“Let’s start getting in place,” Ben said to his team. He ground out his cigarette and stood up. There was no need to go over anything. Everybody knew what was required of them.
The Hummers were already packed for the run and the Rebels began silently mounting up. In a dozen places all over the southern part of Texas, the same scene was being played out, getting ready for act one in this dangerous and deadly play between forces of decidedly different philosophies.
“Roll,” Ben told Beth, and the teams moved out.
“All teams in place, “Corrie reported from the rear.
The short convoy rolled through the night, headlights taped to permit only a slit of light, just enough for the drivers to see and no more.
After a few silent miles had passed, a tremendous flash of light laced the night sky ahead of them.
“Right on time,” Jersey said.
“Pour the juice to it,” Corrie radioed the lead vehicles. “Two miles from objective.”
On the north end of the encampment, scouts were dropping rockets down mortar tubes as fast as they could, and the exploding 60mm rounds were more than covering the fast-advancing Hummers.
Cooper stood up through the hinged trap in the roof and jacked a round into the big .50. Ben lowered his window and Jersey and Corrie followed suit. The Hummers left the road and assumed a line, much like a cavalry charge. As soon as the Hummers’ lights came into sight, the mortars stopped and the scouts grabbed up M-16s and charged to the edge of the encampment and jumped for cover.
Cooper began letting the heavy .50 caliber rock and roll and Big Thumpers began hammering out 40mm high-explosive grenades, the combined weapons dealing out misery and turning the early morning hour into a taste of hell for the enemy troops.
The Hummers slid to a halt and the Rebels bailed out, running for whatever cover they could find, but always forward. Ben threw himself through an open window of a house and rolled, Jersey right behind him. Coming up to his knees, he pulled the trigger of the bloop tube and gave a knot of men a fragmentation grenade. The shrapnel from the M-433 liner made a big sloppy mess in the den. Jersey’s M-16 rattled and spat and two men wearing the death’s-head insignia on their uniforms went down in a bloody heap.
“Bastards,” Jersey said.
“Let’s find the communications room,” Ben said, and kicked in a door. Jersey rolled a grenade into the darkness and the two of them flattened against a wall.
“Grenade!” a man’s voice called out in panic. One second later all that remained was the echo of his word of warning.
Outside, the firing was lessening. The suddenness and viciousness of the attack had worked . . . this time.
“One dead, two wounded,” Corrie reported to Ben. “We have several prisoners.”
“Make certain the camp is secure and let’s see what we’ve got,” Ben said.
This was the first time any of Hoffman’s people had mixed it up with Rebels, and the surviving black-shirted followers of terrorism and the none-too-bright ultra-right-wingers who had joined with them were clearly shocked at the results. As daylight began streaking the sky, the prisoners sat on the ground in stunned and sullen silence, their hands tied behind their backs.
“Airstrip right over there, General,” a Scout said.
“General!” one black-shirted man said. “Are you General Raines?”
Ben turned to him. “Yes.”
“I am Major Garcia. I demand to be treated with all respect due an officer in the NAL.”
“The what?” Ben asked.
“New Army of Liberation. That is Captain Grumman to my left, and Lieutenant Jammal Mubutu beside him.”
“I know that son of a bitch,” a black Rebel sergeant said, looking closely at Mubutu. “I went to school with him. Until he dropped out. His name is Jesse Williams. He was a member of a street gang in Chicago.”
“My name is Mubutu.” The lieutenant spat out the words. “I rejected the racist white name years ago.”
“Yeah?” the sergeant said with a smile. “Well, I’m King Farouk. Screw you, Jesse.”
The sky was still gray with the dawning. Ben looked at Major Mendoza. “I’ll deal with you people the same way I deal with any damned terrorist, Garcia. You get no special favors from me.”
“You, sir,” the major spat back, “are no gentleman. And the weapons your people use are hideous. One of my officers is lying over there,” he cut his eyes, “with a face full of steel darts from a shotgun blast. That is against all rules of the Geneva Convention.”
