Maitland and his daughter Ruthelma, along with her new husband Jonathon, Sean's uncle Philo, and his Pooka friend Markey, had returned to Ireland, though Roxy suspected Maitland and Ruthelma were more likely in Europe now, helping to deal with the issues presented by the demons in Germany.

  Everyone else seated at the table was military. Jack Kennedy was now a two-star general and the top commanding officer of all US military forces in the region. Majors Randy Harper and Joyce Vanderberg, their supply and logistics heads, were both still assigned here. General Young represented the Marines, General Bonds represented the Air Force, and General Yates had taken over as representative of the Army from Kennedy when he'd been promoted.

  Next was Lieutenant Colonel Davies, who was the Air Force surveillance liaison; he dealt with all of the Air Force's airborne intelligence assets. Hogan, a civilian who worked for the Pentagon, was their main intelligence source for everything in North America, and now had two aides helping him as well. Karen Taite was the NSA liaison, and last of all was Major Dougherty, their liaison to the US Space Forces, who now ran all the imagining satellites they used that didn't belong to the NSA or the CIA.

  The CIA had refused to provide access to their satellites; seems they were still a bit upset with Cali, who'd killed their former boss, though he was technically already dead by then.

  "I thought Sean was out inspecting the forts?" Major Vanderberg said.

  "It's called a 'fact finding tour'," Sawyer said as he strode into the room.

  "Sawyer? What are you doing here?" Vincent Powers asked.

  "Finding facts," Sawyer said as he walked over to Sean's chair. Pulling it out, he used the small wooden step he'd put there before anyone showed up and dropped into the chair, which he'd also raised.

  Roxy noted that no one else noticed any of that, because they were all focused on what Sawyer was wearing. Normally Sawyer favored expensive silk shirts and dress slacks with a tie, but today he was wearing a black camo shirt, black camo pants, black high-tops with black soles, and a black combat harness holding a Glock 19 in a speed draw holster and a large Kukri with a black handle and a black blade.

  And none of it looked new; in fact, it all looked used—well used.

  She didn't miss the black balaclava, or the black gloves tucked into the harness, either. Sawyer was dressed for a fight, and from the looks of things, it wasn't a costume. She noticed that even her father looked impressed. Too many people thought Sawyer was a coward, but after all these years, she knew better. Sure, he was afraid of her father, but that wasn't cowardice, it was common sense.

  "Okay," Sawyer said, rapping on the table with his knuckles. "If you look at the displays, you'll see that there's a force of djevels estimated to be about 20,000 strong attempting to break out of the DEZ at this very moment."

  "Yes, we're aware of that," Jack said, looking at Sawyer, "but that doesn't tell me why we're here, and why you're in charge."

  "I'm here because Sean asked me to take charge of this matter," Sawyer said, looking round the table.

  "What, the breakout?" Hogan said, looking confused.

  "No!" Sawyer said, and he jumped onto the seat and leaned over the table, putting his hands to either side of it. Roxy noticed the look on his face wasn't a pleasant one at all. "What the kid wants to know, what I promised him I would find out, is how in the name of the nine goblin princes do twenty-thousand djevels get that close"—he pointed to one of the displays—"to the border and no one saw it coming!"

  Roxy was surprised at how many of them leaned back.

  Sawyer dropped back into his seat and looked around the room.

  "Well?" he said, glaring around the room. "I'm waiting!"

  "Hogan, speak," Adam said, looking at their civilian intel specialist.

  "I, I don't know!" he said, looking around the room nervously. "I got the alert the same time everyone else did!"

  "Dougherty!" Adam said next.

  "I'll check the surveillance tapes and talk to the operators as soon as we're done here!" Major Dougherty said, suddenly looking a lot more angry than scared as the realization of what was happening sank in.

  "Go now," Sawyer said. "This has implications beyond the obvious. I want you to send me, Roxy, Adam, Chad, and General Kennedy copies of those tapes as soon as you have them. I also want you to videotape the interviews with those operators and send them to us as soon as they're complete. Bill, if you would accompany him and take part in those interviews, please?"

