“Calm yourself,” the black-shirt said. “Now just calm down. You’re doing exactly what Raines wants you to do. Losing control. You can’t afford to do that. You—”
“I run this area, Major,” Jackman’s words were cold. “Me. Not you. You’re here by invite only. I suggest you don’t forget that.”
The major smiled—thinly. “If those are your final words on the matter, I think then, Mr. Jackman, that I shall take my contingent of troops and move further north. I might find a more congenial atmosphere among those stationed north of the state line.”
“Take your goddamn troops and leave, then.” Jackman’s words were thick with anger. “I’m tired of you lookin’ down your nose at me.”
The major stood up. “I shall be gone within the hour, Mr. Jackman.”
“Good. Take your goddamn uppity attitude with you.”
“Oh, I shall. Good-bye, Mr. Jackman. I wish you much luck in your campaign against Ben Raines . . . you’re going to need it.”
“Fuck you!”
The black-shirt smiled and closed the door behind him.
“Now then,” Jackman said. “Listen up, people. We destroy Ben Raines and his little band—tonight!”
FOUR
Ben and the others lay some one hundred yards from the road and watched the lights of the trucks draw closer. “Pass the word,” Ben said to Ann. “Hold positions, but do not fire. Do not fire. Let them go on by.”
The convoy rumbled past.
“What’s the matter, Ben?” Ann asked.
“It’s too easy. It stinks. It’s a setup.” He looked down the road and smiled. “See them?”
She stared but could see nothing.
“They’re running without lights,” Ben told her. “Staying about three miles behind the sacrificial lambs. I’d bet every cent I ever owned those are townspeople who were forced to drive the convoy trucks.”
She hissed her disgust at that.
“Arm the LAWs,” Ben said. “We’re going to give Mr. Jackass a hard lesson on why it’s not nice to play with innocent human lives.”
The LAWs armed up and down the line, Ann asked, “Why did you move off the ridges on this particular night?”
“When you’re fighting a guerrilla war, Ann, readable patterns can get you killed. Here they are. Steady now.”
The trucks were filled with heavily armed soldiers of Jackman.
“Fire!” Ben yelled, and the trucks exploded in front of them. The high-explosive warheads blew the gas tanks and sent body parts flying all over the road.
Ben and his team of survivors opened fire with automatic weapons and finished off any who might have survived the blasts. Then the seven of them melted back into the night and circled around, trying to catch up with the first convoy. The drivers had stopped in the road when the sky behind them lit up from the attacks.
“Jackman is holding our families hostage, Ann,” a man said. “He says he’d shoot them if we refused to drive the trucks.”
“What you carrying back here?” Ben asked.
“I don’t know. Boxes of something. General Raines, you’ve got to clear out. Jackman says that from here on in, for every day you stay attacking his troops, he’ll kill ten townspeople.”
“That’s the breaks of the game, Ted,” Larry told him. “They killed my wife and kids when I joined the resistance, remember?”
“David, Frank,” Ben said. “See what’s in those boxes.”
“You’ve turned hard, Larry,” Ted told him. “I don’t know you anymore. I want all you people to clear out. All of you. I’m thinking that maybe living under Hoffman’s rules wouldn’t be so bad.”
Larry lifted his pistol and shot the man between the eyes. The local tumbled from the cab of the truck to fall in a heap on the blacktop.
“Jesus, Larry,” another man said.
“You want some of it, Burt?”
“No, man. No. But my wife and kids . . .”
“You think Jackman won’t kill them and you when he learns the ambush failed?” Ann told him. “If you think he won’t, you’re very badly mistaken.”
“Get out, Burt,” Ben told the man. “You’re in the army now.”
“Radios, General,” David called. “And food and clothing and all sorts of gear.”
“Get in the trucks,” Ben ordered. “We’ll drive to that safe area and see what we’ve got. Move, people.”
“What about Ted, General?” another man asked.
“What about him?”
The man looked into Ben’s hard eyes and shrugged his shoulders. “Nothing, General. Nothing at all.”
