Chaos in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  Older now, and much more the statesman, Homer sat back and gave that some thought. “Let’s leave them there for the time being as advisors and administrators only,” he finally said. “I don’t want them in any combat role. And I sure as hell don’t want us to get bogged down over there. We’ve got too many problems here in North America to resolve before we can take on the world.”

  Cecil smiled. “You and Ben really aren’t that far apart in thinking.”

  Blanton returned the smile. “Not anymore, at least. But he had to kick me in the ass to make me realize that.”

  Cecil laughed. And yet another friendship was born out of misunderstanding.

  Far to the north of Ben’s position, Issac Africa read the dispatch with great interest and growing anger. Simon Border was up to something—but what? According to the dispatch, Rita Rivers couldn’t figure it out either. But that came as no surprise to Issac. Rita was ugly as a mud fence, but a great fuck. However, she didn’t have the common sense Allah gave a goose.

  And neither did Harriet Hooter.

  Both of them together couldn’t change a light bulb.

  Issac crumbled the note and tossed it. Rita and Harriet had no more stroke. Politically, they were finished. Therefore, Issac had no more use for Rita. Simon Border would make a place for both of them in his organization, but it would be positions of no importance.

  Issac’s main concern now was that goddamn Ben Raines. Issac knew that once Ben got pissed off, he would squash that loony-tunes honky redneck Musseldine like a bug.

  Then Issac would be next.

  Issac was under no illusions about that, either.

  No army anywhere in the world had ever defeated the Rebels, including the U.S. Armed Forces. Issac had a lot of troops; the Rebels had more and they were much better equipped. The Rebels had rocket-assisted artillery that could lay back twenty miles and hit the targets with scary accuracy.

  So what was the best course of action?

  Issac knew, but it galled him to even think about it.

  Compromise.

  But would Raines even talk about a compromise?

  One way to find out.

  He headed for his communications building. If he could just buy a little time, perhaps he could build up his army so strong that even Raines might have second thoughts about attacking him.

  It was worth a try.

  What had once been the thriving city of Little Rock was a shambles, almost exactly as the Rebels had left it after bringing it down in their relentless quest to rid the earth of gangs and thugs and punks and the hated Night People.

  There was one difference now: the rabble were squatting amid the ruins.

  “Why?” Anna asked, upon sighting the men and women and kids. “With all the land and homes theirs for the taking, with cows and chickens and pigs and goats and sheep by the hundreds of thousands, why are they picking through the trash, always on the verge of starvation?”

  Ben didn’t reply. His eyes were sweeping the area ahead. Something was all out of whack here but he couldn’t immediately bring it into focus.

  “Hold it up right here, Coop,” Ben said.

  Cooper stopped the van. “What’s wrong, boss?”

  “I don’t know. Corrie, order tanks buttoned up and forward. Everybody get ready for a fight. I think we’ve been suckered.”

  “How?” Cooper asked.

  “Just a hunch, Coop. Just a hunch. See how the women are staying between us and kids at all times? See how both the men and women are all dressed in long coats? Hell, it must be ninety degrees out there. They’re hiding weapons. Back us up behind the tanks.”

  But Ben’s warning came too late. The so-called “rabble” suddenly dropped behind carefully worked out and previously chosen defensive positions and opened fire on the Rebels.

  A battle tank was coming up fast, trying to get between the van and the attackers, but it was just a few seconds too late. A mortar round exploded in front of the van, rocking the heavy vehicle and pocking the bullet-proof windshield. Light machine-gun fire hammered against the grill and the radiator began pouring out clouds of steam.

  “Out the back!” Ben yelled. “Grab what you can and get the hell out of this tin coffin before it blows.”

  Ben and his team quickly exited out the rear of the van with just seconds to spare. A rocket slammed into the side of the van and the vehicle exploded in flames. The force of the explosion knocked Ben and team to the street, momentarily stunned, but otherwise unhurt. They scrambled to their boots and raced for cover.

