“Yes, Eric,” Stephanie answered. “They let Mother and me watch them do it.” She held up her left arm. “And they took off our wrist computers too. We’re all free.”

“Now are you satisfied?” Travis sneered.

“Not quite. Mom, Steph, come over here behind me.”

“Oh, no, you don’t!” Travis snapped, raising his arm to block their progress. “They stay right here until I see that Nicole is okay.”

Eric shrugged and lifted the walkie-talkie. “Okay, Cliff. Send Nicole.”

As Travis had done with Becky, Eric had to intercept Nicole as she almost broke into a run when she saw Travis. “Just stay behind me, Nicole,” he said, not taking his eyes from Travis.

“Nicole, are you all right?”

She started to answer but the words caught in her throat, and she finally nodded. Before Travis could answer, a loud thump rattled the steel doorway of the blockhouse, and Eric heard a muffled cry of surprise.

Eric smiled briefly. “Sorry to spoil their little welcoming party.”

“Sergeant Decker,” Travis shouted, “the door’s locked. Just stand easy for a while.”

Eric half turned around to face Nicole. “I’m sorry for the last few days. I really mean that.”

She stared at him for a moment, her eyes as green as the depths of the sea. “I appreciate your treating me with respect.”

“I hope you can find peace within yourself.” He turned back to Travis. “Okay, start my family over, and Nicole is all yours.”

Becky lurched forward, but Travis’s arm was like a steel bar holding her back. “Just like that, huh?” he said softly. “Then we all walk away and everyone is happy?”

Nicole too had started around Eric, but he yanked her back against him, suddenly wary. “Yes. Just like that.” His eyes were riveted on Travis’s face, and he felt his muscles tensing rapidly.

“Sorry, Eric,” Travis said, “but it can’t go down that way. If it was simply your family for Nicole, the Major might have bought it. But when you started removing the implantations on other people, that set it in concrete. No way can the Major let it go now. We’ve got a hundred men closing in on you right now. There’s no way to get out of here.”

Eric jerked Nicole around to shield him as his hand whipped down to his boot and pulled out the hunting knife hidden there. “Did you hear that, Dick?” he shouted, ignoring Nicole’s sharp gasp of surprise.

“I sure did,” came the answer from the walkie-talkie. Almost instantly the blast of the explosive rocked the air, spinning everyone on the top of the dam around to look northward. A huge cloud of dust and smoke billowed upward about a quarter mile away.

“So much for those truckloads,” Eric said. He looked past Travis to his family. “Mother, you and the girls start walking slowly toward me.”