“West is now secure and moving inland,” she said, after checking with communications. “General Striganov is moving inland along the Mamaloha Highway toward the inland airport. He reports no resistance but is expecting heavy fighting once at the airport. Buddy, Colonel Gray, and Rebet are secure. Danjou is reporting no resistance of any kind.”
“We’re going to have to dig them out,” Ben said, disgust in his voice. “Corrie, bump Therm and tell him I want every flamethrower we have over here ASAP. Plenty of fuel. Also start flying C-4 over here today. Lots of it. I’m not going to lose people by using them as tunnel rats. We’ll find the creepie hidey-holes and exits and blow them closed. Has anybody found any survivors on this island?”
“No one is reporting any, General,” Corrie said. “I think the creepies wiped them out.”
Jersey looked startled. “You mean they ate a hundred thousand people?”
“I doubt it,” Ben said. “But they probably worked their way through a lot of them.”
“Blakk!” Jersey said, a grimace on her face.
“All right, people,” Ben said. “Let’s get this airport cleaned up and get ready to receive some planes. Start dragging out the creepies and burning them. Anyone with an open wound is not to touch any creepie.” Doctor Chase and his lab people had found that the Night People were highly infectious.
The runways were clear by noon and the planes started bringing in supplies. Food, fresh water, ammo, flamethrowers and fuel, and lots of explosives. Ben split his command and sent two companies south on Highway 130. They were to reconnoiter the small village of Keaau and then cut southwest to the village of Kurtistown, on Highway 11, and hold their positions.
Before they left, Ben told them, “You know the creepies just as well as I do. They’ll probably be coming at you tonight. Heads up, people.” He ordered two platoons into town with these words, “Check every basement, everything that leads underground. I don’t believe for a minute they all went into the brush. They’ve left some behind, bet on it. If something is suspicious-looking, blow it.”
Ike intercepted the transmissions and got on the horn. “You’re too light, Ben. If they hit you now, you’ll be in deep shit. I’m sending some of my people in to beef you up and no arguments.”
“None from me, Ike,” Ben told him. “I was going to request backup from you.” He smiled. “But I figured you’d be snooping like an old gossip on a party line anyway.”
He broke the connection as Ike was sputtering and cussing. Within thirty minutes, some of Ike’s SEAL teams were helicoptered in and set up around the airport. Ike used the same training methods as he had gone through as a young man, and as a result, the SEALs in Ben’s command were ranked as extremely dangerous fighters, and all were at the peak of physical conditioning. Ike never let up on his people. That was the way he was trained, and he saw no reason to change it. One either cut it or got out. There was no middle ground with Ike. His people got all the shit jobs anyway, just like it had been back when the nation was whole, so nothing had changed.
“First and second platoons under heavy attack in town!” Corrie yelled from the makeshift radio room. “Creepies coming out of the woodwork.”
“Goddammit!” Ben said. “I knew those bastards were close. “Ask if they need assistance.”
“That’s negative for right now, sir. They’re in good defensive positions and holding their own.”
Ben started to ask the SEALs to go into town, but checked his tongue. That would put them in a bad spot, for he knew that Ike had ordered them to stay close to him. “Pull back those two companies I sent down Highway 130, Corrie. Let’s settle this here and now.” He checked a map. “I want the Rebels’ exact position in town. Once that is established, tell them do not move, I’m sending in gunships.”
“Gunships diverted and on the way,” Corrie told him.
“Hit the town and rearm here.”
“Yes, sir.”
From the airport, the Rebels heard the gunships as they began their vicious attack. Smoke began spiraling from the town as rockets set buildings blazing. Creepies began scurrying like rats from the inferno and Rebels chopped them down. Helicopters began setting down for rearming and the pilots reported to Ben.
“We got them cold, General. Our people are tucked in tight and secure. It won’t be long now. We’re leaving an avenue clean for our guys and gals to get out, if they choose. But the creeps are running this way.”
“We’ll be ready for them. Encourage them to head this way.”
