"Uh, yes."

Oh, shit.

"I'm leaving first. Count to a hundred before you follow."

"I'm supposed to brief you..."

"No. We won't be talking again."

"What? Nonsense. You were sent to assist in my investigation!"

Who trained you? "Message for Control: Delta Uniform. Got that?"

"Delta Uniform? That's it?"

"Send it as soon as you can. Don't forget to count to a hundred." Kimble walked into the deeper shadow under the bridge. When the bank rose and he was on the relatively smooth dried mud, he sprinted up. The moon was well clear of the horizon now and the road was a bright ribbon after the darkness under the bridge. He ignored it and took to the brush on the north side of the road.

A few minutes later he watched as Hodges climbed the bank and began trudging back to the barracks.

There was more traffic over the next hour, including several Rangers returning from town, but he didn't see Bickle among them.

Finally Kimble gave up. He went north along the riverbank and, well outside of town, waded across to reach the Zen Center and climbed up the steep path to his campsite.

18.

Messages Thayet picked up the apples in town and also took a message to the Qwest Heliograph office the next day. It read: TERRITORIAL MEDICAL CLAIMS ADMIN OFFICE NUEVO SANTA FE STOP LEFT TOWN WITHOUT RESOLVING TREATMENT CLAIM 322355 STOP THREE TWO TWO THREE FIVE FIVE STOP PLEASE INFORM OUTCOME PECOSITO HELIO WILL CALL STOP DU OHARA.

The message was converted into Morse blinks of reflected sunshine and passed from station to station before being translated back to paper in the territorial capital. The claims clerk who took delivery of the message pulled the folder for claim 322355 to see what was what. It was empty except for a scrawled note: "This claim on Director's desk. Route all correspondence to the Director."

When the heliograph arrived on that worthy's desk, she waited until the clerk had left, sealed it in an envelope and had her secretary run it across the street to a Sergeant Ruiz at the Territorial Rangers Headquarters Building.

Sergeant Ruiz raised his voice, as sergeants are prone to do, and the word "Orderly!" echoed down the hall. By the time the private on duty had arrived from the ready room, Sergeant Ruiz had written a name on the envelope. He handed it to the orderly and said, "Double-time, Major Bentham, Department 17."

Major Bentham was sitting in the analysts' bullpen, talking over border issues with the two men who ran the Mexican desk, when the note came to him.

"Oh, crap. Excuse me, gentlemen. I've got a problem over on the Pecos." He stepped away and stopped three desks down at the Eastern New Mexico desk. "Who the hell is the local Intel at the Sixteenth Barracks?"

The woman behind the desk, Captain Spitzer, frowned. "Oh, no. What has Hodges done now? I just got a Delta Uniform from your boy, LF, through him."

Bentham dropped the heliogram to Medical Claims on her desk. "Me, too."

Captain Spitzer looked at the message. "I'm unfamiliar with this code."

"Right. It's a last resort. You wouldn't see it unless there was something wrong with normal channels. The only thing it really means is 'communicate directly via will-call messages into the Pecosito heliograph office.'" Bentham stabbed a forefinger at the signature, DU OHARA. "O'Hara is one of the code designations for LF, and the initials of the signatory are for any code groups-there's the Delta Uniform again."

"I guess Little Friend means it. It wasn't just Hodges screwing up ... again."

"Didn't we get rid of Hodges? I thought we were going to shove him off onto supply."

Captain Spitzer shook her head. "You couldn't, remember? The governor? That little chat? Hodges' grandmother?"

Bentham covered his eyes with one hand and sighed heavily. "I'm supposed to be the one with the good memory."

Spitzer said, "Well, I'd want to put that out of my head, too."

"So why did we put Hodges in Pecosito?"

"Until the gun smuggling thing came up it was the quietest post in the entire territory. The bugs start to fade out there except for some isolated industrial infestations. I mean, the worst thing about the area is the religious intolerance."

"Well, he's screwed this up, apparently. Do we have anyone local, outside of the Rangers?"

"Not covert, no. That's why we wanted Little Friend. And Lujan before him."

"Okay. Please tell me we've got someone above Hodges we can trust? And I don't mean just with the right security rating. I mean someone with his head on straight."

She pulled a file from the shelf behind her and flipped it open. "Well," she said, "the CO is Colonel Q."

"What? Quincy Anson? I thought he was still over at the academy."

"No. Reassigned three months ago. The brass outside decided they could do the training more efficiently with modern technology and he, uh, declined to live outside."

"I hadn't heard that."

She shrugged. "And you didn't hear it from me. They clamped a lid on it."

Major Bentham stared at her. "Why?"

"Don't know. Don't care. Until they start producing crappy Rangers, that is. They're still giving territorial residents preference in the recruiting process so at least they haven't screwed things up too far."

He shook his head. "But it does mean that Colonel Q is in the right place. Muy bien. Set up a secure call, won't you?"

"THEY said it was the need for modern educational methods-virtual sims, e-books-but I had it from my sources: Too many of the currently serving officers were my students. I think they even threw around that old Soviet phrase, 'cult of personality.'"

