Flames from the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  “So men could go to the moon,” Ben simplified.

  “Who’d want to go to the moon?” Jimmy returned.

  “Did someone feed this kid some uppers with his canned hash?” Ben asked jokingly. Then he relented and spoke in his teacher’s voice. “Back before the Great War, before even your dad was born, men had dreams of exploring space, going to Mars, to the other planets. We did, too. Only it was machines for the most part. Men did stand on the surface of the moon. They planted an American flag there. It’s still up there, as far as I know. Small, powerful robots, called space probes, were shot into space and visited Venus, Mars, the outer planets. One even went off out of our solar system. Then the dream died,” Ben concluded with sadness evident, “along with almost everything else good in our world.”

  “The Great War, huh?” Jimmy asked.

  “That’s part of it. But it began long before that. Politicians convinced themselves that their offices were a ‘career.’ They thought they had been elected for life and acted with all the arrogance of that self-delusion. They openly looted the public wealth to brazenly buy votes from every loudmouthed minority and special interest. They pandered to the criminals, the worthless, and the incompetent. They encouraged a cult of victimism, in which no one was required to be responsible for their actions, and particularly for their crimes or failures. It was always someone else’s fault. Not surprisingly, at the same time, the politicians and judges coddled criminals and persecuted their victims.

  “Society glorified drugs and sex and violence, encouraged by the deviants in the media, entertainment, and government. We became a morally and economically bankrupt nation,” Ben summed up sadly. “And that didn’t happen only in our country, Jimmy. Look at what went on in South America. The politicians began by accommodating the Nazi fugitives from Germany after the Second World War, and see what that got them. Oh, hell, here I go preaching again. And probably pitching my spiel above your head.”

  “Oh, no, sir. I understand everything you said, Gen’ral Raines,” Jimmy answered quietly.

  Was that a note of bitter cynicism in the boy’s voice? Ben asked himself. Considering what he had been through, he had come by it honestly. A silent minute later, Jimmy pointed ahead.

  “We’re going to start up into the mountains. Maybe — maybe you can have Mr. Cooper slow down so I can look real hard at the country?”

  “Sure, Jimmy. Back it off some, Coop, if you please,” Ben instructed.

  Above 3,000 feet in San Agustin Pass, snow began to fall. Strong drafts through the cleft in the red-brown mountains caused it to swirl in thick, tornado-shaped billows. Jimmy’s face became pinched and closed as he studied the country.

  “It was somewhere around here that the trucks with the girls turned off, Gen’ral Raines,” he said quietly.

  A few minutes later he became agitated and pointed excitedly at a narrow side road. “Is that it, Jimmy?” Ben asked.

  “Yes — yes, I think so,” he squeaked.

  “Take a look, Coop,” Ben commanded.

  Cooper slewed the Hummer into the opening, tires creaking on four inches of new fall. They eased along, with not even fences to show a sign of human habitation. After the third mile, with a high, overhanging wall of rock ahead, everyone agreed this was not the road. With greater than usual care, Cooper navigated back to the snow-swept concrete surface of U.S. 70/82. They continued upward.

  Near the summit, at 3,900 feet, Jimmy again showed signs of alert energy. He pointed the Hummer onto a decrepit, rutted dirt side road. Again they didn’t see a sign of life for the first mile. Then, around a bend, a high chain-link fence snapped into sharp focus during a spate in the whirling flakes.

  “That’s it!” Jimmy squeaked. “I bet it is.”

  Ben Raines patted the boy on one shoulder. “Go on, Coop. We’ll take a better look.”

  Indeed they found a compound, enclosed by sagging fence and rusted razor wire. Tall access gates closed off the road. On one, a sign identified it as a part of the old security system for White Sands. It read MONILE PATROL 1 AND DET. 3, AIR SURVEILLANCE (RADAR) CO. B. (USA).

  “We might have something here, Coop. There are no guards in that shack.”

  “Or they’re hiding from us,” Jersey suggested.

  “The guards I heard talking said there weren’t many men on duty up here,” Jimmy offered.

  “Then, let’s go wake up whoever is here,” Ben declared.

  Dismounted from the Hummer, the team approached the gate. Cooper checked out the sentry box and signaled it empty. They entered through a personnel portal. Ben had insisted that Jimmy remain behind in the Humvee. He had an M-16 to keep him company, and with the motor running it was warm.