The chopper pilot smiled. “Will do, General.”
But the creepies never made the airport. Somewhere between the town and the airport, they veered off to the west and disappeared.
“Heading into the Hilo Reserve,” Ben said, consulting his map. “Let’s go into town and look it over.”
Corrie had found transportation—a Ford station wagon—and the team piled in, falling in behind two trucks filled with Rebels—a few SEALs had gone ahead of the trucks—and more Rebels fell in behind the station wagon. Ben pulled out just as the two companies he’d sent scouting returned and took up positions around the airport.
The small city of Hilo was burning and the Rebels made no attempts to put out the fires. Ben ordered backfires lighted to contain the flames and then ordered his people out of the city and let it burn itself out.
“West’s people have secured the towns of Waiohinu and Naalehu,” Corrie informed Ben. “Creeps have retreated back into the Kau Reserve. He is not pursuing at this time.”
“Tell him to hold what he has and wait for orders. The other battalions?”
“Firmly in control of their areas. I’m waiting on a report from Five Battalion now.”
“Tell them to dig in for the night and do it right. They’re sure to be attacked.”
“General Striganov has reached the airport on 190,” Corrie reported. “Heavy fighting there. He’s calling in gunships while he still has light.”
Ben nodded his head. “The flybys of the breeding farm at the old prison camp?”
“Thermopolis says that initial reports have been confirmed, sir. The camp has been destroyed. Bodies all over the place.”
“God help those poor people,” Ben muttered. In a way, he was relieved that it had happened, for the Rebels had found that liberated people from creepie breeding farms had a very poor chance of ever attaining any degree of normalcy. Being slowly fattened for food drove most of them over the edge.
“Order our people back to the airport and dig in for the night. It’s over here.”
The Rebels put the fires behind them and headed back to the security of the airport.
Only a few attacks occurred that night, and they were minor ones. The creepies had retreated into the interior of the big island, into caves and pre-dug tunnels. But in doing so they had sealed their own fates. So much of the big island was covered with old lava flows that the search areas were restricted and predictable. However, it was still a huge undertaking, and it would be time-consuming.
The Rebels spent the next several days going from one village and town to the next. And they took their time doing it, carefully inspecting each house, every building for hidden cellars and tunnels. When they found one, they sealed it with high explosives. The Rebels could tell if the holes and tunnels were occupied—the smell was a dead giveaway. After the holes were sealed shut, the house was burned to the ground.
Mechanics and engineers got enough of the old cars and trucks and motorcycles left on the island running so the Rebels did not have to ride bikes . . . unless they wanted to, and some did. The Rebels found no survivors on the island.
“Almost a hundred and twenty thousand souls lived on this island,” Ben said, closing a map case. “Now they are gone. Vanished.” He was standing in the center of the old prison camp/breeding farm. The bodies had been removed and buried in a mass grave. There was no way of knowing the names of those the creepies had killed, for the Believers had kept no records. A single cement cro
ss was all that marked the site.
He picked up his M-14 and slung it. “Now it gets down and dirty,” he said aloud. “Corrie, all battalions into the interior. Search and destroy.”
Planes and helicopters using heat-seeking equipment had pinpointed many of the creepie strongholds, but getting to them was dangerous and slow work, for the creepies had booby-trapped the paths and they had to be cleared. The Rebels worked slowly and carefully and lost no one in the clearing of the mines and other booby traps.
The tunnels they found had been skillfully camouflaged, and the Rebels knew they would probably miss some of them. Those they would leave for the locals to deal with.
“Jesus!” Ben said, recoiling from the foul odor that sprang from the mouth of the cave.
“Really smells wonderful, doesn’t it, Ben?” Georgi asked, his face a twisted grimace from the odor.
They were in the Mauna Kea Forest Reserve. They had blown closed a dozen holes that day, and the Rebels were tired and disgusted at the sickening odors that emanated from the creepie hideouts.
“We will control the world someday!” the shout ripped out of the odious darkness of the cave. “You will all eventually die at our hands!”
