“He didn’t make it,” Walker replies grimly. “I had enough people in Washington to get rid of most of the bad apples. The ones we knew about, at least.”

“So you’re saying MogPro is mostly gone and we’re left with . . .”

“A fractured government that’s been kept totally in the dark. This invasion, the idea of aliens from outer space attacking us, it’s all new to them. They accept that you’re fighting on our side. But you’re still an extraterrestrial.”

“They don’t trust me,” I say, unable to keep the bitterness out of my voice.

“Most of them don’t even trust each other anymore. And anyway, you shouldn’t trust them,” Walker replies emphatically. “The known members of MogPro have all been arrested, killed or gone underground. But that doesn’t mean we got them all.”

I give Walker a look, rolling my eyes. “So better for me to stick with the devil I know, huh?”

She opens her arms, obviously not really expecting me to hug her. “That’s right.”

“All right, here’s my first request, liaison,” I say. “The Anubis—that’s the warship that left New York this morning—it’s carrying Setrákus Ra and is on its way to Mexico—”

“Oh, good,” Walker interrupts. “They’ll like that. One less threat in U.S. airspace.”

“They need to scramble jets, fighters, drones, whatever they’ve got,” I continue. “It’s headed to a place of great power, a Loric place. I’m not sure what Setrákus Ra wants there, but I know it’s bad if he gets it. We need to take the fight to him.”

Walker’s expression darkens the more I talk. I can already tell that I’m not going to like whatever she’s got to tell me. She leads me off the pier, across some matted grass and stops in front of a canvas tent slightly isolated from the others.

“A direct attack isn’t going to happen,” she says.

“Why the hell not?”

“My headquarters,” she says, pushing open the entrance flap. “Let’s talk inside.”

Inside Walker’s tent is an unused cot, a cluttered table and a laptop computer. There’s a map of New York City with red lines crisscrossing it—if I had to guess, I’d bet that line represents the path the Anubis took during yesterday’s attack. Walker pulls a second map from beneath the New York one, this one of the entire world. There are ominous black X’s drawn over a bunch of major cities—New York, Washington, Los Angeles and faraway places like London, Moscow and Beijing. There are more than twenty cities marked in this way. Walker taps her fingers on the map.

“This is the situation, John,” she says. “Every marking is one of their warships. You know how to bring one of those things down?”