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Bernadette reached into her purse and pulled out the butcher knife. That would show them. It had worked on her daughters, made them shut up, and it had sure as h.e.l.l taught Shawn an important lesson about not f.u.c.king around on his wife. It worked on them, it would work on the troopers.

She rushed at the trooper who had been leaning into her car.

Everything blurred, her body twitched and trembled, she dropped the knife and fell to the cold, slushy pavement. Such agony . The pain stopped as suddenly as it started, leaving an echo effect rolling through her body. She shook her head and tried to stand, but suddenly there were hands all over her. She felt her face pushed into the wet pavement, something heavy on her spine. Her hands were pulled behind her back, and she felt handcuffs snap into place.

ROADBLOCK

About six miles east of the I-75 on-ramp, Private First Cla.s.s Dustin Climer looked to the sky and watched a Black Hawk helicopter head west. For the past thirty minutes, the helicopter had been cruising around slowly, watching the roads below. Something was up. Dustin wondered if they’d got one.

“Dustin?” Neil Illing called out. “The swab?”

“Sorry,” Dustin said, then slid the swab into the white detector. He’d been holding both, swab and detector, but the helicopter’s sudden movement had distracted him. After just a couple of seconds, the detector let out two short beeps and the green square lit up, indicating a negative result.

“She’s fine,” he said to Neil.

Neil bent down just a bit to look in the car window.

“You’re all set, ma’am,” Neil said.

The woman let out a huge sigh of relief. Dustin wasn’t sure if her relief came from a negative result on the flesh-eating-bacteria test, or because the four heavily armed men surrounding her car finally seemed to relax.

“When can I come back home?” the woman asked. “This is just so crazy.”

Neil nodded. “Yes ma’am. You should be able to come back tomorrow, or the next day at the latest. Just watch the news.”

“Thank you, Officer.”

Neil laughed. “I’m a soldier, not a cop, ma’am.”

The woman gave an exaggerated nod, as if to say, Yes, of course. Neil smiled again and stood back from the car. The woman put it in gear and drove past the checkpoint, continuing down the snow-covered dirt road.

Dustin and Neil stood there in the early-morning cold, waiting for the next car. Joel Brauer was at the side of the road, manning the M249 machine gun, so he had to endure the cold as well. James Eager, the fourth member of their team, slid back into their Hummer’s heated interior. He only had to come out when a car drove up, which meant Dustin was d.a.m.n jealous of him at that moment. Fifteen more minutes, and then he and Neil would switch positions with James and Joel.

With the helicopter gone, they could hear the faint sound of snowmobiles again. Local boys whipping through the woods, probably.

James opened the door and leaned out. “They got one,” he called. “Triangle host trying to get on the I-75 on-ramp. Cope said to stay sharp. They’re sending the backup units to reinforce the on-ramp in case there’s more, so we’re on our own for a bit.”

“Got it,” Dustin said.

James slid back inside the heated Hummer, and Dustin hated him a little more.