The Water Knife Read Free Page A

contact,” Reyes announced.
    “Any chance they’ll fight?”
    Reyes shook his head. “Zoners don’t have much to defend with. Still got most of their units deployed up in the Arctic.”
    That had been Case’s doing, greasing a bunch of East Coast politicians who didn’t care what the hell happened on this side of the Continental Divide. She’d gorged those pork-barrel bastards on hookers and cocaine and vast sloshing oceans of Super PAC cash, so when the Joint Chiefs discovered a desperate need to defend tar sands pipelines way up north, coincidentally, the only folks who could do the job were the desert rats of the Arizona National Guard.
    Angel remembered watching the news as they deployed, the relentless rah-rah of energy security from the feeds. He’d enjoyed watching all the journos beating the patriotism drums and getting their ratings up. Making citizens feel like badass Americans again. The journos were good for that, at least. For a second, Americans could still feel like big swinging dicks.
    Solidarity, baby
.
    The Camel Corps’s two dozen choppers dropped into the river’s canyon, skimming black waters. They wound along its serpentine length, hemmed in on either side by stony hills, sweeping up the liquid curves of the Colorado to the target.
    Angel was starting to grin, feeling the familiar rush of adrenaline that came when all bets were made and all anyone could do was find out what lay in the dealer’s deck.
    He clutched the court’s injunctions to his chest. All those seals and hologram stamps. All that ritual of lawsuits and appeals, all leading to a moment when they could finally take the gloves off.
    Arizona would never know what hit them.
    He laughed. “Times they do change.”
    Gupta, riding the belly gun, glanced over. “What’s that you saying?”
    She was young, Angel realized. Young, as he’d been when Case put him in the guardies and got his state residence approved once and for all. Poor and desperate deportee, looking to find some way—any way—to stay on the right side of the border.
    “How old are you?” he asked. “Twelve?”
    She gave him a dirty look and brought her focus back to her targeting systems.
    “Twenty. Old man.”
    “Don’t be cold.” He pointed down at the Colorado. “You’re too young to remember how it used to be. Used to be that we all sat down with a bunch of lawyers and papers, bureaucrats with pocket protectors…”
    He trailed off, remembering early days, when he’d stood bodyguard behind Catherine Case as she went into meetings: bald bureaucrat guys, city water managers, Bureau of Reclamation, Department of the Interior. All of them talking acre-feet and reclamation guidelinesand cooperation, wastewater efficiency, recycling, water banking, evaporation reduction and river covers, tamarisk and cottonwood and willow elimination. All of them trying to rearrange deck chairs on a big old
Titanic
. All of them playing the game by the rules, believing there was a way for everyone to get by, pretending they could cooperate and share their way out of the situation if they just got real clever about the problem.
    And then California tore up the rulebook and chose a new game.
    “Were you saying something?” Gupta pressed.
    “Nah.” Angel shook his head. “Game’s changed is all. Case used to play that old game pretty good.” He grabbed his seat for support as they popped up over the canyon rim and bore down on their target. “We do okay with this new game, too.”
    Ahead, their objective glowed in the darkness, a whole complex standing alone in the desert.
    “There it is.”
    Lights started winking out.
    “They know we’re coming,” Reyes said, and began issuing battle instructions.
    The choppers spread out, picking likely targets as they came into range. Their own chopper plunged lower, joined by a pair of support drones. Angel’s military glass showed another cluster of choppers running ahead, opening up airspace. He gritted his teeth as they