Treason in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  “Asshole?” Blanton whispered. “You think I’m an asshole, Willie?”

  “At times, yes.”

  “I could not bear the thought of living under a dictatorship,” VP Hooter said.

  “Horseshit!” Senator Hanrahan spoke up. “What do you think we held the American people under for years before the Great War?”

  “It was not a dictatorship, Senator,” Homer said.

  “The hell it wasn’t. We taxed them to the breaking point to pay for programs the majority didn’t want, and when they objected and finally spoke up about it, refusing to pay more than what they felt was their fair share, we seized their possessions and/or put them in prison. During your administration—and I accept my part of the blame for it—the dictatorial powers of the IRS bankrupted and made homeless untold thousands of decent, hardworking American citizens. You issued orders—and the congress went along with it—to spy on the people, bug their phones and personal computers, stifle freedom of speech, and you stuffed unwanted programs and legislation down their throats, and in effect told the majority of American citizens that if they didn’t like it, that was just too goddamn bad. And you have the audacity to sit there and proclaim that you didn’t run your own petty and oftentimes petulant little dictatorship. I say again: horseshit!”

  “What’s changed you so, Senator,” the president asked. “What’s happened to you?”

  “I’m an old man, Homer. A worn-out old liberal who is tired of dodging the growing number of potholes in a political road that we should have abandoned several decades ago. I’m not saying that Ben Raines is one hundred percent correct. No political philosophy ever is. Ours certainly wasn’t, and if you haven’t seen that by now—and you obviously haven’t—then I feel sorry for you.” He stood up and walked to the door of the room. “I’m leaving, Homer. And I’m taking several of your key staff people and senators and representatives with me. We’re going down to join Ben Raines. And if you have the sense God gave a goose, you’ll do the same. Goodbye, Homer.”

  Senator Hanrahan opened the door, walked out, and did not look back.

  “We’ll fight the mongrel hordes descending upon us!” Rita Rivers bellowed, jumping up and marching around the room, hollering at the top of her voice. She sang a verse of “God Bless America.” In rap. Kate Smith was probably spinning in her grave.

  “Oh, no!” Blush Lightheart said, covering his ears.

  “Right on, sister!” VP Hooter hollered, jumping up to march around the room.

  “Wait a minute, Senator Hanrahan!” Blush hollered. “I’m coming with you.” He ran out of the room.

  “We’ll fight them and defeat them!” Rita squalled. “Damn filthy honky republicans. The democratic liberal way is the only right and true and just way. Power to the people. Together we’ll carry the banner of liberalism into battle and be victorious over the nasty, filthy republican right. Our slogan will be a chicken in every pot.”

  The President of the United States took his hands from over his ears and looked at the woman. He sighed and said, “Oh . . . fuck you, Rita!”

  “Now?” she asked.

  Cecil walked into Ben’s office. Ben was doing paperwork and he was frowning. He hated any and all types of paperwork. Cecil was wearing a smile that a charge of C-4 would not have been able to remove. Ben looked up at his old friend. “Want to tell me the joke, Cec?”

  “We won, Ben?”

  “Won what?”

  He held up a paper. “Blanton has agreed to sign treaties with us. He will officially recognize the SUSA as a separate and sovereign nation.”

  Ben took the paper and put on his reading glasses, quickly scanning the document. He sighed and removed his glasses, laying the paper aside. “It’s a desperation move, Cec. You know that. He wants us to fight his wars for him. That’s all this amounts to. He’s a goddamn liberal democrat. He’ll never keep his word after the smoke clears.”

  “I beg to differ, sir,” the voice came from the open doorway.

  Ben looked up to see Hanrahan and Lightheart standing there. He smiled and stood up, shaking hands with the men. “Did you two bring this document?”

  “Yes, we did, Ben,” Blush said. “And Blanton means every word of it. But there is more. He has agreed to give you total command of our army. The generals agreed to that. Once Revere is defeated, our two nations will exist side by side. We will sign a mutually agreed upon non-aggression pact and work out a free trade agreement. The United Nations is reconvening. They have agreed to the recognition of the SUSA as a separate nation. You’ve won, Ben. You’ve won.”

