“On whether on not you tell me the truth.”
“I swear to God, General. Every word I have spoken was the truth. I would not lie to you. I am not that big a fool.”
“Perhaps not. But you would lie to save your life, wouldn’t you?”
“Who wouldn’t, sir?” the soldier replied honestly.
Ben chuckled. “Good reply. Now tell me everything you know about the number of prisoners taken, where they are held, and anything else you know that I need to know.” Ben held up the knife. “And don’t lie.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
The soldier could tell Ben little else, and he did not believe the young man was lying to him.
“You’ll be able to free yourself from these ropes in a few hours, if you work at it,” Ben told him.
“Yes, sir.”
Ben left the young man trussed up on the dirt floor of the hut and drove off toward the south, deliberately allowing the soldier to see what direction he was taking by circling around and driving past the door of the hut. Ten miles down the highway, he cut off onto an ill-defined old logging road and circled around, almost getting stuck half a dozen times. He returned to the highway an hour later and fifteen miles north of the hut and headed north toward Natitingou, Nick’s last known reporting site. But as he approached the town, Ben could not go a mile without seeing signs of a terrible battle.
There weren’t so many Rebel bodies, but dozens of vehicles and several tanks and APCs.
The soldier Ben had questioned had told him that standing orders were to carry off and bury their own dead, leaving the Rebels behind as a form of intimidation to any locals who might get it into their heads to come out of the brush and fight Bruno’s forces. Ben guessed that made sense, in a weird sort of way, since Bruno’s people had killed millions already, and those few natives left were slowly starving to death or dying of disease and most were too sick or weak to fight off a gnat.
About twenty miles south of the town, Ben cut off the main highway onto another highway that angled toward the northeast, but not before stopping at a wrecked deuce-and-a-half and finding one full five-gallon can of fuel somebody had overlooked. He topped off his fuel tank and drove on. The bed of the transport had been filled with dead Rebels, stripped down to their underwear. They were so bloated it was impossible to make out their features.
But where in the hell were the hundreds of Rebels who had escaped the battles?
In the brush and jungle, living off the land, hiding out until they could regroup, probably. They would stay well away from any highways.
But would the survivors head back west, or head east? Neither, he finally concluded: they would make their way north. Some among them would have managed to establish and maintain communications with other battalions during the fight, and would know that not all battalions had been hit. They would try to connect with those battalions.
Ben came to a sliding halt at a tiny village about forty miles north-northeast of the highway he had exited. His eyes had found a graveyard filled with makeshift crosses. He parked the Hummer behind a falling-down hut and walked through the drizzle to the graveyard. He could see dog tags hanging from the rickety crosses, the markers held together with rope and twine and strips of cloth.
The first dog tags he looked at belonged to Nick Stafford. The commander of 18 Batt had died fighting beside his people.
Ben walked through the graveyard, looking at the dogtags; he knew many of the people who were buried there. Several doctors. Nick’s XO.
Ben shook his head and walked back to the Hummer, wondering who had buried the fallen Rebels.
He didn’t know and probably never would.
“Shit!” Ben said, filled with rage. He pulled back onto the highway.
The town of Kerou was nearly deserted, except for a few old men and women who were barely clinging to life. But Ben found an old fuel dump on the outskirts of town and topped off his tank, after he had searched for nearly an hour among the hundreds of barrels to find one that was half full.
It was dark when Ben finished at the dump and he drove about five miles outside of town and made camp in the burned-out ruins of what had once been a nice home.
He had seen no signs of Bruno’s forces and the fuel depot appeared to have been used up and deserted. That could possibly mean that Bruno’s people, when they pulled out, had no intention of returning.
But which direction had they gone?
Ben had him a hunch they headed back toward home.
He didn’t know why he felt that way, but the hunch was strong.
But not so strong that he could afford to let down his guard and become careless.
“Shit!” Ben said, as he poured a cup of coffee and dumped in the contents of a sugar pack from his accessory pack. His thoughts were of Nick. A damn good battalion commander, well liked and respected by his troops.
