Fire in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

Lowry smiled, rose from his chair, and extended his hand to the president. “You won't regret it, Aston. My God, I feel better already."

  Aston sat at his desk for a long time after the VP had gone. He wondered if Lowry was sincere. Wondered if the man would really draw up and sign that paper. If he would, well, this nation might have a chance of making it.

  The president wondered about a lot of things.

  * * * *

  “It's all set,” Lowry told the old man. “Aston bought it. Do you have an agent you can trust in the Secret Service?"

  “Oh, yes,” the voice said. “I'll take care of all that."

  “Why wasn't I notified of Hartline's move in northern California?"

  “I don't know. I didn't know about it myself until I read it in the papers.

  “No matter. I knew Hartline was going to do it, but I didn't know when. Well, it's done."

  He broke the connection.

  The old man placed the receiver back in the cradle. He sat for a time, smiling. If it all worked out, not only would he get rid of Addison, but he'd get rid of Lowry, too.

  And then what he had longed for and sought for years would be his. After all those years of kowtowing to niggers and spies and Jews, pretending to be the poor man's friend; the great liberal.

  With Addison and Lowry dead, the logical choice for the presidency would be one man.

  The old man laughed aloud.

  Five

  Sabra lay in her bed and listened to Hartline pleasure himself with her daughter. Nancy no longer cried out and fought the mercenary, just accepted her fate with a stoicism that was frightening in its repression.

  “Come on, baby,” Hartline's voice drifted to the mother. “Move your ass. I might as well be fuckin’ a log."

  Sabra slipped from her bed at an alien sound from the living room. She thought she heard a key being turned in the lock. Stubbing her toe on the dresser cost her several seconds of sitting on the bed and uttering quiet curses. A shout brought her to her feet, the pain in her big toe forgotten. Gunfire blasted and ripped the night, sparking in the dark house. There was a short bubbly scream, and the sounds of someone falling to the floor.

  Sabra literally stumbled over the body of her husband, sprawled in a pool of blood on the den floor. She stood for a moment, the scream building in her, not quite ready to push out of her throat.

  Hartline stood in the archway that separated hall from den, a gun in his hand. The mercenary was naked, and his phallus was slick from her daughter's juices. The violence seemed to have enlarged him further, as if the act of killing was an aphrodisiac.

  “I thought I heard someone prowling around,” Hartline said calmly. “Well, baby, you don't have to worry about a divorce now.” He grinned at her.

  Sabra began screaming.

  Nancy dipped up behind Hartline, a wild look in her young eyes. She carried a softball bat in her hands. She was naked.

  Some primal sense of warning dropped the mercenary to the carpet, in a crouch, just as the girl swung the bat. The bat hit the side of the archway, knocking plaster and wood into the air. She raised the bat high over her head, animal sounds coming from her throat. Hartline leveled the automatic and shot the girl in the stomach, pulling the trigger three times. A row of crimson dots appeared on the girl's belly. She was flung backward against the wall and slowly sank to the floor. She began screaming.

  Sabra joined in the screaming of her daughter. She ran toward the fallen child. Hartline slapped her, backhanding the woman, knocking her to the floor.

  Sabra thought of the butcher knife she had secreted between her mattress and box springs; the knife she had not been able to use on the mercenary.

  Through her screaming and the screaming of her daughter, Sabra heard the mercenary's words ringing in her head. “I found the butcher knife, Sabra-baby. Sorry ‘bout that."

  Then, as her daughter died before her eyes, the woman felt her robe being ripped from her and a sharp pain digging into her anus.

  Hartline was taking her like a dog.

  As the stink of blood and urine from relaxed bladders filled her head, the woman's frayed nerves finally popped. Her own screaming would be the last thing she would remember for a long, long time.

  * * * *

  “I wish you hadn't done that,” Lowry pouted, his lips pursed like a spoiled child. “I think she was beginning to really like me."

