Death in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  Dan was studying the map. “Miles City?”

  “Will have to wait until we’re finished up north.”

  “We’ll be passing right by the old Custer Battlefield site. Do you anticipate an attack by Matt and what is left of his army?”

  “I’m not going to give him a chance, Dan. We’re going to be moving as fast as the roads will allow us. Your Scouts report the Interstate is in good shape, and they have seen nothing of Matt or his people. There hasn’t been a shot fired at them. We’ll deal with Matt when we’ve finished with Malone.”

  “Spearheading?”

  “Tina. Have her take command of those Scouts already north of us, and move out today. She’ll stop on the outskirts of Hardin. And assign a Duster to her just in case. I can’t believe Malone is going to just let us come up behind him unopposed.”

  “He may be having his hands full with General Striganov.”

  “Georgi will damn sure give him all he can handle; bet on that. I’d like to think if we hit Malone fast and hard, we can settle this quickly. But something tells me this is going to be a long campaign.”

  “I’m afraid you’re right.” Dan seemed reluctant to leave. As if he had something on his mind and didn’t quite know how to say it.

  Ben helped him along. “Spit it out, Dan. What’s eating at you?”

  “Very well, General. Do you trust Meg Callahan?”

  Ben hesitated. “I don’t know, Dan. It just doesn’t seem reasonable that a very attractive woman, kidnapped by outlaw bikers, was not raped by them. And Dr. Ling was emphatic on that point. I’ve toyed with the idea that my so-called assassination attempt back in Shreveport was all rigged.”

  “With Meg to be planted within the Rebels.” Dan did not present his remark as a question.

  “Yes. But to do what? Kill me? Hell, Dan, she’s had ample opportunities to do that. What has she done to arouse your suspicions?”

  “She’s just too smooth, General. Everything that comes out of her mouth is too pat. It’s almost as if she’s been rehearsed.”

  “By whom? Her father? She’s managed to convince nearly everybody that she genuinely despises Matt.”

  “But not you?”

  “I don’t know,” Ben said softly. “But I do sense that something is out of kilter with Meg. Go on, Dan.”

  “General, you’ve seen the caliber of people we’ve been facing. Do you believe that type of scum would allow a lovely young lady to live undisturbed within arm’s reach of them for a couple of years, as Meg claims?”

  “It doesn’t seem reasonable. And if her father sexually abused her as a child, as she claimed, why would he not do the same as an adult?”

  “That thought entered my mind as well.”

  “And she’s been gently pushing at me to attack Matt in the Rosebuds. Our interrogation teams back at Base Camp One have not been able to corroborate our suspicions by questioning of the biker women, however.”

  “They might not have had prior knowledge. Although that seems a bit unlikely. I think it’s just because they’re very tough women and hard to break.”

  Ben nodded and stepped into the radio room, telling Corrie to get Base Camp One on the horn and tell them to start using drugs on the biker women; find out what they can about Meg Callahan.

  “No!” Ben suddenly said. “Ten-twenty-two those orders, Corrie.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Ben slowly turned to face Dan. “I don’t think she’s in cahoots with Matt. I think she really wants to see her father dead.”

  Dan spread his hands, while confusion filled his face. “She certainly says she does. But if she isn’t working for her father? Then?”

  “Dan, you were there in Shreveport when I spoke with Meg for the first time. She mentioned that survivalist group that her father shared power with. And she mentioned that they did not get along. That somebody had to have been Malone.”

  “Yes, I remember, and I agree.” Dan was thoughtful for a moment and then he smiled. “Ahh, yes. Now I am beginning to see.”

  “She wants to see both Matt and me killed. If money was worth a damn, I’d bet you that she takes her orders from Malone.”

  2

  “So we do what, Father?” Buddy asked.

  Ben had called a gathering of Buddy and Tina, Dan, Dr. Ling, and his company commanders.

  “We watch her. We have nothing but suspicions. We have absolutely no solid proof. I’m just going to play this by ear and be careful.”

