Flames from the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  “I got one, General. Maybe he can tell us something about his crazy boss.”

  “I will tell you nothing,” the man said stoutly. “God is my protection and my seal.”

  Ben Raines bent over him, his composure ruffled by this encounter. “A little of Dr. Chase’s babble juice and you’ll be telling us all the intimate details of your great-grandmother’s love life,” he growled. When a couple of Rebel scouts trotted up, Ben indicated the captive.

  “Take him off and chemically debrief him.”

  Answers began to reach Ben quickly. Brother Armageddon, it turned out, had been born Archibald Gulp. He had operated a cult before the Great War that sounded like a GM plant: the Assembly of the Body of Jesus. His latest scam had come out of the turmoil of the war and plague that followed. His present headquarters lay in a valley beyond North La Veta Pass in the San Isabel Mountains, part of the Rockies. They numbered about 250 effective fighting men, supplemented by 75 women with combat experience. They would, the captive insisted, bring havoc down on Ben Raines and all Rebel servants of Satan. Ben gave this and the immediacy of his mission to aid General Payon considerable thought. Frowning, he announced his decision an hour after encountering the End of the Worlders.

  “We can’t leave that large a nest of armed idiots behind us,” he declared. “They could cut our lines of communication and supply, raise hell with the troops following us.” He turned to Bull McDade. “Stan, get the R Batt ready to advance on La Veta Pass. We’re going to take out Brother Armageddon and then move on.”

  Brother Armageddon might be a few bricks shy when it came to theology, but he proved adept at military matters. La Veta Pass had been mined, and more tank traps abounded. Ben Raines traveled directly behind the spearhead of the R Batt column. The flash from behind them lighted the interior of the Humvee.

  “What was that?” Corrie asked, surprise clear in her voice.

  “Antitank mine,” Ben said tightly.

  “Eagle, we took a hit,” crackled the tank commander’s voice from Corrie’s radio.

  “Unass that thing,” Ben barked unnecessarily. Corrie was already relaying the same information.

  Flames leapt up around one tread and shattered bogie wheel when the hatches flew open and the tank crew bailed out. One Rebel tanker cried out and went to his knees when a sniper’s bullet pierced his thigh. The turret on another of the three M-1As swiveled to the hillside and the coaxial .30 MG stitched a shroud for the hidden gunman.

  “Peace and nonviolence, my ass,” growled Jersey.

  “To quote our friend Emil from a few years ago, ‘There’s nothing like highly motivated self-interest to stimulate a reliance on arms,’” Ben quipped.

  Jersey made a face. Outside, the tank reclaimer had crawled forward and started to pull the wounded Abrams out of the way. Ben nodded to it. “Corrie, have them clean out some of these dragon’s teeth while they’re at it. Use explosives if necessary.”

  “Getting right on it, General,” she said cheerily. “Maybe we should have someone up here to probe for mines?”

  “You’re learning, girl,” Ben complimented.

  Two long, tedious hours went by while the part-time engineers with R Batt cleared the roadway of obstructions and hazards. At last the convoy got under way. Much of the snow had melted, and patches clung to the shaded southern slope. The ditches to either side of State 160 ran like fresh mountain streams. Ben urged greater speed. He was eager to make a finish of the religious fanatics and be on the way to Mexico.

  The Rebel advance came out of the pass and down a long, winding grade into the valley with still five hours of daylight left. When they hit the valley floor, Ben ordered them to spread out, and raced forward with the point platoon. His heavy armor protectors rumbled along behind, second best in the speed department. In the distance he saw a cluster of buildings, all of recent origin and apparently crudely built.

  From there came the first mortar rounds that began to shower down on the Rebel point.

  THREE

  Colonel McDade posed a thorny question to Ben Raines while Ben and the point platoon scrambled to avoid the mortar rounds. “Same rules of engagement as with the Nazis?”

  “Negative on that, Stan,” Ben responded, shouting over the ear-slamming blast of mortar rounds. “Any of the younger women who want out, and all kids under twelve, to go to Base Camp One. If most of these people stop hearing the bullshit Armageddon is spouting, there’s hope for them. At least I’m betting there is.”

