Blackstone had re-formed these forces into brigade combat teams with a full strength of close to three thousand effectives per team. On paper, Mad Jack could draw on six brigades with armour, infantry and artillery battalions. They were supported by two aviation brigades equipped with the latest Apache gunships. As impressive as the full combat teams sounded, however, they were rarely concentrated at brigade strength. Many of his units were scattered about as battalion-size task forces.

A good sixty per cent of that combat power was oriented along the northern approaches to Texas, ostensibly on internal security patrols for criminal elements and the like. No one in Seattle believed that story, and nor did Caitlin. The remaining forty per cent was evenly divided between the so-called Panamanian Expeditionary Force and the Gulf coastline, backed up by a small collection of patrol boats and a pair of destroyers, which combined to form the naval component.

Once you tossed in a number of squadrons drawn from air force F-16s and navy F/A-18 Hornets, she concluded, what you had was a first-order military power within US territory. And she hadn’t even reached the reserve structure table of organisation yet. In theory, every citizen in Texas could be mobilised for active duty. With one-quarter of the current US population living in the Lone Star state, that number could top out at three to four million.

She shook her head. Blackstone would never need that many. The campaign in New York had left most of the remaining federal ground forces a complete wreck. It would take years, perhaps decades, for them to recover. The only elements receiving full funding were the naval and Marine forces attached to the Combined Fleet. Everything else was falling apart due to a lack of financial resources.

As accustomed as she’d become to the changed world, Caitlin Monroe still struggled to accept the idea of a rival power establishing itself on the North American continent. Because that’s what Blackstone’s regime was starting to look like. Putting aside her own privileged access to information, there was simply no avoiding the conclusion that he was preparing for a confrontation with Seattle, either to break them or to break with them. That was hardly white-hot raw intelligence. The old media and the new filled up miles of on-screen real estate yammering on about it every day.

As always with politics, Caitlin just didn’t care. It might’ve been something more than sound and fury, signifying nothing. But to her, for now, the deepening cold war within the United States was just an operational parameter. She still drew a pay cheque from Echelon, but that was a multinational concern now. The old order, where the US had been first among equals – she couldn’t help but smile at that polite fantasy – had been swept away. Seattle was just a spear carrier these days. The America she had once defended was gone.