  “Oh, quite,” Dan said, giving Cooper, Jersey, Beth, and Corrie a glance. They got the message.

  The eye contact did not escape Ben, but he said nothing about it.

  “Do you want me to switch her ammo?” Buddy asked. “Substitute blanks for real?”

  “No. As I said, we have zero proof that she has done anything wrong. It may just be that I’m getting paranoid.”

  “That we are becoming paranoid,” Dan corrected.

  “That’s it, people. Tina, you all set to go?”

  “Sittin’ on ready.”

  “Take off. Follow the Duster and we’ll see you in Hardin maybe late tomorrow. For sure in a couple of days.”

  Tina waved and left the room.

  “Let’s start packing it up, people,” Ben said.

  The Rebels rolled out of Sheridan just as dawn was spreading light over the valley. The extra tanks and artillery that Ben had requested from Base Camp One were a day behind them and coming hard.

  Ben pushed his people hard and they made Hardin by dusk of the first day out, driving right through the area where Ben thought Matt was hiding. But if Matt Callahan thought Ben was going to waste his time hunting him, the Rattlesnake Kid was sorely disappointed.

  Tina had radioed back that Hardin was a ghost town.

  During the noon break, Sarah had said, “The people are all along the Yellowstone. When the outlaws came, many of them left the towns for the country.”

  “We don’t have time to contact them now,” Ben said. “After we deal with Mr. Malone, then we can backtrack.”

  “Meg appears to be a bit edgy this evening,” Dan said, walking up to Ben, two packages of cold rations in his hands. He handed one to Ben.

  “Does she now? It wouldn’t break my heart if she were to desert.”

  “Nor mine.”

  The men sat down on a curb and opened their field ration packs, the contents all carefully mixed under the eagle eye of Dr. Chase, ensuring the troops the correct amounts of vitamins and fiber and nutrients and with all the taste of a tennis shoe.

  All the Rebels carried small bottles of hot sauce around with them to slop generously on their field rations. Ben requisitioned homemade hot sauce by the hundred-case lot.

  “Are you sure Chase retired from the Navy, or they forced him out before those in his command mutinied?” Dan asked, looking with distain at the goop he had dumped into his mess kit.

  Dan gave the paper to Chester to lick and the dog took one smell and carried it off and buried it, returning to sit by Dan’s side.

  “That has to tell us something,” Dan remarked as he scratched the small animal behind the ears.

  The next morning, Ben held up the column while Tina and her Scouts checked out Billings. He took that time to radio back to Louisiana and tell Cecil to start sending up tins of meat and dried beans and sacks of rice and potatoes. And if Chase had the nerve to send along any of his nutritious field ration goop, have the pilots dump it into the first swamp they flew over.

  “What’s the matter, old hoss?” Cecil said with a laugh, knowing perfectly well what the matter was.

  “Very funny. And send along a case of vitamins for us to take. I’d rather take a pill than eat any more of Lamar’s concoctions.”

  Cecil was still laughing when Ben broke the connection.

  Ben stopped smiling when Dan stepped into the tent and said, “Tina reports Billings is filled with creepies, General.”

  “Here we go again, Dan. All right. We’ll hold up here and wait for
the extra tanks and artillery.”

  “And if they’re holding prisoners, sir?”

  Ben sighed, remembering the sign that President Harry Truman had on his desk. THE BUCK STOPS HERE. Ben knew only too well what that sign meant.

  Ben hand-rolled a cigarette, taking that time to weigh his options—and they were few. “We’ll hope they will survive the shelling,” he said, knowing he was sealing the fates of many, but having no other choice.

  “If it helps,” Dan said, “I would have made the same decision.”

  The main battle tanks and the vehicle-drawn 105s joined the column the next afternoon and Ben gave everybody an extra day to rest before beginning the attack on Billings. The vehicle-drawn 105s had a range of about ten miles, or slightly farther, depending upon the type of shells used.

  Ben laid out the plans, and they involved the splitting of his command.

