Courage In The Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  “If I were trapped in that city,” said Buddy at a meeting of commanders one afternoon, “knowing I was facing death anyway I chose to turn, I would try a suicide charge. A few would make it out.”

  “I concur,” Dan said. “It’s the last option open to them other than shooting themselves.”

  “Those that have staggered out tell us the food and water situation is getting very grim in the city,” General Striganov said.

  “Message from General Raines, sir,” an aide said, handing the Russian a slip of paper.

  Striganov read it, then read it again, a smile playing on his lips. “Interesting,” he whispered.

  “What is it?” Buddy asked.

  “Your father has ordered us to offer the outlaws surrender terms. If they surrender, they will stand trial with the survivors as the judges and the juries. Only those convicted of capital crimes will be given the death sentence. The others will be given prison terms. That will give the survivors jobs and those outlaws who wish to be rehabilitated a chance to do so. He has ordered Ike to offer the same terms down south.”

  “I’ve never heard of my father doing such a thing.”

  Dan smiled. “I can assure you, Buddy, there is no compassion in that anything-but-magnanimous gesture.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re saying,” the young man said, shaking his head.

  “Your father will do almost anything to save Rebel lives,” Striganov said. “Correction: he will do anything to save Rebel lives. He knows that many outlaws will choose to surrender to a jail term rather than face death. He also knows that the harder outlaws will turn on them the instant they do. The outlaws themselves will kill probably twenty to thirty percent of their fellow partners-in-crime. That’s a thousand that we won’t have to fight.”

  Buddy walked away a few steps, his brow furrowed in thought. He turned to face the commanders. “Historians will not paint a very admirable portrait of my father, will they?”

  “No,” Georgi said. “They will not. Nor will they paint a very nice verbal painting of Ike, Cecil, Dan, Rebet, Danjou, Thermopolis, West, your sister, you, or me. They will sit in their paneled offices and studios and put cold impersonal words upon paper. They are not here. They have, in all probability, not even been born. They’ll defile us, Buddy Raines. Just like many defiled Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, Washington, Lincoln, in this country, at least half a hundred in my country; and others in countries all over the world. Warriors don’t become historians, Buddy. Not in most cases. Timid little people who have never experienced the horror of battle, or seen the brutality that outlaws can do to innocent people will sniff in disfavor and say we could have done it differently; we did not have to be so callous, so unfeeling. But what the hell do they really know about it? The answer is nothing. And what will all the half-truths and sly innuendo mean to us?” He smiled. “Nothing. We shall be dust in some lonely grave here in America, or in England, or in Russia, or God help us all, Turkey or Libya. And in another five hundred years, some descendant of ours will have to do what we are doing, all over again, because of timid little people who don’t know reality from a bowl of borscht.”

  Dan laughed at the expression on the Russian’s face. “Do you miss borscht, Georgi?”

  Georgi grimaced. “I hate borscht. I hate cabbage and I hate boiled potatoes.” He laughed aloud. “I must have been a terrible Russian!”

  FIFTEEN

  The guns of the Rebels fell silent. In the cities under siege, the outlaws looked at each other, their eyes dull from fatigue, holding a vacant expression, their minds numb from the bombardment that had been a constant part of their lives for several days.

  The silence was almost frightening to the gang leaders and their followers.

  Many of the women urged their men to take the surrender terms and stand trial. Many of the men told their women to go right straight to hell.

  “Jesus,” one gang leader said. “How many survivors could there be? There can’t be that many to testify against us. I say we got a better than even chance of walkin’ away scot free.”

  “You’re a fool,” another said. “You think Ben Raines is just gonna sit back and let us go free? I wouldn’t trust that bastard no further than I can see him. And I can’t see him.”

  “It’s a trick,” another said. “What’s that thing that Geronimo or Daniel Boone or somebody said about divide and conquer? That’s what Raines is doin’.”

  “I think he’s sincere,” yet another said. “I’m packin’ it in.”

  He turned to walk away and a friend of his cursed and shot him in the back of the head.

