Ike rolled his eyes and looked toward the ceiling. Georgi looked embarrassed. Buddy quickly began studying his big hands. Pat O’Shea, the carrot-topped, freckle-faced, wild Irishman who commanded 10 Battalion ducked his head and took a sip of whiskey from a small flask.
“See that they’re supplied,” Ben ordered. “Promptly.”
Ben had blown the theory right out the window that women could not perform well in combat. Two of his batt coms were women, and many of his most feared Scouts, Night-fighters, Pathfinders, and Rat Pack members were women. The female motorcycle Rebels, called the Sisters, were under the command of Wanda. And they were savage fighters.
“Yes, sir,” Corrie said with a smile.
“You find something amusing about all this?” Ben demanded.
She laughed at his expression. “Good to have you back with us, General.”
Ben smiled. “It’s good to be back.” To the room of batt coms: “Are we going to have to regroup and redefine battalions, people?”
Ike shook his graying head. “I don’t think so, Ben. Beth has prepared a list of all battalions and their strength. But General Payon has taken his Mexican troops back across the border to deal with what is left of Hoffman’s people. So you can see that we’re really cut down in size.”
“Casualties?” Ben asked softly.
“Thirty to thirty-five percent of Rebels dead or unaccounted for,” Ike said without hesitation.
“Damn!” Ben let the word explode from his mouth.
For a man pushing middle age hard, Ben was in excellent physical shape, still possessing enormous upper body strength and maintaining a trim waistline. His thick hair was cut short, and now salt-and-pepper. He was not handsome in the pretty-boy way, but more a man’s man with rugged good looks. He was also very much a woman’s man. He had known for a long time that his personal bodyguard, the beautiful, dark-eyed, part-Apache, Little Jersey, was in love with him. But Ben had let that remain strictly platonic, and always would. Jersey knew that too, and contented herself with just being close to the man.
Ben had suffered through several May/September romances, and knew they seldom worked. He had buried the only woman he had ever truly loved, Jerre, on a lonely windswept hill in the Northwest, after a particularly brutal campaign. The entire Rebel camp knew of their years-long stormy and rocky relationship. They also knew it was a closed book.
“Get some rest,” Ben abruptly ended the meeting. “In the morning, all you batt coms list your needed supplies and start them moving toward your location. I don’t want anybody to do anything except rest and relax for a week. It’s going to take me that long to assess the situation and make plans.” He paused and grinned. “And for me to get myself squared away. I’ll see you all at breakfast. Dismissed.”
As was his custom, Ben was up long before dawn, walking the silent camp. Jersey had alerted the sentries that Ben would be taking his walk shortly—so easy with the trigger fingers. He had slept soundly for seven hours—about two hours more than what he usually got—and awakened refreshed. He showered and shaved and dressed in clean BDUs. Ben wandered to the mess area and got a mug of coffee. He knew Jersey, Beth, Corrie, and Cooper were all around him, but leaving him alone until he signaled he wanted company.
Ben sat down on the tailgate of a pickup truck, rolled a cigarette, and smoked, drank his coffee, and let his thoughts wander.
After his meeting with the batt coms, he had gone over field reports. The Rebels were in bad shape. The worst they’d been in a long time. They were not demoralized, not since his return, anyway. They were just tired. Battle weary.
Ben wandered back to the mess and got a coffee refill and returned to the truck tailgate. He was lost in memory, thinking back over the years. Remembering the final year before the collapse.
The end came during the last few years of the millennium. History clearly points out that the last decade of any millennium is always the most violent, the most volatile, the most unpredictable, the most subject to tumultuous change.
History sure was right.
America had become embroiled in other countries’ civil wars around the globe. And Americans were very weary of being the world’s policeman. America had troops in Haiti, several countries in Africa, Central America, and we had thousands of troops in Eastern Europe. And, Ben thought, we shouldn’t have been in any of those countries.
Americans were being taxed to the point of open rebellion. Crime had soared to an unprecedented level. Gangs roamed the cities and had spread out into the smaller rural communities. And still the petunia-plucking liberals in congress refused to allow the law-abiding, tax-paying citizens to protect themselves adequately. God forbid a person should take a life just to protect his own, or the lives of his or her family, and under no circumstances should lethal force ever, ever, ever, be used just to protect property. How awful! Dreadful.
Like so many others, Ben had sealed up his guns in weatherproof containers and buried them. He recalled looking toward Washington and the Democratic president who had signed the bill and said, “Fuck you all!”
Jails and prisons were filled beyond capacity. Unemployment was high. Discontent among the hardworking, over-taxed Americans was running at a fever pitch. And there appeared to be no end in sight to how far the liberals would go to disarm law-abiding Americans and kiss the ass of the criminals.
“We must give the oppressed and the poor and those whose propensity it is to break the law more money,” cooed the liberals.
Taxes went up again.
The president grinned and ate another Big Mac.
“Sit down,” said his wife, the unelected czarina of the nation. “You look stupid.”
For once she was right.
