“Please do,” Ben said. “It’s fascinating.”
“Thanks. Leroy is the head knocker of one of the biggest gangs. They’re called the New Africans. Black and green is their color. Carmine bosses the gang called the Women. Bunch of dykes. They wear yellow. Cash runs the Surfers. White and blue. Jimmy fronts the Indios. White and red. Stan’s bunch is called the Flat Rocks. Yellow headbands. The Boogies is bossed by Ishmal. They wear turbans. The Skulls is run by Junkyard. They all wear black leather gloves. They’s a whole bunch of little-bitty gangs scattered all around the fringes of the territory and the zone. Can I have a drink of water?” Cough.
Ben nodded and one of Henry’s hands was unchained. He drank two glasses of water, went into a fit of coughing, and the hand was once more chained.
“All right, Henry. Tell me what kind of weapons you people have.”
“All kinds, General. Machine guns, rocket launchers, grenades, mortars — anything we could grab from the military bases all around the area.” Cough.
Ben drummed his fingertips on the desk. “Has any large force ever tried to overrun you people?”
“Hell, no!” Henry said with a laugh. “No, General. And you people ain’t gonna make it neither. You and your army is gonna get chewed up.” Cough. “All these good-lookin’ cunts around here is gonna make for fine barter.”
Jersey laughed at him.
Ben stared at the punk for a moment. “Get him out of here and chain him someplace. Keep him away from people. The bastard has fleas jumping all over him.”
“And that’s not all he has,” Lamar added.
“The one I interrogated was slightly more erudite,” Dan Gray said. He and Ben were comparing notes on the prisoners’ remarks. “They have been studying our tactics for years, so it seems. And those in the city are highly organized. It’s going to be a tough campaign. They’ve practiced their plans many times and each gang knows what to do. They also know that we don’t have the chemicals to neutralize such a large area. A conservative guesstimate would be thirty-five thousand of the enemy.”
“I was going to say fifty thousand,” Ike said. “Trained, well-armed, and ready for a fight.”
“Yeah,” Ben said, leaning back in his chair. “Well, we’ve got to reclaim the old military bases first thing, once we’re in the area. The caches of weapons and supplies have probably not been found. Georgi and his people will take China Lake and Fort Irwin while West moves down to reclaim Twentynine Palms. Cecil will occupy Edwards. Ike, you and yours take Vandenberg.”
Corrie stuck her head into the room. “Leadfoot and the Wolfpack have reported in, sir. They creamed the ambushers. The Pack suffered two minor wounds. They took no prisoners.”
“Tell them to come on back, Corrie.”
“Yes, sir.”
Lamar entered the room and poured a cup of coffee. He had a very grim look on his face. “All right, ladies and gentlemen, here it is. Our prisoners, all of them, have advanced syphilis and tuberculosis. You have all been inoculated, so there is little danger for any of you. However, I have ordered booster shots for all Rebels. It’s going to take a day to get the vaccine in here, and a couple of days to get everyone popped. So stand your people down, Ben. And roll up your sleeve. And that is a direct order from the Chief of Medicine.”
Ben did not question the order. He and Lamar loved to argue and yell at one another, but when it came to health matters, Ben was no different from any other Rebel. He did what the Chief of Medicine told him to do.
The medical research people down at Base Camp One had taken the vaccine BCG, widely used in halting the spread of TB, and improved on it. The vaccine was basically weakened tubercle bacilli which were injected into the skin, then followed by injections of various drugs such as ethambutol, rifampicin, thiacetazone, and poyrazinamide, and sometimes streptomycin, isioniazid, and paraaminosalicylic acid. The reasons for the varied combinations was because the disease could grow resistant to repeated doses of the same drug.
“How do you suppose Leadfoot and that bunch roamed around like the wind for all these years without contracting some dreadful disease?” Linda asked, helping Lamar inoculate.
Dan smiled at her. “Leadfoot and his bunch are far from being stupid, Linda. Believe it or not, there are a couple of Ph.D. types among them. And several holders of master’s degrees. I believe the one called Frank actually taught at one of America’s more prestigious universities.”
