Flashback

1.10 Raton Pass and New Mexico—Wednesday, Sept. 15

When Sato called him sometime after 6 a.m. and told him to be on the roof of the Cherry Creek Mall Condos by 7 a.m. to wait for a pickup by the Sasayaki-tonbo dragonfly ’copter, Nick felt a shameful rush of relief so profound that it almost affected his bowels. He’d not known before this that he was such a coward.

He didn’t care. Flying to Santa Fe—despite the Nakamura Corporation’s worries about shoulder-launched or other kinds of missiles—had to be a hell of a lot safer than trying to drive.

There were no clouds visible from the roof of the former mall. Sixty-some miles to the south, Pikes Peak caught the low, sharp morning sunlight. The dragonfly ’copter came in from the west, circled, and set down lightly. Nick tossed his duffel in the open back door and ignored Sato’s offered hand as he clambered up and in by himself.

The oversized bag was heavy. Besides the Glock 9 he had holstered on his belt, the duffel held full police body dragon armor that he’d bought on the black market after losing his job (much more serious stuff than yesterday’s K-Plus undies), a sheathed KA-BAR fighting knife, an M4A1 assault rifle that had belonged to the Old Man, an M209 grenade launcher that Nick had bought to attach to the old M4A1, a box of M406 HE grenades in their egg crates, a Negev-Galil flechette sweeper, and a compact Springfield Armory EMP 1911-A1 9mm semiautomatic pistol. Nick had also brought an S&W Model 625 .45-caliber revolver that he’d used to good effect in DPD shooting competitions—firing six shots, reloading with a moon clip or other speedloader, and firing six more in just over three seconds—and, finally, boxes of appropriate ammunition for everything that required ammunition.

“Be careful with the duffel,” he said to Sato as he took his fold-down webbed seat against the aft bulkhead and dragged the heavy bag under it.

“Ah, you brought your toys along, Bottom-san?” said Sato. There was almost no engine or rotor noise, but as the dragonfly ’copter rose, leveled off, and headed south, the roar of air through the open doors was loud enough that Sato handed Nick a set of earphones and shouted the number of the private channel they should use.

They were flying steadily at about three thousand feet of altitude. Nick looked out the open door as the southern suburbs of Denver melded into the northern suburbs of Castle Rock.

It was cooler this morning, the first really cool morning of this September, and the sunlight fell on buildings and cars that seemed clean and normal, a product of a sane world. Even the abandoned, rusting windmills running along the Continental Divide to their right looked pretty and clean in this rich morning light. The high peaks themselves, save for the looming Pikes Peak, seemed to be receding westward as the dragonfly continued to fly due south above I-25.

Nick almost grinned. He knew he should be ashamed of the relief that he’d felt since Sato’s call about the dragonfly, but there was far more relief in him than guilt. He just really hadn’t wanted to make that all-day drive to Santa Fe in the treacherous daylight.

“What made you change your mind?” he asked Sato over their private intercom.

“Change mind about what, Bottom-san?” The security chief looked sleepy this morning. Either that or he’d been meditating in the square of sunlight falling on their seats and the rear bulkhead.

“About flying to Santa Fe rather than driving.”

Sato shook his head in that awkward, Oddjobby way. “Ah, no. We take the Sasayaki-tonbo only as far as Raton Pass and the state line. From there we take two trucks into New Mexico the rest of the way to Santa Fe. Getting to the vehicles was faster this way.”

Nick managed to limit his reaction to a nod. He turned his face away from Sato and concentrated on watching the abandoned ranches and subdivisions between cities and the little-used highway passing beneath them. They’d passed over Colorado Springs, and the Pikes Peak massif, already with some snow on its broad summit eleven thousand feet higher than the helicopter, was falling behind to their right.

“Nick, why don’t we try that new drug, F-two?” asks Dara.

They’re lying together in their bedroom on a sunny Saturday in January just ten days before Dara is to die. They’ve just made love in that slow, undramatic, but wonderful way that sometimes happens to married couples who’ve found the next level of intimacy.

