“Have you given any thought to driving deep into Mexico and beefing up Payon’s army, Ben?”
“I thought about it, then rejected it. General Payon says the roads are in terrible shape down there. Our supply lines would be stretched to the max. We don’t know the country and accurate maps are not available. Besides, we’ve got to contain those infiltrators in this country. That’s a must-do priority.”
Ike nodded his head. “I’ll start putting my teams together today and laying out gear. I want first on the list for those Hummers, Ben.”
“You got it. Check with Therm on the locations of the fuel trucks.”
The eyes of the two warriors touched and held for a moment. Ike said, “You know we’re not going to stop these bastards at the border, Ben.”
“I know. To butt heads with them, force against force, would be suicide for us.”
“First time in a while,” Ike drawled, “that we’ll be on the hard defensive.”
Ben shrugged. “I think we’d better get used to it, old friend.”
Ike sighed. “Well, Hawaii was nothing more than a realistic training exercise. But at least it got some of the new people blooded. Now comes the real test.”
“Yes. But if we fail this exam, we don’t get to repeat the course.”
“A real final exam.”
“With hard emphasis on the final.”
“Yeah. Well, I got to get busy. See you around, Ben.”
Ben stood alone for a moment, staring out the window. Beth quietly entered the room, a slip of paper in her hand.
“General?”
Ben turned, noting the expression on her face. He mentally braced for the worst.
“Those troops of General Payon’s who were trapped in southern Mexico? . . . They’ve been wiped out. Only a handful escaped. Hoffman’s troops are not taking any prisoners. General Payon is now blowing all bridges on highways leading north and is extensively mining Highways 190, 185, 180, and 150. He is in the process of destroying all major airports.”
“Damn!” Ben said softly.
“Makes Hawaii seem like sweet dreams, doesn’t it?” Doctor Chase said, entering the room.
The two old friends shook hands. “How are you doing, Lamar?”
“I’m well. What’s the matter with Ike? I saw him limping out of the building and asked about his health. He almost bit my head off.”
“I don’t know. Maybe he’s due for a checkup.”
“I suggested that. He told me where to put my checkup. Sideways. And stick a helicopter up there with it.”
“General,” Cooper said, sticking his head into the room. “All the batt comms are here. And General Jefferys’s plane just touched down.”
“Thanks, Coop. You want to sit in on this, Lamar?”
The chief of medicine shook his head. “No, thanks. I’ll say hello to Cecil and be on my way. Ben, my people are going to be stretched pretty thin.”
“I know, Lamar. We all are. General Payon is flying in medical teams from Mexico to take some of the strain off your people.”
“They’ll damn sure be welcomed and put to work. See you, Ben.”
Cooper walked to Ben’s side. “General, are we gonna win this one?”
“I don’t know, Coop,” Ben said softly. “I just don’t know. But for humanity’s sake, we’d better.”
TWO
Cecil looked bad. Ben was shocked at his old friend’s appearance. Cecil’s hair was almost totally gray now, and his face was haggard. We’re all getting old, Ben thought. We’ve been fighting this damn war for more than a decade and it’s telling on us.
When all the men were seated, Ben said, “Ike won’t be here. He’s out of this until the full-scale fighting starts. He’s in charge of all special ops. Might as well give you the bad news first. Southern Mexico has fallen to Hoffman’s troops.” He picked up a pointer and walked to the wall map. “From 185, here, up to Mexico City is a no-man’s-land. We don’t have much time, people. We’ve got to do a year’s work in approximately two months. General Payon has promised me two months, and I think he’ll hold for that long. Then he’s got to get across the border and beef us up.”
“How many troops does he have, Ben?” Striganov asked.
“The question is, Georgi, how many will we have left?” The Russian smiled grimly and nodded his head in agreement. Ben said, “If he gets up here with five full battalions, I’ll be both shocked and pleased.”
“Dad, are his battalions about the same as ours?” Tina asked.
