Courage In The Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  “Bastard,” Lan Villar cursed Ben Raines and the Rebels. “He never misses a bet.”

  Young Parr had grown increasingly morose as the days dragged on. He hardly spoke now, oftentimes not even when spoken to. Lan would wager that Parr would not wait around for the Rebels to kill him; Lan had silently made a bet with himself that Young Parr would kill himself.

  Khamsin prayed a lot, Lan noticed. The formerly much-feared Libyan terrorist spent more time on his knees, on his prayer rug, than he did on his boots.

  Ashley was the only one who appeared to be taking his impending death philosophically. He spent a lot of time at a battered old portable typewriter, writing his memoirs, he told Lan. Bringing an end to an era, he added.

  “The only thing that’s comin’ to an end is your smart-aleck ass,” a big outlaw biker told him.

  Ashley would only smile and continue his typing, occasionally laughing at some line or paragraph he found amusing.

  “You know what Ben Raines is gonna do with that crap when he finds it?” the biker asked.

  “Probably recognize the writings of a genius and save it for publication,” Ashley replied.

  “What he’s gonna do is burn it,” the biker said.

  Meg, daughter of Matt Callahan, who had waged war against the Rebels in the western part of the United States, and had eluded the Rebels for months, had disappeared. Lan doubted she would resurface until the Rebels were long gone. But she’d survive, he was quite sure. Meg was a tough little bitch.

  “Why don’t we just go into the wilderness and hide ’til it’s over?” Parr asked, a tremble of fear in his voice. “Ben Raines won’t shell no timber. He’s so goddamn concerned about animals and the environment and all that crap.”

  Lan smiled at the very frightened young man who once fancied himself a big, bad, tough outlaw. “He’d just wait us out, Parr. We couldn’t take enough food with us to last through the first winter.”

  “Goddamnit!” the young man screamed, “I don’t want to die.”

  “Well, you’re going to die whether you want to or not,” Ashley told him. He held out a plastic container. “Here. Take one of those every few hours. It’ll help to calm you.”

  Parr grabbed the bottle out of his hand. “What is this stuff?”

  “Tranquilizers. You’re coming unglued, Parr. You’re going to turn into a babbling idiot if you don’t do something. Your hands are shaking so bad you couldn’t aim a rifle if you tried. There are enough pills in that bottle to last you a couple of weeks.” He shrugged his shoulders. “It’ll be over by then.”

  Parr swallowed two of the pills and then went to his quarters and carefully hid his newly acquired stash.

  “I’m tired of listening to his whining and complaining,” Ashley responded to Villar’s questioning look. “And we’re going to need every person we have to make any sort of fight against the Rebels.”

  “You’re very calm standing so close to your grave, Ashley. What have you got up your sleeve?’’

  Ashley laughed at the terrorist. “My God, Lan—I don’t have anything devious planned. You don’t think Ben Raines would let me live, do you?”

  Lan smiled. “No. That is something I do not believe. I have heard how much he dislikes you.” He laughed. “And also how he humiliated you years ago, in a fight, down in Louisiana.”

  Ashley’s face showed some temper rising at that. He fought it back and joined the terrorist in a smile; but it was a forced curving of the lips. “Yes. He certainly did that. But he didn’t fight fair.”

  Lan howled his laughter. “Fight fair?” he managed to choke the words off his tongue while wiping his eyes. “Do you still believe in fair fights, Ashley?”

  “Certainly,” Ashley said stiffly. “I might be a criminal—in the eyes of some—but I am still a gentleman.”

  Lan broke up again, the laughter bouncing around the room. When he calmed down, he walked over and patted Ashley on the shoulder. “We’ll be sure to leave word that you want that on your tombstone, Ashley. Yes. We’ll be sure to do that. ‘Here lies Lance Ashley Lanier, a gentleman to the end.’” He walked away, laughing uproariously.

  “Cretin,” Ashley muttered. “I hope I stay alive long enough to see Dan Gray beat you to death with his fists.”

  Khamsin and a big outlaw biker called Bishop who had once ridden with Satan’s bunch had sat at the table across the big room and listened to the exchange.

