Blood in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  Jerry Bradford was a man in his mid-thirties, a college grad. He was a man who held the rank of master sergeant in the Rebel army. A man who was an expert at managing the huge equipment list of the Rebel army. He was a man known for his level-headedness in any type of bad situation. And Cecil played hard on that quality.

  Cecil pressed on, knowing the other prisoners were listening. “Jerry, you and the other people don’t follow me, or Ike, or Dan, or Juan, or Mark. You follow Ben. We all follow Ben. I wouldn’t dream of asking any of you to allow me to step into Ben’s shoes. Me being black and all.”

  Jerry’s intelligent face became confused. “Black? Hell, Cecil, what has that got to do with anything? None of us care what color a person is. You know that.”

  “I hoped that’s the way it still stood, Jerry. All right, now tell me this: Any blacks in Willette’s immediate company?”

  Jerry was thoughtful for a moment. “You mean those that came in here with him?”

  “Right.”

  Jerry sighed. “Well . . . now that you mention it, no.”

  “That’s right. Any Hispanics, Jews, Orientals, Indians?”

  Jerry stared at Cecil for a long moment. Then he abruptly slung his M-16 on his shoulder. “Never thought about it, Colonel Jefferys. But I have to say the answer is no.”

  Cecil was back to “Colonel Jefferys” with Jerry. He let it slide. “Now see if you can answer this, Jerry: Where did this so-called evidence about me and the others come from?”

  “Well . . . hmm.” Jerry thought about that. “I don’t really know, Colonel. To be honest about it. One of Captain Willette’s people always seemed to come up with it. And it seemed like we practically had to drag the information from whoever it was.” He met Cecil’s eyes. “Pretty slick, huh, Colonel? Yeah. One of Willette’s people. And it was always put so we could take it either way. And like I said, they were always reluctant to say anything bad about any of you. At first.”

  “And then once they had you hooked, they played you all like a big bass?”

  Jerry sighed heavily. “Yeah, they sure did, Colonel.”

  “Beginning to see some light at the end of the tunnel, Jerry?”

  “Yes, sir. I sure am. And I don’t like what’s at the end of that tunnel.” He reached for the keys on his belt. Cecil’s voice stopped the hand movement.

  “No, Jerry.”

  “Sir?”

  “I think this place is not only the best place for us, in terms of you finding out more truth for yourself, but probably the safest place for the time being. Think about it.”

  After a moment, Jerry nodded his head. “Right, Colonel. I see. Accidents might happen on the outside. Yeah. OK. I’ll make sure one of the regular Rebels is on duty at all times. Goddamn it, Colonel, I feel like the world’s prize idiot. We ... none of us had the forethought to question any of what was said. It just ... it was like a chain reaction, I guess is the best way to put it. Colonel,” he said, a worried look on his face, “why did we want so badly to believe it about the general and about all of you?”

  “Number of reasons, Jerry. We’re all very tired. We’ve just come through one hell of a summer with the Russian and the battles fought.7 And I’m just now beginning to realize how smooth-tongued Willette and his people can be. And, don’t take this the wrong way, Jerry: We are all just too damned dependent on Ben. And those are his words, Jerry. I’ve heard him say them many times. And, Jerry, those of us with any type of advanced education are now in the very definite minority. A mob’s mentality can be very infectious even to an educated person. There are many more reasons, Jerry. That’s just the high points.

  Jerry clutched at any straw to help ease his mind. “Was it ... was it hypnosis, Colonel?”

  “No, Jerry. It was mob hysteria and too much love for Ben Raines.”

  He squared his shoulders. “Yes, sir. You’re right. And it was pure stupidity on the part of people who should have known better. And I’m at the top of that list. I’ll pick the ones I talk to very carefully, Colonel,” he promised. Jerry removed his .45 pistol from leather and handed it and a spare clip through the bars. “You keep this well-hidden, Colonel. When I come back on guard duty, I’ll bring a couple more guns until I can get you all armed.”

  “Jerry?” Dan called.

  “Sir?”

  “Some C-4 and detonators, too, please.”

  Jerry laughed. “You betcha, Colonel. Consider it done.”