“Stanford, I think it was,” Ben said. “He was an associate professor, I believe. Frank is a good man. He just took a wrong road for a brief time. What Dan was going to say, Linda, is that most of those people are pretty good medics in their own right. They’ve all read up on what medicines to take and so forth. And they all knew a great deal about herbal and folk medicines. I had a bad case of diarrhea one day, and didn’t have anything at hand to help me. Axehandle went out into the woods, came back with some blackberry roots. He boiled them and made me a glass of hot tea. I’ve had better-tasting liquids, but it stopped my diarrhea.”
Ben grimaced as Linda popped him with the needle, then swabbed the injection point with alcohol. “You’ll live,” she told him.
“I’m not sure I will,” Dan said, after Doctor Chase had popped him. “Lamar has the touch of someone repairing anvils.”
The Rebels rested, cleaned already spotless weapons, and waited for the entire army to be inoculated. All of them, from the Scouts to the cooks and back again, had been briefed as to what lay ahead of them in southern California. They were under no illusions. This was to be the toughest fight they had ever endured. Outnumbered meant nothing to them. The Rebels were almost always outnumbered.
Those prisoners that Ike had captured were turned loose and told to go somewhere, make their peace with God, lie down, and die. Doctor Chase said that there was no way any of them could live another six months.
“Won’t they spread the disease?” Ben asked.
“I pumped them full of medicine. It certainly won’t cure them, but it will somewhat reduce the danger of them spreading the tuberculosis. The syphilis is another matter. I did what I could for that, but it’s my opinion that Gavin will not live another sixty days. Lab results show extensive brain infection. His motor reactions are already severely affected. None of them will be alive six months from now.”
“Why don’t we just cordon off the area down there and let them all drop dead of diseases?” Jersey asked, considerable heat in her tone. “Serves those guys right if their whosis rots off. Damned bunch of rapists and slavers.”
Lamar looked at her. “Remind me to always stay on your good side, Jersey.”
Ben said, “We just don’t have the personnel or the time to do that, Jersey. That might take years. Too bad, though. It was a good idea.”
“You people are vicious,” Lamar said. “What’s a nice, gentle man like me doing in the company of such heathens?”
He was booed and hissed out of the CP, leaving with a grin on his face.
On the night before the long columns of Rebels were to resume their push toward the south, Ben stayed up late in his CP. Those they would be facing in the southern part of the state had rockets, several different kinds of rockets. The old prop-job planes of the Rebels could not hope to evade any kind of Stinger or surface-to-air missiles. So that grounded the planes. He made a note to have Corrie radio the pilots first thing in the morning and have them stand down in any kind of combat role for the duration. They wouldn’t like it, but they would see the reasoning behind the orders.
He killed the low flame under the coffeepot and rinsed it out, then checked his watch. Midnight. Time to go to bed and get his customary four hours of sleep. Very rarely did Ben sleep more than five hours a night, usually less than that.
In several days, the columns would be nearing the territory of the gangs in southern California, and Ben expected the first real heavy fighting of this campaign to begin. Ben had expected the area around Monterey to have been heavily populated, but Ike had r
eported nothing stirring. Fort Ord had been destroyed, and the lovely old towns on the Monterey Peninsula burned and deserted.
Ben sat on the edge of his camp cot and unlaced his boots. What had he left out? What had he forgotten? He went over every aspect of the battle plans in his mind, picking at them, worrying with them. He could not think of anything that he and the other commanders had not touched upon.
He heard footsteps on the front porch. They were friendly footsteps or his guards would have opened fire. Since the assassination plots against him had surfaced, security was very tight around Ben.
A knock on the door.
“Come in if you’re friendly,” Ben said.
Linda walked in, carrying a small bag in her hand. She sat down beside him on the edge of the cot.
“You having any reaction to the booster shots, Ben?”
“Just a slight fever yesterday. It’s gone.”
“I guess by this time tomorrow, the whole camp will be talking about my coming over here.”
