Smoke from the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

A few of The Hot Wind’s troops begged for mercy from the Rebels.

  But the Rebels were in no mood to offer mercy toward those who had started this little dance. Colonel Williams settled that point with one blunt statement.

  “Finish them!”

  Single shots rang out in the night.

  “Strip the bodies of weapons, ammo, grenades, and boots,” came the orders from down the line.

  The Rebels never left anything behind that might be of some use to someone later on. The orders of Ben Raines.

  “Booby-trap some of the bodies,” Joe ordered. “We can send a few more of the bastards to hell when they come snooping around to inspect the awesome forces of The Hot Shit!”

  Joe’s smile was grim, but filled with a soldier’s satisfaction. “We stung them, people. But they’ll be a lot more cautious after this.” He motioned for his radio operator to come over. “Get General Jefferys on the horn. Tell him I’m blowing all bridges from Augusta north to the mountains.”

  He hesitated for only a second. “Yes, sir.”

  That had not been an easy decision for anyone to make, and the radio operator, as well as all the other Rebels listening, knew it. Considering the times, once those vital links were gone, they would, in all probability, be gone forever. Millions of dollars of state-to-state links destroyed.

  Joe was very conscious of Rebel eyes on him in the gunsmoke-filled and bloody pre-dawn. And as was the Rebel way, he said, “I’m open for suggestions, people.”

  To a person, the Rebels shook their heads. They might not like the idea of destroying those bridges, but the decision was necessary. Anything to buy them a little more time. It had to be.

  Without the bridges, Khamsin’s IPA would have to detour a hundred miles or more to get into Rebel-controlled territory. And the Rebels were just aching for the IPA to meet them in the mountains — something all knew that Khamsin would not allow, for his recon teams who had been sent into the mountains never returned. They had disappeared into the foggy mountains and misty hollows without a trace.

  And without the bridges, the IPA would be forced to use the remaining bridges far south of Rebel-held country. Time. Precious time for the Rebels.

  “General Jefferys says to blow the bridges, colonel,” a runner informed Joe. “And may future generations forgive us.”

  “They’re all over the damn place, sir!” Ashley was informed by a breathless aide. Breathless and pale, Ashley noted.

  “Who is all over the damn place, man? And get ’hold of yourself.”

  “Rebels, sir! They seized towns from the Oklahoma line clear up to Nebraska. We just got a message in from Chanute. Had to be transmitted by CB radio, using relay points. We got another message in, same way, from just east of Emporia. Them guys there is lookin’ smack at Ben Raines and his people. Like to have scared the shit outta them ol’ boys when dawn come and there they was.”

  “You mean no one heard them settin’ up or comin’ in?” Ashley yelled.

  “No, sir. Ain’t nobody heared nothin’.”

  Ashley thought hard for a moment. “All right. Listen to me. Carefully. These are my orders: Everybody between Interstate Seventy and Highway Fifty-four, pull back. Set up defense lines along Highway Seventy-five. We’ll form a line so solid that no one can break through. Raines wants a head-to-head fight, all right, by God, let’s give it to him. Order everyone out of the southern sectors of the state. Have them pull back to Yates Center and then spread east to Fort Scott. Order everyone in the northern section of the state to drop south to Interstate Seventy and stretch from Topeka to the hot zone edge. We’ve got just as many troops as Ben Raines has Rebels. So let’s give them a fight. Tell the men to take as many women and kids and old fuckers prisoners as they can. If Raines wants us, he’ll have to fire into lines of civilians. That’ll stop the son of a bitch! He won’t hurt them. Go, man, go.”

  “They’re pulling back, sir,” Denise said, reading the message just delivered from communications. “Big Louie’s troops appear to be forting up behind Highways Fifty-four to the south, Seventy-five to the west, and Seventy to the north. Field commanders awaiting your orders. There’s more.”

  “The silly shit,” Ben muttered. “He didn’t have enough sense to see that we were spread so thin he could have bunched his people up and punched right through us at damn near any point.” He looked at Denise. “Tell all teams to push hard toward their objectives, but to halt just outside of those boundaries you just named. No one goes in or comes out. I’ve got a hunch what he’s planning; I’ve seen it before, and it isn’t very pretty.”

  But she was right in step with him. “He’s used women and kids and the elderly before, general,” she said. “As shields for his troops.”

  “Yes. That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  “And? . . .”

  Ben shook his head. “I don’t know, Denise. We’ll just have to wait and see. What else was in that message?”

  “General McGowan captured some of Louie’s people. They told him that Ashley’s hatred for you goes all the way back to Louisiana. Back before the Great War.”

  “Strange,” Ben said. “But I still cannot place this Ashley person. Should be a very interesting encounter. When we do meet.”

  THREE

  Mark and Alvaro sent sappers from their contingent in the Oconee Forest racing eastward across Interstate 20 to Augusta. They carried enough explosives to destroy twenty bridges. They had four bridges to blow: the I-20 bridge, the Highway 25 bridge, the 1-78 bridge, and the bridge that ran Highway 28 into Augusta. At the junction of I-20 and State 232, the teams shook hands and split up. They would regroup that night at the deserted town of Wrens, just south of the old Fort Gordon Military Reservation. If all groups were not there by 2000 hours, those not present were on their own. Guerrilla warfare is not for the faint at heart.