Ben and his people had gathered many, many weapons over the past week, all from dead or dying troops of Jackman. The five new men were outfitted and told to get some rest. Ben went over the gear. Much of it was material they had no use for, but the radios and field rations and some of the clothing they could certainly use. They had loaded what they could use on one truck and burned the others, then drove miles away to a reasonably safe section of the county. The drove the truck under a part of a falling-down old barn.
The radios were top-quality, and at dawn, Ben strung an antenna and sent out a three-second message on a frequency he knew was constantly scanned by every Rebel patrol and outpost in North America.
EAGLE ROOSTING MOUNTAIN HOME. Then he quickly cut the radio off.
The message was picked up by a patrol in southern Missouri and immediately related to HQ in Laredo, Texas.
“Mountain Home, Arkansas!” Thermopolis shouted. He grabbed up a field phone and rang up Ike. “Ben’s in Mountain Home, Arkansas, Ike. Confirmed.”
Five minutes later, Dan and West had their battalions forming up and recon teams were struggling into parachutes and loading into aircraft.
“Did you try to reestablish contact with him?” Tina asked Therm.
“No. Since we didn’t pick up the signal, his radio isn’t strong enough to reach us. Ben probably cut the radio as soon as he sent his message.”
“If he lasted this long, he’ll make it another twenty-four hours,” Striganov said. “By this time tomorrow, there’ll be several thousand Rebels in that area.” He looked at Ben’s team, all standing around bandaged up from gunshot wounds. “And no, you cannot go with the assault teams.”
Buddy opened his mouth to protest and Striganov fixed him with a hard look. Buddy closed his mouth. “Perhaps when the area is secure, boy,” the Russian softened his look with words. “Be content for the time being with the knowledge that your father is safe.”
The black-shirt commander and his contingent got out of Mountain Home just in time. Had they waited another twelve hours to depart, they would have found themselves surrounded by grim-faced Rebels with the blood running hot with killing fever.
The Rebel recon and assault teams landed south and west of the town and quickly formed up. Jackman received the word about paratroopers landing and foolishly dismissed it.
“Oh, yeah?” one of his commanders said sarcastically. “Well, tell that to Brownie. He’s gettin’ treated now at the medics. The Rebels wiped out his whole damn platoon!”
Every team that was roaming around the borders of Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, and Missouri shifted gears and headed for Mountain Home, and they were in no mood to play word games with anybody who even mildly supported Hoffman or Jackman.
The man who had brazenly displayed the Nazi swastika on a flag pole in his front yard looked down in horror at his second cousin, now sprawled on the ground with a bullet in his head. Then he cut his eyes to the Rebel officer holding a Colt army issue .45 caliber autoloader in his hand.
“Now, motherfucker,” the officer said. “If I have your full attention, you will answer my questions or in five seconds you can join this dead prick in your front yard.”
“You got it, man!” the Nazi-lover blurted the words. “Whatever you want to know, I’m the feller who’ll tell you. Oh, yeah. You just ax your questions and I’ll tell you whatever is it you want to know.”
>
“You already know the questions,” the Rebel officer said coldly.
“Oh, yeah. That’s right. Shore is. Well, you gonna hang a right on 201 just down the road here. Hit’s about twenty-eight or thirty miles to Mountain Home. Not far. Jackman’s got roadblocks in three places, he does, beefed up with machine guns.” He looked around at the gathering teams of hard-eyed, grim-faced, and heavily-armed Rebels and swallowed hard. “But I don’t ’spect y’all will have no trouble bustin’ through. Jackman’s got maybe two thousand or more men down yonder. A whole bunch of black-shirts just passed through here not more than two hours ago. Headin’ north. But I ’spect they didn’t go far. Maybe up into the old national forest north of here. That’s where another bunch like Jackman’s is holed up waitin’ for the liberation. Oh, Lord! I done said the wrong thing, didn’t I?”