  Ben considered changing his mind on that a few minutes later when he spotted three X-shaped scaffolds on a hillside behind the cult’s meeting hall. Two wretched individuals had recently been crucified on a pair of these. Ben pointed it out to the occupants of the Hummer.

  “Want to bet those aren’t stragglers who accidentally wandered into the valley recently?”

  “No bet, boss,” Jersey stated, tight-lipped. “What kind of crapheads would do a thing like that?”

  “The sort we’ve just run — Look out!” Ben ended in a shout.

  A huge old earthmoving machine had lumbered directly into the path of the Hummer. It bore down on them, its tall stack belching black diesel fumes. Cooper cut to the right, then swung straight to no avail. Twelve-foot-high tires rumbled by close enough to shake the Humvee. The articulated vehicle rammed past and reversed itself with surprising speed. Ben lowered a window and tried for a shot at the operator’s cab.

  His Thompson rapped out a three-round burst and the slugs sang off the thick plates of counterweight on the nose of the bright yellow monster. The worn engine clattered as the driver poured on full throttle. Cooper spun tires in loose soil as he fought the wheel of the Hummer. Roostertails of dirt fanned out from the rear of the armored vehicle. Ben tried again and managed to put two rounds through the radiator.

  Ben reached to the combat harness snugged over his shoulders and slipped a grenade from its retainer. “When I say to, brake hard, Coop, and throw the wheel all the way to the right.”

  Cooper nodded, and Ben pulled the pin. Clasping the spoon tightly, he squeezed his broad shoulders and chest out the window and freed his throwing arm. The earth-mover loomed over them, rapidly approaching for a broadside slam. Ben slipped the spoon and shouted in the same instant.

  “Now, Coop. Hit it!”

  Foot heavy on the brake, Cooper spun the wheel to the right as Ben’s count got to two. With a savage roar, the story-and-a-half machine flashed past the Humvee. Ben lobbed the grenade on three.

  “Gun it!” Ben shouted. “Get the hell out of here.”

  The grenade plopped through an open door on the side of the cab and went off immediately. Showers of safety glass bits mushroomed outward. Many had instantly been washed with a spray of blood. Driver-less, the formidable monstrosity rumbled on until it struck the stone structure that served as the cult’s meeting house.

  Its nose rose upward while the dirt-hopper portion continued forward. Upended, the drive unit snapped the gooseneck and fell on top of the rear portion. Ben took his first secure breath in a long minute. It tasted sweeter than clear mountain air on a frosty morning.

  “Great improviser, ain’t he?” Jersey gasped out.

  “Corrie, check with the point,” Ben requested, ignoring Jersey.

  “You’re . . . going on?” she asked, still unsettled by their close call with the rampaging construction equipment. “Here,” she answered a second later, chastened by her knowledge of Ben Raines.

  “We’ve come under heavy fire at a low building, looks to be mostly dug into the hillside. Some sort of bunker. They’ve got machine guns,” the point lieutenant reported to Ben.

  “I don’t need to tell you your job, Lieutenant Crowe, just see that you neutralize that place.”

  “Yes, sir, Eagle. I have men bringing up a wire-guided rocket now. My assistant squad leaders are using their bloopers.”

  Ben smiled tightly. “You’re doing everything I would. Keep up the good work. Eagle out.”


  Terrible blasts and the ruffled air of cannon rounds in flight advised Ben that the tanks had located the mortar batteries. Once they got knocked out, it would be just a question of mop-up.

  “Lady Gloria, this is Eagle,” Ben radioed, to contact the tank nearest them, which he recognized.

  “This is the Lady, Eagle. Sergeant Gomez commander, sir.”

  “Are you using beehive, Gomez?”

  “Roger that, Eagle. Also gas.”

  “Jesus,” Ben ejected forcefully.

  “Oh, not that gas, sir. Just the nausea and pepper stuff.”

  Ben chuckled, and spoke to the team. “Stan’s right on top of it.” To the tank commander, “Good hunting, Lady. Eagle out.”