“Conventions,” Ben automatically corrected. “Those rules do not apply to scum like you.” He turned his back to the major. “Corrie, get some big choppers in here to take back the wounded and the prisoners.”
“Scum!” Garcia hollered. “You dare to call me scum?”
Ben slowly turned around and lowered the muzzle of his M-16 until it was pointing directly at the major’s head. “Don’t push your luck with me, Garcia.” He smiled. “Or I’ll turn you over to those two very attractive ladies standing right over there.”
Garcia cut his eyes to where Maria and Victoria were standing, the butt of their weapons resting on their hips. They smiled at the major.
“And they’d like for me to do just that, Garcia,” Ben said. “You and your pack of trash and filth and malcontents like Jesse there killed their parents, their brothers and sisters, and uncles and aunts down in Villahermosa.”
“My name is Jammal Mubutu, you goddamn honky son of a bitch!” Jesse yelled.
The black Rebel sergeant looked at Ben. “With your permission, General?”
“Be my guest,” Ben told him.
The sergeant stepped forward and kicked Jesse/Jammal in the mouth and Jesse/Jammal didn’t have anything left to say, or any front teeth, either.
“If they picked up arms against the great army of General Hoffman, then they deserved to die,” Garcia said. “Heil Hitler!”
Ben laughed at him. “You dumb bastard. Hitler’s been dead for about sixty years. And he would have shoved you in the ovens or the gas chambers right along with the Jews.”
“That’s a vicious lie,” Garcia said. “We know the truth about Hitler. All that other was written and published by agents of ZOG to defile the great man’s name.”
“ZOG?” Beth said, looking at Ben.
“Zionist Occupation Government of North America,” Ben told her. “There’s a phrase from the past. That’s the old Aryan Nations/KKK bullshit. The holocaust never happened, according to them. I am beginning to see what has been happening in certain sections of South America since the end of the Second World War. I couldn’t understand this movement until now. But now, it all fits.”
“Madre Dios! The swine have rewritten the history books and altered, or edited, old films,” Tomas said. “They brainwashed their followers.”
“Exactly, Captain. That is precisely what they did. And two or three generations of people have grown up believing it.”
“Lies, lies, lies!” Garcia shouted. “All lies. Hitler was the savior of the world and the Jews killed him, just like they did our savior, Jesus Christ. The butchers, Roosevelt and Churchill, were the real villains, not the great and noble Adolf Hitler.”
The black sergeant looked at Ben. “This is scary, General. Real scary.”
“Tell me,” Ben replied.
Cooper edged up to Jersey. “Jersey?” he whispered. “Who in hell are Roosevelt and Churchill?”
She cut her dark eyes to him. “Beats the hell out of me, Coop.”
Those taken prisoner back at the Rebel outpost were freed and all immediately volunteered to join the active Rebels. They were welcomed in. Garcia and the other prisoners from the NAL were choppered back to Laredo, under heavy guard.
Ben prowled through the rubble of the devastated camp until he found what he was sure he would find. In Garcia’s quarters he found the flag and took it outside. The Nazi swastika. He held it up for all to see. Several of the older Jewish Rebels wore g
rim expressions on their faces at the hated sight. They knew the truth about that symbol. The Rebels of German ancestry shook their heads in disgust at the symbol invisibly stained with the blood of millions of Jews.
“This cannot be allowed to happen,” Ben told the teams gathered around. “Not again. Not ever again. For those of you too young to know what this represents, when we return to base, I assure you all that you will know the truth.” He threw the flag on the ground and kicked it away from him. “My older brother fought against that goddamn piece of shit decades back,” Ben raged. “Somebody burn that damn rag!”
Ben stalked away, Jersey falling in step with him. “We got all their weapons, General. Real high tech stuff, too, some of it. Hoffman and his bunch must have been warehousing Heckler and Koch equipment for years. Over a hundred boxes of belted ammo. You know how our people love their light machine guns.”