The American people (those who never did believe in Camelot) soon learned that the President of the United States, nearing the end of his first term, and elected because of his promises to reduce government, lower taxes, provide all things to everybody whenever they wanted it (all without raising taxes) had lied every time he’d opened his mouth on the campaign trail.
So what else is new?
It had long been said that if five million taxpayers stopped paying taxes, the government would soon cease to function. A grass-roots movement was started to do just that. Thousands signed up and thousands soon became about ten million with the majority of them refusing to pay taxes according to the current tax structure, which by now was not just the highest in the nation’s history, it was obscene.
The government threatened to put them all in jail. But that was a hollow threat and those in the tax revolt knew it. There was no place to put hundreds of thousands of men and women.
“We’ll pay fifteen percent of our gross income,” the leaders of the Fair Taxation movement said. “No deductions. But we won’t pay over fifteen percent.”
The Federal government sent in agents to crush the movement. But this time the American people were determined to stand their ground and fight for what they believed was right and just and fair. Several thousand heretofore tax-paying and law-abiding citizens were shot to death and many, many more were wounded during the nationwide raids. Men, women, and children.
The men and women who had joined the fair taxation movement had not done so without expert study of what it would take to run the government and fund what they believed were needed programs. Some programs were going to be cut down in size, only a few would be cut out altogether. Pork barrel programs and general government waste would have been hard hit. Government programs would not be run by government employees, but by retired members of the business community and volunteers. Economists had proven time and time again that more revenue would be collected for the government’s coffers by a flat income tax for everyone, with no exceptions and no deductions. That’s all the members of the Fair Taxation movement wanted: for everyone to pay their fair share.
And they were, by God, not going to pay any more income tax until that happened.
Then the president ordered feder
al agents to move in and seize the members’ property and possessions for back taxes, and to try to physically arrest the members.
It was by far the worst decision any sitting president had ever made.
The Fair Taxation members chose to defend their property and themselves. And why not? It was their property. They worked for it. The federal government had no right to attempt to take it from them by force.
After hundreds of bloody shoot-outs all across the nation, dozens of them in every state, many of the FBI, ATF, Secret Service, IRS, Justice Department agents, and Federal Marshals threw down their badges and said, “No more.” They were sickened by the sight of dead children, sprawled in pools of blood, lying by their parents’ side. Dead parents, shot to death by federal agents. Dead parents who had broken . . . what laws?
The President of the United States then went on TV and said that he was just, “Terribly, terribly sorry about all this violence. But if the men and women who were killed had obeyed the law, none of this would have happened. And,” he added, holding up a finger, “if the American people had turned in their guns as had been ordered by new federal legislation, those poor children would still be alive.”
That is liberal logic at work, folks. Go figure.
Then one of the president’s aides, who was just barely old enough to shave, took his Walkman earplug out of his ear (where he had been listening to a rap song titled “Kill the Pigs and Rape the Bitches”), handed the president a Twinkie and the press conference was over.
But this time it backfired. The nation’s press finally got around to doing some unbiased public opinion polls and found the majority of Americans shocked and sickened by the sight of dead children and the cold, savage callousness of federal agents. The American people were aroused to a point unequalled in American history.
Many Americans began calling for the president to be impeached. Many more began arming themselves, openly defying the new federal anti-gun laws. Others openly signed on with the Fair Taxation movement. Still others called for calm and for a total overhaul of the machinery of government in general and for revamping the tax system in particular—go with a flat tax for a couple of years. See if it will work.
It would have worked. But it was too late. It was just too late. Americans began choosing sides, and this time bullets would replace words.
Revolution was in the air. Not just in America, but all around the world.
Ben Raines sat in his house, in his easy chair, and watched the news on TV. He lifted a martini glass toward the set. “It really isn’t your fault, Mister Pres, but you’re going to get the blame for it. Not that it’s going to make any difference in the long run. It’s all over.”
Ben went outside and dug up his cached guns.
Some say that the President of the United States broke under the strain. No one will ever know for sure because the whole goddamn world blew up twenty-four hours later. The only thing that history recorded about that last day is that the President of the United States had a meeting with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The meeting was tape-recorded and for a time was preserved and removed to the new Capital of Richmond, Virginia after Washington, D.C. took a direct hit during the limited nuclear strikes exchanged between various countries around the world. The tape was lost the year after the move.
“I want troops sent in to put down those pockets of resistance around the country,” he told the General.
“No,” the Chairman of the JCs said. “You won’t use my people to kill any more American civilians.”
“I gave you an order.”
“And I said no.”
“You’re fired!” the Commander in Chief shouted.
“All right,” the general said with a smile. “Throw me out of your office.”
The president wasn’t about to tangle with the general, even though the general was a good ten years older than the president. The pres did not want to get the shit beat out of him.
The president buzzed for security. None came. He stalked to the door of the Oval Office and looked up and down the hall, expecting to see his Secret Service guards. Instead, he saw armed Marines, Army Rangers, and Navy SEALs.
The Secret Service was not going to take part in the killing of more American citizens. They had met with the Joint Chiefs and bowed out.
