Trapped in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

“And now?” Jerre asked.

  “Nothing has changed. We keep Khamsin on the New Jersey side of the river and concentrate on wiping out the Night People. We’ve got a few days; it’ll take him that long to recover from the mauling we handed him and to make some plans. Let’s get down to some serious ass-kicking, people!”

  But the creepies had vanished. There was not one shot fired from either side all that day.

  “Khamsin’s been in contact with them,” Ben told his commanders that afternoon. “They’re cooking up something and there is no point in us sitting around worrying about it. Let’s take this time and strip New York City. We’ll take it block by block and treasure-hunt. We’re going to take everything of value, and then I just might blow this goddamn place into oblivion. I don’t know; I haven’t decided yet.”

  “Shore would take a lot of powder,” Ike drawled.

  “Not as much as you might think,” Ben told him. “Since I discovered a pocket of methane gas over near where the kids were found, I’ve had some engineers working wherever they felt was clear of crawlers. The city is sitting on top of many, many pockets of methane. I may use it. I don’t know.

  “For the next few days, we’re going to strip New York City. Start working your sectors. Blow every bank, inspect every museum and gallery. Go into the major TV and radio networks and recording studios and take it all.”

  After the men and women had left his CP, Ben sat alone, behind his desk, deep in thought. He looked up as Jerre entered the room.

  “Am I interrupting, Ben?”

  “No. Glad to have the company.”

  “You looked deep in thought.”

  “I was thinking about all the history I would destroy if I left this city in rubble. History that future genera dons can ill afford to lose. Central Park, City Hall, Fraunces Tavern, UN headquarters, and a lot of other places I can’t recall off the top of my head.”

  “Will there be future generations capable of understanding history, Ben?”

  “Oh, yes, Jerre. Don’t ever lose hope of that. That’s what we’re fighting for. Our own survival, to be sure. But much more than that, we’ve got to be planning for generations that will be along a century after we’re dry bones in the grave.”

  “And that really matters to you, doesn’t it, Ben?”

  “Yes, Jerre, it does.”

  “Strange comment from a man who was once a mercenary, don’t you think?”

  “Maybe.” He smiled at her. “But I told you, I was more a soldier of fortune than a mercenary.”

  “You think Khamsin and the creepies will be making more moves to kidnap me?”

  “Yes. More than ever. Although it may not seem that way to you, for the first time, we’ve got them on the defensive. The Night People are fighting scared. Morale must be terribly low in the Hot Wind’s army. Unfortunately, we’re not in a position to do much about it. We’re still stuck on this island.”

  “But you could break out if you wanted to, couldn’t you, Ben?” She asked the question softly.

  “Oh, yeah, kid. That we could do.”

  She waited for him to elaborate. When he did not, she said, “What’s the matter, Ben? You don’t think I’m the informant, do you?”

  “Oh, no, Jerre. Colonel Gray found him this morning.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. A man who’d been with us for several years. Shows you how long the Night People have been monitoring us.”

  “Where is the man?”

  “I shot him about two hours ago.”

  TEN

  “Come on.” Ben shook Jerre’s foot. “We’re getting an early start today.”

  She opened one eye and gave him a bleak look. “Jesus, Ben! What time is it?”

  “Two-thirty. We’re going to take a little trip this morning and see if we can’t catch some creepies with their drawers down.”

  She swung out of the cot. “What a disgusting thought, especially at this time of the morning. Where are we going, Ben?”

  “You’ll see. Shake a leg.” He began rousting out the others.

  After advising them all that if they weren’t down on street level, in full combat gear, in fifteen minutes, he would reassign them all to the death barges, Ben walked down the steps and out onto the bitterly cold and dark street.

  Dan was waiting for him. “Good morning, sir!” he said brightly, and poured Ben a cup of steaming coffee. He handed him a sandwich.

  “Do I dare ask what is in between these two pieces of bread, Dan?”

  “I would not, sir. Just envision several thick pieces of bacon and try to convince your taste buds of the accuracy of that.”

  “I was afraid of that.” He took a bite, and then his face brightened with a big smile. “I’ll be damned, Dan! Peanut butter and jelly!”