“The 7.62 HK11A1?”
“Right. And lots of replacement barrels and spare parts to go with them. We also found a lot of light stuff too. 9mm submachine guns.”
“Before this is over, Jersey, we’ve very likely to be fighting with clubs and axes.”
They walked a few more yards. “You think this is going to last a long time, don’t you?”
“Yes. We’re looking at some long and bitter and bloody months ahead of us.”
“Hey, we’ll make it, General. Bet on it.”
He smiled down at the diminutive bodyguard. “It might go on for years, Jersey.”
“We’ll still make it. Can’t nothing stop us, General. And you know why? ’Cause we’re right, that’s why.”
Ben smiled. “All right, Jersey. So let’s go give ’em hell!”
The teams pulled out and headed north, pushing hard. Hoffman’s infiltrators along with American collaborators and sympathizers had struck at a small Rebel outpost located about seventy-five miles southeast of Abilene. The defenders had beaten off the attack, but only after suffering hard losses. They had radioed that the attackers had taken off to the north, toward the interstate that ran east and west. Ben had ordered eyes in the skies up and they had located the Nazi-loving bunch.
Now, as Jersey was so fond of saying, it was kick-ass time!
FOUR
The Rebels left the main highways and took to the secondary roads when they pulled to within thirty miles of the enemy camp. This group was reported to be much larger than the first bunch Ben and his teams had encountered down south and, according to reports, had taken over the deserted town with its two airports and looked to be settling in, probably planning to make it a major supply depot when Hoffman decided to make his push into North America. “Not if I can help it,” Ben muttered to himself.
Corrie had received reports that teams of Rebels had kicked the hell out of Hoffman’s people down along the border, pursued them back into Mexico, and wiped them out. Three battalions had been broken up into small search-and-destroy teams; the rest were stretched out at strategic crossing points along the border.
Therm had reported that small Rebel outposts all over North America had been attacked and, in some cases, overrun by Hoffman’s troops and local guerrilla groups that supported Hoffman’s wacko philosophy. Enough outposts had been seized to make it a worrisome matter. Ben had ordered the survivors of those attacks to regroup and wait to be resupplied, then to start harassment tactics against the post—just enough to keep the NAL on their toes and afraid to leave the protected areas.
Supplies were not a problem for the Rebels, since they had hundreds of thousands of tons of material cached all over North America. It would only be a problem should the war stretch into years. But it would be a bigger problem for Hoffman, who had to move his supplies thousands of miles, up from the south.
“Therm,” Ben spoke to HQ commander. “Get Hoffman or his spokesman on the horn. Advise him that I have nuclear and chemical first-strike weapons all over Base Camp One in Louisiana. I think he is aware of that. Tell him that if Base Camp One is attacked, I will use those missiles against him.”
Therm’s sigh was audible over the miles. Therm knew Ben was not bluffing; he would launch those missiles. “That’s ten-four, Ben. I will advise Herr Hoffman.”
In his HQ, several hundred miles south of Mexico City, Hoffman read the communiqué and slowly laid it on his desk.
“Of course, he is bluffing,” a general said.
Hoffman shook his head. “I don’t think so. Raines put those missiles in place a long time ago. It’s just simply a small matter of changing the coordinates. He would use them.” He looked at an aide. “Advise this, ah, Thermopolis person that Base Camp One in Louisiana will not be attacked. And ask him what concessions we shall receive for this magnanimous gesture on our part.”
The aide was back in a moment and handed Hoffman a single sheet of paper. One word was typed on it: NOTHING.
Hoffman grunted and handed the paper to the general. The general read it, cursed, then crumpled the paper and tossed it into a wastebasket. “The arrogance of that man is infuriating.”
