Three hours, a handful of interviews, and one short drive later, Manny and Reggie arrived at their home for the night: the Richardson Autonomous Project. Once a Walmart, now a twenty-two-year-old experiment in sustainable urban living, the Project was the furthest island of “civilization” on the SDF’s side of the front. Its militia steadfastly refused to involve themselves in the region’s greater conflicts. They’d been targeted a few times by the Heavenly Kingdom. The SDF, by contrast, left them alone. So when a fixer like Manny found himself on the wrong side of the LBJ Freeway after dark he could usually trust the Project to provide food, booze, and shelter. For a price, of course.

Sleeping arrangements in the Project were broadly communal. The bulk of the old Walmart had been converted into an indoor meadow with grow-lights hanging from the rafters and a wide, lush field of native grass sprawling across most of the inhabited space. Fruit trees, bushes full of berries, cannabis plants, and copses of bamboo lined the edges of the space. The center of the field was dominated by a large, circular kitchen surrounded by a handsome oaken bar. Tables, gazebos, and sundry personal structures dotted the field, along with a pair of dance floors.

Reggie’s face lit up when he saw the bar. By the time Manny had dropped off their bags and paid Charlie and the driver for the night, the journalist was already three beers in. The Brit wasn’t precisely drunk or sober, but at that productive twilight in between. He’d unrolled a portable screen and had a holographic display up, looping four separate sections of the security footage Colonel Milgram had sent over. The journalist alternated between typing furiously, scrawling notes in his journal, and taking huge gulps of something brown and foamy. He stopped working when he saw Manny approach and waved him into the adjacent seat.

“Hey brother, check this out.”

Manny pulled up a seat and the journalist directed his attention to a six-second loop of footage, from immediately after the bombing. It showed two man-sized silhouettes standing on top of an old garage; Manny remembered the building. It stood maybe two hundred meters from the Abrams Road checkpoint. One of the silhouettes had a rifle. The other held a short, squat tube that Manny recognized as a camera lens.

“Notice anything?”

“Spotters,” Manny said. “Probably trying to get a kill count.”

“Nah, man. Look at where he’s pointed. That cunt’s not looking at any post. He’s looking straight back, deeper into the old town. And I’ll bet you he’s high up enough to be staring right at Colonel Milgram’s command post.”

Manny looked again. He thought about the angle. “OK, so, what?” he asked. “You think this was a probing attack for some big action?”