  Unbidden, Cooper set out in the direction indicated by the point leader’s report of heavy action. The building looked odd, all right. Like part of a castle from the Middle Ages, cut off and transported to Colorado. Narrow firing ports allowed for interlocking fire to protect the approaches, and lateral ones provided for the traverse of machine guns. Not a bit of glass or a doorway could be seen.

  “They go in and out by way of a shaft from above,” Ben surmised to the team. “It’s going to be a bitch to dig them out of there. Direct fire from the MBTs is the best bet.”

  “What about one of the four-inchers on a Bradley, General?”

  “I knew you were going to be worth something someday, Cooper,” Ben jested back. “Corrie, get one over here pronto.”

  It arrived in a shower of churned-up sod. Ben talked to the commander, who studied the situation a second and suggested that the Rebel personnel be cleared from the area.

  “Then I’ll put a HEAT round in there and crack some eggs,” he added.

  “Go for it,” Ben urged.

  It took ten minutes to disengage and pull back the Rebel troops. Then the Bradley lined up and pumped a 75mm high-explosive antitank round into the stone face. The delayed fuse allowed the hardened steel nosecone to punch through like a single-jack drill, a cloud of dust and rock chips in its wake. A soft crump followed, then the front of the blockhouse bulged outward and came apart like a watermelon shot with a 12-gauge punkin ball.

  “Hit the magazine,” the Bradley commander observed in an awed, quiet voice.

  Immediately, resistance slackened. World’s Enders tried to surrender, to be shot down by hard-faced Rebels. The rest, driven by desperation, hung on to the bloody end. Ben thanked the Bradley crew and then added, “Keep up the good work. I’m going after Brother Armageddon.”

  “Brother who?”

  There hadn’t been time to fully brief everyone in R Batt, Ben realized. He explained as the distance between the Hummer and Bradley widened. The search soon became futile. Either the cult leader had perished in the bunker or he had somehow managed to evade the steel-tipped dragnet of Rebel troops.

  After half an hour, Ben had to admit to himself that somehow Brother Armageddon and an unknown number of followers had managed to escape from the valley. “No doubt,” he told Colonel McDade and the other officers, “they took State 150 west in the early stage of the assault. I had him figured for a guy who’d be careful to cover his ass. Only I expected it to be some sort of hidey-hole. At least he’s been reduced to a harmless irritant. Clean up the last of this mess and we’ll move on south to Trinidad.”

  Peter Volmer sat at a desk in the office accorded him by the Führer, Jesus Hoffman. The walls were covered with maps, the desk with the latest intelligence summaries. Somewhere out there, Ben Raines prowled the countryside. Peter Volmer literally ached with the desire to capture and exterminate this insult to their superiority.

  He made repeated circles and arrows on the acetate overlays of the maps. Only one of them truly represented the whereabouts of Ben Raines and his Rebels. Slowly, inspiration came to Volmer. Reports of Rebel attacks continued to come in from the northern end of their eastern wall. Yet, more came from the south. Denver had fallen. Fleeing members of his own American Nazi Party had reported Rebels in large numbers advancing southward along the line from Denver toward the Mexican border. Reports of the use of the Rebel call sign Eagle had all but ceased to exist in the north.

  Volmer’s troops had managed to obtain several Rebel radios intact, complete with scrambler units. Fortunately for the Rebels, the operators had managed to destroy the SOI and SSI (Signal Operating Information and Standard Signal Instructions), leaving it a hit-or-miss operation to intercept and descramble Rebel communications. They had managed to establish that the majority of “Eagle” calls came from the southern end of the defensive wall. And “Eagle” had to be Ben Raines. Satisfied with that interpretation, Volmer decided to act.

  He left his office for that of his personal communications officer. Rather than draft a message and have it sent through normal channels, he trusted his own people more. He excused the operator on duty and sat at the radio console. On a white pad he drafted his message and opened a channel to the headquarters of his Werewolves.

  “This is Werewolf One, Brigadeführer,” Siegfried Dracher announced when he responded to the summons to his communications van.

  “Excellent, Standartenführer. After considerable investigation and evaluation, I have come to a conclusion regarding your major assignment. From here on, the project is classified Most High Secret, and code-named Eagle. You are to take your command and proceed at all possible haste to the vicinity of Carlsbad, New Mexico. There you will deploy, set up your diversion and the principal ruse, and stand by to intercept the subject of Eagle. Is that clear?”

