Terror in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  “I feel rather foolish commanding this armada,” Therm told Ben. “Every ship’s captain out there has more experience than I do.”

  “I know you, and I trust you,” Ben replied. “So don’t sweat it. When the ships are docked, you’re back in command of your battalion and you’ll wish you were back at sea.”

  “That is probably very true.”

  “How is Rosebud?” Therm’s hippie wife.

  “Rosebud is fine. Stop changing the subject. I’ll only put this to you once, and that will be the end of it: You’re really going in first wave?”

  “That is correct.” He looked at the slip of paper Therm had handed him. “This ETA is firm?”

  “As firm as I can plot it. The sea is unpredictable, Ben. It’s approaching fall, and it can get rough this time of year. I gave us some leeway, so I can promise you that we will be in position no later than the time and date I gave you. I personally checked out the trawler you and your people are using going in. It’s a fine little vessel.”

  “Little vessel!” Cooper said. “I’m sick already.”

  “Shut up,” Jersey told him.

  “I got to go see the medics and get some seasick pills.”

  “Oh, hush up and sit down. It’s all in your head,” Jersey said. “And that’s about all that’s in your head.”

  “You’re a cruel person, Jersey,” Cooper said. “I don’t see how your boyfriend puts up with you.”

  “True love makes the stormy seas calm,” Thermopolis said with a smile.

  “Shit!” Jersey said. “Love doesn’t have anything to do with it. It takes the edge off, that’s all.”

  “How crude!” Emil piped up, then beat a fast retreat out of the CP at one look from Jersey’s dark eyes. No one knew exactly what Jersey’s heritage was, but Ben would bet a hundred dollars she had some Apache in her.

  Ben held out his hand and Therm shook it. “Let’s start getting the people on board, Therm. The weather experts say it’s going to start raining late tomorrow. I want as many as possible on board before that happens.”

  “See you in England, Ben.”

  Ben and his team began checking equipment, then double-checking. They would be taking only emergency rations, carrying extra ammo and grenades in place of bulky food packets. As Ben had expected, Buddy showed up.

  “Don’t holler at me, father,” the young man spoke from the open doorway of Ben’s CP in Galway.

  “I know, I know,” Ben replied. “Ike told you to cover me like a blanket.”

  “Ike did, Dan did, Rebet did, Danjou did, West did, Tina did, and Striganov did . . . all very forcefully. It was beginning to sound like a recording.”

  “How many of your Rat Team did you bring?”

  “I brought two squads. It was difficult choosing the best because they’re all very good at what they do. They all wanted to come, but I thought that would be defeating the purpose of this mission.”

  “You thought correctly. Have you seen the trawlers we’ll be going over on?”

  “Yes. Aren’t they rather small for the open seas?”

  “They’re workhorses, son. Tough as Jersey.”

  Buddy looked at the diminutive bodyguard. “Then we certainly have nothing to worry about,” he said drily.

  “Damn right,” Jersey said, closing the bolt on her M-16.

  “That was meant as a compliment,” Buddy said.

  Jersey smiled. “I know.”

  Ben spent a day driving from airport to airport checking out the planes that would fly diversion the night of the invasion. Some of them didn’t look as though they could get off the ground, and he wasn’t too sure about the men and women who would be piloting them.

  “I didn’t know you could fly, Lucy,” Ben asked, looking at the dilapidated old cargo plane that looked suspiciously like the one he was in once while working for the Company, and flying Air America.

  “I couldn’t until about two weeks ago,” she said with a grin.

  Ben could see Ike’s fine hand in all of this. “You’ve had only two . . . weeks’ flight training?”

  “Right, sir. I’m hell on taking off and flying this crate, but not so good on landing. So I’ve decided not to land.”

  “Ah ... right!” Ben said. “Ah ... Lucy, has somebody invented a new way to survive crashing?”

  She laughed at the expression on his face. “No, sir. What me and my team are going to do is this: when we get near our DZ, I’ll set this bird on auto and we’ll jump. The plane will crash out in the North Sea.”

