The Apocalypse Troll

Someone had to keep a grip on himself, he thought, and pushed himself to his feet. He managed to walk down the path almost normally, grateful that he had convinced his master to exclude the men from his mental link.

Taggart didn't like to think about what would happen if the Apocalypse Brigade caught the same blood lust which drove the mobs.

"Coming up on River Hill, Admiral," Colonel Dickle a

The ready lights above the hatches lit, and the men of First Platoon, Company T, gathered themselves internally.

Colonel Tyson felt cold satisfaction. It had turned into a race, after all, and First Brigade had won it.

Tentacles of madmen had flooded up I-26, brushing aside the county and state roadblocks, and one rampaging column had curled out for the airport. But the first C-17s had landed twenty minutes before, and his paratroopers had moved into positions selected before leaving Bragg. The rattle of treads had cut through the clamor of the approaching mob as Bradley fighting vehicles and the LPM8 AGS-technically the "Armored Gun System," but for all intents and purposes light tanks-which had finally replaced the old, unsatisfactory Sheridans with which the Eighty-Second had been equipped for decades, headed for the perimeter. They were in their firing positions and the Apache gunships were waiting overhead when the glaring headlights swept down Airport Road.

Tyson wasted no time calling on the mob to surrender. When the first rounds of blind fire spattered his men, they raked the packed civilian vehicles and captured National Guard trucks with a tornado of automatic fire. The Apaches' thirty-millimeter chainguns and the twenty-five-millimeter chainguns and co-ax machine guns of the Bradleys had been particularly effective, he thought grimly, but the high-explosive and white-phosphorous rounds from the M35 105-millimeter main guns of the LPM8s had been even more spectacular.

The bloodied survivors had broken and run, abandoning their dead, and the night sky behind the colonel reverberated with the whine of jet engines as his brigade's second echelon came in.

He gestured to his clerk for his map case and bent over the cards, rechecking his pla

Jeremiah Willis crouched behind the charred hulk of an M113. No one knew how the small party of rioters had gotten that close, but their Molotov cocktails and the LAWs and AT4s they'd taken from dead Guardsmen had cost General Evans dozens of APCs and trucks. Every raider had been killed, though, and Willis had shot two of them himself. He was shocked by the satisfaction he'd felt, but he could not-would not-deny it.

The rioters had smashed switching stations, transformers, and power lines as they rampaged through his city, but the flames backlit them as they came in. Willis popped up and ripped off a long burst at a dimly seen figure sniping at a Guard machine gun team. He had no idea if he'd hit the sniper, but the shape disappeared.

Fifty-caliber tracers raked the paving of Patton Avenue, flaring down from the top of the hotel to drive back another knot of rioters. Or perhaps they were only civilians trying to flee. The gu

He heard the rattle and crash of battle from his left. One of Evans's lieutenants was leading a company-level attack down O'Henry Avenue and Haywood Street in an effort to retake the I-240 overpasses. The drive had started out under a captain, until a bullet through the head stopped him.

The Mayor of Asheville made himself watch his front, throttling the need to look south and wonder where the Eighty-Second was.

"Tango Leader, Tango Two-Seven. We're going in."

Lieutenant Colonel Dickle nodded with satisfaction. Right on the dot, she thought. No more than a couple of seconds early.

The C-130 pilots roared in south of Sugarloaf, making themselves appear loose and relaxed while their breathing slowed and their nerves tightened. They swept down the highway behind the brilliance of their landing lights under a glare of illuminating flares, bare yards above the ground. The huge rear cargo doors were open, and the dark shape of an LAV-25 Piranha slid from the lead plane. The fourteen-ton armored vehicle crashed to the ground on its shock-absorbing pallet, and suddenly the night was full of splintering sound as vehicle after vehicle slammed to earth.

It was over in seconds, the C-130s clawing up and away while Ospreys nestled in among the vehicles with their crews. Marines raced from the planes, throwing off tie-down chains, starting engines, testing internal systems. The clatter of charging handles racketed over shouts of command as automatic weapons were cocked, and then they were moving, rumbling up the twisting macadamized road into the featureless dark.

The flares died, and no gleam of light came from the vehicles. It wasn't needed. Drivers and gu

Taggart lurched up as the first report was radioed in. It was impossible! How could anyone have guessed?

Shock held him for just one moment as his brain fought to understand how it could have happened, but then he shook off his paralysis. The "how" didn't matter, only the "what," and as his brain came back to life, he wasted no time congratulating himself for posting sentinels on the access road despite the Troll's dismissal of the need. He shouted orders, and the alarm flashed through the encampment. The men of the Apocalypse Brigade tumbled into their prepared positions, and a fifty-man response team moved quickly to support the sentries.

Only after the men were in motion did Taggart realize that he had felt absolutely no response from his master.

"Tango Leader, Tango Two-Seven. Slugger is down. I say again, Slugger is down."

"Roger, Two-Seven. Tango Leader copies. Good work, Ken."

Dickle watched the pavement rushing past beneath her. It was marvelous how good night-vision devices had become, she thought almost absently, then nodded sharply as the lights of Carmen, North Carolina, appeared before her.

She swung to port, settling on her new heading, and Sugarloaf Mountain loomed against the starry heavens like a wall.

The first LAW exploded out of the darkness like a meteor. The fire-trailing rocket just missed the lead LAV, and the Marine gu

The LAW warhead performed exactly as designed, and PFC Jordan Van Hoy of Trenton, New Jersey, became the first Marine fatality of the Battle of Sugarloaf Mountain.