“Oh, it won’t take that long. News travels fast. Give it an hour, tops.”
They stared at each other for a moment. Linda said, “This is a very narrow cot, Ben.”
“It’s a warm night. We could always go outside.”
“There are fifty people out there guarding you! I don’t want an audience, thank you.”
“You plan on getting kinky?”
Both of them laughed softly.
“Tomorrow,” Linda said, “I wish you would request a larger cot.”
“I shall certainly do that.”
She reached over and turned off the lantern.
ELEVEN
“Heads up,” Ben told the forward recon teams just as they were about to pull out. “This is the day we’re probably going to meet our first real resistance. Make a mistake and you’re not only dead, but other Rebels will die as well. Okay? Take off. We’ll be an hour behind you.”
Ben turned to Corrie. “Advise all units to move their recon teams out, please.” He waited while those orders were relayed, then said, “Tell all drivers to start their engines and check out any bugs. We’re going to be pushing hard this day. I’d like to be sitting on Interstate 5 by this afternoon.”
Beth glanced up at him. “Interstate 5? I thought we were pushing south to 101 and Ventura.”
“That’s what the creeps and crud think too,” Ben said with a smile. “That’s why I talked on an open frequency the other day. We’ll leave Highway 33 just south of Maricopa and cut through the northern edge of the Los Padres National Forest, coming out on the Interstate east of Tejon Pass. Just a slight change of plans, that’s all. Let’s keep the creeps and crud off balance whenever we can. If the Interstate is impassable, we’ll take 138 for a few miles, then cut south on a state road. Either way, by this time tomorrow, we’ll be knocking on the gates of San Fernando, or damn close to it.”
Thermopolis was standing close by, listening. “That will put us ahead of the others,” he said. “You plan on spearheading this operation, Ben?”
“Indeed I do, Therm. We’re going to hit the northern edge of the enemy’s territory so damn hard they’ll all have a headache for days.”
Therm’s wife, Rosebud, was studying an old map of southern California, using the beam of a tiny flashlight. “That is one huge area. New York City is going to seem like a walk in the park compared to this place.”
“Well, dear,” her husband told her, smiling, “you always wanted to see southern California.”
The look she gave him closed his mouth.
“Sweep the area for anything you might have left behind,” Ben told them. “Have yourselves another cup of coffee. Then get ready to mount up. Let’s go make boom-boom with the creeps and the crud.”
“My, you do have a way with words,” Therm told him.
The columns rolled out just as dawn was streaking the eastern skies with faint light. Forward recon teams, from the Pacific Ocean east to the desert, reported that all barricades in front of them were unmanned. It appeared that everyone had abandoned them and headed back to the city to dig in.
“Good move on their part,” Ben said. They’d be losing personnel unnecessarily by leaving small groups behind to face us. We’re not dealing with a bunch of idiots . . . despite the names of the gangs. We’ll pull over just as soon as we hit 58 and radio-check all the other units.”
“We’d better do it now,” Corrie said. “I’ve got Ike on the horn. But we’ll lose contact with him as soon as we’re on the east side of these mountains.”
“Good. Ask him if he’s met any sign of resistance.”
“That’s ten-fifty, sir,” she said. “San Luis Obispo is a burned-out ghost town. No signs of recent occupation. Cecil reports that Bakersfield is in ruins. There are survivors there, but they all ran away and hid at his approach. They appeared to be badly frightened and very disorganized. He is proceeding over to Edwards Air Force Base and making good time.”
“Can you make contact with Georgi and West?”
“Negative, sir. Not with this radio. We’ll have to use the van when we stop.”
Ben halted the columns at Highway 58 and made contact with Georgi.
“I am investigating what is left of the China Lake base now, Ben,” the Russian said. “But it has been picked over very carefully. I can find nothing of any practical use.”
“That’s ten-four, Georgi. Call it off and move out.”
Ben’s unit cut over, picked up Highway 14, and moved slowly toward the town of San Fernando. Ike slammed his way down 101, and pulled up short when he was suddenly bogged down in a firefight just south of Santa Maria. Georgi was highballing it toward the San Gabriel Mountains, and West and Cecil had linked up and cleared George AFB between Highway 395 and Interstate 15.