  “It’s started,” Georgi Striganov said to Dan and Buddy, as the number and intensity of firing picked up in the city.

  The Rebels watched as outlaws and their women ran toward their lines, their hands in the air, some of them carrying sticks with dirty white handkerchiefs tied to them. The Rebels watched as the outlaws in the city shot their former comrades in the back.

  “Don’t fire a shot unless fired upon,” Georgi gave the order to his troops. “Let those in the city do our work for us.”

  Ike issued the same orders to his people around Anchorage, Inside both cities, the carnage continued as friend turned on friend in savage and usually deadly disagreement over whether or not to take Ben Raines’ surrender offer.

  Groups formed in both cities and the fighting among the factions intensified. The Rebels sat back and relaxed.

  Still confined to his bed, Ben lay back and smiled as the reports came in, knowing he was saving countless Rebel lives by this move.

  “Pleased with yourself, aren’t you?” Linda asked, sitting beside his bed.

  “Shouldn’t I be?”

  “Did you ever have any intention of letting those people stand trial, Ben?”

  “Oh, yes. I discussed it with a number of survivors before making the offer. But I told them not to rush in cleaning up the prisons and jails. I didn’t think we’d have many coming out to stand trial.”

  “You knew, or guessed, that the outlaws would turn on each other?”

  “Yes. It’s a dirty, underhanded way to fight a war, Linda. But I’m saving Rebel lives. And to my way of thinking, that is the most important thing in war: saving the lives of your troops. Other commanders might put the taking of ground ahead of that. But I won’t. Not if there is another way of doing it. History will probably not treat me very kindly.”

  “Does that worry you, Ben?”

  “Not one damn bit.”

  She gave him his medication, waited to make sure he took it, then left the room, turning out the generator-powered lights and telling him to get some sleep.

  “Hell, that’s all I’ve been doing for days,” Ben bitched.

  “And you’ll be doing it for many more days to come. Take a nap.”

  At the end of the third day following the notice of surrender terms from the Rebels, the cities lay quiet and stinking with death. Around the perimeters, bodies lay in bloated, swollen piles, shot in the back by fellow outlaws. From his hospital bed, Ben gave the orders: “Take the cities.”

  The Rebel push began toward the downtown areas of Fairbanks and Anchorage. If any Rebel thought the situation was grim on the former perimeters of outlaw territory, they changed their minds once the push got underway. Bodies of men and women and children were hanging from lamp posts and old power poles. Many had been tortured, mutilated, and sexually abused.

  “Nice folks,” Buddy muttered.

  “We’re fighting the true dregs now,” Dan told him. “I cannot believe there is a single man or woman left in the city who is worth the effort of attempted rehabilitation.”

  Georgi settled that issue. “No prisoners,” the Russian ordered. “No surrender. Shoot the enemy on sight.”

  The Rebels began taking the city.

  Ike and his battalions pushed relentlessly in toward the center of Anchorage. Danjou and his battalion dropped down and did an end-around up the bay side, pushing with brutal effic
iency toward the International Airport. Ike ordered his gunships up and at the end of the second day of renewed fighting, the old Anchorage airport was in Rebel hands and Danjou’s people were being resupplied by air.

  Everything south of the airport, all the way down to Rabbit Creek Road had been cleared. By the end of the third day, Ike’s people had bulled their way to Gambel Street in the downtown area and his people to the south were in firm control of everything up to Northern Lights Boulevard.

  Behind Ike’s First Battalion, Therm’s battalion had the unenviable job of mopping up, flushing out those outlaws who were still hiding in buildings in the hope the Rebels would not find them.

  The Rebels found them, usually sealing them in their hidey-holes with explosives, bringing portions of the buildings down on them.

  In Fairbanks, Georgi’s three battalions had very nearly gained control of the much smaller city. They had put the outlaws in a box from which there was no escape. It was now down to fighting from building to building, house to house, flushing out the last of the lawless.

