The camp, when camp was made for the evening, also stretched for miles down I-95. At the head of it, a dozen miles north of Jacksonville, sat the truck Melanie and her top lieutenants were riding in. The day had been an eventful one; off to one side, in an open field, sat a helicopter that had brought Admiral Hansen and some of his top people in from the fleet out at sea. Following a long meeting, Melanie felt there was just one more thing to be done today.

"Okay," she told Mitch, "get those people from Atlanta on the line. Tell them they can have that interview now, tonight. If they try to put you off, tell them that's not acceptable. Tonight or not at all."

"Sure about this, Melanie?" Harry asked. He looked worried.

She nodded. "Very sure, Harry. And no, I'm not about to let you, or Michelle, or anybody else do it. I'm doing it myself."

"You do understand that there will be an outgoing signal someone could track and pinpoint. And fire a missile at."

"I don't think they'll do that. That would mean wiping out that news crew, and on national television, too. They need some good publicity; so far everything had been bad, and that would be worse."

"They may be beyond worrying about publicity."

"Maybe." She gazed at him steadily for a few seconds. "So maybe you shouldn't be here... maybe you should go back and join Rachel and Eileen for the night..."

He laughed. "No chance of that. Don't make it an order, I don't want to mutiny."

Melanie laughed with him, but secretly she wished she could make a compelling case for him--and several of the others--to go further back in the line. Practically all had refused. Harry had sent Rachel and Eileen back--over their very vocal protests--and Jackie had taken a command position far back near the end of the long column. John's business experience had made him a practical choice for logistics, and he was riding in a bus near the convoy's center, and several of the others had been scattered into command positions. But, besides Harry, Dave, Mitch, Michelle, and Captain Miller--along with three girls from the Preserve, Bonnie, Barbara, and Lydia, and a national guard officer--remained in the lead truck with her. For quite some time now she'd feared that the forces loyal to Washington might try to strike at the truck, even though Admiral Hansen and his men were keeping a close watch for any signs of that. And the loss to the movement, if all those people were killed at once, would be huge.

But she didn't argue. If things went as planned, all this would change soon anyway.

"They're coming in, Melanie," Mitch said, his eyes still on his computer screen. "They'll be here in an hour and a half. They're coming by chopper and they'll send in a news van with a transmitter from Jacksonville."

"Sounds good," Melanie replied with a nod. "Gives us plenty of time to make everything ready for them."

The truck arrived a little over an hour later; two of the guard officers went out to meet it, and reported back that everything seemed to be in order. Not long after they'd put up their remote dish, a small helicopter with an Atlanta TV station's logo painted on the side came in from the Northwest. The interviewer--Rhonda Mackie, a well-known TV personality--along with a cameraman, a light man, a sound man, and a makeup girl climbed out. Miller himself went to check them out, then escorted them back to the truck.

Melanie was seated in a chair facing the door, her legs crossed and her hands in her lap, when Rhonda, a tall blond woman with teased hair, came in. "Oh, I'm sorry, we thought you were ready for us," she said. "We'll go back outside until you're--"

"I am ready," Melanie interrupted. "I was waiting for you."

Rhonda stopped. "But--but--you don't--"

"Don't have any clothes on." Melanie smiled. "Yes, I noticed that. Ask me about it during your interview. I'll tell the whole country why not."

Rhonda gave her a questioning look. Then, all business, she directed the crew to their positions. The makeup girl touched up Rhonda's face, then turned to Melanie--who shook her head. Harry, Dave, Mitch, Michelle, and Miller all remained in the room, though out of the camera's view.

Then the lights came on. "Mark!" the soundman called. "On!"

Rhonda smiled at the camera. "This is Rhonda Mackie," she said breathlessly. "I'm here in the back of a truck outside of Jacksonville, Florida. With me is Melanie Abbot, the leader of the revolution which has become known as 'Melanie's War,' and this is her first interview." She turned to Melanie. "You told me to ask you," she said, "why you've chosen to appear in the nude."