“You didn’t win any points,” the Rebel officer told him. “Now I’ll tell you what you’re going to do. You’re going to haul down that Nazi flag, piss on it, and then you’re going to burn it. You got that?”
“Oh, yes, sir. I need to go real bad like right now.”
“Do it.”
“But y’all got wimmin in the bunch. I can’t pee in front of no wimmin.”
The officer lifted the .45 and cocked it.
“Oh, yes, I can! Earline,” he bellowed. “Haul down that fuckin’ flag, woman. And fetch some far.”
The Rebels watched as the man peed on the flag and then set it blazing.
“What country are you in?” the Rebel officer called to the man.
“America!” the former Nazi squalled. “God bless America. Liberty and justice for all. Whooeee, Lord, yes. You want me to sing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’?”
“Spare me that. We’ll be checking back from time to time, partner. I really hope this sudden rebirth of patriotism isn’t temporary.”
“Oh, it won’t be!” the citizen assured him. “To hell with Hoffman and Jackman and all them Nazi bastards. You boys and girls is lookin’ at a borned-ag’in Christian and a true red, white, and blue American.”
“Uh-huh,” the officer said. “I sure hope so. Let’s roll, people.”
The same scene was being replayed all over the area as supporters of Hoffman and Jackman suddenly found themselves looking down the barrels of guns in the hands of Rebels. Other citizens dug up weapons they had buried when Jackman took over and were busy rounding up and hanging sympathizers and collaborators. The Rebels did not stop them.
The Rebels blocked all roads leading into and out of Mountain Home.
“Looking for me, Dan?” Ben called from the timberline.
The Englishman turned and a huge grin cut his features. “General!” He walked over and shook hands with Ben. “You certainly gave us a dreadful fright there for a time.”
“How’s my team, and how many people did we lose down in Oklahoma?”
“Your team came out just fine. A few minor wounds. Fifty-seven dead at last count and two that the doctors don’t think will make it.” He looked at the men and women coming out of the timber. “New recruits?”
“About half of them, yes. What’s the word south of the border?”
“Just after you were reported alive and active, Hoffman started radio traffic. The man is furious. He then tried a push against Payon’s troops, and the Mexican Army held firm and threw them back.”
Ben waved his new team to his side. “Ladies and gentlemen. This is Colonel Dan Gray. All right, people. Let’s go retake the town.”
Jackman was physically ill. After returning from the bathroom, where he had vomited up his churning fear, he gathered his commanders around him. “We don’t have a supporter left alive in the county. The goddamn locals are hanging our people from lamp posts and tree limbs and power poles. We’re cut off. The town is surrounded. It’s got to be every man for himself.”
“Bust-out time, sir?” a commander asked.
“That’s right. Break the men up into small teams and before they go out, dress in civilian clothing. If they’re spotted by Rebels, they can always drop their weapons. We’ve got weapons up the butt cached up north. Right now, getting out is the main problem. Shit!” he shouted.
The original six that Ben busted out of the holding room stayed on with the Rebels. The men from the convoy just wanted to go home and see if their wives and children were safe. They were not safe. Jackman had ordered them executed the same night as the ambush.
“You feel bad about that?” Ben asked Larry, as they sat drinking coffee and eating their first really hot meal in days.
“Not really. I should, I know, but after my wife and children were slaughtered, I . . . went numb. In a war, people are killed. That’s the nature of the beast.” He took a sip of coffee: “It’s going to get real bad before it gets better, isn’t it, General?”
“Yes. And we’re going to need every man and woman who can hold a gun.”
“Count me in. But we’ll need more training than we received up to this point.”
“It’s going to be OJT for most of you, Larry. Don’t worry. You and this team have done just fine.”
Ann and Carol joined them. The ladies were freshly bathed and shampooed and had on clean BDUs. They both had changed during the days spent with Ben. They both were lovely women, but both had changed into warriors. Ben had seen it happen many times. He smiled at them and picked up his M-16.
“You ladies ready to go kick some ass?” he questioned.
