The SEAL grinned in the darkness of predawn. “We’ll go have some fun now, General. It’s been boring so far.”
“Get out of here,” Ben said with a laugh.
All the military bases around Pearl had been looted and picked over so many times that nothing of value had been left. And the Rebels met no resistance as they worked their way around Pearl Harbor. They secured Hickam AFB and Honolulu International Airport without firing a shot. They saw no sign of the enemy. By seven o’clock in the morning, ships were off-loading equipment and not one shot had been fired.
“Ike’s meeting stiff resistance, sir,” Corrie reported. “But he’s got a toehold and gradually pushing the punks back.”
“What about our forward people?”
“SEALs reporting Honolulu is one dead damn place, sir. They’re rounding up what few survivors are left in the city and bringing them here. Doctor Chase is setting up at Hickam and is ready to receive.”
“Has my wagon been off-loaded?”
“That’s ten-four.”
“Let’s go visit Honolulu.”
With two Dusters ahead of him, and a company of Rebels behind him, Ben set off to see what was left of Honolulu, staying south of H1.
The days of bombardment from the guns offshore had devastated the city. The fires which had gone unchecked had finished it. Everything south of the interstate was tangled rubble and burned-out buildings. Ben rode over as far as the Honolulu Zoo, and that sight made him so mad his team thought he was having a heart attack. Even after all these years, it was obvious that the poor animals had been left without water or food and had died horribly. A citizen confirmed it.
It was very fortunate for the gang leaders and their followers that Ben did not run up on any of them the day he visited the zoo. Had he done so, judgment would have been very swift and very final.
“You got to see this, General,” one of Gray’s scouts radioed. “We’re just south of the interstate on Kapiolani. Where some old construction work was started and never finished.”
The Scout pointed to a mass grave, the earth so shallowly scooped out, already hands and arms and legs were sticking out of the ground due to the recent rains.
A local the scouts had found explained. “The outlaws didn’t want us running around after they split up into small groups. So they rounded up all the slaves they could find and killed them.”
“Jesus!” Cooper said.
“They didn’t bury them for several days. It was . . . not a pretty sight.”
“Get some earthmoving equipment in here and cover these people,” Ben said. He turned to the local. “Where are the gangs of outlaws?”
“They scattered all over the island, General. In groups of five and six. They’re in the pineapple fields and the brush and the mountains. They’ll be hard to dig out.”
“We’ll dig them out,” Ben assured the old man. “How many of you escaped the carnage?”
The man smiled. “More than you might think. The outlaws killed maybe . . . oh, two or three thousand. But most of us had long since taken to the hills and the brush. This morning, when we saw the thugs leaving, many of us came back, to fight alongside you and your Rebels. I have a weapon that I hid when the outlaws came.” He held up an old double-barreled shotgun with a broken stock. It had been recently taped back together. “I know many of the faces of the outlaws, and I intend to kill every one I see.” He said that defiantly, and Ben knew there were probably many others just like the man.
“You certainly have my permission to do just that,” Ben told him. “But for now, why don’t you gather up all the survivors you can find and come with us to the hospital for a checkup and some hot food?”
The old man had whip marks all over his bare arms. Scars on top of scars. Ben had a idea that Doctor Chase was going to go right through the ceiling when he took a look at the old man’s back.
“That’s very kind of you, General. Thank you.”
“My pleasure to be able to do so, sir.” Ben waved at a Rebel and the old man was led away.
“It is mostly the old people who are left around here,” the old man told the young cammie-clad Rebel. “It was mostly the young ones the thugs killed. I guess they thought we were too old to present any danger to them.”
Ben was grim-faced as he checked his M-14 and said, “Seeing how this scum mistreated old people just makes the job a lot easier.”
“And the animals,” Beth said, her voice menacingly low. Beth was an animal-lover who had murder in her heart for anyone who mistreated an animal.
Jersey smiled. “Kick-ass time!”
