But they also knew they had but two choices in the matter: surrender or fight. And neither man was about to take surrender under consideration. That was out of the question—unthinkable.
Ben sat quietly, deep in thought, while Cecil made half a dozen quick phone calls. After a few moments, Cecil finished with his last call. He poured a fresh cup of coffee from the carafe and leaned back in his chair.
“Do we unveil our little surprise for the folks, Ben? The men and women we’ve been training are at a razor’s edge and raring to go.”
Ben shook his head. “Not yet. I want to keep the wraps on that for a while longer.”
“I thought you might say that. But I want to ease back on the training just a bit. We’ve been pushing them awfully hard. ”
“All right. Stand them down for a few days. I sure don’t want them over-trained until they lose their edge. When the balloon goes up, they’re going to get all the combat and pressure they want.”
“You know that Osterman doesn’t have much of an air force, Ben.”
“I can assure you she won’t have any when our people get through,” Ben said, accompanying that with a very nasty smile like that of a hungry tiger.
Cecil cautioned his friend—“If she’s stupid enough to start trouble with us—”
“She’ll start it, Cece. If for no other reason than she hates me more than God hates sin.”
“Even if she knows she can’t win? Even if she knows all she’ll accomplish is to destroy North America?”
“All that, Cece. And more. She’s power hungry. Has been all her life. And she professes to hate guns . . . but for years before the Great War she had a concealed carry permit. Packed a .38 in her purse. But was instrumental in leading the fight to disarm Americans.”
Cecil nodded his head. “I remember all that now. Didn’t you and Sugar Babe lock horns on a talk show once?”
Ben laughed as the memory of that came flooding back. “We sure did. I enjoyed that hour program more than I could ever explain. I verbally backed that left-wing bitch into so many corners she thought she was in a maze. She’s hated me intensely ever since.”
“And then the Great War came,” Cecil said softly. “And nothing mattered much for several years.”
“That’s about the size of it, Cece. Nothing mattered much except for staying alive.”
“That and your dream of a better society for those who had a modicum of common sense.”
Ben smiled, drained his coffee mug, pushed back his chair, and stood up. “And we turned that dream into hard reality, didn’t we, ole’ buddy?”
Cece stood up and nodded his head in agreement. “We sure did, Ben. But it’s taken a lot of sweat and blood and cost a lot of lives to keep it alive.”
“It’s going to cost a lot more before we’re through. Get ready for that.”
“I know,” Cece replied in a low voice. “And I think everyone in the SUSA realizes that, too.”
“Let’s get ready for war, Cece.”
“Again,” Cecil said.
“Yes,” Ben said. “Again.
Two
A week passed with no word from those in power outside the borders of the SUSA. Then Beth stuck her head into Ben’s office one morning and said, “Madame President Osterman on the horn, Boss.”
Ben looked up from the mound of paperwork on his desk. “No kidding? Finally. I bet this is going to be a delightful conversation.” He punched the record button on a tape recorder and picked up the receiver. “Good morning, Sugar,” he said cheerfully. “And how are you this morning in the great state of Indiana?”
“I’m fine, Raines,” Claire replied. “Let’s dispense with the small talk and get right down to business, shall we?”
“Suits me, Sugar.”
“Will you stop calling me Sugar, Raines? I detest that nickname, and have all my life.”
“No.”
“No? No, what?”
“I won’t stop calling you Sugar, Sugar.”
“Well then . . . fuck you, Raines.”
“Thanks, Sugar, but I think I’ll pass. Frankly, my dear, you’re just not my type.”
She cussed Ben, loud and long. Madame President Claire ‘Sugar Babe’ Osterman knew all the words and got them all in the right places.
When she paused for breath, Ben asked, “Are you quite finished, Sugar?”
“You’re an asshole, Raines!” Then she let him have it again, putting together another long string of profane words.
“I guess you aren’t finished,” Ben muttered. “Please, do continue.”
