Crisis in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  “Do you think she’ll call off the bombing, Ben?” Mike Post asked.

  Ben shook his head. “I doubt it. I believe the lady really is insane.” He took a deep breath. “But let’s give her a chance. I want all offensive attacks against the USA halted immediately. Keep our air defenses on full alert, and we’ll resume our attack only if she tries to launch her bombers against us.”

  “Ten-four, Ben,” Mike said, and sat down immediately to give the appropriate orders to his field commanders.

  Ben walked over to his desk, sat down, and rolled himself a cigarette. As the smoke trailed from his nostrils, he looked at his team, sitting in various positions around his office. “Now, we wait and see if she really is crazy enough to attack us.”

  Johnny Albright pulled back on the stick of his medium bomber and kept his eyes on the red lights of his altimeter.

  “Squadron leader climbing to twenty-five thousand feet,” he said into the microphone attached to his flight helmet.

  One by one, the five other bombers in his squadron checked in to acknowledge his order.

  Timothy Baron, his copilot, kept his eyes peeled through the plexiglass windshield of the plane, watching for evidence of fighters that they knew would soon be coming up to meet them.

  “Keep a sharp lookout for SAM trails,” Johnny said, “the fucking radar on these antiques ain’t gonna be much help if we pass a SAM battery on our way in.”

  “Roger,” Timothy said. “So far it all looks clear.”

  “It’s too bad Osterman was in such a hurry for this mission,” Johnny said, glancing out the side window at the full moon overhead. “It’d go a lot smoother if we’d waited until the new moon, or if we had a full complement of bombers in the squadron.”

  “You got that right, chief,” Timothy answered. “Goin’ up against SUSA at half strength ain’t exactly my idea of a smart move.” He hesitated. “I wish we had that bitch up here with us just once when the flak and SAM’s started. Maybe she’d think twice about issuing stupid orders then.”

  Johnny grunted. “Ours is not to reason why, Timmy my boy, ours is but to do or die.”

  “It’s the dying part I’m not particularly fond of,” Timothy answered.

  From out of nowhere a P51E fighter plane from SUSA streaked by, its wing cannons blazing, sending tracers ripping by their window in a narrow miss. Johnny jerked the stick to the side and pushed with his left foot to turn the bomber into a steep, curving dive.

  “Goddamn!” Timothy screamed, flinching as if he could somehow dodge the crimson trails of death from the P51E.

  Johnny yelled into his mic, “Fighters . . . fighters at twelve o’clock high! Take evasive measures!”

  The big turbine engines of the bomber whined, revving up to rpms their manufacturers had never planned as Johnny tried desperately to evade the killer attackers.

  Timothy glanced at his pilot, fear-sweat forming on his brow in spite of the near freezing temperature at twenty-five thousand feet. He could almost see the wings dancing in the moonlight as they vibrated at speeds nearly twice the usual for the bomber.

  “Do you see any more?” Johnny yelled, craning his neck to get a better look.

  Timothy leaned to the side, looking first forward, then back over his shoulder. “Not yet, but you can bet your ass they’re out there. Those bastards always travel in packs.”

  A bright flash from off to their right lit up the night as a fighter passed their wing man, its tracers stitching a pattern of death and destruction along the fuselage of the plane. Billowing smoke, colored orange by avgas catching on fire, blossomed from the stricken bomber.

  “Mayday! Mayday! I’m hit!” said a voice in Johnny’s earphones.

  “It’s Jackie,” Timothy said, watching the death throes of their brother airman as he desperately tried to keep his plane aloft.

  Johnny didn’t bother to answer. He was too busy jerking his plane back and forth in a zig-zag pattern to try to evade the attack he knew was coming.

  Timothy jerked back as a wing separated itself from the nearby bomber and the plane began to twist and turn in a falling spiral, out of control.

  “Bail out . . . bail out!” Johnny screamed into the mic, watching helplessly as the plane disappeared in a mushrooming ball of fire.

  The concussion from the blast shook Johnny’s plane and almost pushed it on its side as he frantically fought the stick to regain control.