  Cecil said, “Be very careful who you discuss this with, Jerry. Very careful.”

  “Don’t you worry about that, Colonel,” Jerry assured him. “That sucking sound you heard a few minutes ago was me, pulling my stupid head out of my ass.”

  Cecil laughed, feeling, for the first time in hours, a slight glimmer of hope. “I have to say this, Jerry. Brace yourself for Ben’s taking off when all this is over.”

  “We never mentioned it aloud, Colonel, but that was part of it, too—among us older troops. We put too much on the man, didn’t we?”

  “Yes. Ben is his own man, Jerry. None of us had any right to foist something on him he really didn’t want. Took me a long time to reach that decision, but I finally made it.”

  “Who will lead us, sir?”

  “Whoever Ben appoints, Jerry.”

  “I hope it’s you, sir,” Jerry said.

  “Thank you, Jerry.”

  “I’ll be back in about an hour, Colonel. I’ll bring the C-4 and a couple of pistols this next trip.”

  When Jerry’s bootsteps had faded away and the door to the runaround closed behind him, Dan said, “You took an awful chance, Cec. That could have blown up in your face. Awfully cheeky thing you did, but I am so glad you seized the moment and brought it off.”

  “So am I, Dan. So am I. It was a risk, but I felt it the only chance we had left us.”

  “I will feel ever so much better when I have my hand wrapped around the butt of a pistol,” the Englishman said.

  Cecil hefted the .45. “I can tell you, friend. It does feel good.”

  NINE

  She looked at the small contingent of Gray’s Scouts that had accompanied her out of the Rebel Base Camp. Roy Jaydot, his Russian wife, Katrina. Tina’s fiance, Bob Graham. Mary Macklin. A dozen others.

  “We’re too small a group to do much damage to Willette’s bunch,” Tina said. “First we’re going to have to link up with the other teams of Scouts that made it out.”

  They were camped on the northernmost banks of Carters Lake, just off Highway 382. They were well-supplied, for at Colonel Gray’s orders, each of his Scouts had slipped out of camp several times, each time carrying a load of food or ammo or mortar rounds, caching them in the deep timber. And in teams of twelve or fourteen, Dan had sent them out of the Base Camp, on some pretext or the other—anything to get as many of his people out before the coup went down.

  Most of the highly trained and superbly conditioned men and women known as Gray’s Scouts had gotten out, with only a few taken prisoner. Even though the coup had gone down much quicker than anyone had anticipated.

  “Have you thought about making an attempt to link up with Dad Raines?” Bob asked her.

  “God, yes. Many times during the past few hours. But I don’t know exactly where he is. Odds of us finding him are against us. I think we’re much better off staying in this area and linking up with the other teams of Scouts.”

  Tina was team leader, and no one questioned her authority. She was as skilled a guerrilla fighter as anyone in the Rebels, with the possible exception of Ike, Dan or her father.

  “Eagle Two to Eagle One,” the backpack radio softly crackled. “Lookin’ for a home.”

  Tina moved to the radio operator’s side, taking the mic. “This is Eagle One. We’re out of the home nest. Come on.”

  “Jose Ferranza here, Tina. Got my team all with me. Where you wanna link up, Big Momma?”

  Tina’s team members chuckled at Jose’s words. Tina was actually a captain in Gray’s Scouts, but like sp
ecial troops the world over—when there was a functioning world—special troops almost never stood on formality, for theirs was an easy camaraderie that few outside the unit ever understood.

  “I’ll Big Momma your ass, you wetback.” Tina laughed the words, knowing Jose would take it in good humor, as it was meant.

  “Your boyfriend is much too large,” Jose replied, laughing. “I am a lover, not a fighter.”

  “Bullshit,” Bob muttered. Sergeant Ferranza was one of the most feared guerrilla fighters in Gray’s Scouts.

  “Give me your coordinates, Eagle Two,” Tina radioed.

  Tina checked her grid map as Jose gave his position in coded words. “We’re close,” she said. “We’ll find you. Stay put.”

  “Ten-four.”