  Col. Joe Williams had sent teams of his Rebels north and south, loaded down with high explosives. After they blew their assigned bridges, they were to set up observation posts on the Georgia side of the river.

  Cecil Jefferys had ordered his teams to destroy the northernmost bridges linking South Carolina and Georgia. The only bridge that was to be spared — Cecil just could not bring himself to destroy it — was the I-85 bridge. But it was to be heavily mined and guarded from the Georgia side.

  Cecil knew, without any doubts, thanks to many intercepted messages from the IPA, that Khamsin did not want to mix it up with the Rebels in the mountains; Khamsin did not want to stick his nose anywhere near the mountains — and that was not just because of the Rebels.

  The mountains were filled with tough, single-minded folks, people whose basic nature, even in the best of times, was to shoot first and ask questions later. Their names were synonymous with legended feuds. The Rebels had made an easy truce with the mountain people, simply because, in many ways, their own philosophy of living was much the same: You mind your own business and I’ll mind mine; but if you come fucking around, with intentions to harm me or mine, I’ll kill you!

  Khamsin sat in his office and stared at the radio message that lay on his wide and polished desk. The copied message had succeeded in souring Khamsin’s stomach and ruining his entire morning.

  Second brigade wiped out in ambush with Rebels. No survivors. Do we pursue?

  How? Khamsin silently pondered the awful question. How could such a tiny force of Rebels wipe out an entire brigade?

  He sighed heavily. He looked at his coffee cup. The thought of drinking more of the bitter brew was totally repugnant to him. He turned in his leather chair and gazed out the window, his thoughts revengeful and savage. The commander of the Second Brigade had been with Khamsin for many years. He had been such a fine terrorist — and also a deeply religious man. Khamsin had spread his rug and prayed with the man many times.

  Such a fine and honorable man. Now he was dead at the hands of savages.

  “You’ll pay for this, Ben Raines,” Khamsin swore, his voice low. “I swear that you will. Y
ou will never be rid of me. I will follow you to the smoking gates of hell and beyond to have my revenge.”

  Khamsin buzzed for an aide. “Contact all troops in Georgia and order them to stop their advance. Do not pursue the Rebels.”

  Khamsin’s XO, Hamid, entered the room and took a seat.

  Khamsin said, “We have a foothold in Georgia. And that is good. We know that the black general, Jefferys, has ordered his troops north of Interstate Eighty-five . . . that may or may not be accurate information. But I would wager that the black man has ordered recon and sappers into the area between Interstates Eighty-five and Twenty; probably to engage in guerrilla warfare with our people. And I would expect him to start destroying all bridges linking the two states — ”

  An aide knocked softly on the door.

  “Come!” Khamsin said.

  “General, the bridge at Calhoun Falls is gone. We lost several hundred men and many trucks. The Rebels on the other side shot those who tried to swim to safety.”

  Khamsin slammed a hand down on the desk. “Savages!” he hissed. “They are savages. There is not one ounce of honor in the entire filthy lot of them.”

  But a lot of dedicated and highly professional soldiers, the XO thought. He kept that thought to himself, however.

  Khamsin nodded at the young aide and the man left, closing the door behind him.

  Hamid said, “We have three places left to us to cross, general. And the first bridge south of Augusta is said to be mined.”

  Khamsin waved him silent. “I know. I know all that. And I also know that if I were General Jefferys, I would have teams of Rebels on the western side of those bridges. Just a small team could block the bridges for a very long time. We could quite easily get men across the river in boats, but heavy equipment is yet another matter. Jefferys would like us to try an approach through the mountains. I have no doubt that, in time, we could cut through. But at what cost of lives?”

  Hamid said nothing. He had personally led a patrol into the mountains. The dark and foggy roads and misty, forbidding, green dripping terrain had filled him with uneasiness. He could feel eyes on him at all times; hostile eyes, watching, waiting. And it would take but a single stick of dynamite to bring down part of any mountain on his force. Hamid had turned back after only a few hours into the mountains.

  “All right,” Khamsin said with a sigh. “For the present, we hold what we have taken. Order our people to dig in hard and deep. Make no further advances. I’ll leave at dawn tomorrow to begin an inspection of the southern bridges. We can’t move effectively, but then, nether can the Rebels. But time is on our side. We can afford to wait, Hamid. We can only grow stronger, while the Rebels can only grow weaker.”

  Hamid nodded his head. But he was thinking, I wonder about that. I really wonder.

  Cecil had taken five hundred troops and moved to the south. Colonel Williams had taken five hundred troops and spread out along the eastern border.

  “What a thin brave line,” Cecil said aloud. “If Khamsin ever discovers just how thin . . .”

  He trailed that off into silence.

  “Beg pardon, sir?” Cecil’s driver asked.

