"No. You guys saved our a.s.ses. I'm the one that should be sorry. I appreciate you sticking your necks out like this."

"It's our pleasure, sir," said Cantrell. "I just wish we could have rolled through the same motherf.u.c.kers that hit our convoy, instead of those cartel rats."

"Me, too," said David. "I'll tell Nathan. Give me a little s.p.a.ce."

"No problem," said Gedmin. "One other thing. I'm uncomfortable bringing these mercenaries on board the AL-TACs with their weapons. Can you smooth that over with them? I'd be happy to store all of their gear externally."

"Jason. Do me a favor. Cut them a break. This is the same group that saved what was left of my ECI platoon on the interstate. They've been fighting and dying for us since then. You can trust them."

"I can live with that," said Gedmin. "I'll get them loaded up."

"Thanks again, guys," said David, waiting for them to disappear before opening the back hatch. He took a flashlight from his vest and waved it inside. "Nathan. Jose needs to ask you some questions about our meet-up in Las Vegas. Shouldn't take more than a minute."

When Nathan's feet hit the ground, David guided him away from the door and closed it. He aimed the light upward, between them, illuminating their faces.

"Where's Jose?"

"Jose isn't here," said David.

"What?"

"Nathan. I have some really bad news," he said. "Your father is dead."

Nathan didn't say anything at first. He looked down at the light before shaking his head slowly. "What about my mom?"

"She's safe."

Nathan nodded slowly. "How did it happen?"

"He was killed at his friend's town house by Cerberus. My dad and Blake took out the team somehow."

A heavy gust of wind blew a thick patch of sand against them, momentarily blocking most of the light. When Nathan's face reappeared, he was staring at David, his face registering no expression.

"We're going to bring the rest of them down, right?" he said, an edge to his voice.

David was taken aback by the question, though it should have been the easiest for him to answer. He stood there, the wind and sand pelting him for a several moments, before gripping his shoulder.

"I swear it," said David.

Nathan's stoic facade started to crumble. He patted David on the shoulder and turned toward the faint outline of the vehicle next to him, then stopped and turned back. "Don't say anything to Keira or Owen," he said. "I'll give them the news once we're tucked safely away in Las Vegas. They've been through enough."

"We've all been through enough," said David, grabbing the hatch lever. "I'm sorry about your dad, Nathan. My father spoke of him like a brother."

"They were brothers as far as my dad was concerned," said Nathan, hitting the side of the hatch with his fist. "Best friends until the end."

David extended a hand. "Until the end."

"Until the bitter end," said Nathan, gripping it firmly.

CHAPTER 61.

Mason Flagg opened his laptop and connected to the jet's encrypted server, settling in for the ninety-minute flight to AspenPitkin County Airport. He navigated to a secure e-mail system and checked for an update from his Sinaloa contact.

The last message he'd read prior to leaving the Point Loma operations center for the flight had confirmed that a convoy of three vehicles matching descriptions from Nogales had pa.s.sed the last turnoff on Highway 93, heading north onto a long stretch of lonely road. His contact had a.s.sured Flagg that his problems would disappear on the highway, despite possible interference from a dust storm of "biblical proportions." At worst, Fisher and company might not make it to the ambush site before the storm hit, pulling off the road to let it pa.s.s. A short delay to the inevitable, the Mexican had said. Flagg would believe it when he saw the three cars burning. The past ninety-six hours had conditioned him to refrain from making any a.s.sumptions about the fate of Nathan Fisher.

A new message waited, time-stamped nearly an hour ago. Dammit. He hated using this message drop system, but the Mexican had insisted. Apparently, talking on a satphone had become the number-one cause of death among high-ranking cartel members over the past few weeks. From the sound of things, the United States military had implemented continuous air coverage missions over cartel hot spots. Fully armed stealth bombers cruising at high alt.i.tude above each designated area, waiting for target coordinates provided by sophisticated electronic intercept platforms. One minute, Cartel Joe was discussing the latest armored Range Rover models with a buddy in Mexico City; the next minute, forensic scientists were sc.r.a.ping his remains from the side of a two-thousand-pound smart bomb crater.

Flagg could appreciate the security concern, despite his annoyance with logging in to get updates he had paid millions of dollars to receive. He clicked on the message, encouraged to see that the convoy was less than thirty minutes away from reaching what had been described to him as "a gauntlet of firepower."

Don't get excited. The message had been sent close to an hour ago. Thirty minutes had pa.s.sed since he should have received a message confirming the ambush's success. OK-twenty-five. He could understand a small delay. Flagg started to type a message but stopped. The suspense was killing him.