Cold in the ground.
“Valhalla just got another good soldier,” Ben muttered.
Sleep was elusive for Ben that night. He managed a couple of hours and was on the road just before dawn. He was flagged down about halfway between Kerou and Banikoara by a priest and two nuns, all three wearing the rags of their faith.
“You might kill me for asking this,” the priest said, before Ben could say a word. “But I am not afraid of death. I know you do not shoot wounded men . . . or so I have been told. We have a badly wounded soldier in that hut over there.” He pointed. “Can you spare just a little medicine?”
“I’m an American,” Ben told the priest. “My name is Ben Raines.”
The jaws of all three religious people dropped open. They crossed themselves. The priest said, “Yes. You fit the description. Are you aware there is a great reward out for your capture?”
“No. But that doesn’t surprise me any. Take me to him. Sorry I can’t give you a lift. The vehicle is packed with supplies.”
“It’s only a few hundred yards, General,” a sister said. “Follow us.”
The Rebel was hard hit and dying. Ben felt it was some sort of miracle the man was still alive. For the first time, Ben was able to hear some of what had happened.
“Don’t bother changing bandages or giving me anything, General,” the Rebel sergeant told Ben. “It would be a waste of precious supplies. I’ve had it and I know it. Just listen if you will.”
Ben nodded his head.
“I prayed to God some officer would come along so I could tell my story. I guess God answered my prayers.”
“I guess He did,” Ben said.
“We never really had a chance, General. They came at us by the thousands. First it was suicide squads all mixed in with refugees. Then they came at us in what seemed like thousands; may have been thousands. It was hand to hand most of the time. Artillery was useless, so were mortars. Everything was close up.”
The sergeant paused for a moment to catch his breath. Ben waited.
“But we must have killed hundreds of them, General. Hell, I know we did. There were bodies stacked up like cans of beans in a grocery store. Still they kept coming. They’d climb over the dead and keep coming. It’s . . . like they were all popped up on something. Maybe some local dope. I don’t know. General? Is 18 Batt finished?”
“Nick’s dead. I found his grave among others.”
“Yes, sir. I saw him fall. We were among the last to get hit. Between the two of us, we must have killed at least a hundred. How about your battalion, sir?”
“We were overrun, Sergeant. We took a lot of casualties.”
“Your team?”
“I don’t know. I prefer to think of them as missing.”
The sergeant closed his eyes and smiled. “But we gave them hell, didn’t we, sir?”
“We sure did, Sergeant.”
The sergeant never opened his eyes again. An hour later, he died peacefully in his sleep. Ben had never left his side.
Ben rose to his boots. “I have a shovel in the vehicle. I’ll get it.”
“No need,” the pri
est said. “We have locals waiting about a mile from here. In the bush. We’ll see to his burial. The locals won’t come out as long as you are here. They’re afraid of you.”
“I’m not here to hurt them, Padre.”
“I know that. But they don’t.”
“Can I leave you anything? I can spare some food.”
The priest smiled and shook his head. “No. Thank you. But we’ll make it. You have a long way to go. The sergeant said something about a 17 Batt just across the border in Niger. The bridge is still standing at Malanville. And my people tell me it isn’t guarded.”
“Any word on where Bruno Bottger’s Nazis went?”
“They pulled out. Where, I don’t know. But except for roaming patrols, they’re gone.”
“I guess I’d better go. I still have not been able to make radio contact with any of my people.”
“The sergeant didn’t have any type of communications equipment with him when we found him. Sorry.”
“I am, too, Padre.” The men shook hands, Ben nodded to the nuns, and got back on the road.
Banikoara was a burned out town, with the stench of death hanging everywhere. Ben soon discovered why that was: part of Nick’s 18 Batt had made a last stand in the town, and Bruno’s troops had thrown everything they had at the Rebels, finally overrunning them after what must have been a fierce hand to hand battle.