For nearly six years, Nick has avoided flashing on these last months before Dara’s death, even the nicest memories, since the sense of impending doom overwhelms the pleasure of being with his beloved. But he’s made an exception this time because the half-remembered conversation from that January Saturday from five and a half years ago may be relevant to his new investigation.

Val is ten years old and away at a birthday party under Laura McGilvrey’s supervision all this long, slow afternoon.

“Seriously,” says Dara, stretching out naked against him. “You won’t try regular flashback with me, but why don’t we try this Flash-two everyone’s talking about? I hear it only allows happy thoughts.”

Nick grunts. He’s given up smoking but at this particular postcoital-glow moment he’s very aware of a hidden pack on the shelf in the closet just a few paces away. “Flash-two isn’t real,” he says. “It’s an urban myth. Sorry to break it to you, kid.”

“Well, heck and spit,” says Dara. “I assumed that this was just the official line but that you’d really busted F-two users and had vials and vials of the stuff in your evidence room.”

“Nope,” says Nick and draws his finger up the curve of her bare side. He enjoys watching the goose bumps break out. “Pure nonsense. No such drug. But why the hell would you want to use it if it were real? We’ve never even tried regular flashback.”

“Because you wouldn’t let us if I wanted to,” fake-pouted his young wife. This was an old joke, her wanting to use various illicit substances, this oh-so-daring child bride of his who thinks that an extra glass of wine with dinner is a sin.

He takes her head in his large hands and shakes it gently. “What’s bothering you? Something is.”

She rolls over and props herself on her elbows so she can look at him. “I so wish we could talk, Nick. We can’t talk.”

Knowing that it’s the worst possible thing to do in this sort of marital conversation, Nick still has to laugh.

Dara moves a few inches farther away from him and pulls up a pillow to hide her lovely breasts.

“Sorry,” says Nick. And he is. He knows he’s hurt her feelings. And he’s sad that she’s covering herself in front of him. “It’s just that we talk all the time, kiddo.”

“When you’re home.”

“And when you’re home,” he retorts. “You’ve been coming home late and traveling weekends as much or more than I have.” And again he’s sorry he said anything.

“Our jobs…,” she whispers.

Hovering above the conversation, listening in on his own thoughts from then as well as to his and Dara’s dialogue from that day more than five years ago, Nick is close to deciding that his hunch was wrong… she hadn’t said anything pertinent that day.

“I thought we liked our jobs,” Nick-then says. Idiot. Dolt, thinks Nick-now.

“We do. I did. But they keep us from talking about… well, work things.”

The then-Nick thinks he understands. There’s a lot about the Keigo Nakamura investigation that he hasn’t been free to talk to Dara about since she works for District Attorney Mannie Ortega. The then-Nick thinks that she resents his silence.

“I’m sorry, Dara. There are just things that I haven’t been able to talk about and…”

Amazingly, she balls her hand into a fist and hits him on his chest. It isn’t a joke-punch; she strikes hard enough to make a red mark.

“You idiot,” she says and he’s even more startled to see tears in her eyes. “Does it ever occur to you that there are things about my job that I can’t talk to you about but would like to? Need to?”

He’s smart enough—for a change—not to admit this, but in truth this possibility hasn’t really occurred to Nick. Since Dara is head researcher for one of the assistant district attorneys, old Harvey Cohen, with whom Nick has never been that impressed, he can’t imagine much in her work life that she couldn’t talk to Nick about if she wanted to. As far as he knows, the DA’s office, much less Harvey, doesn’t have any cases pending that Nick has been involved in or would have to go to court to testify about.

“It’s not right,” says Dara, putting her flushed face into the pillow. “But I guess it doesn’t matter… it’s almost over… just a few more days, maybe a week, Mannie says…”

“Mannie Ortega?” says Nick. He’s never liked the ambitious, shrewd, but not very bright DA. “What the hell has he got to do with anything?”

“Nothing, nothing, nothing,” says Dara and rolls over on her side, facing away from him now and still hugging the pillow to her chest.

