Destiny in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  He moved around a corner of the building under siege and saw a group of nine men standing on a corner, discussing just how to finish off the cops inside.

  Sam slid back the ejector lever on the Beretta, cocking it, and held it down at his side next to his thigh. Humming softly to himself, he walked nonchalantly toward the group, keeping his head down so they couldn’t see his face as he approached.

  When he was about twenty feet away, one of the men called out, “Hey, who are you?”

  Sam looked up, grinned, and said, “Death!”

  He raised his Beretta in the classic two-handed grip and began to trigger off rounds, aiming for the biggest part of his targets, the chest.

  Eight men went down before the ninth managed to get his AK-47 up and fire.

  Sam fired just as he was hit, and took the last man out. His aim was thrown off by the impact of the slug from the AK-47 and hit the target in the mouth, blowing teeth, skull, brains, and hair out of the back of his head.

  Sam had taken a slug in the left side of his chest, but he was lucky. The bullet had hit a rib and skidded just under the skin, and come out under his left shoulder blade without ever going into his chest.

  Nevertheless, Sam was knocked off his feet and lay on his back, looking up at the stars in the night sky, barely visible because of the glare from the flames in the burning building across the street.

  As Sam lay there with his left arm clamped tight against his chest to stop the bleeding, Jack Bean’s face appeared over him.

  “You just gonna lay there bleeding or are you gonna get up and fight?” Bean asked as he checked Sam’s wound.

  Sam took a deep breath. “Ah, if it’s all the same to you, Major, I think I’ll just lay here a while.”

  “Hell,” Bean said after he’d checked the wound. “This is just a little ol’ graze. Get on your feet, you pussy.”

  Sam’s eyes rolled a little as Bean got him to his feet. “I’ll get up, Jack,” he said, “but I don’t think I’m gonna be much good to you.”

  Bean laughed. “Listen to that,” he said.

  Sam cocked his head, and he could hear rapid fire coming from all around them, along with explosions of frag grenades among the attackers.

  He glanced at Bean. “The citizens?”

  Bean stepped out into the street. In the light of the moon, he saw Jim Watson, along with Jeremy and Brit and other men and women of the town, who were carrying Uzis and blasting away at scurrying terrorists and FFA men as if they were born to it, cleaning up the last of the invaders.

  “Yeah,” Bean said to Sam. “I guess they had the balls to fight after all.”

  The Arab invaders refused to give up, and were slaughtered where they stood, some of the citizens being cut down in the process.

  For the most part, the FFA men didn’t have the same conviction to their cause as the Arabs, and most of them, when they saw the citizens fighting and rising up against them, knew it was all over. They dropped their weapons and stood meekly with their hands raised over their heads.

  As the people of the city threw them on the ground facedown and tied their hands behind their backs, Bean thought to himself he wouldn’t want to be in the FFA traitors’ shoes when it came time for their neighbors to judge their crimes.

  In less than an hour, all of the attackers were either killed, wounded, or in custody of the citizens who’d come after them.

  The police that were left alive took control and began to organize the citizens into groups, with each group assigned a different area of the city to defend.

  Known FFA men or sympathizers were rounded up and put behind bars.

  Jackson Bean, after seeing to what was left of Mary Blackburn’s body and Sam Clemens’s wounds, called the base and told them he was finished in Allentown and was ready for reassignment.

  Twenty-eight

  Similar happenings were taking place all across the United States, with varying degrees of success. In most cases, the citizens rose to the occasion as they did in Allentown, but some areas were peopled with citizens of less dependable patriotism.

  California, long settled by people of a more liberal bent who expected the government to take care of them totally, had few citizens willing to risk life and limb to save themselves.

  San Francisco, targeted hard by the invaders who hoped to use its port for importation of supplies and reinforcements, was one such place.

  The Scout team sent in there, consisting of ten men and women because of the city’s importance and the higher than usual number of invaders, found almost no one among the populace willing to help them in their quest to oust the invaders.