  “We found a huge underground warehouse fairly packed with all sorts of goodies: cheeses, powdered milk, powdered eggs, potato flakes—all sorts of things. Some of it was ruined, naturally, but quite a lot of it was still in excellent shape.”

  “Our luck is changing, Dan. I can feel it.”

  “I think so as well, General. If our intelligence was correct, we’ll deal the Night People a terribly crippling blow this morning.”

  “I’m counting on it, Dan.”

  Cooper, Beth, Jersey, and Jerre came wandering out of the building, yawning and stretching and pulling at the uncomfortable body armor under their shirts.

  “Grab you some coffee and a sandwich,” Ben told them. “I’ll drive.”

  “Oh, God!” Jersey said. “We’ll never get there alive. Where the hell are we going anyway, sir?”

  “You’ll see. Get in,” he said, as the Blazer was pulled around to the curb. Chuckling, Ben got behind the wheel. He frowned as three APCs pulled out of a side street and took the point.

  “You really didn’t think we’d let you take the point, did you, now, General?” Dan admonished him through the window.

  “I could always hope. Come on, let’s get this show on the road. Who is taking point?”

  “Buddy. See you at the train station, General.”

  “Right.” Ben blinked his lights a couple of times and the APCs pulled out.

  “Wow!” Beth said. “These are peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.” She took a big bite and rolled her eyes in satisfaction.

  Ben pulled out and with a free hand, pointed to the sandwich in Jerre’s hand. “Eat, kid, and be happy. How long’s it been since you had peanut butter and jelly?”

  “Long time, Be . . . General.”

  “You two can relax around us, for Christ sake!” Jersey managed to speak around a stuffed mouth. “So why don’t you knock off the formalities. Makes me edgy.”

  “Maybe you’re just horny?” Cooper suggested.

  “Put a zipper on it, Cooper! And eat!”

  “We have about seven or eight miles to go,” Ben told them. “The others were briefed just before I ordered that early turn-in.”

  “I wondered about that,” Jerre said, glancing at him. “You think there might be other informants among us?”

  “I’m sure of it. Probably in all critical areas. Two more were ferreted out around ten o’clock. They’re either still being questioned or they’re dead.”

  “And our destination on this miserable morning?” Jerre asked, munching on her sandwich and sipping on the welcome coffee.

  “Grand Central Station, gang. Actually, it was a terminal, not a station. You follow me in, and stay with me. We have very good intelligence that the place is swarming with creepies. The place is about fifty acres, that’s above and below ground. The underground yard stretches from Forty-fourth to Fifty-ninth Streets. I have people already in position at Fifty-ninth, ready to go in. They’ve found rabbit holes the creepies have tunneled through. Buddy is hitting the main concourse first, clearing it. The terminal runs five stories below ground, and has a maze of old steam pipes. Going to be a lot of creepies among those pipes. This isn’t going to be either pleasant or easy. But it has to be
done. We’ve broken a leg from under the Night People already. Let’s break the other leg this morning.”

  Ben followed the tanks and APCs as they turned south off 125th Street onto Park Avenue and headed south. Their unusual but tasty breakfast finished, the passengers in the Blazer tried to relax as best they could in their uncomfortable battle harnesses, loaded full with clip pouches and grenades.

  “How do you know the creepies won’t be alerted and waiting for us?” Jerre asked.

  “I don’t. But we’ve never launched a night attack directly at them, so it’s something they won’t be expecting from us.”

  They crossed 116th Street. They had not seen one living thing since leaving the CP. The city seemed deserted under the layer of snow still blanketing the streets. The temperature was hovering right around ten above, and with the winds blowing, the chill factor was well below zero. The chains on the rear tires of the vehicles dug through the snow and clanked against the brick and concrete of the old streets as the convoy pushed south toward the terminal.

  They passed 96th Street, still some fifty blocks away from their objective.

  “You ever ride the trains out of this place, General?” Cooper asked.