  Ben took off his beret, scratched his head for a moment, and then chuckled. “How many others are planning on doing likewise, Lucy?”

  “Oh ... ’bout fifteen teams, General.”

  Ben patted her on the shoulder. “Carry on, Lucy, carry on.”

  Ike’s Two Battalion was loading when Ben reached the docks; Tina and Rebet’s Battalions were waiting to load. Ben called Ike to one side.

  “If something happens to me, Ike, you’re in charge. Orders to that effect have been typed up and I’ve signed and dated them.”

  Ike nodded his head. “West and Danjou have sailed; they’ll be landing right behind you and yours, Ben. Striganov and his bunch behind them. Then me and Tina and Rebet. Keep your head down.”

  “I plan to.”

  They shook hands and Ike joined his battalion.

  Ben’s Husky, Smoot, and Dan’s mutt, Chester, were on the ship with Thermopolis, being taken very good care of by Rosebud and others of the Thermopolis clan.

  Ben pointed to a row of trawlers. “That’s us. Load your gear on board. Cooper, park the wagon over there and a cargo ship will hoist it on board.”

  “When are we leaving, General?” Cooper asked.

  Ben smiled. “Tonight.”

  The trawlers caught up with and pulled ahead of the deliberately slow-moving bigger ships carrying West and Danjou. Striganov and West were right behind them. Chase’s medical teams were scattered out on all ships. Ben lifted a hand of greeting and good luck in the darkness, knowing that West and Danjou were doing the same, although neither could see the other.

  They had pulled out about five that afternoon in a driving rain, shortly after the skies had darkened down to near night. The skippers of the trawlers figured thirty to thirty-four hours to Plymouth — that was at twelve knots. The skipper of Ben’s trawler had grinned and pointed to the engine compartment hatch.

  “We all put in new engines, General. This old girl will give you eighteen knots if you ask her.”

  “Fourteen knots would put us in Plymouth harbor in thirty hours even,” Beth said. “That would put us close at midnight.”

  “That’s perfect,” Ben said. “Can you do it, Skipper?”

  “You bet I can. The seas are uncommonly smooth for this time of year and the stars they’ve come out a-twinkling. You people just settle down and enjoy the ride.” He looked close at Ben. “What was all that pukin’ a few hours ago?”

  “Cooper,” Ben said. “He gets sick very easily.”

  “Then he’d best pray we don’t run into no bad weather. This old girl will give him a bad time of it.”

  “We’ll just shoot him,” Jersey said with a straight face.

  The skipper took Ben to one side. “That young lady there who just spoke — is she as mean as she looks?”

  “Meaner,” Ben told him without cracking a smile.

  “She looks like one of them wild red Indians I used to read about.”

  “She is. Cochise was her great-grandfather.”

  “You don’t say!”

  “Oh, yes. She takes scalps, too.”

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” He went back to the wheelhouse, muttering and giving Jersey some cautious looks.

  “They’re going to know we’re coming,” Buddy said to his father.

  “Yes. But they won’t know where we’re going. At two o’clock tomorrow morning, at my signal, teams all over Britain are going to start raising hell from north to south, east to
west. At 0230 the paratroopers will land north of Plymouth and start in our direction. And we’d better, by God, have a firm toehold on the docks.”

  “Yes, I’m sure that the sight of all eighty of us will strike terrible fear into the hearts of the defenders.”

  Ben chuckled in the night. “The BRF will be attacking the city hard from the east, the jumpers will be coming in from the north, we’ll be attacking from the south, and with the sea to the remaining side — more or less — that pretty well boxes them in.”

  “All those crates you had put on board — inflatable boats and motors?”

  “That’s right.”

  “So these trawlers, they’ll never actually enter Plymouth harbor, will they?”

  “Right again. We’ll motor most of the way and paddle the rest. Our skipper is cutting some time off by not skirting the Isles of Scilly; we’ll go between them and Land’s End.”

  “It’s chancy, isn’t it, Father?”

  Ben looked at his son for a long moment before replying. “Very.”

