Courage In The Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  “Can you gather up your neighbors?”

  “Sure.”

  “We stacked the weapons and the ammo from the dead by the side of the road. They’re yours. Pass them out. Don’t ever let any government disarm you again, ma’am.”

  “We won’t, General. We won’t.”

  “My son will be coming up this road in about half an hour.” Ben smiled. “He’s the one who’ll set the lassies’ hearts to beating faster.”

  “Takes after his father, now, does he?”

  Ben laughed and leaned into the open window and kissed the old woman on the cheek. A small fire was burning and a stew was bubbling in a blackened pot. It smelled like rabbit. “You get those weapons and then rest easy. We’ll give your country back to you, and that’s a promise.”

  “And you never break a promise, General?”

  “Only the ones I make to the ladies.”

  She laughed and flapped her apron at him. “Get on with you, now!”

  Ben and his Rebels walked on through the cool night. The sounds of heavy fighting began to touch their ears. Galway was about a mile away.

  “We’ll hold up here and wait for Buddy,” Ben told his team. “Dig in, but not too deep. We might have to run like thieves in the night.”

  Linda lay by his side in the dewy dampness of a field and said, “It’s finally sinking in, Ben. We’re really in Ireland. We’re really here!”

  “What convinced you? Did you see a leprechaun?”

  “If I did, I’d never tell. That’s bad luck.”

  “Well, if you see another one, ask him to grant us some good luck.”

  “We’re going to need it, aren’t we?”

  “All we can get, Linda. Jack Hunt has tanks and mortars and artillery. Ours are still on board ship. We’ve got some tank-killing Dragons, but they’re complicated bastards and they don’t always stop the target. Why in the hell the U.S. didn’t adopt me Milan is something I will never understand. I’m sure it was politics.”

  “Rat calling, sir,” Corrie said, crawling to Ben’s position.

  Ben took the mike. “Go, Rat.”

  “I just talked to an old lady you laid the blarney on. I think we’re about two miles behind you and I know we’re coming hard. I’ve got two platoons with me and a full company is ten minutes behind me.”

  “That’s ten-four. You have Dragons with you?”

  “Affirmative, Eagle.”

  “We’ll hold and wait for you. When you get here you can rest and we’ll make some plans. Eagle out.”

  “Company on the way, General,” the lookout called. “Tanks.”

  “Shit,” Ben said. “Corrie, advise Buddy he’s got tanks coming at him. We’re going to lay low and hope we don’t get spotted. Everybody get down.”

  “Lookout says he doesn’t know what the hell these tanks are,” Corrie said. “He’s never seen anything like them. They’re not big ones.”

  “Probably the British Scimitars. They carry a 30mm cannon. Thank God they’re not Chieftains. I don’t know if the Dragons could stop one of those.”

  “Passing by lookout,” Ben was told. “The hatches are open.”

  “Hug the ground.”

  The tanks didn’t slow down as they passed Ben’s position. They rumbled on south.

  “Scimitars,” Ben said. He took the mike. “Eagle to Rat.”

  “Go, Eagle.”

  “They’re British Scimitars. Five of them. You have antitank mines with you?”

  “Negative.”

  “The Dragons will stop them.”

  “I have one Dragon.”

  “Damn!” Ben said. He keyed the mike. “They’re rolling with open hatches. That tell you anything?”

  “Indeed it does. Rat out.”

  “What will they do, Ben?” Linda asked.

  “Buddy’s got about a hundred troops with him. Those tanks were rolling bunched up. That is a very stupid thing to do. But Jack hasn’t been fighting highly trained troops so that tells me he’s gotten careless; or at least his men have. Those tanks are going to have about a hundred grenades raining down on them. Some of them will get inside the hatches. Then Buddy’s only problem will be staying down when the ammo blows.”

  “I can imagine what that does to the people inside.”

  Ben looked at her. “No, dear. Believe me when I say, you cannot. Want me to describe it?”

  “I think I’ll pass.”

  “Good move. But I’m sure before the week is out you’ll get to see it firsthand.”