  “Goddamn you, Osterman!” he muttered, cursing the woman who’d sent them on this mission before the squadron was at full strength.

  “Where the hell are our fighter escorts?” Timothy asked, looking back and forth through the windows.

  As he spoke another fighter, smaller and quicker than the P51Es of SUSA, dived into view. The USA fighters, though more agile and somewhat faster than SUSA’s, had less body armor and were therefore much more vulnerable to return fire.

  The P51E and the US fighter approached each other at combined speeds of more that six hundred miles an hour, playing out their deadly ballet right in front of Johnny and Timothy.

  “Come on, fellah,” Johnny said, “blow that son of a bitch outta the sky.”

  The planes swerved at the last minute, passing each other with their cannons blazing like some old-fashioned gunfight between western gunslicks.

  The P51E curved off to the left, gradually losing altitude, smoke pouring from its engine.

  The US fighter waggled its wings once—as if saying gotcha!—and started to climb as it looked for another attacker.

  Just as it banked, a P51E came from six o’clock low and signed its death warrant with a blast of bullets that cut the plane almost in two.

  Johnny saw silk blossom as the pilot ejected seconds before his plane exploded in a blinding flash of light.

  “Damn, how many fighters does SUSA have?” Timothy asked, his eyes flicking back and forth, seeing the moonlit skies seemingly full of the buzzing instruments of death.

  Johnny felt rather than saw his plane take a hit, as the stick shuddered in his hands and began to feel mushy. “We’re hit!” he yelled at Timothy.

  “You may have to help me with . . .” he started to say, fighting the controls as the plane began to dive and bank to the left, out of control.

  He stopped in mid-sentence when he looked at Timothy and saw him slumped in his seat, the right side of his head missing and his sidewindow shattered by machine-gun fire.

  As the plane lost altitude, Johnny glanced below and saw lights of a city. It must be Little Rock, he thought, recognizing his primary target.

  He reached down and jerked the bomb-release lever, trying to ignore the P51E he saw headed straight for him.

  “Our Father, who art in heaven,” he prayed, feeling the shudder as his bombs released, staring ahead at the tracers from the fighter as they rushed toward him, never feeling the concussion when his plane exploded around him.

  The night over Little Rock, Arkansas, lit up like a fourth of July fireworks celebration as the squadron of P51Es systematically destroyed every bomber overhead. Not a single plane survived the attack, and Johnny’s was the only one which successfully dropped its payload of deadly plague bombs.

  The infected fleas, designed to survive their bombs’ detonation, spread out on the evening air, falling in a white cloud of flour, settling to the ground like ash from an exploding volcano.

  The fleas, unaffected by their fall, scattered along the city streets, looking for warm-blooded animals and a blood meal, so they could lay thousands of eggs, which would also be infected by the bubonic plague bacteria.

  Those pilots who were still flying, searched the sky in vain for surviving US bombers or fighters, until they realized the attackers had been wiped out to the last man.

  “Come on, boys,” the squadron leader of the P51Es called on his command frequency microphone. “Let’s go home. We’re done here.”

  THIRTY-SIX

  Ben and Mike Post and President Jeffreys listened to the radio reports of
Claire Osterman’s bombing raids on the radio in Ben’s office. Almost all of the planes had been shot down, or so disabled that they turned back before reaching SUSA territory. Some of the reports even said several of the wounded planes dropped their deadly cargo on USA territory to lighten their loads so they could make it back to their base airfield.

  Mike Post shook his head. “I can’t believe those pilots dropped BW on their own people just to try to save their own lives,” he said disgustedly.

  “When you have leaders who put their own interests above those of their country, it becomes contagious,” Ben answered. “Everyone in the USA armed services is out for number one, and the country be damned.”

  “That kind of thinking is so foreign to me, I can’t begin to describe how it makes me feel,” Cecil Jeffreys said in a low, sad voice.

  Ben looked at his friend with gentle eyes. “That’s why you’re a great leader, Cec, unlike Sugar Babe Osterman.”

