Page 31 of V-Day
8.
DUARDO NEVER THOUGHT HE WOULDwant to go back to the eighteen hours he had sat in the command Hummer and listened to General Thorne’s bad rhetoric. Only, they had been moving then. Slowly, at the walking speed a column of men could manage through a high mountain pass, yet ithadbeen progress.
He and Aguado had watched with interest while Thorne took the call directly from the Situation Room in the White House in Washington, telling him to halt and wait for further orders. They had been less than a mile away from the top of the Freonegro pass and Thorne’s face turned an interesting shade of red. He actually spluttered.
Then he slammed the phone back into its holder with enough force to break the plastic casing.
That had been three hours ago. Thorne had become unbearable after the call. The columns of men had fallen out and relaxed, most of them sleeping with their heads on their folded arms. Thorne, though, had marched. Twelve paces one way, twelve back. All the while, he muttered, his full mustache twitching. Whenever he came within hearing distance, Duardo heard about the stupidity of politicians, the lily-livered constitutions of bureaucrats, and the lack of backbone of the “others”, by which he assumed Thorne meant Duardo and his men, and Aguado’s regiment.
When a forward sentry reported on movement on the road down from the high pass, Duardo volunteered to check it out, deep relief blossoming. He grabbed a rifle his non-comm held out to him and jog-trotted the mile to the top of the pass where the forward posts had settled. Aguado fell in beside him, one of the Mexican Army’s FX-05 Xiuhcoatl assault carbines slung over his shoulder.
They wiggled on their bellies up to the sentry post. Duardo took the field glasses first and zeroed in on the road down into the valley. He had traveled through this pass when he was a child—perhaps eight or ten years old. His parents had taken the family to the Big Rock for a camping holiday. On the way back, Duardo could remember the car coming over the crest of the pass and the view down into the valley. When he was ten, the valley had been filled with trees and fields and paddocks with cows and sheep and goats.
Now, the far end of the valley glinted with white flecks and silver. The houses at the edge of the city spilled out this far.
“Are thosela Colinashomes, down there?” Aguado asked.
“I suppose they are part of the city, yes,” Duardo said. “The center is still nearly fifteen miles away.”
Aguado whistled. “Your little town went and exploded, didn’t it?”
“This war will slow things down for a generation,” Duardo said sourly. “Or more.” He handed the glasses to Aguado. “On the main road. They’re walking, just as we are, but it’s them.” He rolled onto his side, to relieve the strain on his neck.
“Insurrectos?” Aguado looked through the glasses. “Jesus Maria! How many of them are there? It looks as though…hell, did Serrano empty out the city?”
“He got wind of our numbers,” Duardo said. “And he knows Thorne is pinned down and can’t move. Of course he knows—he’s the bastard doing the pinning.”
Aguado put down the glasses and looked at him. “Wecan move, though.”
“Yes,” Duardo said, as thoughts and possibilities occurred to him. “Yes,” he breathed, a smile forming.
*
DANIEL PUT HIS BACK TOthe wall, just as the other two Secret Service agents were doing. Rosa Bergen had also taken up a post in one of the four corners.
In the center of the elongated room, dozens of senior staff settled around the long tablet-shaped table. They were talking among themselves, ignoring the admin and security staff standing along the walls, including Daniel. Rosa was right—he was invisible.
It allowed him to relax and study the people around the table. He could match nearly all of them to profiles which had been in the documents the President had sent for him to study.
Doug Mulray was the most interesting one in the room and not just because of his carrot-colored red hair. His behavior was descriptive.
The chair at the head of the table was for the President and no one had the guts to sit there. Doug walked into the room well after most of the chairs were taken. He walked straight up to the staffer sitting in the chair to the immediate right of the President’s and patted his shoulder and looked at him.
He didn’t speak, yet the staffer scrambled to pick up his files and move, pushing his glasses up his nose nervously.
Doug had settled his papers on the table while joking and talking to the senior staff at the table. Just before lowering himself into the chair, he reached over the table and slapped knuckles with the man opposite—someone in Communications, a senior officer, Daniel thought. Horner or Hornsby. The name would come, although it wasn’t important because Daniel had already put the man on the harmless side of the list.
Doug smiled as he sat. He looked like the king of the mountain, prince of his own domain, his confidence unshakeable. The smile was unforced and brilliant as he turned his head to survey everyone at the table.
Daniel slid his gaze to Rosa Bergen, to see if she was taking in the performance, too.
Her expression was neutral. It was hard to judge who she was watching. By the fixed direction of her chin, Daniel suspected she was watching Doug Mulray just as closely as he was. Daniel had primed her to watch the guy, although Mulray was giving off power signals a blind person could pick up.
Through the open door of the conference room, Daniel spotted another door opening across the corridor. Two people stepped out, one of them President Collins, the other his private secretary, carrying a bunch of files.
They moved through the conference room doors. The room grew quiet and everyone got to their feet.
The secretary moved over to stand by the wall just behind the President, as he pulled out the chair at the end of the table and sat. She still held the files. An open notebook sat on the top, with a pen resting in the spine.