  “Talk about walking into an ambush with our eyes wide open,” Ben panted, as he crouched down behind what was left of a brick store-front wall.

  “Nobody picked up on it, Boss,” Jersey said. “These people are better than we thought.”

  Ben brushed the dust off his Thompson and nodded his head. “Yeah. But we do have a slight problem, gang.”

  His team looked at him over the rattle of weapons.

  “We’re cut off,” Ben said.

  TEN

  Musseldine’s people tried a frontal against Ben and team. It was suicide. The guns of the MBTs opened up and chopped them to the pavement of the littered street.

  “Cooper, you and Anna take the rear,” Ben ordered.

  Cooper grabbed his SAW and a can of ammo and he and Anna got into position.

  Ben was thankful now that he had sent Smoot back to Base Camp One, getting the Husky out of harm’s way.

  A long burst of heavy machine-gun fire kept the heads of Ben and team down for half a minute.

  “They’ll be working closer under that cover,” Ben shouted over the roar of combat. “Coming out of the alleys from side and rear. Get ready for it.”

  Several of Musseldine’s people rushed the side, making it over the piles of brick and junk that were once the building.

  Anna caught one in mid-jump and gave him a burst from her CAR, the .223 rounds stitching him from groin to neck. He fell in a lifeless lump at her boots.

  Cooper made a one-handed catch of a thrown grenade and tossed the pineapple back with about one second left on the fuse. “Down!” he yelled, just as the grenade blew. The pineapple exploded about two feet off the ground and the shrapnel from it peppered several of Musseldine’s fighters.

  “Are they brave or just stupid?” Jersey called over the painful shrieking of the horribly wounded.

  “They’re religious fanatics,” Ben replied. “And that makes them doubly dangerous.”

  Then there was no time for talk as Musseldine’s people charged Ben’s position.

  But two more main battle tanks had joined the fracas, and they opened up with .50 caliber machine guns and M-60 machine guns, laying down a devastating half circle of fire around Ben’s position. Musseldine’s people went down like broken bowling pins, flopping and kicking and screaming their lives away on the littered and now blood-soaked street and alleys.

  “We have a narrow window to our left,” Corrie called. “But it’ll be closing in a matter of seconds.”

  “Let’s take it!” Ben shouted. “Go, people, go! Follow me!” Ben was over the wall and running before anyone could stop him.

  The few seconds of the safety net closed as Musseldine’s people shifted around.

  Ben came face to face with a burly and bearded man, a wild light shining in his eyes. Ben stuck the muzzle of the old Thompson in the man’s face and pulled the trigger. The man’s head exploded in a shower of blood and brains and bone, all of it splattering the brick wall behind him.

  Ben and team ducked into a building as the window of opportunity was completely sealed off.

  A woman came running and shrieking toward Jersey, shouting something about saving babies from the devil’s knife of abortion and calling Jersey a whore of evil.

  “Oh, fuck you!” Jersey said, then shut her up permanently with half a mag of .223 rounds.

  “What kind of nuts are we fighting?” Jersey panted. “Abortions?”

  Ben shoved a fresh
mag into the belly of the Thompson. “A wing of the old religious right—the extremist branch of it. The nuts are really coming out of the woodwork now.”

  “All the years we’ve been fighting the punks and warlords and street crap and Night People, they’ve been in deep cover, training,” Cooper remarked, keeping an eye on the street from his position behind a blown-out window.

  “You got it, Coop,” Ben agreed.

  “And I thought we had some real piss-heads in my country,” Anna said.

  Ben smiled at the now grimy-faced teenager. Even the dirt and gunsmoke and dust of battle could not hide the young woman’s astonishing beauty.

  Ben looked up as a roaring came to his ears.

  “They’re all over us!” Beth shouted, rising to meet the charging crush of Musseldine’s fanatics as they came streaming in through a hole in the concrete block wall.

  Then it was hand-to-hand in a bloody no-quarter fight to the finish.