  There was joy in the SUSA, but it was tempered with the knowledge that a hard battle lay between them and full acceptance as a nation. Many Rebels would die. But freedom has never come cheaply. Members of the Rebel Army reached for their weapons and made ready for war.

  Cecil and his staff and Ben and his team flew into Charleston, West Virginia and were escorted to the White House. Cecil and Homer shook hands warmly. Ben did not offer his hand to Homer Blanton and the President of the United States did not offer his hand to Ben Raines. The two men didn’t like each other, didn’t trust each other, and that was that.

  Rita Rivers and VP Hooter glared daggers at Ben, and he pointedly ignored them.

  Ben turned to the large group in the room and said, “I would like for President Jefferys and I to meet privately with President Blanton and VP Hooter.”

  “Now see here!” Rita protested. “Please, Ms. Rivers,” Blanton quieted her. “All of you. Leave the four of us alone.”

  Blanton rang for coffee and when that was served and the door closed behind the aide, he looked at Ben. “It’s your call, General.”

  “President Blanton,” Ben said, after taking a sip of coffee. “You and I will probably never get along. I think you sense that as strongly as I do. But I really feel that you, and Vice President Hooter, do not truly understand the philosophies of the Rebel government. There has been so much misinformation spread about us, that your confusion is understandable.”

  Ben leaned forward. “I wanted Cecil to be the one to tell you these things, but he insisted that I do it. Perhaps in the hopes that you and I could become, if not friends, at least not enemies. I don’t know. But I’ll give this my best effort.

  “President Blanton, much of what you and all the other liberals in government tried to do before the Great War was admirable. Only a very callous or shortsighted fool would deny that. It was very impractical, but admirable. But you were trying, and will probably continue to try, to buck human nature. There will always be poor people, Mr. Blanton. That’s the way life is. In any land, on any continent. It has been that way since the beginning of time and will remain that way until God takes a hand and fulfills His promise to destroy the earth and all on it.

  “There will be those who will work hard all their lives and never have anything to show for it. There will be hopelessness and despair, tragedy and misfortune, needless suffering of good decent people, and the most terrible and heinous of crimes committed against the weak. There will be winners and there will be losers.

  “Mr. Blanton, we, as leaders, can only point people in the right direction, perhaps provide them with some incentive and material, and then turn them loose and hope for the best. We cannot be all things to all people, all the time. Not at the expense of others who can ill afford to foot the bills.

  “When people take away from society more than they give, in the form of criminal acts, and do it time and time again, I see no point in keeping those people alive. Not at taxpayer expense. This time around we didn’t kill them. I just ran them out and handed them to you.”

  “I know,” Blanton said, very drily.

  Cecil had to duck his head to hide his smile at that.

  “Now. Mr. Blanton, what you do with those types of people is your problem. You and the rest of the old hanky-stomping, weepy, take-a-punk-to-lunch, soft-line, liberal party helped create them, so you can have them. If they come back into the SUSA
with anything else on their minds than obeying the law and working hard and respecting the rights of others, we’ll bury them.

  “Mr. Blanton, I’m telling you all this not to chastise, but to warn you, to urge you, that if you don’t adopt some domestic policy very similar to ours, your emerging nation is not going to make it. You see and hear all those protesters outside this office? Why aren’t they out working on a home to live in? Gathering up free coal or cutting wood or gathering up scraps of wood to burn? There are millions of head of cattle just running loose all across this nation. They belong to no one. Why don’t they go gather up some and start a small ranch and farm? There are literally billions of chickens running loose, laying eggs all over the place. There is no reason for any of those people out there to be hungry. But they’re waiting on the government—your government—to do it for them.

  “Now there are old people out there who do need help, and they genuinely deserve that help, because you and all the other politicians sure as hell tore the taxes out of them for many, many years. There are very young people and some disabled people in that crowd. They, too, do deserve government help. And you don’t need forty-seven house and senate committees to do that. And the rest of those people, Mr. Blanton—they’re losers. They’ve been losers all their lives and they’ll die losers. They think nothing is ever their fault. It’s always the fault of someone else. The boss didn’t like them, he or she picked on them. They didn’t get promoted because of this, that, or the other reason. But never was it their fault. And if they do find work, they will do just enough to get by. Never more than their share.

