Valor in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  “Relax, boys,” the Englishman said, a smile playing around his mouth. “The general is having a bit of fun at our expense. Right, General?”

  “You guys are too serious,” Ben told his friends. “Lighten up, boys. The office is just fine. Katzman’s people are installing radio equipment now. He’s going to move part of his operation over here. I’ll use this as the main CP until we get to Central Park South. Then I’ll have to move.”

  “And pushing up that far, General, might take all winter,” Dan warned.

  “I know. All right, boys, pull up a chair and let’s get down to business. Where’s West?”

  “Here, sir.” The mercenary stepped into the big office. “Sorry I’m late. I ran into a pocket of bogies on the way over. Took two alive and turned them over to Chase’s people for interrogation.”

  “Pull up a chair, West. Speaking of the night crawlers and Chase . . . I haven’t seen the old goat. Did he tell you how the interrogation is going?”

  “Yes. Slowly. Seems the ones we initially took are hard-core, and they’re going to be tough to break.”

  Ben nodded his head. That was Chase’s baby. He’d let them know when there was a breakthrough. If ever. “Katzman just handed me the latest on this Monte person. He’s closing, but still a long way off. Rebet and Danjou are nipping at his heels and slowing him down. They’re badly outnumbered and can’t close with him. They’re helping us in the only way they can.”

  “They’re going to try to enter the city, Ben?” Cecil asked. “Rebet and Danjou, I mean.”

  “Yes. But they don’t know when, of course, or even where. Since no one knows what route Monte is going to take when he gets close.” Ben stood up and moved to a huge wall map just hung in place. “Monte didn’t cross at Toronto.” He thumped the map. “And he is approximately here.” He pointed to a spot. “So my guess is that he’ll turn south on Eighty-one. Rebet sent a company across at Toronto to try to intercept Monte’s columns somewhere between Binghamton and the border. They won’t be able to stop Monte, but they can sure aggravate the hell out of him. Rebet and Danjou are just trying to buy us some time.”

  “Our weather people say we’ve got some snow on the way,” Ike informed the group. “They’re saying it’s building up to be a hard winter.”

  “That’s all we need. OK. Let’s get some fuel-hunting teams out and start rounding up some stoves.”

  Ben looked out the window. He had made damn sure his new office had at least one window. Dark in the city, and when there is no man-made light in a city, it seems to be more than dark. “I spoke with Tina. The runways at Teterboro are intact, but it’s going to take them several days to clear it.” A smile touched his lips. “And then they’re going to guard it.”

  “How about additional personnel over there?” Ike asked. “That airport is going to be vital, Ben.”

  “I’m sending one platoon over. That’s all Tina requested. That will beef them up to a hundred. I’m sending them mortar crews, a couple of Big Thumpers, two Abrams, and some Fifties. That’s in addition to the new platoon. When we know for sure what route Monte is taking, we’ll make our decision about how many more troops to send over. We’ve made our choice of airports, and now we’ve got to hold it, and we damn sure have to keep the George Washington Bridge open.” He hit the wall with the palm of his hand. “Damn, but I hate to destroy bridges.”

  They all knew what he was saying: the bridge linking America with Canada on Interstate 81. But they also knew they had to buy some more time and one way to do that was to force Monte to change his route, putting him far away from the Teterboro Airport.

  Dan took it. “I can have Sappers up and dropped by daylight, General.”

  “That will also be a dead giveaway to Monte” Ben reminded them all. But he knew with a sickening feeling in his gut that the bridge had to go.

  “Perhaps,” West said. “And perhaps he’ll just think we’re trying to slow his advance toward the city. We have to assume the Night People know of Tina’s move to the airport. But we can’t be sure.”

  Ben nodded. “All right. Blow it, Dan. But knock enough of it out so a Bailey can’t be stretched across. That’s going to mean some fast and dirty work for your people. Support columns are going to have to come down.”

  The Englishman nodded and stood up. “I’ll get them outfitted and on the way. You want them to then link up with the Canadians or Russians?”

  “Yes.”

