She turned off the radio and returned the little unit to her main backpack. It was late now, and she had rested through part of today already, but she knew from having stood the midnight watch so many times on the trail that it was best to take whatever rest one could when the chance came along.

After readying the smaller backpack and checking her weapons, Sofia retired to the main bedroom, where she had already drawn the heavy curtains. There was no linen for the bed, but she had her sleeping bag and the blanket she’d salvaged from the motel back in Temple. Crawling into the bag and tenting the blanket above her head, she used a small torch to take a few minutes to study her map of the town and army base yet again. Once confident of the route, she flicked off the torch and laid her head down, saying a prayer for the souls of her family and of all those friends she had lost.

*

‘So, I’m just asking Governor Blackstone to put aside any personal ill feeling he might have towards me, and to ask himself whether he thinks that constantly butting heads is what’s best for the country. We have our differences. Very serious differences. But I hope that in the end we can put them aside. There’s just too much work to do.’

Kipper turned off the radio with the remote. His appealing glance towards Barbara and Jed brought forth two very different responses. His wife smiled, almost apologetically. The White House Chief of Staff struggled to rein in his frustration.

‘Too soft, Jed?’

Culver placed his empty brandy balloon on the mantelpiece. He folded his arms, chewed his lip and invested a few moments staring at the rug in front of the hearth.

‘Well, you know my view, sir. We should be muscling up to Mad Jack, knocking him off balance. Not giving him a chance to set his defences.’

‘Spoken like an old college wrestler,’ said Barb, smiling a little.

‘Maybe so,’ he conceded. ‘But you know, Mr President, that we have to do something about this guy, and sometime soon. Do you really want to be cosying up to a guy you’re about to punch in the back of the head?’

Kip smiled. ‘That’d have to be the best place to be, wouldn’t it, Jed? Nice and close, so I can hit him even harder.’

Culver ignored the rhetorical fend and paced over to the drinks cabinet with exaggerated care to fix himself a bourbon. He was drinking a little heavily of late, thought Kip. Even during the worst days of the fighting in New York, Jed had restricted himself to two drinks of an evening, and only after clocking off. Not that any of them ever really went off duty.

‘You’re surely not going to fall for this bait and switch with Morales, are you?’ Culver asked.