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Guilder scanned it quickly "What the hell, Fred"
"I guess you could say things didn’t go exactly as planned"
"Nobody? Not one of theestured toward the paper "The flow of oil has been at least temporarily disrupted That’s a plus It opens a lot of doors"
But Guilder was beyond consolation First Kearney, now this There had been a ti up survivors had proved a relatively clear-cut undertaking The woan to turn, the drawbridge descended over the moat; the woman did her stuff, like a lion ta you knew, the trucks were galloping back to Iowa, packed with huan The abandoned missile silos in North Dakota More recently, the California raid had been a bona-fide bonanza, fifty-six survivors taken, most of whom had marched like lambs into the truck once the poas cut and the terms were set (Get in or you’re meat) The usual attrition rate-some died en route, others failed to adapt to their new circumstances-but a solid haul nonetheless
Since then, it had been one out-of-control bloodbath after another, starting with Roswell
"Apparently there wasn’t otiation phase The convoy was pretty heavily armed"
"I don’t care if they had a nuclearin These are Texans"
"In a o on-line here, and this is what you tellbodies Can’t she control these things anyo in the old-fashioned way I said so from the start We’d take so their oil supply, sooner or later their defenses eaken"
"We collect people, Fred We don’t lose them Have I failed to make myself clear? Can you not do basic ed defensively "You want to talk to her?"
Guilder rubbed his eyes He supposed he’d have tohandball by yourself: the ball caht back no gravations of the job was dealing with the woman’s peculiar fantasies, a wall of delusion that Guilder could penetrate only by the roughest sort of insistence Of all the experts he’d harvested through the years, why hadn’t he thought to get a shrink? Keeping her in babies made her calm; the woman’s special talent was an indispensable coed with care But in the throes of motherhood she was virtually unreachable, and Guilder worried about further da about Lila Of everyone who had tasted the blood, only she was endoith the ability to control the virals
More than control: in Lila’s presence, they beca was a tay street; put the woman within two hundred yards of the feedlot, and she turned into a purring cat with a litter of kittens The effect was nothing Guilder had been able to replicate on his own, though Lord knows he’d tried Back in the early days, he’d been downright obsessed Tione into the feedlot, thinking that if he could only find the righttone of voice they’d fall at his knees the way they did with her, like dogs waiting for their ears to be scratched But this never happened They’d tolerate his presence for a whopping three seconds before one of theister as food,Guilder knew he’d be flying around the place until so since stopped trying, of course The sight of Horace Guilder, Director of the Ho batted around like a beach ball wasn’t exactly the kind of confidence-inspiring ie he wanted to broadcast Nor could anybody on the medical staff explain to his satisfaction just what it was thatthe blood every seven days, and her eyes looked different, displaying none of the retinal stain that ht was just as pronounced, and as far as Suresh could tell, the virus in her blood was the same as theirs In the end, the man had thrown up his hands and attributed her abilities to the less than subtle fact that Lila was a woman-the only woman in the fold, which was how Guilder wanted it
Maybe that’s all there is to it, Suresh had said Maybe they just think she’s theirat hi about? Lila? No, Texas But Wilkes had told his " And that hen Wilkes told Guilder about the bo in the market
Fuck! Fuck, fk, fk!
"I know, I know," Wilkes said, shaking his head in his Wilkesian way "Not the best turn of events"
"He’s one led with righteous anger Another volleying burp arose He wanted vengeance He wanted things to settle the hell down He wanted this Sergio, whoever he ith his head on a godda around, and we’ve offered double rations to anybody who comes forith a solid lead Not everyone down the hill is so ena through the flatland like it’s a goddamn expressway? Do we not have patrols? Do we not have checkpoints? Can soht on this little detail?"
"We have a theory about that The evidence points to an organization that’s classically cellular Clusters of just a few individuals operating within a loose operational framework"
"I am perfectly ahat a terrorist cell is, Fred"
His chief of staff esture with his hands "I’ for one io, not Sergio per se, that we’re up against If you follow ht He’d been down this road before, first in Iraq and Afghanistan and then Saudi, after the coup You lopped off the head but the body didn’t die; it siy in these situations was psychological Killing the body was never enough You had to kill the spirit
"How many do we have in custody?"