“I’m going to see your little private kingdom destroyed, and you in prison, Raines. You’re a traitor.”
“And you’re going to do all that if I don’t do what, Sugar Babe?”
“Dissolve your government, disband your army, and swear allegiance to the United States. The Southern United States is going to rejoin the rest of the states, and this nation is going to be healed.”
“Forget it, Sugar. That isn’t going to happen. The SUSA is here to stay.”
“No way, Raines. You’re going to be nothing more than a small dark blot on history.”
“Sugar, don’t start trouble with us. Let’s see if we can’t work this out, come to some sort of agreement. I see no reason why we can’t co-exist peacefully.”
“I see lots of reasons, Raines. You’ve always been nothing but a troublemaking rabble-rouser. You’ve been stirring up hate and discontent for years. Your damn trashy books started all this. You went on television and radio talk shows and openly supported the militia movement and all those wacky survivalist groups. You’re just another loudmouth, right wing gun nut. You advocated the carrying of firearms. You hated the government and you hated the IRS. You certainly fanned the flames of a tax revolt, and your words got a lot of people hurt and killed and put in prison. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you didn’t have something to do with starting the Great War. It’s certainly something you would do.”
“Are you through, Sugar?”
“No, I’m not, Raines. You’re a jerk, and nothing more than a common criminal. You—”
“Oh, shut up, Sugar!”
That shocked the woman into momentary silence. Then she started sputtering.
“You’re wrong on a lot of counts, Claire,” Ben said. “I never hated the government, and I never hated the IRS. We have to have some sort of method of collecting taxes, and we certainly have to have a government. Without government we’d have anarchy. Without taxes we couldn’t have a government. It was all the government intrusion into private lives that got me up on a soapbox. I didn’t hate the IRS. Those people were just taking orders from the damned politicians. It was the way taxes were collected that burned my butt . . . and you people wouldn’t fix it. And I knew that once people were free to carry guns—with a permit and only after firearms training—many of them wouldn’t. And I was right. We’ve proved that here in the SUSA.”
Claire began stuttering and sputtering once more.
“Goddamnit, Osterman, shut up and let me finish!”
“You’re finished, Raines!” Madame President shouted. “You and your barbaric nation are finished! Believe that if you believe nothing else.”
She slammed the phone down, breaking the connection and leaving Ben holding a buzzing phone.
“Her temper sure hasn’t improved any,” Ben said just as Anna walked into the office.
“Whose temper?” the young woman asked, sitting down in a chair in front of the desk.
“Madame President Osterman.”
“Oh, her. Yes. I went over to the main library yesterday afternoon and did some reading up on that female barracuda. She’s a communist, I think.”
“Socialist, Baby,” Ben corrected.
“So what comes after socialism, Daddy Ben? Communism, that’s what. Look it up in the dictionary . . . I did.”
Ben smiled at the young woman. “You’re right, of course, Anna. But Madame President would be appalled and ve
ry, very angry should anyone accuse her of being a socialist or a communist.”
“You mean she isn’t aware of her political leanings?”
“I don’t think so, Honey. I believe that most ultra liberals don’t understand that they’re flirting with a dangerous form of government.”
“Then they’re stupid people,” Anna said bluntly, in her usual style.
Ben again smiled at his adopted daughter. She was absolutely breathtakingly beautiful, with her blonde hair and pale, pale eyes. “I’ve known many extremely intelligent people who were ultra liberal, Anna. Not only that, or perhaps despite that, they were very decent, caring, and well-meaning people . . . as are most, I believe.”
“Then why do they embrace socialism, if they’re so damn smart?”
“That’s a question I can’t answer. I’ve debated government with many of them countless times. As far as I’m concerned it’s like arguing with a stump, and I’m sure they feel the same about me.”
“But they don’t care one little bit about the rights of those who are politically their opposites, do they?”
“That does appear to be the case.”
“Then to hell with them. They can have their own way of life outside the SUSA, and we’ll have ours here.”