  * * *

  Thousands of miles away, at his mansion in Africa, Bruno Bottger smiled and leaned back in his chair. The recently arrived and decoded reports from his spies in North America were pleasing to his eyes. Ben Raines and his Rebels were fighting for their very existence in the States. Bruno’s people had done their jobs well, infiltrating Simon Border’s organization, infiltrating Jethro Musseldine’s army, and working hard to bring down Homer Blanton’s administration.

  Everything was going exactly as planned and right on schedule.

  The native men and women and children in the territory that Bruno’s army now controlled in Africa had been either killed or cowed to the point where they were no longer any threat.

  All those found with AIDS had been exterminated shortly after Bruno had arrived. Everyone was tested (those that refused the tests or tried to run were shot), and anyone who tested positive for HIV had been gassed or shot and their bodies burned. Entire tribes had been wiped from the face of the earth.

  The Nazi flag now flew over thousands and thousands of acres of Africa. Gold mines and diamond mines were now solidly under Nazi control. Some of the richest farmland in the world was now producing crops for the men and women and children of the New Reich.

  Bruno Bottger closed his eyes and his smile widened in satisfaction.

  Ah! he thought. Life is good.

  * * *

  None of the hundreds of roaming gangs of rabble, none of the self-proclaimed warlords, nor the armies of Issac Africa or Jethro Musseldine worried Simon Border. The rabble and the warlords had no real organization and Africa and Musseldine were both idiots. Ben Raines would deal with all of them in his usual manner.

  It was Ben Raines that worried Simon.

  Simon Border trusted Ben even less than Ben trusted Simon.

  Simon had no intention of allowing Ben and his Southern United States of America to flourish. And Simon knew that Ben was probably well aware of that.

  It was just a matter of time before their armies would clash.

  Ben emptied a magazine of .45s into the knot of screaming fanatics and then slammed the butt of the Thompson against a head and heard the skull bone pop under the impact. Jersey had emptied her M-16 and was now using an entrenching tool from her pack; the blood was flying with each savage slash from the sharpened blade. Anna was using a machete and had already sent several heads slopping to the dirty floor, unblinking and frozen eyes wide open in death shock. Corrie was swinging her CAR like a club, with devastating results. Cooper and Beth remained at their positions, keeping others of Musseldine’s army at bay outside the ruined building.

  Troops and MBTs finally smashed through to Ben’s position and the assault from Musseldine’s men and women was broken . . . for the time being.

  Every member of the team was cut and bleeding from minor wounds, but none suffered any serious injury. Tough body armor and helmets had saved them all from being badly wounded.

  “Get out of these ruins,” Ben ordered, brushing away a medic who had rushed up and started fussing over him. “The city is a deathtrap. Everybody out of here.”

  The Rebels began pulling back until they were clear of the ruins of Little Rock.

  There, Ben let the medics go to work on him.

  “We sure got suckered into that one,” Ben remarked, as the aid man finished cleaning out a cut on his cheek. He gave Ben a shot to dull the pain before he started stitching up the two-inch long knife slash. While the medicine was taking hold, he gave Ben a tetanus shot and then started closing the cut.

  A Scout walked up. “We know now what kind of weapons these nuts have and what kind they don’t have,” he reported. “They have only a few rocket launchers. But they have plenty of heavy machine guns and enough mortars to cause us some grief.”

  Ben nodded his head.

  “Hold still!” the medic said.

  “Sorry,” Ben muttered.

  “The men and women of Musseldine’s army are highly disciplined and reasonably well-trained in military tactics,” the Scout continued. “We’re not dealing with amateurs. But only a few wore any type of body armor and they appear to have no universal dress code.”

  “But they’re damn good guerrilla fighters,” Ben replied, his words slightly slurred due to the deadening of part of his face.

  “They are that,” the Scout agreed, a grimness behind his words. “We took some hits.”

  “Give it to me.”

  “Eighteen dead. Twenty-five wounded. Five of them not expected to make it.”

  “Corrie, order replacements up from the ready pool.”

