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“Sir?”

“Transfer all available forces to open the Oakdale gate,” the president said. “Doctor Weaver.”

“Yes, Mr. President?”

“Try very hard to set it off on the other side of the gate. And may God grant us victory on this day.”

* * *

The F-15 never even returned to Orlando. Instead, taking a snaking course that followed relatively safe lanes around the area the Titcher interdicted, it flared out and landed at Louisville International, the closest airport with runways long enough. A Blackhawk, a special operations variant he noticed, was waiting just outside the gates to the airport and as soon as Bill was in and strapped down, in one of the crew-chief seats that had a great view out the Plexiglas window, it took off. The flight started low and got lower the closer they got to the alien incursion.

Bill thought that riding in an F-15 was wild, and it was, but even though the Blackhawk was going a fraction of the speed of the fighter, the fact that it was doing so, towards the end, actually below the treetops added a certain degree of frisson to the experience. So did jerking up to avoid power lines and then back down, quickly, to avoid fire from the hills to the east.

It was right at 130 miles, straight-line, from Louisville International to the Oakdale gate. Even in a Blackhawk it took over an hour to make the flight, twisting and turning at the very edge of the experienced chief warrant officer five’s capability. Towards the end the chopper cut south and, keeping a ridgeline between itself and the gate, actually passed the gate to the Army assembly point in Jackson.

Naturally, Bill thought, the most assaultable gate would be just about the least accessible. The road network in the area was, to say the least, primitive. To get the bulk of the combat forces to the region required going down Highway 402 out of Lexington and through Winchester, to Highway 15. Highway 402 was a multilane highway, limited access for most of its length, and it had been taken out of civilian service to move the vast fleet of tanks and fighting vehicles that were headed for the gate. Highway 15, on the other hand, was a two lane, twisting, road that snaked through the hills in the area, hills which were just starting to leave the rolling bluegrass and edge up into the Appalachians. Highway 402 was a logjam of low-boy trailers trying to turn onto 15, which was worse.

Many of the soldiers being sent to try to retake the gate were Ohio national guardsmen who were, for reasons unexplained, being removed from defending their own homes and driven to the wilds of Kentucky. They were, to say the least, less than thrilled. Others were coming up from Tennessee, again National Guard with a leavening of air assault troops from the 101st at Fort Campbell. They took the Daniel Boone Highway, a limited access toll road that, again, had been placed in military service, and then turned north on the same Highway 15.

What the more astute soldiers noticed was the distinct lack of support vehicles. Missing from the logjam were the fuel, food and ammunition trucks they were used to seeing accompanying their formations. They had been given a basic load of ammunition and food at an assembly point in Louisville and their tanks were full. But there were no apparent plans for resupply. What that told those astute soldiers was far more grim than the fact that they were being taken away from their homes and families.

Furthermore, the assembly area in Jackson was a nightmare. The small town of a bare 2500 souls was more of an elaborate crossroads on two minor highways. It was the county seat of Breathitt County and, notably, its largest town. In an area with barely a square acre of flat land; it occupied a section of large, relatively flat, and therefore flood prone, shoreline along the North Kentucky River.

“As a spot to assemble a battalion of tanks, much less a short division,” Brigadier General Rand McKeen said, dryly, “it leaves a lot to be desired.”

Low-boy trailers could be heard in the background, snorting around turns and backing and filling, trying to find places to drop all the tanks and fighting vehicles they carried. The town, even before the heavy reinforcements had arrived, had been largely abandoned and tanks now parked in yards, alleyways and streets, trying to ensure that they knew where their higher control was and, more importantly, which way the enemy might come from.

Even defining “higher” was difficult. The units were drawn from four different divisions, two brigades from Kentucky National Guard, one brigade from Ohio, one from Tennessee and a battalion of light infantry from the 101st. General McKeen, assistant division commander of the 101st, had been placed in overall command.

“And you’re not an armor officer,” Command Master Chief Miller noted. “Sir.”

“Nope,” McKeen said, smiling faintly. He was a tall, rawboned man with a lantern jaw, wearing his helmet very straight with the chinstrap neatly fastened. He also was weighted down with an infantryman’s combat harness, loaded with magazines, and carried an M-4 rifle. “I’m not. But I suddenly got dumped with four brigades of National Guard armor and a direction of the President to take and hold one hilltop with them. So I guess that’s what I’m going to have to do.”

“Certainly you have enough forces,” Bill said.

“Well… yes and no,” McKeen replied. “The Mreee and Nitch, if that’s who those spiders are, don’t seem to be fighting all that hard. The local National Guard commander had positions along all the ridgelines around the boson. Some of them got pushed out and the Mreee took the town of Oakdale, pushed down the valley and took Athol and pushed over the nearest ridge towards Warcreek. But the local National Guard forces held them up in every direction, despite the Mreee having more forces and those damned rayguns of theirs. The rayguns don’t appear to track in on infantry. And that’s what I meant by ‘yes and no.’ If I go barrel assing down 52 with all these Abrams and Bradleys, we’re going to get blown to hell, Doctor. Frankly, it would have been much better to just send the whole 101st. But we’re spread in penny packets on other missions. So here I sit, a light infantry specialist with a classic light infantry mission and a whole passel of mechanized infantry on my hands.”

“So what are you going to do?” Bill asked.

“Take the gate,” the general replied, smiling faintly again. “As to how I’m going to take it, Doctor Weaver, that’s for me to know. As I understand it, my mission is to get you and your SEAL team up to the gate. And the very least, you have to be alive. That is what I intend to do. How is up to me. The when is, according to my orders, up to you.”

Bill looked at his watch and shook his head.

“The… device we need to insert will not be ready for nine more hours,” the physicist said. “Can we hold on that long?”

“As long as the Titcher don’t reinforce their ‘allies,’ ” the general replied. “In fact, I’d appreciate at least that long to get this amazing cluster… stuff fixed. Normally this sort of movement would take days, for exactly the reason that you see on the roads. As it is, we’re doing the best we can with the time we’ve got. Ten hours would be preferable.”

“The device won’t be ready for nine hours,” Bill repeated. “Thereafter… well, would you like to be sitting on a nuclear hand grenade that already had the pin pulled and was just being kept from blowing up by holding down the little lever thingy?”

“Spoon,” the general said, his face going blank. “Is that what this thing is?”

“Worse,” Miller said, his face grim. “Much, much, much worse.”

“The best scenario is that we get it up to the gate, through the gate and blow it on the other side,” Dr. Weaver said, blowing out as he said it. “Then the gates all shut down and we all go have a beer.”