  Jersey came upon the first guard. She silenced him with a butt-stroke to the throat. He went down gagging and suffocating. Cooper knifed a fat guard in what might have been the guardroom. After a quick circuit of the compound, they gathered at a large barrack building. Dim lights glowed from dirty windows, indicating the presence of a generator.

  “We’ll take the end doors, front and rear. In two minutes, we all go in together,” Ben instructed.

  “One of those doors is goin’ to have to go beggin’, boss. I stay with you,” Jersey insisted.

  Ben snorted his irritation, but agreed. When the second hand indicated the end of two minutes, Ben kicked in the door and Jersey went in first. High, shrill shouts of surprise reached Ben’s ears a fraction of a second before he followed Jersey.

  They found kids, all right. Each one a fanatical member of Peter Volmer’s Werewolves. Firing began at once, with the advantage to the crazed Nazi kids. Like their leader, Ben Raines, the Rebels had an instinctively protective attitude toward children. That made even the deadly Jersey a bit slow with her trigger finger.

  For all that, her slugs reached two kiddie black-shirts before the weapons they aimed at Ben Raines could discharge. They went down with severe wounds, rather than killing shots. Intense pain in ones so small rendered them helpless. Shouting “Sieg Heil!” the little monsters swarmed around and over Ben’s team. Ben went belatedly for his .50 Desert Eagle a moment before a stout lad of fourteen drove the butt of his FAL M-2 rifle into the back of Ben’s head. Blackness swamped the Rebel leader as other blows felled his team.

  A murmur, like the surf on a gentle strand, reached the mind of Ben Raines. Slowly the blackness turned to gray. Slivers of pain lanced through his head as he tried slowly to raise his eyelids. After a long rest, he made another effort. The murmur turned to human speech.

  At least, Ben thought it to be human. It did sound like high, sharp twitters of birds. Suddenly a voice heavy with authority cut through the chirping and brought silence.

  “Achtung!”

  Ben forced his lids up to a strange sight. He estimated some forty little tads standing at rigid attention all around him. Their faces were clean-scrubbed and glowed with health. All had crew cuts, their hair ranging from cotton white to soft brown. They all wore short black trousers and brown elbow-length shirts. Each had a swastika armband. The authoritative voice spoke again.

  “Comrades, our beloved leader, Brigadeführer Peter Volmer.”

  “Heil Hoffman!” the little Nazis barked.

  Peter Volmer here? Where was “here”? And how long had he been out? Ben puzzled over these questions muzzily while he fought to maintain focus with eyes that turned and throbbed.

  “My dear Werewolves, I am immensely proud of you. When I learned of the presence of Ben Raines near Alamogordo, I immediately made arrangements to come here. First I must compliment your commander. Standartenführer Dracher, you planned and executed your mission splendidly. I will personally recommend you to our Führer for the First Class Order of the Iron Cross.”

  “Thank you, Brigadeführer,” young Dracher blushingly blurted. “What are we to do with these Rebel swine?”

  “I think we shall leave them alive. Let them try to live with the fact they are responsible for the mighty Ben Raines
being captured by the mere children of the Master Race.” He laughed heartily for Peter Volmer, a sort of strangled “Haa-ha, haaa-hee — haa!”

  Again, Dracher called for silence as the boy Nazis picked up on the laughter. Volmer nodded his approval and Ben Raines glowered at him from the floor. Then Volmer reached behind him and made a come-here gesture.

  “The real hero of this engagement — the star actor of our little drama, shall we say — is young Abteilungführer Heinz Gruber.”

  Volmer brought forward a pale-faced boy in the uniform of the Werewolves. With outrage and sick disgust, Ben Raines recognized their ever-so-cooperative guide, Jimmy Riggs. The two pips of an SS squad leader sparkled on the shoulder tabs of his brown shirt. On one side of the collar were the SS runes, on the other an old U.S. Army officer’s infantry branch insignia. Volmer ran lengthy, pallid, spatulate fingers down the long lobe at the back of the boy’s head and along his neck in a possessive, intimate touch that made Ben’s stomach lurch.

  “You did well, Heinz,” Volmer praised. “But what else could I expect from my most efficient Standartenführer?”

