Triumph in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  “OK, Ben. Anything else?” Michaels asked.

  “Yeah. When you talk to the brigade commanders, tell them to let the troops know it’s going to get a lot tougher the closer we get to Pretoria. Bottger will have stationed his best troops and most modern equipment close by his headquarters, to protect himself.”

  Michaels was making notes on a small pad as Ben talked. “What are we going to do next, Ben?”

  “I plan to take the 501 to the east a bit, to avoid the worst of the desert country in Namibia. We’ll skirt the desert by traveling on the central plateau, heading south at high speeds over the grasslands. When we get to Windhoek, about in the center of the country, we’ll take a hard left to the east and head toward Botswana. If we angle slightly south, we’ll pass just below the worst of the Kalahari desert.”

  Michaels frowned. “Boss, that’s going to leave us awfully exposed. That country is nothing but grass plains, veld, and desert. There’ll be absolutely no cover if we come under attack.”

  “I know, but it can’t be helped, John. If we take the safe, long way around, all that we’re fighting for back home may be lost. We’re gonna haul ass across the open country, travel a lot at night, and depend on our air superiority to keep us safe. Let the troops know there’ll be damn little sleep for the next week or so.”

  “Yes, sir,” Michaels said, still frowning as he left the tent to radio Ben’s orders to the other commanders.

  Beth looked up from some old travel brochures which she had been reading while Ben and Michaels talked.

  “General Ben, it says here that Namibia is the driest place on earth, and takes its name from the Nambib, a great swathe of desert along the eight-hundred-mile-long Skeleton Coast. It also says the central plateau savannas you told John we’re going to cross are at an altitude of five thousand feet!”

  “That’s right, Beth. That means the troops are going to have to carry all our water with them, and the fatigue factor is going to be high at that altitude. In fact, the only free flowing rivers in Namibia are at the extreme northern and southern borders, with practically no water in between.”

  He stood up and pointed to the map on the wall of the tent. “In addition, as we progress farther east, toward Botswana, we’ll run into the Kalahari sandveld, thousands of acres of red sand dunes, well vegetated with thornbush and high grass, but no surface water at all. We’ll probably have to use the C-130s to transport our water to us as we travel then, ’cause it will be impossible to carry enough water with us for the entire journey.”

  Cooper shook his head. “All in all, Boss, it sounds like a delightful trip we’re embarking on.”

  “It won’t be fun, that’s for sure, Coop. Especially if we come under air attack, as I expect us to when Bottger realizes our entire army has turned toward his headquarters in Pretoria.”

  “You think he might get a little excited, Chief?” Jersey asked.

  Ben grinned an evil grin. “To say the least, Jersey, we’ll certainly get his full attention.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  Major Marcus Cheli, commander of a New World Special Forces Unit with two Bantu scouts showing them the way through impenetrable jungles in Zimbabwe, was growing increasingly wary.

  Their informant west of the Zambezi River in Zambia radioed that Rebel Battalion 12 had suddenly turned southeast at the Chizarira National Park area and headed into the heart of Zimbabwe. Immediately, the entire battalion simply disappeared.

  Aerial recon had found nothing, no trace of a huge armored battalion with Abrams fifty-five ton tanks and the main battle tank employed by the Rebels—the M48A3—which was usually protected from the sky by Apache helicopter gunships.

  Cheli’s small Cessna recon planes had found nothing to report other than a sea of green jungle, apparently undisturbed by an army passing through it.

  Nothing so large was capable of vanishing like this—an entire brigade—although the Russian spy plane had been shot down by a missile before it could cover enough of northern Zimbabwe to be absolutely sure there were no military units moving through the rain forest.

  Moving as quickly as he dared northeast from the Zimbabwe city of Bulawayo, where his forces had been stationed, into northern Zimbabwe, Cheli had been charged with finding the Rebel strike force.

  His instructions were clear, and he was told not to bother to return if they weren’t carried out to the letter. He was ordered to send coordinates for a massive air strike against Colonel Marsh and his strike force by forces being gathered in Pretoria, to be commanded by General Conreid and Bruno Bottger himself.