The bodies of Rebels littered the streets. And they had all been stripped of everything, right down to their underwear, and some had even been stripped of that.
Ben stopped at every shot-up and disabled vehicle until he found one that had two full fuel cans. He filled his tank and stowed the second can in the cargo space of the Hummer and left the city of the dead behind him.
He cut over to the main highway at Kandi, no more than a wide spot in the road, with few stores and the remnants of one hotel, the Baobab 2000. Ben saw a few people, but they showed no great interest in him and he had no desire to stop and exchange pleasantries with them.
It was a hundred kilometers from Kandi to Malanville on the border. Halfway to the border, Ben pulled over at what remained of a lone store set in the middle of nowhere and tucked the Hummer inside the store. Doing that was easy: half of the back wall was missing.
Paul Harrison’s 17 Batt had been working just across the border in Niger. Paul’s last report was that the capital, Niamey, was in ruins and he was moving on and would wait for Ben’s column to line up south of his at a town with the unpronounceable name of Dogondouctchi.
Ben had a hunch that 17 Batt had met the same fate as his 1 Batt and Nick’s 18 Batt.
He wondered how many other battalions had been hit by Bruno’s forces, and how many Rebels had been lost?
He would know something for sure in the morning, but in his heart, he already knew.
Ben found the first of many dead bodies of Rebels he would see that day just past the bridge over the Niger River at Malanville . . . or rather, what was left of them. They were from Paul’s 17 Batt. They might have been part of a Scout team, but Ben couldn’t be sure: the bodies had been stripped and were unrecognizable. Every weapon, every piece of usable equipment, every uniform had been taken.
Ben drove on toward Dosso. There he connected with another highway that would take him Birni Ngaoure, change routes again, and into Dogondouctchi. Ben figured the mileage at just about a hundred and seventy-five kilometers from the bridge over the Niger.
He used a siphoning pump that was in the tool compartment of every Rebel vehicle to top off his gas tank from a shot-up Rebel deuce-and-a-half he found in the ditch and drove on. Ben did his best to keep his eyes from the naked bloated bodies in the cab of the truck. But he couldn’t keep the smell from his nostrils.
On the outskirts of Birni Ngaoure, Ben found the first signs of what a fierce battle Paul’s 17 Batt had waged with Bruno’s troops. The town had been destroyed by mortar and towed artillery, the heavy bombardment finally aiding Bruno’s troops in overrunning and killing what Rebels were left in the besieged town.
The sergeant the priest and nuns had found had been correct: the Rebels must have taken a terrible toll on the enemy troops, fighting right down to the last person standing, or able to pull a trigger.
And written on the bullet-pocked wall of a building were these words, scrawled in indelible ink: 17th HAD IT. 16TH UNDER HEAVY ATTACK. 15TH OVERRUN. 14TH HOLDING BUT NOT FOR LONG. It was signed Lieutenant James Preston and dated.
Ben had met Lt. Preston several times.
Ben shook his head and walked back outside just as the rains came ripping down. He drove on into the town. A dead town. Not one person could be found . . . at least not alive.
Ben looked into a bullet-pocked HumVee and saw a walkie-talkie on the floorboards. He almost turned away from it, thinking certainly it was useless, or booby-trapped, it was in such an obvious place.
Ben fashioned together several long sticks and backed away from the Hummer, crouching behind part of a wall. He began poking at the walkie-talkie, moving it around, turning it over. Nothing happened. Somehow the enemy troops had missed spotting the radio.
Ben retrieved the radio and put it on the seat beside him in his Hummer, then topped off his tank with a siphoning pump. Then he drove away from the town, stopping a few miles outside of town by the banks of a river. He got out, extended the antenna and keyed the talk button.
Nothing.
Ben looked at the walkie-talkie and grimaced. “Try turning it on, Raines,” he muttered in disgust. “That always helps.”
“This is Eagle,” he said, after setting the frequency. “Anyone out there interested in talking to an old bird whose wings have been clipped just a little?”