  Asshole, Hartline thought. With your vienna sausage-sized cock. You'd have to stick it up her ass before she'd know you had it in her. “It couldn't be helped,” the mercenary said, brushing off the deaths and mental collapse. “Anyway, what difference does it make now? You want some strange pussy, let me know; just point her out and I'll get her for you. How about some real young stuff?"

  Lowry licked his lips, his mental deterioration becoming more evident. “How young?"

  Hartline shrugged. “Name it."

  “You promise no one will know?"

  Hartline laughed. “Yes, Mr. Vice President, I'll promise."

  * * * *

  “General Preston's people say Jerre is somewhere in Virginia, Ben,” Ike told him. “But they can't get a fix as to exactly where he's got her."

  Ben sighed heavily, his rage and frustration just scarcely concealed, lying fermenting just under the surface of the man. Ben had advanced his column of Rebels to within twenty miles of Waynesboro and had halted them while his other commanders geared up for the big push north. He had heard rumors about some proposed meeting between the president and himself, but so far nothing had come of that.

  Cecil walked up to the men, a broad grin on his face. “Ben, communications just handed me this. It's from the president. If you'll hold your troops in their present positions, he'll meet with you next Monday to sign a peace agreement."

  Ben sighed. “Well, that's some good news to come out of this mess."

  “Still no word on Jerre's whereabouts?"

  “Nothing."

  “It would be less than useless to ask the president for help,” Ike said. “Lowry, as far as I know, is still running the country. And I've said it before and will again: this whole meeting business smells bad to me."

  “I know,” Ben agreed. “I get the same bad vibes out of it. But what else can I do except meet with him?"

  “I don't like it,” Ike repeated, then walked away.

  “Cecil?"

  “I think it's a chance we have to take, Ben. I just wish I knew what was happening to Jerre."

  * * * *

  She lay on a bunk, a dirty blanket beneath her, an equally filthy blanket covering her nakedness. She did not know how many men had raped her, and she really did not care. She did not even know where she was, how she came to be there, what was happening to her, or even who she was.

  She sensed more than thought something very terrible had happened to her, but she did not know what it was. Sometimes a flickering nightmare passed through her tortured mind, the scenes so terrible her mind would not permit the mental reply for more than a few seconds before blacking it out and once more dropping her into the depths of nonrecall.

  But one man's face kept entering and reentering her mind, until finally she could attach a name to it: Sam Hartline.

  She hated Sam Hartline, but she didn't know why.

  She wanted to kill Sam Hartline, but she didn't know why she wanted to do that.

  Maybe it would come to her in time.

  “Spread ‘em, baby,” a man's voice said.

  She felt the blanket jerked from her and cool air on her nakedness.

  She opened her legs without question, grunting as a man's hardness forced its way inside her.

  Sabra Olivier lay passively on the cot as the man took his turn with her. She didn't even resist when he kissed her.

  Somehow she knew this wasn't Sam Hartline.

  * * * *

  “You want that to happen to you?” Hartline asked Jerre. He had turned on the lights after viewing the tape of Sabra being raped.

  “
You know I don't,” Jerre replied. She was very much aware of her own nakedness. The leather chair was cold against her skin. She did not know where her clothes were.

  “Then you'll do what I ask of you?"

  “No."

  “Baby,” Hartline leaned forward, “it isn't as if I'm asking you to betray Ben Raines. Come Monday afternoon, he'll be dead anyway."

  “I will not betray the movement,” Jerre said, just as she had said a hundred times already.

  “You really want me to make it rough for you, don't you, honey?"

  “I'm no good to you dead, Hartline,” Jerre looked the mercenary in the eye. “And you will never kill Ben Raines."

  He slapped her. “I told you not to mention his name ‘less I asked you to, didn't I? Goddamn you. Before I'm through with you you'll be begging me to kill you."

  “Maybe,” Jerre admitted, getting set mentally for the worst.

  Instead Hartline laughed and got to his feet. “You got guts, baby—I'll give you that much. Nice pretty blond cunt, too. I like blond cunts. Turns me on. Maybe I'll be back to see you later this evening."

