As soon as he received the approval from the NMWA, the Colonel immediately set to work. He knew he didn't have much time: he had to act immediately and take over the Eternal Palace as soon as possible.

The Colonel was in no doubt that after the NMWA's attack, the dinosaurs would show their true nature as brutal killers and attack Beleriard. Even if the NMWA's fleet could keep them busy, even a small handful of those monsters could have exterminated tens of thousands of people. The nation had to rely on NMWA protection right away, before the dinosaurs made any move.

The Colonel gathered his soldiers in his base and made his speech: "Brothers! Today is the big day! We will finally get rid of this plague. Today we will conquer the Eternal Palace and bring the nation back on track. There will be no more room for dinosaur sympathizers; the country will once again take sides with the species to which we belong, humanity! Because humans are the only ones who have the right to dictate the law on this planet. It was a human who allowed the dinosaurs to get this far, if it weren't for that damn Henry Wu none of this would have ever happened! We humans are an extremely young species, but in this short period of time we have achieved things that no one else has ever dreamed of! We walked on the moon and broke the atom, and now we also have the power to control life! So we are the ones who deserve to be the pinnacle of the food chain, not stupid lizards who know nothing of civilization!"

His soldiers cheered in ecstasy, but the Colonel didn't stop: "Right now, our brothers, our real brothers who don't sympathize with dinosaurs, are fighting south to eradicate this plague! The time has come to do our part. We will conquer the Eternal Palace and allow the NMWA to move its weapons here! We will defeat those dinosaurs with a pincer attack! Those beasts will see nothing but a shower of bullets and missiles above them! We will defeat them! We are the beginning and the end!"

"WE ARE THE BEGINNING AND THE END!" the soldiers all together shouted, waving their rifles.

The Colonel looked at his soldiers with satisfaction. Their eyes burned with passion. Many of them had recently been civilians, but now they wanted nothing more than to fight. They would become his invincible sword with which he would end the rule of that accursed dinosaur sympathizer. With his phone he quickly sent a message to all the other outposts giving the order to attack: it was time to start the battle.

*********

"The Colonel has given his assent!" Jay yelled. "Come on guys! Let's go give those bastards a good lesson!"

The soldiers inside the shed didn't have to heard it a second time and began to take up arms. All of them had studied the itinerary and knew what they had to do. They knew there was a possibility of not returning alive from that mission: after all, they were about to fight against the government and the army. But all of them were ready to sacrifice themselves for the greater good.

Jay was about to order them to come out and start the attack, but he realized a detail: "Where has my cell phone gone?"

He had put his phone back in his pocket immediately after receiving the colonel's approval, so that he could communicate any developments in the operation or receive further orders, but now it was gone.

"Hey, mine too!" one of the soldiers exclaimed.

"Mine too!"

"But what does it mean?"

Jay bit his lip. It was impossible that all one hundred people in the shed had lost their cell phones completely. "What the hell…?"

"Are you looking for something, gentlemen?"

Everyone looked up. A small chicken-sized animal with a slight crest on its head was perched on a beam in the ceiling. "An oviraptor!" someone yelled.

"My name is Steel, good man. Please remember that" the dinosaur said, then showed a plastic bag full of telephones, two-way radios and communication devices. "I assume these are yours. You shouldn't leave things lying around... there are many thieves around here"

"Shoot him!" Jay growled furiously.

The oviraptor shook his head. "Go ahead, if you want, but if I were you I would spare the bullets... you will need them"

"What are you... gooo!" Jay was only able to emit guttural ground when something pierced his neck from side to side. The man felt himself lifted from the ground and just emitted a few spasms before falling into the arms of death.

The rest of the soldiers turned alerted by the sound emitted by their commander, only to see him and six other men impaled by the huge claws of a therizinosaurus. The animal was at least four meters tall and was covered in armor that seemed very thick. "Your leader is dead" the creature said. "Give up now and submit to the law of this country, or you will be treated as a rebel and we will be entitled to kill you. It's your only chance"

"Shut up, monster!" at least twenty people screamed starting to shoot, but the bullets bounced off the armor without even touching the therizinosaurus.

"So this is your choice. Good!" exclaimed the animal, who did not seem disappointed at all. "Let the extermination begin! Don't let anyone escape!"