  After being HALO-dropped on the outskirts of town, Major Jim Wilson, the leader of the Scout team, led his forces into the city by confiscating local vehicles.

  Once in the city, Wilson approached numerous residents. After explaining the situation to them in detail, he asked for their help in arming others in the city to help in the attack on the invaders.

  Other than a few older individuals, no one was willing to take up arms against the terrorists, citing their belief that it was the government’s job to take care of national defense and that was what they paid their taxes for.

  As the Scouts made their way down the coast road towards the famous Fisherman’s Wharf, which even in these tough economic times was still a tourist mecca, Wilson was furious.

  “These pacifistic sons of bitches,” he groused to his second in command, Janey Goodall. “If it was up to me, I’d let the fuckin’ Arabs kill every one of them.”

  Goodall, who was a bit more laid back than her commander, smiled and shook her head. “Yeah, me too, Boss, but that wouldn’t help the rest of the country when they bring in those ships with reinforcements like they’re probably planning to do.”

  Wilson grinned ruefully. “I know, I know. It’s just that I can’t stand people who won’t stand up for the way of life they’re enjoying.”

  “That’s why you live in the SUSA and not the U.S.,” Goodall reminded him.

  “I guess so,” Wilson said, pulling the truck containing his team over to the side of the road about three miles from the wharf area.

  He stepped out of the vehicle and looked back up the hill toward the downtown area. Flames lit the night sky from the burning buildings that had been razed by the invaders in their destruction of the police and highway patrol offices. The nearby Army base, long deserted by a cost-cutting Administration, had been left alone since there were no soldiers there to protect the city.

  Wilson climbed up on top of the vehicle and turned night-vision goggles toward the wharf area, trying to see just what kind of defenses the invaders had set up to guard the port.

  He could see roadblocks on each road leading into the port, with teams of men standing guard to prevent access to the ship-docking areas.

  “Looks like they got it pretty much blocked off,” he said to Janey Goodall and the rest of the Scouts standing next to the car.

  “Too many of them for a frontal assault?” Goodall asked.

  “Yep,” he answered shortly.

  “Can you tell how many we’re gonna be up against?” she asked.

  He turned his goggles toward the dock area and saw it swarming with armed men. “Looks like a couple’a hundred at least,” he said.

  “You think we can get the job done with only ten people?” she asked, looking around at the team.

  Wilson jumped down and put the goggles in a pouch on his belt. “Hell, yes. We’re Scouts, aren’t we?”

  He fished a detailed map of the dock area from his pocket and spread it out on the hood of the car. “Now, here’s what we’re gonna do. Our job isn’t necessarily to kill all of the invaders, but to make the docks unusable for off-loading of men and matériel in the event the invaders want to do that.”

  “So, all we have to do is walk in there and destroy the docks?” Goodall asked sarcastically.

  Wilson smiled at her. “That’s exactly what we’re gonna do, my dear,�
� he said. He reached into his backpack and pulled out a can of black shoe polish. “Put this on, people, ’cause we’re gonna have to be invisible to get this done.”

  Once the team was ready, with backpacks full of packets of C-4 plastic explosive and timing devices, antipersonnel mines, and grenades, Wilson gave each member of the team an individual assignment, marking on the map fuel areas and docks that needed to be destroyed.

  One of the basic strengths of the Scouts was their ability to work alone, without the need for backup and support on their jobs.

  With their assignments committed to memory, the team split up and each of the ten men and women went their separate ways, moving alone so if one were discovered, the others wouldn’t be put in jeopardy.

  Janey Goodall, the straps of her heavy backpack chafing her shoulders, moved silently among and between groups of guards without being noticed. With her blackened face and hands and her all-black Scout’s cammies, she was completely invisible from more than a few feet away.