  “Bring a sandwich when you do,” Jerre told him. “I'm hungry."

  Hartline was still laughing as he went out the door. Fifteen minutes later, her clothes were handed to her and she was given a hot meal.

  “Talk about a case for Jung,” she muttered, taking a grateful bite of hot roast beef. “He'd be beside himself with Hartline."

  * * * *

  “How do I reply to this message, Ben?” Cecil asked. “What do I tell the president?"

  Ben rubbed his hands together and paced the floor of the home. “You've been in touch with the Joint Chiefs?"

  “Yes."

  “What do they think?"

  “Reading between the lines, Ben, they would seem to think it's some kind of setup."

  “To kill me?"

  “Right. You and Addison."

  “I don't understand why they won't take a side in this thing,” Ben said, slamming one clenched fist into his open palm. “Goddamnit, if they'd throw their weight behind us, we could have this thing over with the country running again in two weeks."

  Cecil shrugged.

  “Not another power play among them?” Ben wondered aloud.

  “I don't think so, buddy,” Ike said. “But I'm with the JCs on this: it's a setup. And I don't believe it's all Lowry, either."

  “Then ...?"

  Ike shrugged.

  “I don't see I have a choice, boys,” Ben glanced first at Cecil, then at Ike. “The sooner we get this thing done, the sooner Jerre is freed."

  “Unless it's a setup,” Ike persisted.

  “You're a harbinger of doom and destruction, Ike,” Ben managed a grin.

  “But other than that, I'm soooo lovable."

  Cecil laughed and Ben had to join him in the humor. “All right, Cec, tell Addison I'll meet with him Monday morning. The Holiday Inn in Charlottesville."

  “No!” Ike said sharply.

  Both men looked at him.

  “The first motel on the outskirts of town,” Ike said. “The first one on the right headin’ east. I don't want us to get boxed in."

  “All right, Ike—if that will make you feel better.” He looked at Cecil. “What about our request to send people into Richmond to meet with committee heads of Congress?"

  “Everything is A-OK, Ben,” Cecil assured him.

  “Then I guess that's it,” Ben said.

  Ike looked at his watch. “Seventy-two hours to launch,” he said. “One way or the other."

  Six

  The questions were almost identical, the answers almost word for word, only the connotation different.

  Both meetings were held in Richmond. Both held at night. The meeting places only two miles apart. Both meetings held degrees of selfishness. Both meetings concerned the fate of Ben Raines. But only one was being conducted for the good of the nation and its people as a whole.

  “Is it going to work?” the same question was asked at both places.

  At one: “If Ben Raines dies."

  At the other: “If Ben Raines makes it."

  “I'll be glad to see that sob-sister Addison dead, too."

  At the other: “I wish to God there was some other way to do this without sacrificing the president."

  Same meeting: “He's weak; not the man for this time in our history. I don't like it either. But I can't see another way."

  Same meeting: “I feel ... traitorous."

  The other meeting: “Lowry will be forced to step down if you threaten to go public with that promise he made you."

  Hartline grinned. “And then we'll just put you in the Oval Office."

  The old man grinned. “That's the way it will be."

  * * * *

  Jerre sat in her cell at the camp of the mercenaries. She had not been harmed in any way. She had not seen Hartline since that afternoon he had returned her clothing and ordered her fed.

  She wondered what was going to happen to her. She wondered about her babies and about Matt.

  She wondered who that woman was that occasionally screamed from down the corridor.

  * * * *

  Sabra had been allowed to bathe and wash her hair. She was dressed in a dress that looked like a sack. But she really didn't care. She had managed in her feverish brain to put a name with the face that tormented her. She had it for a time, but it kept slipping away from her. Now she could keep it with her at all times: Sam Hartline.

  She knew this Hartline had done something terrible to her, and to someone else, but she couldn't recall what it was.