  It was a huge responsibility, with close scrutiny by Bottger and Conreid, and Cheli did not intend to fail. Leading a squad of fifty-four Special Forces soldiers, some armed with handheld Soviet rocket launchers, Cheli followed his native Zimbabwean Bantus along a quiet stretch of river, staying in contact with them by two-way radio equipped with scramblers.

  Nala, a towering Zulu giant, moved west of the river, using all his jungle skills to keep from being detected. Okobe, a wiry Bantu from near the abandoned stone city of Great Zimbabwe, had been a lion hunter most of his life, and his cunning and knowledge of this jungle more than made up for his limited use of English.

  Cheli pushed the transmit button on his radio. “Anything yet, Nala?”

  A short crackle of static, then a whispered voice. “No, Major. There be nothing.”

  Cheli frowned, sleeving sweat off his face, irritated by a spider bite swelling on his forearm. He hoped like hell the spider, whatever it was, wasn’t poisonous.

  “Damn! Where the hell can that Marsh bastard be?” He said this to Captain Schmidt, his XO, walking through the jungle beside him.

  “No telling,” Schmidt replied, his red beret soaked with sweat, his face encircled by swarms of mosquitos lured to the sweaty camouflage greasepaint on his face, as if they savored the taste of it. His AK47 hung loosely under his arm by a strap. “An armored battalion cannot simply disappear. If nothing else, we should be able to pick up their helicopters when they leave the ground.”

  “At least we oughta be able to hear ’em,” Cheli agreed as he wondered about Okobe moving along the opposite bank of the river, following an overgrown trail through the forest that had once been used by loggers and nomads harvesting sap from rubber trees.

  “Yes, we should,” Schmidt said, almost stumbling over a twisted mass of vines crossing the abandoned road.

  Cheli changed frequencies and spoke into the mouthpiece. “Do you see or hear anything, Okobe?”

  Okobe was positioned more than a mile upriver from the column, allowing him plenty of time to warn Cheli if he sighted the enemy.

  More static. “No,” Okobe answered in a hoarse voice. “No men. No soldiers.”

  “Any tracks? Anything at all?”

  A silence, lasting too long. “See one footprint in river mud. Be a big boot. Some man cross over. Not be afraid of crocs.”

  They had seen dozens of giant saltwater crocodiles basking in sunny spots along the water’s edge. These reptiles were very aggressive and territorial, not shy like the inland crocs found in fresh water. A few had made threatening charges toward some of Cheli’s men.

  “I wonder why someone wearing a heavy boot is out in the jungle here,” Cheli said, shifting the weight of his AK47 to the other shoulder and asking Schmidt, “crossing a damn croc-infested river in boots?”

  “A Scout, perhaps,” Schmidt suggested. “The Rebels may be having as much trouble with recon as we are. This forest canopy is too thick for reliable air recon, thus they are left with the same choices we have . . . making an ID from the ground.”

  Cheli pushed the transmit button again. “Who could it be, Okobe?”

  This time, Okobe’s voice came back quickly. “Soldier. Jungle people don’t wear big boots. Wear sandals. He not from this place, I sure.”

  Cheli warned, “Keep your eyes open. Let me know if you see even one more track. Or anything else.”

  Before Cheli could
turn off his radio and put it back in his belt, he heard Okobe speak.

  “Okobe have bad feeling. Somebody be watch me. I hear voice of spirits tell me to go back.”

  The major scowled. He spoke to Schmidt. “These superstitious bastards aren’t worth the gunpowder it would take to kill them. They’re afraid of their own damn shadows.”

  Schmidt didn’t sound so sure. “Perhaps his senses have picked up something, only he doesn’t recognize what it is yet. Bantus know the jungle, its sights and sounds. I wonder if he has seen or heard something he couldn’t quite identify.”

  Cheli put the radio away. “Let’s keep pushing. General Field Marshal Bottger and General Conreid are expecting to hear from us, and I damn sure don’t want to be the one to tell either of them we haven’t found a friggin’ thing.”