Ben came very close to weeping from relief when a voice came back. “You bet, Eagle. Keep your location to yourself. Too many radios in the wrong hands . . .”
Then the frequency was jammed up with voices as Rebel communication techs came on, all trying to talk at once. Ben leaned back against the side of the Hummer.
“Well,” he said to the waters of the river and the rain that drenched him. “At least we’re still in business.”
TWENTY-NINE
It would have been useless to set the walkie-talkie on scramble, for Bruno’s people were surely monitoring and with the stolen Rebel equipment could listen to every word. Ben and the radio tech—wherever he was—talked in nonsense and baby talk until both knew the approximate location of the other. The location was determined by using the first, second, third and fourth letter of each word spoken, depending on how the word was positioned in the sentence and then spelling them out. That was something the Rebels had worked out years back.
It shocked Ben to learn he was talking with the communications people of Jim Peter’s 14 Batt, located some hundred miles to the east.
So where were 15 and 16 Batt?
The tech hundreds of miles away did not reply, and from the silence, Ben knew.
Wiped out.
Where was Jim Peters?
Dead.
Buck Taylor of 15 Batt?
Badly wounded.
Mike Post?
Dead.
Raul Gomez of 13 Batt?
Dead.
Jackie Malone of 12 Batt?
Badly wounded.
Greenwalt of 11 Batt?
Dead.
“Jesus H. Christ!” Ben exploded in plain English.
“Nobody else got scratched, General,” the tech replied in kind. If the Commanding General wanted to talk without using the code, the tech sure as hell wasn’t going to tell him he couldn’t.
“Calm down, Ben,” Ike’s voice took the place of the tech. “Save your anger. You’ll need it later. I have your location. Sign off for now. I’ll talk to you later. Check in now and then. Hang loose.”
Ben was left with a hundred unanswered questions, but Ike was right. No point in getting this close to linking up only to have some roaming patrol of Bruno’s close in on him.
Ben made a cam
p, fixed something to eat, heated some coffee, and was rolling a cigarette when several dozen Rebels came walking up the road, as nonchalant as if heading for a church dinner on the grounds.
“Howdy, General!” a sergeant called, waving. “Damn, but it’s good to see a friendly face. We intercepted your transmission and put the code together. Hell, we were only about half an hour away.”
They had rations of their own and a dozen or more vehicles hidden away in the bush, about two miles away. That was good news. But then they dropped some really good news on Ben.
“We’ve been talking in bursts with dozens of other Rebel units scattered all around,” the sergeant said. He was the sergeant major of Paul Harrison’s battalion. “Maybe three hundred or so, with plenty more Rebels in small teams all over the damn place. But they must be without any type of communications except for squad radios.”
“I have one of those in the Hummer,” Ben said. “We’ll try to contact them in a minute. What have you heard, Sergeant? How bad is it?”
“It’s bad, General.” He hesitated. “Almost all of your 1 Batt was wiped out. Maybe a hundred/hundred and fifty got away into the bush and jungle.”
“Any word on my team?”
“Nothing, sir.”
“Dr. Chase?”
“Not a peep, sir.”
“Then you know about those battalions that got hard hit.” It was not a question.
“Yes, sir. We lost some fine people.”
“That we did, Sergeant Major. That we did. Thermopolis and his HQ Batt?”
“They didn’t get attacked.”
“Get the short-range walkie-talkie out of my Hummer and let’s start getting this new brigade organized.”
“New brigade, sir?” a young Rebel questioned.
“Yes. You people are now part of my new 1st Brigade. Get cracking.”
“Yes, sir!” The young Rebel was wearing a grin a charge of C-4 couldn’t dislodge as he rose to retrieve the walkie-talkie.
By the time darkness began covering the land, slightly more than four hundred Rebels had been located. He had again spoken with Ike, who had told him there had been no word about Dr. Chase and his doctors from 1 Batt or Ben’s team.
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