  “I feel sorry for you, Mr. Blanton, because we’ve handed you the dregs of society. We’ve handed you the whiners, complainers, the chronic whip-lash and bad-backers. We’ve handed you the slackers and the dullards and the underachievers. Those are some of the types of people who are attracted to your form of government. The other type is the high-idealed, idealistic, and out of touch with reality person. They’re the smart ones. They have lots of book sense but not nearly enough common sense. They’re the ones who will form your staff and make up your house and senate. They will write your speeches and pass the legislation and implement all the glorious and totally unworkable social programs that will lead your government right back to the way it was when you first took office, a decade ago. And you know where that led.

  “So, Mister President, here we are. The Eagle and the Dove. The nation that I helped create is going to fly. We’re going to soar. We’re already so far ahead of your nation that you’ll never catch up, not unless you start to copy our ways. And I urge you to do that.”

  Ben stood up and looked at Homer Blanton. “That’s what I came to say, sir. You and Cecil work out all the formalities between our two countries. But you’ll have to excuse me; I have a war to fight.”

  “My war, you mean,” Blanton words were softly offered.

  Ben nodded his head and walked to the door. There, he turned around. “That’s about the size of it, Homer.”

  EIGHT

  Far to the north of the new White House in West Virginia, General Revere sat behind the desk in his headquarters building and mulled over the new situation that faced him. It was a brand new ball game now, for sure. The prospect of facing twenty battalions of combat-tested and proven Rebels, plus massive armor and artillery, soured his stomach.

  The signing of treaties between the USA and the SUSA had thrown a monkey wrench into Revere’s plans. That plan had been to defeat Blanton’s poorly-trained and ill-equipped army and then turn the hundreds of thousands of malcontents and whiners and complainers that Ben Raines had tossed out of the SUSA loose against Raines. They would overwhelm the Rebels by sheer numbers, then Revere’s troops, coming in force right behind them, would mop it all up.

  Now the baby just got tossed out with the bathwater and Revere was back to square one.

  Revere’s army was larger than the Rebels and Blanton’s troops combined, for thousands of foreign mercenaries had arrived to join his forces. But when facing the Rebels, size did not count for all that much. Khamsin, the Hot Wind from the desert, had learned that. So had Kenny Parr and Lan Vilar and Matt Callahan and the Night People and Sam Hartline and all the others who had faced Raines’s Rebels over the bloody years. Those people now lay rotting in their graves and Ben Raines was walking tall.

  “Shit!” Revere swore softly, as the door to his office opened and the commanding officer of his intelligence section walked in and took a seat. Revere lifted his eyes to the man. “I suppose you’ve brought me bad news,” he stated, not putting it as a question.

  The man lifted a folder. “Analysis just finished working this up. If we tangle with Ben Raines head to head in a conventional ground war, our losses would be unacceptable. They would be even worse if we tried to fight him using unconventional tactics. He is considered the world’s foremost expert in down and dirty guerrilla warfare.”

  Revere sighed. The news was not unexpected. “Give it all to me.”

  “We fall back across the old Canadian border, into the areas that are secure to us, and reopen the factories there while we continue to build in strength. If we run the war factories around the clock, seven days a week, in a year’s time we’ll have the armor and artillery to successfully face and defeat Ben Raines and Blanton’s forces.”

  Revere grunted. “Your experts have taken into consideration that during that year’s time, Raines and Blanton will be doing the same thing and growing stronger?”

  “Yes. But only Raines will be doing that. Blanton’s main thrust will be concentrating on social programs. Blanton is not nearly as security minded as Raines. Our people have been purged from the Rebel ranks, but we have many around Blanton. We have two on the White House staff who feed us information daily. We know everything that Blanton plans. He doesn’t polygraph people the way Raines does.”

  “Can we sanction Ben Raines?”