  “I can hardly wait,” she said dryly.

  FIFTEEN

  The Rebels could feel and hear the crumping sounds of the grenades that missed the open tank hatches. When the 30mm rounds and the smaller ammo stored inside the tanks blew, the ground trembled like the aftershock of an earthquake. Buddy’s team had caught the tanks on the crest of a hill and the flames shooting out of the hatches were clearly visible.

  Linda felt that a number of body parts also were blown through the open hatches.

  The SEAL team that Ben had outdistanced and who had linked up with Buddy, were the first to reach Ben’s position. “Fried ’em like chickens,” one SEAL said.

  Another said, “We got orders from General Ike to stay on your ass like a leech, General. You gonna give us a hard time about that?”

  “Nope,” Ben said easily. “I never give a man a hard time for following orders.”

  Buddy panted up; his load was nearly twice what the other Rebels were packing.

  “You trying to prove something totin’ all that, boy?” Ben asked, a smile on his lips.

  “I will be the first to admit that I might have overloaded myself,” Buddy said.

  “Spread it around among the others. You need to stay just as light as the others.”

  Buddy looked at his father’s CAR-15 in 9mm and the two 9mm pistols belted around his waist. “Retired the old Thunder Lizard?”

  “For this operation. Have you been in contact with the company behind you?”

  “Yes. They’re just over the hill there.”

  “Corrie, tell them to hold up and take five. Then maintain a half mile distance between us. I don’t want us all bunched up.”

  “Shark to Eagle.”

  “Go, Shark.”

  “We’ve linked up with the Free Irish. But brother, the harbor is only three blocks to our rear. It’s like that comedian used to tell about that man up a tree fighting a bobcat. He told his buddy on the ground to just shoot up amongst us. One of us has got to have some relief.”

  “All right, Ike. We’ll take some pressure off your west flank. Hang on.” To Corrie: “Order Striganov’s people to use everything that’ll float to get to Galway by the sea. Attack the harbor head on.’’ To Beth: “How many people do we still have on ship?”

  “About seventy percent,” she told him. “Those being landed are scattered all over the place due to the winds picking up and the sea turning rough. Some of them were put ashore north of Kilkierran Bay. They’re working their way toward Galway, some of them riding bicycles.”

  “Hell of a way to run a war,” Ben said, standing up and adjusting his battle harness. “Let’s go, people. Corrie, advise the ships’ captains we are attacking Galway between the city and the airport.”

  Ben assigned Scouts to take the point. They had not advanced half a mile before hitting a road block, a blockade backed up by tanks and APCs.

  “Leave it for those behind us to handle,” Ben ordered. “We head cross-country from this point. Keep that rise to your left and then swing around. Move out in teams of five. Go.”

  The fires burning in Galway clearly pinpointed the Rebels’ objective. Muzzle flashes and tracers briefly gave light to the pockets of darkness. The problem was, nobody knew who was the enemy and who was a friend.

  “Corrie, tell the company behind us to take the airport. We’re going into the city.”

  “People approaching from the east,” Jersey pointed out.

  “Rebels!”
came the call from the darkness. “We’re fighters from Kilkenny. Hold your fire, we’re friendly.”

  “We’ll see,” Ben said. “Come on in, friends.”

  The leader’s hair was as red as some of the flames in the city and his grin was infectious. “Pat O’Shea’s the name. And I’ve seen your picture; you’d be General Ben Raines.”

  “I am.” Ben stuck out his hand and the man shook it.

  “They’s some forty of us if the laggards ever catch up. We’ve set a fair pace this night. Left Ballyragget when lookouts radioed the ships was near the Arans. We’re fighters and not a person among us will shirk no duty, General. What would you have us do?”

  “Do you know the city?”

  “Aye, sir, I know it well.”

  “Get us in there.”

  Pat grinned. “Right into the thick of things you want to go, hey, General?”

  “That’s where the action is.”

  Pat waved at two men. “Sutton, you and Murphy get with the General’s point men—” He took a closer look at the way a Rebel’s BDUs fit. “—Point people, and get us into the fracus, now, will you, lads?”

