Triumph in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

The clatter of heavy steel tank tracks moving in front and behind them was a comforting sound, Schultz thought. With ten of his smaller Minsk tanks in front of them, and twenty-seven much heavier Bulldogs bringing up the rear with big 105mm cannons and .50 caliber machine guns guarding trucks and APCs filled with infantrymen—more than three hundred of General Conreid’s best, the Praetorian Guard—he was ready for the Rebels even without air support.

  “The Rebel commander we seek chooses not to fight us in the air, Fritz. There are staying under every bit of jungle cover they can find because Marsh has so few gunships. I suspect his Apaches are being transported on trucks.”

  “Perhaps that is why they’re moving so slowly, Major. If they are here, they have not covered much ground since defeating Major Cheli’s forces,” Hinz said.

  Schultz nodded. “General Conreid says our best estimate is that Marsh has only three Apaches left.”

  “But they have a number of Abrams tanks, according to the report General Conreid gave you, and three times as many of the American-made M48s. They are said to be very maneuverable and quite fast, although we have never actually faced them in battle.”

  “We shall give them their ultimate test, Fritz.”

  “The report says General Field Marshal Bottger is angry with General Conreid for being unable to locate the Rebels in his sector. Let us pray the Zulu’s information is good, or we will be peeling potatoes somewhere . . . or worse.”

  Schultz picked up his two-way radio, turning to the frequency used by his scouts. “Come in, Beta Group. Have you spotted anything yet?”

  A moment was needed for a voice to answer. “Nothing, Major, only more of this damn hot jungle. There is one thing, however I don’t know what it means.”

  “And what is that?”

  “Before there were hundreds of howler monkeys and parrots and macaws and that sort of thing scattering away from us. Now the jungle appears to be empty. It’s very strange.”

  “Perhaps the wildlife hears us coming,” Schultz suggested, “or they may hear the tanks from the strike force approaching from the north.”

  “Could be, Major. Only time will tell.”

  Schultz thought about what his Scout said, how the jungle seemed to be empty of animals. “This may be what we’ve been looking for. Stay on the alert. Let me know the minute you see anything at all.”

  “Will do, Major. Right now we can’t see a damn thing at all. You’ll be glad to know this road is widening out about a mile ahead of our column. The going will be easier for our tanks.”

  Schultz gave some thought to the possibility that Rebels planting land mines had scared the monkeys and birds away. But his scouts should have found at least one or two of the mines by now, unless only the large, heavy-load variety were planted. A man on foot would not set one off. Could they be pushing ahead into a mine field? he wondered.

  Later, as Fritz negotiated a low muddy spot in four-wheel drive, Schultz decided against it. His scouts were too clever not to have noticed some sign of mines being planted.

  The earthshaking concussion of a Minsk being blown to bits caused Major Schultz to stiffen in his seat. “What the hell was that?”

  Fritz brought the APC to a sudden halt. “Either a mortar or a land mine has blown up one of the Minsks. The turret and cannon went flying into the jungle, and the body is on fire. The fuel and cannon shells will explode any second now.”

  Before the words left Fritz’s mouth, a mighty secondary explosion rocked the jungle. A ball of flame curled upward into the rain forest treetops, setting some of the upper branches on fire.

  “Dear God,” Schultz whispered when a Minsk tank just in front of the first to be hit erupted in steel shreds amid the roar of a rocket strike.

  “Handheld rocket launchers!” he cried above the clap of another explosion. “Pull off into the jungle!” he shouted into the mouthpiece of his radio, instructions to all tanks and trucks. “Take evasive action at once!”

  A Minsk swerved off into a tangle of vines, where it struck a land mine almost immediately. The tracks blew off in sections as the body and turret convulsed.

  Schultz turned around when an even louder explosion came from his rear. A huge Bulldog fifty ton tank disintegrated when it drove over a mine only a few yards off the roadway. The Bulldogs had a weakness—armor plate too thin to protect their underbelly—and when a heavy charge was set off underneath it, the tank came apart like a tin can.

  “Son of a bitch!” Schultz cried. “There are mines all over the place.”