  “Highly unlikely. That’s been considered and rejected. Raines has security around him at all times. Most of the time you can’t see them, but there is a security circle around the man constantly. Outside of that, there is a uniformed larger circle, then another circle outside of that one. Even a suicide attempt would probably not be successful.”

  “Damn! How much time do we have?”

  “Not much, Paul. We’d better start moving immediately.”

  Revere slowly nodded his head. “All right. I’ll order the pullback. A year is not that long.”

  “I knew it!” President Blanton yelled when he heard the news. “Revere is all mouth and bluster. I knew he’d back away from us.”

  “He didn’t back away from us, sir,” General Holtz corrected. “He just didn’t want to tangle with Ben Raines.”

  “Whatever,” Blanton said with a wave of his hand. “Now we can concentrate on really important issues instead of pouring money into the military.”

  The generals exchanged glances. Same old jukebox, same old song. The generals rose as one and walked out.

  After receiving the news of Revere’s withdrawal, Ben called for a meeting with all his batt coms. “I don’t have to tell you what this means,” he said. “You all know. All Revere did was postpone the fight until he can grow stronger. Well, I’m not going to let him do that. We’re going into Canada and kick the shit out of him.”

  “Blanton won’t like that, Ben,” Cecil warned.

  “I don’t care what Blanton likes or dislikes,” Ben was quick to reply. “I have it on good authority that General Holtz will not commit troops against us. Blanton is going to pitch one of his temper tantrums but that’s about all he can do. We’ve got to cut the head off this snake before it can grow. Start moving supplies out by ship . . . now.” He placed a pointer on a map. “Dock in Maine, here, and start moving inland, setting up a depot . . . here. I want four battalions in place on the ground as security before the first ships dock. Dan, have your 3 Battalion parachute in along with Buddy and his special ops group. Georgi, you and your
5 Battalion go in with Jackie and her 12 Battalion. I’ll get things rolling here and then join you with my 1 Battalion. Thermopolis, work out the logistics. That’s it, people. Let’s go.”

  “He can’t invade a friendly sovereign nation!” Blanton squealed. “I’ll deny him ground routes and air space.”

  “With what?” one of his senior advisers asked. “That rabble protesting outside the White House? What are they going to do, hit the Rebels with their placards?”

  “You asked for Raines’s help,” Senator Arnold said. “Personally, I can’t stand the man. But he’s only meeting the threat the best way he knows how—before Revere can grow stronger. Reluctantly, I’ve got to support him. Besides,” he said with a nasty smile, “the Rebels might be so weakened after a sustained campaign against Revere that we would be able to crush him and put this Union back together.”

  “Right on!” Blanton said. “Good thinking, Senator.” He turned to his secretary of state, the former soap star, Cynthia Barnhart. “Advise Secretary of State Penny that this campaign has our full blessing. God speed and all that crap.”

  “He’s lying through his capped teeth,” Ben said, tossing the communique aside. “He hopes we’ll be so weakened by fighting Revere that his troops will be able to overwhelm us.”

  “Regretfully, that is my conclusion too,” Dick Penny said. “But I don’t believe General Holtz will stand for committing troops against us.”

  Ben smiled. “Oh, I know he won’t. I anticipated this from that goddamn liberal and met with General Holtz and his senior officers two days ago in Tennessee. If Blanton orders Holtz and his troops to face us after the Canadian Campaign, Holtz and his people will turn on him and depose him.” Ben smiled at a clearly startled Dick Penny. “You see, Dick, there are many things I have over President Blanton. He’s not nearly as sneaky as I am, and not nearly the one hundred percent hard-assed son of a bitch that I am. Nice guys can’t govern a nation this size. It takes a mean bastard to do that. It takes a man able to pick up a phone and order a sanction against an enemy. There hasn’t been a Democratic president since Harry Truman with the balls to do that. The Iranian mess could have been avoided if the president had killed Khomeni in Paris, but he didn’t have the guts to do it. All he wound up doing was fucking up a hostage rescue. I’d have killed that bastard and not given it a second thought. Khomeni, not the president. We had the deniables ready to go and in place. Blanton is going to make a bad mistake if he fucks with me.”