked. “Richardson was a sleeper, a stay-behind? Or his jailhouse conversion was just a convenience while he was inside?”

Dalby eased back on the gas as the downpour grew heavier, exhibiting the first hint of emotion since she’d met him. If she didn’t know better, she could have sworn that he was disappointed. He flicked the wipers to a faster setting and turned on his headlights, although the road remained largely empty.

“We have no preconceived ideas,” he said, hunching slightly over the wheel. “But we very much like this Hizb connection as an explanation for why he’d be looking for you—and how he came to get his hands on a couple of prestige motors, a book of petrol coupons, and the small arsenal they were carrying. There is no common or garden-variety criminal angle to this as far as we can tell. But Richardson and his crew taking on a contract job for Hizb ut-Tahrir? That all clicks together very nicely.”

“Well, not really,” she protested. “I can’t imagine the Hizb have much of a network left here since the deportations. Who would have handled Richardson for them?”

“A cutout?” Dalby suggested. “They don’t need a full beard to issue the orders. Just someone reliable to pass them along and run the logistics. There’s still plenty of villains about, and pickings have been very thin for them the last few years what with all the extra security and rationing and so on. One of the advantages for Hizb in having been so active in the prison system is the number of contacts it gave them with handy infidels, like Richardson’s crew.”

“None of them flagged as converts?” she asked.

“No. But they’d all done time in prisons with a Hizb presence. Richardson would not have had to sell them a line about doing God’s work. All he had to do was tell them he had a paying job. And this job did pay well. Once we had confirmed IDs, the Met raided the last known addresses of the four men you killed, well, three of the four. For one we had no known address. They found envelopes with two and half thousand in euros at two of the flats. At the third, they found a party in progress. Seems young Ed McConaughy’s girlfriend couldn’t wait for him to get home.”

“McConaughy?”

“The nasty little carrot top. I believe you shot him in the face.”

“Oh, him. So, two and a half up front. And two and a half at the back end? Plus a bonus for Richardson, an executive fee for running the show?”

“Certainly. Plus the equipment, the cars and guns and so on. And travel passes. They were valid, so that involved a payoff somewhere along the line. We’ll know more about that when Special Branch gets back to us. All in all, though, Ms. Monroe, somebody spent a pretty penny to send these villains after you.”

Caitlin stared out her window. The rain was heavy enough now to have obscured visibility beyond about fifty yards. The world outside the car had been reduced to formless gray and green shadows.

“So why, if you’re going to all that trouble …”

“Do you send a bunch of bloody amateurs like these?” Dalby finished for her.

Caitlin nodded. It made no sense. There had to be better crews around than Richardson’s. Professional hitters who could have taken her out from a hilltop with a long barrel. Snatch teams that could have disappeared her from the face of the earth without a trace. Yet somebody had sent a bunch of half-wits and morons who’d been incapable of catching her husband on his bicycle.

And, with the exception of Richardson, their putative leader, they were all dead. Almost as if that was the point of the exercise.

Texas, Federal Mandate

Crows and magpies, carrion birds, screeched nearby as the little caravan emerged from the northern edge of the forest through wispy drifts of cold rain. A thin, straggling line of poplars wound away to the north like a green river through the fields of beans and spinach irrigated from a couple of human-made lakes. The sun cracked through the clouds as Miguel rode past the nearest garden beds, and an automatic sprinkler system engaged with a click and a whoosh, creating a small field of rainbows in the arcs of jetting water. Blue Dog, an Australian blue heeler, barked in surprise but settled with a warning glance and whistle from his master. His littermate, a red heeler inventively named Red Dog, appeared to throw a contemptuous glance at her brother. She stuck close to Sofia’s horse, a station from which she had not strayed since the girl had released both dogs from the barn back at the farm.

Miguel watched Sofia closely from a few yards behind, where he was leading a string of three more horses. Great storms of emotion swirled and clashed within him, but he ignored them as best he could, focusing his concern on his surviving daughter. She rode tall in the saddle; that was normal enough. The problem was that everything and anything seemed to spook her. Her eyes were constantly darting over every possible place where danger might lurk. He was worried that she would focus so much on what frightened her that she might tumble from her mount like a rag doll. Sofia’s agitated mood was easily read by her horse, which in turn grew increasingly twitchy and nervous. Red Dog trotted alongside her, looking up and whimpering occasionally.