NINE
Ben made no moves until all his equipment was offloaded and ready to roll. On the island of Kauai, Ike had established a firm toehold on several docking areas and was doing the same as Ben. As Ike had predicted, once John Dodge actually saw what he was facing, he broke his people up into small groups and they headed for the countryside.
During the lull, Ben and Ike had shifted people around, putting them back on ships and landing them all over the island, off-loading tanks and heavy artillery whenever possible. The second phase of the invasion was about to begin and it was going to be done very efficiently, accomplished as quickly as possible, and conducted ruthlessly.
The outlaws huddled in small groups and waited to die.
Those outlaws who did not leave the immediate area of the city soon found out how deeply—although not for very long—the hatred for them ran among those they had enslaved.
As the Rebels began their push out of the ruined city, scouts began discovering the mutilated bodies of outlaws. Some had been shot, but most had been hacked to death with machetes and axes. The Rebels viewed the carnage impassively and moved on. Their feeling was that the outlaws got exactly what had been coming to them. The Rebels also noted that all of the weapons and ammo had been removed from the bodies. Never again would the people of these islands be enslaved. They were rearmed, and this time they would remain armed, and the blithering and blathering of politicians be damned.
The Rebels were quietly amused at how quickly the islanders were adopting the Rebel philosophy. Any future politician who suggested any type of gun control would more than likely be shot before the words left his or her mouth.
The slow flushing out of the outlaws and thugs and self-proclaimed pirates began, and it was classic textbook search-and-destroy on the part of the Rebels. The cat-and-mouse game played out to the death in some of the most beautiful country in all the world.
Only a few miles outside the city proper, Ben and his team found themselves cut off and coming under hard fire.
“They’re all around us,” Cooper said, after crawling to Ben’s side. “Nearest friendlies are half a klick away and pinned down just like us.”
“We’re in a good position,” Ben replied. “The bogeys will have to cross that little clearing to get to us and I don’t think they want to try that. Just sit tight. What’s all that traffic about, Corrie?”
“B company. They were a little concerned about us. I anticipated your reply and told them that we could handle it.”
Ben smiled and looked around at his team and the half-dozen other Rebels who were trapped with them in the gully. “Hang tight, people. They’ll lose patience before long and do something stupid. They always do.”
“Come on out and get us!” The shouted challenge was hurled at the Rebels from out of thick brush only a scant fifty yards away. “Come on, you bastards!”
“And bitches,” Jersey muttered. “Don’t forget us, you worthless pricks.”
Ben chuckled. Jersey was a mean, vicious little fighter who had about as much back-up in her as an angered wolverine. Jersey and the other women in the Rebel army had long put to rest the question of whether women could hold their own alongside men in combat. Not every woman was cut out for combat, but then, neither was every man.
The outlaws began firing wildly, the slugs hitting only air and the brush behind the Rebels’ position.
&n
bsp; “Idiots,” Jersey muttered.
“Hold your fire,” Ben said to Cooper, over the rattle of automatic weapons fire. “Pass the word, Coop. Hold your fire. They’re getting nervous.”
The word passed, Corrie said, “B company wants to know if you want them to drop in some mortars, General?”
“No. Save them. That pack of crud over there will flush themselves in a few minutes. They’re getting antsy.”
“Big brave boys and girls,” the sneering words came across the clearing. “You’re like every pig I ever met. All mouth and no guts.”
Ben looked around and caught Jersey’s eyes. She smiled at him and winked. Like many of the Rebels, Jersey had played this game so many times she had lost count. If the outlaws really felt they could anger a Rebel into doing something foolish, they were dumber than Ben originally thought.
“Why don’t you surrender?” Jersey raised her voice, taunting the crud. “We’ll give you a hot meal and a cup of coffee before we shoot you.”
“You bitch!” a man shouted. “I get my hands on you, I’ll show you the only thing you’re good for.”
Jersey laughed at him. “Wrong. Pus-brains and needle-dicks have never appealed to me.”
