Betrayal in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  “We’re next,” Ben said, picking up his Thompson. “And we’re out of running room.”

  Corrie had slipped the headphones on to lessen the noise and confusion in the room. “Smithson’s surrounded by troops loyal to him and they’re holding,” she called. “Our people are with him and say it looks pretty good. We’re fairly evenly matched all the way around. If Buddy and his spec ops can bust out of the airport, we’ll put the turncoats on the run.”

  “Here they come!” Cooper yelled. Coop had managed to wrangle a SAW—a 5.56 squad automatic weapon—along with half-a-dozen boxes, each containing 200 rounds in a belt—and was positioning himself at a window. “They’ve busted through our weak side!”

  “Slow them up, Coop,” Ben said, moving to a window just as Coop started rocking and rolling and screams of pain came from the side yard. Ben leveled the old Thompson and held the trigger back. The fat slugs tore into flesh and shattered bone, and the line of Smithson’s turncoats went down like pins in a bowling alley. Ben fought the rise of the weapon until the clip was empty, then ejected the clip and fitted a drum into the belly of the weapon and knelt down.

  Beth was kneeling behind a Big Thumper, the Mark 19-3 40mm automatic grenade launcher, and she had turned the other side of the yard into a slaughterhouse as the Big Thumper spat out anti-personnel grenades at about 40 grenades per minute. The anti-personnel mini-bombs had a killing range of about seventeen feet, and Beth was filling the air with shrapnel, shredding flesh from shattered bone. The bodies were stacking up in her perimeter and those troops who unwisely attacked her side of the CP were rapidly having a change of heart.

  More than half-a-dozen Rebel MBTs came clanking and rumbling up, machine guns hammering. The tank commanders used no finesse in this fight. They just began circling the small battlefield and running over the turncoat troops, crushing them under the treads of the sixty-ton tanks.

  It was anything but a pleasant sight, and the sounds were even less appealing.

  The attack against Ben’s CP was over. Ben had a cut on one cheek; Cooper had taken a burn on the left arm, and Mike had a splinter embedded in his right forearm. Other than that, no one among the Rebels had been hurt. The MBTs had assumed a defensive circle around the building.

  “Get me a report from the airport,” Ben called, coughing in the thick gunsmoke that filled the room.

  “Say again, say again.” Corrie was speaking into her mike. She listened, then turned to Ben. “Buddy’s people broke through and put the turncoats on the run. Billy’s troops at his CP held. The attack appears to be over.” She grimaced as her headset filled with frantic calls. “All battalions, all battalions. This is Big Chick. Everything OK at the Eagle’s Nest. We had a little trouble. It’s over. Eagle to Shark, Eagle to Shark.” She turned and nodded at Ben. “Ike on the horn.”

  Ben took the mike. “Ike, try to find out what’s happening Stateside. We have reports that Blanton’s been shot or killed. Looks like a revolution is starting over there. Give me a bump as soon as you know something.”

  Ben turned to his team. “Let’s go find Billy.”

  Ninety percent of the Secret Service was loyal to Blanton. Jeff ran up the hall with two of his men and shot the turncoat agents dead in the doorway.

  “Rebels are ringing the grounds with troops and tanks!” a Secret Service agent shouted.

  “But what goddamn side are they on?” another agent yelled.

  “If they’re not with us, we’re fucked!” Jeff called.

  Jeff knelt down beside Blanton. “He’s alive! Get an ambulance.”

  “I am in command,” Harriet Hooter said. “Remove the Rebels from the grounds. Immediately!”

  “Fuck you,” Jeff told the Vice President.

  “Now?” Rita asked.

  “What did you say to me?” Harriet roared at the Secret Service agent.

  “You couldn’t command a gang bang,” Jeff told her. “You’re a joke. You’ve always been a joke—a very profane joke. Now get the hell out of my way and stay out of my way.”

  While Harriet sputtered and stuttered in shock, Jeff told an agent, “Get General Bodison over here. He’s in charge.”

  “The fucking military in charge!” Harriet hollered.

  “We’re all doomed!” Immaculate Crapums shrieked.