“Exactly the same. He patterned his army after ours. Tina, I want you and Raul to act as training officers for the new recruits we’ll be receiving from across the border. We’ve got about a hundred young men and women now over at McAllen. I’ll have them brought over here ASAP.”
“How many are you expecting?” Tina asked.
“Hundreds.”
“How intense do we make the training, General?” Raul asked.
“Just as tough as you think they can stand. All right, people. Here is how it lays out.” He went to the map again and pointed to a dozen different locations, marked with tiny black flags. “These are trouble spots. Hoffman’s troops are known to be there, working with hard-right-wing groups that have had the good sense over the years to keep their heads down and out of our sight. We’re going to pick teams right now—at this meeting—to go in and kick the shit out of them. We’re not going to have much in the way of heavy stuff. We’ll be traveling fast and light, in Hummers. They’ll be here within a day or two. We’ll be supported, whenever possible, by Apaches and other attack choppers. The old PUFFs are out. Hoffman’s people have too much in the way of high-tech weapons; they’d blow them out of the sky. Let’s start picking teams and drawing equipment. We shove off within hours after the Hummers arrive.”
General Payon’s expression was bleak as he listened to his scouts report. He had lost a lot of good men and women when they had gotten trapped in that pocket down south. Good men and women. Highly trained and loyal to the core. It was a blow that still had the general reeling.
He dismissed his scouts and sat for a time behind his desk in the old ranch house he was using as a CP. Like Ben Raines, General Payon was a middle-aged man who was battle-hardened by years of fighting. And like Ben, Payon was a true professional soldier. A soldier’s soldier. He had not always been so, but like General Raines, when his people turned to him, he reluctantly agreed to lead the fight. And like Ben, he suffered silently and stoically when he lost personnel. But he knew, like his counterpart north of the border, those were the fortunes and fates of war and warriors.
He called to an aide. “We must have a more personal liaison between us and General Raines. Send Captain Tomas to me.”
The captain standing in front of his desk, Payon said, “You will pick a small team and travel to the border, to General Raines’s command post. You will be my eyes and ears and voice with General Raines. We will be in daily communication. You stay with General Raines. No matter where he goes, you stay with him.” He handed the captain a sealed envelope. “This is to be hand-delivered to General Raines, and only to General Raines. God speed, Tomas.” He rose and extended his hand.
After the young officer had left, General Payon sat down and rolled a cigarette. He felt better now. Now, if anything was to happen to him, his carefully chosen and trained army would remain intact. He smiled. Although Ben Raines might not be happy with the contents of the letter he was about to receive.
“Do you know what this letter says?” Ben asked the captain, after carefully reading the letter.
“No, sir,” Tomas replied stiffly.
“Relax, son,” Ben told him. “We’re not all that big on spit and polish and protocol in this army. Sit down and have some coffee. Real coffee.”
Ben had a knack of being able to put people at ease, and Tomas sat down and slowly relaxed. He tensed as Ben poured him coffee. Commanding generals did not do things like that in his army.
“Sugar and milk
, Tomas?” Ben asked from the small table in a corner of the room.
“Please, sir.”
“How many personnel did you bring with you?”
“Eight, sir.”
“All experienced combat veterans?”
“Oh, yes, sir. Veterans of dozens of campaigns. Dependable and steady people. Six men and two women.” Ben handed him a mug of coffee. “The women are ferocious fighters, General. I will admit that at first I was dubious. No more. They pull their own weight and then some.”
“Same in this army. So you are to stay with me, is that right?”
“Yes, sir. Those are my orders.”
Ben handed him the letter and watched Tomas’s face as he read it. The letter stated unequivocally that should anything happen to General Payon, General Ben Raines was to assume command of the Mexican Army and the officers and personnel of that army would obey Ben Raines’s orders without hesitation or question.
Tomas carefully folded the letter and placed it on Ben’s desk. “I know that other letters went out to all commanders, sir,” he said. “I did not know the contents. Now I do. It is an honor to serve in your command, General.”
