Blood in the Ashes (19 page)

“I hear them,” Ben said, appearing by the sentry's side on the bluff of the crest. “Head's up now. Be ready for anything.”

Dawn was three hours old, the air clear and cold on the ridge. Dogs bayed in the distance. The wind was blowing west to east, a point in the Rebels' favor.

“You sure can move quiet, General,” the young Rebel said. “'Bout as quiet as anyone I ever heard walk.”

“Some people think I'm a ghost,” Ben kidded the Rebel.

And knew immediately it had been the wrong thing to say.

The Rebel looked at Ben strangely, an odd glint in his eyes.

“Don't take that seriously, son. I was only kidding you.”

“Yes, sir.” But the young Rebel wasn't so certain about that. He'd heard, many times, all the stories told about General Raines. All the amazing things. General Raines just had to be a little bit more than mere human. Or, the thought touched him with a light chilling effect, a little bit less.

Ben looked at his watch. 1000 hours. The troops of Tony Silver and the Ninth Order were right on time.

The Rebel Ben had spoken to the previous night was also checking his watch. “The general said they'd be here at ten o'clock,” he said to a group of Rebels. “And here they are. Right on the money.”

The Rebels shook their heads. No one ever questioned Ben Raines.

One more rung on the ladder of legend.

The distant baying of the dogs changed. “All right,” Ben said. “Get ready. The dogs have picked up scent.”

The thin line of defenders waited for several moments. The dogs drew closer, their barking more excited.

“I can't spot the dogs, sir,” a lookout called.

“They'll be along,” Ben said. “Mortar crews facing southeast, stand ready with twelve pounders. You have coordinates, observers?”

“Yes, sir! Still too far away for effect, but they're closing fast.”

“Sing out when they reach range.”

“Yes, sir. The dogs are visible, sir.”

“The first wave will be right behind them.”

Several hard explosions reached the Rebels dug in on the hill, faint screaming following the explosions.

“Claymores got a few of them,” Ben said with a faint smile. He knew first-hand how deadly the feared Claymores could be.

Mines buried in the ground began crashing, flinging bits of bodies into the air. The painful howling of dogs could be heard.

“I hope it killed all them damn dogs,” the young sentry said. “'Fore I joined up with you, General, I was travelin' with this girl. Beth was her name. I was seventeen, she was fifteen, she thought, wasn't really sure how old she was. We was over in central Texas, between Austin and Abilene. Come up on these men. They turned dogs loose on us. No reason for it. They just done it to see what we'd do, I guess. I guess they thought it was sport. The dogs got us separated. I will never forget it. There wasn't nothing I could do. Them dogs tore her to pieces. Them men just laughed like it was the funniest thing they'd ever seen. I got back to our truck and got my gun. Killed two of 'em. Or at least hit them. The others run off. I hate dogs. I know it ain't right for me to hate all dogs for what just a few done, but I can't help it. Can't seem to ever get that sight out of my mind.”

Psychiatrists could have a field day with me and my bunch, Ben thought. The shrinks would be leaping for joy. I wonder how many shrinks are still alive? Ben silently pondered. Not many. Those liberal bastards probably couldn't survive in the real world.

Ben, like so many men who were a part of military's special, highly elite troops, had a dim opinion of most psychiatrists.

“No one in their right mind could blame you for feeling the way you do,” Ben told him. “Not after seeing what you saw.”

The observer halted any further conversation. “The first wave has halted at twenty-five hundred meters, sir,” he called, his voice crackling out of Ben's speakers. He had them hanging loosely around his neck.

Ben put on the headset and asked, “You have them locked in?”

“Yes, sir,” the mortar crew chief replied calmly. “I can put them right up their noses.”

“All right, Sergeant. Then go ahead and clear up their sinuses.”

Ben heard the sounds of tubes being loaded, the
thonk
and the following flutter as the rockets flew toward target.

