Battle in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  Under the light from a gas lantern, Ben studied maps of the state. “From Birmingham north to the state line, everything east of I-65 to the Georgia line is claimed by Wink. Everything west of I-65 over to Mississippi Highway 45 is claimed by Moi.” Ben put aside the maps and smiled, and with that, his team knew he’d come up with some plan; probably a very perverse one.

  “We attack tomorrow?” Corrie asked.

  “No,” Ben replied. “We’ll stay on I-20 over into Georgia. When we reach Georgia Highway 27, we’ll split up into company sized units, with each company having armor and artillery. Then we’ll start shoving Wink and his nuts and fruitcakes west.” He laughed. “Right into Moi’s territory. The results should be quite interesting. Wink’s people might decide to run north or south, and if they do, that’s all right. We’ll be ready for that, too. Corrie, bump Base Camp One and have gun-ships standing by ready to fly. I want gunships flying search and destroy along the northern, southern and eastern perimeters of our TO. Get the PUFFs ready to go as well. Might as well do this right.”

  “It’s a hundred and sixty six miles to Georgia Highway 27,” Beth told him.

  “We’ll figure two days total to reach it and spread out south to north,” Ben said.

  “Soften it up with artillery first?” one of the company commanders in attendance asked.

  Ben shook his head. “Not until we give the noncombatants time to get out of the area. I don’t like the idea of a lot of collateral damage if it can be avoided.”

  “And if they refuse to come out?” he was asked.

  “A lot of people are going to get hurt,” was Ben’s reply.

  It was a confusing and sometimes chaotic time in Texas. The Rebels and the multinational forces were very nearly overwhelmed by surrendering and very hungry Blackshirts. General Payon helped the situation immensely by clearing a way south through Mexico for the prisoners. The Blackshirts were disarmed and using their own captured vehicles, with the prisoners driving, were sent south, back to their own countries and to a very uncertain fate once they arrived. If they arrived. For the citizens of the Blackshirts’ home countries, once the bulk of Hoffman’s people had left for the north, had risen up and overwhelmed the dictatorial government in place.

  Cecil appointed Ned Hawkins and his force of New Texas Rangers to be the law in Texas and to clean it up. Hoffman, Brodermann, their staff officers, and at least several thousand of their SS followers, had disappeared without a trace.

  “We’ve won some battles but not the war,” Ben said, upon hearing that news. “They’ll stay down and quietly rebuild. For there are still thousands of people across this country who subscribe to Hoffman’s ideas. We haven’t heard the last of Hoffman. Not by a long shot. You’ve got to cut the head off before the poisonous snake is dead. And be damn careful when you handle the dead part, it can still kill you. Corrie, have Ike assign as many people as he thinks necessary to start scouring the land, looking for Hoffman. How about the plans of the multinationals?”

  “They agreed unanimously that they’ll stay until things are secure.”

  “Good enough. What about those that we learned were coming over?”

  “Cecil told them many thanks and to head on back home. And that anytime they might need help, to give us a shout. They said they would and wished us good luck.”

  “Any word from Moi or Wink?”

  “Yes.” She hesitated. “Moi says for you to take your offer and stick it up your honky racist ass. Wink says to take your offer and stick it up your nigger-lovin’ ass.”

  “Being misunderstood,” Ben said with a smile. “That’s the story of my life.”

  His team all groaned at that.

  “And no respect either,” Ben added. That got him another series of groans.

  “Gunships up?” Ben asked, when the groaning had died down.

  “Up,” Corrie said. “No signs of anyone trying to bug out.”

  “Fools,” Ben muttered. “The arrogant fools. Well, you can bet one thing, when the shells start dropping in on them, there will be some quick rethinking on our offer.”

  “But it’ll be too late then, won’t it, General,” the CO of Dog Company asked.

  “Yes,” Ben said slowly. “It will.”

