Through the lowlands of South Carolina, a few miles north of Savannah, the convoy rolled on. The last of it had just crossed the bridge over the Savannah River; Melanie's army had passed through Georgia without encountering any resistance at all, and each time they passed a major city their numbers swelled. As the day drew to a close, a helicopter with "US Navy" emblazoned on its side flew the length of the column, from back to front, then dropped down in front of the lead truck. Two men got out; the helicopter lifted off again. As the lead truck came alongside them, it stopped momentarily and the two climbed into the back.

"Good to see you again, Admiral," Melanie said as the truck rolled forward again.

The admiral smiled. "This is Commander Richard Kent," he said, introducing the other man. "SEALs. He'll be in charge of the operation at the other end."

Melanie put out her hand. "Good to meet you, Commander," she said. She cocked her head and looked at him; he was a large man, and--surprisingly for a military man--he wore a small earring in his left ear. "You look slightly familiar," she told him. "Did I see you out on the carrier when we were sailing to Key West?"

Kent pursed his lips and shook his head. "No. You have an excellent memory, Ms. Abbot. I'm a veteran of the Preserve too, just like the admiral. A girl named Susan. She'd volunteered because she was told she had a terminal disease."

"Yes, I remember," Melanie said, searching his eyes. "And it was a fraud, I suspected it then, and we know it now." She shook her head. "Amazing... so many of you..."

"I don't think it's amazing at all," he replied. "We went out there and we learned the difference between fantasy and reality. A lot of us understood it all too well after we left."

"It's made all the difference, though," she told him. "Without you, we'd all have been killed on the island, there isn't a question about that." She smiled at the two of them. "Well, let's sit down, we have some planning to do."

"You probably know," Hansen said after they were seated, "that we made a run up and down the line before we landed. So far, I doubt if the difference is noticeable. It isn't very obvious to us, and we're flying low and close to the line."

"And Washington is viewing it from--?"

"Satellite," he answered. "and maybe from spy planes flying high. But we doubt that, because so much of the Air Force has thrown in with you now. We would have heard about it."

Melanie smiled again and shook her head. "So fantastic... nothing I ever even imagined comes anywhere close."

"Frankly," Hansen agreed, "neither did I. We thought it was incredible when most of the crews in my task force wanted to go this way." He grinned as well. "Your plan," he went on, "is quite clever. I hope it works."

"I hope so too. One thing I want to do above all else in minimize casualties on all sides. One way or another this is all going to be over pretty soon, and then we all have to come back together."

"Yes, we do," Hansen agreed. He rose and walked to the wall map, the one that had been displayed so prominently during Melanie's TV interview. "All the indications we have," he said, "is that they are accepting this whole business as a dumb mistake on your part. They're continuing to pile up personnel and ordnance along I-95 where is crosses the state line. Smaller units at the coast and over near Charlotte."

"What will they think," Melanie asked, "when we start diverting toward the coast, over to US17?"

"Well, they might think that someone has pointed out that the map was obvious in the TV show, and because of that you're changing plans, or that you're deliberately trying to throw them off, or that it's a part of that 'first attack' on the map. It's going to become a game of second-guessing; is the actual thrust coming there, or at I-95? They have no way of knowing, so they have to keep themselves mobile. That they are doing." He looked very serious. "And they are pretty mobile, Melanie, the groups from Bragg especially. We don't want to encounter them and start fighting them."

"And if those fights go on very long," Kent put in, "they'll be able to move their whole force to react. That's a large force. You'll have air superiority, but that only goes so far."

"And they can take a lot of that away from us," Melanie said, "by staying close to the big cities and so on. I do not want to be firing missiles into cities."

"No, that's not a good idea," Hansen agreed. "Right now you have the high moral ground in spades. At all costs you have to hold it."

Melanie nodded. "Even if we lose..."

"If we lose," Kent told her, "they haven't won. There are tens of thousands of military people opposing them. Whole cities have come down on our side, not to mention the state of Hawaii. I know Bussman, I know how he'll want to react. Billy Jackson has his ear, and I know what he'll want to do, too--he'll recommend executing absolutely everyone involved at anything like a command level. All of us, the city councils in places like Louisville, the state legislature in Hawaii. Unless someone with a sense of reason comes forward, a horrific massacre is going to take place if we lose."

"Which means that another Melanie will arise somewhere else, and the banner will be carried on," Hansen said.