  "Why me?" Roxy's father asked.

  "Because I want them questioned by a pro, why else?" Sawyer said. "Now, please, go. You, too, Hogan! I won't get any closer to the answers I need with your ass warming that seat over there!"

  Roxy and the others watched as the major left, with her father in tow, followed by Hogan and his two aides. Sawyer then turned to Taite, the NSA liaison.

  "Okay, Miss Taite, what's your excuse?"

  "That's Mrs."

  "No, that's Miss. Your husband divorced you and left you three years, four months, and twenty-three days ago. Would you like me to tell you what schools your three children attend? What courses they're studying? Their favorite color? You're playing in the big leagues here, Karen. I suggest you consider the consequences of failure, especially failures like this. Why didn't the NSA's satellites notice this?"

  "The NSA hasn't been monitoring the DEZ," she said in a soft voice.

  Roxy saw a number of eyebrows go up around the table. She also noticed that Karen Taite had suddenly turned quite pale.

  Looking back at Sawyer, she saw he'd drawn his Glock and was pointing it at Taite's head.

  "Then why are you here? Are you here to spy on us? Or to help us? Answer carefully, because lying to me is fatal."

  "I…I…" She closed her eyes. "Both. They wanted to be able to keep tabs on what was going on here, but I never withheld any information I received!"

  "Then why aren't you using your satellites to help us?"

  "Because I was told we didn't have the budget for it! That you didn't need the extra resources!"

  "See, that wasn't so hard, now," Sawyer said, putting the pistol away. "You're dismissed, and you're going to tell your bosses that you're not allowed to come back until they do the job they were ordered to. By the president."

  "Son of a bitch," Chad swore after she'd fled the room. "How long have you known, Sawyer?"

  Sawyer snorted. "I didn't. I just suspected. Davies, when was the last sortie by one of your photo recon aircraft?"

  "A week ago."

  "Why?"

  "Things looked calm and…" He looked over where Karen had been sitting. "We got a high priority request from the NSA for surveillance on the eastern seaboard!"

  Sawyer sighed and leaned back in his seat. "And that's why I suspected her. As soon as I got the call to look into this, I had a couple of my people dig through the messages and requests between all the intel services here. You're a lycan, so I can have Adam order you to tell him everything you know or suspect about this…"

  "I'm ordering you to do that, Davies. Answer Sawyer's questions fully and truthfully from here on, understand?" Adam growled.

  "Yes, Adam," Lt Colonel Davies said with a nod and turned back to Sawyer.

  Sawyer smiled. "Thank you, Adam. Now, to get back to my point, the reason I flushed all the humans out of the room is, either there are still djevels in the intel services, or the humans have decided to play politics. Again."

  "They'd play politics with this?" Estrella said, looking shocked.

  "Of course they would! A major demon breakout makes Sean look bad. It makes the lions look bad, it even makes Steve and the president look bad. You have to understand, the amount of power the kid has taken on here is enormous! Power creates envy, and we goblins know all about envy. That's how we make our living, after all!

  "So these other politicians, these public 'servants', they see the kid with that kind of power, and they want a piece of it—if not all of it—and if they can't grab a piece of it for themselves, they're going to try to take away as much of it as they can from him while knocking everyone down a few pegs in the process!"

  "Aren't they afraid they'll die?"

  Sawyer snorted. "Hardly. You can believe they'll all be nicely protected in some enclave that has all sorts of magical and mechanical protections. Hell, I bet they even have lycans guarding them. They just make sure none of them know they're trying to sabotage the kid."

  "Because that would be fatal," Adam growled.

  "Exactly!" Sawyer said with a scowl. "And it's going to be my job to get the word out on everyone involved, so they can be dealt with. That, or deal with them myself. I think I'm going to advise Sean to ban all humans from these meetings, and have someone bite Hogan and Dougherty."

  "Wait, what?" Vincent said.

  "Magic users don't count as human," Sawyer said, and then grinned. "I mean, why would I want to insult humans with the association?"

  Vincent sighed and shook his head.