  Dan nodded and left the room.

  Ben turned to Beth. “Have Katzman send a coded message to Rebet, advising him of this action and to be aware that some of my people will be linking up with the company he’s sent across the border.”

  Beth walked across the room and picked up an in-house phone.

  “Another vital link destroyed,” Ben mused aloud. “And one that will never be rebuilt in our lifetime. Just like the bridges along the South Carolina border.”

  “What I wouldn’t give for an air force,” Cecil added some musings of his own.

  “In a sense,” West said, “we have reverted back to the caveman type of warfare. All our once-fabulous technology and million-dollar-plus aircraft lies rusting and useless. Our guns and tanks can be equated to the caveman’s clubs and stone axes. I suppose it’s true that what goes around, comes around.”

  West never talked about his past. But it was obvious to all that he was a highly educated man. And refined in a strange way. Ben also knew that Tina and West saw each other. But their involvement was kept on a discreet basis . . . as discreet as is possible in any army camp.

  And Ben never interfered in his daughter’s social life.

  Once again, Jerre entered his mind.

  * * *

  “Brother Emil.” Sister Martha approached him. “Where are we?”

  “We’re in Virginia, Sister,” Emil told her. “And we appear to be surrounded by some sort of cretinous savages.”

  “Perhaps you could call on Blomm to come to our aid?” it was suggested to Emil.

  Since Big Louie’s rocket had changed course and exploded over Louisiana, Emil had suffered through many second thoughts about whether Blomm was real or not. He concluded that Blomm was not real . . . but then, it never paid to screw around with gods. Just on the off chance that Blomm really did exist.

  “Those people are coming closer,” Brother Carl said.

  Emil looked around him in the near-darkness, the gloom broken only by the flickering lights of the camp’s fires. Looked to him like there was about a hundred of . . . whatever the hell they were. Human, he hoped.

  “Away with you!” Emil shouted. “Be gone. Out, out, damn spot! Before I call down the wrath of Blomm.”

  The figures came closer.

  “OK, you turkeys,” Emil muttered. “You asked for it.”

  He began some slow shoulder movements. “Oh, Blomm! I am asking that you look into the hearts of those who have invaded the sanctity of our camp and send us friends, and not enemies.” He began doing some footwork, looking for the most part like a drunken Egyptian paying homage to Ra.

  “That old boy is doing the Moonwalk!” a strange female voice came to Emil.

  “Relax, man,” another voice came to Emil. “Everything’s cool. We just wanted to see who you folks were, that’s all.”

  Emil threw his arms wide. “Thank you, Blomm.” Then he took a closer look at the men and women who had stepped into the light of the campfires. “Great scott! It’s a whole gaggle of hippies!”

  “I can’t tell you how good it is to hear that word again,” the long-haired man with a bandana around his head said, stepping closer to Emil. The man took a closer look at Emil. “Ah . . . exactly what are you, man?”

  Emil drew himself up just as tall as he would ever be. Which was short. “I am known as Father Emil, divine spiritual leader of the earth, disciple of the Great God Blomm.”

  “No kidding!” the woman by the man’s side said. “Wow, that’s awesome. Who the hell is Blomm?”

&nb
sp; Emil opened his mouth to tell the woman not to blaspheme. Before he could speak, the man stuck out his hand and said, “I’m Thermopolis.”

  Emil shook it. Noted that both the man and the woman and everybody else with them were well armed.

  “This is Rosebud.” The man indicated the woman next to him. “Where are you bound, friend?” As Emil had done, Thermopolis noted that Emil and his group were all very well armed.

  “We are on a mission of love and respect, Thermy.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. We have put aside our personal interests — not to mention our safety — to travel into a land of savages, going to the aid of our good and great friend, the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in America, General Ben Raines.”

  “Ummm!” Thermopolis said.

  Rosebud said, “Is Ben Raines in trouble?”

  “He is fighting the Night People in New York City.”

  “I never did like that authoritative bastard’s method of government,” Thermopolis grumbled.