They stuck to the tree line even though it doubled the distance they had to cross, winding back east for a few hundred yards, then switching north again before the ground began to rise and the cultivated fields gave way to larger patches of old-growth forest, thick with chalk maple, hackberry, and white ash. The road agents had not appeared again, but Miguel had no doubt the towering pillar of black smoke rising from his homestead would be enough to draw them back to investigate what had happened to their missing comrades. He wanted to put some hard ground between them and his daughter as quickly as possible. The patch of uncleared forest they were headed for would be impenetrable to motor vehicles of the sort the road agents were driving. Indeed, within minutes both he and Sofia were forced to dismount and lead the horses on foot. Blue Dog trotted ahead, sniffing at tree roots and occasionally snapping up a bug. Red Dog stayed close to Sofia, nudging at her leg every now and then.

They bore away from Bald Prairie and the homesteads Miguel knew were a few miles to the north. He did not think it likely the agents would attack those farms. They were home to white families from Seattle, and Miguel believed with all his heart that the road agents were Blackstone’s men, and so would do the governor’s bidding. That meant driving off beaners like his family even if they were within the Federal Mandate but leaving the right sort of settlers in place. He was confident the forest would keep him and Sofia hidden for most of the next twenty or thirty miles, until the patches of woodland grew thinner and eventually petered out short of Leona. There was nobody up there. It was a pissant little burg that had mostly burned out after the Wave and never been reclaimed. If they could make it by nightfall, it was certain they’d find shelter there, but no sign of the agents or the
TDF
, he hoped. The Texas Defense Force was supposed to protect settlers from the likes of the road agents, but in Miguel’s experience people like him needed protecting from them.

The path widened as the forest thinned out again, and within a few minutes they were able to remount. Following the heavily wooded line of Larrison Creek, they rode in silence for nearly two hours, the only sounds the snuffling of the dogs and the muted footfalls of their mounts on the soft leaf litter of the forest floor. At one point, just after three o’clock, he called a halt for ten minutes after hearing the thudding beat of a helicopter somewhere to the south, but it never moved any closer while he sat quietly, chewing a couple of Mariela’s cookies and sipping at a water bottle. Sofia refused the offer of something to eat, but he was relieved to see she took a drink from her canteen. Red Dog growled at the distant noise, but Miguel shushed her immediately.

The first real challenge to their getaway came a short time later when they had to cross the wide-open lanes of Route 21. Emerging from the tree line near the rusting hulk of a pickup that had veered into the ditch and rolled, presumably when its driver had Disappeared, Miguel gave himself a minute.

“Sit and stay,” he ordered, and the two cattle dogs dropped onto their haunches as he listened to the world around them.

Sofia unslung her Remington and laid it across her lap, and that unsettled him. She was just a little too quick to reach for her rifle, and he considered taking it from her more than once. However, he couldn’t leave her defenseless, and it was better that she be alert than lethargic.

“Is something wrong?” Sofia asked, looking around. “Do you see those men?”

He shook his head but gestured with a hand for her to be quiet while he listened. But there was nothing.

No helicopters.

No aircraft.

No traffic.

Just the rustle of a chilling breeze through the wet leaves of the forest patch from which they had come.

“It’s nothing,” he said quietly. “I am just being careful. Come on.”

They all crossed the roadway at a trot. It was cracked and sprouting with weeds in places, and the clip-clop of the horses’ metal shoes sounded very loud after the quiet confines of the forest. But within moments they were over and safely concealed under the forest canopy again. The rest of the day passed without event, giving Miguel to understand just how empty was the land in this part of the country. They skirted two ranches late in the day on the approach to Leona, but the sun was already low in the sky and he could tell from a few minutes’ observation with his binoculars that the homesteads were deserted. Not because agents or the
TDF
had run off new settlers but because they had been empty for years. Grass and weeds grew to chest height right up to the front porches. The roof of one house had been badly damaged in a storm at some point and never repaired, and the other home was blackened with the telltale scorch marks of a small fire. He wondered why the whole structure had not burned but shrugged off the question. A sprinkler system, perhaps. It didn’t really matter. Only ghosts dwelled there now.

