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Frank Poole was riding shotgun, up front, occasionally glancing in the rearview mirror to admire the long column of gray-green or sand-colored tanks, armored personnel carriers, and trucks stretching for almost two miles behind him.
It was sheer, naked, destructive power, that column: death on tracks and wheels. Death from helicopters and fighter jets. Death from machine guns and cannon, from missiles and bombs. It was Poole’s greatest moment as a soldier, though he was exceedingly worried about blowback: the rules of engagement were not at all clear, and the whole world was watching.
“Colonel?” the driver, a sergeant, said. He nodded ahead.
Poole saw a tan Lexus crossing the highway dividing strip, bottoming out and sending up a spray of sand, but plowing through.
Poole had a brief glimpse of children in the back seat pounding on the seat before them, screaming silently, ignored by the determined-faced man at the wheel.
“What the . . . ?” Poole said.
And at that the car escaped the sand, wobbled as its tires bit concrete, then accelerated to smash into the side of an M1A2 Abrams tank. The tank weighed nearly seventy tons; the car weighed less than two. The car’s front smashed, the rear end jumped off the ground, and the Abrams didn’t even vibrate. The tank plowed on, crushing the front end of the car, squeezing it off the road, and moving on as if nothing had happened.
Poole turned in his chair to speak to his adjutant. “Transmit new rules of engagement. Anbar rules: Any vehicle appearing to try and ram the column should be taken out. And detail an ambulance to see about the people in the car.”
They were at the Nevada state line when the second attack came. This time it was a minivan that came up from behind and smashed into an armored personnel carrier, slightly wounding one soldier.
No shots were fired, and it began to occur to Poole that his soldiers had been trained to kill enemy forces, not their fellow Americans. This could be trouble. He’d had no time to fully brief officers or GIs on this new reality.
The third attack was more serious: a loaded ore truck pulled onto the freeway ahead of them, then managed a long, awkward U-turn to come racing right toward Poole’s JLTV.
“Engage!” Poole shouted, and after a moment’s hesitation, the gunner opened up with his .50 caliber. But he was firing warning shots, tearing up the road. The trucker did not slow, let alone stop.
“Fire for effect, goddammit!” Poole shouted as the massive truck closed the distance with shocking speed.
This time the chattering gun blew apart the truck’s engine and made hamburger of the driver.
The JLTV went around the steaming wreck, and the first tank in line shoved it off the road.
As Poole looked back, he saw one of his own ambulances pull off, medical techs rushing to see if the driver could be saved.
Poole sighed. The US Army had not knowingly fired on an American citizen since the Civil War. It was a glorious fact that the US military had never participated in a coup or interfered directly in politics. Poole would not have wanted to lead a force that enjoyed killing American civilians.
But, he thought grimly, they’re going to have to learn.
Tom Peaks was trapped driving behind Poole’s column. He had driven past the annihilated ore truck and had a pretty good sense that trying to pass the column might end badly, so he stuck carefully to the forty-five-mile-an-hour speed of the column.
The sky was darkening, and in the distance he could see the garish lights of the city—somewhat diminished, as it had occurred to at least some of the casino operators that they were not, currently, looking to entice gamblers.
And he saw as well a massive pillar of smoke that rose high before spreading out to form a hanging gray veil.
Then he spotted flashing lights on the road ahead and realized the Nevada Highway Patrol had set up a roadblock that the army column would blow right through, but that he, in a stolen minivan, would not. He had no way to fool the highway patrol—his name and photo were on every law enforcement database in the country, with flashing arrows and exclamation points.
So he pulled off the freeway and drove into the desert.
Tom Peaks could not reach Vegas.
Dragon could.
Vincent Vu had watched television coverage of the attack on the Ranch, and the madness of Las Vegas, which MSNBC’s chyron called Crisis: Las Vegas, and CNN called Battle for Las Vegas, and Fox News labeled Sin City Apocalypse!
The decision to go to Las Vegas was a combination of factors. One: There wasn’t much on TV but news. Two: He had run out of Pepperidge Farm Montauk cookies—his favorite. Three: He had always wanted to see Las Vegas.
And then there were the voices in his head.
Vincent suffered from a cluster of serious mental illnesses, the most terrifying of which was schizophrenia. He knew he was schizophrenic. He knew the voices he heard were not real, that the voices often lied. But when they berated him for laziness, cowardice, uselessness, and alternately reminded him that he was the avenging angel Abaddon, it was very hard to ignore them. Especially when he hadn’t taken his meds in weeks.
And, by the way, he could actually become a nightmarish monster. That was not a figment. That was not a hallucination. And once you accepted the fact that you could actually become a giant starfish-human mash-up, well, the things the voices suggested seemed less crazy. Watching the last twenty-four hours of television—the Ranch, Las Vegas—notions of sane and insane had become rather . . . mixed up.