“Fine, Tomas. Finish your coffee and relax for a few minutes. In one hour we’re shoving off for a little town just north of what is left of San Antonio. Some of Hoffman’s infiltrators have linked up with a group of assholes up there. We’re going to wipe their butts with lead.”
Tomas smiled. “I think I am going to enjoy serving in your command, sir.”
“It gets interesting at times, Captain. I assure you of that.”
After making sure that his husky, Smoot, was in good hands—it was; Thermopolis and Rosebud were taking care of it—Ben played with the animal for a few minutes and then climbed into the Hummer. He looked around at his team. “Tell Therm we’re on our way, Corrie. Let’s go, Coop.”
Rebel engineers had reworked the interior of the Hummer, making it a bit more comfortable. They had bulletproofed the vehicle, and on Ben’s staff Hummer a .50 caliber machine gun was mounted on top. Others were mounted with 7.62 machine guns or 40mm Big Thumper grenade tossers. Gun clamps had been installed inside for easier weapons carrying and a high-tech, state-of-the-art radio was built in under the rear seat.
Cooper slipped the Hummer into gear and the 2.5-ton vehicle rolled out, followed by several dozen more, including two Hummers assigned to Captain Tomas and his team. The Hummers bristled with weapons, both inside and out. In specially built racks in each Hummer were two Winchester model 1200 pump shotguns, which could be loaded with various types of rounds, including #00 buckshot, shells containing two steel darts, called flechettes, which could penetrate a steel helmet at 300 meters, and shells that contained a large lead slug that could cripple an engine or blow a door off its hinges from a distance of 100 meters.
On this mission, the personal weapon for each Rebel, including Ben, was the M-16 with the M-203 grenade launcher attached, nicknamed bloop tubes. The M-16 was chosen because of the ability of each Rebel to carry more ammo. If each Rebel personally carried ten pounds of ammo, he or she could carry 384 5.56 rounds as opposed to only 187 rounds of 7.62 ammo.
Fuel for the V-8, 6.2-liter GM diesel was no problem for the Rebels, since for over a decade they had been caching fuel, gas and diesel, all over the United States in secret underground locations. Ben had felt all along that someday the war would come home, someday a huge army would try to smash the Rebel form of government, and he had ordered materials cached all over the nation.
“Scouts are waiting just a few miles south of the ruins of San Antonio, Coop,” Ben said. “It’s an easy run from here. We’ll hit Hoffman’s finest just at dawn tomorrow.”
The drive up Interstate 35 from Laredo was uneventful, but it was depressing for Ben. The Rebels saw absolutely no sign of life for over one hundred miles. Just desolation and silence. Ben commented on it.
“Of course,” Beth spoke up. “After spending time in Hawaii, nearly any place would look desolate.”
“You’re right, Beth,” Ben said. “But we are supposed to have a settlement up here in Pearsall, remember?”
She groaned. “I’m falling down on the job, General. Sorry.”
“The scouts haven’t reported on that outpost.”
“It’s about ten miles up the road,” Coop said. “We’ll know one way or the other in a few minutes.”
The town had been destroyed, and done so some time back. In an alley, the Rebels found the bleached bones of dozens of people.
“Mostly men and boys,” a medic said, after inspecting the skeletal remains. “Very few women, that I can tell.”
He could tell. Lamar Chase’s medics were not far from being doctors—most of them became doctors after several years in the field.
“How long ago?” Ben asked.
“Three months, maybe, sir.”
“It is the same in my country,” Tomas said, walking up. “And in all the countries Hoffman’s troops overpower. They enslave as many men as possible and make putas out of the women and girls.” He shook his head. “But here, it appears that the men and many of the women fought to the death.”
“Rebels do that,” Ben told him.