  Bishop stood up, a sneer on his ugly face. “I was in prison once with a gentleman. He could suck a dick better than anyone in the block.” He tugged at his crotch. “You wanna suck my dick, Gentleman?”

  Ashley smiled thinly and pulled out a government-issue .45. “People of your ilk always confuse civility with homosexuality. It’s a terrible mistake to make.” He leveled the muzzle and shot Bishop twice in the belly.

  The outlaw hit the floor, screaming as the hot pain hit him. Ashley stood up, leveled his .45, and shot the man in the head, stilling his screaming. He looked at Khamsin.

  “Do you have any disparaging remarks you’d like to make about me, Hot Wind?”

  “No,” the Libyan said. “I rather like the time I have left me.”

  “That’s good, Khamsin. Very wise move on your part.” Ashley sat back down at the typewriter and began typing out more of his memoirs.

  Khamsin motioned at a group of men who had gathered around the outside of the office. He pointed at Bishop. “Do something with him,” he ordered. “And if you like, you can carve on his tombstone that you cannot judge a book by its cover.”

  The bombardment of downtown Anchorage began at midnight. Every artillery piece in Rebel hands—from 155mm SP to 81mm mortars—began tossing projectiles into the heart of the city. The incoming rounds tore the tops off the taller buildings and sent tons of concrete crashing to the streets below. Then Ike ordered white phosphorous rounds dropped in, and the city began burning. He stood the artillery down at dawn, after a thundering night of sheer terror and death for those in the heart of the city, and at his order helicopters came in dropping napalm.

  Twelve hours later, at noon on a fine warm sunny day in Alaska, the heart of what had been the state’s largest city was burning out of control.

  “We’ll let it burn itself out, and then go in and see what we’ve got,” Ike said.

  Lan Villar had traveled up close to the bay. He stood looking at the huge columns of smoke rising from the ruined city. “We’re next, “he said grimly.

  Ike’s battalions entered the city at dawn of the next day. They were equipped and ready to fight pockets of resistance, but very few were left alive in the city. The defending outlaws had simply not prepared for a sustained artillery attack. The Rebels knew there were certainly dozens of outlaws still alive, trapped under tons of rubble. They would stay there, entombed by their own stubbornness and savagery.

  The Rebels spent that day and the next day in a search-and-destroy deployment. They searched a lot, but destroyed little, because most of the heart of the city had already been destroyed, and that included ninety-nine percent of those who had chosen to defend it. By dusk of the second day the Rebel platoon leaders declared the city dead.

  * * *

  Ben was up and walking around. He was doing more walking every day to keep his legs from atrophying, so he said.

  “Raines,” Chase said patiently, “you would have to lay up in bed for weeks, comotose, before anything like that would begin to occur.”

  “I know what I’m doing,” Ben told him.

  “A witch doctor knows more about medicine than you do,” Chase fired back.

  “Stuff it, Lamar.”

  “Stick it up your nose, Raines.”

  The two men argued and bitched and cursed each other as they walked the streets of the town. It was a welcome sight and sound to the Rebels. They knew that Ben Raines was going to be all right.

  “You ready to start givin’ ’em hell, General?” a Rebel called.

  “You damp right, Shorty,” Be
n replied. “It won’t be long now.”

  “What are we gonna find overseas, General?” a woman yelled.

  “Trouble,” Ben returned the yell.

  “What else is new?” she told him.

  Therm began joining the men on their daily walks. His wife had pointed out that he was getting a little tubby about the middle. Pissed him off mightily.

  On this day, Ben was not using his cane. “You have amazing healing powers, Ben,” Therm told him.

  “Modern medicine,” Lamar said with a smirk, knowing that would get a response out of Ben.

  “Horseshit,” Ben told him.

  A runner came up and handed Ben a message. The man stopped while Ben read the note. He smiled. “Anchorage has fallen. Very few prisoners taken. The crud fought almost to the last person. Ike begins his move against Lan Villar in the morning.”

  Lamar pointed to a bench. “Sit,” he told Ben. “You’re overdoing it.”