  The remaining outlaws fought with an insane fury, carrying lighted bundles of dynamite and charging at tanks in a vain attempt to inflict some sort of damage against the seemingly invincible Rebels, screaming as they ran, only to be chopped down in the streets by the Rebels who advanced alongside and behind the main battle tanks.

  It was bloody, awful work that none of the Rebels enjoyed. It was close-up, nose-to-nose, smelling the enemy’s fear and body-stink, seeing the hopelessness in their eyes and sometimes, hearing them scream for mercy. But a Rebel, who asked to see a doctor or a chaplain—to provide solace or hear a confession—would be reminded by his or her platoon leader of the mass graves they’d found on the way up to the city, men and women and children and the family pet, tortured, raped, abused, and then lined up and shot.

  The Rebels usually returned to duty, the steel in their backbones hardened and straightened out by nothing more than that memory.

  Finally, on a day that dawned rainy and quite cool, the Rebels fanned out in the city and could find no outlaws alive.

  “Nothing in our section,” Buddy radioed in.

  “We’re clean,” Dan radioed.

  “That’s it, then,” Georgi spoke into his mike. “Let’s scoop up the last of the bodies and get clear of this place.”

  Georgi asked his radio operator to hook him up to Ike.

  “Shark here, Bear,” Ike came on the horn.

  “The city is ours,” the Russian said.

  “Take everything of value, past and present, then burn it,” Ike ordered.

  “That is affirmative,” Georgi said. “How is your situation?”

  “We’re laying back now and holding. As soon as you get clear, come on down and we’ll nail the lid on this coffin.”

  Georgi laughed “I’ll see you in a few days. Bear out.”

  They had been deliberately talking on an unscrambled frequency, wanting outlaws outside of the secure zones to hear them. And Lan Villar heard it all.

  He sighed and walked out of the communications room to stand in the light mist. His breath steamed the early summer air. Already the nights were very short, with only about five and half hours of darkness. He realized that Raines had planned this assault very well, to give his people the maximum of daylight; the longer to have to fight with less danger of night sneak attacks.

  “You bastard,” he cursed Ben Raines. “I could have conquered the United States if it had not been for you. I could have had ten million slaves, all answering to my every wish and whim. Instead, here I am in this cold, wet, miserable place, waiting for you to come kill me.”

  At that instant, the clouds started dumping a cold, driving rain on the Kenai Peninsula. That did nothing to improve the terrorist’s mood. At this juncture in time, he doubted that anything would.

  With the airport open Georgi had sent planes north to Prudhoe Bay to check on the pipeline. The planes carried two full companies of Rebels as well as a number of the best engineers in the Rebel Army. As had been expected, there were outlaws manning the equipment at Deadhorse and Prudhoe Bay. But they gave up without either side firing a shot. Other outlaws manning the pump stations along the way surrendered with no deaths or injuries on either side. They elected to take their chances with a trial and were flown back south and handed over to the survivors.

  The Rebel engineers began the complicated job of shutting the operation down. The two companies of Rebels stayed with them, for it would be weeks before all the shutdown work could be completed. The nearly ten billion barrels of recoverable oil on Alaska’s North Slope would stay in the ground.

  Ben hoped it would never be needed.

  Ike held his people where they were and let the trapped outlaws in the city stew for a time until Georgi and his battalions could join them for the push to retake Anchorage.

  Ben was now ambulatory but was still a long way from being able to step back in as active field commander of the Rebels. He spent a lot of time reading, and that was something he’d missed doing in the field. He played cards with Lamar and gossiped with Linda, and the days moved by with a sameness that he never quite grew accustomed to.

  On a reasonably warm summer’s morning, Georgi and Dan and Buddy pulled their battalions in to Anchorage and linked up with Ike’s battalions.

  The men shook hands all the way around, Georgi saying, “We saw the smoke from a long way out.”

  “The city’s burning all around those downtown,” Ike said. “I don’t see how they’re standing it.”

  “They don’t appear to have a great deal of choice,” Buddy said dryly.

