COLLAPSED LOW READY

The Challenger 350 stood out like a sore thumb on the tarmac. By my reckoning, it must have been the first non-Gilead registered aircraft at the old Logan airport in years. Foreign registered aircraft were victims of the child trafficking of a decade and a half ago. In that, 86 children had been trafficked out of Gilead, and the powers-that-be in those days tightened up considerably. The airport itself had been deteriorating through disuse. (That had been a continually-deferred agenda item at Chancery, but I digress.)

Of course, the livery on the Challenger kind of gave it away as well: Gouvernement du Canada / Government of Canada in small lettering along the fuselage. It immediately struck one as a lot of lettering for such a compact, private jet.

Coming down the on-board, now deployed staircase was who else - Mark Tuello. After all these years, the American State Department seemed to have the run of Canadian government aircraft. And why not. The Canadians had made sport out of giving the shit jobs to Americans-in-exile. This was one of them. Aside from the pilots and the insurance on the craft itself, if we had blown it out of the sky, the Canadians were covered.

Tuello was obviously older than I'd remembered, but then again it had been 15 years. He'd had a hand in the Waterford deportation. I mean, what the hell did he care.

I must have been a sight for him. There I was leaned up against the limousine, Kathryn and our 15 year old inside. Me clad with an AR-15. Tuello, as always, he was unarmed. That man operated by guile alone. I told him he was perhaps one of the few Americans I'd ever met who was not a gun-toting, good-old-boy, as the stereotype went. He countered by saying he was a Southern Gentleman, who left such unseemly items like guns to the hired help.

So, there I was, High Commander Nick Blaine, the hired help.

It's amazing what one remembers. As I approached Tuello toward the bottom of the stairs, I held the weapon at the collapsed low ready position. If anything it signalled to the American that I was ready for anything - from any direction, believe you me.

"Hello, High Commander," Tuello greeted me. "How long are we on the tarmac?" Goodness, Tuello had found his 'southern twang', an accent that had otherwise all but disappeared in both the Southeast as well as Gulf Districts of Gilead.

"You're late," was all I could come up with, given that he was, in fact, late. He said that it could not have been helped, they'd had to stop to pick up a passenger in Halifax on their way from Toronto.

So. Tuello had managed to locate her. No wonder she'd come along, this was a flight into danger. This was a flight meant to fuck with Gilead. She would not miss that.

I told Tuello that we were waiting on another limo, with two, maybe three others. Tuello said, "Well, there are seatbelts for nine, so don't make it too many." Once airborne, though, seatbelts might be the least of our problems.

I said, "We'll be fine as long as our Chancery continues to concentrate on Ardua Hall. This one is on Aunt Lydia. My bet is that she's dead by now - if I know her, by her own hand. She's bought us time, but the clock is ticking."

I looked up the stairs to the cabin of the Challenger, knowing what was waiting.

ANATOMY OF A COUP

Putnam had never seen it coming. The first task of any High Commander is survival. If he'd not seen it coming, then he needed removing.

It had been his trusted assistant, his 'Bobby Kennedy' as Putnam had always said. My assistant was my former unit sergeant, the guy who'd taken care of me all these years. Both Pryce's nephew as well as my guy excelled at what they did, except for on the loyalty-scale. It turned out that the assistant, former High Commander Pryce's nephew, had always had only one loyalty - to his long, dead uncle. Putnam had been a means to an end, and Pryce's nephew was putting this to an end.

My sergeant, now my assistant in Chancery, was head and shoulders above the rest. He'd been the one who had simply refused my transport from home to Chancery on that day. Out of harms' way. Good Lord, I'd been mad. Kathryn and I had been fighting. Our then 12-year-old was being, well, a twelve-year-old. That day she'd wanted to be married off. Apparently she could add. Kathryn, being 25 at the time, had her age thrown at her by our daughter. "Why can't I be a Wife? You were!"

So there was another item on my long-term to-do list. Getting them the hell outta here!

First things first. I was to commit the following to memory in case I needed it, because the two effectual things Putnam managed, in an otherwise ineffectual High Commandership was to:

Have a safe word which his family had memorized

Had a plan to get everyone to the airport before Gilead security could mobilize.