  Jesus Hoffman had split up his remaining forces, disseminating them among the population and countryside. Hoffman could wait. He would choose his new people very carefully and proceed ever so slowly. And he now knew just the type of person who would jump at the chance to join his forces. The rabble of Paris had helped defeat Burgundy—so he had been taught in school—so too could the rabble of America help bring down Ben Raines. They all despised him with a burning passion that bordered on fanaticism. Hoffman knew that. So why not use them? The more he thought about it, the better he liked it. He had broached the plan to Brodermann, who had agreed to the genius of it.

  “Yes,” Hoffman said, leaning back in his chair and smiling. “It will work.”

  They had all carefully packed away and hidden their uniforms, and were now dressed in civilian clothing. They spoke only English. Any other language was forbidden. The men had all grown moustaches and many had grown full beards. They hunted and fished and scratched out gardens. All had plans to take American women as wives; those with children preferable.

  “One year, Ben Raines,” Hoffman spoke to the silent room. “Give me one year, and I will smash you into the ground. I learned from you, Raines. I learned much from you. I learned that you are not a gentleman. I learned that you are no more than a cut above a very cunning savage. Yes, I learned much. And for that, I will thank you just before I kill you.”

  Moi Sambura could not understand what was happening. He had sent scouts out north and south of his seized territory, but they could find no sign of the Rebels. But lots and lots of attack helicopters. And some strange-looking old slow prop planes, that fairly bristled with guns. Moi was the furthest thing from a fool. He knew from the description what his scouts had seen. PUFFs. One PUFF could effectively clear an area about the size of two or three football fields . . . of all living things. And do it very quickly.

  What the hell was that damnable Ben Raines up to?

  * * *

  “We got to get the wimmen and the chil’ren out of here, Wink!” one of Payne’s men said, panic in his voice. “They’s thousands and thousands of Rebels gathered over yonder to the west.”

  “Sit down, Ed,” Wink told him. “Calm yourself. There are not thousands and thousands of Rebels. There is one, maybe two battalions of Rebels. That’s it. That’s a total of no more than two thousand Rebels. And some of them is women. And we all know the only thing women is good for. So they’re probably along to screw the troops, is all. The crap we been hearin’ about women Rebels bein’ tigers in battle is just that, Ed. Crap. We got machines guns, mortars, and the bes’ automatic assault rifles anywhere in the world. Hell, Ed, we been coon-killin’ Moi’s people for years, ain’t we? Don’t that tell you nothin’ ’bout how tough we is, boy?”

  “I reckon you be right, Wink,” Ed said, sitting down. “But you better talk to the men. Some of them is gettin’ spooked about the rumors of thousands of Rebels.”

  “I’ll settle ’em down, Ed. You just leave that to me.”

  After the calmed down Ed had left, Wink sat in the study of his home and pondered what faced him. Unlike many, if not most, of his followers, Wink Payne was not an ignorant man. It was his radical views that drew the ignorant to him like steel shavings to a magnet. He would have been highly insulted had anyone suggested that he and Moi Sambura were so much alike in their thinking they could pass for mental twins. But it was true. The main difference between them was their color. Wink hated black people, Moi hated white people.

  Both were highly intelligent men, well-read and well-versed, but both were so blind in their individual hatred they could not see that even if they could somehow miraculously combine their forces, they would still be unable to defeat the Rebels.

  They didn�
��t know this, but Ben Raines did.

  The sadness of it all, Ben thought, as he leaned against the fender of his Hummer and stared at what used to be the Alabama-Georgia state line, is that both Wink and Moi are correct to a small degree in their thinking. Back when we had a central government in Washington, D.C. the nation’s leaders overreacted in an attempt to try to make up for two hundred years of injustice toward the blacks. Some white toes got stepped on; in many cases, trod on hard.

  Ben didn’t believe that standards should have been lowered to help the blacks, and neither did any intelligent black that he had ever met . . . once confidence was gained and both sides could speak freely.

  Cecil Jefferys had once said, “Toss them all into society with the same standards for everybody, no matter what color. It will be brutal, but the best and the brightest and the mentally toughest will make it.”

  But that didn’t happen until men like Ben Raines and Cecil Jefferys came into power. And Cecil’s words were proving to be correct.