A few silent seconds lapsed between firing and impact. Then the ground below the men and women on the ridge erupted in sound and fury. The mixed mortar rounds, HE and WP, turned the area into an inferno, the white phosphorus rounds igniting the dry brush and timber. Burning shards of WP slammed into human bodies and began burning their way into flesh. Men ran screaming in agony; some flopped on the ground and rolled about, trying to ease the burning.

Nothing they did would stop the horrible pain as the phosphorus burned through flesh and bone.

“Gonna be forest fires come out of this,” the young Rebel standing beside Ben observed.

“It will be raining by two o'clock this afternoon,” Ben told him, not taking the binoculars from his eyes. He viewed the wreckage below with a soldier's satisfaction.

The young Rebel looked toward the skies. The sky was clear and cloudless. But if General Raines said it was going to rain . . . get your poncho out.

“Continue lobbing them in,” Ben spoke into his headset. “Drive them back. Let's clear their ranks out as heavily as possible during the first wave.”

The mortar crews continued working steadily for two more minutes before Ben called for them to cease firing. Lifting his field glasses to his eyes, he viewed the ripped low ground before him. He smiled as he looked at the smoking battleground.

Broken, shattered and bleeding bodies littered the scarred landscape of the earth. Arms and legs and heads had been torn from torsos and flung yards from the mangled trunks. Small fires were burning on the south side of the creek. A burning pine tree suddenly exploded like a bomb going off as the sap ignited.

“I count almost a hundred dead, General,” Captain Rayle said, appearing at Ben's side. “They've probably dragged forty or fifty wounded out of our line of sight, back into the deep timber. We hurt them, all right.”

“They'll leave us alone from that direction for a while,” Ben said. “You lookouts on the flanks and to the rear, heads up, now. They'll be sending out sniping teams.” Ben walked to the hastily dug communications bunker. “What's the word from the Base Camp?”

“Nothing since last night, sir.”

“Mopping up,” Ben told her. “The worst job of them all.”

“How many did we lose?” Tina asked Colonel Gray.

“Too bloody many,” the Englishman replied. “Counting the wounded, the dead, the desertions, we have had our strength cut by about forty percent. Old General Walker was killed, along with about half of his old soldiers who joined us. Walker died with a rifle in his hands, though. Reports say the old boy killed several of Willette's men before they gunned him down.”

“Eagle Three is reporting some pockets of resistance still to the east of us. The Scouts say they'll have it contained in a few hours. I'm sorry about General Walker. I liked that old man. Did he really fight in World War II?”

“He sure did,” Dan replied, just a touch of awe in his voice. “With Merrill's Marauders in Burma. He was a hero again in Korea, and was a general during the early days of Vietnam.”

Cecil strolled up, his face grim. “I have ordered our people in the field to offer surrender terms only once. After that, if our teams are met with armed force, the coup members are to be destroyed. I want this put down hard!”

“That's all we can do, Cec,” Mark Terry said, joining the group. There was a bloody bandage tied around his head and he had taken a nick on his left arm. He was grim-faced. “About twenty percent of my people were involved in the takeover attempt. I'm having those who survived shot at this moment. I warned them after that fiasco with Hartline and the IPF forces that any breech of orders would result in a firing squad.”
⁸

The group was silent for a moment, listening to the punishing shots roll from just north of the camp. Mark's eyes were tortured as he listened, knowing those were his people he had ordered put against the wall.

“How is Peggy?” Dan asked gently.

Mark sighed. With a visible effort he pulled his attention away from the shots of the firing squads. “She's OK. Her wounds were not serious. Doctor Chase and his medical people just returned to camp. That old man is
randy,
folks. He was leading a team of guerrillas in the woods. His people killed two teams of Willette's people.” Mark kicked at a pebble with the toe of a jump boot. His eyes were downcast, as if something heavy was weighing on his mind.

“Something on your mind, old man?” Dan asked.

Mark blurted, “Sally McGowen was among those killed at the football field.”

“Oh ...
balls
!” Dan said.

“How about the children?” Tina asked.