But her lovely back and lovely backside are bare, and Nick presses himself against them, putting his left arm around her, his forearm encountering only pillow. “I’m sorry I’ve been so busy…”

She reaches back over her head and touches the top of his head with her fingers. “It’s stupid. Forget everything I said, Nick. I’ll explain… when I can. Soon.”

He kisses her neck.

And, he realizes floating above the conversation at the end of this fifteen-minute flash, he almost had forgotten the entire conversation. He still didn’t understand what she’d been talking and crying about. Something at work—her work—obviously had been bothering her for some time.

“Shall we take that nap we came in for an hour ago?” whispers Dara, turning back toward him. Her breath is sweet from tears.

“Sure, let’s take a short snooze,” says Nick. “I’ll lock the door in case Val gets home from the birthday party before we wake up.”

The Summit of Raton Pass was only 7,834 feet, but Major Malcolm’s headquarters was in a military trailer set a few hundred feet higher on a low peak just to the west of Interstate 25.

The major obviously knew that Sato was coming and that he represented the Advisor, so Malcolm treated Nakamura’s security chief with that minimum of obviously irritated you’re-wasting-my-time-but-I-have-to-do-this respect that military officers are so good at projecting. Sato had introduced Nick only by name—no explanation of his presence—and Major Malcolm’s nod had been totally dismissive.

There’d been a time when Nick would have been insulted by that attitude, but now he found it convenient. He wanted to think his own thoughts and not be involved.

Also, he was tired. He’d done flashback most of the night, getting less than an hour’s sleep. Not a smart strategy for a day when he knew he might need all his survival skills—whatever he had left—but he didn’t have time enough not to have spent the hours under the flash.

They were in the trailer and the major was gesturing toward one screen on a wall of screens, pointing at what seemed to be tiny dust puffs swirling against a textured and three-dimensional tan-and-brown wall.

“These dust fountains,” said Major Malcolm, stabbing his blunt finger into the 3D images, “are what’s left of the Republic of Texas’s Third Armored Division, retreating toward their initial staging area in Dalhart and Dumas. These…”

His hand disappeared into the raised images as he touched the screen where darker, broader smudges rose. “This black wall here is actually more than a thousand smoke plumes between Wagon Mound and Las Vegas, a lot of them near the old Fort Union National Monument… and beneath those plumes are hundreds of burning tanks, APCs, and other armored elements, mostly Texan. The battle lasted ten days and some of our historians are already saying that it was the largest tank fight since the Battle of Kursk in late summer of nineteen forty-three.”

“Who won?” asked Nick.

Major Malcolm looked at him as if he’d farted. “Strategically speaking, the Russians, because they stopped the German Blitzkrieg,” said the major. “Although the Soviets lost more than six thousand tanks and assault guns against the Germans’ seven hundred or so in the whole battle, the Wehrmacht had to retreat. They’d lost the initiative on the Eastern Front and it was the last strategic offensive Hitler managed to mount in the east.”

Sato cleared his throat. “I believe what my colleague is asking, Major, is who won this particular battle—the Mexicans or Texans?”

“Oh,” said Malcolm, not visibly embarrassed. “The spanics and cartels beat the R-oh-Ts back with significant losses for the Texans. That’s what I meant when I used the word ‘retreating.’ ”

Colorado’s southern border, effectively the southern border of the United States, was protected by National Guardsmen, but their commander and this unit at Raton Pass were regular Army. The real regular Army was too valuable serving as mercenaries to the Japanese and others—one of America’s few sources of hard currency—to waste on mere American security issues. Nick made an informed guess that Major Malcolm had taught military history at West Point or somewhere before he’d been ordered here to watch the weekend-warrior doofuses who were watching the border.

None of it mattered.

“Are these satellite or drone images?” Sato was asking.

“Satellite,” said Major Malcolm. “We buy time on the Indian and civilian sats. The Nuevo Mexican forces knock down our drones.”

“The reconquistas control all airspace south of here?” said Sato.

