‘That solves Gore’s global-warming problem,’ Major Clarence snorted.

‘Quiet on deck!’ Lieutenant Colonel Stavros shouted.

Musso ignored the distraction and brought up satellite coverage of the Eurasian landmass.

‘The plume has moved across Europe and is within two days of reaching the eastern seaboard of China. It is largely contained within the northern hemisphere between thirty and sixty degrees latitude. The climatic effects are less severe than on the North American continent, but they remain significant, and I’m told they’ll probably deteriorate for another two to three weeks, before stabilising for six to twelve months.’

‘There’s a lot of wriggle room in those figures, General,’ said Pileggi, as she looked up from scribbling in her notebook.

‘Enough of a margin to mean the difference between a lot of people living and dying,’ he agreed. ‘I’ve been on at PACOM to tighten them up, but that’s as good as they’ll commit to for now. You know what scientists are like,’ he added, shaking his head. The spectre of Professor Griffiths still haunted the briefing room.

The display returned to top-down street scenes in Miami and KC. Not a living thing moved anywhere in either city.

‘The weather data is important to us because it directly affects our mission: the evacuation of all US citizens who want it, to a secure location, as yet to be determined.’ Musso turned to Pileggi while he dabbed at his cut again. ‘Your airfield is going to be vital in that effort to move from the Pacific to the Atlantic, Colonel, especially if we evacuate to Australia, New Zealand or our allies in Asia.’

‘I understand, sir. If I may – what about defence assets?’ Pileggi asked. ‘Castro is gone, but Chavez isn’t. I do not have any air cover to speak of outside of our allies in the region, and their air power isn’t quite up to dealing with Hugo if he gets froggy. Plus, we’re going to need to secure the Canal.’

‘I know,’ agreed Musso. ‘I’ve been on to PACOM about that too. Pearl’s promising whatever they can spare, but at the moment, that’s nothing.’

The colonel persisted anyway. ‘If they’re serious about the refugee problem they need to find that brigade to secure the Canal,’ she said. ‘My staff have planned our side of any evacuation based on being able to ship people through Panama. If the government collapses – which is a pretty good bet – that canal is going to stop working. These locks are a century old and require ground crew to run them. At some very narrow points, the ships are actually pulled by tugs. All of these locations are extremely vulnerable to attack.’

Musso threw up his hands. ‘I know all about it, Colonel. But at the moment, it’s a tenth-order issue for them. I’ll see what I can do to change that. We need to plan for the worst, though.’

‘There are some contingency plans, but they are almost uniformly awful,’ Pileggi went on. ‘Some ships could try to head to Nicaragua and cross there. Most of Nicaragua can be crossed by travelling upriver to a point where the trip overland to the Pacific side is maybe eight to ten miles. The navy could pick up folks on the other side, but it would require heavy combat power on the ground to secure any transit, especially if Nicaragua goes under. Alternately, a convoy could sail around the tip of South America. But that route is vulnerable to Chavez and his navy. I also imagine there will be a significant rise in piracy throughout those waters should there be a breakdown in state control. Another option is to disembark any civilians on the Atlantic side of the Canal Zone, where our own forces could establish a defensive position of sorts. Those civilians would then be escorted overland to the Pacific side or to a useable airfield. Another nightmare.’

‘I’ll talk to Ritchie,’ said Musso.

There was no avoiding it. Over a hundred civilian craft lay at anchor down in the bay, most of them carrying US nationals who’d gravitated to the nearest and most obvious symbol of American power still in existence in this part of the world. Just feeding them and supplying enough fresh water each day was a Herculean challenge. They couldn’t stay. But getting them there was a non-trivial problem too. From Musso’s perspective, maintaining control of the Panama Canal was still a number-one priority for the United States. At least in the short term. He was responsible for the transport and protection of any American refugees who requested it, and that meant putting most of them through Panama. Where they went after that was a matter for diplomatic negotiations underway in Pearl.

PACOM HQ, PEARL HARBOR, HAWAII

‘It’s the low season for tourism, so we have plenty of spare beds, but nobody’s figured out how it would work – who’d pay, what arrangements we might need over the longer course, and whether you’d be looking at permanent resettlement and residency or eventual citizenship. But Canberra has authorised me to assure you that we’ll take as many as you can send.’

Admiral Ritchie thanked the Australian Ambassador – the new ambassador, of course. The previous one had disappeared in Washington. His colleague from New Zealand added that her government would likewise accommodate as many ‘displaced US citizens’ as possible. New Zealand’s diplomat preferred not to use the term ‘refugee’ and had twisted herself into linguistic knots once or twice trying to avoid it.

Ritchie placed a tick in a small hand-drawn box next to the letters ‘A/NZ’. He looked over to the Japanese Consul-General, seated near the window giving onto a pleasant view of the small garden outside his office. A riot of colour framed the small, dark-suited man, a pink and orange spray of flowering bougainvillea.

‘Mr Ude?’

‘My government is more than happy for you to initially house as many of your countrymen and women as you can within your military facilities on our soil. And with the suspension of the academic year, there are a number of temporary rooms available on some college campuses

Ritchie couldn’t help but notice the heavy qualifications in that statement, and he could feel the ‘but’ coming somewhere in the next few seconds.

‘However,’ Mr Ude continued, ‘you will appreciate that accommodation is severely limited on the home islands, and cultural factors mean that resettling many of your citizens within our borders is likely to be so difficult as to be… unfeasible.’

Ritchie stamped down on his annoyance and cut to the point. ‘But you’ll take them in, for now, if we bring them?’

Ude nodded, seemingly thankful for having something to offer. ‘Yes. Within such limits as are to be confirmed by my government.’

Ritchie placed a tick in the box next to ‘Japan’ but then placed a small question mark after it and wrote Limits. A similar notation sat next to ‘France’, which maintained a number of colonial outposts in the Pacific, all of them well served by tourist infrastructure. In fact, a small forest of question marks surrounded the tick he’d placed next to France. His direct negotiations with the authorities in Noumea and the decolonised French territory of Vanuatu had initially gone well, but they had since referred all of his enquiries to Paris, and getting any kind of timely or useful response from Chirac or de Villepin was becoming nigh on impossible. Still, with firm commitments to help from Australia, New Zealand, Brazil and Chile, in addition to all of the larger independent island states such as Fiji, Ritchie could begin to stitch together a patchwork of temporary refuge for most of the five million souls in the American diaspora. He had about a quarter-of-a-million berths he could call on throughout the rest of the region, but Ude was right: countries like Japan and Korea weren’t swimming in spare room, and many Westerners simply would not cope with the culture shock of being dropped in there even under the best of circumstances.