  Following the first crippling blast under the Bulldog, a secondary explosion of its 105 millimeter shells scattered fragments of the tank like shrapnel, cutting down trees, pulverizing every plant in its path, igniting even the greenest vines and bushes when sprays of flaming fuel covered them.

  Suddenly the thump of mortars being fired sounded from off in the jungle. A mortar shell landed somewhere at the rear of the column, and Schultz heard men screaming.

  Another rocket sizzled into a Minsk across the road from Schultz’s APC. The turret went spinning away like a hat blown in the wind, surrounded by fire and smoke, but the sound was lost when more mortars and cannons went off. Some of his gunners were taking aim at the enemy, and the pounding of shells landing in the rain forest was like sweet music.

  Fritz glanced over his shoulder at the major. “Where shall I drive?” he yelled to be heard above the battle sounds crashing and banging from all directions.

  “Stay here!” Schultz replied in his loudest voice. “It could be a mistake to move now!”

  A Bulldog tank, moving deeper into the jungle, struck a mine, and despite its great weight appeared to leave the ground as the charge went off under it. Scraps of flaming metal flew up to the highest treetops before the armored vehicle fell off its tracks and axles, engulfed in smoke and flames, the men inside screaming in agony as their flesh literally melted in the intense heat of the flames.

  The chatter of machine gun fire filled brief pauses in the exchange of cannons and mortars. Somewhere to the north another explosion announced a rocket strike on a tank.

  They are too heavily armed, Schultz thought, and we drove right into their trap. He recalled what the scout told him about the absence of birds and monkeys in the forest. He should have known then that something was wrong, and called a halt until the scouts found out what it was.

  A mortar shell fell very close to the APC and the concussion shook its frame, interrupting something Schultz was listening to on the two-way radio, a command to infantrymen from the back of the column.

  “We must get out of here!” Fritz cried. “We’ll take a hit any time now if we sit still!”

  “Wait. We will gain an advantage very soon, I feel sure, and I must be here to direct our return fire.”

  “We may not be alive, Major!”

  “Nonsense. Bottger’s Praetorian Guard is spreading out into the jungle. It won’t be long until the advantage is ours. Stay where we are!”

  “Yes sir . . .” Fritz’s voice was drowned out by a rocket striking a Bulldog tank very close to them. A peal of thunderous noise almost deafened Schultz for a moment, and Fritz hunkered down in his seat, covering his ears with his hands, his face gone pale with fear.

  Schultz hit the transmit button on his radio. “All units! Move deeper into the jungle! Attack all enemy mortar positions at once!”

  The roar of diesel engines followed the major’s order, and soon more than a dozen tanks were moving, crashing through deep undergrowth, crushing small trees and bushes in their path. But only moments after Schultz gave the order he realized his serious mistake, when moving tanks began to explode, running over even more heavy land mines.

  “It can’t be . . .” Schultz said under his breath, watching his powerful armored fighting machines being blown to pieces to the north and south of his position. “How could they have known exactly where to put them?”

  “We must move!” Fritz yelled. “We are a sitting duck right here. Please, Maj
or.”

  “Shut up, you yellow bastard!” Schultz replied, his rage growing as more of his tanks blew up.

  “But sir—”

  “I said shut up. And remain here!”

  Fritz had tears in his eyes when he looked into the back seat. “We will be killed, sir, and I have a family, a wife and two sons.”

  “You are a soldier, you insolent fool! And now I discover you are also a cowardly one.”

  “I have no wish to die, sir. If we move carefully to some place out of sight, perhaps they won’t target us.”

  “You idiot! I must be able to see in order to direct our battle plan.”

  “Sir, our battle plan is failing. These Rebels are destroying us.”

  Schultz refused to accept what his eyes and ears told him, that every word Captain Hinz said was true. His tanks were easy targets for rockets and mortars, and whenever they moved they encountered more land mines.

  “I must not fail General Conreid or General Field Marshal Bottger!” he snapped as the noises from pitched battle grew even louder.