The outlaw cursed her.
Jersey didn’t let up. Raising her voice, she said, “Hey, Alice,” she yelled to another Rebel. “Can you imagine bedding down with that crud? Christ, I can smell them from here. I bet they haven’t taken a bath in weeks.”
The outlaw’s cussing became wilder.
“Yeah,” Alice said, loud enough for the outlaws to hear. “They probably use their fingers to wipe their butts.”
“And then eat with the same fingers,” Corrie shouted.
“Yeah,” Beth added her opinion. “Those types are the reason you see signs in bathrooms urging people to wash their hands after using the toilet.”
Ben lay on the sloping ground of the gully and smiled, letting the women have their fun with the crud. And then Jersey and the others really started letting the outlaws have it. It got downright crude when the Rebel women began loudly referring to them as a pack of pus-gutted, unwashed, ignorant, needle-dicked bug fuckers.
Corrie, lying beside Ben, looked at him and shook his head. “They won’t take much more of that,” he said.
“You damn whores!” the same outlaw screamed. “Stand up and I’ll fight you like a man.”
The women laughed and jeered at that.
“Does that idiot realize what he just said?” Cooper questioned.
“I doubt it,” Ben said. “He’s probably too scared to think straight.” Ben raised his voice just a bit. “Let’s get this over with, Jersey. They’re not going to rush us and time’s a-wasting.”
“I’ve done everything I know to do to make them mad,” Jersey said.
“I ought to put you ladies over my knee and give you a good spanking for all that bad language,” Ben told them.
“Promises, promises,” Alice called with a laugh.
“Take your team and work around,” Ben told a squad leader. “Flush them out with grenades and we’ll take it from there. Corrie, advise B company we’ll have people working between positions. Let’s don’t shoot our own people.”
It was an easy shoot after that. What the grenades didn’t do, Ben and the others did. They chopped the outlaws up like so much liver. Ben stood for a moment with his team, looking over the slaughter site. Ten dead, two badly wounded.
One of the wounded looked up at Jersey. “You that bad-talkin’ bitch?” he gasped.
“One of them,” she told him coldly.
“You one hell of a fighter, for sure,” he managed to push the words out of his mouth. Then his head lolled to one side and he closed his eyes.
Another team of Rebels joined Ben. Because they had left the city behind them, and had moved into rough country, this team was armed with shotguns, the barrels sawed down to twenty inches. The shotguns were loaded with three-inch magnum #00 buckshot and usually made a terrible mess out of a human body.
“We’ve still got daylight,” Ben said. “Let’s go.”
They hadn’t advanced a quarter of a mile before being forced into and around an old house by intense fire coming from across the road.
“Get used to it,” Ben said, worming his way to a shattered window. “This is the way it’s going to be until we clear these islands. How badly spread out are we, Corrie?”
“We sure aren’t bunched up,” she replied.
“Put some rifle grenades into that building directly across from us. Let’s see what happens.”
The roof collapsed, pinning those outlaws inside.
“Finish it,” Ben ordered.
It was unconventional and many would say inhumane. But the Rebels had learned over the long bloody years that hard-core criminals either could not or would not be rehabilitated. They poured lead and fired grenades into the ruined structure and moved on. If there were wounded under all the mess, they could damn well stay there. On these remaining islands, Ben had sent out the word: fight us, and you die.
The Rebel battalions on the island of Oahu were working clockwise around the island. Striganov was on Highway 930, and after securing and clearing Dillingham AFB he moved on toward Haleiwa on Highway 83. Dan was on the north part of the island, and after securing Kawela was working south on 83. West had put ashore just north of Kaneohe and was working south, while Rebet and his battalion had landed on the extreme eastern tip of the island and were working toward the ruins of Honolulu. As the major highways looping the island, and the villages and towns on them were cleared, the Rebels would then begin slowly tightening the noose, working inland toward the Koolau Range.
On Kauai, Ike and those battalions under his command were following suit, first clearing the coastline highways, and then moving inland.
