The Rangers had been assigned Rebel radios and a short course on how they worked was given by Corrie. There was no horseplay from the new men. They knew their lives might well depend on the radios and they paid close attention.
After wishing the new people well, and shaking hands with Ned, Ben and his bunch headed north, crossed the Red River into Oklahoma and cut east on Highway 70, taking the southernmost route across the bottom of the state.
They saw only desolation, despair, and ruin. For reasons that no one had ever been able to explain, Oklahoma had been the hardest hit by roaming gangs of thugs and punks right after the Great War and also during the later years. They had turned a large part of the state into piles of rubble. The Rebels did not have a single outpost in the southern part of the state.
“This drive is depressing,” Cooper said, after they rolled through what was left of a small town. “Where the hell are all the people?”
“There are some out there,” Ben said, gazing out the window. “See the plumes of smoke to the south?”
“Squatter camps,” Beth said. “I was talking with a scout the other day. He told me this stretch along here has a lot of them. They don’t do anything. Don’t raise gardens or keep milk cows or do anything except hunt or fish. They’ve wiped out all the game in this area.”
“We’ll put a stop to that after we’ve dealt with Hoffman,” Ben said. “Right now I don’t have time to fool with the shiftless bastards. Although it would probably be prudent to take the time to do so.”
“Why’s that, General?” Cooper asked.
“Trashy-assed people like Beth just talked about are always looking for the easy way out. Anything that goes wrong is never their fault. It’s always somebody’s else’s fault. Hoffman will recruit them to fight against us in one way or the other. If he’s smart, that is, and I think he is.”
“Scouts reporting a lot of chatter on CBs, General,” Corrie said.
“Hold it right here,” Ben said. “Let’s see what’s up ahead before we walk into something.”
“Scouts are laying back and reporting a massive roadblock on the outskirts of the town,” Corrie told him. “Heavily armed people are demanding that we pay them tribute before they’ll let us use the highways.”
Ben grunted. “Tribute, huh? Sure. It’s a trap,” he said, carefully rolling a cigarette. He was thoughtful for a moment. “Tell the scouts to give the terrain on both sides of the blockade a very careful going over. I think we’re probably hard in enemy territory, gang. Pass that word, Corrie. I think Herr Hoffman’s goose-steppers have been here before us.”
“Scouts report seeing nothing out of the ordinary, General,” Corrie said after bumping the forward people. “But they say if you want a gut feeling, something is wrong.”
“Set up mortars,” Ben ordered. “Fire only on my orders. When crews are in place, get on the CB channel and tell those people to tear down that blockade and get those hidden ambushers in plain sight or we’ll open fire. Order the scouts back.”
Corrie hesitated. “What if there are no ambushers, General?”
“Then I’ve made a mistake and those behind the barricades are in trouble.”
Ben ordered Cooper forward. In sight of the barricades but well out of range, Ben stood outside the Hummer and watched and waited. For a few moments, it looked like a cold standoff between the Rebels and the locals. Then cooler heads prevailed among those behind the barricades and Corrie got the word.
“They say hold our fire, General. The ambushers are being called in and they’re all backing off.”
“Tell them to lay all weapons on the shoulder of the road and do it now.” Ben watched through binoculars as the locals hurriedly complied. The barricades were torn down. The several-hundred-strong band of locals outnumbered the Rebels, but as it usually went, numbers meant very little. The reputation of the Rebels had preceded them. The locals wanted no part of the Rebels’ fury when engaged in a firefight.
The scouts moved in fast and secured the locals. Two Hummers with top-mounted .50s had a very calming effect on the would-be ambushers.
Ben got out and stood looking at the shiftless bunch. They were dirty and unkempt. “Don’t get too close,” he told his people. “I think they’ve got fleas . . . among other things.”
“There’s a damn river right outside of town,” Coop said. “Why don’t they bathe?”