  Scurrying among ship’s containers scattered along the dock area, she held her K-Bar assault knife in her right hand and her mini-Uzi in her left. The gun was to be used only as a last resort lest she tip off the terrorists to her team’s presence on the docks.

  Her nostrils picked up the scent of tobacco smoke just as she rounded a corner of a container just off the dock area. She found herself face-to-face with a fat man with a florid face who was leaning against the steel wall of the container smoking a cigarette. He had an AK-47 on a strap slung over his shoulder, and was just taking a sip from a flask as he saw her.

  He stopped with the flask halfway to his lips, his eyes opened wide with surprise.

  “Hey, what the hell? Who are ... ?” he began.

  Goodall smiled, her teeth flashing white against the blackness of her camouflaged face. “I’m nobody,” she said, stepping quickly up to the man and burying her K-Bar in his throat up to the hilt.

  She grabbed him as he sagged against her, the warm blood that spurted from his neck soaking her cammies and making her gag with its salty, coppery scent.

  When he quit jerking, she lowered him to the ground, taking his flask so it wouldn’t make any noise when it fell.

  She held it up to her nose and sniffed. Smelled like whiskey to her. She took a quick sip to get the taste of the man’s blood out of her mouth, and then placed the flask gently on his blood-soaked chest.

  “Sorry, fellah,” she whispered. “You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  She leaned out from behind the container and looked both ways. She could see no other guards, but she knew they were there, just waiting for her to make a mistake.

  Crouching as low as she could, she ran across the bare area in front of the huge loading dock that was her target. Just on the edge of the wharf was a series of diesel fuel pumps. She squatted next to the pumps and checked her watch. It was midnight straight up and down.

  Wilson had coordinated their attack to begin at one in the morning, so she set the timers on her C-4 packets for one hour. She placed one of the packets on the bottom of the nearest pump and stuck it there with a piece of duct tape.

  Peeking around and seeing no one nearby, she crawled on hands and knees to the actual dock itself. Just as she was about to move onto it, she saw a tiny red flare fifty yards out on the very end of the dock.

  “Damn, another guard,” she muttered to herself. “Thank heavens for tobacco addiction,” she added, knowing if the man hadn’t stopped to take a smoke, she never would have seen him in the darkness.

  She moved to the side of the dock and eased herself over, shimmying down one of the stanchions until her feet hit water.

  A shock went through her body as she submerged up to her chest in fifty-degree water.

  Goddamn, she thought, how do those surfers around here stand this shit? I’d be freezing my balls off . . . if I had any.

  Treading water, she made her way out along the dock until she was about midway to the end.

  She wrapped her legs around one of the support beams, gritting her teeth against the pain as dozens of razor-sharp barnacles shredded her skin.

  Won’t have to shave my legs for a while, she told herself with a tight grin.

  She pulled another packet of C-4 from her pack and affixed it to the support, then dog-paddled under the dock to the other side support and did the same thing.

  That oughta take the sucker down, she thought as she swam back to the shore end of the dock. She floated there in the water, wondering if she was going to be able to find a way to climb back up before she succumbed to hypothermia.

  As she moved along the shore, she finally came to a rust-and-barnacle-covered metal ladder that ran from the water up to the top of the shore.

  Thank goodness for small boats, she thought as she made her way quickly up and out of the freezing water. She pulled herself onshore and lay there shivering for a moment, waiting for her body temperature to get back up to survivable levels.

  She checked her watch, its radium dial glowing in the darkness. It was twelve-forty. Damn, only twenty minutes to get shut of this place before it goes up like Hiroshima, she told herself.

  On hands and knees again, she crawled back to the fuel pump where she’d placed her first packet of C-4.

  She lifted the handle and laid it on the ground. After turning the lever at the top of the pump, she depressed the handle-lever and heard the soft sound of diesel fuel running out onto the ground all around her.

  That oughta make a right nice fire, she thought as she moved silently away from the docks.

  Ten minutes later she was back at the rendezvous point where they’d left their vehicle.