  “Right, boss. I’ve got a big nine-passenger wagon on the way up from Base Camp One. It’s one of the last made before the Great War. Our people just finished bullet-proofing it and adding some electronic gear.”

  “Cecil order that wagon found and updated?”

  “Right. He thought our van sucked—his words.”

  Ben smiled, then sobered. “All right, people. Let’s bury our dead and start making some plans to teach a hard lesson to Mr. Musseldine and his army of fruitcakes.”

  The first lesson came in the form of heavy artillery from Ben’s massive self-propelled 155’s. They began dropping in every type of round in their arsenal, including tactical CS gas. When Musseldine’s people came staggering out of their holes, Rebel snipers, many of them using specially built .50 caliber rifles, lined them up in the cross-hairs and killed them. Closer in, the MBTs were slinging out anti-personnel and HE rounds. Then Ben ordered the P-51E’s in, loaded with napalm.

  When it came to warfare, Ben was not a nice person.

  Ben’s Rebels circled the city, pounding it and surrounding areas with land-based artillery and air attacks for two days and nights without a break. When Ben finally ordered a halt to the bombardment, there was little left of what had once been the capital of Arkansas. The city was a smoking, burning ruin, stinking of death and the lingering residue of CS gas.

  “Scouts in,” Ben ordered.

  “It’s a dead city,” they reported back.

  “Let’s go,” Ben told his team, climbing into the big four-wheel drive vehicle just up from Base Camp One. The original seats had been pulled out and six individual seats installed. A hole had been cut into the roof and a ring mount with a machine gun had been added to the strengthened roof of the big wagon. The wagon didn’t get much in the way of gas mileage, but it was comfortable and well-armored.

  With two MBTs leading, Ben once more entered the city.

  A deadly stillness greeted the Rebels, punctuated only by the crackling of an occasional fire, as the napalm-ignited flames ate into old and smashed wood.

  “Pull over there,” Ben said to Cooper, pointing to a Scout checkpoint. He lowered the window. “Prisoners?” he asked the young Scout.

  “’Bout a dozen so far, General. They’re a pretty sad-looking bunch. Held ’bout a half mile further down. On your right. Interrogation teams are there now.”

  Cooper parked at the interrogation site and Ben and team got out, walking over
to the one-story building that had, miraculously, escaped the barrage virtually unscathed. An officer from the psychological warfare and interrogation unit had just stepped outside as Ben drove up.

  “All the fight got knocked out of this little bunch, General,” the officer said with a smile. “Forty-eight hours of continuous artillery bombardment and air strikes will do that. According to them, we trapped about three thousand of Musseldine’s people in the city. After the ambush, they apparently relaxed, thinking we had pulled out. The artillery and air strikes really came as quite a surprise. The CS gas drove a lot of them out of their holes and the incoming got them. Those that were near the outskirts got wasted by our snipers.”

  “Children?” Ben asked softly.

  The officer hesitated for a moment. “Some kids were among the group, sir.”

  “Shit!” The oath exploded from Ben’s mouth.

  “That ought to tell you what kind of people they are, sir. Bringing kids into a battle zone.”

  “But the children are still dead.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Suffer the little children unto me,” Ben muttered under his breath.

  “Sir?”

  Ben waved that off. “Nothing. Just talking to myself. Any word on where Musseldine’s HQ might be located?”

  “He doesn’t have a permanent HQ. That’s been confirmed. He’s constantly moving from one location to another. But his people are spread out from west to east at the top of the state.”

  “I certainly know that part of the country. Were you with us at that time?”

  “Yes, sir. I was in another part of the nation. But I heard about it.”

  A few years back, Ben had been captured by a bunch of wackos. For several weeks after his escape, he had waged a devastating guerrilla war against those who had taken him prisoner.

  “Boss?” Corrie called. “Pilots report large groups of people heading north. They’re spreading out all over the top part of the state. Visuals confirm it is Musseldine’s people. Men, women, and children.”