Ben stood up and stretched. He was restless, eager to get on the road. But he had promised his people a full week of rest and would hold to that promise. He walked to the huge wall map and studied it for a time. There were several dangerous groups that had sprung up here in Texas. Ned Hawkins and his New Texas Rangers were roaming the state, dealing with them. For all the trouble that had taken place inside what used to be called Texas, this state would probably be the first to re-establish law and order, thanks to people like Ned and those who served with him.
The rest of the country was in chaos—the best word Ben could think of to describe the condition of what used to be the United States of America.
Almost all of the carefully set up Rebel outposts had been overrun by the gangs of thugs and punks and trash that had surfaced while the Rebels were fighting Hoffman and his Nazis.
“Bastards,” Ben muttered.
“Who are you cursing now, Raines?” Doctor Chase asked, stepping into the office. “Oh, don’t let me stop you from venting your spleen. It’s good for you.”
Ben turned and smiled at his long-time friend. Chase was too old for the field—he had to be in his seventies—but he refused to leave the field, and Ben had stopped asking him to do so.
“Fresh pot of coffee over there,” Ben said, pointing.
Chase poured a cup of black coffee. He sat down in front of the desk and watched Ben fidget for a moment. “Getting restless, are we?”
“Yes,” Ben admitted, cutting his eyes to his personal team as they entered the office and spread out. Jersey was always close, her CAR ready.
“Well, calm yourself. The people need their promised week of rest.” He looked at Jersey, looking at him. “Girl, don’t you ever relax your guard?”
“No,” she told him, and sat down, her back to a wall.
Chase harrumphed and looked back at Ben. “I saw you working while I had you in the hospital. Have you reorganized?”
“I’m almost through. Very few changes. I’m pretty much going to leave things as they are.” He looked at Corrie. “You have news, Corrie?”
“I just spoke with Thermopolis. “He’s all set up back in Arkansas. Fully operational. They had to do a little ass-kicking but nothing serious.”
Ben nodded.
Beth, Ben’s organizer, said, “I’ll have situation reports ready for you in a few minutes. We’re spread pretty thin, General.”
“The Hummer is sittin’ on ready, General,” Coop, Ben’s driver said. “It’s been completely reworked, inside and out.”
“My Thompson?”
“Ready,” Jersey said. “Is there an original part left in that thing, General?”
Ben laughed. “I doubt it. It won’t qualify as an antique.”
“You would,” Chase muttered, and left the room.
“Crusty old bastard,” Jersey said.
“I heard that, you damn Apache heathen!” Chase roared from the outside.
“Go sit on a candlestick,” Jersey retorted.
Ben sat down, laughing so hard he had to wipe his eyes. Conditions were back to normal.
Rebel planes were kept busy that week of rest for the ground troops. They flew in supplies to a dozen different locations around the country, working around the clock. Those men and women who had chosen a life of crime and had staked out parts of the nation as their own little kingdoms heard the roaring of engines overhead and knew something was up . . . and that something was not going to be good for them.
“That honky, racist, pig bastard Raines is coming after us, “Bandar told his people. “We’ve got to be ready for them.”
“That damn nigger-lovin’ Ben Raines is gettin’ ready to move against us,” Carl Nations told his people. “It’s root hog or die time.”
No one could really fathom Ben. One just could not fit Ben Raines or his Rebels into any particular political slot. The Rebels were of all colors, all races, all religions. But first, last, and always, they were Americans, even though the nation of America, per se, no longer existed. Many Rebels did not agree with Ben’s philosophy one hundred percent, but they all agreed with it in general.
It was a hard time, and it took hard people to wage the long fight to bring the nation back into some sort of structured order. All Rebels shared many philosophical points; but all shared one thing in common: they were not so much interested in the fine points of law as they were in order and justice. Nearly all could clearly remember when criminals had more rights than the law abiding. That was never going to happen again.