Bugs love electromagnetic radiation, but there are work-arounds. To get to the headquarters communication bunker, Bentham started in the basement and climbed down a ladder, then walked through a winding concrete-stabilized tunnel to a deep pocket in the earth, well underground. The equipment was powered by batteries and these were routinely charged by privates peddling on flywheel generators, all down here with tons of dirt between the EMF and any possible passing bugs. The signals left the buried room as packets of light, in glass bundles, fiber optics running straight up to the roof and then up a Dacron rope to a tethered communications balloon over fifteen thousand feet above sea level. There, solar-charged batteries powered a satellite uplink set, passing signals in both directions.

Bugs don't like thin air. Not because they breathe, but because they have wings. Smallish wings. And when the air gets too thin, the bugs don't rise any higher. It's why you can fly aircraft over the territory-just don't dip below ten-thousand feet. To maintain a margin of error, the legal limit is fifteen thousand.

There are balloons tethered over all significant territorial government installations, including most Ranger barracks.

Bentham took a breath of stale air and shuddered. Ranger communication officers really need to be comfortable in closed spaces.

"Well, I hate to say it, Colonel, but I'm glad you're available. May not be as good for the academy but it's sure good for me."

"Tell me what this Delta Uniform is. You've mentioned it three times and I still don't know what it means."

"Director unreliable. It refers to the field director-the person directing the operations of a covert field agent. In this case it means Hodges."

"I thought Hodges passed you that message."

"Yes. There are certain codes reserved for field agents so they can communicate things through their directors without the director knowing what it means. But Hodges did send it, so I suspect incompetence, not malfeasance."

"Well, I'll be honest with you. When I reviewed the staff files after taking over here, I was not impressed with Hodges' previous evaluations. I mean, seriously, why is he still doing secure work?"

Bentham cleared his throat. "I tried to transfer him into supply, but there were complications."

"Supply didn't want him?" Supply was chronically understaffed. Moving supplies with metal-free technology is not easy work. The common wisdom was that they would take anyone.

"His grandmother is chair of the Governor's Citizen Advisory Council. I got a visit from the man. He even put on the uniform."

"Oh, Christ," said Colonel Anson. "I thought he only wore that for academy graduations."

The governor was titular commander-in-chief of the Territorial Rangers, but everyone-the officer corps, the territorial administration, and even the governor's own staff-tried to keep him as far away as possible from the working Rangers.

"I don't know the basis of LF's Delta Uniform, so I can't speculate, but I really need to know what's going on."

Colonel Anson cleared his throat. "I suppose I can get him in here so you can talk directly, but not exactly secretly."

"No. It's asking a lot, but I'd like you to take over as his director in the field. At least until we know why he doesn't trust Hodges. You'd have to meet covertly, away from your installation."

"Humph. Secret handshakes and recognition codes? Don't you think I'm a little old for that?"

Bentham laughed. "Identity won't be a problem. You know the boy."

"I do?"

"LF is Kimble Monroe."

"Kim? The kid you lent us for the unarmed combat evaluations?"

"Right."

"Oh, very good. There were some punctured egos that day. I had to stop watching. I was going to bust a gut trying not to laugh at the poor bastards."

"So you remember what he looks like?"

"Pretty much. As of two years ago, anyway."

"No major changes. Maybe an inch or two of growth, but, if anything, thinner."

"Right."

"Is he still as, uh, proficient?"

"He lives in the dojo when he isn't on assignment, but it's his judgment I value. And I try not to use him that often."

"Too young?"

"Too valuable. I don't want him overexposed."

"Well, put me in the loop, Jeremy. I'll do what I can."

19.

A Night at the Theater Kimble spent the afternoon weeding the Zen Center's bean field. It was oddly relaxing and gave him a chance to catch up with Thayet, who was helping, sort of, in that she was doing more talking than weeding. That was all right-Kimble pulled enough weeds for three.

She had been achieving merit, she told him, by sitting with the hospice residents, fetching water, and singing softly to a woman who wanted the same song sung over and over and over.

"And I learned a joke involving broccoli and a word I'm not supposed to say."

He took supper with the monks, watered Mrs. Perdicaris at the river, then led her in a scramble up the cut to his campsite while there was still light. He put her on a long tether on good grass and set out his bedroll in a hollow of the wash.

He was lying on his back watching the stars come out when Mrs. P made a snorting sound and turned abruptly. Kimble sat up and listened. He didn't hear anything at first, but after a bit he heard the horses-two of them, he thought-approaching from the west.

He crouched and stood slowly until his head was over the edge of the wash. The sun had set, but the western horizon was still light and he saw the riders silhouetted against it. They were headed for the edge of the bluff above the Zen Center.

They dismounted well back from the edge and, from the sound, tied their reins to a scrub mesquite, then walked off toward the edge.

Kimble heard Mrs. P whuff deep in her chest, getting ready to talk to the horses, and he clucked his tongue softly, to get her attention, then rolled up over the edge and went to her head, automatically checking his pants for sugar, but he wasn't wearing his pants, just boxers. He unhooked her from the tether and rubbed her poll vigorously.

"Lee, where did you leave those rocks?"

They were whispering but the voices easily carried across the grass.

"Hell, they were right there. Remember, you put them straight back from that notch in the cliff top."

There was the scratch of a match being lit. "You can see where they were. Someone moved 'em."

"Shit. Well, there's some back by the road, unless you want to climb halfway down the cliff."

"No. They'd hear that. Deacon Dave said not to be seen."