Battle in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  “Only the writers of history can be the judge of that, Ben Raines. We will be no more than dust in a lonely and forgotten grave when that question shall be answered.” He held out his hand. “Good luck to you, Ben Raines.”

  White hand shook black hand. “And good luck to you, Franklin Sharp.”

  The Rebels mounted up and pulled out as engineers and doctors and road-builders and others from Base Camp One pulled in.

  Ike had radioed in. All resistance in Texas had been crushed by the Rebels and their multinational allies. Hoffman and Brodermann had slipped out, that had been confirmed.

  “We’ll have to fight them again,” Ben said, as the convoy rolled westward toward Arkansas and Thermopolis’s command, dug in deep in a mountain.

  None of Ben’s team had to ask where Hoffman would recruit his army. They knew. From the hundreds of thousands of malcontents scattered all over the nation. People of all races who hated Ben Raines and his Rebels and the authority they represented.

  “When we get set up tonight, Corrie,” Ben said. “Have Ike send out teams all over the nation. We’ve got to start rebuilding outposts, and this time we’ll make them stronger and with more people per post.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We’ll use Jahn’s people to start new outposts all over the nation, Beth,” Ben added. “And that will keep them widely separated until we can weed out any Nazi’s who have infiltrated his bunch,” Ben added, knowing, as Jahn had confided in him, that there were hard-core SS people in his group, put there deliberately by Hoffman and Brodermann. Jahn just didn’t know who they were. But he had suspicions.

  “Jahn might not like that,” Jersey said.

  “It was his idea,” Ben said with a smile. “Jahn wants to live in a free society, where he can enjoy the books he wants to read, newspapers that don’t carry the party line, and where he can engage in open, spirited debate. And the man wants to farm his own piece of ground. Some of his staff officers told me Jahn had one of the most beautiful flower gardens they’d ever seen. You just never know about a person.”

  “Yeah,” Cooper said. “Hitler played the harmonica.”

  “Cooper!” Jersey said.

  “It’s true! I read it in a book.”

  “General!” Corrie said, and the urgency in her voice stopped the bantering. “Thermopolis is under heavy attack. He’s holding, but says he can only hold out for another twenty-four hours at most.”

  Ben lifted a map. “We roll all night, change drivers every two hours. Corrie, tell the trucks pulling the artillery to catch up when they can. Who is attacking Therm?”

  “Therm says he doesn’t have the faintest idea. But they’re throwing everything but the mop bucket at him.”

  “Tell him to hang on. We’re on the way.”

  TWELVE

  The convoy bulled their way through the night until about midnight, when the skies opened up and began a torrential rain on them; a hard rain that slowed the convoy down to a careful creep. The roads were in horrible shape anyway. After years of neglect, they were full of ruts and holes and places where entire sections had been washed out by flooding. Scouts had gone racing ahead, bouncing over, around and through the holes and sometimes leaving the road altogether, driving in the ditches and in fields, doing their best to stay ahead of the convoy.

  Just about the time the rain slacked, the drivers pulled over for a shift change and Ben took the wheel.

  “Oh, shit!” Jersey muttered. “Here we go. Hang on, people.”

  “I heard that,” Ben said, and roared ahead.

  “I’ve lost contact with Therm,” Corrie said.

  “We don’t have far to go now,” Ben spoke over the roar of the engine.

  The Hummer Ben was driving soon overtook the Scouts, and Ben pushed the advance party hard, staying right on the bumper of the last Scout vehicle. Finally, Ben spun the wheel, raced around the Scouts, and took the lead. Behind him, the convoy picked up speed, staying with Ben.

  After an hour of sliding around hilly curves on the rain-slick old highway, with Ben’s team holding on to anything they could grab, they sped past the old county line sign and were within a few miles of Therm’s HQ. Ben slowed, then pulled over to the side of the road. Ben and team got out.

  “Try it now, Corrie,” Ben said.

  “I have them, General.”

  “Give me the mic. Therm! This is Eagle. What’s your status?”

  “Grim.” The sound of gunfire was sharp. “Where are you?”