  Ben had often written to and said to government leaders, back when the government was whole: “This nation cannot be all things to all people, all the time. To attempt to do that is not only physically impossible, but economically unreasonable and grossly unfair to the hard working taxpayers who are being forced, in most cases against their will, to foot the bill.”

  But the elected officials would not listen to men like Ben Raines and Cecil Jefferys. The best of friends. A black man and a white man of like mind. Hard men.

  “Wink,” Ben muttered, as he stared toward the west. “And Moi, too. You’d better get your acts together. And you damn well better do it quickly. ’Cause in about five minutes, I’m coming after you.”

  Ben walked back to where Corrie sat with her radio equipment. “Any word from either of them, Corrie?”

  “Not a peep directed at us, sir. But Beth has been listening to Wink’s people talk back and forth.”

  Ben cut his eyes. “What are they saying, Beth?”

  “That they’re going to kick our asses.”

  Jersey slapped a full clip of .223 ammo into the belly of her M-16. “I wonder if anyone over there would like to bet on that?” She stood up and looked at Ben. “Kick-ass time, General?”

  Ben nodded. “Kick-ass time, Jersey.”

  TEN

  In slightly less than fifteen minutes, eight towns that once bordered the Georgia line were reduced to blazing rubble and thick, swirling, choking smoke from the artillery barrage. Wink had finally used some common sense and moved women and children back to the center of his controlled territory, momentarily out of harm’s way. But when the barrage ended, not quite half of those men he had assigned to the eastern front lines made it out of the savage barrage of HE, WP, and antipersonnel rounds that rained down on their heads from miles away.

  Wink’s men had been told the Rebels would be easy to stop. And his ignorant followers had believed that. They had believed that right up until the shelling. They fired their mortars toward the east. But the rounds fell miles short of the Rebel artillery.

  Wink ordered his followers to fall back. “Blow the bridges on the Tennessee,” he ordered. He thought that might buy him some time. It wouldn’t. He thought that would show the Rebels how determined Wink Payne and his followers really were. It didn’t. He thought he would be able to rally his men and stop the Rebel advance. He was wrong.

  Ben, at the top of the state near the Tennessee line, simply drove straight down a secondary road, on the east side of the river and Guntersville Lake, blocked off the southern escape route, helped Baker Company put any of Wink’s stragglers into a box, and systematically set about mopping up.

  “We have one of Payne’s senior officers,” a scout reported, just as Ben was finishing the evening meal.

  It was pleasant in this part of the state, with thick forests, the foliage lush, and flowers at high bloom. The air was softly scented with dozens of fragrances, and the evening was cool for this time of the year.

  “Bring him in,” Ben said.

  The man was scared, and tried not to show it. But Ben and his team could smell it. They’d smelled it many times before. The man looked to be in his mid- to late forties, and was clean-shaven. Ben, knowing the man had been thoroughly searched, waved him to a chair.

  “Coffee?” he asked. “Mr. . . . ?”

  The prisoner looked startled. “Jeb Brown. Yeah, might as well,” he said. “I haven’t had real coffee in years.” He smiled thinly. “You give me a cup of coffee and then you shoot me, is that it, General?”

  Ben smiled and tasted his own just-poured cup. “No one is going to shoot you, Mr. Brown. You’re a prisoner. As soon as Wink is put out of business, you can go back to farming, or whatever it is you do. As for the coffee, our friends from South America just sent us tons of fresh beans. And we, ah, liberated more tonnage from General Jesus Hoffman and his Blackshirt army.”

  The man took the cup of fresh coffee, sniffed it several times and smiled. “That does smell good. Thank you, General.”

  “Por nada,” Ben said, his eyes hooded.

  “I don’t speak no greaser language.”

  “They are not ‘greasers,’ Mr. Brown. They are Mexicans, South Americans, Latinos. They might be Peruvian, Chilean, or whatever. But they are not greasers.”

  “They ain’t as good as no white man.” Brown took a gulp of coffee, holding the mug as if fearful it might be snatched away from him at any moment.