Ben had pulled in every tank he could crew for this campaign. He had old Pattons, Sheridans, and Walker Bulldogs. His people had modified APCs, adding more armor plate and adding another 20mm Vulcan Gatling gun to the M113’s. The M113’s were seldom used for troop transport, since the interior was usually loaded down with ammo. With both Vulcans working simultaneously at full rock and roll, each Vulcan was capable of spitting out up to 3000 rounds a minute.
Ben’s forward recon teams radioed back. “They’re waiting for you, General. We’ve spotted mortar pits and heavy machine-gun emplacements.”
“Stay where you are,” Corrie said, relaying Ben’s orders. “Tanks up.”
Cooper pulled in behind an MBT and Ben got out. The hatch popped open. “Let’s open the dance, Sergeant,” Ben told the commander. “They’ve ignored our surrender terms and have chosen to fight. I’m tired of pleading with these bastards to give it up. So let’s give them a taste of what they’re in for.”
“Right, sir,” the TC said with a grin. He spoke into his headset. “Get into position, boys and girls. You’ve got the range. Let’s start some fireworks.”
Two dozen tanks began shelling the edge of town, using a combination of rounds: WP, HE, and napalm. Ben leaned against the fender of a vehicle and waited. After the entire area in front of them was blazing, for ten blocks running east and west, Ben gave the orders to cease fire.
“Mop it up, people,” Ben said. “Bring me some of these crud. Let’s see what we’ve got.”
Not much, was the general consensus.
“Can you comprehend and speak English?” Ben asked one young man. Like the others, he wore a denim jacket, with one sleeve shorter than the other.
“Yeah, I can talk, Pops,” the punk popped off. “You got your hearin’ aid plugged in?”
Ben gave him the butt of his M-14 to the mouth. A short, brutal stroking. Rotten teeth shattered and lips were pulped. The punk lay on the street and looked up at Ben, this time with real undisguised fear in his eyes.
“You would perhaps like to try this conversation one more time, asshole?” Ben asked.
“Yes, sir.” The punk had managed to push the words past swollen and bloody lips.
“That’s good. Much better. You will have to learn to respect people of my advanced age. We get testy at times. Now then, the name of this misbegotten bunch of dickheads is?”
“The Bandits, sir. My mouth sure hurts somethin’ awful . . . sir.”
“That is one of life’s little tragedies, boy. How many in your gang?”
“Couple of hundred. Was. Sir. I guess you cut us down some.”
“I guess we did at that. Do you know who I am?”
“I reckon you must be General Ben Raines. Can I get a rag from my pocket and wipe my mouth?”
“Why, sure you can!” Ben said, knowing damn well the punk was going to try for a gun.
The craphead came out with a derringer and Ben shot him in the belly with the M-14.
“How . . . did you know?” the punk gasped, both hands clutching his shattered stomach.
“Magic,” Ben told him. He kicked the derringer away and turned to a medic. “Get a blood sample. Let’s see what he’s carrying, other than the obvious fleas and head lice. Be careful with these crapheads.”
Ben walked over to stand staring at another Bandit. This one was not nearly so smart-mouthed and defiant after watching what had happened to his fellow Bandit. He had pissed his dirty jeans. “My name’s Jimmy, sir. Whatever you want to know, you just ax me. I’ll tell you.”
“That’s very good, boy.” Ben pointed. “Five blocks that way — what are we going to run into?”
“The Rats, sir.”
“The Rats?”
“Yes, sir. You see, to get to be a Rat, you got to eat a dead rat.”
“Why would anybody want to be a Rat?”
“’Cause they bad, sir.”
“So is their breath, I’m sure,” Ben muttered. He winked at Jersey. “How’d you like to kiss one of those guys, Jersey?”
She grimaced. “Barf City, General!”
“And the Rats control how much territory?” Ben asked.
“The rest of the town till you get to the barricades. They run east and west. Then the Dinks take over.”
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