  “Within spitting distance. What are we looking at?”

  “Several thousand. We now believe they’re a combination of Hoffman’s Blackshirt troops, right-wing survivalist groups who’ve kept their heads down until now, and what’s left of Hoffman’s terrorist groups. They have exhausted their mortar rounds and are attacking with small arms only. We are completely surrounded, Eagle. You ten-four that?”

  “I copy, Therm.”

  Therm was telling Ben that it didn’t make any difference which direction he chose to attack from. Just come on.

  The COs had run up to Ben’s position. “My company will attack from the north,” he told them. “Baker will take the south. Charlie take the east. Dog Company swing around and take the west side. When Dog is in position, we attack. Corrie, any word from the Scouts?”

  “Coming in now, sir.” She listened through her earphones for a moment. “Everything is clear around the attack zone. No surprises for us.”

  “Let’s go 4-F, people,” Ben ordered.

  Find ’em, fix ’em, fight ’em, and finish ’em.

  The Rebels, running without lights, quickly swung into position. The sounds of battle were sharp in the damp night. The rain had ceased and a few stars were beginning to poke through the cloud cover. The storm was moving rapidly off to the east.

  “All units in position, sir,” Corrie reported.

  “Let’s do it,” Ben replied, and the Rebels moved out on foot.

  The terrain was hilly, thick with brush and timber, and the going was gradual uphill, and slow and hard.

  “Dog attacking from the west,” Corrie said. “Enemy is swinging units around to meet them. They believe our main force is Dog.”

  “Did Dog encounter any mines, trip-wires, or any other impediments on the way?”

  “Negative.”

  “Tell our people the password word is Jerry, response is Lee.” When that was done, Ben said, “Put it in gear, people.” Then took off at a trot through the timber.

  The Rebels crashed into the Blackshirts, right-wingers, and terrorists from the north, south, and east at just about the same time, catching them completely off guard. For a full ten minutes, it was hand to hand combat in the damp and treacherous footing in the darkness of the timber.

  Ben slammed the butt of his Thompson into the pale face of a man and then shot him in the chest. Jersey jumped onto the back of a dark shape coming up fast behind Ben and rode the man to his knees. He threw her off and Cooper shot him in the face. Corrie’s CAR-15 spat fire and lead and two dark shapes went down screaming in pain. Beth had slung her M-16 and had both hands filled with 9 mm pistols for the close-in work.

  Ben saw dark shapes come running through the timber and leveled his old Thompson. The Chicago Piano roared and bucked in his hands. The heavy .45-caliber slugs tore into flesh and splintered bone and knocked the running shapes spinning to the ground.

  A man leaped out of the darkness and onto Ben’s back. Ben twisted and slung the man off, then kicked him on the side of the jaw with a boot. The man screamed as his jaw splintered and he rolled away, coming up fast to his knees, a pistol in one hand. Ben pulled the trigger on the Thompson and the slugs turned the man’s face into a bloody, unrecognizable mess. If the man ever had any real thought processes, they were now spattered on the trunk of a tree.

  Ben and team quickly and effectively finished what remained of the counterattack and knelt down on the damp earth to catch their breath.

  “Therm says the situatio
n has eased on his position,” Corrie panted the words. She caught her breath and then smiled in the night, white teeth flashing against the tan of her face. “Smoot is all right. She crawled behind a foot locker and is still there.”

  “Dog’s smarter than we are,” Ben said, snapping a fresh drum into place. “Let’s go.”

  It took the Rebels only a few minutes to break through on all sides and Therm’s command poured out of the underground bunkers to join them. The attacking forces faded into the night, leaving behind their dead and wounded.

  Ben did not have to order his medical people to see to the Rebel wounded first. They did that automatically, ignoring the pleas from the enemy wounded.

  It took Ben a few moments to find Thermopolis. All of Therm’s command had returned to their usual manner of dress. Jeans, sweatshirts or T-shirts, headbands, and tennis shoes.

  “Are we going to have a love-in?” Cooper asked, casting hopeful eyes toward Jersey.