“Eat shit!” Jersey said, and leveled her M-16, giving those in the cave a full thirty-round clip. The other members of Ben’s team followed suit, and lead began howling and bouncing around the stone walls of the cave.
“You people feel better?” Ben asked them.
“Lots,” Beth told him, shoving in a fresh clip.
Ben and Georgi looked at each other and smiled. “Why not?” the Russian asked. He and Ben leveled their weapons and sent more rounds into the yawning, stinking darkness.
A demolitions team came forward and told Ben, Georgi, and the others to clear out. Being careful to stay clear of the mouth of the cave, the Rebels drilled holes in the stone, planted their charges, then backed off and blew it. When the dust had cleared, tons of rocks covered the cave entrance.
“I hope it takes you a long time to die, you creeps!” Jersey said, then turned her back to the cave.
The Rebels did not know it at that time, but they were about to confront a force that they would come to hate even more than the Believers. Although none of them would have thought that possible at the moment.
Back in the mid-1980s, years before the Great War ravaged the earth, many terrorist groups from nearly every country in the world learned of the impending war and sought refuge in several South American countries. They not only brought their blood-drenched ideas with them, but they also brought hundreds of followers. Only a handful of the terrorists actually were of German origin. They were Palestinian, Japanese, Irish, Italian, South American, South African. They came from France, Spain, Mexico, Bulgaria, England, Holland, and from countries all around the globe. Their organizations bore such names as the Military Sports Group (Wehrsportgruppe), Baader-Meinhof, Al Fatah, Black September, the NAP, Armata Rossa, Red Help Group, June 2nd Movement, Holger Heins Commando (which originally recruited its members from a nuthouse at Heidelberg), People’s Socialist Army. Other groups were the Red Army (Sekigun), known as the JRA, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), As-sa’Iqa (the Thunderbolt), the DFLP, the PFLP-GC, the NAYLP (a Palestinian youth group whose members were now grown men and women), Black June. In South America, these dangerous but nutty fruitcakes and yoyo brains were embraced by the Ejercito Revolucionario Del Pueblo, the Montoneros, the Junta de Coordination Revolucionaria (JCR)—other members of the JCR were Bolivia’s National Liberation Army (ELN), Chile’s Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR), Paraguay’s National Liberation Front (Frepalina), and Uruguay’s Tupamaros (MLN). Others included the French Front De Liberation De La Bretagne—Armee Revolutionnaire Bretonne (FLB-ARB). From Holland, the Republik Malaku Selatan. From Spain, the Group De Resistencia Antifascista Primo De Octubre (GRAPO). From Puerto Rico, the Fuerzas Armadas De La Liberaction Nacional—(FALN). From Italy, the Muclei Armati Rivoluzionari—Armed Revolutionary Nuclei (NAR). Brigate Rosse—Red Brigades. From Turkey, the Turkish Peoples Liberation Army (TPLA). And hundreds of other small terrorist groups from all over the world that came together and combined into thousands, and then more thousands after they finished their recruiting drives, promising everything under the sun and more to a people who never had anything to begin with. They were anarchist, antibourgeois (so they claimed), revolutionary, and especially anti-American and most especially anti-Ben Raines and the Rebels.
Their leader was a South American self-styled general with the strange name of Jesus Dieguez Mendoza Hoffman. His grandfather had come to South America just after the end of the Second World War and stayed.
Jesus Hoffman was about to cause Ben more trouble than Ben had ever before experienced in all his years of warfare.
And that was saying a mouthful.
SEVEN
Ben and his battalion walked slowly down the mountain toward the lushness that lay below them. They were, to a person, tired, stinking of sweat and the clinging odor of creepies, and disgusted with the day’s events. To a person they wanted a bath and fresh clothing, and after a time, a hot meal. They had found yet another of the Believers’ breeding farms, the force-fed human food source all dead, lying in bloated mounds in the camp. They had been lined up and shot, men, women, and children.