“They’re losers,” Ben said. “And nothing that anybody did would change that. If these were normal times, you could hand them a million dollars in cash today and they’d be dead broke in a year, or less, with nothing to show for it.” He raised his voice. “Who’s in charge of this pack of rabble?”
“I am,” a man said, stepping forward. “And we ain’t rabble.”
“That is certainly a matter of opinion,” Ben replied. “What did Hoffman’s soldiers offer you to fight on their side?”
The man exchanged glances with several people left and right of him. “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, Raines.”
“Sergeant Morgan,” Ben said, “if that man does not give a satisfactory reply to my question in five seconds, shoot him.”
Morgan lifted his M-16.
“Wait a damn minute!” the local yelled. “Holy shit! All right. All right. Hoffman’s people said they’d keep us supplied with food and clothing and the like. That’s a hell of a lot more than you folks has done for us.”
It was a never ending debate and Ben was weary of it. Back in the 1960s, the federal government had created programs to ease the burden of the poor. It looked good on paper. In effect it destroyed the work ethic and ruined the pride of millions of people. Why work when the government (using the tax money from millions of hard-working citizens) would feed, clothe, and house those who didn’t choose to work? Like nearly every government program ever devised by those ninnies in Washington, it swelled out of control and those in power didn’t have the courage to stop it.
“There are no free rides in Rebel society, mister,” Ben told the man, knowing damn well the citizen already knew it. Ben also felt this man was not from Oklahoma; the accent was all wrong.
“We’re American citizens,” the man said sullenly. “We got a right to food and a decent life.”
“There is no America,” Ben told him. “Not like anything you or I knew before the Great War. At least something good came out of that tragedy. And the states are united, held together, only by Rebel outposts, populated by men and women who work their butts off from daylight to dark in an attempt to build a better way of life. You people know all this. You’re just too goddamn lazy to pitch in and help. Every one of you know the rules. If you want Rebel help, we’ll give it to you. All you’ve got to do is follow a few rules.”
“Your rules is too harsh, General,” a woman called out. “They’re unreasonable.”
“I’ve seen buildings all over the country jam-packed with law books,” Cooper said to Ben. “Billions of words that the average citizen couldn’t make heads or tails of. Our rules don’t even fill up a little notebook. What the hell’s the matter with people?”
“It’s too simple for them,” Ben said. “Sergeant?”
“Sir!”
“Gather up all the weapons. Prepare to move out.”
When the citizens didn’t protest, Ben knew they had more weapons cached somewhere. And if there were any children, the people had hidden them from Rebel eyes. The Rebels put the town behind them and rolled on. They traveled through fifty miles of nothing. Absolutely nothing. This time there was not one sign of human habitation. No smoke, nothing.
“Spooky,” Jersey said. “I’ll be glad when we’re clear of this stretch.”
The next town they rolled through was deserted, and had been for a long time. Years of looting had left it very nearly in ruins.
“Let’s spend the night here,” Ben said. “We know there are people in the next town. What we don’t know is how they’ll receive us. We’d better be fresh when we find out.”
> Ben walked the deserted main street of the town. In what had once been a drug store, he stepped into the gloom and prowled around. The place had been picked over so many times even the rats had finally left it.
He didn’t bother to check the pharmacy, for he knew he would find far-out-of-date medicines on the floor and on the shelves. The only things taken would be the drugs that would give someone an artificial high or low. Drugs that would save lives and fight infection would be largely ignored by the ignorant assholes with a looter’s mentality.
He stepped out of the gloom and into the late afternoon sunlight, his team right with him, and walked on.
“Scouts report the small library was burned,” Corrie said. “All the books destroyed.”
“Naturally,” Ben replied.
“Somebody sure did a number on this town,” Cooper said.
“Our people were probably among the first to strip it,” Ben said with a smile. “Back when we were building the old Tri-States.”
