They sat in silence and looked at him. Ben felt a sinking sensation in his belly. Is this it? he thought. “Have we reached the end of our string?” he said aloud. “Maybe. Maybe so, people. Maybe we’re all just tired of it. Weary of all the blood and pain and suffering and days and nights without sleep. The constant pounding of battle.”
“Tell us what you think, General,” Ned Hawkins of the New Texas Rangers said. “I’m no leader of great armies. I have five hundred people out there ready to fight and die for this country. But I’m no expert at drawin’ up plans for an army this size.”
Greenwalt, who commanded Eleven Battalion, said, “Common sense tells me that if we tried to meet Hoffman nose to nose, he’d chew us up and spit out blood and bone. But if we break up into small groups and try to fight him that way, we’re taking an awful chance.”
“But what other options do we have?” Ike asked. “Hoffman has us outmanned and outgunned. He has more helicopter gunships, more planes, more tanks, more of everything.”
“So did Khamsin,” Ben said. “So did nearly every other group we’ve ever faced. And we licked them all. All right, people. If it’s going to be all up to me, here it is. We can’t meet Hoffman head-on with tanks; we don’t have that many. For every attack chopper we have, he has twenty. But we have SAMs. For some reason as yet unknown, he has no Big Thumpers. Those Thumpers are going to make a mess out of his light armor. So we make Hoffman break up his army. We make him fight on half a dozen fronts. We stretch his supply lines to the breaking point, and then break them. We fight the way we fight the best, as guerrillas. We are going to terrorize his troops. We are going to infiltrate his camps, cut throats while they sleep, hang his people, and in general, scare the living crap out of them. And we can do it. We have no choice in the matter. We have to do it.”
“So we give up the border,” Buddy said.
“Unless you’ve got a better plan, yes.”
“So we turn Texas into a battleground?” Ned asked.
“Yes. But we won’t contain them here. Before this is over, we’ll be fighting all over the nation. And when that occurs, that’s when we’ll beat Hoffman. We’ll spread him so thin he’s vulnerable.”
Ben eyeballed the group. “General Payon, have your people burn their uniforms and dress in civilian clothing. South Texas is your area.”
Payon smiled. “I like it. We shall be poor peasants, scratching at the ground to eke out a meager existence until the enemy troops get close enough to slaughter. Then we become fighters. Yes. I like it.”
“Everybody out of uniforms,” Ben ordered. “We’re all civilians again. How can Hoffman fight an army he can’t recognize and who pops up when he least expects it, hits him hard, and then runs away? Start moving our tanks and armor away from the border. Move them north. Therm, you and your bunch are hippies again. So play your guitars, turn up the volume on that awful music, and keep your guns handy.”
“Then there is no HQ Company?”
“Oh, you’ll be operating. But far from here. How about a commune in Arkansas?”
“Back where I started from,” Therm muttered.
“Everybody start scrounging for civvies,” Ben ordered. “Get trucks loaded with supplies and start caching them all over the country. Hoffman has been warned to stay out of Louisiana. That’s neutral ground. He knows if he violates our agreement, we’ll use everything we’ve got against him. He doesn’t want that any more than I want to order it done.”
“Who gets Emil?” Buddy asked.
“Therm.”
“Thank you so very much,” Thermopolis said.
“There is one thing I think we should all do before this meeting breaks up,” General Payon said.
“What is that?” Ben asked.
“Pray.”
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1993 by William W. Johnstone
Cover design by Open Road Integrated Media
ISBN 978-1-4976-3059-8
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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Vengeance in the Ashes Page 28