  “Let’s go,” Tina ordered, picking up her M-16 and automatically checking the weapon. The fire control lever was on auto, the safety on. “We’ll find three, four more teams and then we’ll be strong enough to do some damage at Base Camp.” She glanced toward the southeast. “Sit tight, Dad,” she muttered, slipping into her pack. “Don’t get it in your head to do something rash. Just sit tight.”

  The team moved out, as silent as ghosts wearing cammies.

  TEN

  Dan felt the comforting cool press of the 9mm Browning against the skin of his belly. Bradford had succeeded in arming all the prisoners in the jail, and in bringing in enough plastic explosive to blow up half the building. But Dan knew several hundred more had been rounded up and were being held under heavy guard in an old football stadium nearby. Despite the obvious and, to Dan and those now in jail, quite odious fact that the coup had been successful, Dan could not envision how it had been done so swiftly. Neither could the Englishman fathom the why of it all.

  He knew more than half of the camp had been subtly swayed by Willette and his people, but that still left more than a thousand Rebels for Willette and his people to contend with. Say, three hundred and fifty had been taken prisoner in the swiftest coup Dan had ever heard of. And most successful, he grudgingly conceded.

  But damn it to hell, he thought, that still left over six hundred men and women—all fighters. What had happened to them?

  All right, he calmed himself, forcing his anger to subside and rational thinking to take control. Think about it, he urged his mind. Say, two hundred out of that thousand were setting up homesteads throughout the vast tracts of land newly claimed by the Rebels. They would not have heard anything about the coup. And if they did hear, they would keep their heads low.

  That left approximately four to five hundred.

  His own Scouts numbered one hundred and fifty. Most of them had gotten free and clear just in the nick of time.

  That left, say, three hundred and fifty. Most of them were with Ro and Wade, with some scattered old-timers mixed in, Doctor Chase and his wife included. That bunch had scattered like the wind, heading in all directions.

  So, there it was. All neatly added up.

  Some of the more level-headed of the bunch, people like Jerry Bradford, older and better educated Rebels, after speaking with Jerry, had seen how they’d been duped and were now back in the fold, so to speak. But they were few, no more than forty, and that might be stretching it.

  Time, Dan knew, was the enemy. The real enemy. For with each passing hour, those Rebels with Willette, the younger, more impressionable, poorly educated men and women, would become more firmly convinced Willette was right and Cecil and Dan and the others were the enemy.

  Dan ceased his restless pacing and sat down on his bunk. He thought: It’s going to be bloody. And there is no way to prevent that from occurring. Lord God on High, but it’s going to be a bloody bitch.

  As if reading his thoughts, for Cecil had been listening to Dan’s restless pacing, he called softly: “I’m not looking forward to pulling the trigger on some of these people, either.”

  “Nor I, Cec,” Dan softly called. “But what I don’t understand is the why of it all. It just doesn’t make any sense.”

  “To destroy Ben Raines,” Peggy said, joining in the conversation.

  “Yes,” Dan agreed. “But still that does not answer the why of it all.”

  “Vendetta,” Juan called. “That is the only possible answer. A blood debt, if you will. Probably one so old it is doubtful General Raines himself even remembers it.”

  “The lengths people will go to settle old scores,” Dan muttered. Then, to himself, he said, “It’s coming apart. Everything Ben Raines dreamed of is coming apart. Ike is being hunted; Ben is cut off with only a small detachment, while more than a thousand men are hunting him. The camp is divided, with a bloodbath looking us in the face.” He sighed. “It’s coming apart. Once more, we shall have to pick up the pieces from the ashes of hate and blood and start anew. But what will happen when those of us with age and education and experience are gone?”

  The Englishman did not like to dwell long on that last question. For like Ben, he knew only too well what would happen.

  “A return to the ashes,” he muttered. “Back to barbarism and savagery and paganism. I hope I do not live to see it.”

  “We shall persevere,” Cecil called. “Everything Ben has worked for will, indeed, must, endure. It is up to us to see that it does.”

  “And when we are gone?” Dan called, feeling the weight of his age, even though he was not yet fifty, fall on him with a crushing invisible force.

  Cecil did not reply.

