The TDF was part genuine kick-ass military force, part state militia, and part Praetorian Guard for the Emperor of Fort Hood. Disgruntled veterans from the federal forces, many of them forcibly demobilised and slated for resettlement in Alaska before the Wave lifted in March 2004, had rallied to Blackstone’s standard. It wouldn’t have been Caitlin’s first choice in that situation, but then she had options that these soldiers did not. If you had a family to feed and no money or food to put on the table, a spot in the Texas Defense Force was certainly an improvement over crumbs and cold, empty promises in the Alaskan wastes.

Patronage. It worked for the Romans, and Blackstone was making it work for him.

At least he hasn’t gone the full Caligula on us yet, Caitlin thought, as she sat up on the bed. ‘Colonel Murdoch’ took a room here at the former Harrah’s Casino Hotel, fresh in from Vancouver, before heading out to the Cerner Corporation Campus for an intense afternoon and early evening of presentations from Mr Culver’s ‘people’. Now, just on nine o’clock, Caitlin had retired to the solitude of her hotel room to review her briefing package before flying out to Texas tomorrow.

She hadn’t much bothered with domestic politics before the Disappearance. The endless pig circus had been largely irrelevant to her concerns, and it felt even more pointless in the years since. Especially once she’d settled into life on the farm with Bret and Monique. To be honest, there had been times when she’d imagined herself never setting foot in America again. Caitlin used to simply tune it out. Care factor zero, she said. Until now.

Bret, on the other hand, couldn’t give up his old habits as a former combat journalist. He’d been a good one. Indeed, many of the reports on the TDF in her mission brief were freelance articles filed by none other than Bret Melton. He kept pretty close tabs on the plight of the demobilised veterans, particularly since some of them were peeps he’d met over in the desert. At night he would sit up with Monique in his arms, holding a bottle, listening to the BBC reports.

She ate her dinner – chicken salad without dressing, washed down with spring water – while committing the TDF’s order of battle to memory.

The Texas Defense Force drew upon the infrastructure left over from two active-duty army divisions and a National Guard division. All three of those divisions were ‘legacy forces’, designed to fight a conventional combined-arms war against a conventional enemy. In many cases, their Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles would have required a fair amount of refit before returning to service. No doubt that was what new inductees spent a lot of their time doing.