He pulled out his satphone, which he'd already linked to the aircraft's...o...b..ard system, and dialed Javier's number. The phone rang twice before his contact answered.

"I figured you'd call," Javier said. "We haven't heard from the ambush team since they last reported. n.o.body can get through to them. It's possible they are having communications problems because of the dust storm."

"Satellite communications should remain mostly unaffected," said Flagg. "How soon can you get a team out there to investigate?"

"They still have blackout conditions in Phoenix. I can't get a team out there until this pa.s.ses."

"Do I get a refund if your people failed to neutralize the target?"

Javier didn't respond immediately.

"I didn't think so," said Flagg. "For that kind of money, you can send someone out immediately. If the ambush failed, I need to know that before I meet with my clients."

"Let me see if we can send one of the lookouts near Interstate 10. They should be within an hour's drive of the site. Probably twice that with the storm."

"Don't let me hold you up," said Flagg.

"I'll be in touch," said Javier, disconnecting the call.

You better be.

Flagg had hoped to walk into the Ethan Burridge's mountain lair with some good news on the Fisher front but had resigned himself to proceeding without it. The hunt for Fisher had become a stale distraction. At least that's how he planned to sell it. If Fisher had somehow survived the ambush on Highway 93, it was time to permanently outsource the problem to an organization with no traceable ties back to the One Nation campaign. This would allow Flagg to refocus on California, where the tide of public opinion had resoundingly turned in One Nation's favor. The latest polls indicated a seven-point rise in the percentage of Californians supporting the status quo over any form of state secession. Flagg would never admit it in front of the council, but Petrov's rash decision to kill Congresswoman Almeda might have inadvertently triggered a landslide shift in the way Californians viewed the issue-shepherded by Flagg's targeted damage-control efforts.

Almeda's murder had been squarely blamed on the secessionists after the lieutenant governor had been killed less than one day later. It was the only logical conclusion, given the lieutenant governor's public antisecessionist stance. The failure of the Del Mar nuclear triad plant further complicated matters for the California Liberation Movement.

With public opinion swinging rapidly in their favor, Flagg had decided to accelerate one of Cerberus's cornerstone projects-the Mojave Block option. In a few short days, they would deal a killer blow to California's self-sustainability movement. The catastrophic loss of the Sheephole Valley Solar Electric Station to an earthquake would call into question the long-term viability of California's renewable energy plan. The Sheephole site wasn't the only solar farm located in an active fault zone. Rolling blackouts across much of Southern California would serve as a constant reminder of the fragile state of California's green energy infrastructure.

If the Cerberus-instigated destruction of the solar farm didn't extinguish the last serious vestiges of the secession movement, the council would have to consider a far more direct approach: open season on the California Liberation Movement and all of its supporters.

Flagg didn't think it would come to that. He wasn't even sure the council would approve the shift in strategy. Petrov would be on board, but that's only because the Russian was no stranger to scorched-earth campaigns. More than four hundred ranchers, farmers, and local or state politicians had been murdered in northern Texas, Kansas, and eastern Colorado during AgraTex's two-year northbound expansion. Flagg didn't think the rest of the council could stomach a similar campaign of intimidation, extortion, bribery, and murder in California, especially on their own dime. He hoped the Mojave Block option put an end to it, once and for all.

CHAPTER 62.

Leeds closed the door to the air-conditioned trailer and descended the short platform of stairs, scanning the flat, brown landscape. A stiff wind swept across the site, loosening a thin film of dust from the hard desert floor. He walked to the end of the trailer, still shielded from the blowing sand, and took another look at the operation.

Two mobile drilling towers loomed in the distance, surrounded by dozens of oversize support rigs. Tanker trucks arrived and departed daily to maintain the high-pressure flow of water and chemicals into the horizontal fracking well. The flow of traffic in and out of each site represented the only security risk to the remote operation, drawing a minimal amount of attention from locals.

The land was private, so most in-person inquiries had been discouraged with a visit from one of their security teams. The few locals who had persisted in sticking their noses too far into their business had been buried where they'd never be found again. From what Leeds could tell, n.o.body had strayed close enough to any of the sites to spot the drill rigs, which had arrived in the middle of the night five weeks ago. That continued to be their primary security concern. The tall rig structures would draw the wrong kind of attention. Not only was fracking prohibited in California, but there was no shale deposit under these shifting sands. His satphone buzzed.

"Miss me already?" said Leeds.

"Not really," said Flagg. "How does it look out there?"

"Bleak. Flat. Not much of an improvement over Mexico."

"At least n.o.body is shooting at you."