  Smoot sat down on the sidewalk and looked up at Ben. Ben said, “Lamar . . .”

  “Sit, goddamnit!” the doctor roared.

  “All right, all right,” Ben said.

  “There is something I want to know, Ben,” Lamar said. “Now is as good a time to ask it as any. The trip back east?”

  “We’re going to make one final sweep of it, Lamar. Lord knows, I’ve had enough time to work it out in my head. As it stands now, here it is: my battalion will take the top of the nation, leaving on Interstate 94. I’ll deal with Sister Voleta in Michigan. Ike will be the next battalion south of me. He’ll eventually link up with I-90 and take it to Chicago. Georgi will start out on I-80 and travel to the Atlantic. Danjou and West will be just south of him. Rebet below them. Then Tina’s battalion. South of her will be Buddy, south of Buddy will be Dan’s people along with Therm.”

  “Sweep it clean one more time before we head out, right?” Therm asked.

  “That’s it.”

  “Then it’s Europe?” Chase asked. “I’d like to see it one more time, Ben. I’m an old man.”

  “Of course, you’re coming, Lamar. But it’s going to be a mean son of a bitch over there.”

  “I know, Ben. I’ve thought it over carefully. You realize, of course, the logistics involved in this move?”

  “Yes. They’re awesome. Once we’re over there, until ships can resupply us, we’re going to be on our own. It’s a scary feeling, I’ll admit.”

  The men were silent for a time, Therm finally saying, “No more getting on the horn and having supplies flown to us in three hours time. We’ve got to take it all with us when we go. How many ships, Ben?”

  “I honestly don’t know, Therm. All we can scrape up and get seaworthy. It’s going to be a hell of an armada. We’ve got to transport all the tanks, artillery, trucks, everything that rolls or flies, and we’ll have to have a tanker or two carrying raw gasoline, and that’s going to be a lovely ride for those on board. I’ve got people on the East Coast working on it now. The last report I received stated that we—or they—have a dozen ships checked out and ready to sail from ports along the East Coast. I don’t think I want to chance the North Sea during winter. So if all goes well, we’ll sail next spring. It’s about four thousand miles, give or take a couple of hundred. If my addition is correct, that is. And we’d all better pray that God is with us on this run, boys. ’Cause we just don’t have many ex-ship’s captains in our ranks.”

  “You have two,” Therm said. “Sort of.”

  “Who?” Chase looked at him.

  “Me, for one,” Therm said.

  “You really know how to drive one of those big bastards?” Ben asked.

  “In a manner of speaking, yes.”

  “In a manner of speaking?’’ Lamar said, leaning forward to stare at him.

  “Who’s the other person?” Ben asked.

  Thermopolis smiled. “Emil Hite.”

  “I feel ill, boys,” Ben said. “Escort me back to the hospital. I need to lie down. Emil Hite! You’ve got to be kidding, Therm?”

  “Nope. He worked in a shipyard as a kid and got to be friends with captains and harbormasters and so forth. I think he’s on the level.”

  “God help us all,” Ben said. “I can just see him now. Admiral Hite.”

  “War does make for strange bedfellows, Ben,” Therm said with a smile.

  “Strange is one thing. Emil is quite another.”

  TWO

  Lan Villar and his troops braced for a frontal attack that did not come.

  “What the hell?” Lan said.

  Ike, meanwhile, was busy sending planes and helicopters far to the south, securing the towns of Seward and Homer. Those two towns and the towns of Ninilchik and Kachemak were in Rebel hands almost before Lan and his troops knew what was happening. The Rebels then began advancing toward Lan on three fronts: north, up Highways 1 and 9, on both sides of the peninsula, and pushing south out of Anchorage.

  “Son of a bitch!” Lan cussed.

  Ashley chuckled with dark humor.

  Parr was eating tranquilizers like candy. One of the outlaw bikers had smiled and winked and given the young punk a very large bottle of amphetamines. Parr began mixing the uppers and downers, producing wild mood shifts. He was now totally unpredictable.

  Ashley sat in his office in Kenai and continued work on his memoirs. He planned to be typing away when the Rebels entered the town and shot him dead.