  “Sadly, it would be the truth,” the captain replied. “But no one wants bad news, I suppose. In this case, the bad news is that we haven’t found a trace of Marsh’s strike force . . . just that one bootprint where a man who isn’t a native crossed over this section of river.”

  “No,” Cheli answered, shaking his head. “The bad news is that if we don’t find that Marsh bastard and radio his coordinates back to General Bottger, you and I might just as well jump into that river and let the crocs eat us, ’cause it’d be a better way to go than if we have to tell the general we failed.”

  He looked sideways at Schmidt, an ironic smirk curling the corners of his mouth. “In fact, if we do fail, I intend to just keep traveling north until I can find someplace to hide where he’ll never find me.”

  Dusk made the forest so dark Cheli couldn’t see much of anything. All day they had marched northeast and found nothing to report to Pretoria. Bottger and Conreid would be furious, and even with nothing to report Cheli knew he had to radio them with the bad news.

  “These men are tired,” Schmidt said. “We should call a rest stop and let them eat their provisions.”

  Major Cheli nodded. “I’ll radio Nala and Okobe that we’re stopping for an hour.”

  While Captain Schmidt passed the word along their column, Cheli made a radio call to Okobe.

  “Okobe, we’re stopping for an hour. Let me know if you see or hear anything.”

  Half a minute passed without any reply, with only dead air on the radio. “Come in, Okobe! Answer me, if you can hear me!”

  Again, more silence. Perhaps Okobe, being on the stupid side, had turned his transmitter off. Cheli switched to Nala’s frequency and said, “Come in, Nala. We’re stopping for a while to rest.”

  When he got no answer to his call to Nala, something twisted in the pit of Cheli’s stomach. Schmidt came walking up with a pint bottle of vodka.

  “I can’t raise Nala or Okobe. I know something’s wrong,” Cheli said, sleeving sweat off his forehead.

  Schmidt took a hurried sip of vodka, glancing at the thick vines and undergrowth around them. “Perhaps someone got to both of them before they could warn us.”

  Cheli’s face paled. “What kind of man could sneak up on a Bantu in the jungle without him knowing it?”

  When Schmidt shook his head, sweat running down his face, Cheli suddenly grabbed him by his shirt with both hands, sticking his face in close. “Tell the men to form a defensive perimeter right now!” Cheli snapped.

  He released Schmidt’s shirt and swung his AK47 around on its strap, where he held it with whitened knuckles, jacking back the loading mechanism to chamber a round. “We could have visitors any minute—” His voice was suddenly drowned out by a wall of machine gun fire coming from all directions, winking muzzle flashes accompanying the deafening blasts from thirty or forty guns.

  Men began screaming all around them as Cheli hit the dirt on his belly, searching for a target with his AK47, finding so many that he simply pulled the trigger, spraying bullets back and forth.

  Schmidt fell down beside him. “Son of a bitch! They have us surrounded!”

  Cheli was momentarily angered by something so damn obvious coming from a seasoned soldier like Schmidt. “Start shooting!” he yelled as his magazine ran dry.

  Schmidt sent a burst of fire into the forest. “But I can’t see them, Major!” he yelled. “It’s too damn dark!”

  Cheli slammed a new mag into his rifle. “Spray ’em. You’ll hit something!”

  Now a fierce battle raged back and forth, guns blasting from both sides amid screams of agony and shouted warnings when someone spotted an enemy in the hazy darkness.

  For five minutes or more the gunfire seemed endless, and Cheli’s ears were ringing from all the noise, his nose stinging from the heavy cloud of gunsmoke hanging in the humid air like winter fog. The heaviest enemy gunfire came from the far side of the river.

  Schmidt raised his eyes above a clump of ferns to get a better look at where he was shooting. At that instant his head snapped back. Cheli saw the back of the captain’s skull split open. Blood and brains and hair flew from a giant hole below the rear hatband of Schmidt’s beret.

  “Auuugh!” Schmidt cried, flopping over on his side, staring at Major Cheli with three eyes . . . what appeared to be three eyes in the dark . . . with one centered between the pair he was born with.