  "What happened with the Space Force's satellites?" Chad asked.

  "No idea," Sawyer said. "That's why I sent Bill in there. Until we have a better idea of what's going on, I can't make any plans to deal with it."

  "Sean was definitely right to have me call you," Roxy said with a smile.

  "Course he was! The kid's got good instincts, and he knows nobody can outwit ole' Sawyer when he's on the job."

  "Would you have really shot her, Sawyer?" Claudia asked.

  "If I'd thought she was lying to me? Yeah, I woulda had to. If you look outside the door, I got a body bag stashed there so we could wrap her up before she bled all over everything. These clothes ain't a costume; ask Cali about the duties of a goblin prince some time. I put these on so everyone would know I was serious."

  "If there are no more questions, I'd like to recall assets and get them set back up over the Demon Exclusion Zone," Lieutenant Colonel Davies said.

  "That sounds like a good idea. Adam? If you could go with him and ride herd on any interference he might get?"

  Adam nodded and stood up immediately. "You got it, Sawyer."

  "Everyone else," Sawyer said, looking around the room, "can go. But keep your eyes open. It looks like the whole 'us versus them' thing might be coming back sooner than the kid expected."

  "Wait, Sean expected this?" Vincent said as he stood up.

  "He expected something like this. Yeah, we may be heroes now to the average schlub in the streets, but the folks in the halls of power? They're gonna try to figure out how to make as much of our power, their power. You might want to warn yer boss, Vincent. I know the kid wouldn't be happy if anything bad should happen to you folks over at Sapientia or the guys over at Eruditio."

  Vincent nodded. "I will, and as much as it always pains me to say it, thank you, Sawyer."

  Sawyer's face split into a big smile. "Ah, there's no sweeter sound in the world than hearing a magic user admit he owes me."

  "I didn't say that!" Vincent said with another sigh and a shake of his head.

  "Sure, ya' didn't!" Sawyer laughed.

  Roxy sat there with Estrella, watching as everyone left the room but Chad, who showed his aide out and closed the door, then came back to take the chair next to Sawyer, sitting across from Roxy and Estrella.

  "Okay, so what's our next move?"

  "What, don't you want to wait and see what I find out?" Sawyer asked with an insincere look of innocence on his face.

  "Sawyer, waiting is for suckers, you know that! I also know you're already working on a solution since we can't trust them anymore. So, let's hear it."

  Sawyer smiled. "That's why I like you, Chad; you're always thinking way ahead of the rest of them."

  "And because I don't mind admitting you're probably the only one around here who's my equal. So, give."

  Sawyer snickered and glanced back and forth with a conspiring look on his face.

  "We need our own intelligence satellite."

  "What! We can't afford that!" Roxy said with a shocked look on her face.

  Chad suddenly laughed. "Oh, man, I wish John were here! Sawyer, you are the goblin!"

  "Huh?" Roxy asked, looking back and forth.

  "Sawyer isn't talking about buying a satellite! He's talking about stealing one!"

  "How the hell do you steal a satellite?" Estrella asked. "Aren't they supposed to be up in space? Like, really far?"

  "Stealing it isn't the hard part; the hard part is making sure they can't steal it back!" Sawyer said with a crooked smile.

  "Sawyer, you're a genius," Chad said, shaking his head. "Thank god you're on our side. Now, what do you need to make it happen?"

  "If you'll excuse me," Roxy said, getting up, "I need to light some fires under some asses. If you need help with anything, call me."

  Grabbing Estrella, she left the two of them planning the "heist of the century" as Sawyer was already calling it.

  "How do you steal a satellite?" Estrella asked after they'd left the room.

  "Beats me," Roxy said, shaking her head, "but if anybody can steal one, it'll be Sawyer."

  #

  Sean was up near the front of the column as they drove south as fast as driver of the first vehicle, one of the local scouts, could go. Sure enough, the djevels were heading to the south of Fort 71, and while there were some strays here and there that the folks at the rear of the column were dealing with, there was a pitched battle going on well west of the border wall to stop the djevel advance before it got there.