  “Forget it,” she told him.

  “You’re breaking my heart, Jersey.”

  “You’ll get over it.”

  “Ben!” the voice of Thermopolis reached him.

  The two men found each other, shook hands and smiled at one another.

  “Good to see you, Thermopolis,” Ben said.

  “Bastards seemed to come out of nowhere,” Therm said. “Those right-wing survivalist types must have been very familiar with this part of the country and linked up with Hoffman’s Blackshirts. Then they slipped in small groups at a time.”

  “Probably part of those we chased out of southern Missouri a while back,” Ben replied. “We knew we didn’t get them all. Let’s get a body count.”

  If Therm’s estimate that he had been under attack by several thousand men was correct, and Ben had no reason to doubt it, the Rebels had broken the backs of that particular bunch. By dawn they had counted more than fifteen hundred dead and wounded. Most of the wounded critically hurt.

  One slight confrontation stuck in Ben’s mind. Shortly after the sounds of battle had faded, Therm and Ben had been standing and chatting.

  “How about the enemy wounded, Ben?” Therm suddenly asked, after a civilian had walked up, carrying a medical bag and with unspoken questions in his eyes.

  “Who is this?” Ben asked.

  “Dr. Sessions,” Therm said. “He and his wife, who is also a doctor, joined up shortly after we got here. We have the makings of quite a community here.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Ben said.

  “The wounded, General?” the doctor pressed him. “They are suffering.”

  “That’s their goddamn problem,” Ben told the man. “You make sure that my people are taken care of, any civilians who might have been in the area, and then, and only then, do you jack around with the enemy. And if they’re going to die, you give them a shot to kill the pain and leave them alone. Now, did you hear all that loud and clear, doctor?”

  Therm was inspecting the stars. They were quite lovely this night, since the storm had blown clear.

  “Help me, Doc!” a man called out. “I took one in the legs.”

  Cooper walked over to the cammie-clad man. “How’d you like to take one in the head?”

  “You got to be kidding!” the fallen man blurted.

  “Trust me when I say he isn’t,” Beth told him. “Shut your damn month. You get treated after everyone else.”

  The doctor’s wife had joined the group. Sessions looked first at Ben, then at Thermopolis. “I thought surely you were kidding when you told me about Ben Raines. My wife and I had a good laugh about it.”

  “You’re not laughing now,” Therm replied.

  Sessions looked at Ben. “I don’t think I like you very much, General.”

  “I don’t give a damn whether you like me or not. You just treat my people and do it right the first time. Get to it, Doctor.”

  Doctor and wife left in a huff. Ben looked at Therm. “He’d better learn how we operate, Therm. If he stays here, and if he ever leaves a Rebel unattended to work on an enemy, and that Rebel dies, I’ll kill that bastard. Personally.”

  “I tried to tell him, Ben. I thought I got through. But I shall pass along your latest words.”

  “Good,” Ben said with a smile. “Now let’s go get some coffee.”

  Therm had lost ten of the people who had been with him for years, and eight more had been badly wounded. Fourteen regular Rebels had been killed, and more than twenty wounded.

  “I take the blame for this, Ben,” Therm said, after they both had slept for a few hours and were now sitting, having a late breakfast.

  “Don’t,” Ben told him. “That would be nonsense. It wasn’t your fault. I’ve read your logs. You had patrols out, Scouts out. You did exactly what any other commander would have done. These things happen. I know you feel bad. So do I. I have a thousand times over the years. And you never get used to it. You just have to learn to live with it.” Ben looked around. “Say! Where is Emil?”

  Therm laughed. “Leading a recon patrol up in Iowa. You lucked out.”

  “Regular Rebels are taking orders from Emil?” Ben asked, astonishment in his words. Emil, the little ex-con artist, was liked by everyone. But a leader of men?

  “Well . . .” Therm again laughed. “They pretend they take orders from him. Sergeant Mack is with him.”

  Ben relaxed. Mack would see to it that Emil didn’t get in much trouble. “You’ve got it looking good around here.”