  Murphy and Sutton moved out. Pat turned to Ben. “Them ladies can fight, hey, General?”

  “You want to cross one and find out?”

  Pat grinned. “My mother—bless her heart—raised one foolish child. My brother. I’ll not insult no woman when she’s totin’ a tommy gun. Let’s go.”

  They drew enemy fire moments after pulling out and hit the ditches.

  “That’s a .50,” a SEAL said.

  “Get that light mortar set up and start dropping in on those bastards,” Ben said. “Range two hundred fifty yards.”

  The light mortar began thunking out 66mm rounds, walking them up. The .50 caliber gun emplacement went up in a flash and a roar. The Rebels and the Irish Freedom Fighters surged forward.

  “Where are we?” Ben asked Pat.

  “In the city limits of Galway, sir. Just barely.”

  “My people have their backs to the bay, Pat. We’ve got to take some heat off them on the west flank. Get us there.”

  “Right you are, sir. Just follow me.”

  “Tanks!” a SEAL shouted. “Three of them. Rounding the corner at one o’clock. They’re all buttoned up.”

  “Rocket launchers and recoilless rifles up,” Ben called. “We can’t penetrate that armor but we can knock a tread off. Cripple them. Do it.”

  Three Rebels ran forward, two of them with M67 90mm recoilless rifles which fired a HEAT warhead.

  The tanks clanked forward, the machine guns spitting and flashing. Two Rebels went down, nearly chopped in two. The M67’s fired, the HEATs struck home. The rocket launcher whooshed and flew true. The light tanks were disabled.

  A medic quickly checked the Rebels. He looked at Ben and shook his head.

  “Take their equipment and give it to the Irish,” Ben ordered. “Slide satchel charges under those goddamn tanks. Corrie, radio that I want antitank mines up here and I want them like fucking yesterday.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The satchel charges blew and made life awfully uncomfortable for those inside the light tanks. But the tanks didn’t blow. Their bellies were heavily armored.

  “Do it again,” Ben ordered.

  The tanks’ main guns boomed. The 76mm cannon blew holes in the old brick building behind the Rebels and the Irish.

  “You certainly do like to live dangerously, General,” Pat remarked, after the dust had settled and the bits of brick had ceased falling all around them.

  “Get the Dragon up here and knock that lead son of a bitch out,” Ben ordered. “We’re not going to leave here with those things operational.”

  “My C Company is right behind us, Father,” Buddy said, sliding on his belly across the road to reach Ben. “B Company is fighting at the airport.”

  “Tell C Company to hold up until we neutralize these tanks. Where’s that Dragon?”

  “Set up and ready to go,” Cooper called.

  “Fire the goddamn thing!”

  The light tank went up in a mass of exploding steel. The force of the explosion twisted another tank around, blocking the narrow passageway and preventing those in the third tank from utilizing their main gun. A SEAL ran forward, carrying a heavy satchel charge. He climbed over the rear of the twisted tank and laid the heavy charge in the narrow space between turret and the main body of the blocked tank. Then he got the hell out of there. The SEAL had just gotten clear when the charge blew and the main gun exploded, blowing the turret half off and twisting it around.

  “Had to have been a round in that cannon,” Ben said. “The charge bent the barrel and the round fired and stuck. That did it. Let’s go.”

  The Rebels and the Irish were pulling out when the remaining 76mm rounds stored in the burning tank exploded. The force brought down a wall, covering the other tank.

  Ben and those with him slipped further inside the war-ravaged town. Shadowy figures dressed in military uniforms darted out into the street about a hundred feet from Ben. Ben and the man in the lead spotted each other about a heartbeat apart. The man brought his weapon up and Ben gave him some 9mm hollow-noses in the gut. The man went down, kicking and screaming.

  His team dropped to the street just as Buddy leveled an M-60 and began chopping up this bunch of Jack Hunt’s army. The M-60 jumped and bucked in his strong hands as he sent the 7.62 slugs howling and whining and making a big bloody mess in the littered street.