  “A few times. I remember the main concourse. Huge place. The terminal used to be called—by some—the town square of Manhattan. You could buy a newspaper from London, have a photo taken, get your shoes shined, eat some oysters, or play tennis for about sixty-five or seventy dollars an hour.”

  “Lots of people used the trains?” Jersey asked.

  “’Bout a quarter of a million people a day, so I was told. It’s an old place. I’d guess maybe ninety years old.”

  They rolled past 85th Street. It seemed to the Rebels that they were visitors on a distant planet—a cold, barren, lifeless planet. But they all knew only too well that death waited around every corner, every turn, in every building, and until recently, under the very streets they now drove, the headlights searching the darkness.

  “Tunnel Rat to Eagle,” the speaker squawked.

  Ben lifted the mike. “Go, Rat.”

  “Swinging over onto Lexington at Sixty-fourth.”

  “Pull over and wait for us, Rat.”

  “Ten-four, Eagle.”

  “Eagle to Scout Team Three.”

  “Three.”

  “Are you in position?”

  “Ten-four, sir. Waiting for the commuters.”

  Ben grinned. “They’re in position at Fifty-ninth and have the holes plugged.” Lifting the mike, he said, “Hang tough and good luck.”

  “Same to you, sir.”

  The lead vehicles pulled over behind Buddy’s short column. “Bloomingdale’s is just a few blocks down,” Ben said. “You ladies want to go shopping? Maybe buy some nighties?”

  “If they model them, can we watch, General?” Cooper said with a grin.

  “Cooper,” Jersey said, giving him an elbow in the ribs. “I swear to God I think your brains are between your legs.”

  Laughing, Ben got out of the Blazer and into the bitterly cold night. He walked up to his son. “Ready, boy?”

  “Yes, sir. Dan and Tina are in position on the west side of the complex, ready to go in.” He grinned, his teeth flashing in the night. “General, Ike and Cecil are going to be highly irritated about being left out of his operation, you know?”

  “Can’t be helped. I couldn’t risk the informants picking up on any transmissions and leaking it.” He gripped the young man’s thick, muscular arm. “Let’s go kick some ass, Buddy.”

  “Good luck, Father.”

  “Same to you, son.”

  Back in the Blazer, Ben pulled out behind the lead vehicles and they rolled past Bloomingdale’s department store. Jerre was looking wistfully at the huge store.

  “You reckon they really have some pretty nighties left in there?” she asked.

  “I wouldn’t doubt it,” Ben told her. “But in this weather, do you really want to trade your longhandles for a silk gown?”

  “It’s gonna be spring sometime, General. I hope.”

  “I feel like I’ve been cold for a damn month!” Beth said.

  “I got news for you,” Ben said with a laugh. “You have!”

  They rolled past Citibank and Citicorp, past the House of Seagrams and the YWCA. “The Waldorf-Astoria,” Ben pointed out.

  “I bet they got beds with mirrors on the ceilings in there.” Cooper grinned at Jerre.

  “Cooper,” she told him, “just think of your M16 as your pecker. And use it accordingly.”

  The column stopped at 44th Street. “Jack ’em in,” Ben said, bailing out of the Blazer. “Let’s go!”

  The sounds of hard gunfire split the night as Buddy and his team hit the main concourse, catching the Night People at rest, huddled together against the bitter cold. The booming and thudding of grenades ripped the gloom of the city blocks around the famous and majestic old terminal.

  The APCs and trucks spewed out Rebels. The tanks spun around in the snowy street, men and women manning machine guns, ready to chop down any crawlers who might try to escape the attack above ground.

  The stench of the filthy hit them all hard as Ben led his team into the main concourse.

  “Good God!” Jerre said, wrinkling her nose at the almost overpowering odor.

  Ben lifted his Thompson and gave a black-robed bunch a short burst of .45-caliber Rebel retribution. The rattle of gunfire was echoing and reverberating in the 125-foot-high main concourse, bouncing back from its vaulted ceilings. Bullets were whining as they ricocheted off the marble floor and splattered and flattened against the walls.

  “Pick your shots!” Ben yelled over the din. “Watch for ricochets!”