“But they don’t want us to have that, Anna.”
The young woman fixed her pale, icy eyes on Ben. “Then we kill them,” she said very softly.
Ben lost his smile as her words echoed away. Anna’s philosophy of life was very simple: I will harm no one who is not attempting to harm me. I will live honorably and decently, without lying, cheating, or stealing. I will leave you alone, if you will leave me alone. But if you try to force your will on me, if you try to steal from me, I will kill you.
Well, Ben thought, Anna’s philosophy isn’t that far off from those of us who live in the SUSA. She just doesn’t mince words about how she believes, and what she’ll do . . . and she doesn’t bluff about it—ever.
“Daddy Ben,” Anna said, “why didn’t the people fight when the government here in America started to turn socialistic?”
“We tried, Baby. But we couldn’t get organized under one leader and a set of agreed upon goals.”
“Why not?”
“Oh . . . a lot of reasons. Squabbling, for one.”
“Squabbling?”
“Anna, there were several thousand groups in America under various names—militia, survivalist, constitutionalist. You name it, and we had it. But none of them—most of them, I should say—couldn’t or wouldn’t cooperate with each other. A group in Idaho, for example, didn’t like the leader of the group in Illinois, or the group in Texas didn’t like part of the philosophy of the group in Florida, or the group in Arkansas didn’t like the name of the group in New York, or the militia in Michigan didn’t want to be called survivalist like the group in Kansas. It was a mess.”
“How many people were involved in the various groups?”
“Thousands. Men and women of all ages and all backgrounds, education, and vocation. We just couldn’t get organized. And the government. Oh, boy . . . they were spending millions of taxpayer dollars a year investigating and infiltrating the various groups. Government agents snooped around the various chat rooms on the Internet. Agents kicked in doors in the middle of the night and terrorized entire families, killing family pets, puppies and kittens, for no real reason. . . .”
“Why?” Anna asked, her eyes narrowing to slits from undisguised anger at the thought of that type of government sanctioned terrorism.
“Oh, some asshole member of the community turned in a person’s name for having what the press liked to call an ‘arsenal’ of weapons, or because they were a member of some militia or survivalist group. Many of those kick-in-your-door-and-kill-the-family-pet agents were a bunch of sorry ass pricks. I asked an agent one time if his mother had any children that lived. Sure pissed him off.”
Anna laughed. “Were you arrested for saying that?”
“No. But the government had been investigating me for years, anyway. They knew all about me. As one of my friends said, I was ‘one looked at fellow’.”
“So you had to be very careful?”
“I should have been, but I wasn’t all the time. I aired my opinion of the left-wing, ultra liberal assholes in government whenever and wherever I felt like it.”
Anna laughed at Ben’s expression. Ben almost always frowned whenever he thought of liberals. “But you had liberal friends. You told me so.”
“We didn’t discuss politics—ever. The subject was taboo. But in the last few years before the collapse, I had no friends who voted the liberal ticket and espoused ultra liberal views. None.”
“You walked away from them?”
Ben shook his head. “No. They walked away from me. I was coming under too much heat from the feds. There was a lot of misinformation being spread about me . . . none of it good.”
Corrie stuck her head into Ben’s office. “Small numbers of federal troops have been moved to what appear to be staging areas along our borders, Boss.”
“Small numbers?”
“Scouts and intel are saying company size. Does that make any sense to you?”
“In a way, yes. If they spread out, we’ve got to spread out, too, in order to keep an eye on them.” Ben was thoughtful for a few seconds. “But what if many of those so-called troops being deployed are really civilians dressed in cammies? What would that point to?”
By now Ben’s entire team was all in the office. Beth said, “A diversion, perhaps?”
“Yes,” Ben said. “To spread us out as thin as they can and then hit us with a hammer blow where we least expect it, pouring troops across our borders. And not just troops—as many civilians as they can muster after promising them all sorts of wild pie in the sky nonsense. Corrie, get eyes in the sky up ASAP—every available chopper and spotter plane we can get into the air. I want our borders surveilled.”