On the fifth day of the Rebels’ stand-down, in every encampment around the country, Rebels were getting restless, itching to get back into the fight. Those that had family and friends back in Base Camp One had written their letters. They had cleaned their weapons and washed their clothing and taken care of equipment. The tanks and trucks and APCs and Bradley Fighting Vehicles and HumVees were ready to roll.
On the sixth day, a Saturday, Ben told Corrie, “Radio all the batt coms to have religious services early tomorrow and make sure all the Rebels know when and where. We roll at 0900.”
“Yes, sir. What’s our objective, General?”
“That nut up in Oklahoma. Jesse what’s-his-name.”
“Jesse Boston.”
“Yeah, Boston.” Ben picked up the file on Jesse Boston and studied it. Most of the information the Rebels had gathered on the various warlords and self-proclaimed rulers had come from victims of their brutality or from members who had been captured . . . usually the latter. Jesse Boston. Alias. Real name unknown. Age, approximately thirty-five. Boasts of having spent more time in prison than out. Convicted murderer and thief. Was in prison when Great War broke out. Escaped in the confusion and since that time has bragged of all the evil deeds he’s done. He and his bunch overran and took over a small town southwest of Oklahoma City.”
Ben closed the folder. “Well, now, Mister Boston,” he said softly. “We’ll just see about bringing your little empire down around your ears.” He raised his voice and said, “Corrie? I want Buddy’s 8 Battalion and Jim Peters’s 14 Battalion with my 1 Battalion on this run.”
“They’re both short, sir.”
“I know it. Our usual complement of artillery will roll with us.”
“Right, sir.”
“Beth, plot us a course.”
“I already have, sir.”
Ben looked over at her. “Now, just how did you know where we were going? I didn’t know myself until this morning.”
“I guessed.” She smiled. “I know the type of person you dislike the most. I have compiled a listing over the years, ranking the types from one to ten, one being the highest. Jesse Boston tops the list.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?”
Beth smiled coyly and returned to writing in her ledger.
Ben stood up and walked to the door. Jersey stepped in front of him, blocking his way. “Aren’t you forgetting something, General?”
“What?”
Cooper tossed Jersey Ben’s Thompson, then web belt with ammo pouch. She handed the articles to him and he dutifully hooked the belt and took his Thompson. “I’m surrounded by a thousand Rebels, Jersey,” Ben said with a smile. “And then, I do have you shadowing me.”
“I don’t have eyes in the back of my head, General,” she replied without cracking a smile.
“Right,” Ben said drily. “Shall we proceed with our walk?”
“Certainly.” She stepped aside.
Father Riley, the Catholic priest assigned to Ben’s 1 Battalion, fell in step with him.
“Padre,” Ben said. “Have you written your sermon for Sunday’s mass yet?”
“Oh, yes. We’re moving out to smite the Philistines hip and thigh?”
“No. But we’re going to kick their asses from here to eternity.”
The priest laughed. “It’s amazing how many more confessions I hear just before a campaign.”
“A person is dead a long time, Padre. I guess,” Ben added. “
Maybe the soul goes to Heaven or Hell or someplace in between at the moment of death. I don’t know and neither does anyone else. Including you.” Ben said the last with a smile.
Father Riley smiled. He wasn’t about to get into an argument with Ben, and he knew that’s what Ben wanted. Ben would argue with a stump . . . and usually win.
Riley looked at Jersey. “I want to hear your confession this evening, young lady.”
“If I have the time,” Jersey hedged.
“She’ll be there,” Ben said. “Cooper will escort her.”
“I’m not Catholic, General!”
“That doesn’t make any difference, does it, Padre?”
“Not a bit.” He looked at Cooper. “I’ll be glad to hear your confession, son.”
“Can I listen?” Jersey asked.
“She can’t listen in, can she, Father?” Cooper asked.
“No,” the priest said, laughing. “I won’t even know it’s you, Cooper.”
“What do I say?” Cooper asked.
