What had become clear to Thomas during the past week was that men like Thomas Jefferson Osborn would not permit him to simply roll over and give up the fight. Osborn had made sure of that. Again looking around his office, GO Thomas now saw that room not as a power base from which he would be able to catapult himself into the White House, but rather as a gilded cage, a prison that he had created himself.

ALONG INTERSTATE 84, EAST OF BOISE, IDAHO EVENING, NOVEMBER 8

By now Nancy Kozak had the routine down. Since neither the governor nor Adjutant General used any special seals on the letters she hand carried between the two, she had found a printer that could replicate the font used to address the envelopes those letters were sealed in. Using the exact type of envelope, Nancy had produced a number of them with the appropriate addressee on it. So she was now free to rip open the envelope knowing that she could simply stuff the letter into one she had produced, seal it, and pass it on with no one being the wiser.

With her penlight in one hand and the Adjutant General’s letter in the other, she read the contents aloud to Sergeant Lightfoot. “It would seem General Saunders is going to make his stand in the vicinity of Glenns Ferry.”

Lightfoot thought about that for a moment. “You know the spot, Colonel. It’s where the interstate runs along the side of a mountain. To the south there is a great flat expanse on the other side of the Snake River. Rising up on either side of the flat are two mesas.”

Putting the Adjutant General’s letter aside, Nancy reached for a map and flipped it over until she found Glenns Ferry. “I see what you mean. It would be difficult, at best, to swing a force to the north, but not impossible.”

“A handful of people who know the ground,” Lightfoot injected, “would play hell with that effort.”

Nancy nodded. “Yes, they could. And anyone going south of the Snake River will need to come down off of the eastern mesa and cross the flat open area fully exposed to anyone sitting on top of the western mesa.”

“Our fellow Guardsmen would have all day to pick their targets as the 4th AD looked for a good place to get up onto the western mesa,” Lightfoot continued.