They passed what had been a small cafe. “I bet you a lot of coffee was sold in there and a lot of gossip shared,” Beth said. “If that place could only talk.”
“Memories,” Ben spoke softly. “Memories of a time that will never come again.”
A Hummer rolled up beside them and stopped. The Rebel said, “General, there isn’t anything in this town. We haven’t seen a dog, a cat, a rat, nothing.”
Ben stood for a moment, listening. There were no birds flying or singing. Without moving his head, he cut his eyes to the second floor of a building across the street. “At my orders,” he said very softly, “we jump into that cafe. When we jump, you people in that Hummer get the hell off the street and find cover. We just walked blindly into an ambush. Now!”
EIGHT
Ben’s helmet was knocked from his head by a slug. Luckily, his chin strap had not been fastened. From the second-floor windows of the buildings on both sides of the street, automatic weapons opened up. For a few seconds, the fire was so intense all the Rebels could do was keep their heads down and hug the floor.
“We’ve got people down,” Corrie shouted over the rattle of combat.
“Start firing grenades into the second floor of the buildings,” Ben returned the shout. “Get those bloop tubes working and the Big Thumpers going. Get some cover smoke into the streets, people. Cooper, check the back door. We’ve got to get out of here.”
Cooper scrambled through the litter and bellied down on the back-room floor. He had just spotted movement across the alleyway as Beth joined him. “People in that building just across from us, Beth. They’re all dressed differently, so that lets our people out.”
“Grenades?”
“Why not?” Coop said with a grin, leveling his M-16. “You loaded?”
“Let’s do it.”
They fired as one, and the 40mm grenades sailed through the windowless frames of the building and exploded. Screams of pain from the shrapnel from the fragmentation liner reached them just as they reloaded and fired again. Out in the street, .50s were yammering and Big Thumpers snorting as they hurled their grenades. M-60 machine guns, called The Pigs, began grunting out firepower.
Ben slid on his belly on the littered floor and almost sailed right out the open doorframe. Beth grabbed him by the ankles and held him back only after Jersey grabbed her by the belt and held on.
“Larry, Curly, and Moe,” Ben muttered. He looked out into the alley and could see no one. “Put a couple more grenades into that old building and then let’s get the hell gone from here.”
Cooper and Beth blooped a couple more grenades across the alley and the team took off, cutting to the right and running up the alley. Ben jumped into a building near the end of the block, his team right behind him. They stood for a moment, listening. Boots thudded on the old floor above them, sending dust down on their heads. Ben grinned and pointed the muzzle of his M-16 toward the ceiling. His team followed suit.
Five M-16s rattled, and one hundred and fifty 5.56 caliber slugs created a duststorm in the room and turned the room above them into a death trap. The falling bodies created another dust storm and Ben stepped into what had once been a showroom for something.
“Corrie, order all personnel to start using incendiary rounds. Burn the bastards out. Let’s fall back to the vehicles.”
Back into the alley again as the Rebels began lobbing special-purpose ammo. Big Thumpers were knocking out thirty-five to forty rounds a minute and the town was soon burning. Those as-yet-unknowns who had almost succeeded in effectively ambushing the Rebels began running out of the inferno.
“Take some alive,” Ben ordered. “I want to see who is behind all this.”
Three people were brought to Ben. Two men and a woman. It surprised him when he saw they were Oriental. “Who the hell are you?” he asked.
They stared at him, sullen and silent.
“Maybe they’re shy?” Cooper suggested.
The woman looked at him. “Stupid American bastard!”
“I can see right now that you and me are never going to be real close,” Coop replied.
She spat at him, then cut her eyes to Jersey. “What are you here for, ornamentation? The American army has always been unfair in their treatment of women.”
“Not in this army, sister.”
The woman snorted, quite unladylike, and said to Ben, “I suppose you are going to rape and defile me. Well, go ahead. It’s what I expect of barbarians.”
