Termination Shock

There was a minute’s delay while the bags were taken by the pilot, one at a time, and stowed in the jet’s luggage compartment. Willem had positioned himself at the end of the short queue of passengers so that he could snap a selfie to send to Remi. For Remi would be getting ready for bed in Leiden, worrying about the latest reports from Tuaba, and he’d sleep better if he had a picture of his husband about to board a plane that would take him to a more stable part of the world. Or to Texas at any rate.

He saw an opportunity to frame the shot more perfectly by walking a short distance away from the plane and positioning himself with the plane behind him and a spectacular Pina2bo dawn behind that.

“May I?” someone offered. One of the Chinese guys who was hanging around. A senior military officer who had broken away from his claque of aides, just to come help Willem with his selfie.

“Thank you,” Willem said, handing him the phone.

“Is this for Remigio?” Bo asked, maneuvering around and trying to figure out how the zoom feature worked.

“The uniform suits you,” Willem said. “Much better than the tank top.”

“I had it tailored in Hong Kong,” Bo explained. “The standard issue are rubbish.” He was tapping the shutter button over and over. “Off to Texas?”

“No,” Willem decided.

“No!?”

“I’m going to stay. Keep an eye on you guys.”

He realized Amelia had come over to collect him. She’d heard.

“It has been great working with you,” Willem said and held out his hand.

Recovering her poise quickly, Amelia reached out and shook it. “Back to Uncle Ed’s for you?”

“Too gritty for a prolonged stay. I can’t see Remigio coming to visit me there. No, I’m going to check into one of the hotels Bo hasn’t blown up yet.”

“Terrorists did that,” Bo demurred. “Believe me, the Sam Houston was no great loss. Black mold and bedbugs everywhere. I recommend the Mandarin.”

“T.R. likes you,” Willem said to Amelia. “Maybe he’ll offer you a gig.”

Amelia’s face reflected skepticism. “Ehh, I’ll bet there’s openings in Netherworld.” She was turning to leave.

“Defense minister. I’ll put in a word for you.”

She looked back over her shoulder. “You going to visit?”

“This place is going to need a foreign policy now that it has been . . . liberated.” Willem nodded into the southern sky above the end of the runway. Lined up on approach, still miles out, were the lights of an approaching airplane. Behind that, another. Behind that, yet another. Like a train in the sky.

“We have to leave now!” shouted T.R.’s pilot through cupped hands. Amelia took off at a run. They didn’t bother stowing her bag, she just heaved it up above her head and pounded up the stairs. The cabin door closed right behind her. The jet was already rolling. It made a turn to get lined up on the runway. Framed in one of its big oval windows was the head of T.R. Schmidt. He tossed Willem a salute as the jet’s engines whined up to a shriek and it sprang forward.

It had barely got its landing gear retracted when the first of the heavy Chinese military transports touched down in its wake.

“Well,” Willem said to Bo, “I’m sure you have a lot to do.”

“On the contrary, my work here is essentially finished,” Bo said, “but I would imagine you are about to become quite busy.”

PERFORMATIVE WAR

It took about a day for T.R.’s people to set Rufus up with the access he needed, and another day for him to find his way around the various directories where the surveillance videos were archived, and to make sense of what he found there.

Rufus was able to rule out the theory that those drones had been put in the air by members of what T.R. referred to as the well-regulated militia. Or the even more far-fetched notion that it had just been some random hobbyist in the right place at the right time. The drones had been launched from a small RV, a converted Sprinter van, which had pulled into the Mobility Center a few minutes ahead of Burrito Guy’s truck. During their brief stay, the occupants—two black-haired men in baseball caps and dark glasses—had refueled their RV but shown a marked lack of interest in using the toilets or getting food. One had looked after the refueling while the other had opened the vehicle’s side door and got three identical drones in the air. They’d done this at an outlying gas pump, far away from any other vehicles. They’d parked in such a way that the only things on that side of the van were a barbed-wire fence and a hundred miles of open range. So no other customers would have seen them launch the drones. The dark glasses they wore (at night) must have contained AR gear. Darkness made it impossible to know where those drones had gone between the time they were launched and the moment that two of them had been silhouetted against the flames.