  Heinz/Jimmy’s face glowed with ecstasy. A promotion! And not a little one, to Company Commander at that. “Th-thank you, Brigadeführer. I — I don’t deserve the promotion, I only did my job.”

  “And excellently, too. We have the great Ben Raines in our grasp now. The ultimate destruction of all Rebel forces is at hand. And it is entirely due to your superb acting ability.” He turned to more-mundane matters. “Clean out this place quickly, leave not a trace. Dump these Rebel scum in their vehicle. Ben Raines is to be bound securely and made ready to be moved. He is coming with me. So, Heinzi, are you,” he concluded, again stroking the boy’s head.

  Ben Raines could contain his revulsion and humiliation no longer, sucking in air he roared with all his powerful voice, “You sick, pervert son of a bitch!”

  Jimmy’s small Nazi foot, in an ankle-high boot, kicked Ben back into unconsciousness.

  When the headquarters comm unit reported that nothing had been heard from Ben’s team in an hour and a half, Buddy had a stab of apprehension. Since he found himself occupied in the finishing-off of Carrizozo, he could do little about it, except worry.

  AH-64 Apaches made their final runs three hours after communications had lost contact with the Hummer. With their “black hole” exhausts, they made hardly a sound as the insectile forms peeked over a ridge and positioned themselves to unload their terrible ordnance. Nazis died like ants on a griddle as missiles, rockets, and thousands of rounds of 30mm swathed through them. Even those dug into supposedly secure holes retained flash impressions of the nosecones of Hellfire missiles an instant before white-hot oblivion embraced them.

  By the time the fledgling village of Carrizozo — rebuilt by Rebels the previous year — had been fully suppressed, Buddy’s gnawing preoccupation with Ben’s whereabouts had reached the head-scratching and lip-chewing stage. Relief flooded him when his comm unit beeped and he heard the welcome words.

  “Rat, we’ve just heard from Eagle’s team.”

  “Good,” Buddy replied briskly. “Where is Eagle and what’s he up to?”

  “Uh, Rat, like I said, we’ve heard from the team. General Ike thinks you should come over here.”

  A cold hand grasped Buddy’s spine. “What do you mean? Come out with it. Is Dad okay?”

  “We, ah, don’t know.” The uncomfortable RT operator had the mike taken from her hands. “Buddy, this is Ike. You’d better come over here. We’ve gotta talk.”

  Conquering potholes, blown bridges, and rockslides, Buddy made the ninety miles to Ike in Roswell in two hours. He entered his senior commander’s CP with a face drawn and gray. Ike, he quickly noticed, looked the same.

  “Here’s what we’ve got,” Ike said curtly after greeting the young Raines. He pushed the play button of a tape recorder.

  Jersey’s voice came through the background static. “This is Eagle team. I gotta talk to General Ike, uh, to Shark.” Crackling airwaves followed while the RT patched the channel to Ike, who was assaulting Roswell at the time. It gave Buddy time to wonder why it was Jersey and not Corrie. He soon learned when the connection was made.

  “Uh — Shark, this is Eagle Team. They, ah, they’ve got Be — Eagle.” Ike’s bluster followed. “I know. It was my fault. I take all blame. The Hummer is out of order. Cooper is trying to reattach the distributor cap and plug wires. It happened about four hours ago. We’re still up in San Agustin Pass. The Nazis, kid Nazis, jumped us, goddamn them.”

  Buddy stared blankly while she spoke. Her disclosure that Ben Raines had been captured by the most vile enemy, except possibly the Night People, the Rebels had known stunned him. Now he croaked out his question when Ike turned off the recorder and keyed the mike.

  “How’s the rest of the team?”

  “Is that Rat? Well, Beth’s all right. Sore and damn mad. Corrie got a hell of a lump on her head. Sick to her stomach right now, so I’m doin’ the talkin’.”

  “What about you?”

  “I don’t matter,” Jersey, filled with misery, fired back. “I dropped the ball. I let the boss get taken by those rotten little bastards. I’m losin’ it, Rat, Ike. I’ll never forgive myself. I — I don’t even know if B-Ben’s still alive!” A sound like a ragged sob ended her transmission.