“Right away.”
Ben picked up the phone. “I’ll brief Cecil and arrange a meeting. I think we’d better bump the country up to a higher readiness alert, too. All leaves canceled immediately. Everybody back to their unit.”
“I wonder why that Sugar Babe person called here last week if she intended to pull something like this all along?” Anna asked.
“My guess would be to offer me the deal she and her buddies had worked out. If I took it—fine. I didn’t. Madame President Sugar Babe knew all along I wouldn’t, so her conscience is clear to start a war with us.”
“I guess I’d better get the wagon serviced as soon as it gets here,” Cooper said.
“It might not arrive before the shooting starts,” Ben cautioned. “I think we’ll be up to our rear ends in fighting before that particular ship gets to port.”
“Here we go again,” Jersey remarked. “It never stops, does it?”
“No,” Ben replied. “And this go-around won’t end it, either.”
“Still predicting worlds of gloom and doom, Raines?” Doctor Chase, the Rebel Chief of Medicine, spoke from the doorway.
Ben looked up at his old friend. “Must be important to get you away from that torture chamber you call a hospital, Lamar. What’s on your mind?”
“Casualties, Raines. At a dozen places along our northern border. I just got that word.”
Ben leaned back in his chair. “They’re probing, Lamar. Trying to find a weak spot. How hard were we hit?”
“A couple of dozen wounded. No dead . . . yet,” he added. “Most of our people suffered only minor wounds.”
Ben picked up his private line, stilling the ringing. He listened for a moment, then spoke a couple of words and hung up. He looked at Lamar. “Federal troops probing at spots along our western borders, too. Couple of wounded, nothing serious. It’s started, folks. Let’s get geared up. Corrie, call Colonel Conners. Tell him to get ready to take the wraps off of our air force and get ready for some action.” Ben smiled. “Let’s see how Sugar Babe likes th
is little surprise.”
Three
“Ben Raines and his followers have control of millions of acres of valuable farm land in the SUSA!” The speaker shouted into the microphone.
The crowd nodded their heads in agreement and muttered words of discontent for their own station in life and condemnation toward Ben and the Rebels. Most were out of work, and blamed Ben and his followers for their own inability to earn a living. That didn’t make much sense, but the SUSA was an easy target.
“Ben Raines is running a dictatorship down there,” the speaker shouted. “He must be stopped, and the land returned to true Americans.”
The crowd cheered and applauded.
“But the government can’t do it by itself,” the speaker told the crowd. “They need your help. After all, it’s your country. It doesn’t belong to Ben Raines and his Rebels.”
The crowd mumbled words of anger. One man called out, “How can we help? We’re not armed. The Rebels are, all of them, from what I’ve heard.”
“We’re not asking you to fight,” the speaker replied. “That is up to the army. And they’ll back you all the way. That is a promise. We’re asking you to settle on the land. Homestead it, stake your claim on what is clearly public lands. The supreme court has ruled on that. It is public land. It belongs to you!” He reached in his pocket and pulled out several sheets of paper, holding them up for all to see. “Here is that ruling . . . and it was a unanimous decision by all nine justices. The land is there, just waiting to be settled. The land now occupied by Ben Raines and his Rebels was taken illegally. Those people are traitors! They have no legal claim to the land they now occupy. It belongs to you.”
There were dozens of speakers holding forth all over that area of land under the rule of Osterman and her party. . . land still referred to as the United States of America. The speakers were working day and night, holding meetings all over the battered and torn nation, organizing thousands and thousands of men and women, readying the eager and very willing civilians to march on the SUSA. What did the civilians have to lose, really, except their lives—and that very real possibility wasn’t brought up by the government organizers. The men and women had no jobs, (there were very few jobs to be had outside the SUSA) and their future looked very bleak indeed.
Hatred in the Ashes Page 3