Malcolm shrugged. “Technically speaking, the Texans have controlled the airspace the last year or so… they even use piloted aircraft. But in the last three months, the Nuevo forces have brought in Iron Dome and Magic Wand mobile antimissile solid THEL laser batteries. It’s given the reconquistas multiple-point defenses against Texan Republic IRBMs, but it’s also cleared the air of anything that flies… including our drones.”

“But the reconquistas have not put up their own aircraft?” asked Sato, his massive forearms folded in front of him.

Malcolm shook his head. “The Texans have airborne versions of the old Israeli Nautilus Skyguard that can take down anything in eastern New Mexico airspace from two hundred miles behind the Republic of Texas border. Trust me, Mr. Sato… no one owns the air down there.”

Sato shot a glance at Nick, but Nick had no idea what the security chief might be trying to tell him. That it would have been a bad idea to try to fly to Santa Fe? Nick looked at the multiple screens, all filled with smudged plumes that meant moving armored divisions or burning vehicles and men. It’s sure in hell not a good idea to try to drive through that, he thought.

“The air corridors from L.A. to Santa Fe are still open, aren’t they?” asked Nick.

Major Malcolm squinted at Sato as if to say Who is this guy? “Those narrow air corridors to the west from Santa Fe are open,” admitted Malcolm. “Too many millionaires, movie producers, and actors who need access via private plane to their second homes in Santa Fe to close those routes.”

Nick sighed softly. If Nakamura had been willing to spend a little money to fly us to L.A. and from there direct to Santa Fe in some transponder-friendly movie producer’s plane, we could avoid all this crap.

“Sir, with all that fighting along the I-Twenty-five corridor,” Sato was saying to the major, “would you suggest we take Highway Sixty-four to Taos and down?”

Nick knew Highway 64. He’d driven it in a police convoy the last time he’d gone to Santa Fe, more than ten years ago. It had been a nightmare then—bandits in the hills, dropped bridges, roving paramilitary units of every nasty persuasion—but at least the Duchess of Taos, a great-granddaughter of some socialist fiction-writer who’d lived there since the 1960s, sent patrols out forty miles or so, almost half the distance between Taos and Raton, to keep things a little sane. From Taos it was only a couple of hours along the Low Road to Santa Fe.

“Actually,” said Major Malcolm, “I can’t recommend to you or the Advisor that you go either way now.”

When Sato said nothing, the major put his hand back into one of the screens. “The only civilian traffic that’s tried to get to Santa Fe in the past two weeks was a twelve-truck convoy—Coca-Cola and Home Depot teaming up—with three military-vehicle outriders for protection. We lost touch with them shortly after they passed our barricades, they never got to Santa Fe, and we think this is them right… here.”

Nick leaned forward the better to see the orange-and-black smudge under Malcolm’s pointing finger. About halfway between the tiny towns of Springer and Wagon Mound, which looked to be about twenty miles apart on the high plains along I-25.

“We have to go, sir,” said Sato. “Would you recommend the I-Twenty-five route or the canyon road to Taos?”

Malcolm dropped his arm and shrugged. “To be honest, I-Twenty-five may be the slightly better bet this week. Gallagos’s cannibals have extended their raiding circle from the old Philmont Boy Scout camp near Cimarron along the canyon highway. The Duchess’s cavalry hasn’t been clearing the last thirty miles of Highway Sixty-four of obstacles and bandits the way she usually has them do… some say she’s died. Maybe in all the confusion after the battle, the Interstate Twenty-five route gives you a slightly better chance of going undetected. There’s a chance of that. Maybe. Small chance.”

Sato nodded, shook hands with the major, and led Nick out of the trailer and down the hill to where the two tan, modified Toyota Land Cruisers they’d be driving into New Mexico sat by the side of the road. Tanks were parked in the turnouts near the summit of the pass and Nick could see National Guard artillery units along the ridgeline to the north and south. The dragonfly ’copter had already departed.