  “Jawohl, Herr Brigadeführer,” young Dracher replied, his voice breaking.

  “You are to remain out of sight from even friendly forces until you are able to effect the intercept. You are to operate in absolute secrecy throughout and to carry out your mission in such a way that no one knows the identity of the troops involved. Do you have any questions?”

  “Nein, Herr Brigadeführer.”

  “Excellent. You’re a good boy, Sigie. Remember that boating trip two years ago on the lake?”

  Volmer could not see Dracher blush furiously on the other end. Dracher vividly recalled that trip. To his eternal self-contempt he remembered every detail. “Yes, Herr Brigadeführer. It was the high point of my life,” he forced himself to say.

  “Well, then,” Volmer offered in a rush. “What you are about to accomplish will become the new high point, I assure you. There is nothing you need? No last-minute questions? You are to maintain complete radio silence until the mission is completed.”

  “There is nothing. I understand, Herr Brigadeführer.”

  “Fine, Standartenführer. Volmer, clear.”

  Now, Ben Raines, he thought fiercely after setting down the stand microphone, your days are numbered.

  Tiny slits of headlights materialized out of the darkness north of Trinidad, Colorado. Silhouettes of canvas-topped trucks, lowboys, and tanks took on substance in the wash of pink light that intensified in the east. Ben Raines and the R Batt rolled along I-25, five miles north of the city. A brief flash from a shielded high-intensity light slowed the column. Ben directed the Hummer to a spot at the base of a rounded hill. There he and Jersey climbed from the back of the vehicle.

  Ben greeted his son warmly, with a big Latin-style abrazo. Buddy stepped back, his dark hair floating out from under a headband on the light dawn breeze. “Dad, you look worried.”

  Ben dismissed it with a wave of his hand. “We ran onto a band of religious nuts. Why that sort of thinking holds such fascination for people I don’t understand. Anyway, we fought.”

  “Yeah,” Buddy responded. “We monitored the radio traffic. Is it true that they crucified two people?”

  “They’d done it to more than that before we got there,” Ben answered tiredly. “The weird practices of these cults is so counterproductive to survival, it’s a wonder they haven’t all died out.”

  “Well, there was Sister Voleta.”

  Ben winced at Buddy’s mention of his mother. That had
all been history for several years. But the boy had a point. For all her craziness, Sister Voleta had held her organization together and even enlarged it since way before the Battle of New York. Her ultimate downfall had come, Ben believed, from the internal decay of her sick cult as much as from the deliberate campaign he had directed against the woman who had borne this strapping young man before him. He decided to cut to the chase.

  “What are your dispositions around Trinidad?” Ben asked his son.

  “We’re deployed to the east and here in the north. I was thinking that the R Batt might want to take the south side of the Nazi positions to prevent them from slipping down to the American SS holding the pass or on to Raton.”

  Ben’s grin flashed in the first intense white glow of dawn. “You know, you’re about ready to take command of this whole shebang.”

  “No, Dad. I could never do that.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Whatever, I had the same idea. We’ll pass through your lines to the east and close off access to Raton Pass.”

  “Are you going to do it by day?” Buddy asked.

  “No. We’ll settle in under the trees and wait for tonight. I figure they must have observers out.”

  “Oh, they do. They know we’re here, but haven’t done anything about it so far.”

  Ben smiled grimly. “When we bite them in the ass, they’ll do something. Now we’ve got to get these vehicles out of sight and I’m for some breakfast. Join me?”

  “Sure, I can always eat,” Buddy offered enthusiastically.

  “So I’ve noticed,” Ben said dryly.

  Obersturmbannführer (Lt. Col.) Erik Klein commanded in Trinidad. He was a cautious man by nature, and relatively well-read in military subjects. Unfortunately for him and his troops, he suffered from a severe lack of respect for the Rebel army. He spent most of the day Gen. Ben Raines arrived outside his area leafing through reports of his intelligence staff and other observers. As the evidence of Rebel positions grew, he noticed one glaring error.