  “Ramos, take your A Company along with your assigned 105s and approach Billings from the southeast, on this old secondary road. Brad, you and B Company will cross the Yellowstone here”—he pointed to a map—“and assault the city from the north. Anderson, you and Charlie Company will lay back on the Interstate and drop in your rounds from the east side. I’ll take Captain Tony and Dog Company and swing wide, coming up on the Interstate west of the city. Buddy, you and your Rat Team will secure the airport.” Ben sighed and minutely shook his head. “We’ll start the bombardment at oh-six-hundred tomorrow, using Willie Peter and incendiary. That’s it, people.”

  The smell emanating from the city was strong even to those Rebels several miles away as they waited and glanced at their watches. It was the unmistakable smell of rotting flesh and death.

  The hands on their watches straight-lined and Ben’s voice came over the speakers. “Fire!”

  Billings, the city on the Yellowstone River, founded back in 1882 by the Northern Pacific Railroad, began to reel under the bombardment from Rebel gunners.

  Buddy and his Rat Team hit the airport coming off Black Otter Trail, and they struck hard, with a cold, fighting fury. Rebels did not take prisoners of Night People. Attempts to do so had invariably and consistently failed miserably, almost always resulting in the death of those Rebels who tried to extend the olive branch of peace to the creepies.

  The cannabalistic Night People were shot down upon sighting, with the wounded receiving a bullet to the head. Orders of Ben Raines.

  The earth-shattering pounding continued until eight o’clock. By that time, the city was burning, black smoke twisting like mortally wounded snakes into the big skies of Montana.

  “Shut it down,” Ben said to Corrie.

  Corrie relayed the orders and the guns fell silent.

  “Snipers in position,” Ben instructed.

  Rebel snipers, armed with .5-caliber rifles, slipped into position and waited.

  “Airport secured, sir,” Corrie told him. “Buddy is clearing a runway now.”

  “Approximate time for clearing?”

  “Two hours.”

  “Advise the communcations truck to notify Base Camp One of that.”

  “Advance teams into the city, sir?”

  “Negative. All units hold their positions. We won’t enter the city until tomorrow at the earliest. Move Tina and her team to the airport for security.”

  “Colonel Gray has a few freed prisoners that came out of the north end of the city.”

  “Take them to the airport. Advise Dr. Ling to move a medical team over there. Tell Buddy to prepare to receive freed prisoners. Put them in a hanger.”

  Sniper rifles began cracking as robed Night People began staggering out of the burning city in a futile attempt to escape the inferno. They left the flames behind them in exchange for a bullet.

  The Rebels maintained their positions all that day as the city slowly began to burn itself out. The flames leaped into the night skies, dancing macabre ballets before sparking and vanishing into the darkness.

  The breeze picked up, bringing with it a moist touch. Ben awakened once during the night, as a soft rain began falling. The rain picked up in intensity as thunderstorms began rolling through, dousing the land and gradually putting out the most savage of the fires that had devoured Billings.

  When Ben stepped out of his tent that morning, the fires were still burning, but the most intense had burned themselves out. The thunderstorms had lashed out their fury and drifted on; the early predawn skies were pocked with stars as Ben walked to the coffee truck.

  Coffee mug in hand, he leaned against the dew-covered fender of a deuce and a half and sipped and watched as his team drew coffee and walked to him.

  “The spare planes will be leaving Sheridan at dawn,” Corrie informed him. “The resupply birds from Base Camp One left at midnight. ETA here is approximately ten hundred hours.”

  “We will not enter what is left of Billings,” Ben said. He had already studied a map and knew where they were going and how they would get there. “Make sure all units understand those orders. When the birds have come and gone, we’ll pull out. Advise all units to begin concentrating along Highway 3, just off the airport. Tell Tina to get her team ready to roll and check out Highway 3. She is to wait for us at Lavina. That is approximately fifty miles north of our present location, at the junction of Highway 3 and 12.”