  Blood squirted from the hole in his forehead, cascading down his surprised face before he collapsed limply in a patch of deep grass, one foot quivering.

  Cheli swallowed back bile. Somehow, they had allowed themselves to be surrounded by a Rebel force. His troops were taking a beating. Dozens of men were dead or wounded along the jungle trail.

  Shadows moved through the forest upriver, and then came the sound of pistol fire, the heavy thud of clubs, the occasional glint of an axe blade where Rebels were attacking his squad at close quarters.

  “Damn,” he whispered, unable to look at his dead friend’s bloodied face. Cheli started shooting at the shadows until yet another clip was empty.

  While he was reloading, something struck the back of his head with tremendous force. He fell over on his face, releasing his rifle, too stunned to move. Through a fog he saw a pair of feet walk away from him, and then he noticed blood running down his neck. His skull throbbed with pain.

  He tried to push himself up from the grass and vines until a wave of dizziness and nausea weakened him too much. He fell back down with his face resting on the stock of his AK47. Cheli found he was paralyzed, completely unable to move.

  He felt sleepy, and closed his eyes to escape the agony of a wound somewhere on the back of his head. The battle sounds around him faded to silence as he was dimly aware he was losing consciousness.

  Major Cheli opened his eyes, discovering that night had passed and a brilliant morning sun beamed through openings in the jungle canopy. How long had he been unconscious?

  Very slowly, he raised his head, blinking furiously to clear his brain. What he saw all around him gripped him with a terror such as he had never known. Dead bodies, swarming with flies and feeding ants, lay everywhere.

  His skull ached fiercely when he turned to look in another direction, the jungle trail behind him. More bodies, more flies and ants. He had never seen so much blood in his life. His shirt was covered with dried blood, and hundreds of ants were crawling over him . . . he could feel them moving on his neck and back and shoulders, and feel their stinging bites.

  Clouds of black flies hovered above him, buzzing, some clinging to his cheeks and filling his nose so that it was hard to breathe.

  Cheli happened to glance toward the river when he heard a splash and other noises. Five or six big crocs were dragging the bodies of his men toward the river. Then, to his horror, he saw a huge croc crawling in his direction. “Oh, no,” he whispered, a feeble, dry sound.

  A sight just as terrifying awaited him on the riverbank, where two long stakes had been driven into the mud. Atop one stake was Okobe’s severed head, his sightless eyes staring at Cheli. On the other stake, Nala’s ebony head was also aimed at him, his jaw hanging open, flies swarming around it, crawling in and out of
his mouth.

  The Rebel army they’d encountered had left a message for anyone who found the battle site. The severed heads would soon be only fleshless skulls after the flies and ants fed, grinning at all who happened to pass this way.

  The giant croc, at least fifteen feet long, came cautiously closer, scenting Cheli’s blood. He tried desperately to get up and run away, but he was too weak to hold his head up any longer and let it fall back on his rifle.

  He could hear the croc hiss, and the slither of its powerful claws moving through grass and ferns and vines. He caught a glimpse of rows of needle-like teeth as the creature opened its jaws.

  “Please, no,” he gasped, panting, fear causing him to tremble from head to toe. He was about to be eaten alive by a crocodile, the worst form of death he could imagine.

  The croc grabbed his arm between its teeth, biting down as it shook its massive head. Cheli felt the bone in his forearm break, and he heard it crack. He shrieked in agony, struggling to free himself as he was being dragged slowly toward the river.

  For some reason the croc let go momentarily. Then Cheli felt its teeth tear into his side just below his rib-cage.

  He screamed again, the noise echoing back and forth among the trees before he was pulled down a muddy embankment, then submerged beneath the water, strangling off the last sound he ever made while the croc began to twist violently, jerking pieces of his flesh away from his body, taking him to the bottom to stuff him under a log until his flesh rotted enough to become an appetizing meal.

  TWENTY-TWO

  “Tell General Field Marshal Bottger that General Dorfmann is here from Berlin. I must speak to him at once.”

  Bruno Bottger heard the voice through a crack in his office door leading to the secured waiting area in his underground bunker, where his private office was protected from air attack.