  “Done for,” Senator Benedict droned.

  “The nation is through,” Senator Arnold said.

  “We’ll be in the hands of fascists!” I. M. Holey said.

  Blanton opened his eyes and groaned. “Jeff,” he whispered.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “If another one of those nitwits opens his mouth . . . shoot him!”

  Jeff grinned at the President. “Yes, sir. With great pleasure.”

  “Did you get my wife clear?”

  ““Yes, sir. She’s safe. And I didn’t have to hit her.”

  “Good. On both counts. How bad off am I?”

  “You took two good ones, sir. One high up in the shoulder and the other one in the side. But the bleeding is not excessive. I think you’re going to be all right.”

  “You sure couldn’t prove it by me. Any word from General Raines?”

  “Nothing, sir.”

  Another agent knelt beside the President. “Sir, General Bodison is on the way. He’ll be here in a few minutes. The grounds are secure.”

  “What about me?” Harriet squalled.

  “Take a hike,” Blanton told her.

  “You want me to shoot her?” Jeff asked.

  Harriet squealed and hit the door, followed quickly by her supporters.

  The room filled with medical personnel and Rebels, and Blanton was lifted onto a stretcher and wheeled out. General Bodison entered and looked at the Rebel commander. “You on our side, son?”

  “All the way, sir.”

  “Good boy.” Bodison looked at the desk in the Oval Office. He shook his head. “I do not want this goddamn job.”

  “I’ll take it!” Harriet shouted from the hall.

  “On second thought . . .” Bodison muttered, and walked toward the desk.

  “The United States of America is under martial law,” Corrie told Ben and Billy. “General Bodison is now sitting in the Oval Office.”

  Billy Smithson had suffered a minor arm wound during the brief rebellion. Rebel medics had patched him up and given him two aspirin for pain.

  “The fools should have known they couldn’t pull this off,” Billy said. “Here or back home.”

  “How many Rebels were involved in this, Mike?” Ben asked.

  “Reports are still coming in. But it looks like each battalion had between seventy-five and a hundred turncoats. Some more, some less.”

  “Say two thousand all told.”

  “That’s a good ballpark figure.”

  “About thirty-eight percent of your people turned on you, Billy,” Mike said.

  “About seventy-five hundred men,” Billy said, his face tight with anger. “May God have mercy on their treacherous souls—for I don’t intend to . . . if I ever find them.”

  “Oh, we’ll run into them again,” Buddy Raines said, appearing in the doorway.

  “What do you mean, son?” Ben asked, looking his son over. Buddy’s face was streaked with dirt, but he did not appear to be hurt.

  “Those who survived went eastward. I assume they joined with Bottger. One of the few prisoners we took told me he thought Bruno Bottger to be a very great man.”

  “I believe we discussed that very possibility, Ben,” Billy said.

  “Yes. We sure did.” Ben sighed and sat down. “I felt there would be a few Rebels who would align with Bottger . . . but my God, not this many. How many senior people went with him, Mike?”

  “None. And we can be thankful for that.”

  Ben stood up. “Let’s start reorganizing and get ready for another push. We came over here to do a job. Let’s get back to it. Corrie, order all Rebels being held in reserve to get to the front ASAP. I want full reports fro
m all batt coms, reports from Cecil, and reports on the situation in Charleston. I want to be on top of things before they happen. Let’s go, people.”

  Billy watched Ben as he strode out of the building, his team with him. He cut his eyes to Buddy Raines. “Does anything ever shake him up?”

  Buddy smiled. “I’ve seen him shook up over a woman every now and then . . . but not for very long.”

  “The right one hasn’t come along yet, hey?”

  “Yes,” Buddy said with a sigh. “She came along. They met shortly after the Great War, when conditions were chaotic. I really don’t know all the details. But years later, my father buried her in the northwest part of the United States. Her name was Jerre. From what I understand, theirs was a relationship that was doomed from the start. But they did love each other in a strange way. He never talks about Jerre and he probably never will.”

  “This was your mother, son?”