  The radio crackled to life again, and with a small amount of static, a voice said, “Eagle One, come in. This is squadron leader Jimmy Johnson reporting.”

  Ben keyed the mic. “Eagle One, go ahead Jimmy.”

  “We’ve managed to turn the attack around in this sector. Two planes managed to drop their payloads just north of Little Rock, Arkansas. All others were destroyed or turned back with bombs undropped.”

  “Ten-four, Jimmy. Thanks. Eagle One out.”

  Ben glanced over at Corrie, who was keeping tabs on where the bombers had been successful, in a notebook. “What’s that make us?” he asked.

  She consulted her book. “Two loads of bombs in Little Rock, three near El Paso, and one just north of Phoenix, Arizona. All the others were unsuccessful, according to our fighters’ reports.”

  “Mike,” Ben said, “send in the decontamination squads to those locations as soon as we can. From what Dr. Ishi told Dr. Zimmer in his written correspondence, the bombs contain fleas infected with bubonic plague bacteria in some sort of food medium. If we can get our teams into the sites quick enough with their insecticides and extra vaccines for the people in those areas that didn’t take it the first time around, perhaps we can contain the outbreak before it starts.”

  “Ten-four, Ben. I’ve got over fifty old crop dusters who’re ready to drop as much Diazinon as it takes to control the flea population. However, there’s still bound to be some independent souls who get the disease.”

  Ben nodded. “That’s why Dr. Lamar Chase is going to send his medical teams in after the decontamination squads to aggressively treat any and all persons suspected of having the plague.”

  Jeffreys looked surprised. “I thought antibiotics didn’t work against bubonic plague.”

  “No, that’s a myth,” Ben said. “Tetracycline and Erythromycin are both effective in treating infected individuals. The problem is, the disease spreads so fast it’s extremely difficult to contain with medical treatment alone. However, by combining decontamination, aggressive flea control, and vaccination with the antibiotics, I think we stand a good chance of not losing very many people.”

  “What are you going to do about Osterman, Ben?” Jersey asked from her seat across the room.

  “I’m going to resume all bombing and sabotage in the US. That bitch is going to pay dearly for her actions.”

  “You mean her citizens are, don’t you Ben?” Jeffreys said.

  Ben stared at the president. “It’s the same thing, Cec. A populace who countenances such actions by their elected leaders deserves to live, and to die, by their choices of leaders. Ultimately, they’ll either get rid of her for causing them such hardship, or I’ll wipe the entire country off the face of the earth.”

  He looked at Mike. “Send the word to all our field commanders and to the air force, Mike. Full steam ahead.”

  Claire Osterman stormed into the war room in her nightgown, her cheeks a flaming red. It was a few minutes past eleven o’clock, almost midnight. The ground above the war room shook with repeated bomb blasts, and the whistle of rockets screamed through night skies.

  “What the hell is going on up there?” she demanded, as the ground trembled with bombs and missile warheads. “I can’t sleep with all this shit going on. I damn near fell out of bed a minute ago. Who the hell is doing all the bombing so close to our headquarters? I want some goddamn answers, and I want them now!”

  Andy Schumberger, Otis Warner, Captain Broadhurst, General Maxwell, and Harlan Millard sat around a table with a map of the old United States on it, covered by a thin sheet of plastic. All across the map were red and blue plastic squares representing both USA and SUSA infantry and armored battalions. Tiny plastic airplanes represented airborne units.

  “We’ve suffered some losses, Madam President,” Harlan said softly.

  “Losses?” She spat it out, is if the word had a foul taste to it.

  She rested her palms on her ample hips, staring from one man to the next.

  General Maxwell wouldn’t look Claire in the eye, his gaze roaming around the war room.

  “Yes, Madam President . . . losses we did not expect,” Harlan explained when it appeared no one else was willing to answer the president’s question.

  She glared at him. “You keep telling me we won’t have any more . . . losses, as you call them. What has happened now? Do I want to hear this shit?”

  “You’ll have to hear about them sooner or later, Madam President,” Maxwell said, glancing around him for support.

