Without warning

They had run out of Kiwi boot polish as well, hard as that was to believe. Most combat boots looked as if they’d been polished with a Hershey bar, if at all. The general wore a pair of the new, now rare, suede tan Marine Corps boots. At least he didn’t have to worry about spit and polish every night.

The afternoon sun was warm, but not uncomfortably so. Nonetheless, it glinted off the steel and wire of Camp 4 with a fierceness that made the sunglasses necessary. It was quiet today. The next call to prayer was still an hour away and the prisoners’ initial excitement after the Disappearance had long since evaporated. The Israelis had made sure of that. Most of these humps were now as alone in the world as the Americans who still guarded them.

‘I don’t know what to do, George,’ he admitted to his aide.

‘Pearl wants this expedited. And that’s the extent of their instructions. Except for Susan Pileggi’s Uplift requirements, we really don’t rate as a priority anymore, and the refugee flow has slowed up anyway. God knows, some of these losers really don’t need to be here,’ he said, waving a dismissive hand back towards the imprisoned jihadis. ‘But, on the other hand, nobody’s going to thank me for releasing a couple of hundred more lunatics onto the job market. So what do we do?’

‘Don’t know, General,’ replied Stavros. ‘That’s why you make the big bucks.’

That really was a joke. Neither of them had been paid in weeks. Even if they had been, what use would they have for a dead, worthless currency?

‘Okay, decision time. Let’s set up a small review team. We’ll do a quick and dirty study of each case. The really bad motherfuckers, like Khalid, we’re going to try according to the laws of war. If convicted, they can be dealt with summarily.’

Lieutenant Colonel Stavros looked wary. ‘But General, most of the personnel involved in the commission process were back home. Prosecutors, defence. And most of their files are gone too. What do we charge them with? How can we -’

Musso cut him off with a chopping hand gesture. ‘I didn’t say it’d be pretty, George. Just fast. Some of these guys need their necks stretched. Some of them don’t belong here. Let’s shake the box and see who falls out of which hole. I want it sorted in a month.’

‘A month…’ Stavros stammered. ‘But General, we’ve got hundreds of cases… And where are we going to send them?’

‘A lot of them can be repatriated to their homelands, assuming the Israelis didn’t turn them into a slagheap. We got a lot of Pakistanis here – let Musharraf have them. We might even get lucky. India might nuke him as soon as they touch down. Most of the rest are Saudis, Jordanians, Afghanis – let’s send ‘em home. What happens then is up to their governments. Frankly, I don’t think many of them will survive, but that’s not my problem. A month, Colonel. This is one issue I don’t need to think about anymore. There’s plenty more that I do. Including this waste of space…’

Stavros turned to look over his shoulder where Musso had glowered at two approaching civilians. Professor Griffiths and his assistant Tibor, universally known as Igor. The pair were stomping up the road in front of Camp 4, sweating profusely.

Griffiths began carping as soon as he was in pistol-shot range. ‘Found you at last, General. I must protest yet again about the lack of cooperation from your staff with my research. Do I have to remind you that my team and I were sent here by your superiors? I am supposed to be studying the phenomenon, instead I spend most of my time getting jerked around by you or your minions.’

‘Good afternoon, Professor. Always lovely to see you,’ said Musso. ‘And no, you don’t have to remind me. I’ve heard that particular song so many times now, it has its own neural pathway that lights up every time I see you. If this is about your field trip, my staff aren’t thwarting you, Professor. They’re simply following orders. They cannot go into the exclusion zone along the line of the Wave, because they have been ordered not to. The Wave is dangerous, sir. It eats people. It ate one of yours the first week you were here. Left a little pile of goo in a white coat, as I recall. It’s not getting any more of mine.’