Mark shook his head. “Dead. Sally tried to protect them with her body, shielding them. It was a brave but futile gesture. The .50-caliber slugs went right through her. The kids bought it.”

“That's not going to set well with Ike,” Dan said. “He and Sally have been experiencing some troubles in their relationship, but he adored those children.”

Juan Solis and his brother, Alvaro, walked up. Both were bloodstained and dusty. “Willette and what was left of his bunch are gone. Disappeared into the timber, witnesses say. And it was Willette and some of his men who killed those people at the football field. Shot them in cold blood. Laughing as they murdered them. Witnesses who survived say Willette treated the entire matter as one big joke. Some of the Rebels guarding them, when they saw what was happening, dropped their weapons and ran to aid the wounded. Abe Lancer and his men were attacking the stadium, got there just in time to see the guards running. They thought the guards were a part of the murderers and opened fire on them. It was a night of confusion all the way around.”

“That couldn't be helped,” Cecil said. “I'll speak to Abe and his people. We're at the point where a traitor is a traitor is a traitor—to paraphrase Gertrude Stein.”

“What outfit was she in?” a young Rebel sergeant asked the ex-college professor turned guerrilla fighter.

“They're pulling out of the timber,” Ike said, after listening for a moment to his walkie-talkie. “But before we make any hasty moves, let's lay low for a few hours. It could be a trap.”

“You mean, they may know we have communications, now?”

“Yeah. But from what we just heard, the coup attempt at the Base Camp failed. But we took a lot of casualties puttin' it down. Lots of folks got killed.”

“Your wife?”

“I don't know,” Ike replied. “I'm worried about the kids.” He looked at Nina. “Don't read that as hard as it sounded. Kids and olds folks always take it on the chin in any war. I've seen too much of it not to know that's the way it goes down.”

“I don't wanna grow old,” Nina said flatly. “I feel sorry for old people. I seen it time after time, old people just pushed aside. Bad people abusin' them. It ain't right.”

“That's the way it was when the government of the United States was operatin' at full tilt, too, Nina. Don't get me started on that subject. I always did feel there should have been special laws for the punks and crud who attack and abuse old people.”

“What law would that have been, Ike?”

“Put the punk sons of bitches against a wall and shoot them.”

Together they lay in a thicket and listened to their walkie-talkies. Within moments of the initial pullback order, the radios fell silent as the searchers pulled out of range. Ike and Nina waited for an hour. The surrounding timber was silent except for the singing of the birds and the barking of squirrels as they went about their yearly tasks of gathering nuts for the fast-approaching winter months.

“Pretty and peaceful,” Nina said. “I wish the whole world was peaceful.”

“Maybe it will be someday,” Ike replied.

“Don't put no money on it,” her reply was pessimistic.

The pair ate a cold lunch, washing it down with fresh water from a rushing mountain stream. At Ike's orders, they gathered up their weapons and other gear and moved out, heading south.

This time they moved slowly and as silently as possible, stopping every hundred or so yards to check for sound or movement in the deep timber.

But only the natural sounds of forest inhabitants greeted them. They neither saw nor heard any of the men who had been chasing them.

Nina touched Ike's arm. “I think they're really gone.”

“Yeah, I agree, little one.” He looked at an old road map and then glanced around him, getting his bearings from deep in the timber. He pointed to a spot on the map. “We'll head out for this little town. This state road right here shouldn't be too far off. We'll find it, and take it into town. If we have any luck at all, we'll find some wheels and barrel-ass back to Base Camp. I wanna find out what's happened to Ben.”

“You're really worried about Mr. Raines, aren't you, Ike?”

“Worried maybe ain't the right word. Ben is tough as wang-leather. It's just . . . well, we've been together for a long time.”

“Kinda like the way brothers is supposed to feel?” Nina questioned.

“Yeah,” Ike said with a smile. “Brothers.”

“OK. So lead on, Mr. Shark.”

Ike wore a pained expression. “I keep tellin' you, damnit. It's SEAL, not shark. SEAL!”