Ambush in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  Ben dragged the bodies, one at a time, off the side of the road and into the brush. Then he quickly broke his own camp and stowed his gear into the Hummer. He was delighted to see a case of field rations behind the front seat and other gear piled in the back. There were four full five-gallon fuel cans in the cargo space in the rear.

  Ben got behind the wheel, cranked the engine, and sighed with satisfaction. The fuel tank was full. He dropped the Hummer into gear and moved out. He was back in business.

  Ben drove for ten miles, then at a crossroads, pulled off the road and parked behind what had once been a store and a residence. The sky was beginning to lighten and he wanted to inspect the gear in the Hummer.

  He sat for a few minutes behind the wheel, knowing he was grinning like a schoolboy and couldn’t stop. Hell, he didn’t want to stop.

  He unassed himself from the Hummer and did a careful inspection of the old store and adjoining building. Both were deserted and showed no signs of having been occupied for a long time. There was nothing left in either building; they had been looted many times.

  Behind the store, sitting on the back step, Ben heated a cup of coffee and while that was heating, ate a full ration pack and could have eaten more. He was rapidly regaining his strength. Pulling the bodies off the road had not sapped him as he was afraid it would. He took his daily medicine, then drank his coffee and smoked a cigarette while he watched the sun break the horizon. Then he began his inspection of the interior of the Hummer.

  One of his bullets had punched through the thick plastic of the rear side door and penetrated the radio. It wouldn’t even turn on.

  “Well, so much for that,” Ben muttered. “I can’t have everything I wished for.”

  Then he began rummaging through the other gear. A full case of field rations on the seat, another on the floorboards. Ben didn’t have to worry about anything to eat for a time. A five-gallon sealed can of drinking water, with the date it had been factory sealed stamped on the can.

  “Issued for his white troops only, I’ll bet,” Ben muttered, but he was glad to see the full can of water. It would last him for a long time if he was careful, and he certainly intended to be careful.

  Ben found blankets and a tent. A portable stove and several cans of fuel for it. A rucksack filled with grenades. Then he smiled when he found a Heckler & Koch HK11A1 machine gun, chambered for the 7.62 round. This weapon could also take the 5.56 round and the lighter old Russian 7.62 round by replacing the barrel, bolt, and feed mechanism. But there were no spare parts for the weapon so this machine gun would take only the heavier 7.62 round. Which suited Ben just fine. There were five full one hundred round cans of belted ammo in the Hummer.

  “Playtime is over, boys,” Ben said. “The Eagle is back in business.”

  Eagle had been Ben’s code designation for a long time.

  Ben found the tool kit and removed the front panel from the radio. The bullet, or as it turned out, bullets, had made a mess of the radio. It was beyond useless. Ben removed it from its brackets and carefully hid it with some junk in the old store. Removing the radio would lighten the load in the Hummer by about fifty pounds.

  Ben found some clean socks and some dirty underwear. He kept the socks. He found a pair of new boots that were several sizes too small for him but he kept them anyway. He just might run across a Rebel who needed some boots. He found a map case and inspected it. The maps were far more up to date than the ones the Rebels were using. He found roads he didn’t even know existed. More importantly, he found enemy troops’ positions and hidden food and fuel depots clearly marked.

  “Thank you very much, Captain,” Ben said, carefully folding the maps and slipping them back into the waterproof case. “You’ve been a great help.”

  Ben laid several grenades on the seat beside him and stowed the rest. He squatted down and drank some water, while planning his next move.

  Which was easy enough. “Keep moving on,” he muttered. He was bound to run into some Rebels sooner or later.

  He once more tried the frequencies on his walkie-talkie. Nothing. Which was what he expected.

  Ben cranked the engine and pulled out onto the road. Might as well keep going, he thought. It isn’t as though I have a lot of choice in the matter.

  With a full tank of fuel and the extra cans, Ben knew he could travel about five hundred or so miles, give or take seventy five. But now that he had the locations of hidden fuel depots clearly marked on the maps he had, as long as he could evade the enemy, he just might keep going for a long, long time.

  Of course, he might round the next bend in the road and run smack into an enemy patrol.

  “Pays your money and takes your chances,” he muttered, and drove off into the unknown.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Ben stayed on roads that ran along the border with Togo, and ran through no towns that were on the map. He passed through tiny villages and saw perhaps a total of a hundred people, all of them looking as if they might fall over dead from starvation or disease any moment. Ben did not stop. There was no point. There was nothing he could do.

  By midmorning, the dirt road came to an end, intersecting with the main highway between Savalou and Djougou. Now it would get dicey.

  Ben backed up and into the brush. He got out the map case taken from the officer he’d shot and rummaged through the papers, finally finding a map of Djougou. A population of thirty thousand before the Great War. No telling what it was now. It might be only a few hundred or a few hundred thousand. But there was a fuel depot there and he would need fuel.

  Ben smiled. He felt an old familiar recklessness take him. He just might be able to bluff his way in and out. Hell, what did he have to lose?

  He studied the map again. He was about a hundred kilometers from Djougou. The road appeared to be in fair condition, so he should reach the small city about 1500 hours, right in the middle of a driving monsoonal rain. That would work to his advantage . . . he hoped.