Melanie nodded. "I'm sure you expected combat fatigues or something like them," she said. She looked at the camera herself. "But this," she went on, gesturing toward herself, "is the uniform I was forced, by the government in Washington, to wear for the last ten years. For a crime I did not commit I was sentenced to death, and I'm sure everyone in authority expected that sentence to be carried out by the hunters who came to Isla de la Muerta. I was lucky, I survived ten years. I was supposed to be pardoned after that; but your government, your elected officials, passed secret laws allowing the Bureau of Prisons to sell ten-year survivors--of which I am the only one in the past sixteen years--to private corporations for private hunts."

"There has been," Rhonda noted, "a huge outcry against this law. And a demand by the public to be told about any other secret laws the congress has passed."

"That's good," Melanie said. "But not enough. Washington, your government, has drowned in an ocean of corruption. As we see it, it cannot be reformed. It must be removed from power."

"And that's what this army of yours plans to do?"

Melanie nodded. "Yes. I'm sure no one even has had a question about where we're going. I want to stress that we do not consider any of the people of the United States our enemies. We are well aware that the soldiers and policemen who have been opposing us are just doing their duty as they see it. We do not wish to harm anyone, but we will not be stayed from our objective. We are going to Washington, and there we will confront those who have treated us so unfairly." She looked hard at the camera. "Those who have, over the past twenty-five years or more, systematically betrayed you--or your wives, your girlfriends, and your daughters. Betrayed you and had you killed in order to make money from the TV shows, from the Preserve, from the gladiatorial games--and from corporations like the Gallagher Corporation of Montana. Money which was not needed to run the government; money to line the pockets of corrupt officials."

"Strong charges."

"Yes. But you can talk to our computer people here, they can show you evidence that what I've said is true."

"We'd like to see it," Rhonda went on, "but right now, we'd like to know more about you. About your past, and your plans for the future."

"Our plan for the immediate future," Melanie said quietly, "is to go to Washington. We are quite aware that the army is massing troops at the North Carolina border to stop us. They will not be able to."

"How can you be so sure?"

Melanie smiled. "Well, I can't tell you all our plans, can I? I'm sure the commanders of those forces are listening! We lack experience, so we have to be careful about what we say and do." She shifted her position slightly.

Behind her--evidently unnoticed by everyone in the room--hung a large wall map showing the northern part of South Carolina. It clearly showed a plan for a three-pronged attack, a plan to feint to the East with a hit-and-run strike at the army's line above Myrtle Beach, then a feint West in the Charlotte area--while the main force waited to ram up the center, right along I-95, while the army's attention and forces were diverted by the lateral assaults. All this was shown by blue arrows, arrows indicating a "first attack," a "second diversion" and a "main thrust."

And it was all very clearly in the view of the camera, framed by Melanie and Rhonda. Rhonda pushed on with the interview, concentrating on Melanie's past and drawing comments from her about life in the Preserve for the past ten years. Finally, after about twenty minutes, the interview was over and Rhonda started making her closing remarks. As she did, the sound man--who'd been holding a mike in close to them while keeping it out of the camera's view--suddenly pulled his mike back. Rhonda, knowing from her earpiece that her own voice had faded away, threw him a quick glance. Melanie, simply waiting at that point, followed her gaze.

The sound man, with an annoyed look on his face, was in the process of ripping the mike and its holder off the end of the boom arm. As it came, a piece of wire--an extra piece of wire, it seemed to her--came with it. The end of the arm was not three feet away, she could see that the extra wire was designed to release the mike and its holder, and for some reason the release apparently had failed.

She could also see that she was looking into the open end of the chrome pipe that formed the boom arm--and that there was something inside it that looked suspiciously like the muzzle of a small-caliber gun.

A gun which was aimed at her chest. Her gaze flew back along the pipe, to the sound man's hand, and to the now-obvious trigger he was reaching for. She started to move; too late and too slow, she told herself.

