Courage In The Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  The other man had carried spare launch tubes, for the tube had to be discarded after each firing. Ben inspected the two Armbrusters and found they were ready to fire. He moved to a window just as a tank clanked up and stopped, troops behind it.

  Ben unclipped his handy-talkie and said, “This is Eagle. I just found some goodies, so I’m going to neutralize that tank that showed up and then knock out that .50 caliber in the building next to that church.”

  “Ten-four, General,” Corrie said.

  Ben uncapped the sights and smiled as he dead-centered the tank in the reflex sight. The 78mm Armbruster round has a muzzle velocity of 722 feet per second and is capable of penetrating a foot of armor.

  Ben squeezed the trigger and the tank exploded in a massive ball of flame. He laid the launcher aside and loaded the second with an HE antipersonnel fragmentation round. He sighted in the open window where the .50 was spitting out death, then lowered the launcher to the jumping barrel of the heavy machine gun. The entire wall exploded, and the screaming of men filled the night.

  Ben changed the tubes and loaded up with HE antipersonnel rounds just as the SEALs and the Scouts on top of the buildings began dropping Fire-Frag grenades on top of Jack Hunt’s soldiers in the alley and street below them. Ben let another rocket fly and the alley was filled with dead and dying troops.

  Ben smiled as the enemy troops tried to make the APCs and were cut down. Those that could still run did so, fleeing into the night.

  Ben keyed his mike. “I’m in the house directly behind the stone fence. I got a sack full of goodies. Get some people over here pronto.”

  A SEAL was the first one in the building. Several Free Irish came right behind him. The Irish began stripping the dead of their weapons and ammo.

  “All right!” The SEAL said; spotting the Armbruster.

  A few more shots were fired outside as the Rebels finished off the drivers of the APCs.

  “Hey,” the shout reached Ben. “Most of these are American APCs. They’re M113’s.”

  “I don’t know what this one is,” another said. “But it’s got a hell of a twin-mount machine gun on it.”

  Ben did not have to tell his people to collect all the weapons and ammo from the dead. But he did add, “Get all their field rations. It might be awhile before we get resupplied.”

  “How about their water jugs, General?” Ben was asked.

  “Purify it.”

  “Prisoners, sir?”

  Ben hesitated, conscious of Pat O’Shea’s eyes on him as the Irishman knelt on the floor by a dead Hunt soldier. Then he smiled and cut his eyes to Pat. “It’s your country, Pat. We’re just here to help out.”

  “I’m a God-fearin’ man, I am, General,” Pat said. “But I’ve lived under the iron rule of these bastards for too many years to be merciful towards them. They’ve killed and raped and pillaged all over this land. They’ve turned this good green earth bloody. Kill them.”

  Ben lifted his handy-talkie. “No prisoners.”

  SIXTEEN

  When the news that Ben Raines was not taking prisoners reached Jack Hunt, safely in his command post miles away from the small city of Galway, it came as no surprise. He had expected no better from General Ben Raines and his Rebels.

  Jack had studied Ben Raines and his tactics for years. He had compiled hundreds of hours of taped broadcasts of Rebel transmissions and had listened to them again and again. And Ben Raines was by no means the first to sail the Atlantic after the Great War. Many of Jack’s men were Americans who had faced thousands of miles of ocean to escape Ben Raines ruthless purge of gangs and criminals from America. Just the mention of Ben Raines’ name was enough to bring out a fine sheen of sweat on those men’s faces.

  But, Jack thought with a smile, if Ben Raines thought this was going to be an easy fight, Ben Raines had another think due him.

  Jack rose from his chair and walked to the window. The storm was picking up, the winds howling and the rain hammering the earth. The terrible weather would slow the invasion forces leaving the ships. And Raines would not use those goddamned helicopter gunships of his. But it wouldn’t slow up those Rebels and the fighting Free Irish already in Galway or proceeding toward the city.

  Jack Hunt—he had used so many aliases over the long bloody years it was difficult for him to remember his real name—turned from the window to face his commanders in this sector. “How many men are in Galway?”