  The move by Ben and his Rebels had caught the Night People completely by surprise. This location was deep in controlled territory, and they thought they were safe. A group of Dan’s hand-picked Scouts had silently neutralized the guards moments before the attack came, leaving them sprawled in the cold and snow, knocked down and dead by silenced .22-caliber auto-loading pistols.

  When several hundred heavily armed Rebels came storming into the huge terminal, the attack had further demoralized the already low-spirited crawlers. Sleepy, cold, and hungry, the Night People could do little for the first few moments except die.

  And they died in stinking heaps on the cold floor of the terminal, their blood staining the filth-encrusted marble.

  The main concourse was cleared in only a few minutes, and teams of Rebels began dragging the dead outside, to pile them on the street, awaiting transport to the death barges in the harbor. The floor could not be watered down, removing the blood, for the water would freeze seconds after hitting the floor.

  “Gas masks!” Ben ordered. “Tear-gas cannisters into the lower level!”

  The cannisters went bouncing and hissing and spewing their fumes into the levels below the main concourse.

  Those who ran in panic from the blinding tear gas only ran into more tear gas being tossed down from 59th Street, and from the street entrances of their thought-to-be-safe hidey holes. Half blinded by the harsh gas, the Night People ran right into the guns of the Rebels and died in bloody stacks amid the steam pipes of the old terminal.

  There was no point in trying to surrender, and the creepies knew it, and did not attempt it. They died cursing Ben Raine and his Rebels.

  The battle was short, savage, and bloody. Ben did not order pursuit of the crawlers below the second level. “Blow it,” he ordered. “Bring it down on them or block them off.”

  The Rebels made their way back out onto the streets around the old terminal and waited while the demolition teams did their work. It did not take long for them to plant their massive charges of C-4 and C-5. At their signal, Ben ordered his people well away from the terminal and told the explosives experts to drop the hammer.

  The concrete beneath their boots trembled when the radio-detonated explosives blew. One section of the building, that part bordering 45th and Lexington
, collapsed, sending up clouds of dust and raining down bricks and steel and mortar.

  Trucks arrived to cart off the frozen dead. “No point in leaving them here,” Ben observed. “Their friends would eat them.”

  Ike and Cecil and West roared and clanked up. Ike bailed out and began cussing and jumping up and down, yelling at Ben for being a damn fool and why in hell didn’t he let them in on the raid. Then the stocky ex-Navy SEAL lost his footing on the ice and snow and did a frantic, arm-waving ballet before he thumped down on his butt in the middle of the street.

  Ben and Dan were laughing so hard both men were clutching their sides at Ike’s antics.

  “Baryshnikov should be here to see those moves, Fats,” Dan stuck the needle to Ike. “He’d be envious.”

  “Who the hell is that?” Ike yelled, trying to get to his feet and only succeeding in falling down once again.

  Even Cecil had lost his irritation and could no longer keep a straight face.

  “Who is Baryshnikov?” Dan yelled at Ike, spinning around and around on the ice in the street. “Only a redneck would ask that question, you . . . you cretin!”

  “Redneck!” Ike squalled. “You prissy limey! Just for that, you’ll never get to listen to my George Jones records.”

  “Who?” Dan asked.

  “George Jones, you heathen! Everybody in the world’s heard of George Jones. Somebody help me up, god damn it!”

  “Who is George Jones?” Dan asked Ben.

  “He sang country songs.”

  “From what country?” Dan asked, a confused look on his face.

  From America!” Ike squalled, getting to his boots a clump of snow in one gloved hand. He balled it and tossed it at Dan, hitting the Englishman on the forehead.

  And in the middle of sprawled death, standing in the freezing cold, America and England carried on the Revolution . . . with snowballs.

  ELEVEN

  A blizzard was raging when Ben awakened that morning. He looked at his watch. Ten o’clock. And it was cold, the wind howling through the patched-up windows of his office.

  He dressed quickly and stepped into the anteroom. The rest of his crew was just getting up and dressing. “When you get some coffee and food in you, Beth, advise the field commanders to hand out extra rations and keep the troops in as much as possible. I want guards changed every hour, and advise the medics to be on the lookout for frostbite.”