Oh yes, the third thing. It could be called various things, but my own assistant called it a diversion. I didn't share it with my guy, but the night twenty years ago that me and Rita were going to get Nichole and June out, I'd started the fire at the Commander's home across the street. Unbeknownst to me, Ofjoseph's knifing of Aunt Lydia had added to the much needed confusion.

The only fly in that ointment had been June Osborne herself. She'd refused to get on the truck. Damn her.

But that day, it had been Putnam's own assistant's forces who'd been firing weapons on Putnam's office floor. Putnam had got his safeword to Naomi at home, and the two of them had managed to get to the airport. As usual, the rest belonged to the American Mark Tuello. He'd choreographed the ensuing propaganda campaign, with Putnam's smiling face and missing forearm ever prominent.

So, lesson learned. Safeword. Secure transport. Diversion. Done.

HIGH COMMANDER BLAINE

I'm not sure it is of interest to you how my own 'High Commandership' went, much less how it had come to be.

The most interesting part had been my first day in Putnam's restored office. Bullet-holes all plastered over, and a new Puritan decor. An outer office where my sergeant sat - which he rarely did, because he always had to be moving. And a lobby, maintained by an able secretary. Extra security at home - multiple mansions next to us bought up by 'the State' and converted to house Guardian barracks, Martha squads (at the ready for High Commander entertaining, which Kathryn abhoured).

First day? A dozen roses from Colonel Lieutenant Stans. God, he was now a Colonel. In the envelope, "No hard feelings." He was still alive. Why did my guy not know that?

Then the secretary buzzed. "High Commander, there are some Marthas to see you." What!? Marthas? He buzzed them through, me grateful that my assistant was ever mobile, and not there. I'm not sure what he'd say about this.

The two older Marthas came in. The Mayday-Marthas if you must know. I had half a mind to check them for explosive vests, but by now it was far, far two late. I made a mental note that the Chancery had to beef up security.

Me, I first tried going for laughs. As the alpha-Martha sat, without asking if you must know, I said, "You have a lot of balls." Fortunately for me, she enjoyed the joke. After a bit, I started, "Ok, what do you want."

She turned to smile at the beta-Martha standing behind her. She turned back and said, "Nothing. I just wanted to see you in this office. Truly, being here is enough." Which was her version of 'going for laughs'.

I told her not to take what happened next personally, but I was going to summon a Guardian, just one, to have the two of them escorted from the building. If she didn't knife me first. To take her back to…. wherever the hell she lived. Note to assistant, find out where she lives.

Literally one minute after the two marthas had been escorted out, my sergeant came in - dressed in a natty three-piece suit. He said, "Was that who I think it was?" I told him it was. He said, "High Commander, you and me are going to have to sit and have a talk. Seriously. This can't continue."

I told him it was a little late for that. It was what it was. He then placed two folders in front of me, which I opened. The first was tomorrow's Chancery meeting. The list of action items, and how the vote would go on each. On the back were the list of 'wants' each of the dissenting Commander's assistants said they wanted, if they were going to 'get in line' with the High Commander. My assistant had circled some in green, others in red with the phrase 'go to hell' scribbled in the margin.

My sergeant then pointed to the other folder. "That's the list of skimmers. Fully half the Commanders. I haven't yet been able to follow the money on all of them. Fortunately they aren't very smart. I've made a list of the guys you can lean on for favours, as well as the guys who, quite frankly, should be on the wall. All you need do is give the word."

High Commanders' work.

TWO LAST THINGS

"Then there's your old girlfriend," my sergeant said, even though I'd ordered him to stop calling her that. "For my money, she's behind the ruckus in Colorado Springs. And why not. That's where her other daughter had been. In the Western Colonies District. Air Force Academy." That was the daughter now with Aunt Lydia at Ardua Hall.

And speaking of. He said, "Aunt Lydia is on the warpath again. Has a hate-on for Commanders." I corrected him. The 'again', should have been a 'still'.

One final thing I told him. "Make sure we have a good, secure back-channel to Tuello in Toronto. If you can't manage it, ask Lawrence how he'd done it."