‘So glad I didn’t chose the army for my cover,’ she said to herself. It was just the type of pointless, dumb-ass physical training she hated. They’d probably follow it up with a ten-mile run to sober up all the alcoholics. No doubt, out at Fort Hood at this very instant, the same ritual was taking place. Or maybe not. As Musso said, it wasn’t the regular army anymore.
She’d woken up feeling refreshed, at least, but hungry. There had been a promise of dinner with Musso and McCutcheon, she remembered, but after a few drinks that promise turned into an untidy pile of corn chips and peanuts. An orgy of trashy carbs and additives she’d decided to skip.
After changing into exercise clothes and hitting the gym, she logged a long session of high-intensity cardio intervals, strength training and the Tensho and Saiha kata of the Kyokushin ryu, before searching out breakfast. Returning to the hotel bar, she found the whole area had been thoroughly cleared of the debris de partay before the caterers set up the morning buffet. She wasn’t surprised to see a lot of fried meat on offer, most of it the fruit of the pig. Caitlin indulged herself in one half-rasher of bacon, but stuck to her usual breakfast of oatmeal with berries, two eggs on a piece of wholemeal toast and a cup of black coffee. She would have liked some citrus, but there was none to be found.
‘Impressive effort, Colonel. I wouldn’t have imagined any human being could face poached eggs the morning after besting a bottle of single malt in close-quarter combat.’
Looming over her table, Tusk Musso was holding a plate of sausages and scrambled eggs and waiting for an invitation to sit down. He caught her with a mouthful of food, necessitating some awkward hand gestures as she juggled a knife and fork and her cup of coffee. Musso took the seat opposite.
‘Saw you in the gym this morning, as I shuffled past,’ he chuckled. ‘I’m afraid I don’t practise the combat arts as much as I used to. I’m getting a bit old and brittle for it. Most dangerous cripple in America, that’s me.’
‘You don’t look like you’re about to fall over,’ replied Caitlin, smiling. ‘Unlike some this morning.’
The general grinned with the appreciative malevolence of somebody who hadn’t drunk too much. ‘I don’t imagine Ty McCutcheon will be putting his head in there or here anytime soon,’ he said. ‘Last I saw of him, he was being dragged off to his room by a couple of Rangers.’
So he didn’t score. Useful to know … Even gossip could be useful to know.
‘Well, you know the air force, sir,’ she joked. ‘The hardest drinkingest service of all. Although, I’ll give you your due. For a Leatherneck, you didn’t do too badly last night.’
Musso started in on his scrambled eggs, bulldozing them up with a piece of beef sausage. ‘Do you think it helped?’ he asked, ignoring the troll bait.
It was the sort of question he would ask of his military liaison officer, but of course they both knew that she was nothing of the sort. Caitlin wondered whether he was genuinely curious about her reading of the night, or just playing to her cover.
‘Depends,’ she said. ‘On how straight he was with us. On how much influence he has with Blackstone. Maybe even on whether he wakes up with sailor’s nuts and gets pissed off he didn’t get to have his end away with those two cuties he was bouncing on his knee last night.’
A look appeared on Musso’s face that was a little confused, but mostly inquisitive.
‘Have his end away? You sound like you spent some time in England, Colonel Murdoch.’
Caitlin mopped up some runny yolk with a piece of toast on the end of her fork. The eggs looked to be free range, from the rich, bright orange of the yolk. She wondered where they sourced them. They reminded her of the farm in Wiltshire.
‘That’s how I missed the Wave,’ she said, dropping into the background story of her mission jacket. ‘I was on a posting with the RAF. Only supposed to be there six months. Ended up staying nearly three years in all the confusion. Never developed a taste for warm beer, but I did get some schooling in how to drink whiskey during a stint up in Scotland at RAF Leuchars.’
A few people were beginning to drift into the repurposed bar for their breakfast, but nobody she recognised from last night.
‘That’s good,’ replied Musso. ‘Because you’ll need your wits about you today, even if McCutcheon doesn’t have his. We have a meeting with Governor Blackstone at 0900 hours.’
‘We?’
‘Indeed. We, including my new buddy Tyrone.’
‘Somebody had better go wake him up then. Bags not me.’
‘You have been over the pond a while, haven’t you? Don’t worry about McCutcheon. I’ve already put Sergeant Milosz onto that hazardous duty.’
She cocked her head a little. ‘You know, General, Milosz didn’t look like he was going to be much better off this morning, last time I saw him.’
Musso shrugged. ‘I think they gave Sergeant Milosz potato vodka instead of baby formula at whatever collectivised communist childcare facility he was raised in. He was probably up before you with the rest of the Rangers, giving them a metric ton of shit for their unmanly inability to hold their liquor. Probably worked Melville into his cadence, too. His guys love him, but they hate it when he tries to improve them.’
Caitlin washed down the last of the toast with black coffee, ready to face the day.
‘I ran into him yesterday,’ she said. ‘Seemed a good guy. He was partly why I went in so hard at the start of last night. I wanted to knock McCutcheon off balance, get a concession from him before we even got things under way. I hope you’re okay with that. You looked a little taken aback.’
The former Marine shook his head, dismissing her concerns. ‘You did take me by surprise, but McCutcheon was a lot more surprised. And it worked. Or it seemed to, anyway. I guess we’ll see about that today. I’m going to send a few people over to pick up some basic supplies at the PX. We’ll see whether or not the chickenshit is persistent.’
He finished his breakfast, placed his knife and fork next to each other on the plate, and leaned back, giving Caitlin a calculating once-over.
‘Is it your intention to go in against Blackstone the same way, Colonel?’ he asked. ‘Because I don’t know if the same tactics would be as successful with him. He is a prickly character.’
She could see a number of stress lines working away under the surface with Musso. It was real now. She was in play. But of course she was running more than one play, and while Kipper’s man in Texas had pledged to support her, he was also aware that his people would bear the consequences of any miscalculation by Colonel Katherine Murdoch. Even if Caitlin’s real mission was a washout, ‘Katherine’ could still have great influence over the next couple of days, for good or ill, and Tusk Musso was alone in knowing that she was largely unqualified to do what everybody else was expecting of her. Namely, to create a bridge between contending powers.
Musso knew, as did she, that creation was not her forte. Caitlin Monroe’s special gift was for destruction.
‘I’ll deal with the man on his merits,’ she assured him. ‘But I won’t be dissuaded from doing what I have to.’
*
A small convoy of Humvees followed by a solitary M35 cargo truck proceeded from Temple to Fort Hood, led off by a very seedy-looking Ty McCutcheon, who was undoubtedly still too drunk to drive his Jeep Wrangler, but who insisted on doing so anyway. Nobody was going to be pulling Governor Blackstone’s right-hand man over to the roadside for a breath test, and he wanted to take point to make sure there was no problem when they started hitting the ubiquitous checkpoints.