  Something elusive kept flashing through her brain: scenes of bloody bodies and nakedness and ugliness and perversion.

  She screamed. No reason for her screaming; she just felt like screaming.

  * * * *

  “I wish Nixon were still president,” the head of network news spoke wistfully. “Or somebody like him. Then we could do like they did back in the ‘70s. We'd jump on him and stay on him until we rode him down."

  “Yeah, that's really what a news department is all about, isn't it,” the spokesman for CBS said, his voice thick with sarcasm.

  CNN looked at ABC. “I am so glad we were not a part of that disgraceful happening."

  “Nixon or the news reporting during that time?” NBC asked.

  “Guess,” CNN spoke with as much sarcasm as CBS.

  “What are you, a Republican?” AP asked.

  “Maybe she is just putting into words what we all secretly feel,” UPI injected. “That our dead colleagues just might have been something less than objective. But that is all water over the dam. Let's talk about what is confronting us at the moment."

  “We have no proof the military is setting anyone up,” NBC said.

  And that brought huge laughter.

  When the laughter had faded into memory, ABC said, “That isn't the issue. The issue is are we getting tit for tat, or is it a better trade-off."

  “Anything would be better than Lowry and Cody and Hartline. You all have heard, by now, about Sabra and her family?"

  “Rumors of gunshots in the night. The apartment is sealed off. No one has seen any of them."

  “At least Hartline can't use the tape,” NBC said. “We found it and destroyed it. It was disgusting."

  “We're all still dancing around the point for this meeting,” CNN said. “Let's stop playing patty-cake and get down to it."

  “I never heard of any proposed setup,” NBC said, standing up, slipping into his topcoat.

  “I'm with that,” CNN said, rising to her feet.

  In a moment, all were in agreement: they would not report on speculation, on news that had not occurred.

  But no one really said what was on their mind, what lay like a dark hairy creature in the far corners of the brain: The end will justify the means.

  They had to believe it.

  After all, it was for the good of the country.

  * * * *
/>   President Addison grew more apprehensive the closer he got to Charlottesville. One of his agents had told him he feared a setup. Aston had gone to Tommy Levant of the Bureau and asked him.

  The senior agent had denied any knowledge of any setup.

  That should have reassured the president.

  But it didn't.

  At the motel, it distressed the president to see the Rebels so military in appearance. They looked like a crack unit. He had wished—secretly—they would all look rag-tag, with beards and beads and unwashed bodies and blue jeans. Anything but this. But, he reminded himself, he should have known Raines would have a crack outfit.

  The motorcade rolled up to a motel and stopped.

  “Here it is, sir,” a Secret Service man said.

  “It isn't even a nationally known chain,” Addison muttered. “Figures."

  “Sir?” the Secret Service man looked at him.

  “Nothing,” Addison said. He stepped out of the limousine into the cold air of late fall. No honor guard to greet him; no band playing “Hail to the Chief."

  There was a squad of Marines present. But what Aston did not know was these Marines were actually part of Hartline's mercenaries.

  Three Rebels, two women and a man, lounged under the awning over the front of the motel office. They looked at the president of the United States with about the same interest an aardvark would give two cockatoos copulating.

  One of the women jerked a thumb at a closed door. “In there,” she said.

  “You're addressing the president of the United States,” an aide said irritably.

  “Excuse the hell outta me,” the woman replied.

  “Let's do it, Benny,” Addison said. He pushed ahead of his man and opened the motel room door.

  The beds and dresser had been removed, a large table taking that space. Four men in field clothes sat at the table. A tape recorder sat in the center of the table. A rather pretty young lady sat off to one side, a stenographer's pad in her hand.

  Aston recognized Raines, Krigel, and Hazen. The fourth man was introduced as Major Conger.

  No one on either side seemed terribly impressed with the other.

  The president, his Secret Service men, a few of his aides crowded into the room. Aston shot a thought across the table to Ben: I had nothing to do with the kidnapping of Jerre Hunter, he feverishly projected the thought.