Infected Page 108

“How the h.e.l.l should I know?” Dew asked. “All I know is we’ve got to blow it up.”

Ogden leaned closer to the picture. “No telling how tall it is. You got a normal shot?”

Dew produced a detailed picture of the same area, the resolution so fine it revealed individual branches of the bigger trees. The strange design was visible, but barely, its green and black shading blending into the natural ground colors. This one had been taken by aerial recon, not even an hour earlier. Intel guys had highlighted the construct. The area around it was a patch of exposed forest floor surrounded by the whiteness of the winter woods. Five yellow circles marked vehicles spread across the map — three cars, a pickup and an RV.

“That construct, or whatever it is, melted the snow,” Ogden said. “It’s hot all right. d.a.m.n thing blends in so much it almost looks camouflaged. What are those marked vehicles?”

“Abandoned cars,” Dew said. “Local police found them, n.o.body home. We think that the triangle hosts drove them here, ditched them, then walked to the construct.”

“What about all these little red dots on the infrared shot?”

“Those are the hostiles,” Dew said. He produced a sheaf of papers. Each held a composite artist’s rendering based on Dew’s brief glimpse of the burning creature that fell from the third-story window. He didn’t

know it yet, but the picture was a pa.s.sable representation of the hatchlings. He pa.s.sed the sheets out to the squad leaders.

“The red dots are individual heat signatures, either human hosts or something that looks like these critters.”

A soldier saw the sketch and laughed out loud. Dew fixed him with a death stare; his voice took on a new and dominant tone. He’d commanded boys just like these, and seen them die by the truckloads.

“You think this is funny?” Dew said. “These things are responsible for the death of at least fifteen people, and if you don’t get your s.h.i.+t straight, you’ll probably be dead within the hour.”

The soldier fell silent. The only sound came from wind hissing through the barren branches.

Ogden pushed the satellite photos out of the way and smoothed the map. “If I may suggest, sir, we should break into a primary a.s.sault group of eight squads, which will attack from the west, and two containment groups of two squads each, one north and one southeast of the target.”

Ogden tapped three spots on the map. “Here, here and here. The woods are too thick to get the vehicles in, so it’s all on foot. We have enough men in place for containment groups one and two. Containment group three is at the airport. They will move out shortly and can be in position in fifteen minutes. Artillery will be guns-up in thirty minutes.

“The Apaches will be here before the infantry sets up the full perimeter, so they’ll stay on-station about a mile out. Once artillery is ready, we send in recon to take a s.h.i.+tload of pictures, then paint the target with a laser and have the Apaches blow the living p.i.s.s out of it. After that the west containment group moves in and we clean up.”

Dew stared at the map for a moment. Ogden had the west group moving in from a hill, giving them the high ground. If the hatchlings ran, they would probably follow the easiest path, a narrow valley that ran north to southeast — and that would take them directly into a killing zone of dug-in squads.

“That’s an excellent plan. You tell your men to kill anything that moves.”

“What about the hosts that drove here?” Ogden asked. “They’re civilians.”

Dew looked hard at Ogden. “Like I said, anything that moves.”

Dew turned to face the men again. “You’ve all seen the picture. Whether you believe it or not doesn’t matter. We don’t know how

dangerous these things are, so a.s.sume they are dangerous in the extreme.”

The looks on the soldiers’ faces said it all. Half of them simply didn’t believe they were about to go up against some movie monster; the other half did believe it, and those men had wide-eyed expressions of fear.

“Keep your lines tight,” Ogden said. “Know where your man is on your right and left. Shoot anything in front of you. It doesn’t matter if it looks like a critter or your Aunt Jenny, it’s the enemy and you shoot it just like you would an enemy soldier. Now get your squads ready. We move out immediately.”

The grim-faced young men hurried away, leaving only Ogden and Dew. “You know what’s f.u.c.ked up here, Dew?”

Dew nodded. “Yeah. Just about every last bit of this thing.” “Besides that, of course,” Ogden said. “If this is some kind of a gateway, like they’re going to bring troops in through that crazy thing or what have you, why the h.e.l.l would they build it two miles from a landing strip?”

Dew grunted once. He’d been so thrilled at the easy access, that question hadn’t crossed his mind.

“Maybe it’s above their pay grade,” Dew said. “The only thing that makes sense is they just didn’t know. Whoever they had run recon on this, that party either just plain missed the airport or didn’t know what it was.”

Ogden nodded. “That’s got to be it. Kind of weird, though — they are obviously high-tech as h.e.l.l, and they screwed themselves with location, location, location. I don’t know what these things are, but looks like we’re kicking their a.s.s on intel.”

Dew nodded. The satellite images gave him total command of the area, images he wouldn’t have had if not for Margaret Montoya’s hunch. Without her demands they would still be trying to bring a satellite online, and might not know the exact location of the construct for several hours — and Dew Phillips had a feeling that every second mattered.