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“Understood. Listen, I think South Bloomingville was a feint. Designed to draw our attention while they set up at Marinesco.”

“What are you saying, Charlie?” Dew asked. “These little b.a.s.t.a.r.ds are using high-level tactics?”

“They didn’t defend themselves. When we closed in, they destroyed the construct, killing themselves in the process. And I think it was a prop.”

“A prop?”

“Yeah, like fake planes on a fake airstrip designed to fool satellite intel. It heated up like the other gates, but it was thinner. Just enough material to have the right shape and the right behaviors, not enough to be functional.”

Dew felt a helpless feeling spreading through his guts. “So if this Marinesco gate is already hot,” Dew said, “if you can’t get there in time, then what?”

Ogden’s voice dropped a little as he spoke to someone near him. “Cope, order the FAC to this location.”

Dew heard a distant “Yes sir.”

“Charlie,” Dew said, “what the f.u.c.k are you doing?”

“I just deployed the FAC, the forward air controller. It’s an F-22 Raptor fighter, fast as h.e.l.l. It will acquire the target and transmit coordinates to the Strike Eagle squadron.”

“The F-15s? You’re dropping f.u.c.king two-thousand-pound bombs on it? It’s Michigan, not f.u.c.king Fallujah, Charlie. Why can’t we use the Apaches like we did in Wahjamega and Mather?”

“Depends on if we can get them there in time,” Ogden said. “If I send the Apaches now, it’s a two-hour straight flight. The Eagles do Mach 2.5—they’ll be there in twenty-five minutes.”

Dew’s cell phone buzzed—he checked it to find a text message that was nothing but a sixteen-character code.

“I’ve got sat pictures, Charlie.”

“We just got them, too. Cope, up on the screen.”

Dew shoved the map aside and carefully typed in the code. A series of thumbnail images appeared, some in color, some in black and white. Dew clicked on the first black-and-white image, blowing it up to fill the screen. Most of the picture showed the black, irregular patterns of dense trees. The center of the image, however, showed a fuzzy white symbol that had come to represent the unknown terror of the infection.

White meant that the gate was already hot.

“I’m ordering a full strike,” Ogden said. “Taking that d.a.m.n thing out of the game.”

“Hold on, Charlie,” Dew said. “The area looks pretty unpopulated, but we don’t have any intel on the residents. Can we get some planes to make a pa.s.s? See if any people are around?”

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