“He’s got stashes all over the country. Look how fast mechs and hovercycles popped up when they were chasing Cole.”
“Six mechs and a dozen hovercycles,” said Torrent. “Near the nation’s capital, at a time when they were needed to keep Major Malich’s PDA from getting into our hands. But I don’t think there are stashes all over, and you know why.”
“Secrets are hard to keep,” said Drew.
“Don’t divide your forces,” said Cole.
“Both,” said Torrent. “Verus can’t afford to have lots of hiding places, because these things are hard to hide. Especially the soldiers. It’s hard to disguise garrisons, especially if you’re training them to keep them in top form. And he doesn’t want tiny forces scattered around where he might never need them. He needs to have most of them in one really terrific hiding place. A place from which he can disperse them as needed.”
“Where?” said Cole.
“I don’t know,” said Torrent.
They all showed their disappointment.
“But you don’t know it’s Aldo Verus, either,” said Cecily. “So where do you think it is?”
“That’s why I had you bring in your map,” he said. “Just as Verus is the obvious guy, the place is obvious, too.”
Cecily lifted up the map and propped its frame on the end of the table. “I’ve been looking at it for weeks now, and it’s not obvious to me.”
“First, let’s look at what he needs,” said Torrent. “Rough terrain. A place where big things can easily be hidden. Which means forest or mountains. Or both. Iowa need not apply.”
The soldiers nodded.
“Then he needs it to be close to where he’ll need it. He isn’t planning to conquer the whole U.S., he’s going to try to win over and protect territories that are largely sympathetic to his cause.” “Blue states,” said Drew.
“No,” said Torrent. “Because you know that ‘blue states’ and ‘red states’ are a lie. Most of the blue states are blue because the city vote overwhelmed the rural vote. But he can’t hide these things inside a city, can he?”
Again they agreed with his reasoning.
“Then he needs isolation. Unsettled territory. Few neighbors. That practically rules out the whole East and Midwest, doesn’t it? The land is too heavily settled, too constantly observed. Even in the wildest part of the mountains of New York State—ignoring how Republican those areas are—there are thousands of overflights and too much traffic on the roads.”
“So he goes west,” said Cole.
“Not California. Again, too populated and too many conservatives. There are only two states with wide open spaces, Progressive political dominance, and conservatives who feel so hammered they’ve practically given up.”
“Ecotopia,” said Mingo.
“Washington and Oregon,” said Torrent. “That’s right. Now look at Mrs. Malich’s map.”
Until that point, Cecily had seen it all as a web of shipments crisscrossing the country. But if you looked only at Oregon and Washington, Oregon was practically empty of endpoints. “It has to be Washington,” she said. “But where? It’s a big state.”
“He needs to be near a major highway,” said Torrent. “But he has to be in very rugged country.”
“Most of the rugged country is on the west side, in the Cascades,” said Cecily. “Which is also the most Progressive part of the state.”
“It fits his recipe,” said Torrent. “Assuming we’re right.”
“But haven’t you already looked at the satellite photos?”
“Of course,” said Torrent. “And there’s nothing. But there’s nothing anywhere in the world. Teams in the DOD have gone over the whole world looking for a place where these things might be built and stored.”
“So you think he went underground,” said Drew.
“We think that one of these mountains is probably riddled with caverns. Aldo Verus is smart enough to learn from Al Qaeda’s tunneling. Only he’ll do it on a larger scale, and totally high tech.”
“What about the dirt?” said Mingo. “I’ve worked construction, man. I’ve dug tunnels. You get a shitload of dirt and it shows up on satellites, believe me.”