For the first time in the nation’s history, a coup d’etat was taking place in America.
The president returned to his desk and sat down. He stared at the general for a moment, then sighed. “I only wanted what was best for all.”
“I know that, Mister President. But you should have known that the nation cannot afford to be all things to everyone.”
“We are our brothers’ keepers,” the pres went biblical.
“Horseshit!” the military man, totally worldly and one hundred percent realist, replied.
“You can’t hope to get away with this.”
“I wish to God I didn’t have to.”
“The American people elected me.”
“Not the majority of them,” the general reminded him. “And those who voted for you certainly didn’t think you would order children butchered.”
“I didn’t want that to happen. My God, what kind of a man do you think I am?”
“One who is out of a job,” General Harold Coyle replied.
THREE
Corrie walked over to Ben and broke into his thoughts. “General Payon just radioed in, sir. Jesus Hoffman is dead. Positively identified. Ecuadoran troops shot down the plane he was in. Hoffman and nearly all of his top people dead.”
“That’s the good news.” Ben laughed. “Now tell me the bad news.”
She smiled in the murky light of pre-dawn. “Heavily armed gangs all over the nation. Hundreds of thousands of men and women. Not like the ones we kicked ass before. These are para-military types. Most of them, anyway. Disciplined, organized, and well-trained.”
“Where the hell did they come from?”
“Doctor Chase has a theory about that.”
“Doctor Chase has a theory about everything. He once told me that rice has no nutritional value.”
“Doctor Chase hates rice.”
“I know. That’s why he said it. Go on.”
“He thinks that many of these people are thugs and the like who have managed to escape from foreign countries and make their way over here. Once here, they organized, stayed low, and began training their people. Now they’re surfacing.”
“I don’t doubt that’s part of it. Have you learned anything about what is happening in Africa?”
“Everything bad you can possibly imagine.”
“That bad, huh?”
“That bad.”
“I predicted that, too,” Ben muttered.
“Yes, sir. I know. In a book of yours called Out of the Darkness.”
“You read it?”
“Yes, sir. Enjoyed it immensely.”
“I haven’t seen a copy of that book in years.”
“All your books have been reprinted and have been required high school reading for the past two years,” Corrie said, stepping back.
“They what?” Ben shouted, spilling coffee down the front of his shirt.
Rebels began running out of tents, scrambling from under six-bys and other heavy vehicles, all armed and racing toward the general.
“Relax,” Ben shouted. “Stand easy. Everything is all right. Go get breakfast.” He turned to Corrie. “Some of those books are damned sexy, Corrie. Whose bright idea was this?”
“General Jefferys. He had people edit out the rough spots, though.” She grinned. “But not in the copy I have.”
“Why wasn’t I told about this?”
“Because Cecil is in charge of public education and didn’t feel it necessary,” Doctor Lamar Chase said, walking up. “You should be flattered, Ben. It’s not every day that a writer of such dubious pulp that you managed to get published is immortalized.”
“You’re too kind to me, Lamar.”
“I feel charitable this morning. I’ll revert to my normal self by mid-morning, I assure you.”
“With any kind of luck, I’ll be fifty miles away by then.”
Chase grinned. “Sorry. But the only place you’re going is to the hospital.”
“I had a check up yesterday!” Ben protested. “I checked out just fine.”
“A very perfunctory examination. No, Ben. This time you’re going to be in my capable hands.”
“God help me,” Ben muttered. But he knew better than to argue. In almost any army in the world, a doctor can order the captain of a ship off the bridge and to his quarters or sick-bay, ground a pilot, and put a general to bed.
For the next two days, Ben was in the MASH hospital tent, and Doctor Chase put him through a grueling examination. Grudgingly, the doctor admitted that Ben was in excellent health (for a man his age) and released him back to duty.
In his makeshift office, Ben began once more poring over reports. None of them looked good. True, Jesus Hoffman and his goose-stepping, Nazi army had been anti-climactically smashed and ground under the boot-heels of the Rebels and their allies, but in the year it had taken the Rebels to do that, a dozen or more threats to peace and rebuilding and some semblance to order had sprang up.
“It never ends,” Ben muttered. “It just never ends.”
He picked up a wad of reports, dealing with warlords and cults: Al Rogers, who had settled in the midwest part of the nation and boasted an army of five thousand. Dangerous and well-equipped. Bandar Ali Shazam Baroshi, a self-proclaimed black messiah with a following estimated at four to six thousand, also in the midwest part of the nation. Carl Nations, an extremist far to the right, hates people of color, and has a following of several thousand, located in West Virginia. Jeb Moody, located in Central Illinois—following of about five thousand. Political leanings unknown. Carlos Medina, Arizona/New Mexico, militant hispanic. Hates all anglos. Jake Starr, located in what was once called Florida. Drove off or killed all people of color. Strength: about five thousand.
Ben sighed and laid the reports to one side. There were at least two dozen more files on groups still waiting to be read. They could wait for a little while.
Treason in the Ashes Page 2