  Khamsin now spent most of his time praying to Allah. It is unclear whether Allah heard his pleas, or not. If he did, he chose to ignore the ranting and ravings of the terrorist.

  The Rebels blocked Highway 1 south just a few miles outside of Kasilof. From the east, the Rebels secured the town of Sterling after a minor firefight and waited.

  “Why are they stopping their advance?” Khamsin paused in his praying long enough to ask. “Why are they doing this to us? Why don’t they come on and put an end to this game?”

  Thousands of outlaws in and around the town of Kenai were asking the same questions.

  “The Rebels are waiting for us to turn on each other,” Bonny Jefferson said, finally guessing the Rebels’ plan. “It’s the same shit they pulled up north.”

  “We’re running out of food,” Moose added. “In a week we’ll be eating each other.”

  “Then we’d be no better than them nasty Night People,” Jake said.

  “Who says we are?” Ashley asked.

  The Rebels moved closer, tightening the noose around the town. The outlaws tensed.

  “They’re not going to risk a person,” Lan put it together. “They’re going to move artillery into place and blow us all straight to hell.”

  Khamsin started flogging himself with a piece of rope, wailing out his prayers. He abruptly stopped as the sounds of big blades hammering the air reached the men.

  “Gunships!” Lan yelled.

  The words had just left his mouth when thirty helicopter gunships began raking the town with rockets, cannon and machine-gun fire. The gun-ships made one long pass at the town, then hammered away. Only the crackling of burning wood and the moaning of the wounded broke the deadly silence. The respite was very brief.

  “Fire!” Ike gave the orders.

  Every artillery piece at the Rebels’ command began thundering from the east and the south. Outlaw Foley was running from one building to another when he disappeared in a smear of blood as an 81mm mortar round landed two feet in front of him. One of Foley’s arms, neatly severed at the shoulder, landed on the windowsill directly in front of Young Parr’s horrified eyes.

  Ashley continued his typing.

  “You son of a bitch!” an outlaw biker screamed over the thunder at Ashley. “Ain’t you gonna fight?”

  “Fight . . . with whom?” Ashley said, looking up. “The Rebels are two or three miles outside of town, you ninny. There is no one within our limited range.”

  “Well . . . we gotta do something!”

  “Oh, we shall,” Ashley assured him. “We’re all going to die.”<
br />
  The outlaw biker cursed Ashley and ran out into the street. Shrapnel from a M731 antipersonnel round tore him into bloody chunks and scattered him all over the street.

  The next round landed on the building in which Ashley was working, and the unrepentant gentleman outlaw was buried under several tons of brick and concrete and steel, his memoirs lost forever.

  Outlaw Dixson tried to run from the burning and bloody streets of the town. A Rebel sniper, shooting a .50-caliber rifle from about 5,000 feet away, put a slug through the outlaw’s chest. The impact lifted Dixson off his boots and knocked him flat on his back in the road. He died with his eyes wide open, staring up at the sun.

  “Nice shooting, Rosie,” her spotter said

  A group of bikers cranked their motorcycles and tried to make a run for it. They got as far as Beaver Loop Road before spotters zeroed in on them and called for artillery. The bikers were sent to hell in a burning howl of white phosphorous, their saddle tanks exploding.

  Young Parr grabbed up his M-16 and went running and screaming toward the edge of town. With the luck of the stupid, he managed to avoid the incoming artillery. His system was so full of uppers and downers he didn’t know where he was or really what he was doing. He ran cursing Ben Raines, cursing the Rebels, cursing Alaska, and cursing the fates that had brought him to this point in time.

  Parr emptied the clip in his rifle, shooting into the air. He ran toward the Rebels’ position, bullets zinging and popping all around him. His drug-overburdened heart suddenly quit and he fell to the street, his nose and lips smashed as his rifle went clattering on the road. The young outlaw’s reign of terror was over.

  Bonny Jefferson looked around him at what part of the town he could see through the smoke. Everything was on fire, blazing out of control. “It ain’t right,” he yelled. “It ain’t fair. I got a right to a trial. My constitutional rights is bein’ violated. I got . . .”