  Ike’s slow, patient voice got her back on the air. After several deep breaths, Jersey related the entire story from the beginning. Expressions of alarm passed among those in the comm van. Ike questioned Jersey in his easy drawl to make certain everything came out.

  “You say those kids the R Batt found in Alamogordo were part of this Werewolf outfit?”

  “Roger, Shark. I felt hincky about that all along, those kids being there, all convenient for us to rescue. Way I see these Nazis, they’d kill any witnesses. Oh, shit! There’s most of them still there. Somethin’ ought to be done about it.”

  It being Buddy’s AO, he took the mike. “Some of them still are,” he replied to Jersey’s worry. “Others we packed up an hour ago and sent them off on a supply plane to Base Camp One. We’ll take care of it right away. When will you be back to Alamogordo?”

  “Whenever Cooper gets this thing running again. I don’t want to come back. I want to go find the boss,” Jersey said with anguish.

  “We all do. I’ll be there in two hours. Then well take care of those baby black-shirts. Meet me there and we’ll organize a search for — for Eagle. Rat out.”

  TEN

  Buddy Raines came back to Alamogordo boiling with rage. He’d never trust a kid again. Wide-eyed little deceiving sons of bitches. And they had his father. Who knew what tortures the Nazi bastards would use on Ben Raines? Radio messages had alerted the military police among the Rebels.

  Part-timers, they were volunteers for policing rear areas, directing convoy traffic, and all the details attended to in a military community. The captain who served as provost marshal to Buddy’s command met him outside the administrative building of the fake Nazi concentration camp.

  “What are your orders, Colonel?” he asked briskly.

  “We’re going to round up those Nazi brats damn fast,” Buddy snapped.

  “Sir, some of the guys who are missing their own families have sorta taken them in. After all, once they were cleaned up, they were kinda cute little tykes.”

  “I’m calling this Operation Diaper Vipers,” Buddy stated coldly. “Those kids are trained killers. Consider it like having a cobra in your hooch, Captain O’Malley.” At the top cop’s puzzled expression, Buddy explained. “It comes from that old war in Vietnam. Dad told me about cobras and hooches. Snakes are cold-blooded. They like warm places. A hooch was a dugout shelter, usually with a thatch roof, for one or two men. Sleeping men put out a lot of warmth.”

  “I follow the rest, sir,” O’Malley responded with a wince. “We handle the kids with care.”

  “Right. You’ll be in charge, but I’m coming along to pick up every o
ne of them.”

  “Five of the boys are still right over there in the barrack, sir.”

  “Good. We’ll start with them. Pick five of your MPs and bring them along.” Buddy loosened the .45 in his belt holster.

  Five small boys sat in a tight circle on the floor of the main dormitory room of the barrack. They had been engaged in an earnest, whispered conversation when the door burst open to reveal Buddy Raines, face darkly clouded with his anger.

  They were good, Buddy had to admit. All five looked up with guileless, friendly expressions. “Spread out, get on your bellies, arms over your heads, legs apart,” Buddy snapped.

  “Wh-what? Is this a game?” one lad chirped.

  “This is like the nasties did to us,” another whined.

  Buddy stepped further into the room and MPs followed him. At their presence, with the bands on helmets and brassards on arms, the Werewolves’ eyes widened. Buddy growled at them, with full intent behind the menace.

  “Do it, or I’ll kick you clear the fuck across the room.”

  An MP knelt at the side of each supine boy. Expertly they bent the small arms down to the small of childish backs and secured the wrists with plastic riot cuffs. Then they began searching. A small pile of boning, filleting, and utility knives began to grow. Buddy studied it and felt a chill.

  “I imagine the cooks will be interested to learn where their missing cutlery was found,” he observed dryly. “Take them somewhere and lock them up. Have interrogators stand by to chemically debrief them. Let’s go get the others.”

  Operation Diaper Vipers went quicker and easier than Buddy had anticipated. Before an hour had passed, all but one of the boys had been rounded up. The embarrassed, red-faced Rebel who had “adopted” the boy who called himself Tommy Cook told them that the youngster had wanted to go look at the tanks. Buddy and the military police headed for the tank park.

  They did not find Tommy there. Growing more concerned, Buddy suggested the search spread out. Captain O’Malley directed his men to every sensitive point. He remained with Buddy Raines. Their wait didn’t prove a long one.