  The rest of the team was already there waiting for her.

  “Damn, Janey,” Wilson said, “get a move on. We’ve gotta get outta here ’fore all hell breaks loose.”

  “Roger that, Chief,” she said through chattering teeth.

  She noticed most of the other members of the team were soaking wet just as she was, and nodded thankfully when one of them handed her a woolen blanket to wrap around her shoulders.

  “Where’d you get this?” she asked.

  Her teammate grinned. “Took it off an Arab who probably ain’t ever gonna be cold again.”

  “Get in the fuckin’ car,” Wilson hissed as he opened the door and started the engine.

  They were five miles away when the dock area behind them went up in a tremendous explosion, sending flames hundreds of feet into the air and rattling windows for twenty miles around.

  “I guess they won’t be landing any boats in San Francisco for a while,” Wilson said over his shoulder.

  “From the size of that blast, it’ll probably be raining fish all the way down to Los Angeles,” Goodall said with a grin.

  “Fish and Arabs,” Wilson added, making the entire team laugh out loud.

  Twenty-nine

  Mustafa Kareem knocked, and entered the room where Abdullah El Farrar and Osama bin Araman were celebrating the steady advancement of their troops across what they assumed was an unresisting America.

  Farrar and Araman, both devout Muslims, never indulged in alcoholic spirits, so they were drinking fruit juice and eating fish broiled in the Arab way, with heavy spices and curry.

  Kareem looked down at the paper in his hand and gritted his teeth. It contained a message that he knew would end his friend and leader’s celebration on an unhappy note.

  “Sir,” he said deferentially, as he always did when Farrar was with someone else.

  Farrar looked up, a benevolent smile on his face. “Yes, Mustafa, come and join us. This fish is most elegant, even if it did grow under the feet of the infidels.”

  “I’m afraid I have some troubling news, my friend,” Kareem said, his face a long frown.

  “What is it, Mustafa?” Farrar said, his smile leaving as abruptly as his good mood did at the look on the face of his friend and second in command.

  “I have received several
reports that our troops have been stopped in their advancement. They are coming under heavy fire and have sustained terrible losses.”

  “Has the American government finally awakened to our threat and sent in troops?” Araman asked, a look of astonishment on his face.

  “Not only that, Osama,” Kareem answered, handing the paper to Farrar. “It seems in most areas the citizens of the United States are joining in the fight. They are proving to be more formidable adversaries than we first imagined.”

  “But how are they doing this?” Farrar asked, shaking the paper in Kareem’s face. “I understood from our intelligence sources that the American government had disarmed its citizens some years back. Where are they getting the arms to stand against our troops?”

  “From what little information I have been able to gather,” Kareem explained, “the Americans are being aided by Ben Raines and his Scout troops from the SUSA. Evidently, they are not only bringing in arms for the American citizens to use, they are somehow convincing them to give up their pacifistic ways and join in the battle . . . with devastating results.”

  Farrar laid the paper gently on the table in front of him and stared at it for a moment. Finally, he looked up, a small smile of satisfaction on his face.

  “Well, it is of no matter,” he said. “Once our planes land with reinforcements and the ships we’ve sent to San Francisco disembark their cargo of more troops and equipment, we should be able to make short work of these infidel amateurs who think they can stand against our seasoned fighters.”

  Kareem dropped his gaze. He would rather bite off his tongue than give his friend this next bit of bad news, delivered by phone just minutes before.

  “That is not all I have to tell you, Abdullah,” he said, looking up with sorrowful eyes to meet the gaze of his best friend in all the world.

  “What else is there?” Farrar asked.

  “I’m afraid there will be no landing of troops at the San Francisco docks.”

  “What?” Araman almost screamed. “Why not?”

  “The docks were destroyed in a late-night raid by some of Ben Raines’s Scouts. The entire landing area is nothing more than twisted and charred metal. There is no place for the troops to be landed.”