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Heather waited with her captor; after a time they heard the rumble and thud of the DC-3 landing. “Smart enough to land out of sight and range,” the Marine said, with grudging approval.

“While they figure out which side is in charge,” Heather said, “don’t lose track of this: I clubbed one of your guys pretty hard and he rolled down the slope into the ravine. Make sure they find him; he’s probably still alive but he might not be in great shape.”

“Okay, thanks.”

More time went by; Heather figured that to land on the road, out of sight of the train, they must have come down a mile or more away, so this was going to take time. She just hoped there were enough—

They must have had that bullhorn in a clean box, Heather thought, missing the words because of the strangeness of hearing amplified speech again. “—Alpha Company, Second Ranger Battalion. Your aircraft has been destroyed, and we have you surrounded. We have functioning automatic weapons, and there is no escape route; we have both ends of the train under observation and can fire on any point around the train. Please release the president and his party unharmed. You will be treated in accord with the Geneva Conventions, and we intend to release you as soon as possible.”

“Shit,” Escalera said. “We’ve been out in the world so long now, with what’s gotta be growing on us, they won’t let us back on the ship till we’ve been boiled.”

TWO HOURS LATER. THE COW CREEK COUNTRY. NORTH OF GRANT’S PASS. OREGON. 2:30 P.M. PST. SATURDAY. JANUARY 4.

Sorting everything out seemed interminably long to Heather. Everett, in the car ahead of her, had been wounded, and would probably limp the rest of his days, but the medic seemed to think he’d be able to keep and use the leg. Rogers and Machado had been killed by Marine snipers; the Marines had had their ambush in place since the night before.

“How did you know we were here, and in trouble?” Heather asked.

Quattro perched on a rock beside her while they watched all the people with authority argue with each other. “This morning, Bambi and I were flying the Stearman, and this gadget, up to Olympia, to catch the big party, you know? And we were following the tracks because we thought we might see you. When what to our wondering eyes should appear, I guess you’d say, but a Marine helicopter on one side of the mountain, and a pile of logs on the tracks on the other, which we didn’t think was a good thing.

“I guess we were high enough, and it’s always so overcast, and they just weren’t listening so they didn’t hear us over the noise of their chopper’s blades—they were rotating when we passed over. So we continued on up to Olympia, I hopped over to Fort Lewis—where they still had some real avgas, can you imagine that—great stuff!

“I did some fast talking and the Second Ranger Battalion either decided they were loyal to the president or they wanted an excuse to go fight Marines. Now, the Stearman was a trainer, the trainee seat is normally the front, and it’s an open cockpit. So we put one Ranger that was supposed to be a crack shot with a shoulder-fired missile in the front seat. It turned out he was.”

“That was four men killed instantly,” Heather said, annoyed by a feeling that Quattro was in this whole thing because it was the kind of adventure he’d imagined having when he was fourteen. “Your sharpshooter must’ve hit right on a fuel tank or maybe set off some ordnance.”

“That would be my guess. It was one sweet shot.” So much for compassion. “But yeah, Bambi and the sergeant kind of thought there might be a lot of negative feelings around, so they just headed back to Fort Lewis. No reason to rub anyone’s nose in it, you know. And I kind of think she wanted to go someplace else anyway. I don’t think she’s real used to the idea of killing anyone—let alone burning several men to death.”

“I hope she doesn’t ever get used to that,” Heather said.

“That’s very reasonable,” Quattro admitted. “Want to give me a hand cleaning scunge out of the DC-3 while they make up their minds who’s riding in it? I’m one of two people that has a guaranteed seat, so I don’t need to be involved in that discussion.”

They scrubbed with rags and sticks—“jeez, I wish we had toothbrushes, except if we did, I’d want to keep them for my teeth,” Quattro said.

Heather bent to her scrubbing. “Quattro, let me ask you a dangerous question—what do you think? Is it a war or a system artifact that we’re up against?”

“I think in a couple years I can be selling canned fish into the middle of the country, before people get iodine deficiencies. And that’s all I think. I used to think I cared about political issues. Now that I’m the freeholder of Castle Larsen, I think about feeding people, building shit, making shit work, all the people that count on me, and shit that won’t get done without me. Basically it’s down to people and shit. I prefer it that way.” He took another rag, put one end in the bleach, pulled it up and shook it, and wiped along an already-shining surface near the spark coil. “And I don’t envy you your job, Heather, but I sure as hell am glad someone is doing it.”

“I’m not so sure I’m glad it’s me.”

“Well, I’m glad it’s you. You at least kind of seem to have your head on straight.” He glanced around, and lowered his voice. “Is it just me, or does it look like our president is becoming excessively presidential? I mean, when we picked him up, he was just a little guy trying to do a big job; now I think he’s becoming a very big guy who feels entitled to a very big job. The way he was with the California legislature? Like fucking Mussolini or something. And lately when he speaks to a crowd, like in Sacramento… he’s not quite the guy that I saw in Pale Bluff.”

It was very much what Heather had been saying to herself, and she wanted to argue, but it just seemed… true. “It used to be he was right about so much, and no one listened. Now they—”

A Ranger sergeant from Fort Lewis was trotting toward them, carrying a clipboard, and Chris Manckiewicz was running beside him, comical as only a middle-aged former fat guy trying to keep up with a young athlete can be. “Looks like there’ve been some decisions,” Heather said.

The sergeant said, “Mr. Larsen, we’ve finally got a manifest together, sort of, with who’s going where. Ms. O’Grainne, you’re on, along with Mr. Manckiewicz here—”

Heather was annoyed. “So apparently the new president is so far gone into playing president that he has to have media coverage—”

“Uh,” Chris said, “I think that—”

“I don’t blame you for wanting to be with the president, Chris, but—”

“Actually,” Chris said, “it’s more of a—”

“But I’m getting seriously pissed off and worried about the way that he’s coming down with Shaunsen’s disease, and—”

“Heather.” Quattro’s voice was soft but very firm, and she stopped. “Chris gets a seat because he’s sitting next to me; he’s the copilot.”

“Oh,” Heather said, flushing.

“So I’ll be busy on the flight,” Chris said, “but I do think you’ve got some interesting things to say. How about an interview once we’re in Olympia?”

ABOUT TWO WEEKS LATER. OLYMPIA, NEW DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. (OLYMPIA. WASHINGTON.) 1:00 P.M. PST. MONDAY. JANUARY 20.

“It’s hard to put together much of a band when all the plastic goes,” Ramirez was saying, apologetically, to Heather. “Some of the more expensive wooden clarinets with felt pads, a few all-metal brass instruments, a couple of drums where the skins are really skins, that’s about all we could do. Too many little plastic rings and gaskets in modern instruments, so that even the ones that were mostly metal or mostly wood have pads and fittings, here and there, that are gone and can’t be replaced right away.” Ramirez was the senior bandmaster from Fort Lewis, where four units had bands and three National Guard bands came for practice. He’d rounded up players and instruments from the Army, the National Guard, several different fife and drum corps, a couple of conservatories, and local high schools, and managed to get them all together to rehearse on just three weeks’ notice. He didn’t even seem to think it had been hard, saying only that “band standards tend to be patriotic numbers, anyway, we just had to work out what version of what we were playing.”