“You tell him all your sins, dummy!” Jersey said. “If you’ve been mean to someone, thought bad thoughts about someone, lusted in your heart, you confess it.”
“Then what does the priest do with that information?” Cooper asked.
Jersey, a wicked glint in her dark eyes, whispered in Cooper’s ear: “The priest tells God!”
“I’m in real trouble,” Cooper muttered.
FOUR
The religious services were over, the Rebels mounted up and ready to roll out of the staging area. As was his custom, Ben walked up beside the long lines of trucks and Jeeps and Hummers and tanks. At one time he knew the name of every Rebel in his command. Not so anymore. There were many new faces. Many of those who had survived the assault on the old Tri-States years back were gone. Dead, permanently disabled, retired back to Base Camp One. There were few in the ranks now who had survived the long years of war.
By all rights, Ben should not have been one of those who survived. He was known for taking incredible chances. He’d been shot several times, stabbed more than once, survived assassination attempts, kidnapped, tortured. But he always came through and returned to lead his people. He was back now, leaner and meaner than ever before.
Ben realized he was a living legend, and not just among his troops. The name of Ben Raines was known all over the world. He was equally loved and feared and hated. At the end of the brief but deadly Great War that exploded worldwide, hundreds of thousands of thugs and punks and human slime had roamed the ruins of the nation, preying on the very old, the very young, the sick, the helpless. Ben Raines and his Rebels had tracked them down and killed them.
Now it appeared they had it to do all over again.
Ben walked the line, his Thompson slung, Jersey one step behind him to the left, her M-16 at the ready. Corrie walked beside Jersey, to her right, wearing the backpack radio, headset in place. Beth and Cooper behind them.
As Ben neared the head of the long column, Buddy and Jim Peters joined him. “Scouts out, son?” Ben asked, knowing full well they had been gone for several hours.
“Left two hours ago,” his son acknowledged.
Ben’s 1 Battalion would spearhead, as always, with tanks ranging out ahead of him, between Ben and the scouts, Jim’s battalion in the center of the long column, Buddy’s battalion in the drag. Tanker trucks, carrying fuel, were spaced among the three battalions.
Ben glanced at Cooper and he and Beth ran on ahead, to ready the Hummer. “We should make about a hundred miles today, considering the condition of the roads,” Ben said. “And providing we don’t get our asses ambushed,” he added drily. He looked at Buddy and Jim. “Let’s roll.”
It was slow going. During the year-long battle with Hoffman’s Nazis, many of the bridges and overpasses had been blown by the Rebels to slow the enemy advance. The Rebels made seventy-five miles the first day, fifty miles the second day, and slightly over eighty miles the third day. They encountered no hostile forces.
“We’re going to pass through a small town in the morning that is filled with people who are not going to be thrilled to see us,” Corrie informed Ben that evening.
“Oh?”
“Scouts report that these people don’t even want us to enter their town.”
“Is there a bypass?”
“No, sir.”
“Then we’ll go through the town. Tell the leaders of this group we are not looking for any trouble.”
“They’ve been told that, sir.”
“And?”
“They said to keep out or fight them.”
“Oh, shit! What’s their problem?”
Corrie could not hide her grin.
Ben sighed. “Come on, Corrie. Give.”
“They’re hippies, sir.”
“You’re kidding? Like Thermopolis and his bunch?”
“Sort of. But totally non-violent. They don’t believe in guns or eating meat or wearing leather and things like that.”
“That’s admirable of them. I applaud them for it. But you said they were going to fight us—how?”
“With a protest march.”
“Oh, shit!”
“Yes, sir. At least that.”
* * *
BEN RAINES SUCKS read the white banner with large black words that stretched from one side of the road to the other.
Buddy walked back to his father. “Father, what is that horrible sound coming from the town?”
“Acid rock, son.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Music of the 1960s. Or maybe the ’70s. I wasn’t in the country so I’m not sure.”
“That’s music?”
“They think so. Listen to that chanting.”
“ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR. WE DON’T WANT YOUR FUCKING WAR!”
Buddy could not understand why his father was smiling. “That takes me back,” Ben said.
“Father, this is ridiculous. We’re not asking them to fight with us. We just want to drive through the town.”
“Brace yourself, son. I assure you, you have never seen anything like this. Let’s roll on through.”
BEN RAINES IS A BABY-KILLER, proclaimed another banner, stretched across the old highway.
NIXON EATS SHIT, said another banner.
“Nixon?” Cooper muttered. “Oh, President Nixon. But that was more than thirty years ago!”
“That’s where they’re living, Coop,” Ben told him. “In the past.”
“My God!” Corrie blurted. “Look at that crowd.”
“Thermopolis would love this,” Beth said.
“In a way, he would,” Ben said. “But Therm knows that having freedom sometimes means fighting for it. How did these people escape the Nazis?”
“They ran,” Corrie told him.
“Well, that’s one way to do it.”
MAKE LOVE, NOT WAR, another banner read.
The column inched forward. “Don’t run over anybody,” Ben urged.
Many of the Rebels had their cameras out, taking pictures of the crowd. Most of the hippies were middleaged and beyond.
“This is pathetic,” Beth said.
“Oh, in a way, I suppose it is,” Ben said, taking a flower offered him by a gray-haired man. “Thank you,” Ben told him. “But they’re happy with their way of life and I’ll bet you they have no crime, they’re all healthy and they all work together. I wish the whole world could adopt their ways.”
“That would be neat,” Cooper said. “I wonder if they believe in free love.”
“Boy, it’s back to confession for you,” Jersey told him.
“I’m sorry I brought it up,” Cooper muttered.
“Don’t kill our babies, Ben Raines!” a gray-haired woman shouted, standing close to the Hummer.
“How old is your baby, lady?” Ben asked.
“Forty-one.”
“Incredible,” Ben muttered. “Get us the hell out of here, Cooper.”
“I’m tryin’,” General!”
The town must have held about five hundred aging hippies. Ben had yet to spot one who wasn’t at least sixty years old. And they had blocked the road, standing ten deep.
After a few moments of listening to protest songs that Ben hadn’t heard (thank God) in more than twenty years, he lost his patience. “I’ve had all I can tolerate,” he said. Ben stepped out of the Hummer and let a full clip of .45 caliber slugs cut the air over the heads of the protesters. The line of colorfully dressed men and women broke ranks in one hell of a hurry and cleared the street. Ben got back into the Hummer. “Now drive on through,” he said.
The roads were so bad that the Rebels only made about fifty miles that day before having to pull over for the night. They always stopped early, to give them time to scout the country and set up perimeters, for the land called America was once more enemy territory for the Rebels.
“You think those old hippies will come out here and make trouble?” Cooper asked Ben.
“Oh, no. They made their point, albeit a couple of decades late, and they’ll leave us alone. I’m ninety-nine percent sure of that. I don’t want to hurt any of those people.”
“We going through Dallas or cut around it?” Corrie asked.
“I’m going to let the Scouts answer that,” Ben said. “There shouldn’t be a whole lot left of the city.”
“Negative on Dallas,” the scouts radioed back the next morning. “I get the distinct smell of Creepies.”
“10-9,” Corrie asked for a repeat.
“Creepies. Night People. The smell is strong.”
“I heard it,” Ben said. “Damn!” he whispered the word. “I thought we were through with those cannibalistic bastards. Pull the convoy over, Corrie. Set up for long-range traffic.”
When she was set up, Ben said, “Burst transmission, Corrie. To all batt coms. Inspect the larger towns and cities for Creepies. I think they have returned.”
“Creepies?” General Georgi Striganov said, up in Tennessee.
“Creepies?” Colonel West said, from his location in Iowa.
“Creepies?” Ike said. “Again?”
“I thought we wiped them out?” Thermopolis said, from his HQ Company location in Arkansas.
Treason in the Ashes Page 3