The four ninjas working for Sato were waiting by the vehicles. When Sato had introduced the four young men to Nick—Joe,” “Willy,” “Toby,” and “Bill”—all Nick could say in response to their nods was “Uh-huh.” It reminded him of when he was a child before the turn of the century and would call for tech help on his computer or software and the heavily accented voice from somewhere in India would say “My name is Joe.” Uh-huh.

The four had been in faded jeans and cheap noninteractive T-shirts when Nick had met them, but in the short period he and Sato had been in Major Malcolm’s trailer, they’d changed into their body armor. This was a serious transformation. No black ninja slippers and clothing and balaclavas for these four boys. Their hideously expensive post-dragon body armor—seemingly as thin as silk covered with overlapping scales—was based on samurai armor from the eighth or tenth century A.D. or some such time. Each man’s armor was different, but each included studded shoulder pads, a sort of skirt, a helmet, studded gloves, and shin guards.

“Whoa,” said Nick, staring. “As my son would say, those are totally coolshit.”

“Hai,” grunted Joe. He was the only one of the four wearing his helmet and it was an impressive piece of work, complete with elaborately carved horns or small-hockey-stick-shaped prongs that clicked up from their inset place along the curve of the otherwise modern Kevlar-9 impact-armored headpiece.

Nick pointed to the helmet extensions. “Joe, do you mind me asking what the superhero antelope prongs there are about?”

“Clan symbols,” Joe grunted fiercely. But some of the ferocity was offset by the young mercenary’s sudden grin and by the fact that he was chewing gum. “Nakamura clan,” he added with no grin.

Nick looked at the other three helmets held under the men’s left arms as they waited by the open doors of the Land Cruisers. All had the same elaborately painted, click-up Nakamura-clan-symbol goalpost horns. So, Nick realized, Sato’s men weren’t just ronin, masterless mercenaries—they were some sort of ninja-samurai bushi not just in the employ of Hiroshi Nakamura but almost certainly fanatically loyal to the Nakamura family corporation.

“What are these things called?” asked Nick, pointing to but not quite touching Joe’s dangling shoulder pads. They looked heavy, but Nick realized that they were made of the same superlight Kevlar-9 woven material as the rest of the body armor.

“Sendan-no-ita, kyubi-no-ita,” said Joe.

Nick thought that this was a long name for a relatively small shoulder pad. “And why the extra layer of red K-nine on the left arm and not the right?”

Toby answered. He was the shortest and slimmest of the four young fighters, but his voice was almost absurdly deep. “The extra left-arm armor is called kote, Bottom-san. It can be held up quickly to deflect a sword thrust or bullet. It’s only on the left arm because the right arm must be free to allow the samurai to fire a bow.”

“Or a nine-K-forty-six Igla shoulder-launched surface-to-air missile,” added Bill as he tapped a cylindrical case strung over his shoulder.

Sato came around the closer Land Cruiser. The security chief was in his own samurai armor—all red, pure blood red, including the helmet and metallic mask. Although the mask was pushed back on his head and not yet in place, Nick could see that it had some sort of pale, whiskery fibers protruding from it like white whiskers. An actual samurai sword—sheathed—was in the stocky man’s belt.

Nick had no urge whatsoever to laugh.

“Tsugi no fourtsu desu ka yaban to jōdan owa~tsu ta no?” Sato barked at his four fighters.

The four young men bowed at once. And they bowed low.

“Hai! Junbi ga deki te, bosu ni id shi masu,” said Joe.

Sato turned toward Nick, who thought the security chief looked infinitely more at home in the samurai armor than he had in his usual black or gray suits and ties. “Joe will be riding with us, the other three in the second truck. You had best get into your body armor, Bottom-san.”

Their two vehicles were made to look like Toyota Land Cruisers, but once Nick saw the scale with men standing next to them, he realized that both SUVs—a quaint term from Nick’s childhood and young-adult years—were about twice the size of even the largest vehicle from the venerable line of what he and Dara had called Land Crushers. He’d also noticed that the “Land Cruisers” had no windows of any sort—not even windshields. Every part of the rugged, dull-matte-painted surface was the same desert-tan mix of steel, Kevlar-9, and various alloys.