For all the Rebels, it was slow and dangerous work. The outlaws had booby traps all over the place and had laid out antipersonnel mines that had to be cleared before any advance. Each day, a thousand acts of courage above and beyond the call of duty were performed by Rebels. No medals were given out, no bands played, and there were no parades held in their honor. It was just something they all knew had to be done, and they did it.
On both islands, locals were resurfacing and being armed and used as scouts and trackers by the Rebels, and no outlaw wanted to fall into the hands of a local. Those that did were not treated well at all.
Many of the outlaws, now seeing the writing on the wall, and knowing there was no way they were going to stop the advance of the Rebel army, wanted to surrender and let due process take its course. They assumed that since civilized behavior appeared certain to replace anarchy and lawlessness, they could surrender and they would be given lengthy trials, with long-winded lawyers and appeals and all that.
Wrong.
A group of men approached Ben at breakfast one clear and glorious morning and requested a meeting with him.
“We are attorneys, sir,” one said.
“So?” Ben asked, spreading jam on a piece of toast.
“I was with the local ACLU chapter,” another said.
“Don’t spoil my breakfast,” Ben warned him.
“We were wondering,” another said. “When—”
“It won’t,” Ben said, sugaring his coffee.
“You did not allow me to finish, General.”
“That is certainly my plan,” Ben replied without looking up.
Dan walked in, carrying a plate of food in one hand and a cup of tea in the other. “What’s all this?” the Englishman asked, sitting down.
“Lawyers,” Ben told him.
“Before breakfast?” Dan questioned. “How ghastly.”
“I don’t like you,” one attorney said to him.
“I cannot possibly begin to tell you how deeply affected I am at that remark. Since I am basically a very sensitive fellow, my psyche has been bruised sorely.”
“You’re English?”
“How astute you are. What co
uld have possibly given that away?”
“Get out of here,” Ben told the lawyers.
“These islands have been in the grips of lawlessness for a decade, sir,” another attorney said.
“The man is so sagacious it boggles the mind,” Dan said, winking at Ben. “Don’t you agree?”
“Oh, quite.” Ben lifted his eyes and stared at the group of men. “There may come a time when people like you are needed. I hope not, but it’s a possibility. Albeit not one I’m looking forward to. But for now you are not needed. We ordered the outlaws on these islands to surrender. They chose to ignore that order. Now, we might take a few prisoners. But if we do, they will not be represented in any way familiar to you people. We don’t care what their childhood was like. We don’t care whether the devil made them do it, or if their parents beat them, or if they weren’t allowed to play first team or if their neighbors complained because they played music too loud or they were deprived of a certain brand of tennis shoes. Do I make myself clear?”
“Now, see here, General,” the sixth and last lawyer spoke up. “We, all of us, have been subjected to a myriad of indignities since the hoodlums took over the islands. But for all that they have done, and many of them have done terrible things, they still have the right to a trial. I . . .”
Ben stood up at that. Ben was not a physically overpowering man. For his age he was in marvelous shape, but it was his eyes that made a wise man shut up. The lawyer showed uncommon good sense and closed his mouth.
“We took the best of the outlaws and are training them on another island right now,” Ben told the group of barristers. “They will become part of the Rebel force. As for the scum left on Oahu and Kauai, the only trials they’ll receive is from the muzzle of a gun. Now, before you go, let me warn you of this: After we have cleaned these islands of trash, and have returned to the mainland to meet the largest known army on the face of the earth, don’t try to force a return back to your old type of law and order. The people that we have freed and will leave behind won’t tolerate it. The days of legal mumbo-jumbo are gone forever. No back-room deals. No plea-bargaining. No jailing or suing a citizen for using lethal force to protect what is his or hers. You all know how we operate. I don’t have to explain it to you. Or I shouldn’t have to. Now get the hell out of here and let me finish my breakfast in peace.”
Vengeance in the Ashes Page 8