Under the astonished gazes of all four other dinosaurs they appeared out of nowhere. There were a streaked dinosaur, a tyrannotitan, an iguanodon and an euplocephalus. All of them were covered in thick armor and as soon as they appeared they charged the humans like elephants.

The weak resistance provided by the humans was useless. Forty of them were eliminated in less than a second, crushed under the mighty legs of the dinosaurs, and another thirty followed them to the grave soon after due to the dinosaurs' fangs, tails, horns and claws. The bullets and weapons proved useless. Among the survivors some mad fanatic tried to run against them to fight, but most tried to escape. However, none of them went far: for some reason, the dinosaurs kept disappearing in one place and appearing in another!

"What... can you teleport, you stupid tyrannosaurus!?" someone exclaimed after the great theropod had appeared before him three times.

"Tyrannosaurus?" The animal seemed offended. "I'm a tyrannotitan, you idiot!"

"Who cares!" the human roared and then opened fire. The dinosaur didn't have to do anything: the bullets bounced off his armor and one of them hit the human in the face, killing him on the spot. The tyrannotitan looked at his corpse for a moment, somewhat disappointed, then abandoned it and ran to kill other humans.

Within just four minutes, all one hundred rebels from that outpost had been eliminated. "We did our job" the therizinosaurus confirmed as he checked for any survivors.

All that had happened was, of course, Snock's strategy. Over the preceding days Rambo and his intelligence network had tracked down all the outposts and so Snock had been able to field some of his underlings to be able to carry out a large-scale surprise attack and eliminate most of the rebels in one fell swoop. . There was no need for many soldiers: for the occasion Sobek had provided him with a good set of armor, so in fact even a single dinosaur could have eliminated an entire outpost. To prevent anyone from escaping, however, Snock had decided to send a team of five or six individuals to each outpost. Furthermore, it was necessary to deprive the rebels of their means of communication before carrying out the attack, or they could have warned the other outposts or worse still the Colonel.

That scene was repeated in many other parts of the city. While the rebels were still preparing to leave, the dinosaurs took them all out one by one. The civilian population did not even notice what had happened: the only signs of that carnage were some noises that people attributed to some stupid game of street criminals.

In just ten minutes, twenty-one outposts had been destroyed and more than two-thirds of the rebels had been eliminated. Now the Beleriard army had to deal only with the Colonel and the men who followed him.

*********

The Colonel was marching down the city highway leading his army. Behind him there were at least nine hundred people. Although he had divided his army into various outposts he had wanted to keep many more men with him.

The march continued uninterrupted for almost half an hour. The people on the street had retreated to their homes; the Colonel knew that a state of emergency had probably already been proclaimed, but he didn't care. At that moment, surely the police and the army were too busy managing the other outposts.

As evidence of his thoughts, all that the army could deploy against him was a pathetic contingent of about five hundred men who tried to block their way. The Colonel laughed when he saw them: not only were they outnumbered, but they were worse equipped. The weapons the NMWA had provided him and his rebels were far better than theirs.

"Stop! Don't you dare advance or we'll open fire!" one of the soldiers ordered.

"You'll open fire? Tsk!" one of the Colonel's men mocked him. "We will be the ones to open fire on you!" and so saying he fired a shot; fortunately the soldier had time to protect himself with the riot shield.

The Colonel stepped forward. "We are not barbarians. We are not going to kill our human brothers if we can avoid it. Don't waste your lives unnecessarily and join us! Together, we will eliminate this threat once and for all and create a government that cares about the lives of humans, not that of other species! It is we who must determine our actions, not the dinosaurs! We are the beginning and the end!"

"WE ARE THE BEGINNING AND THE END!" the rebels roared behind him.

The soldiers did not move. The Colonel raised an eyebrow. He had expected that after his speech they would have given up: beyond their personal ideology, why would they have had to continue fighting knowing they were outnumbered and technological?

Then a very burly black man emerged from the wall of soldiers. The Colonel recognized him immediately: it was Abe, the new minister of defense. "That's enough, McCullough! This will be the only warning. Surrender and submit to the law of this country, which perhaps will be kind to you; continue with this madness and I will order my men to open fire!"