  ELEVEN

  “Take the one on the left,” Ike whispered. “Shoot him in the chest. Try to miss that walkie-talkie. I want it. I’ll waste the pus-gutted dude on the right.”

  Two rifles cracked. Two men from the Ninth Order went down in howling heaps. One kicked and squalled in agony, his legs jerking as life slowly left him. Nina’s shot had gone high, the bullet striking her man in the throat, almost tearing the head from him with the expanding slug. Blood spurted in two-foot-high arcs until his heart ceased its pumping. The man drummed his booted feet on the earth and died.

  “Shit!” Nina said, working a fresh round into the chamber of her .270.

  “No point in bitchin’ about it,” Ike told her. “You got him.”

  “But I was off the mark by a foot!” she said. “I haven’t missed like that in years.”

  “You were shootin’ downhill, little one,” Ike said. “Downhill shootin’ is always tricky. We’ll wait a few minutes, see if any of their buddies come runnin’. Then you cover me while I get the walkie-talkie. Maybe then we’ll be able to keep more than one jump ahead of them.”

  The pair lay in the brush on the crest of the hill. Within seconds after the shooting, the birds once more began their singing and calling. No more men of the Ninth Order appeared. Ike counted off another sixty seconds.

  Ike rose to his feet. “You see anything other than me movin’ around down there, blow the ass off it.”

  She leaned over and kissed his cheek, now rough with beard stubble. “Yes, sir.”

  Ike grinned. “This ain’t no time for romance, darlin’.”

  He made his way cautiously to the site of the dead men. The air was foul with urine from relaxed bladders and excrement from bowel movements. Ike was especially wary of Dobermans, for he was very familiar with those animals who had been silent-trained. They were awesome and deadly. Few people realize just how much damage even an untrained dog can do to a man, and how quickly. Ike was as fully trained in the art of handling an attacking dog as any man who is not an experienced dog handler. But all that was just training, and Ike hoped he would never have to find out how good the training had been.

  No dogs were present, much to Ike’s relief. And no more live men, either.

  He stripped the dead men of their warm, lined field jackets, and took the long-range walkie-talkie. He left their weapons; both carried shotguns. He shoved their bodies over the edge of a deep rocky ravine, thinking perhaps if they were found, the missing walkie-talkie would not be noticed. He hustled back up the hill and flop
ped down beside Nina, extending the antenna. Chatter came to them immediately.

  “They done killed Langford and Benny,” the excited voice said. “I heard the shots and then couldn’t get neither of them on the radio. You copy all that? Over.”

  “Stand clear of ’em. Don’t get any closer than you have to. Sister Voleta says to keep pushin’ ’em north. ’Bout five more miles and we’ll have them boxed in the meadow up yonder.”

  “How ‘bout usin’ the dogs ag’in?”

  “Negative to that. The dogs is being sent south to track General Raines and his bunch.”

  “That’s a relief,” Nina said.

  “In a way,” Ike responded.

  The radio crackled once more. “How’s things at the Base Camp?”

  “Ever’thang is jam up and jelly tight. The Base Camp is ours.”

  “Oh, goddamn it!” Ike cussed. “What in the hell is going on?”

  “OK. We’ll keep pushin’ ’em north. Point out.”

  “Your Base Camp has been overrun, Ike?” Nina asked. “By the Ninth Order? I didn’t think they were strong enough to do something like that.”

  “They aren’t. Not by themselves. That goddamn Willette and his pack have to have something to do with this.”

  “Willette?”

  He told her, briefly, all he knew and suspected about Willette and his people.

  She was silent for a moment. “Then . . . this Captain Willette must be tied in with the Ninth Order, is that what you think?”

  Ike nodded. “I guess so, Nina. Like I said before when we talked about it, this whole business is so screwed up, I really can’t tell you what in the hell is going on.”

  Ike got to his feet and helped Nina up. He looked around him, got his bearings, and started walking—south. There was a determined set to his jaw and a cold look in his eyes.

  “Ike!” She tugged at his arm. “We’re heading right back toward them.”

  “That’s right, babe. We sure are. We’re goin’ back to Base Camp. I got the monkey and the skunk syndrome about this mess.”