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The traffic on the overpa.s.s itself looked much the same—motionless cars, smoke, flames and bodies sprawled everywhere. The only movement was near one green vehicle.

A Humvee.

Even from the high angle, Murray could see two men in fatigues. Wherever they moved, little puffs of smoke from automatic weapons soon followed.

The speakers suddenly played the sound that accompianied the image.

“. . . we don’t know who these men are or how many people are hurt. We can see bodies from here. The vehicle is army green, but there is no unit insignia.”

An air response was already on the way. A-10 tank killers from Selfridge would be the first to engage, then Apache attack helicopters. Murray had even scrambled Ogden’s squadron of four dedicated Strike Eagles—he just prayed he wouldn’t have to use any bombs on Detroit.

“Murray,” Tom said.

Murray tore his eyes away from the screen. Tom had a phone in his hand again.

“Dew Phillips on line two, said it’s mission-critical.”

Murray nodded, grabbed the nearest phone and hit line two as he looked back to the surreal carnage on the screen.

“Dew,” Murray said. “You okay?”

“Yeah, so is Perry, but a squad of Ogden’s men tried to kill us. They took out Baum and Milner. Perry identified the gate location—it’s in Detroit, and apparently it opens up at one-fifteen sharp.”

“We’ve got a lot of gunfire in Detroit,” Murray said. “Rockets, too. Looks like more of Ogden’s men. He’s AWOL, so he’s either dead or hiding somewhere and calling the shots.”

“We know,” Dew said. “It’s all over the news.”

“Where are you?”

“With Whiskey Company,” Dew said. “Two platoons in three Ospreys, headed for Detroit. We’ll be there in thirty minutes. We’ll set down, then Perry will find the gate.”

Murray popped four more Tums into his mouth and chewed. This couldn’t be happening. They’d had it won.

“Another one,” Tom called out.

“Dew, hold on,” Murray said. He looked at the screen. The bottom left corner of this one showed Fox-2 News. The center bottom of the screen read 8-MILE OVERPa.s.s AT M-10 JOHN C. LODGE FREEWAY. The scene looked like a mirror image of the other, hundreds of cars piled up on the road, a Humvee on the overpa.s.s with soldiers firing away.

Nothing could get through that tangled mess of cars. Ogden was shutting down the highways into and out of Detroit.

Murray turned his attention back to the call. “Dew, if this is Ogden’s doing, what the h.e.l.l is he up to?”