"But if somebody with a sense of reason does come forward..."

Hansen nodded. "It could change. It won't matter to you and me, if we've survived we'd be executed, and that's a given. But we can't expect the nation to react the same if the executions are limited to a few dozen of the top people."

"And things would go back to where they were."

"I'd expect more discretion from Washington, now that a lot of this stuff--like the clinic programs and the sales of women to big corporations--has come out. There'll be a lot of noise about reform, but the system won't change, not basically."

"Which just means, gentlemen," Melanie said with a smile, "that we can't afford to lose!"

Hansen glanced at the open door at the back of the truck. "Getting late," he noted. "Time to get things underway."

"Yes," Melanie agreed. She turned to the group of people nearer the front of the truck. "Send out the message," she said. "Let's move."

As if to contradict what she'd just said, the lead truck pulled to the side of the road and rolled to a halt. In chain-reaction fashion, the whole convoy slowed and stopped behind it. For awhile, it looked as if nothing important was happening; little cooking fires and the glows of various kinds of lanterns lit up the long chain of vehicles. Only the most careful observer, even one close by, would have noticed the vehicles that split off from the column and moved northward along I-95, passing the lead truck. Even this was not unusual, it was common for people to go out for gas and supplies and then return to their place in the column. From the back of the lead truck, Melanie watched them go by. Many of them, seeing her, waved and yelled; she waved back until her arm was fatigued. One after another she watched them go. A schoolbus with "Dade County" painted on the side, overflowing with people. A van, stuffed. A delivery truck with so many people in the back the pull-down door could not be closed. On and on, seemingly without end. After an hour or so, her attention was distracted by the helicopter, which had returned and was landing in a nearby field.

"We should get back to the carrier," Hansen said from behind her. "Ready?"

She nodded. "Does seem like a waste of fuel," she said. "Your pilot does have to bring me back."

"A good commander," he told her, "needs to know exactly what's going on." He nodded toward the waiting helicopter. "Let's go."

She followed the two Navy men; taking her lead from them, she ducked her head as they passed under the spinning rotor. Moments later, with the three of them aboard, it lifted off. Flying low, it followed the cars, trucks, and buses as they went on up I-95. At the next exit, virtually all of them left the Interstate and headed down a two-lane road toward the coast--and most of them turned off their headlights. From above, it looked at a glance like only a few vehicles were traveling that road, when in fact it was hundreds.

A little while later, they reached the coastline; the road they'd taken ended in a cul-de-sac where there was a marina and a section of broad beach. Here they stopped and, for the most part, disgorged their human occupants. The people as a mass moved down the dark beach, accompanied by such four-wheel-drive vehicles as could navigate the sand. A quarter of a mile down was a single bright light, like a beacon. The helicopter moved over it, and Melanie could see the landing barges, twenty of them, their bows pushed up on the sand and huge bay doors open. She smiled; the people approached them and, guided by a number of sailors, began to board them. The four-wheel-drives that had come along drove right into the bay doors and vanished inside.

"Beautifully done," Melanie said, looking down on the operation. "Wonderfully planned."

"Your planning, mostly," Hansen reminded her.

She turned to him and smiled. "Ridiculous. I just said get people on the ships. You and your crew made it happen."

The helicopter moved back; the stream of people was still coming. By this time, the majority of the vehicles, empty except for their drivers, were laboring to turn around in the narrow confines of the cul-de-sac. They were managing, though, and already many of them were headed back to the convoy on I-95, where they would take their place in line again.

"Let me get back now," Melanie said as she continued to watch the operation. "Mitch and a couple of engineers from Miami are trying to get things ready for the meeting at the border, and I want to see how that's coming. If we can't get that done, it isn't going to be good."

The helicopter swing around. A short while later it touched down near the lead truck; Melanie got out and trotted back toward her mobile headquarters. As she went, the aircraft lifted into the air again, headed back now to the Jimmy Carter, out at sea.

Harry was waiting for her at the back of the truck. "Before you ask," he said, "let me just tell you that everything is coming along just fine. Mitch assures me we can get the engineering done in plenty of time."

She breathed a sigh of relief. "Oh, that's good, that is good," she replied. Almost immediately, however, her expression changed to one of concern. "Harry, is this all going to work out?" she asked. "I mean, so many things have to go right..."

He grinned. "All I can say, Melanie," he told her, "is that an awful lot of things have gone right so far!"