The phone rang again, and Aston scooped it up.
"Aston," he growled.
"It's me." Morris's voice was sharp with concern, and Aston frowned. He flipped a switch and put Morris on the conference speaker.
"Milla's with us, M&M. What is it?"
"All hell's breaking loose in the target area," Morris said tensely. "We've got the KKK and the Nazis coming in from the north and west, and they're loaded for bear."
"We knew they were coming, Mordecai," Ludmilla said.
"Not like this, we didn't," Morris said grimly. "Just listen a minute. The Governor's called out the Guard, and the State Patrol and local sheriffs' departments have set up roadblocks on all the major highways leading into Asheville. There's a three-county dusk-to-dawn curfew and the local law enforcement people are on full alert, but I don't think it's going to be enough. A convoy of Kluxers or Nazis-hell, for all I know it was both of them!-hit a roadblock on US 23 in Madison County, just south of the Tennessee line. When the deputies manning it tried to stop them, they shot their way through with automatic weapons."
Aston and Ludmilla stared at one another, faces tightening.
"The good guys lost four deputies there-no survivors-and the same thing just happened on I-40 in Haywood County. The Guard's supposed to take over-set up an inner perimeter closer to Asheville-but it's a powder keg. And just to make things worse, another bunch of crazies is moving up from the south."
"I thought the damned rally was for idiots from the mountain states!"
"It is, but Wilkins just called to warn me about some sort of exodus from Atlanta and points north in Georgia and South Carolina. The other side seems to be headed for Asheville to break up the rally."
"That's crazy!"
"No, Dick," Ludmilla said softly. "It's the Troll."
"But why? Why bring about a confrontation now? And why Asheville, of all damned places?"
"Who knows?" she answered with a shrug. "Some sort of a test. The first move in whatever it is he plans to do with them. It doesn't matter. It's him-it has to be him."
"How bad is it, M&M?" Aston asked harshly.
"Bad. There are thousands of them, and I've got unconfirmed reports that some Guard units are shooting at each other instead of the rioters or whatever the hell they are."
"Why not?" Ludmilla gave an ugly almost-laugh. "If he can program everybody else, why not National Guardsmen?"
"Shit," Aston said flatly.
"The Governor's mobilizing Guard units outside the affected area," Morris went on, "and the President's alerted the Eighty-Second Airborne, but nobody thought about what might happen inside the local units-and I should have, damn it!"
"Later, Mordecai. Nobody else did either. Just give us the worst."
"All right." Morris drew a deep breath. "The Asheville area's in chaos. The highways going east and north are crowded with people trying to get out of the way, the bad guys are headed in to turn it into a battlefield, and the local authorities don't know who they can trust. Martial law's been declared, but Governor Farnam's balking at using paratroopers. He wants airlift for other Guard units, military police, civilian SWAT teams-anything but airborne." The commander laughed harshly. "Hard to blame him. He's afraid of casualties; the Eighty-Second's not exactly trained in crowd control."
"Crowd control may be the last thing he needs," Aston muttered.
"But he doesn't know that, and we can't tell him."
"All right. Cut to the bottom line, Mordecai."
"The way it looks, the first airlift-outside Guardsmen, airborne, or whatever-should be coming into Asheville Airport in four or five hours ... by which time, the first wave of Kluxers and Nazis will have been there for hours, and the maniacs from the other side will be arriving, too."
"Shit," Aston said again, then looked at Ludmilla. "All right, there's no time for you to fly around looking for him, Milla. If he's behind this, the only way to stop it is to stop him. Fast."
"I agree," she said softly.
"Mordecai," Aston said into the phone, "tell Anson we're going in."
"Now, Dick? Into the middle of all that?"
"Right now," Aston said grimly. "We don't know what he's up to, but a lot of people are going to get killed, whatever it is, and for all we know, this is the start of his big push. We've got to hit him before he really starts to roll." He smiled savagely. "It may even work to our advantage. With so much going on, the confusion should help cover us."
"All right," Morris said slowly. "We've got the air support worked out at this end. How soon should we alert it?"
"Now. We'll brief the men and be in the air within three hours."
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Deputy Holden Mitchell rechecked the loads in his Ithaca Model 37 shotgun. He'd bought it with his own money rather than use the Remington 870s the rest of the Department were issued-and he hadn't added the disconnector. He had eight rounds of twelve-gauge available, and he could fire them as rapidly as he could work the slide. Once upon a time, he'd been willing to admit all the ribbing about paranoia he'd taken over his choice in weapons might have a point; today he wasn't. Afternoon sunlight spilled down on the double ribbon of asphalt, and the air was cool, but his face was grim as he listened to the radio traffic. He'd known all four of the deputies who'd just died a few miles north of his position.
Mitchell glanced sideways at his partner. Allen Farmer's face showed little sign of his thoughts, but Mitchell recognized the tightness around his eyes. He'd been a little leery when they first teamed him with a black man, but not now. Not until today, anyway. There'd always been a certain unspoken tension between them-an awareness of differences. It hadn't kept them from respecting one another and forming a firm friendship, but it was always there. Privately, Mitchell had resented Allen's unspoken assumption that anyone he met was a racist until proved otherwise. He'd never let it get out of hand, but Mitchell had known it was there.
And today, Holden Mitchell thought bitterly, he finally understood exactly why Allen thought that way.
A state cruiser screeched to a stop behind them, and a pair of state troopers trotted up to the two county cars parked nose-to-nose across the south-bound lanes of US 23. The north-bound lanes were blocked by a logging truck Mitchell had commandeered earlier in the day.
"What's going on back there?" Mitchell demanded of the senior trooper.
"Mars Hill's okay-for now," the trooper replied tersely. "But there's trouble in Asheville. Rumor is some of the Guard units started shooting at each other."
"Shit." Mitchell spat tobacco juice onto the pavement and squinted into the breeze blowing out of the north. What was keeping the bastards? "You all we get?"
" 'Fraid so, Deputy-till the Guard gets straightened out, anyway." The trooper was sweating, but his voice was level. "And I can't say I like this position a hell of a lot."
"You an' me both, Corporal, but the idea's to keep them away from the junction of Nineteen and Twenty-Three." He shrugged.
"Yeah." The trooper wiped his mouth and stiffened as the sound of engines came down the highway. "They told me you're the boss. How do you want to handle this?"
"Well, I'll tell you, Corporal, I'm s'posed to stop 'em, and I figure I'll just flag the bastards down-with this." Mitchell twitched the Ithaca, and the trooper gave him a thin smile.
"I can live with that," he said.
The Troll gave a mental shudder of pleasure as he tasted blood at last. The uniformed idiots who'd tried to block his hate-maddened humans had paid for their stupidity, and he had discovered something unexpected. The ecstasy of killing was even stronger this way, for he experienced it not just once but again and again, through each open mind.
He felt himself reaching out, fragmenting and coalescing, caught up in his own firestorm. It fed him, strengthened him ... and woke a bottomless craving for more destruction. He rode with his killers, waving the bloody jacket of a county deputy and cheering.