  “Two battalions in the town proper and two battalions waiting just outside the city, between Galway and Tuam,” he was told. “And those in the city are getting the shit kicked out of them,” the man added.

  Jack ran short battalions of five hundred men per battalion. He had plenty of light tanks, but nothing to compare with Ben Raines huge MBTs. He had artillery, but nothing like the monster guns that were at Ben Raines’s command. But those were still on board ship. He had to strike now, within a matter of hours, and strike hard. But how? Jack had no navy, so sinking the transports was out of the question.

  “Sink the damn ships,” one commander said.

  Jack shook his head. “Impossible in this weather. The sea is running high. You can bet that Raines has the best radar he could set up on those vessels. Any flotilla would be spotted immediately—providing we had a flotilla. Frogmen couldn’t get near the ships in this weather—if we had frogmen to send. No, we’ve got to contain Ben Raines inside Galway. Alert the two battalions outside the city to strike just before dawn. Raines and his people will have been up all day and fighting all night and they’ll be weary and cold to the bone in this weather. They’ll be running out of supplies and in this weather they can’t be resupplied from ship. Hit them at dawn.”

  “Miserable goddamned weather,” Striganov bitched from his airport command post on the big island of the Aran chain. “Twenty-four gunships ready to go and they’re useless in this raging storm.” He turned to his radio operator. “What is the status of the ships?”

  “They’ve ceased all disembarking of troops, sir. The weather is just too foul and the risks are too high.”

  “And whose decision was that?”

  “Thermopolis and Emil, sir. The winds are blowing the tiny fishing boats all over the place. Two were wrecked and sunk by the battering against the transports.”

  The Russian nodded his head in agreement. “The captains had no other choice in the matter. How many troops did we get ashore and where are they?”

  “Less than a thousand, sir. And they’re scattered all over the place.”

  “Merciful God,” Georgi muttered. A small smile creased his lips. “Have the Free Irish turned Dan Gray loose, yet?”

  “Only after Colonel Gray gave them a tongue-lashing and a cussing that the leader of the resistance group said he’d never heard the like of. But Dan and the few Rebels with him are miles from Galway.”

  “This weather won’t stop that crazy Englishman,” Georgi said.

  A group of Irish resistance fighters had seized Dan and briefly held him prisoner, suspecting him of being a part of Jack Hunt’s army. A few of Dan’s troops had finally showed up and convinced the Free Irish that they were Raines’ Rebels and that Dan was their commander. Dan, it was reported, was ready to kill the whole lot of his captors before he was calmed down. The former SAS man had a great many of very uncomplimentary things to say about the Irish and said them, including quite a few invectives concerning the Irish mentality, which, Dan concluded, was on a par with a hedgehog.

  It was only after the leader of the Free Irish brought out a jug of whiskey that Dan began to mellow out.

  Now the whole group of them were stomping through the rain and the storm, struggling to reach the Rebels trapped inside Galway.

  Ben and his people now controlled several blocks of Galway, and Hunt’s soldiers had been forced to move troops away from the harbor area to stop their advance. That took some of the pressure off of Ike and his people.

  “Shark to Eagle.”

  “Go, Shark.”


  “We got some breathin’ room now, Eagle. I don’t know how they managed it in this weather, but about a hundred more Rebels just docked. That’s gonna be the end of it until the weather breaks. What do you hear from those who made shore in faraway places?”

  “Dan and some of his people, including a group of Free Irish, are on the way, but they don’t anticipate arriving at their objective until about an hour before dawn. I’ve assigned them to a crossroads north of the city. I have a hunch that Hunt is going to try a counterattack, and resistance leaders tell me he has a battalion or more somewhere between here and Tuan. Dan is carrying quite a bit of firepower. He might not be able to stop them, but he can put a hell of a dent in them.”

  “That’s ten-four, Eagle. We’re holdin’ our own. You do the same. Shark out.”

  The heavy rain and high winds seemed to drive the cold deeper to the bone among the Rebel troops that were stretched along a very thin line some three blocks from the harbor and from the Rebels in Ben’s command, many, many blocks away from Ike’s position.