  Ben turned his back to the dead and smoking city and walked back to his tent to pack. If he had to adpot a scorched-earth policy in order to rid the land of outlaws and scum and Night People, so be it. Regrets, if any, he could deal with later.

  “You killed about a hundred prisoners!” the woman screamed at Ben. “Murderer!”

  Ben stood at the edge of the tarmac of the airport and listened to her tirade, his face expressionless. She cursed him until she was breathless.

  “What would you have had me do, madam?” he asked.

  “Free us!”

  “Madam, you are free.”

  “But many of my friends are dead! Thanks to your callousness.”

  Ben stared down at the woman, her clothing no more than rags, and with her face baering the marks of recent beatings. He knew he should just turn his back and walk away; knew it was pointless to stand and argue with her. But with Ben Raines being what he was, he wasn’t about to do anything like that.

  Ben pointed toward the smoking ruins of the city. “Madam, how far away do you think you were from being served up as dinner to some of those loathesome creatures who were holding you captive?”

  “I don’t know! That isn’t the point. You could have attacked the city with your army and saved us all.”

  “To tell you the truth, I’m beginning to wonder if you were even worth saving.”

  “You can’t talk to her in that manner!” a man said, stepping away from the hanger and walking to the woman’s side.

  Ben blinked. “Now, just who in the hell are you?”

  “I am her friend.”

  “Well, friend, you best carry your ass back inside that hanger before you get on the wrong side of me. And I might point out that your mouth is awfully close to getting you there.”

  The woman opened her mouth and the man said, “Sybil, let me handle this. General Raines, we are not ungrateful for being plucked from the hands of those dreadful creatures. But it is distressing that more than half of our group was killed by the bombings and the fires that followed.”

  “Your . . . group. All of you were from the same group?”

  “Oh, quite. We are—were—all from the same scientific organization.”

  “And that would be . . . ?”

  “Peace without violence.”

  Ben sighed. “And how long has this organization been around?”

  “Only recently. I would say about six months. We all felt we could reason with those poor unfortunates who have turned to a life of crime and violence.”

  “Poor . . . unfortunates?”

  “Quite.”

  “Ah—yeah! Right. And some of those ’poor unfortunates’ came along, grabbed you
up, and swapped you to the Night People, right?”

  “Well . . . yes. But that doesn’t mean that our plan won’t work with some other group, at some other place and time.”

  “Ah . . . you mean you want to try again?”

  “Oh, my, yes.”

  “Do you want us to arm you?”

  “Oh, no, General. Indeed not. We do not require arms to exist. We are vegetarians, so we don’t have to kill for food.”

  “I wasn’t talking about hunting, mister . . . whatever your name is.”

  “Morris Deason. Oh, I see what you mean. Oh, no. We don’t want arms. If we do come upon some ruffians, I feel we can convince them that we are peaceful and mean them no harm.”

  “You do, huh?”

  “Yes.”

  In a pig’s ass, Ben thought. “Well, I wish you lots of luck, Mr. Deason.” ’Cause you’re sure going to need it, he silently added. “Can we, ah, drop you and your group off somewhere?”

  “That’s very kind of you, General, but no. We must first bury our dead and then take a vote as to where we will relocate.”

  “I would suggest that you don’t go north.”

  “Oh?”

  “That’s where we’re going.”

  “To kill more innocent people?” Sybil asked, enough venom in her voice to kill an ox.

  Ben glanced at her and then deliberately turned his back. “Dan, see to their needs. You can be much more diplomatic than I.” He walked away.

  “Murderer!” Sybil screamed after him.

  3

  The Rebels saw no signs of human life on the way to Lavina, and when they reached the small town, there was nothing left of Lavina.

  The tiny town and its few buildings were no more than piles of charred rubble.

  Ben ordered Tina and her Scouts out toward Harlowton. As they drove Highway 12, which was in surprisingly good shape, they followed the Mussel-shell River, flowing on the south side of the highway. The lack of any sighting of human life was beginning to be depressing to all of them. Beth said as much.