Tammy smiled. "If we need more information," she said, "and we certainly do, I should go and ask some questions of the soldiers on the bridge."

"Excuse me?" Ray said.

She smiled. "I have a way with soldiers, as you saw. There are certain things you learn as an attorney, such as how to get witnesses to tell you things they don't want to reveal, how to sway a jury, and so on."

Ray nodded slowly, puffing on his cigarette. "We're talking about more than that, aren't we?"

She shrugged, still smiling. "Possibly. Does it matter? Either I'll get information, or I won't."

Neil had been observing this exchange very carefully, and he asked, "Was there a problem with soldiers?"

"Before you joined us," Vicki said. "Some soldiers broke in here, to round us up or to kill us. But Katherine saw them come into the building, and shot them all. There were more, outside on the street, and Tammy convinced them to go away."

"Actually, I think three of them joined us," Jan added.

"So," Neil said to Tammy, "you can be . . . persuasive." He was obviously choosing his words very carefully.

She nodded. "It's a matter of record that, when I was practicing law, I almost never lost a case. And, between us, the few that I did lose, they were cases I didn't want to win."

"You should be very careful, then," he said. "It would be important to find out everything you can, of course, but please be very careful how you do it. If higher ranks of the military should start to get the idea that we have somebody who could, even potentially, turn their own troops against them, they might decide to bomb us out of existence. I have no idea if they have that capacity at the moment, but I'd rather not find out." He shrugged. "In their position, in the current situation, that's probably what I would do."

Vicki nodded. "That makes sense."

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