  “Well, hell!” Emil blustered. “You think I do? But it sure beats the crap out of being eaten by cannibals!”

  “Yeah,” another voice was added. “That ain’t cool at all, man.”

  Emil peered at him. “Wenceslaus,” he was told. “This is my old lady, Zelotes.”

  “Pleased, I’m sure,” Emil muttered.

  Yet another voice spoke. “He does have a point. That adds up to what we’ve been hearing. I’m Adder. This is my brother, Udder.” He jerked a thumb toward a man standing beside him. “Them’s our old ladies, Ima and Ura.”

  Emil was beginning to wonder if he had accidentally camped close to a still-operational nuthouse.

  Thermopolis sighed. “I guess I’d rather live under Ben Raines’s rule than run from Night People for the rest of my life.”

  “He’s left you alone, hasn’t he?” Emil questioned.

  “He doesn’t know where we live,” a woman said.

  “Swallow,” Rosebud introduced them.

  “Don’t be foolish,” Emil told the group. “Of course Ben Raines knows where you live. He knows about the hippie communes in Arkansas and California and Washington and Oregon and in Missouri . . . and a hundred other places. If you’re more than a hundred strong, with some form of government, and you raise gardens and have schools . . . he knows about you. He has patrols out working the entire country. Mapping and logging communities. But I have been told by more than one Rebel that people like you pose no threat. You have laws, you have rules . . . you must, or you couldn’t exist. The point is, you obviously don’t break any of the few laws the Rebels live under. And you don’t interfere with Ben Raines and the outposts he and his Rebels are setting up all over the nation. If you want to get right down to it, there isn’t that much difference in your group from my group, or our groups from Ben Raines’s Rebels.”

  “You’re a funny little man, but you can make sense,” another voice spoke.

  “Zipper,” Rosebud said. “That’s his old lady, Fly.”

  Emil couldn’t help it. He had to smile. Then he laughed, and the laughter was infectious. Emil’s people laughed and the hippies were quick to join in. Soon they were all hugging and shaking hands and talking.

  There is a myriad of differences between true hippies and straights — especially if those straights are rural and so-called religious. Hippies can laugh at themselves. Laugh at a redneck and see how violent matters become.

  “We’ll come with you,” Thermopolis said.

  “Thermy,” Emil replied. “You all dress funny, but you’re my kind of people!”

  SEVENTEEN

  Snowing, and Ham was bitching.

  “Months of hard-assed training to join Dan Gray’s Scouts. And what are we doing? Stringin’ fence!” he said disgustedly.

  Jerre laughed at him as she and Pam struggled to work the homemade come-along that pulled the wire tight. “You can blame it on me, Ham. I don’t mind.”

  “It isn’t your fault,” Tina said, hooking the wire on the post. “It’s my fault for getting up in Dad’s face. I should have known better. But Dad has his faults too. I’m his kid. I know. Dad can be awfully ruthless and vindictive.”

  “That’s a trait that all world leaders and great military people have,” Doctor Ling told them. The doctor was working right along with them. “And back when the world was whole, nearly all self-made men and women, millionaires and billionaires and heads of great corporations. They have to be. That’s the way the world is.” He caught his finger in some wire and cussed. In several languages.

  “Why?” Sergeant Wilson asked, when the doctor had exhausted his vocabulary of cusswords.

  “Because they are dealing with, controlling, getting along with, and asking all types of personalities to follow them. They’ve got to be tough, sometimes hard, sometimes ruthless, sometimes charismatic, sometimes cruel — they’ve got to run the entire spectrum. Very few people have that many qualities they can fall back on. Ben Raines does.”

  “My people are on the ground and planting charges, General,” Dan told Ben.

  “Everybody down all right?”

  “They lost one man. His chute malfunctioned.”

  “I’m sorry, Dan.”

  “They know the risks involved in becoming a part of my Scouts.”

  Ben said no more. Dan would grieve for this Scout in his own way. Stoically and wooden-faced. But grieve nevertheless. He was a hard man, in the midst of men and women just as hard — in a hard time.