  “Oh, no. Good God, no. My mother was a perverted, crazed, evil woman. She hated Ben Raines. Her one goal in life was to destroy him. Then when I left her, she had two goals: To destroy both of us.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “Her hate did her in . . . with a little help from Ike.” He picked up his weapon and slung it over his shoulder. “What do you want done with the prisoners we took from your contingent?”

  Billy’s eyes went suddenly bleak and cold.

  “You and my father do share a few things in common,” Buddy said, then walked out the door.

  TEN

  The attack on the borders of the SUSA almost fizzled before it started. When the takeover in Charleston failed, Smithson’s men in charge of gathering the rabble along the border ran for their lives. The mob made a few halfhearted attempts to cross the borders, but after being thrown back several times in bloody charges, they gave up and returned to their former vocations of bitching and whining and parading up and down in various locations throughout the nation.

  Vice President Harriet Hooter resigned in a huff and took a dozen or so men and women with her. She started a new political party, calling it Americans Selected to Serve Honorably and Onward for the Liberal Endeavor. When it was pointed out to her that the name made absolutely no sense and the acronym was ASSHOLE, Harriet answered, “Only a very sexist, inconsiderate, unfeeling, politically incorrect person would make anything vulgar of it.”

  ASSHOLE started a registration drive and immediately began attracting hordes of people to its ranks. Their first convention, held a week after Homer Blanton was shot and General Bodison took over the running of the government, was something that had not been seen since Barnum and Bailey put together their first sideshow.

  People showed up waving McGovern-for-President and McCarthy-for-President banners; and outside, people held placards that read: WHERE ARE YOU RONALD REAGAN NOW THAT WE NEED YOU? And GEORGE BUSH PLEASE COME BACK.

  Inside, Harriet Hooter took the rostrum and immediately launched into a wild, screaming, arm-waving tirade against General Ben Raines and the Rebels; President Cecil Jefferys of the SUSA; President Homer Blanton; General Bodison, Acting President of the United States; the Republican Party; the National Rifle Association; Charlton Heston; the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard; all the cops everywhere, and anyone who didn’t agree with everything Harriet said, while Rita Rivers worked the crowds and tried to pick up a few bucks turning tricks under the bleachers. She only had one taker, however, and he turned out to be a man who had gotten into the wrong line out front and was wearing a Gerald Ford-for-President button. But for twenty bucks and fifteen minutes, Rita could put political differences aside.

  The convention broke up after putting forth these resolutions: One, the only way to solve America’s problems was to immediately raise taxes. Two, cut the work week to twenty hours and set up medical facilities and build new welfare offices to accommodate all the uneducated, illiterate, unemployable new people who would arrive once the borders and coastlines were opened up. Three, take away their machetes as soon as they land—carrying a brick to bash someone’s head in was all right, but machetes were a no-no.

  Since they couldn’t agree on a fourth resolution, the convention was adjourned until the following week, when they would meet again to discuss passing a resolution jailing anyone who was found with a terrible ol’ handgun in their home or vehicle. We just have to put an end to violence, you know?

  “ASSHOLE?” Ben said after reading the article in a Stateside newspaper. Hundreds of newspapers were flown over with the supplies every day from the States.

  “The name fits that pack of nitwits,” Cooper said.

  President Blanton was recovering nicely from the assassination attempt and was expected to be back at work in a few weeks.

  “I bet that was a shock to the V.P. when Blanton kicked her out of power,” Beth said.

  “She’ll be back,” Jersey remarked, reading the same newspaper. “This new party she started is attracting followers like flies to shit.”

  “What a feminine phrase,” Cooper said with a grimace.

  Jersey flipped him the bird.

  “But nicely put,” Ben said.

  For reasons known only to the oftentimes fickle gods of war, the battle lines had not moved an inch either way in three weeks. There had been only a few shots fired from either side. Ben was taking the time to realign his troops, and Bottger was using the respite to rush reinforcements and supplies to the front.

  Since the Rebels were now firmly established in Bottger’s claimed territory, hundreds of French, Swiss, German, and Italian men and women had enlisted in the Free Forces of those countries fighting with the Rebels. But still the Rebels and the Free Forces were badly outnumbered as they waited for the assault to begin anew.