  Ben waved his son and the SEAL Team leader to his side. “How many of your Rat Pack is with you?”

  “Ten, that I know of, Father.”

  “How many in your team?” he asked the SEAL.

  “Eight, including me.”

  Ben tapped the SEAL on the arm. “You take your people on the right side of this long street. Buddy, take your Rat Pack on the left side.” The rain streaked his face, making his slow smile seem almost sinister. “Take along some mines and blocks of C-4. You don’t have to bring back ears on this run, boys.”

  The Ike-trained SEAL and the Ben and Dan-trained Buddy were just about the same age. They looked at each other and grinned. Then they were gone silent into the storm.

  Ben felt eyes on him. He turned his head. Linda was beside him, having moved up unheard in the hard-pounding rain, “I suppose there is no point in telling you to get into dry clothing, is there?”

  Ben laughed softly. “Hell, Linda, none of us have any dry clothing.”

  She tugged at him until he moved. She led him under an overhang where at least the rain did not touch them. The cold wind was another matter.

  “Open your mouth, Ben.”

  “You going to feed me?”

  “In a manner of speaking.” She popped two pills into his mouth and told him to swallow them.

  He did. “What the hell was that?”

  “A little preventive medicine.” She tucked a small clear plastic bag in his pocket. “That’s a twenty-four hour supply. Take two of those every four hours. Every Rebel is getting the same dose. After twenty-four hours, if we’re not resupplied, it isn’t going to make any difference one way or the other, is it, Ben?”

  “No.” He was brutally honest with her, and he did not have to say more about their situation.

  “This is pneumonia weather, Ben. And unlike some nurses and doctors, I always believed in preventive medicines doing at least some good.”

  She laid her head against his chest.

  “Scared?” Ben asked her.

  “You bet.”

  “Wanna find a dry place and play kissy-face?”

  She laughed against his chest. “I know where one is.”

  A few yards away, in the darkness, Cooper and Jersey looked at each other and grinned.

  There was no letting up of the rain. But by 0400 the main body of the storm had moved through, calming the winds, and the temperature had risen.

  “How’s the water look, Shark?” Ben asked.

  “They’re loading some of the bigger boats now, Eagle. I just talked with Dickerson on the Virginia Lady. Danjou and some of his people will be along shortly.”

  “I figure Hunt’s people will try to hit us about dawn. That will put them at the crossroads in about one hour. You hard-pressed for anything?”

  “A great big pot of hot coffee, a whole plateful of Momma’s cat-head biscuits and a big bowl of milk gravy would be de-lightful right about now.”

  “Dream on, Ike,” Ben said with a laugh. “Dream on. Eagle out.”

  Ben opened a packet of field rations, looked at the goop, sighed, wiped off his spoon and dug in. The cold rations were edible, but just barely.

  “Stuff tastes like shit!” Ben heard Jersey say.

  Buddy slipped through the darkness and sat down beside his father.

  “When’d you get back?” Ben asked.

  “About three hours ago. We all got some sleep.”

  “Do any good?”

  Buddy smiled. “We planted enough Claymores to make Jack Hunt’s people wish they’d never heard of Ireland. Some of them we just positioned on the little stoop in front of a door where Jack’s men were sleeping . . .”

  A very loud explosion split the rainy early morning. Screams of badly wounded men quickly followed the booming.

  “I believe someone just opened a door,” Ben said, chewing on a mouthful of rations.

  “Wait until they try to crank some of their vehicles,” Buddy said, rummaging around in his pack for something to eat and frowning at a field ration packet.

  The words had just left his mouth when another explosion ripped the early morning. That one was followed by a huge fireball that lit up one end of the block.

  “I see what you mean,” Ben said. “How’d you rig that one, son?”

  “Pressure sensitive,” Buddy said, opening a packet of rations. “With a wire running to a bundle of dynamite we stuck to the gas tank. The wire became hot as soon as the driver sat down.”