Maria and Victoria walked up to stand by Tomas. The two women in the Mexican detachment were very pretty ladies, and, Ben deduced, very tough ladies. “Then so shall we,” Maria said. “For us, there is no going back. Vicki and me, we come from Villahermosa. We know that our parents and our brothers and sisters are dead. At the hands of Hoffman and his pigs.” She spat out the last few words. “We have sworn to God and the Blessed Virgin that we will kill as many of Hoffman’s soldiers as we can and will not be taken alive.” Together, the ladies turned around and walked off.
A young Mexican sergeant smiled and made the classic Latin movement of shaking his fingers as if dispelling water and said, “Those two are muy malo, I tell you. Do not cross those ladies. I saw Vicki gut one of Hoffman’s soldiers like a fish. She is ver’ ver’ quick with a knife.”
“My kind of gal,” Jersey said.
The sergeant looked at how Jersey fit her BDUs, rolled his eyes, and said, “Ai, yi yi.”
“Stick it up your kazoo,” Jersey told him, absolutely no diplomat in her at all, then walked over to Vicki and Maria.
Captain Tomas chuckled.
“I like that one!” the sergeant said. “Much fire in her.”
Vicki, Maria, and Jersey looked back at the sergeant and all three giggled. It was somehow out of place considering how heavily they were armed.
“She likes me, too,” the sergeant said, his eyes flashing.
“Come on, Casanova,” Ben said with a smile. “We’ve got work to do. Beth, where are the caches in this town?”
The Rebels found the hidden arms and supplies and resealed the bunkers. Tomas was clearly awed.
“You have these all over the nation, General?”
“Hundreds of them. The water in those sealed containers might be stale, but safe to drink. The food is changed out every five years. It’s fresh, now. Remember the locations we show you, Captain. I have a hunch we’ll all eventually be forced to fall back on them.”
“You sound like General Payon now, sir,” the amorous sergeant said. “He believes that this war we fight with Hoffman and his army will be the one that will decide the fate of all the rest of the world.”
“So do I, Sergeant,” Ben told him. “So do I.”
At the preset rendezvous just south of the ruins of San Antonio, Ben linked up with the scouts. “We didn’t want to use the radio to tell you about the outpost back there,” the team leader said.
“We didn’t check the caches either,” another said. “Figured you’d want to do that.”
“You both did well, “Ben told him. “What have we got up ahead of us?”
“Large group of right-wingers who have linked up with about a hundred of Hoffman’s dickheads,” the team leader replied. “I figure a force of at least three hundred, all told.�
� He took a map out of his case and opened it. “Right here, sir. Just outside of New Braunfels. Right on the edge of the hill country. And they’re good, sir. Real good.”
“Better than us, Sergeant?”
“I got to say as good, sir.”
“Then this is going to be interesting,” Ben said. He looked at Jersey and waited.
She smiled and said, “Kick-ass time!”
“What a woman!” the Mexican sergeant said.
THREE
Ben waited in the darkness before dawn, sitting on the ground drinking coffee and eating from a breakfast pack. Like most Rebels, he preferred to eat breakfast in the dark so he did not have to see what he was eating. The prepackaged goop was highly nutritious, but looking at it could cause a sudden loss of appetite.
Scouts had moved out hours before. They would create a very loud diversion on the north side of the enemy’s encampment a few moments before the main body of Rebels hit at the south end of the camp. The diversion would, hopefully, cover the sounds of the Hummers’ fast approach.
Beth would be driving the staff car, with Cooper manning the .50 caliber. Once inside the enemy’s perimeter, the battle would turn into a free-for-all. Surprise was the key to survival.
Ben finished his breakfast, buried the wrappers in the ground, and rolled a cigarette, smoking it while he drank the last of his coffee.
He checked his watch. A few more minutes before they moved out. These fast attacks were being conducted all over the southern half of Texas. Ben could not hope to smash all the right-wing groups who had surfaced all over the nation and aligned with Hoffman’s infiltrators, but they could clear many of those in Texas and get them off their backs.
Vengeance in the Ashes Page 11