  Explosions were occurring up and down his entire column with increasing frequency. Schultz knew Fritz was right to be afraid of their present position in the APC. It was only a matter of time before a rocket or a mortar shell found them, and it was all too clear this engagement was about to be lost.

  “All right, Captain,” he said, slumping back in the seat as more garbled orders crackled on his radio. “Find some cover for us, but don’t go too far.”

  Fritz started the motor and ground gears. Pulling forward, he inched across a tangle of vines toward a thick clump of small rubber plants that would hide the APC.

  Schultz heard more machine gun fire, and then a chorus of screams. Were the fearless Praetorian Guardsmen being cut down by enemy fire?

  Fritz guided the APC over a bump, striking something with the left front wheel.

  “What was that?” Schultz asked.

  “I don’t know, sir,” Fritz stammered as the left rear wheel passed over the same bump.

  A banging noise filled the inside of the armored vehicle, and at the same time Major Schultz felt a powerful force lift him up off the rear seat, slamming his head into the roof.

  “No!” Fritz shrieked, before the explosion drowned out every other sound.

  Yellow fire swept across Major Schultz’s face, his chest, and arms and legs. He tried to suck in a breath of air, but when he did he inhaled a mouthful flames.

  He tried to scream and spat fire when he did, but there was no sound, and it was as if his mother had turned out the lights in his bedroom, the way she did when he was a boy. Everything went black and silent, and now he felt and heard nothing.

  The war was over for Major Hans Schultz and the Praetorian Guardsmen.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  General Conreid came into Bruno’s subterranean office, his face a ghostly white. He saluted smartly and stood at attention until Bruno spoke to him.

  “What is so important that you told Rudolf you had to see me right away?”

  Conreid took a deep breath. “I have bad news, General Field Marshal.”

  “I guessed as much. It must have something to do with your armored division tracking the strike force.”

  “I’m afraid so,” Conreid replied. “I sent one of our best field armored commanders, Major Schultz, and almost fifty of our Minsks and Bulldogs. Three hundred men from the Praetorian Guard went along as infantry support. . . .”

  “And?” Bruno was growing impatient, although he had already guessed what Conreid came to tell him. He stared at the general, drumming his fingers on his desk, daring Conreid to give him the bad news he knew was coming.

  “We engaged the enemy in southern Zimbabwe—”

  “It does not matter where! Get on with it!”

  Conreid swallowed hard, and his hands, pressed to his legs, were shaking. His eyes flicked around the bunker, afraid to look at Bottger.

  “They destroyed us. Every tank was immobilized or blown to bits. Five men escaped on foot in the jungle. One of them just radioed me with a full report. The Rebels were equipped with anti-tank rockets and heavy mortars. Major Schultz is dead, and so is everyone else. However, I was told the Rebels captured Captain Klaus, commander of the Praetorian Guard Unit. I suppose they intend to question him.”

  Bruno momentarily closed his eyes, fighting back the urge to use his Steyer on General Conreid. Incompetence could not be tolerated.

  Bruno leaned his head back, staring at the water-stained concrete ceiling of his bunker. He sighed. “They will interrogate Klaus, probably with drugs, wanting to know about our fortifications here at Pretoria so the information can be sent to General Raines. It is quite clear this bastard Raines intends to storm our headquarters. There is no other explanation for the curious movements of his battalions.”

  “I agree,” said Conreid. “They move back and forth to confuse us, but every Rebel battalion seems to be moving toward South Africa, toward Pretoria.”

  Bruno glanced at the map on a nearby wall, with its colored pins showing the locations of Raines’s battalions spread across the African continent. Their movements of the last few days had altered, so that all of his forces were now headed straight for Pretoria and the headquarters of Bottger’s New World Order troops.

  “There seems to have been a shift recently in Raines’s troops movements. Their intelligence must have found out where we are headquartered, for all of his forces are now coming directly toward us,” Bruno said.

  “I agree, General Field Marshal. Somehow they have learned of our location in South Africa, but it is hard to believe they know about our underground fortifications.”

  Conreid spread his hands, trying to put the best face on the disturbing news. “Perhaps they only know our general location near Pretoria, and not the extent of our preparations.”