  Unfortunately, 1,000 soldiers against a 20,000-strong djevel army wasn't the best of odds. Sean had called Colonel Curtis at Fort 73 and gone over the game plan. He'd ordered Fort 72 to send everyone north and leave the bare minimum to hold the fort, then ordered Colonel Curtis to turn out everyone he could spare and have them run up to support 72's people as they dug in and tried to set up defenses, while the colonel's attack helicopters attacked the front lines of the approaching horde in an attempt to slow them down.

  Sean's goal, however, lay closer to the rear of the attacking army. His problem was reliable intelligence. He was no longer feeling confident about what the satellite feed, the one being fed through his tablet, was showing him, especially when that feed was going to go away soon, as the satellite moved out of range, and they lost it for about an hour.

  No one had made him aware of any gaps in coverage.

  No one had told him that the drones they'd been using had all been 'repurposed' to 'higher-priority' duties.

  Roxy's brief report on what Sawyer had found out hadn't made him very happy. There would be some severe recriminations when he got home, but right now, he had a battle to win.

  Sean continued to scan the horizon with his binoculars, along with all the other soldiers standing in the turrets of the Humvees, Strykers, and other vehicles. They had a fair number of technicals with them now, a 'technical' being a Toyota Pickup, or what everyone else in the world called a 'Hilux'.

  The number of small bands and lone djevels they were passing were increasing, the gunners in the technicals and some of the troops in the other vehicles picking them off as they passed through them.

  The iron spikes on the bumpers and the ones sticking off the lug nuts of the wheels—not unlike the tractor-trailers on the highways used, if a little bit longer, were also doing a number on the djevels, as some of the drivers simply ran over the singletons as they drove across the rough terrain.

  "We need more Strykers and the like out here," Sean grumbled as he looked around. The Bradleys and other tracked vehicles weren't as fast on the terrain out here, so they hadn't been deployed. The Strykers had turned out to be highly suited for the work, but the noise had been a problem, so Sean had devised a solution—an amulet that could be affixed to the vehicle that limited the decibel level of the engine. Problem was, they were slow to produce, and had slowed down the introduction of the vehicles to the field.

  That one at least was on him; he'd already messaged Stewart and told him to build another machine. Stewart had turned out to be even more of a gift than expected. Part of that was Rachel; she might not be able to cast magic, but when it came to designing spells and Sean's machines, she was brilliant. She was also a natural when it came to cheating, which of course made absolute sense when Sean had thought about it. So she could work the problems, while Stewart enchanted the machines and items.

  "Stop!" the lookout from the lead vehicle called over the comms circuit, and they quickly did just that, Chet pulling their Humvee up beside the lead scout vehicle at the top of a small rise. The djevel army was laid out before them, and thankfully, the satellite image he'd been going off of was correct; this was the tail end of them.

  Scanning over the mass of them, Sean quickly found what he was looking for: the djevel spurring them on.

  "So, is it a lord?" Travis asked from the passenger seat, using his own binoculars. "'Cause that sure don't look like no prince."

  Sean was doing his best to find the leader in the group near the rear, trying to find the hersker, or djevel lord. So far he'd picked out two biskops and several ridders.

  "Something looks odd about this," Sean said, then keyed the comm circuit. "This is Sean, of those djevels you've all been shooting up, how many of them were gnashers, and how many were bonde? And did anybody see any råge?"

  Sean listened with half an ear as the reports quickly came in. Mostly it had been gnashers, a few bonde, and nothing beyond that.

  "What's up, Sean?" Lieutenant Vance asked over comms.

  "There aren't enough biskops and ridders, plus there are way too many gnashers and not enough bonde down there," Sean said, still scanning the djevels, which apparently hadn't even noticed the group of Humvees and armored vehicles sitting on the ridgeline less than a half mile away.

  "So we got the B-team?" Dean quipped from the back of the Humvee, where only Sean and those in his vehicle could hear him.

  "I think the biskop wearing that weird headdress is the one in charge," one of the scouts reported over the comms.