  Ike grinned and said in his best Mississippi drawl, “Now that there’s a puredee fact, boy. I talked to your father last night. He’s gettin’ better and better and chompin’ at the bit to get back in action.”

  “What does Dr. Chase have to say about that?” Dan asked.

  “He says Ben will see no action during this campaign. They’re not taking any chances with him this time.”

  “Cecil?”

  “Doin’ great. I talked with him this morning. He says it’s sure nice to be able to go home every evenin’ and prop his feet up and have a martini and listen to recordin’ or watch old movies on the VCR and all that homebody stuff.”

  “Of course, he’s lying through his teeth,” Georgi said with a laugh.

  “Sure he is,” Ike agreed. “He wants back out here so bad I could sense it over the air. But he also knows that will never be, so he’s adjustin’ the best he can.” Ike got serious. “Let’s ease on to my CP and go over the situation we got here. I think we can wrap this city up in a week.”

  In the CP, the commanders crowded around a wall map of downtown Anchorage.

  “We’re here,” Ike pointed. “We’re clean south of Northern Lights Boulevard and east from Gambel. That still leaves us about twenty-five blocks to clear over to the bay. We haven’t found a damn thing worth salvagin’ so far. The punks and crud destroyed every priceless bit of art they came up on. It’s enough to make you vomit. They burned books, paintings, statues, scrimshaw, you name it, they fucked it up. And for no reason.’’ He sighed in frustration and looked at Georgi. “Did you take prisoners toward the last up in Fairbanks?”

  The Russian shook his head.

  “That’s the way we’re gonna play here, too. What’d you find on Highway 3 comin’ down here?”

  “No outlaws. They fled weeks ago, running into the city or south to link up with Lan Villar and his trash. Survivors are reclaiming the few towns along the way. We listened to traffic coming from the west of us, out in the wilderness areas, but it was all friendly. They asked to be included in our outpost system; said they would conform with all the laws we advocate, but other than that, they wish to be left alone.”

  “That jibes with what our pilots and patrols have reported back. The crud and crap pretty much left those folks alone. Speakin’ of prisoners, we were forced to take some prisoners earlier. Hell, you
can’t shoot a person who just sits down on the ground and sticks their hands into the air. They told us that any outlaws who ventured very far west just didn’t come back.”

  “The ones who are left in the city, male and female?” Buddy asked, although he knew what the reply would be.

  “Those left in there that know if they did surrender they’d be hanged by the survivors. Now, here’s the way I see this operation: Ben’s given the orders that we don’t destroy the parks—we all share his feelin’s about the environment and wildlife—so everything south of this city is gonna be hand-to-hand and tough goin’. There ain’t nothin’ left savin’ in the city—human or otherwise. I don’t see any point in sheddin’ Rebel blood over the crap and crud facin’ us in the city. I say we take it with tanks and artillery and mop up after they’re done.”

  “That’s fine with me,” Therm said. “Just as long as you give the final mopping up to another battalion. My people are worn out and need a break from that kind of work.”

  “I’ll do better than that. Since Buddy’s battalion is two companies short after splitting up to go north with the engineers, you and Buddy take your battalions back to Ben’s CP at Tok. I’ll bump Tok and have Tina and West and their battalions ready to pull out as soon as you and Buddy arrive. How’s that sound to you?”

  “Great.”

  Ike nodded his head. “When do you want to leave?”

  Therm smiled. “How about right now?”

  BOOK TWO

  I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one; “O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.” And God granted it.

  –Voltaire

  ONE

  While the battalions were being shifted around, Ike and his people took that time to resupply, the planes landing and taking off from Anchorage International. Those inside the smoky city could sense the growing urgency and knew their time was very short. South of the city, on the peninsula, Lan Villar and his troops grew accustomed to the drone of planes and the slap of helicopters on their patrols south of Kenai. No one tried to exit by boat or ship after the first few times—the planes and attack gunships blew them out of the water. Ben had sent troops by ship down to Kodiak, and after a very brief firefight, the planes and gunships were flying out of that city’s airport.