  Billy Smithson had softened his attitude toward the black race, but not enough to open the borders of his newly claimed state. Not yet.

  The Rebel troops rested up and down the long front, writing letters, reading, resupplying for the next push against Bottger’s MEF.

  Finally, after months of trying, Ben began getting some word out of Russia—the country was in total chaos. Norway, Finland, and Sweden were not much better, but the newly formed governments had their hands full attempting to bring some order and stability back to those countries and could offer only limited help to Ben and his troops.

  The Balkan nations had exploded in war several years before the Great War that nearly destroyed the world, and they were still at war. Ethnic cleansing, it was called.

  “Peacekeepers is what soldiers like us used to be called,” Ben said to his team, laying his newspaper aside. “They were brave men wearing blue berets and got the shit shot out of them.”

  “Why didn’t they shoot back?” Cooper asked.

  “Most of the time they were under orders not to. That’s why I made it perfectly clear to the Secretary General of the United Nations that we were most definitely not peacekeepers. Corrie, what is Bottger up to?”

  “Whatever he’s doing, he’s keeping off the air,” she replied. “But we do know for sure that those turncoat Rebels and Smithson’s men did join with him. They were formed into one oversized battalion and positioned facing Billy’s people.”

  “Interesting move on Bottger’s part,” Ben muttered. “Corrie, alert all battalions we jump off tomorrow morning at dawn. Let’s get this show on the road. Get the HumVee ready, Coop.”

  An artillery barrage is a dead giveaway that an assault is on the way, so Ben stood his artillery down and began sending in teams of scouts and spec op people as soon as it was dark. Rebel radio operators kept up normal chatter, and the troops did not vary the day-to-day routines that Bottger’s troops had grown accustomed to over the quiet weeks.

  Ben was up an hour earlier than his usual time; but this morning, so was every Rebel troop up and down the line. There was no chatter and no movement unless it was absolutely necessary. Everything that might rattle or tinkle had either been stowed or taped. At three o’clock,
the Rebels began moving out. At four o’clock, spec ops people silently cut the throats of Bottger’s men guarding the tunnel at St. Bernard’s Pass and Ben, leading his battalion, began moving into Italy.

  “All you lovely and lonely Italian women, here I come,” Cooper whispered.

  “As soon as they see you, they’ll run the other way,” Jersey told him. “Now shut up.”

  Fortunately, the lights were out in the tunnel and there was no traffic as the Rebels stealthily walked the dark length. Capturing and holding the tunnel and the bridge just beyond it was imperative—and it was chancy, for the Rebels would have no tank support for several hours. The lines were so close together that as soon as the tanks roared into life, Bottger’s men would know something was in the works.

  Ben’s One Batt and the spec ops people with him had to hold the pass with only light weapons and mortars until the tanks and support troops could link up with them. Every Rebel in Ben’s One Batt was carrying extra ammunition and mortar rounds. The fact that it was pouring down a cold rain was both good and bad. It helped hide the sounds of the Rebels’ advance, but it also reduced visibility and the planes that were to have struck at dawn were now counted out because of fog and mist—they wouldn’t be able to see the targets and might drop payloads on advancing Rebels . . . providing the troops got out of the tunnel at all.

  Ben sent the spec ops people ahead when the main force was only a hundred feet from the eastern entrance. And it was a good thing he did, for the spec ops team still had about fifty feet to go when one of the guards suddenly sensed something and whirled around, lifting his weapon. The spec ops team cut him down, along with the three other guards who were out in the open.

  “Let’s go!” Ben yelled. “Go. Go. Go!” He took off running for the mouth of the tunnel. As he usually did when weight and ammunition was a factor, Ben was carrying an M-16, fitted with a bloop tube for firing 40mm grenades.

  Ben reached the mouth of the tunnel and bellied down, waving Rebels on. “Both sides of the pass!” he shouted “Stretch out and get behind cover. And watch your footing in this rain. Those rocks are slicker than owl shit. Corrie! Get those tanks rolling.”