In truth, Sato explained after Nick had struggled into his definitely-not-samurai-looking cop armor, these vehicles were the Japanese military’s blend of the most effectively armored-up civilian trucks they had along with the twenty-year-old but constantly refined U.S. Army’s Oshkosh B’Gosh M-ATV, which stood, Sato explained, for “Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected All-Terrain Vehicle.”

This Land Cruiser’s belly was four feet off the ground and V-shaped to deflect IED blasts from beneath. In an age where every granny lady on the block paid extra to have her Chevrolet up-armored so she could get to the supermarket without being blown away, this M-ATV was still exceptional.

The huge Michelin tires were not only centrally inflatable from the cabin and two-hundred-mile run-flats, but were woven of metallic mesh. The four wheels were connected to TAK-7 military independent suspensions that would transmit only the slightest of bumps if the big vehicle decided to run over a platoon of enemy soldiers. Instead of batteries or an internal-combustion engine demanding gasoline or diesel, the two trucks were moved by two Caterpillar C10, inline-8, 700-horsepower, 1,880-pound-feet of torque turbines powered by “radioactive elements” in the vehicle’s armored core of cores. In other words, Sato explained, the two Land Cruiser–Oshkoshes could drive twice around the world without stopping to refuel.

“Decent mileage” was Nick’s response. Joe was helping him to strap in and the restraints included not only five-point metal-mesh harnesses but a series of restraint clips that attached him permanently to his sarcophagus of a passenger seat. Enmeshed in his body armor as well as the deep tub of the crash seat and harnesses, Nick suddenly wished he’d taken time to pee.

As if reading his mind, the red-samurai-armored figure behind the wheel said, “There’s a relief tube there in the door that you can attach for urinary purposes, Bottom-san. The urine will be stored in a receptacle—up to three gallons—there in the door until we stop to empty it.”

“Three gallons,” said Nick. “Great.”

There were no windows or windshields visible from the outside of the Land Cruiser, but there was the perfect illusion from the inside of two large windshields in front of Sato and Nick. It was 3DHD, the image gathered from a multitude of external micro-cams, and the data and smaller images superimposed on the “windshield” at the driver’s command furthered the illusion by looking like a regular heads-up display.

Joe was trying to put an oxygen mask on Nick.

“I don’t need that.”

“You do,” came Sato’s voice in his earphones. “If the vehicle is hit by a shell or IED blast, there will be no oxygen in the compartment.”

Nick assumed that this was because of fire-quenching elements such as CO₂ or some sort of firefighting foam and let it go. The oxygen mask had a microphone embedded in it and the surrounding helmet of the sarcophagus-seat had the earphones pressed against his head. Sato showed him the floor switch that Nick could click once with his foot to put him on a private comm line with Sato, twice to include Joe, and three times to tie into the radio band between the two vehicles and all six men.

“What else should I do here from the passenger seat?” asked Nick. He was all but encircled by high-tech consoles, LCD panels, switches, and levers.

“Absolutely nothing,” said Sato. “Touch nothing, Bottom-san.”

“Great,” said Nick, wondering if he should use the relief tube yet. He decided to wait until Sato and Joe were busy with something else.

Nick couldn’t shift in his concave cradle of a seat to look back at Joe as the third man got busy behind him, but the dash monitor showed an interior view so Nick could watch the mercenary tuck himself into his own seat.

The rest of the Land Cruiser wasn’t exactly showroom stock. The rear seat and cargo areas were empty except for lockers everywhere on the bulkheads and Joe’s elaborate chair. To Nick’s surprise, that chair now rose through the roof of the truck with Joe clutching what looked to be an M260 7.62mm machine gun.

Nick looked at an exterior view and saw the black bubble up there enlarge and the barrel of the machine gun extend through the glass or plastic and lock in place. The vertical pillar of the seat assembly hummed behind Nick and he could see the barrel turning slowly as Joe and the gun barrel pivoted in a full circle. It reminded Nick of the top-gunner in the B-17 movies—Twelve O’Clock High, The Memphis Belle—that he and Val had loved to watch.