Ann returned his smile. “Do you ever get tired of it, Ben?” She and Ben had been on a first-name basis almost from the start.
“Occasionally,” Ben admitted. “Just like mechanics get tired of having their hands greasy all the time and truck drivers get tired of shifting gears. Then I tell myself it’s just a job that needs doing.”
“But there is more to it than that. You really like what you’re doing. And now I suddenly find myself experiencing all new emotions. It’s . . . somehow frightening.”
Ben knew the feeling all too well. “Ann, this country wallowed for several decades in lawlessness. Decent people had their hands tied in what they could do in defense of home, self, loved ones, property, and so forth. The punks and crud had more rights than their victims. The Rebels are changing that. We’re bringing law and justice and order back to this nation. Do I enjoy being a part of that? Yes. I do. Do I enjoy the killing? Sometimes. Yes. Does that bring me down to the criminals’ level? No. I don’t think so.”
“The crap in the town are beginning to make their run for it, General,” a Rebel wearing a backpack radio called. “They’re busting out in small groups, all wearing civilian clothing.”
“Let’s go to work,” Ben said.
FIVE
As Jackman’s people were leaving the town, Rebels entered it. They did not, at first, use the roads and streets, choosing instead to cross fields and meadows and walk the ditches and creeks in their advance. They ran into a lot of Jackman’s men. They left a lot of Jackman’s men dead.
As they entered the town, scores of weary locals came out of their homes to stand and watch the well-fed, well-armed, and combat-experienced Rebels walk past.
“We’ll be reopening the hospital,” a Rebel called to a group of people. “Anyone needing medical treatment can go over there now. It’s clear.”
Ben and his team went first to the motel that served as a jail. The scene that greeted them was not totally unexpected.
Jackman’s men had killed all those being held.
“Get somebody to ID the bodies and bury them,” Ben ordered. “I’ll use that old real estate office across the street as a CP. Get it cleaned up and staffed.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Dan, find the building that Jackman used for a CP and go over it carefully. Watch out for booby traps. Bring me any papers and maps you think are pertinent.”
The sounds of small, very intense firefights cracked around the edge of town all that day as Jackman’s men tried to slip through the Rebel lines. But as
more and more patrols came in from all over a five-state area, the Rebels had not one noose circling the town, but three. The first noose lay just outside the city limits. The second one was three miles out from the first. And the third noose was the sealing off of all bridges to the south, east, and west, and a narrowing pyramid of troops to the north. Some of Jackman’s people made it out. But not very many. Most chose to die fighting rather than face harsh Rebel law. For this town had been a designated outpost, and any violation to its sovereignty meant hanging under Rebel law. And Rebel law left few shaded areas for discussion.
A lot of rope was stretched those first few days after the Rebels reclaimed the town.
Four days after the reclaiming of the town, Ben put together rod and reel and a tackle box of lures and went fishing on Norfork Lake. The siege of Mountain Home was over.
Ben’s original team was waiting for him when he returned to his CP.
“Ugh!” Jersey said, after hugging Ben. “You’re all wet!”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Ben replied.
“It’s customary to remove your clothing before swimming,” Dan said with a definite twinkle in his eyes.
“Funny, Dan. Very funny.”
Buddy was sitting in a chair, his left arm in a sling. “Father, did you fall out of the boat?”
“Yes, dammit. I fell out of the boat. And I lost the fish, too. That bass must have weighed a good eight pounds. When I tried to get back in the boat, I tipped it over and dumped Lieutenant MacDonald in the drink. We finally said to hell with it and swam ashore.” He laughed at the recalling of it. “Talk about a comedy of errors. I’m just glad no one was around with a video camera. I’d never live it down. Somebody find me a dry shirt.”
Ben took the kidding good-naturedly. When it had died down, he asked, “Tell me what happened back at the crossroads. How the hell did we get overrun?”
“The heavy downpour of rain certainly contributed to it,” Buddy said. “Other than that, I haven’t talked to anyone who had a clue.”
Vengeance in the Ashes Page 23