But the others in the room had already seen what was going on and they were moving, too. Melanie saw Harry's form streaking across toward the sound man, looking for all the world like a pouncing panther. She saw Dave moving too, much more slowly, and then a bare back blocked her view--just as the report of the gun echoed inside the truck.

Melanie jumped up. Harry had by then seized the sound man and had driven him to the floor; he did not appear to need help, but Dave, Mitch, and Captain Miller were all there as well, tearing the makeshift gun away from the man and immobilizing him.

And right in front of her, Michelle was falling to the floor, her hands against her chest and blood flowing from between her fingers. Melanie screamed her name and knelt beside her; leaving Mitch and Captain Miller to deal with the would-be assassin, Harry and Dave rushed back.

The wound, Melanie could see, was bad. She'd been hit close to the center of her chest; it wasn't out of the question that her heart was damaged. "Damn it, Michelle!" she yelled. "Why did you do that?"

Michelle's eyes flickered open. "We can't... spare the leader," she said with a weak grin. "You always taught us that..."

"That was then! Now, it doesn't matter! I can do just as much good as a martyr as I can as a leader!"

Michelle blinked. "Okay," she murmured. "I won't... do it again... then..." She shuddered; her body arched, then relaxed. A stream of blood flowed from her mouth without force.

Melanie stood up. Rhonda and the rest of her crew were staring with horror--and, Melanie noted, no small amount of fear. "We didn't know," she said quickly. "He--this was his own idea, we sure didn't plan--you have to believe us, Melanie!"

It didn't matter, Melanie told herself, whether the woman was telling the truth or not--and her instincts suggested that she was. Ignoring Rhonda and her crew for a moment, she turned to the sound man, by now on his feet and being held tightly by Mitch and the Captain.

"I want to know," she said, "who sent you?" He didn't answer, he just glared. She glanced back at Rhonda. "Is he new with your crew? Or a long-term employee?"

"He's been with the station for at least ten years," the cameraman said quickly.

She studied the man's face. "Doesn't mean he isn't a federal agent." She looked at the weapon, which Dave was then holding. "What do you think?" she asked him. "Is that something professionally produced, or something homemade?"

"I'd say," Dave answered, "something homemade, definitely." He pointed to the bottom of the pipe. "Looks like nothing more than a .220 barrel and action. The trigger guard and the bolt arm have been hacksawed off so it could all be fitted in the boom and grip. The wire here was supposed to make the mike fall off; if it had worked we wouldn't have had any warning and you'd probably be dead."

"All of which means," Melanie told the man, "that you acted alone, or pretty much so. You want to tell me why you wanted to kill me?"

"Because you started a civil war!" the man shouted suddenly. "What gives you the right to do that? Thousands of people are going to die because of you!"

"Thousands already have died because of the actions of this government," Melanie replied evenly.

"And besides that," the man spat, "you run around naked like some slut! If I'd managed to kill you I'd be a hero!"

If Michelle wasn't lying dead on the floor, Melanie would have laughed. "I see," she said slowly. "Okay. I think it's unlikely you're a federal agent. If you were, I'd be curious as to how you were motivated to carry out what could easily have been a suicide mission." She sighed, then turned back to Rhonda. "You can go," she said, and the newswoman breathed a sigh of relief. "And," she went on, "you can take him with you."

Rhonda looked at her in confusion. "But... he killed this woman... I assumed you'd want to execute him..."

"If I believed he was a federal agent, I'd have to," Melanie said gravely. "I'd have to, so that others thinking about the same thing would understand, clearly, that they were on suicide missions. But I don't think he is. He's just a publicity hound. I've got nothing to gain by killing him. No, we'll tie him up and you can take him with you. When you get back to Jacksonville or Atlanta or whatever, call the police and have him charged with murder. You were a witness, yourself."

"We even have it on tape," the cameraman said.

"Even better." She turned to Harry. "Get him tied up so he can't get loose," she said, "and get them out of here. We have a funeral and a burial to attend to."