  “Okay, Raines,” he muttered. “Let’s have a go at it.”

  Just before the compound was overrun, Ben had changed into regulation BDUs, and given his tiger stripe fatigues to the laundry crew to be washed. So he was wearing the same type of field clothing as Bruno’s officers. The collar insignia denoting rank was different in the two armies, so Ben was going to have to depend on his age and good deal of bluff to get through any checkpoints he might run into. Ben was very good at intimidation, so he wasn’t too worried about dealing with inexperienced enlisted men and junior officers. He just hoped he didn’t run into some field-savvy senior sergeant along the way. He didn’t feel there was much danger of that, since senior sergeants seldom manned checkpoints.

  It was a needless worry. Ben did not run into a single checkpoint on the way to Djougou. About fifty kilometers from the city, the rains came thundering down and Ben drove on into the small city without a hitch.

  Ben had memorized the way to the fuel depot, but naturally he got lost in the twisted street. He came up on a group of young soldiers, several whites and several blacks. Ben brazenly stopped and waved one over.

  “Sir!” the young soldier said in perfect English, coming to full brace in the rain.

  “The fuel depot,” Ben barked. “Where is it?”

  The young soldier gave good instructions and added, “But you might have trouble getting someone to assist you, sir.”

  Ben fixed the young man with a hard look. “Do you really think that I will have very much trouble?”

  The young soldier took a deep breath. “Ah . . . no, sir. No, sir. I really think not.”

  “Thank you,” Ben told him, returning the salute. “Carry on.”

  “Sir, yes, sir!”

  Ben filled up at the depot, swiped four more full five-gallon cans of fuel, stowed them in the rear cargo space, and was gone from the small city, having done it all in just about twenty minutes.

  “It just takes a little bit of nerve, that’s all,” Ben said, leaving Djougou behind him. “And a
lot of blind luck,” he added.

  About fifteen miles north of Djougou, Ben ran into his first checkpoint. It was manned by two tough-looking African soldiers, both of them wearing some sort of tribal marks cut and tattooed into their cheeks. They were both surly and arrogant-acting. Ben pulled his sidearm from leather and held it in his right hand, out of sight. The 9mm was on full cock and ready to bang. He unzipped the thick upper plastic of the door and peered out at the men.

  “Yes?”

  “Get out of the vehicle,” one ordered.

  “I don’t think so,” Ben told him.

  The man lifted his rifle and Ben shot him in the face, the man dying without a sound. The second guard whirled around and Ben put two 9mm rounds in the man’s chest. The guard sat down hard on the muddy ground and looked at Ben, a very surprised expression on his face. Then he toppled over face first in the mud.

  Ben couldn’t leave the two where they were. Any enemy tracker with half a brain would know Ben was heading north. He scrambled out of the Hummer and laid both dead men across the wide hood of the Hummer. He looked up and down the highway. No vehicle in sight. Ben pulled back out on the road and headed north, feeling just a bit conspicuous with two dead men lying across the hood. About a mile up the highway, he came to a nearly overflowing and fast-running creek. He stopped on the bridge and dumped the bodies into the water. They disappeared from sight. Ben got back into the Hummer and continued on his way, knowing with a sick feeling in his stomach that if Bruno’s men were working openly here, Nick’s battalion had been overrun and scattered.

  How many more of Ben’s battalions had suffered the same fate?

  Ben was afraid to even guess.

  Bruno had carefully suckered Ben and his Rebels on, lulling them into a sense of false security. He had used the rainy season to finish moving massive numbers of troops north and had probably had the tunnels dug and supplied long before Ben and his battalions had sailed from the States.

  Ben had always said he could never afford the luxury of selling Bruno short, and damned if he hadn’t done just that.

  And Ben’s people had paid the ultimate price for his own short-sightedness.

  The Rebels’ years-long unbroken stretch of luck had run out.

  Ben’s face had tightened with rage with those thoughts, his big hands gripping the wheel turning white-knuckled.

  He willed himself to calm down. Take it easy. Anger wouldn’t solve anything now. He had to keep a cool head. He forced himself to find something positive to think about and concentrate on that.

  Miles went past in a torrent of warm rain and worsening highway. Ben had to slow his speed. He did not want to break down now. He drove on a few more miles. Where in the hell were the people? Where had they gone? Had Bruno’s horrible plans of massive genocide reached this far north? Could any human being actually be that callous?

  Ben was a long-time student of history. He knew the answer to that question the instant it formed in his brain. Hitler was Bruno’s idol; Bruno considered Hitler to be the greatest man who ever lived.

  Yes. Bruno was perfectly capable of killing millions of people, and that’s what he had done. He had used old tribal hatred among the African people to practice massive genocide. And those who carried out Bruno’s orders had aligned themselves with the Nazi bastard. So the Rebels weren’t just up against several hundred thousand of Bruno’s troops. They had walked right in and placed themselves against about a million troops—more or less.

  Well, there was only one thing Ben could do about that: survive. Rebuild. Plan. Be smarter than Bruno. Be meaner than Bruno.

  And the latter was something Ben could damn sure do.

