"What would you suggest, General?" Springfield asked. "Do we put the entire country under martial law?" He had been expecting it, and suspected his chances of explaining the problem to them were close to non-existent, but he had to try. He walked over to a large whiteboard and picked up the remote. Scrolling through a menu, he found what he was looking for. He displayed a large map of the the contiguous states, with only the boundaries and names of the states. Using a stylus he drew a large circle around California and another around the northeast area. He turned back to the table.

"Close to ninety percent of the population lives in the cities," he said. "About eighty million of it here," pointing to the circles. "The total armed forces numbers about two million, or just under. The army, guard and reserves included, is only half of that. You might be able to maintain order, to some degree, in the cities. Or not. I wouldn't want to see it. For the rest of the country, forget it."

"What do you mean, forget it?" Jordan asked. "Out there is where the problem is." There has to be a way to stop it.

Had the situation not been so serious, Anthony would have enjoyed their discomfiture. There really was no solution - the country would soon be in complete chaos if something were not done. And ten times the army they had couldn't deal with it, assuming half the army did not desert and join the rebels.

"Do you have any suggestions?" he asked.

"Why can't State and local law enforcement to contain it?" Jordan asked. "We should have federalized all law enforcement long ago. Can they do nothing?"

"Next to nothing" Anthony said. "Assuming they wanted to. Probably many of them are on the side of the rebels. And in any case there aren't enough. Look..."

He was still standing by the whiteboard, and drew an outline around the interior, excluding the coasts.

"What you call flyover country" he said. "Everything you need to live comes from there, or has to be transported across it. There are thousands of bridges - highway and railroad - almost of all of them running through virtually uninhabited country. The same goes for electricity, and water for most of the large metro areas. Take out a bridge and trains or trucks don't move on that line or road for days or weeks. One of those transmission towers goes down and the lights go off in the cities. You would have occupy every square mile, three million square miles, to keep it all secure."

MacArthur's Freehold (Enak Nomolos)