He cantered up beside Sofia with a flick of the reins and a few clicks of his tongue. Fresh tear tracks ran like dry riverbeds through the dust and accumulated grime on her face. She was not crying at that very moment, however. At best she seemed cold and remote.

“We shall make camp up ahead soon,” he promised. “There is a small town not far off. We should be safe there.”

Her only reply was a vague shrug.

As the sun dropped into the west, it seemed to grow larger and glow with an almost malevolent orange glare, as though he were staring into a furnace in the Devil’s basement. Shadows pooled in the recesses of the last patch of forest, a small wedge of uncleared brushland between Route 75 and the Farm to Market Road. Leaving the shelter of the trees, they diverted a few hundred yards to the north, where a small farm dam glistened in the sunset. As the animals drank their fill from the cool, clear lake, a dog or possibly a wolf howled from not too far off, causing the horses to step skittishly and flick their ears around, searching for the predator. The cattle dogs were instantly alert, with lips peeled back from their teeth as they growled in warning and the short wiry hair on their backs stood up.

“Blue Dog, Red, be quiet,” Miguel warned. He leaned forward and patted Flossie on the side of her neck. “Hush now, young lady. Some flea-bitten mutt calling for its dinner is no reason for you to be fearful, no.”

Sofia craned anxiously in the saddle, peering into the gloomy distance. Her posture tensed up more than Miguel would have thought possible as she unslung her rifle again and brought the scope to her eye. Again, Miguel fought the urge to take her weapon away from her, though it was good that she thought to scope the town for any trouble.

“See anything?” he asked.

Sofia shook her head. “No, Papa. It looks clear from here.”

“Very good,” he said.

The cowboy unholstered his saddle gun, stroked the polished wooden stock, and resisted the urge to check the loads. There could be no letting his own nerves get the better of him. Any beast or man bold enough to try his luck with Miguel Pieraro would very quickly find that luck turning sour, especially today. He stood alert, listening as the horses dipped their heads back to the dam. They heard no more of the predator. After a few minutes even Sofia relaxed. With the horses watered, he hauled himself back up into the saddle for the short ride into Leona.

“We’ll camp here, Sofia,” he said, mostly for the sake of saying something.

They had ridden in silence for most of the day, exchanging only a few words here and there as was necessary.

“Fine,” she replied.

Sunset was not far off as the last of the storm clouds broke open to reveal a deep red-orange orb peering through a haze of magenta and purple as it fell toward the western horizon. A few birds trilled and tweeted in the trees as the small caravan slowly approached the edge of the settlement. Sofia remained quiet. What little heat had been generated by the reappearance of the sun rapidly leached out of the day as Miguel scanned the ruins of the town for somewhere suitable to make camp. It looked as though more than half the place had burned after the Wave hit, and many of the surviving buildings were badly storm-damaged. Wrack and refuse littered the two main roads, and a flagpole outside the general store was bent over at nearly forty degrees; a twisted sheet of corrugated iron had wrapped itself around the pole where the flag must have flown in days past. The metal awning over the sidewalk by the ruined flagpole had collapsed and the windows flanking the store’s main entrance were broken, but structurally the building seemed fine.

“Perhaps over here,” he suggested as he dismounted and led the horses over to a line of wooden fencing that had survived intact.

“Uh-huh.” His daughter shrugged, following suit and dismounting. Miguel frowned as he tethered Flossie and the string of remounts before removing his saddle gun and cautiously approaching what looked like a general store. After a few steps he paused and motioned to Sofia to be ready with her Remington. She brought the rifle up to her shoulder and waited for further instructions. Her eyes remained blank, cold. Miguel was worried for her, but he had to press on. He whistled softly to the dogs and waved them ahead of him. The dogs trotted off, sniffing and twitching their ears, but gave no sign of any trouble. Miguel took his time examining the building. A small annex, once given over to a diner, remained in stasis. No windows had broken to let in the elements, and the cowboy could see in the fading light that three of the four Formica tables had been occupied on the morning of the Disappearance. Piles of clothing, stained black and stiff with organic residue, lay draped over half a dozen chairs. In front of them sat plates of food or what had been food. Red and yellow plastic bottles stood on each table accompanied by dried-out bottles of McIlhenny Tabasco sauce.