  “Will this Captain Klaus talk if they torture him?”

  “That . . . would be difficult to say. He is a brave soldier, as his record shows, but virtually any man will crack under the right amount of pressure.” Conreid was sweating profusely under Bottger’s questioning. “As we know from the past, these Rebels are experts in the use of drugs and psychological questioning to gain information.” He shook his head. “I don’t know how long Klaus will be able to hold out without telling them everything he knows.”

  Bruno settled back in his chair. “So your brilliant strategy has failed us, General Conreid. You assured me you could find your objective and crush them soundly.”

  Bruno’s voice rose until he was almost shouting as he became more agitated. “Instead, you tell me we’ve been handed a crushing defeat, losing fifty valuable tanks and their support vehicles.” He slammed his hand down on his desk, sending papers and files flying to the floor.

  Conreid nodded, having some difficulty finding his voice for the moment. “Somehow, they were expecting us at a particularly difficult spot to defend. The survivor who radioed me said it was deep jungle, and that land mines had been well placed in the most strategic and damaging areas.”

  “Your tanks were drawn into an ambush?”

  “It would seem so. Schultz was a brilliant field commander, and I’m at a loss to explain it. I can only offer this, and it will seem a weak excuse. Colonel Marsh has virtually no air support, thus his troops stay in the deepest jungles where our air superiority is of no use. If we could have put the HINDs on top of them, this disaster would not have happened. Colonel Walz had air recon over the area, and he found no trace of an entire Rebel unit in either Botswana or Zimbabwe. We found out where the strike force was from a Zulu mercenary. Walz could give us nothing at all.”

  “Then it would seem I have incompetent men directing our aircraft and our armored divisions,” Bruno told him as his anger multiplied. He leaned forward and slammed his fist on the desk again.

  Conreid flinched, but said nothing as Bruno fixed him with a steely-eyed stare. “You have failed me miserably, General. I will not tolerate failure.
I find I’m surrounded by incompetence, by idiots! In the days of the great Nazi regime under Adolf Hitler, both of you would have been shot for failing our cause. Hitler would not have tolerated this!”

  “I understand, General Field Marshal. I simply did the best I could, devising the best plan feasible to destroy an army that will not come out in the open to fight. The Rebels stay hidden, leaving us with no choice but to ferret them out of their jungle hiding places. I could think of no other way without cover from our airships. We had to go in after them, to try to halt their march on Pretoria.”

  Bruno’s jaw clamped. “Instead, you led our men and matèriel to total destruction!”

  “I cannot deny it. I have served you and The New World Order as faithfully as I knew how. Until we were confronted by this band of Rebels, I enjoyed a great many successes in the name of our cause. But Marsh does not fight with military strategy. It is as if he always does the thing we expect least from a well-trained army. I can offer you no other explanation.”

  “What the hell will stop him from marching all the way to our doorstep, General?”

  For the first time, Conreid smiled, albeit weakly. “If he gets this far he will be forced to come out in the open. If he turns west to come at us across northern Botswana, he must then face the Kalahari Desert in the south. His tanks will break down in the sand. We can direct air strikes on him until he has been wiped out, down to the last man.”

  “But what if he stays to the east, coming down through Zimbabwe, following the rivers the way he has in the past?”

  “He and General Raines and his other brigade will still have to cross the Transvaal. When they do, we will blow them off the face of the earth. There will be no places to hide from our bombers and rockets, and our anti-aircraft gunners will knock their Apaches from the skies.”

  Bruno wondered, tapping a finger on his desk. He stared at the map without seeing it as his mind wandered to the past. What was happening now was all too much like events that had happened in Europe many years ago. . . .

  The weakling United Nations Secretary-General, Moon, had branded him a neo-Nazi fanatic and a major threat to world stability. Bruno had raised a massive army to realize his dream of reviving The Third Reich in the post-apocalyptic world. He had formed an elite Minority Eradication Force in Switzerland, and almost 250,000 veteran troops to prepare for war against Ben Raines and other SUSA armies.