  Book Two

  Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith let us to the end dare to do our duty as we understand it.

  Abraham Lincoln

  One

  Ben soon found himself reassessing the known enemy. They obviously did not have pilots to fly patrol; they did not have crews out working patrol boats. The skipper had told him that radar sites all along the coast had never been used since the Great War.

  “Shit-headed street punks,” Ben said, sitting under the shade of a stretched canvas over a part of the deck.

  “Beg pardon?” Buddy asked, looking up from his chess game with Jersey — he was losing again.

  “Street punks,” his father repeated. “That’s who we’ll be fighting. And of course, the Believers.”

  Jersey moved a piece and looked up at Buddy, smiling victoriously. Buddy shook his head. “You’ve got a fine mind, Jersey. When the war is over, please attend college and put that mind to work.”

  “This war’ll never be over, Buddy,” she told him, stowing away her small chess set. “We’ll be doin’ this until the day we die. Tomorrow, next month, next year. You can bet that now that the Rebels have left America, there are thousands of mercenaries, warlords, punks, gangs, dictators, all over the world, and all making plans to attack the United States. We’ll finish up in England, and it won’t take that long; probably ’til mid-winter, and then we’ll go somewhere else to fight again. France, Hawaii.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Who knows? But by that time, General Jefferys will have hard intell that someone is planning on attacking America and we’ll sail back to do it all over again. We’ll clean it up again, and then we’ll sail off somewhere else to fight somebody else’s battles for them. That’s what Americans — and a precious damn few of her allies — have always done.”

  Buddy stared at her for a moment. “So you think we’ll all be back in America by ... when?”

  “A year, tops.”

  Buddy looked at his father. Ben smiled. “She’s probably right, son. Irish intell and the BRF told me that a few large ships pulled out of Irish and British waters before we arrived. Then after the invasion, more ships left. Right before we took Dublin, still more ships pulled out. One hit an old derelict mine and was sunk. The survivors told the BRF they’d been heading to Hawaii to link up with gangs there. So I imagine that Hawaii is our next stop.”

  “Palm trees, coconuts, and hula girls,” Cooper said, having recovered from his seasickness. “Especially the hula girls. That’s for me.”

  “Any hula girl that would take up with you would have to be mentally retarded,” Jersey told him.

  Cooper shot her the bird and she returned it, twice.

  Ben glanced at his watch. “Eight hours to jumpoff time, folks. Let’s start inflating those boats and loading equipment.”

  The trawlers carrying Ben and his teams reached their destinations an hour and a half early. By ten-thirty the teams were in the landing craft and preparing to shove off. And it was a good thing they were early. The seas were picking up and it was going to rain just about the time the Rebels reached shore.

  “You’ll make it before it gets really rough, General,” the skipper called from the railing. “Godspeed to you all.”

  “Everybody got their life vests on?” Ben shouted.

  Everybody did. Cooper had two.

  “Let’s do it,” Ben ordered.

  The rubber boats roared off into the darkness, the rolling and swelling vastness of the sea all around them. Each boat towed a second filled with equipment that was lashed down tight. It cut their speed considerably, and they were forced to stop a half dozen times before they found the right towing length and could adjust to it. Then they were on their way.

  Long before they reached the dark shoreline, the sounds of planes reached them, all flying in from the west.

  “I hope one of those pilotless bastards don’t crash on us,” Beth remarked.

  “That thought did cross my mind,” Ben said.

  Lights popped on in and around Plymouth and wild shooting could be faintly heard. But the shooting quickly died away as the planes flew on and disappeared into the darkness.

  A light rain, no more than a drizzle, began to fall. One by one, the lights on the shore blinked out as those in the small city felt the danger had passed.

  “Idiots,” Ben muttered. “Kill the engines,” he called.

  The night was suddenly very quiet.

  “Paratroopers on the ground,” Corrie said. “Special ops teams moving.”

  “Paddle,” Ben ordered, unlashing a paddle.