  Fifteen miles up the highway, Ben came to half a dozen burned out Hummers and deuce-and-halves and several Rebel tanks. His worse fears were being confirmed: Nick’s battalion had fought one hell of a fight, but had finally been overrun by sheer numbers.

  Ben didn’t stop. There was no point. The scene before him told it all in silent volumes.

  Ben steeled himself and drove on.

  He had not faced the thought that his team might be among the dead, and he refused to do so now. His team was as slippery as quicksilver. If there was just one chance in a million that they survived, they did. That was something that Ben had to keep believing. He had to.

  He drove on through the monsoonal rains. Came to another battle site. More wrecked and burned out Rebel tanks and trucks. Rotting bodies, bloated and eaten on by wild animals and carrion birds.

  Ben kept his eyes on the road and drove on.

  The bodies had been stripped of everything, right down to their underwear. It was obscene.

  Ben began looking for a place to hide for the night. It would be dark in about an hour. He came to what was left of a village and slowed, giving it a visual. He finally stopped and backed up, pulling in behind some falling down huts and houses. The rain had actually picked up in volume, limiting vision to only about a hundred or so yards. The fat raindrops were hammering out and flattening the tire tracks of the Hummer.

  Ben took a chance and walked out onto the highway, looking at the village from the road. The huts he had parked behind completely shielded his vehicle. There was no danger of being spotted from the sky. Ben had not seen an enemy plane or helicopter since the fight at the border.

  He found a dry spot in the hut directly in front of his Hummer and settled in for the evening. His thoughts were dark and ugly as he fixed his supper.

  All right! Ben finally calmed himself down enough to think rationally. All right. Enough of this. Now think, Raines, damnit, think.

  Not everybody was killed. Perhaps no more than forty percent of the two battalions had been hit.

  So where did the survivors go?

  Did they run off into the brush and jungle to form small hit-and-run guerrilla groups?

  Maybe.

  Were they captured?

  That was a possibility that certainly had to be considered.

  If they were captured, where were they being held?

  Ben smiled, a cruel curving of the lips.

  He damn sure knew how to learn the answer to that. But the person he questioned was not going to be very happy about it.

  He ate his supper, heated his coffee, took his daily medication, and smoked a cigarette. Then he went to bed.

  Tomorrow he would take a prisoner and learn the truth. One way or the other.

  The soldier looked up at Ben through very frightened eyes. He had never seen such a savage look in all his life. One instant he had been standing guard at an intersection, the next instant something had struck him on the head and now he was trussed up like a pig awaiting slaughter.

  And who was this savage-looking man squatting beside him, holding that razor-sharp knife?

  “You speak English?” Ben asked.

  Ben had dumped the sentry into the back of the Hummer and driven twenty miles up the road before pulling off into the brush and hauling the soldier out for questioning.

  “Yes, sir.”

  The sentry had been careless. Over-confident. Too sure of himself. The few victories had filled him with a false sense that all was well.

  All was not well.

  Ben Raines was alive and on the warpath.

  “How many prisoners did you people take? And you’d better give me a straight answer when you open your mouth.” Ben held up the knife. “The thumb on your right hand gets cut off first.”

  The soldier believed him. There was not a doubt in his mind kept this barbaric-looking man meant every word. So great was his fright, the soldier peed in his underwear.

  “We took some prisoners. But not very many. They were transported south to a prisoner of war camp.”

  “How far south?”

  “Several hundred miles.”

  “Will they be tortured?”

  “Certainly not, sir! Those are orders from the General Field Marshal himself. All Rebel prisoners will be treated fairly and humanely. I have seen those orders
with my own eyes. I swear it.”

  Ben believed him. Bruno had sense enough to know that if Ben learned any of his people had been tortured, Hell would be a luxury vacation spa compared to what Ben Raines would do . . . and Bruno knew even if Ben was dead, that crazy ex-SEAL, Ike McGowan would do the same, and if those two were dead, Dan Gray, that nutty Englishman, the former SAS officer, would take up the slack, and so on down the line.

  What Bruno did not really understand was: scratch one Rebel, and they all bleed.

  “Give the exact location where they’re being held.”

  “I don’t know the exact location, sir. I swear before God and my mother’s grave, I don’t know.”

  Ben believed him. The soldier was too young and too frightened and there was a ring of sincerity in his words.

  “How many battalions were hit?”

  “About half of them, I think, sir. But I don’t know for sure. I do know that many of the attacks failed and we lost a lot of native soldiers. The main thrust of the attacks were concentrated in the west. We were ordered, at all costs, to either kill or capture General Ben Raines. He . . .” The soldier’s mouth dropped open and he paled under his tan. He had suddenly realized just who was questioning him. “Oh, my God,” he gasped. “You’re General Ben Raines.”

  “That’s right, boy. I’m the devil in person.”

  The soldier’s eyes were suddenly filled with fright. He, too, had heard Ben referred to as the devil. And he obviously believed the rumor.

  “And whether I send you right straight to hell with this knife,” Ben held up the big-bladed knife, “or let you live, depends on you.”

  “How do you mean, General?” The soldier’s voice was filled with panic.