  “Yeah, I’ll have to agree with you. A few of the folks from Mountain Home and surrounding towns came here to settle with us. We’re going to have a good place to live here . . . someday,” he added.

  “Keep the faith, brother,” Ben said. “Power to the people and all that.”

  That really set Therm off in a burst of laughter. He wiped his eyes and said, “Way to go, Ben. Dylan and Baez would love you for that.”

  “Yeah. I’m sure the three of us would get along famously. Did you know I used to sing a lot of Dylan’s songs?”

  Therm suddenly stopped smiling. He frowned. “That’s not funny.”

  “I didn’t mean it to be funny. I used to be able to cord a guitar pretty damn well.”

  “You never told me that!”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “You did not! You sang protest songs?”

  “I didn’t consider them protest songs. I just liked them.”

  “That’s incredible!”

  “No, it isn’t. Where is your guitar?”

  “You wait right there. Don’t move. I’ll get it. This I have to hear personally.”

  “Fine. I’ll be right here.” He hurried off.

  “I’m leaving,” Cooper said.

  Jersey lifted her M-16. “If I gotta hear this, so do you. Sit down, Coop.”

  Coop sat.

  “You two are hurting my feelings,” Ben told them.

  “Has anybody got any ear-plugs?” Jersey said.

  Therm returned with a Martin guitar and handed it to Ben. Ben flexed the fingers of his left hand a few times. “You have to realize that I haven’t played in years. The tips of my fingers are going to get very sore, very quickly.”

  “Just a few chords and a few lines will convince me that you’re not bullshitting me,” Therm replied.

  “Oh, ye of little faith,” Ben said.

  “I’ll believe it when I hear it,” Therm said.

  Ben selected a big triangle pick from the case, hit a few practice chords, cleared his throat a couple of times, and then launched into Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues.”

  Ben’s voice was deep and husky, but he could carry a true tune and his singing wasn’t all that bad. He did a few lines and then went into “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” and did a respectable job of it.

  The look on Therm’s face was priceless.

  Ben sang a few lines of a dozen songs from the protest days, hitting all the right chords. Then the tips of his fingers started hurting. Ben smiled and handed the
guitar back to Therm. “Nice axe, Therm.”

  Thermopolis said, “Well, I’ll be goddamned! You really can pick.”

  Ben smiled. “Yeah. Thanks. That was fun. Took me back years.”

  Therm’s eyes narrowed and he was thoughtful. “Yeah. Probably back to when you worked for the damned CIA and infiltrated student dissident groups. I’ll make a bet that’s why you know all those songs.”

  “You never heard me say that, Therm.”

  “Oh, well,” Therm said with a shrug of his shoulders. “At least you’re continuing your habit of constantly amazing me.”

  “Ike and Dr. Chase are on the way here,” Corrie informed them.

  “Why?” Ben asked.

  “They didn’t say.”

  “ETA?”

  “One hour.”

  Ben looked at Therm. “Did the good Dr. Sessions get over his huff at me?”

  “Not really,” Therm leveled with him. “But I told him if he wanted to practice medicine, and have drugs available to him, that’s the way it had to be.”

  “And he didn’t like that very much, did he?”

  “Not at all.”

  “His wife of like mind?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “You’re going to have trouble with them, Therm. I sense it and I’m pretty good at picking out troublemakers. But that’s your worry. I’m sure they’re both good people. But they’ve got to be made to understand about the time and place and the hundreds of thousands of people out there who would like to destroy this movement. If you can’t get through to them, then whether they stay or go is a judgement call you’re going to have to make. And you’ll make the right one.”

  Therm shook his head. “Just think. A few years ago I was a contented hippie, living as one with the land, in my own little commune, and enjoying life.”

  “And singing protest songs about me,” Ben said with a smile.

  Therm’s eyes twinkled. “You do get right to the truth, don’t you, Ben?”

  THIRTEEN

  Dr. Chase took an immediate dislike to both Dr. Sessions and his wife. He said to Ben: “You would think, after more than a decade of this world being turned upside down, the idealistic views of those two would have been knocked out of them.”