  It was hard work, especially since they were towing a craft, but the shoreline soon leaped into view.

  “Rat Team ashore,” Ben whispered. “Everybody else rest their muscles.”

  They bobbed on the water for a full fifteen minutes, easy targets should the docks be guarded and a flashlight be directed their way.

  “There is no one on the docks, General,” Corrie relayed the message from the Rat Team.

  “What?”

  “Nothing, sir,” Corrie repeated. “The docks are deserted.”

  “My God, but we’re a lucky bunch. Let’s go, people,” Ben said, picking up his paddle. “Hard now.”

  The rubber rafts were pulled ashore and the Rebels quickly unlashed their equipment and loaded up.

  “The Colonists have arrived, Your Majesty. Just hang tough.” Ben looked at his team. “Welcome to England, folks. Corrie, get me the paratroopers’ position.”

  “The main force is about ten miles north of the airport,” she said. “Pat and his contingent of Free Irish went wide of the DZ and landed right in the middle of a small village. Scared the crap out of a bunch of folks. Pat went right through a thatched roof and landed in bed with a man and his wife. Almost gave them a heart attack.”

  Everyone around who could hear chuckled at that. Pat was a pretty good hand at cussing, and they all imagined he did some fancy swearing when he hit the bed.

  “Dan and his team have taken over an old building that used to be a lunatic asylum about fifty klicks north and east of here. They’ve been there three days and nights and haven’t spotted a thing.”

  “We heard shooting,” Cooper remarked. “We know they’re here. So where the hell is everybody?”

  “Pulled back into the cities,” Ben said. “But they’ve got to have patrols working — somewhere. They can’t be this stupid.” He stood up from his kneeling on the ground. “Let’s secure the docks, folks.”

  The Rebels did not encounter a single person as they worked the dock area. Ben set up his thin lines and laid out Claymores. And did it all without firing a shot.

  Ben knelt down in the hollow emptiness of a huge old warehouse and studied the map of the harbor and the area around it. He came to the conclusion — again — that there was no damn way a unit this size was going to hold the harbor for any length of time.

  Ben tensed. He smelled the bastar
d coming up behind him. A stinking creepie. He threw himself to one side just as the creepie jumped for him, the knife flashing through the air. Ben rolled to his boots, stepped forward, and kicked the creep in the nuts. As the cannibal doubled over, his mouth open to scream out the pain from his busted balls, Ben rared back and socked him on the jaw. The smaller man dropped like a stone and Ben stepped back, rubbing his knuckles.

  “What the hell, General?” Jersey said, running through the open door of the warehouse. She pulled up short at the sight of the creepie on the dirty and littered concrete floor, Beth, Corrie, and Cooper right behind her.

  “So we do have people in the harbor area,” Corrie said.

  Outside, the wet night was shattered by gunfire and screaming.

  “Corrie,” Ben said. “Give the signal. All units attack, all units attack.”

  Buddy appeared in the open doorway. “If you don’t mind, Father, would you and your team kindly step outside and give us a hand? We seem to be under attack by a rather large and hostile group of people.”

  “God damn it!” West roared through a bullhorn. “Get those boats over the side and get in them. Move, God damn it, move!”

  It was a strange invasion by modern standards. The Rebels had only a few military-type landing craft, and those had already shoved off. The rest of the first two full battalions were getting to shore in rubber dinghies and anything else they could throw over the side and hook a motor to.

  As Ben always said, “It was a hell of a way to run a war.”

  Thermopolis received a frantic message from Emil, who was captaining the ship carrying Rebet’s Six Battalion. “The goddamn ship is dead in the water, Therm. We hit something. Probably a nearly submerged old tub. It bent the shaft and probably sheered the blades off the prop. We ain’t goin’ anywhere, brother.”

  “What is your location, Emil?” Ike broke in.

  “Right off Lizard Point, General.”

  “Put your troops ashore there and tell them to fight their way north to Bodmin. Secure it.”

  “That’s a ten-four, General.”

  Rebet’s men began tossing dinghies over the side and scrambling down ladders.