  “You are right about that, Mr. Brown. They are much better than you and your cohorts.”

  “Well, it figures you’d say that. You bein’ a nigger-lover an’ all.”

  “Wrong again, Mr. Brown. I don’t judge people by the color of their skin, but by their actions and deeds and how they treat other people. There are a great many black people I cannot abide. Just as there are people of all colors I personally have no use for. Including whites.”

  “Like Wink Payne.”

  “He’s one.”

  “Moi Sambura?”

  “He’s another.”

  “Can I have another cup of coffee?”

  “Sure.”

  Jeb gulped at the fresh cup of brew and said, “I’ll make a deal with you.”

  “What kind of deal?”

  “Well, I’ll tell you everything I know and you turn me a-loose.”

  “We already know everything you know.”

  “Huh! The hell you say! How would you know that?”

  “We infiltrated Wink and Moi’s groups years ago, Mr. Brown. We didn’t consider either of you important enough to waste much time on back then. You could wait. We had other, more pressing battles to fight. We know what you have in the way of weapons, and the battle plans of both groups. So you see, Mr. Brown, you have nothing to barter.”

  “I’ll be damned. You ain’t got no smokin’ tobacco on you, has you?”

  Ben tossed him the makin’s.

  Brown rolled and licked and lit. He tossed the bag and paper onto the desk.

  “Keep them, Mr. Brown,” Ben told him. “I doubt you’ll have the bag smoked by the time this little exercise in futility is concluded.”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s going to be a very short war.”

  “Can I speak frank with you, General?”

  “Go right ahead.”

  “Where do you come off roarin’ in here and stickin’ your nose into our business?”

  Ben smiled. “Brown, I could talk for the rest of the night, but I don’t know if you would ever understand. We don’t care if you don’t subscribe to our way of life. We really don’t care. But when you start killing innocent people, children in many cases, simply because they wouldn’t get off the sidewalk and let you walk by. When you horsewhip and lynch black men and boys for daring to speak to a white woman, and all the other atrocities you people have committed . . . well, Mr. Brown, that offends me. I feel obliged to come to you and read to you from the scriptures, so to speak. Do you understand what I’m saying?�
�

  “You don’t think Moi Sambura done the same thing to white folks? Hell’s far, man, that nigger come in over yonder and run off or kilt hun’erds of good decent white people!”

  “We are going to deal with Moi, Mr. Brown. Rest assured of that.”

  “You gonna kill him?”

  “In all-likelihood.”

  “Good.”

  “And Wink Payne too.”

  “But Wink’s a lay preacher. He’s a good Baptist. He’s a religious man. He can show you right in the Bible where it says plain as day that niggers ain’t as good as white folks.”

  Ben reached into his rucksack and tossed a Bible on the desk. “Show me, Brown.”

  “Well, now, I can’t personal show you. But Wink can.”

  “And you believe that?”

  “Shore.” Brown looked at Ben for a few seconds. “You really read the Bible, General?”

  Ben thought of the remark attributed to General George Patton when a reporter asked him that same question. “I sure do, Brown. Every goddamn day.”

  Jeb Brown blinked at that.

  “Get him out of here and feed him,” Ben said. “Then lock him up.”

  Wink Payne was a good speaker. He could motivate a crowd to do just about anything. But as a soldier, he had a lot to learn. The Rebels were kicking the butts of his people at every report. Wink kept backing up until he found, much to his surprise, he could back no further. I-65 was the separation line between Wink’s little nation and Moi’s claimed territory.

  “That dirty, no-good, rotten, honky son of a bitch!” Moi cussed Ben.

  His aides stood quietly. Moi and his people all wore flowing robes and cute little Muslim caps. They would soon discover the outfits, while quite African, were very impractical as combat uniforms.

  “Be sure and get me one of those hats,” Ben said, after interrogating one of Moi’s scouts. “I want to give it to Cecil.”

  “And do you have any idea what General Jefferys will tell you to do with that hat?” Jersey asked.