“What’re we doing with dynamite?" Diego scoffed. "Run up to that ship of theirs, and throw it through the door? You wouldn’t get within a hundred yards, before they cut you down.”

"She's right," I said, thinking of the hell that IEDs caused us in Nigeria. They were a problem on the roads, but especially dangerous when we were patrolling a village, where sightlines were limited and there were plenty of places to conceal a bomb. Patrolling, like the hamsters were doing right now. Pairs of hamsters were checking out buildings in the center of town, which, considering it's Thomsons Corners, wasn't much. You may think that, being the Columbus Day holiday, there would have been lots of tourists in town when the Ruhar dropped in for a visit. If you think that, you've never had the good fortune of visiting my home town. Columbus Day is a big leaf-peeping holiday in New England, a weekend when city folk from down south drive out to the country, to see the colorful foliage on the trees, stay in quaint little inns and bed and breakfast places, and take lots of pictures. We do get tourists in our part of the Great North Woods, but not for leaf-peeping. By Columbus Day, a lot of the trees around here have already dropped their leaves, and our part of Maine is pretty flat anyway, plus the pine trees don't turn color. People come here for canoeing, fishing, hunting and snowmobiling. There isn't a whole lot of that going on the first part of October, so the town was pretty empty when the Ruhar crash-landed, the day being a school holiday and all. Damn good thing, too, I couldn't imagine what would have happened if the elementary school had been full when the Ruhar took control of the town. I didn't have to imagine that scenario, since I'd already seen that in the movie Red Dawn. The good one made way back when Reagan was in office, not the crappy one they made later.

Anyway, I had an idea. "Susie, your father works at the quarry, right? You and Tom get us dynamite, detonators, wires, whatever we need to blow something up remotely." I had no idea how to do that, having never even seen a stick of dynamite. "Diego, stay here and watch the hamsters, see where they patrol, especially how often they go by the old town hall." Which was now home to the town's only diner, and an insurance agency.  "Stan, Deb, see if you can find a truck or van down there that we can get started, big enough to fit a couple people in the back, something covered, not an open truck bed. Keep to this side of town, you don't want to cross Route 11, or the hamsters will see you. If you find something, drive it over to Red Brook road and leave it there. We'll meet back here."