The Rebels had found the caves where the creepies had taken refuge and were particularly vicious in dealing with them, forcing them out of the tunnels with tear gas and shooting them as they exited the cave. The Rebels talked among themselves about leaving many badly wounded creepies behind that day, considering leaving them behind to die slowly. In the end they did not. They put them out of their misery and dumped them back into the caves, forever sealing them in the dank darkness.
The Rebels—to a person—were beginning to hate this lovely island. They hated the creepies, hated what they were forced to do, and longed for the day they could leave and put it all behind them.
But they had many more long and brutal days ahead of them before that could happen. The Rebels had cleared all the towns and villages. They had secured all the roads and cleaned up many of the historical sites. The major airports were secure and receiving traffic. And daily the Rebels pulled on their boots and slogged out to kill creepies.
“They’re getting harder and harder to find,” Ben said, wearily pulling off his boots and looking at his big toe sticking out through a hole in his sock. “They’re deeper now than they’ve ever been.”
Dan Gray was with him in his CP, on the northwest side of the Mauna Kea Forest Reserve. The two battalions had searched all that day and had not found one cave.
“Analysis says that of the original number, less than ten percent of the creepies are still alive on this island,” Dan said.
“Analysis is sitting on their asses over on Maui, eating hot food daily and sleeping between clean sheets every night,” Ben replied. “They do a valuable and much-needed job, but sometimes I think they’re out of touch with reality.”
A guard stuck her head inside the small building. “Buddy and Rebet coming up, sir.”
The two batt comms entered, shook hands, and poured coffee. Dan was having tea. “Our sectors are clean,” Rebet said, sitting down wearily. “West reports nothing in the past three days.”
“I spoke with Danjou this afternoon,” Buddy said. “He is convinced his sector is sterile.”
Ben nodded his head in agreement. “So is Georgi. Personally, I am not so sure. But if we haven’t killed them all, we’ve knocked them down to the point where they pose no real threat. Tomorrow we’ll start going over this island to make damn sure there are no survivors we’ve missed. Since the creeps eat only human flesh, if we leave them nothing to munch on, it’s a good bet they’ll start on each other. If the leaders will agree to keep this island unpopulated for a couple of years, the creepie problem will, or should, solve itself.” Ben stood up and poured fresh coffee. “I want daily head counts of all per
sonnel. Make damn sure no Rebel falls into hungry hands. I don’t want to see anyone walking alone. It’s too dangerous. If we do this right, we can be out of here in a week; no more than ten days.”
“I would like to return here someday,” Dan said softly. “Once the memories have faded. It is a beautiful place.”
The Rebels began their slow search of the island, on foot and from the air. They found one more cave during that ten-day time and sealed it. No survivors were found on the island. It was void of human life.
Ben ordered the big island evacuated. No one was sorry to put it behind.
Back on Maui, Ben began preparations for the invasion of the two remaining islands, Oahu and Kauai. The only other island, Niihau, the ‘Forbidden Island,’ as some called it, was surely occupied by outlaws and thugs, but because of its size, it could be easily taken and would be the last one the Rebels struck.
And Therm had compiled a great deal of additional data on the divisions coming up from South America. All of it spelled out very bad news.
“The commanding general of the army is a man called Jesus Dieguez Mendoza Hoffman. Approximately thirty-five years old. The grandson of a very famous, or infamous, Nazi of World War Two fame. Since the army is made up of people of all nationalities, no one is quite sure what their ideologies might be. We do know this: They hate America and they despise you and the Rebels, Ben. They are goose-stepping, heil-Hitler types, made up of terrorist groups from all over the world. They are well-trained, well-armed, and they are fanatical in their desire to destroy what is left of the United States.”
Ben shook his head. “How far up are they?”
Therm smiled. “They’re bogged down in Paraguay, having a hell of a time moving all that equipment. Word we’re receiving is that the Indians and the resistance groups down there are really giving them a hard time.”
“I hope every one of those goose-stepping bastards comes down with malaria and dies!”
Therm was still laughing as he left the CP. Ben returned to his maps.
Vengeance in the Ashes Page 6