The biosuited soldiers were already dousing the pieces and scooping up what bits they could. Dew watched the last of them hop into the vans. Everyone was loaded up except for Clarence Otto and Margaret Montoya. She stared at the building, a blank look on her face. Otto stood by her side, waiting for Dew’s next command.
Dew pointed his finger south, in the direction of the hospital. Otto put his arm around Margaret’s shoulder and quickly guided her to the van that held Dawsey. Dew closed the doors behind them. The vans quietly pulled away, avoiding the confused rush of policemen, then sped out of the parking lot.
Somewhere in the distance, Dew heard the faint approach of sirens: ambulances, the fire department. He looked up at the third floor one last time-the window was all but obscured by the raging fire, flames shooting up at least twenty feet into the sky. There wouldn’t be anything left in that apartment.
Amid the shouting chaos, Dew calmly walked to his Buick. He shut himself inside the Buick and stared at Dawsey’s singed map, at the strange symbol so neatly drawn there. The symbol matched the one carved into Dawsey’s arm. The words This is the place neatly written in blue ink. It wasn’t the same hand that had scrawled This is the place on the map in Dawsey’s apartment. This writing was clean, measured.
The writing of a woman.
“Fuck me,” Dew whispered. Dawsey hadn’t run randomly at all-there had been another infected victim in that apartment, a victim that was likely still in the apartment and burning to a crisp. She’d sheltered Dawsey; they were working together.
It was very possible they knew each other before the infection. They lived in the same complex, after all. But if they hadn’t known each other before contracting the triangles, then that meant victims could somehow identify each other, help each other.
And, more important, if they hadn’t known each other, it was possible they had independently decided that Wahjamega was the place to be. And if that was the case, then the only possible conclusion was that they wanted to go there because of the infection.
Or, possibly, the infection wanted to go there.
Margaret’s words replayed in his head: They’re building something, she’d said.
Dew thought back to the burning creature that had fallen from the third-story window, then scrambled for his big cellular.
Murray answered on the first ring. “Did you get him?”
“We got him,” Dew said. “Alive, exactly the way you wanted him. The stakes just went up. Listen and listen good, L.T. I need men in Wahjamega, Michigan, and I need them now. And none of those ATF or CIA commando wannabes. Make it marines or Green Berets or fucking Navy SEALs, but get me men, at least a platoon and then a division, as fast as they can get there. Full combat gear. Fire support, too. Artillery, tanks, the whole works. And choppers, lots of choppers.”
“Dew, what the fuck is going on?”
“And that satellite, is it redirected to Wahjamega yet?”
“Yes,” Murray said. “It already made a pass. The squints are looking at the images now.”
“I’m going to take a picture of a symbol and send it to you as soon as I hang up. This symbol, that’s what the squints are looking for, got it?”
“Yeah, I got it.”
“And I want a surveillance van punched into that satellite, and I want it there in thirty minutes. And a chopper better pick me up in the next fifteen minutes. I don’t care if we have to commandeer the fucking Channel Seven Eye in the Sky, you get me transport ASAP.”
“Dew,” Murray said quietly, “I can’t get you all that so fast, and you know it.”
“You get it!” Dew screamed into the cellular. “You get it right fucking now! You can’t believe the shit I just saw.”
88.
It was the third time he’d seen that symbol, only this time it wasn’t scrawled on a map or carved into human skin.
This time it was from a satellite image.
Four hours after he’d shot Perry Dawsey, Dew Phillips stood next to a Humvee, his booted feet on a dirt road that was frozen solid. A map and several satellite pictures were spread out on the vehicle’s hood. Rocks had been placed on the pictures to hold them in place against the stiff, icy breeze that cut through the winter woods.
Trees rose up on either side of Bruisee Road, trees thick with under-growth, crumbling logs and brambles. Bare branches formed a skeletal canopy over the road, making the dark night even darker. The occasionally strong gust of wind knocked chunks of wet snow from the branches, dropping them on the assemblage below: two Humvees, an unmarked black communications van and sixty armed soldiers.
Around Dew stood the squad and platoon leaders of Bravo Company from the 1-187th Infantry Battalion. The battalion was also known as the “Leader Rakkasans,” an element from the Third Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky. The Rakkasans were the current Division Ready Force, or DRF, a battalion that stood ready to deploy anywhere in the world within thirty-six hours, regardless of location. The fact that the deployment location happened to be about 620 miles from Fort Campbell, and not thousands of miles across an ocean, made them that much faster.
A pair of C-130 Hercules transport planes from the 118th Airlift Wing had taken off from Nashville less than two hours after Dew’s panicked call to Murray Longworth. Those C-130s landed at Campbell Army Air Field thirty minutes after takeoff. Thirty minutes after that, loaded with the first contingent of the 1-187th, the C-130s took off for Caro Municipal Airport, an active airport not quite two miles from where Dew now stood.
Back at the tiny airport, more C-130s were landing. It would take fifteen or so sorties and several more hours to bring in the entire battalion task force. But Dew wasn’t waiting for the full battalion. With four sorties complete, he had 128 soldiers and four Humvees-that was the force available, and those were the men he was taking in.
Most of those men wore serious expressions, some tainted with a hint of fear. A few still thought this was a surprise drill. These were highly trained soldiers, Dew knew, but all the training in the world don’t mean jack squat if you’d never been in the shit. All the squad leaders, at least, had seen serious action-he could tell that by their calm, hard-eyed expressions-but most of the men carried the nasty aura of combat newbies.
Their leader was the battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Ogden. Normally a captain commanded the first company in, but the urgency, the unknown enemy, and the fact that they were operating on American soil demanded Ogden’s direct attention. A gaunt man in his forties, Ogden was so skinny the fatigues almost hung on him. He looked more like a prisoner of war than a soldier, but he moved quickly, he spoke with authority, and his demeanor was anything but weak. His skinniness was also deceiving: he could go toe-to-toe with any of the young bucks in his unit, and they all knew it. Dew could sense that Ogden had seen action, and plenty of it. He was grateful to have a seasoned combat veteran in charge.
“So why here?” Ogden asked. “What’s so special about this place?”
“You got me,” Dew said. “All we know is that there were cases in Detroit, Ann Arbor and Toledo. Wahjamega is easy travel distance from all of those. And there’s a lot of farmland and forest around here, huge tracts of space for them to hide in. We think they’re gathering, either the human hosts or possibly as hatchlings, maybe both.”
On the helicopter ride from Ann Arbor, Dew had talked to Murray and filled him in on what little they knew about the hatchlings. Murray initially demanded that Dew keep the info from the ground troops, as they “didn’t have clearance,” but Dew fought and quickly won that argument-he wasn’t leading men into battle who didn’t know if they might be shooting American civilians or some inhuman monstrosity. Which of the two was worse, Dew couldn’t really say.