Then it struck him: the barrel had gone through the black glass or plastic or Plexiglas.

“Osmotic glass?” asked Nick. When Sato didn’t answer, Nick clicked the intercom floor button once and repeated the question.

“Hai,” grunted Sato. He seemed to be going through a checklist on his phone screen. “Semipermeable bulletproof plastic. A ten-centimeter patch on the top weapons dome. It molds in around the weapon.”

Nick laughed out loud. “That plastic alone is more expensive than any air tickets from Denver to L.A. and then on to Santa Fe would be. These damned vehicles… they must cost Nakamura thousands of times what he’s paying me for this investigation.”

“Of course,” came Sato’s flat voice on Nick’s earphones.

“Then why even bring me along?” demanded Nick. “ ‘Touch nothing, Bottom-san.’ I’m just a fucking passenger.”

“Not at all, Bottom-san. It is you who will be interrogating Don Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev when we get to his compound in Santa Fe.”

“Why me?” Nick’s voice was bitter and he was glad he was on the private comm circuit with Sato. “I’m just being hauled along on this trip like so much dirty laundry.”

“Did you interview Don Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev six years ago?” asked Sato.

“No, you know I didn’t. He was out of the country.”

“And the same was true for three of the four other attempts to interview him. There was a brief FBI interview with the Don—via satellite hookup—two years ago, but the special agents asked poor questions. Yours will be the first true interview with the man… the man who was one of the last to be interviewed on camera by Keigo Nakamura and who might have had serious motives for not wanting that interview seen by anyone else.”

“So you think that Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev is the prime suspect?” asked Nick, trying and failing to turn his head far enough to look directly at Sato.

“He is the most important person in the investigation yet to be interviewed by a competent investigator, Bottom-san.”

Nick almost laughed again. He felt like anything and everything but a “competent investigator” at that moment.

Sato touched buttons and a high whine seemed to be buzzing in Nick’s skull.

“What’s that? The turbines?”

“No, the large gyroscopes,” said Sato. “Coming up to speed.”

“What the hell do we need gyroscopes for?”

“They help right the vehicle, along with hydraulic jacks, should the Land Cruiser be knocked off its wheels.”

This time, Nick did laugh.

“There is something funny, Bottom-san?”

“Yeah, there’s something funny. A minute ago, when Joe went up through the roof, I thought I was in a World War Two B-seventeen movie—you know, Twelve O’Clock High or something. Now I realize I’m caught in the middle of Mad Max or Road Warrior.”

“These are also American movies about World War Two?” asked Sato as he pushed more buttons. The huge turbos fired up and added to the din in Nick’s aching skull. Joe’s turret-gun contraption whirred behind him.

“No,” said Nick, reminding himself not to shout into the microphone. “They were twentieth-century movies—Australian, I think—about a shitty future where everything had gone to hell and men killed men in their weird cars on the lawless highway.”

“Ahhh,” grunted Sato. “Skiffy.”

“What?”

“American skiffy.”

“What’s that?” asked Nick as Sato checked on comm with the Land Cruiser carrying Willy, Toby, and Bill. “Skiffy? What is that?”

“You know,” said Sato, shifting the heavy vehicle into gear. Nick could hear the Oshkosh M-ATV’s heavy transmission grinding beneath him. “Skiffy.”

“Spell it,” said Nick.

“S-c-i-hyphen-f-i,” said Sato, taking the lead in front of the second Land Cruiser and guiding them past a tank and toward the gap a military crane had opened for them in the wall of concrete barriers across the highway. “Skiffy.”

Nick laughed harder than before.

“You’re absolutely right, Hideki-san,” he said at last, wondering how he was going to wipe away the snot under his oxygen mask. “This whole thing is skiffy and getting skiffier by the moment.”

They rolled out of Colorado and the United States and downhill into New Mexico.