“But for now, he holds all the cards,” Hoffman said. “No matter. Once Raines is defeated in the field, all we have to do is surround the base camp and starve them out. The nuclear devices will be useless, because by that time our people shall be all over North America and they will have no targets.” He stood up, a tall and handsome man in his late thirties. His parents and his grandfather had seen to it that he was well-educated . . . and thoroughly brainwashed. The Holocaust had never happened. Hitler had been a great man, the greatest man who had ever lived. All the troubles the world had ever seen was the fault of the Jews. America was the enemy because it was controlled by Jews. Ben Raines was obviously a Jew-lover, so that made him the man to destroy, defeat, grind into the dirt.
Hoffman tolerated black people in his army because those who joined him hated America and were good fighters. Hoffman felt they were certainly inferior to him but managed to keep that opinion well-concealed. The blacks could be easily dealt with (meaning disposed of) at a later date. Right now, his primary concern was that goddamn Ben Raines.
“The first thing, the very first thing, we cripple is their communications network. They are using the community’s old radio station just on the outskirts of town. That was very stupid on their part.” He smiled that famous warrior’s smile. “As we are about to point out to them. I want the old station taken intact. My team will handle that. We might be able to pick up some valuable information by monitoring their frequencies. You’ve all studied layouts of the town and know what to do, so we go in on foot at midnight and start setting up for the takeover. The Hummers will come in fast with a driver and a gunner. Everybody else will already be in position. We’ve got a few hours before jump-off time, so get something to eat and try to get some rest. That’s it.”
The teams broke up and began checking equipment. Only after that was done would any of them eat, then lie down for a few hours of sleep.
The camp they made was a cold one, for their objective was only a few miles away. Ben woke at three o’clock and got his team up. The others in the dark camp were silently lacing up boots and slipping into body armor. Ben washed his mouth out with tepid canteen water and fastened the chin strap on his helmet. He picked up his M-16 and turned to Corrie.
“What do the scouts report?”
“We follow this little creek right to the back of the old radio station. No mines or booby traps. The first sentry post is by the side of the highway. The scouts have already slipped past it and are in position on the edge of town.”
“Let’s do it, people,” Ben said. “By seven o’clock I intend for us to be eating a hot meal and drinking hot coffee, all compliments of Herr Hoffman.”
His people grinned at him, then began slipping off into the blackness, heading for the dark outline of the Texas town.
Ben looked at the drivers and the gunners he was leaving behind. “You come in hard at the first shot, people. We’ll see you in a couple of hours.”
Nearly two hundred miles away, to the east, Buddy wiped the bloody blade of his knife on the dead man’s trousers and sheathed the big blade. They had infiltrated a town about a hundred miles east of Austin and had left about a dozen careless and now dead sentries on the ground.
Buddy and his people began spreading out into the town, moving like silent and deadly wraiths in the quiet hours before dawn. They moved into position and waited.
Dan Gray and his people had tucked their Hummers away in a dry creek bed and silently entered the town on Interstate 20, north and west of Ben’s present position.
“Map of Texas I got says there is a college here,” a young Rebel said.
“We took all the books out years ago,” Dan told him in a whisper. He smiled at the young man. “If you’ve got cheerleaders on your mind, forget it. The last game was played here back in ’88, I think it was.”
“I was about two years old, I think!”
Dan chuckled. “And I was in love with a fair English lady. Long ago and far away,” he said with a sigh. “Heads up. Here comes a foot patrol.”
The two black-shirted NAL men walked within three feet of the Rebels hidden in an alley. They were speaking in Spanish, and from the way they talked and walked, both of them were very bored. In a couple of hours, both of them would be very dead.
Dan’s radio person said, “All people in place, Colonel.”
Dan nodded his head. “Now we wait.”
***
Striganov squatted by the side of the road and stared through the darkness at his objective for that morning. The Russian was about a hundred and fifty miles east and slightly north of Buddy’s position. His team, most of whom were ex-Spetsnaz personnel, were lying in the ditches on either side of the old highway.
Vengeance in the Ashes Page 12