  Ben ordered coffee sent in and added a healthy slug of booze to each coffee. He lifted his mug. “To the SAS and Her Majesty.”

  “Thank you, sir.” He sipped and lifted his mug. “To General Ben Raines and what he stands for,” the Englishman proposed.

  “You’re putting me in awfully lofty company, Dan. But I appreciate it.”

  “The Queen would have liked you, General. And so would have Maggie. They both might have had to set you down from time to time and give you a good talking-to, but they would have liked you.”

  Ben leaned back in his chair and laughed. “Yeah? I wish I could have met them.”

  “You had contact with Tina?”

  “Oh, yeah, Just a few minutes ago. She and her team are busy stretching fence wire.”

  Dan allowed himself a slight smile. “I’m sure they’re all thrilled with that task.”

  “Oh, they seemed overjoyed at it.”

  Coffee finished, Ben shrugged into battle harness and picked up his Thompson. “You ready to go to work?”

  The Rebels pushed on, fighting through the snow and the slush and the cold of that day. West and his people bulled their way toward the center of Lower Manhattan and by late afternoon had linked up with Ben and his teams in Confucius Plaza. Ike and Cecil and their troops were still some blocks away, battling all up and down Lafayette.

  “You check out the Manhattan Savings Bank, West?” Ben asked.

  “Yes. Very interesting architecture. It’s been looted, of course.”

  The Manhattan Savings Bank, a branch of it, located in Chinatown, had been built in the shape of a Chinese temple.

  “Find anything else interesting?”

  The mercenary and the Rebel locked gazes. West knew what Ben was leading up to; he had been noting the same thing all day. “With few exceptions, General, the looting was done sanely and selectively. Someone with a good eye picked over the jade, the ivory, the silks and brocades. And I get the feeling it was not done for profit.”

  “That’s the feeling I got, too. That someone did it with an eye on the future.”

  “But who?”

  Ben shrugged. “Good question. I’ve tried several times today to reestablish contact with those living under the city. No luck. Katzman just told me he’s tried a dozen times to contact those living around Central Park. They refuse to answer.”

  “Has he picked up any chatter from them — among themselves?”

  “Just a bit. They’re operating with CB’s. And the
y speak in code. A very simple code. Intelligence broke it very quickly.”

  Dan walked up, to stand listening.

  Ben brought him up to date, ending with, “It seems that the primary reason they are reluctant to make contact is that someone among them is afraid I’m going to kill him.”

  “Then you are assuming they are unfriendlies?” the mercenary asked.

  Ben shook his head. “No. I don’t see how they could be since they speak of killing Night People.”

  “I wonder how they’re heating their apartments?”

  “I think I figured that out, too,” Ben replied. “What’s the one thing that stands out as missing in almost every building — the thing we’ve had to bring in from outside the city?”

  “Furniture,” Dan pegged it. “That is to say, anything wooden.”

  “Precisely. For a time they did that. Then I got to wondering why, when our people did their flybys, the city was so free of smoke. The Night People, filthy beings that they are, seem to huddle together for a sharing of warmth. Their main CP, let’s call it, as the heat-seekers have shown us, is probably the old Columbia University complex. They’re packed in there like rotten sardines. I studied the pictures of the flybys. Some smoke is coming from there. But the people around Central park — that’s a different story. I went back to the blow-ups.” He held out his hand and Jersey gave him a map case. Ben pulled out a dozen blow-ups and laid them on the hood of a truck. “Look here. On top of these buildings.”

  “Well, I’ll just be damned!” West exclaimed. “They’re not dummies, General. They’ve built solar equipment to trap the sun as a course of energy, converting that into heat.”

  Dan studied the blow-ups. “Yes. Obviously they have some means of storing whatever they pull in, probably by heating water. Although I will admit that I don’t understand all that I know about solar power.”

  “An observation, General?” West asked.

  “Of course.”

  The mercenary tapped the blow-ups. “Professional people live here. For the most part. People with education — although that learning might not be in the form of earned degrees, I’d wager that many of them are college graduates.”