  “So tell me, Max,” she snapped, “what sort of losses are you talking about? And tell me why my bed is shaking so goddamn hard I can’t lie still in it. It felt like I was riding a damn bucking horse just a few minutes ago. Hell . . . no one could sleep with this shit going on.”

  When no one answered her, she glared at the men one at a time. “I spoke with Ben Raines on the radio, yesterday,” she said, her voice dangerously low. “I was under the impression we’d sent some top notch assassins to kill the son of a bitch, and the next thing I know, he’s calling on the goddamned phone!”

  Another, longer silence.

  “The two assassins we sent . . . both of them were killed last night,” General Maxwell mumbled, looking down at the floor to keep from having to see the expression on Claire’s face.

  Claire stared at him in disbelief. “You bastards!” she exclaimed, examining every face in the war room. “To a man, you told me that this James Scott and Frank Brown were the best money could buy. ‘They have assassinated political leaders all over Europe,’ you said.” She stared at Maxwell, her eyes flashing. “You told me they were good!”

  “They are . . . at least until last night, they were.”

  The president’s face flushed a bright crimson. “I authorized the payment of a hundred thousand dollars, in gold, for the two of them to get rid of Ben Raines forever.”

  “Yes, Madam President,” Harlan stammered. “You did. We were informed they were killed by some of Ben Raines’s security men.”

  “Shit!” Claire exclaimed, dropping into a vacant chair at the table, holding her head in her hands. “First we give this little Jap son of a bitch five million dollars out of our treasury and we still haven’t seen his flea bombs work.” She took a deep breath. “Now you tell me the pair of killers we hired from over in England are dead. You told me they were the very best in the world at laying landmines and using explosives. The big one, I forget his name—”

  “James Scott,” Otis Warner told her. “He came to us very highly recommended by the British.”

  Claire shook her head. “He must not have been all that good, Otis. Neither was the other son of a bitch. I forget the bastard’s name, or where he was from.”

  “Frank Brown, from Nova Scotia,” Captain Broadhurst added in a meek voice. “I knew his training officer. He made very few mistakes. He was with the French Foreign Legion a number of years ago. His personnel files give him very high marks for the handling of explosives.”

  “OK,” Claire said, a disgusted tone in her
voice. “Any more good news for me tonight?”

  Harlan spoke up when no one else was willing to respond. “The bombing raids didn’t go as well as we’d hoped . . .” He hesitated.

  “What do you mean?” Claire demanded. “Are you telling me the one thing I . . . we, were counting on to give us some leverage with Raines is a complete failure?”

  A silence lingered in the war room. Again, it was Harlan Millard who was forced to speak when the others remained silent, staring at the map.

  “It failed to achieve our objective, Claire, but it wasn’t a total failure.”

  “Failed?” she screamed.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “How the hell could it fail?” Claire asked, glaring into Harlan’s eyes. “And what do you mean, not a total failure? Either they dropped the damned bombs, or they didn’t.”

  “Something went wrong—”

  Claire’s face was beet red now. “I can tell by the tone of your wimpy voice something went wrong, you damn fool! Just what the hell did go wrong?”

  Another, longer, silence.

  Now General Maxwell spoke up. “I tried to tell you we weren’t ready, that we didn’t have enough planes to get through the heavy air defenses of SUSA. Only four or five of all the planes managed to drop their payloads on SUSA.” He took a deep breath, looking around the room for support, but finding none. No one else had the balls to tell Claire Osterman anything was her fault. “In fact, it even gets worse. Some of the bombers, after being damaged on their runs, dropped their bombs on our own territory to lighten their planes so they could return to base safely.”

  Claire’s eyebrows knitted in a deep frown. “The cowardly bastards!” she exclaimed, examining every face in the room. “These so-called soldiers, in order to save their own miserable hides, not only failed in their mission, but they bombed our own citizens?” She directed her anger toward Harlan. “You told me these pilots were good!

  “They are . . .” said Maxwell. “At least until last night, they were.”

  The president’s spine stiffened. “I want the names of those cowards posted on the airfield bulletin board, and I want them summarily executed. I intend to show our troops that failure is not an option.”