“Lady,” Ben said, “and I use that term as loosely as possible, I wouldn’t screw you with Herr Hoffman’s dick.” She narrowed her eyes at that and Ben knew he’d hit home.
Buildings in the town began collapsing as the flames consumed them. Somewhere, someone was screaming hoarsely. Ben waited until the crashing abated, then said, “I won’t even ask what nut group you were with before the Great War, but I could probably make a very accurate guess. When you get to operations central, I would suggest you answer any question asked you truthfully and quickly. You won’t be physically tortured, but the drugs we use can be pretty grim. Keep that in mind.”
“You will never, ever get anything out of any of us, General Raines,” she boasted.
“That’s what they all say, sister.”
The Rebels did not take the time to bury the enemy dead. They left them where they lay sprawled and pulled out after burying their own dead. They turned north a few miles outside Ardmore and made a cold camp in a ghost town. The prisoners were kept under heavy guard.
“You’ll kill us if we attempt escape, I suppose?” the woman asked.
“Nope,” a guard told her. “We want you alive. We’ll just blow your kneecaps off.”
The prisoners glanced at one another; there would be no attempts made at escape. They had quickly learned that the Rebels meant every word they said.
The following morning, coffee was heated by using smokeless heat tabs and the Rebels were on their way. The Rebels had buried five of their own and several more were badly wounded, so it was imperative they reach a spot where planes could land and take out the wounded, resupply the teams with gear, and bring them up to strength with personnel.
“Tell operations we’re going into what’s left of Ardmore,” Ben told Corrie. “One way or the other, we’ll take the airport. Tell them to get birds in the air with personnel and equipment.”
“I’m north of Gainesville, Texas, Father,” Buddy radioed. “I’m moving out now with two full teams and will be ready to assist you in one hour. Two more full teams are thirty minutes behind me and will be crossing the river a few miles east of my position and approaching on Highway 70.”
“That’s ten-four, son. What do you have on the situation in our objective?”
“Nothing, sir. Except most of the city is in ruins. And we don’t have gunships anywhere close. We’re going into the unknown.”
“We’ve done it before. See you shortly.” Rolling out, Ben said, “We’re just about one hour away. We should be arriving at about the same time.�
��
But the worry was groundless. The small city lay in deserted ruins. With all Rebels working feverishly, a runway was cleared and the planes touched down. Rather than wail any longer, Rebel doctors went to work and operated on the wounded right there.
“Our worries were for naught, son,” Ben told Buddy. “You and your people can take off anytime, and thanks for your help.”
Buddy didn’t move.
Ben eyeballed him curiously. “Did you hear me, son?”
“I heard you. We’re staying.”
“As far as I know, boy, I still give the orders around here.”
“That is correct, sir. But your orders can be overridden if all other commanders voice strong objections. I believe you set that up yourself.”
“Ummm,” Ben said. “Yes, I did. I wondered what you were doing so far north. The batt comms sent you and these other teams to birddog me, huh?”
“In a manner of speaking.” Buddy braced for a verbal assault.
It didn’t come. His father smiled and patted the son’s muscular arm. “I guess I’d better get used to it. All right. With this much firepower, we’ll penetrate deeper into this state and see what we can find. As soon as the wounded and the prisoners are airborne, we’ll pull out for a look-see.”
They didn’t see much in the way of life. There were survivors, for plumes of smoke were always in evidence. But the people weren’t coming forward to be seen. Only a few survivors had come forward, and those few had seen no enemy troops. And they wanted no part of the Rebel way of life. They didn’t ask for any help, and Ben didn’t offer any. The teams rolled on up the interstate.
“This reminds me of the way it was years ago,” Jersey said. “I feel like we’ve been pushed back into time.”
“Call me dumb if you want to,” Cooper said. “And no smart cracks from you, Jersey, but I don’t understand these people. We offer education, medical help, safety, community activities, all sorts of things, yet so many will not take advantage of it. I don’t understand it.”
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