Contagious

“Very well.”

He turned to face Captain Lodge. “How about you, David?”

“Whiskey Company is a mile due west, Colonel,” Lodge said. “We’re ready to go.”

Nealson leaned forward to speak, or more accurately for his six-foot-three frame, he leaned down. “Any chance we’ll get in on this one, sir?” He said it a bit loudly for Ogden’s taste, but for Nealson that was a whisper. His regular speaking voice was three or four times that of a normal man’s, and his shout would make you look for a place to hide.

“Nails,” Ogden said, “the only way Whiskey’s involved is if we’re overrun and I drop bombs on our own position, then you guys come in to clean up whatever is left. So let’s hope you get to take the night off. Lodge, I want you and Nails back with your men twenty minutes before the attack begins.”

Nealson returned to an at-ease stance. He looked disappointed. Lodge tried not to look relieved, but he clearly was. Lodge was an exceptional pencil pusher, but perhaps not a true warrior soul.

Only one question remained—what new tricks did the little b.a.s.t.a.r.ds have in store?

Ogden looked through night-vision binoculars, taking in all the details of their objective, two hundred yards due north. He stared at the glowing, now-familiar shape. It consisted of two twenty-foot-long parallel objects that resembled big logs lying side by side. The log structures led into a set of four curving arches, the first about ten feet high, the next three successively larger with the final arch topping out at around twenty feet. All of the objects, both logs and arches, had an irregular, organic surface.

But something was different this time.

The last two times he’d seen such a structure, all the pieces had been much thicker: thicker logs, thicker arches. This one looked kind of...anorexic.

Mud surrounded the thing, the result of snow melted by the structure’s heat. The first two constructs had put off a huge heat bloom. Satellite readouts had measured them both at around 200 degrees Fahrenheit. This one held a steady 110 degrees. And one other key difference: the first construct, in Wahjamega, Michigan, had shown action, something going on inside the cone, only an hour after heating up. This one had been hot for almost

But there was still no movement.

At Wahjamega they’d seemed to catch the hatchlings off guard. The creatures had been crawling all over the construct, and when they’d detected Ogden’s men, they’d attacked. The battle had been something out of a nightmare—pyramid-shaped monsters sprinting forward on black tentacle-legs, rus.h.i.+ng right into automatic-weapons fire. Some of the monsters made it past the bullets, forcing his men into brutal, close-quarters fighting.

Eight men died.

Three weeks after Wahjamega, Perry Dawsey had discovered another construct in the deep woods near Mather, Wisconsin. Ogden’s primary objective was to capture or destroy the Mather construct before it could activate, but the bra.s.s had given him a secondary objective: capture a living hatchling. But that time it was the hatchlings that caught the Exterminators off guard. The creatures had actually set up a perimeter about a hundred yards around the construct. They’d been hiding up in the d.a.m.n trees; his men literally walked right under the things. When the Exterminators closed to about seventy-five yards from the construct, the hatchlings had dropped down and attacked from behind.

As soon as they dropped, the construct activated. In the confusion of hand-to-hand, Ogden had no idea of the enemy’s numbers. The whole unit might have been overrun, so he didn’t hesitate—he called in air support to make sure he completed the primary objective. Apache rockets tore the thing to pieces.

That hadn’t left much to study, not that it mattered; just like at Wahjamega, the broken pieces of construct dissolved into pools of black goo within hours of the Apache strike. His men also failed to capture a hatchling, but Ogden wasn’t about to lecture them—it was a little much to expect men ambushed by monsters to worry about anything other than survival.

Twelve men died in that fight.

From a purely tactical perspective, casualties weren’t a problem. Charlie Ogden’s unit was so far into a secret black budget that even light probably couldn’t escape. He needed replacements? He got them. He needed equipment? Whatever he wanted, including experimental weapons, even ten Stinger surface-to-air missiles just in case some flying thing came out of those gates. Resupply? Transport? Air support? Same deal. Ogden took orders from Murray Longworth. Murray interfaced directly with the Joint Chiefs and the president. It was a heady bit of power, truth be told—no requisition, no approval, just tell Corporal Cope to place a request and things showed up as if by magic.

The blank check for men and equipment was key to mission success. So was an open-ended flexibility that let him move instantly, without orders, without approval, to wherever the danger might lie. He had to be flexible and fast, because the Mather engagement showed a clear change in hatchling tactics. They had expected an infantry a.s.sault. They had learned from the first encounter, learned and adapted.

That chewed at Ogden’s soul. His men had killed all the hatchlings in Wahjamega, and they hadn’t found anything that might be communication equipment. How had the Wahjamega hatchlings communicated with the Mather hatchlings?

Despite the change in tactics, the hatchlings still lost at Mather, which meant they’d likely change tactics again—so what was Ogden facing this time? His men had scanned the trees. Scanned everything. Normal vision, night vision, infrared, advance scouts. Nothing other than the hatchlings on the construct. No picket line, no perimeter. Odgen couldn’t figure it out. They seemed to be waiting for his men to come in.

He had his objectives, his attack options. The first option, use infantry to take the construct intact. Should that fail, hit it with the second option—Apache rockets. If needed, the Strike Eagles would deliver the third option: dropping enough two-thousand-pound bombs to turn a one-square-mile patch of Ohio into a burning crater. That would kill all his men and Ogden himself, but if it came to that, they’d have already been overrun.