  “You certainly have a vicious streak in you,” Ben said with a straight face. “Sure didn’t get that from me.”

  Buddy choked and coughed on a mouthful of breakfast.

  “Coming under heavy attack,” Dan radioed to Galway. “We can hold for a while; but we can’t expect to stop them. They’re throwing at least a thousand ground troops at us and they’re supported by tanks and heavy machine gun fire.”

  “Can you hold for thirty minutes?” Ben asked.

  “No more than that, General.”

  “That’s ten-four. When you’re in danger of being overrun, split your forces and let the bastards come on through. But make damn sure they have to take the west fork of that crossroads.”

  “Can do.”

  Ben called his team leaders to him and told them what they were going to do. They nodded and returned to their teams. “Eagle to Shark.”

  “Go, Eagle.”

  “Charge!”

  The Rebels took the fight to Jack Hunt’s soldiers on two fronts in the small city of Galway, and the mercenary’s troops were expecting anything but that.

  “They’re all over us!” Hunt’s commander in Galway frantically radioed to his General’s CP. “We can’t hold and have no place to fall back.”

  “Then stand and die!” Jack Hunt screamed into the mike. “Stand and die!” He threw the mike to the table then said the words that outlaws and scum and various types of human trash had been saying for over a decade: “Goddamn Ben Raines!”

  Ben, followed by his personal team, charged into the open door in the rear of a building. Cooper was carrying a Stoner 63, a 5.56mm belt-fed machine gun with a 150-round magazine, and he stepped around Ben and cleared the ground floor of any and all living things.

  Ben heard boots shuffling on the floor behind a closed door. He leveled his CAR-15 and gave the occupant a belly full of 9mm’s at almost point-blank range. Jersey stepped to one side and jerked open the door. Jack Hunt’s man had been sitting on the floor of the closet. The 9mm’s had taken him in the face. He had practically no head left.

  “Sorry about that,” Jersey said, and closed the door.

  Ben walked to the bullet-shattered front door. Pat had told him that the town had been evacuated and there were very few civilians left. Most of them had been used as sacrificial goats and were tied or chained to the gun emplacements along both sides of the harbor.

  “Shark on the horn, General,” Corrie said.

  “Go
, Shark.”

  “What’s your position?”

  “Ah . . .” Ben looked out the door. “About a block from a hotel. I can’t make out the name.”

  “It ain’t the Holiday Inn, is it?”

  Ben laughed. “I haven’t seen one of those, Ike.”

  “What the devil are we gonna do with the prisoners, Ben? They’re surrenderin’ like flies goin’ to honey.”

  Ben smiled. “Bring them to me, Ike. I have an idea how we might use them.”

  SEVENTEEN

  Dan’s Rebels and the Free Irish with him fell back and faded into the glens and brush on both sides of the road when it became apparent they were about to be overrun by Hunt’s troops at the crossroads.

  The commanders of the two battalions called their men back, refusing to allow them to pursue. “Too much danger of an ambush,” they concluded.

  “Try to raise those in Galway,” a battalion commander ordered his radio operator.

  In Galway, a very scared member of Hunt’s army sat before a radio and waited for that to happen. The muzzle of an M-16 was pressed against the side of his head. “Screw up,” a Rebel told him, “and you’re dead one second later.”

  “Four Battalion calling Galway,” the speaker spewed the words. “Come in, Galway.”

  “Answer him,” the radio operator was told. The M-16 was very convincing.

  “This is Galway command post. Go ahead.”

  “What is your situation, Galway?”

  “We have the Rebels contained near the harbor. Fighting has been heavy and we have taken many casualties, but the Rebels appear to be running out of ammo and we have regained ground lost.” He read from a prepared list of answers to possible questions.

  “That’s affirmative, Galway. Stand by. Four Battalion calling Galway Airport.”

  At the airport, another prisoner sat with a .45 pressed against his head. He keyed the mike. “This is Galway Airport.”

  “Have you been monitoring, Airport?”

  “That’s affirmative. The airport is secure.” He didn’t lie about that. It was secure.