"Not yet," said Leeds. "Everything appears to be proceeding as planned. All but one of the wells I've visited are between ninety-seven and ninety-nine percent finished drilling the horizontal fracture. After that, it's a matter of opening as many fissures as possible and putting our faith in the surveys and seismic calculations."

"It'll work," said Flagg. "It better work. How does the security situation look?"

"b.u.t.toned up. The place could hardly be more G.o.dforsaken."

"I'm more interested in the human factors."

"The rig managers report happy campers so far. I'm not sure how that's all going to play out when they start opening fissures without extracting anything, but the number required to operate each rig will be drastically reduced at that point. Some of these guys are going to put two and two together when the ground shakes. That's inevitable."

"We have our own people on each team," said Flagg. "We should be able to identify and manage any problems."

"I don't think we'll see too much of that. They signed draconian nondisclosure agreements, reinforced by generous, progressive payouts-starting after the work is completed. Any pangs of conscience should be tempered by the prospect of losing most of their money."

"And their lives."

"Too bad we couldn't put that into the contract," said Leeds.

"Unfortunately, that tends to scare away the talent. I antic.i.p.ate some unpleasant cleanup work when they realize they've triggered an earthquake, but nothing security can't handle-under your direct supervision, of course."

"And you really need me to babysit this until it happens?"

"We can't afford any security issues, internal or external. I know it's boring as h.e.l.l out there, but we're looking at three to four days at most. This is by far the most important thing on our plate right now. I'm headed up to brief the council on what they can expect from this phase of the operation."

"It sounds like I got the better end of the deal," said Leeds. "Any news on Fisher?"

"I'm not hopeful about the cartel grabbing him in Arizona. He's a loose end we'll sweep up later."

"Sounds like you've been rehearsing that line."

"In the mirror," said Flagg. "Keep me apprised of any concerns out there, regardless of how insignificant they may appear. I want our external security teams to monitor closely for electronic transmissions. The few who managed to smuggle in satphones will start to use them when we pressurize the wells with no apparent intention to collect natural gas."

"Don't they already know there's no shale deposit here?"

"You'd think, but who knows," said Flagg. "I want those satphones confiscated as they're detected. Things might need to get a little rough at that point, to make the rules clear."

"I'll handle it."

"That's why I have my highest-paid operative sitting in the middle of the desert," said Flagg. "I need to let you go. I have to practice my speech a few times."

He pocketed the phone and jogged to the tan Range Rover, getting in the pa.s.senger side. A man dressed in a desert camouflage and light tactical gear sat in the driver's seat, ready to drive him to the next drilling site. Leeds nodded apathetically, and the SUV rolled across the hard-packed desert floor.

CHAPTER 63.

The column of armored vehicles stopped next to a small parking lot overlooking the Hoover Dam. From his seat in the back of the AL-TAC, Nathan could see the tops of the dam's Art Decostyle intake towers through the rear pa.s.senger window. A line of oversize white SUVs blocked the rest of his view. Heavily armed men and women stood around the vehicles. He presumed this was the rest of Jose's Mexicali contingent.

"We're here," he said.

"All right," Keira said, rubbing her eyes and yawning after the fitful sleep she'd stolen during the four-hour ride. He still hadn't told her about his dad. Later, when they'd settled into whatever dank s.p.a.ce that awaited them, he'd find a way to break the news to her alone. Together, they'd decide whether to tell Owen the truth or make up some excuse for why Grandpa had stayed behind. Nathan leaned toward postponing the news.

He hoped they were close to their final destination for the day. Jose hadn't been very specific about the location of the Las Vegas station. For all Nathan knew, it could be in an abandoned mine shaft thirty miles north of the city. As long as it had a place for him to lie down, he didn't care.

"Owen," he said, poking his son's knee.

His son sat slumped in the seat harness, his head tilted forward at a painful-looking angle. When Nathan's first attempt to rouse him from a catatonic sleep went nowhere, he reached across the compartment and shook Owen's shoulder, getting a slurred response.

"We're here, buddy. Time to go."

"Where are we?" said Owen, squinting at him.

"The Hoover Dam."

"Vegas, baby!" yelled Sergeant Graves in a rare display of excitement.

"Woo-hoo! f.u.c.king Vegas!" added Corporal Reading.

"Jesus," muttered Keira. "Don't you guys ever power down?"

"No, ma'am," said Graves, holding up an energy drink. "Not with this coursing through our veins."

"I'll take one of those," she said, catching a can flipped at her from the driver's seat a few seconds later. "Thank you," she said, cracking open the can and taking a drink. "Want some?"