In the conference room Jan listened as the fighting grew closer. The sudden appearance of the paratroopers just outside the door did little to ease her apprehension. She understood that their defenders were preparing to make a last stand. Not knowing what else to do, Jan picked up a recorder she had borrowed from Sam’s crew and crawled over to where Thomas was, where she shoved the mike into the governor’s face. “So, Governor Thomas,” Jan asked as if she were back in a Washington studio, “would care to comment on your plans concerning your political future?”

Nancy had managed to make it halfway down the corridor in her search for Nathan when a familiar sound from outside caught her attention. Dropping down, she crawled through the shattered glass that lay strewn about on the floor to the nearest window. Though she knew the sound growing louder by the second belonged to a Bradley, the Guard officer wasn’t quite sure whose Bradley it was. Once she was at the window she peeked up over the edge of the sill in an effort to find out if the vehicles below was friend or foe.

It took but one glance to realize that infantry fighting vehicle making its way down the center of the street belonged to the Idaho Guard. Buttoned up and ready for action Nancy saw it for what it was, the final blow. Even as she tried to figure out some way of saving as many of the paratroopers and journalists as she could, Nancy couldn’t tear herself away from the window. Ignoring the danger posed by the militiamen firing from across the street, she continued to watch the Bradley trundle down the street over the bodies of the dead and wounded militiamen who covered it.

He was making his way back to where he had left Gandulf and his 2nd Squad when Nathan Dixon also saw the Bradley on the street outside. Unlike Nancy he wasn’t familiar with the tactical markings used by the Idaho Guard. He wasn’t even sure how the vehicles in his own father’s division were marked. So when the turret of the Bradley spun away from the capitol building and began raking the militiamen firing from the second floor of the buildings across the street with its 25mm cannon, Nathan naturally assumed it belonged to the 4th Armored. Overjoyed, he stood in an open window and gave a hearty yell. “I knew you’d make it in time. Give ’em hell, Dad.”

He had no way of knowing at the moment that the general he should have been cheering was Major General Earl Saunders. As he was obligated to do, the State Adjutant General had risen up to defend his state and its constitution against its enemies.

EPILOGUE

EPILOGUE

BOISE, IDAHO MID-MORNING, NOVEMBER 13