  “Pat, have your boys get their weapons and ammo,” Ben told the Irishman.

  “About half of Dan’s people are on shore,” Corrie told Ben.

  “That’s good,” Ben said, squatting by the corner of a building.

  “They’re scattered all to hell and gone, General,” she added, light rain splattered on her helmet and splashing onto her face. The wind had picked up and was howling as the fingers of a large storm that had been building out at sea began touching land. “Therm says to throw out the original plan as to where each battalion was to land. They’re all over the place. Scattered twenty miles in either direction. But he says there have been no reports of Rebels lost at sea.”

  “No. They’re just lost on land,” Ben said with a grimace. “All right, so big deal. We’re on our own. Hell, what else is new? What’s the word from the airport?”

  “Fighting is heavy. But our people have knocked out Hunt’s communication center and seized the building. They say it was very elaborate. He had links over in England and possibly on the continent. Intelligence is going over files and codes now.”

  Before Ben could reply, a dozen APCs rolled up and discharged their cargo of Hunt’s fighting men. There was no more time for conversation for several minutes as the Rebels and the Free Irish fought a fierce firefight with Hunt’s soldiers.

  Ben crawled on his belly to the location of several SEALs and Scouts. “We need those APCs,” Ben said, pulling the man’s head down close to his mouth to be heard. “Take this bunch and work around and get on top of those buildings on their left flank. Take plenty of firepower with you including all the grenades you can stagger with. Go!”

  A rifleman found Ben’s range and started putting some lead around him. He rolled behind a stone fence and stayed low, working away from his team, following the progress of the SEALs and the Scouts until they disappeared from his view. Ben came to a gate and lay flat on the ground, listening to the sounds of war. The rifleman was still concentrating his fire on the place where he’d last seen Ben. Ben snaked across the shattered gate and wriggled through the shattered window of a stone home.

  He lay with his back to the wall for a moment, catching his breath and assessing his situation. He concluded it was better than most of those coming under fire on the outside. He lifted his walkie-talkie and keyed the mike. “This is Eagle. I’m OK and in a secure position. Do not attempt to join me. That is an order. Acknowledge.”

  Corrie acknowledged and Ben clipped the little handy-ta
lkie back on his harness. He froze, hearing the faint sounds of voices coming from the rear of the house. He rolled into a dark corner and behind a rat-chewed old sofa, his CAR-15 off safety and on full rock and roll. He lay on the rat-shit-covered floor and watched as four men crept into the living room area of the old home. Two of them carried bulky objects, the third man carried two huge haversacks bulging with something, and the fourth had an armload of what looked like tubes.

  Ben smiled, hoping he had correctly guessed what the men were about to do.

  “That window right over there,” the Germanic-accented voice came to him. “Gives us a good field of fire.”

  “Christ,” the man who had carried in the haversacks said, setting his burdens on the floor and straightening up. “Goddamn things weigh a hundred pounds.”

  I hope so, Ben thought, for he was now positive what the men were planning.

  “Yer gettin’ old, Dave,” another said He stepped over to join the men who had set their burdens down and gathered in a knot by a wall.

  Just as a mortar round exploded outside, Ben gave the men a full clip from his CAR and watched them fall like broken puppets. At this close range many of the slugs penetrated, and the back of the wall was gory.

  Ben knelt down to avoid any stray slugs that might be coming through the windows and checked each man. One was still breathing. He wasn’t after Ben stood up. Ben wiped his knife clean and sheathed it.

  He inspected his new-found treasures and smiled. The men had been preparing to fire a rocket launcher called the Armbruster. The West Germans had perfected the launcher, and the old American Delta Force had used them with success, when there had been an America and the Delta Force was still around.

  The knapsacks contained three dozen rounds. Dave hadn’t been kidding about the weight. He’d been carrying about eighty pounds of 2.178 pound rockets. One great advantage of the Armbruster is that it can be safely fired within a closed space, unlike the American Dragon or the Russian RPG-7. The noise of the Armbruster firing is about like a pistol shot, and there is no flash, blast, or smoke.