The scene where Interstate 84 crossed from Utah into Idaho was becoming familiar to Scott and the officers who accompanied him. The orange and white barriers that blocked the road with rolls of razor wire stacked before them didn’t strike Scott as being all that different from similar barriers he had seen in Germany before unification, or in the Persian Gulf, or the Balkans. When observed from a distance the heavily armed police pretty much looked like their German, Iraqi, or Serbian counterparts. It was only when one took the time to study them more closely that the differences stood out. It was the little things that struck Scott, like the words “State Police” on the side of the patrol cars, or the shape of a Guardsman helmet and his weapon that set the hairs on the back of his neck to standing.

Lowering his binoculars, Scott surveyed the entire area once more before the last light of day disappeared. “Do you think,” Scott asked Clyde Emerson, “they know what’s about to happen to them?”

The commander of the 4th Armored Division’s 1st Brigade didn’t answer his commanding general right off. Instead, he finished making his own visual reconnaissance. When he was satisfied that nothing had changed since his last visit to this spot, Emerson lowered his binoculars. “Despite all the training you had prior to your first taste of battle, did you really understand what combat was like until after it was over?”

Scott sighed. “No, I guess not, Clyde. But that was different. I was a combat soldier, a trained professional. Practically everything I had done up to that point had prepared me for that moment. And the people I faced were professional soldiers, too. They knew what they were doing. They knew what was at stake.”

Arching an eyebrow, Emerson regarded his superior with surprise. “And you don’t think those folks down there understand what they’re doing?”

“No,” Scott growled. “They think they do. They think they’re standing up for rights they believe have been stripped away from them by some insidious plot to destroy America from within. But in truth I don’t think they appreciate the horrible fact that they’re nothing but pawns in an obscene power game being played out by men who don’t give two shits about them.”

“If that’s true, sir, what does that make us?” Emerson asked innocently.

Scott didn’t answer. He couldn’t, for it was a question he had asked himself a dozen times a day and had yet to find a suitable answer for. Instead he looked out over the vast empty desert and listened to the howl of the night wind. Finally Scott turned to the commander of his 1st Brigade. “Are your lads up to this?”