  “Just talking to myself,” Cecil said. He noticed a rusted, battered, and shot-up road sign. “Is that trash still in Athens, Harrison?”

  “Yes, sir. A bunch of losers, they seem to me, sir. They’ve turned the place into kind of a trash-can fort. Field reports say the bunch seemed to have no direction, no goals, no nothing. I agree with that assessment.”

  “You’ve seen these people?”

  “Yes, sir. When I was working recon. Before I got hit.”

  Cecil knew the young man had very nearly lost his life due to a mine. The mine had broken his legs. He walked with a limp and always would. He had been taken off of field duty and assigned as Cecil’s driver.

  “Bring me up to date, Harrison. How many people in Athens?”

  “Oh, five or six hundred. But they’re a sorry lot, sir.”

  “Maybe they just haven’t had the right person to point out a few facts of life to them.”

  “What do you mean, sir?”

  “Get on the horn, Harrison. Tell the point to take us into Athens. I have an idea. It might go sour, but if it works, we’ll be a bit stronger.”

  “What the hell is that nigger doin’ out there?” Jake asked.

  Jake — no last name — was the unofficial leader of the ragged and dirty bunch of drifters and misfits who now inhabited the ruins of Athens, Georgia. Jake was big and rough and mean and ran his little kingdom by brute force, crippling or killing anyone who dared defy him. Some of the residents stayed on willingly; others stayed because they felt they had no other place to go, and the closed city did afford some degree of safety. Others stayed because they were scared of Jake and his enforcers.

  “General Jefferys,” someone told Jake. “Ben Raines second in command. I’d go easy with this one, Jake.”

  “Oh, yeah! Well, that’s a pretty fancy title for a coon,” Jake said, eyeballing Cecil over the barricaded end of the street. “I thank I’ll jist snatch that funny-lookin’ hat offen his head and then I’ll be a general.” Jake laughed, exposing yellowed and rotten teeth.

  His breath would have stopped a blowfly in midair.

  “Jake . . .” his buddy tried to warn him off.

  “Jist cool it,” Jake said. I’ve done a good job of runnin’ thangs so far, ain’t I?”

  His friend nodded his head.

  “So’s how about you just shut up and let me handle this nigger.”

  His friend again nodded his head, eyeballing the Rebels who lined the street. It’s been pretty good while it lasted, he thought. But now it’s time to haul ass.

  He walked slowly away. He knew that when Ben Raines’s people come to town, they ain’t totin’ Christmas presents.

  Cecil stood a few yards in front of the barricade that blocked entrance to the small city. Jake had not blocked the bypass loop running around the city, only the exits leading into the city proper.

  The sight of Jake was nothing new to Cecil or to his Rebels. They had all seen little two-bit dictators many times in their travels across the devastated land that was once called the United States of America.

  The Jakes of the world were all the same. Only the names and physical descriptions varied from place to place. The Jakes of the world had been losers when the world was whole, rebelling against all authority, bulling their way through life, intimidating those who would allow it, sucking up to those who were stronger, more powerful, richer, possessing some degree of influence. One could, unfortunately, find them in any two-bit redneck honky-tonk in any state — when there were states, that is. And honky-tonks. Only the rednecks remained. Unfortunately.

  The Jakes of the world were easy to spot when the nation was whole, Cecil thought, looking at Jake. Just as easy to spot now.

  Cecil walked up to the barricades and stopped. Jake stepped forward, shoving his face about six inches from Cecil’s. Cecil grimaced at the man’s body odor and foul breath.

  Rebels with weapons at the ready stood left and right of the barricade. And Cecil had to smile as the Rebel behind the Jeep-mounted .50 caliber machine gun jacked a round into the weapon and swung the muzzle toward the crowd of unshaven and stinking men and women on Jake’s side of the barricade.

  The crowd backed up. Jake almost swallowed his chaw.

  “Whut the hale do you want, boy?” Jake mush-mouthed.

  “Perhaps actions will speak much louder than words,” Cecil said.

  “Haw?”

  Cecil reached over the barricade and slapped Jake across the mouth.

  Jake did swallow his chaw.

  Jake coughed and hacked and spat and choked and finally managed to find his voice. “You gawddamn nigger! You cain’t do ’at to me! Why, I’ll — ”

  Cecil backhanded him, then took a half step closer and hit Jake in the mouth with a hard straight right. Jake sat down in the street, blood and tobacco juic
e leaking from his busted mouth.

  Some of Jake’s enforcers looked as though they would very much like to do something. But they weren’t all that certain just exactly what they could do. Considering the reputation of the Rebels.

  “Remove the barricades,” Cecil ordered.

  Rebels ripped down the makeshift barricades.

  Cecil stepped forward and kicked Jake in the mouth with a jump boot. Big Jake lay on the street, unconscious, his mouth leaking blood. His people stood with their mouths open, staring in disbelief. They were, to a person, armed, but not one among them made a move to lift a weapon.

  Oh, they wanted to. They wanted to shoot this big black bastard so badly they had to grit their teeth hard to fight back the feeling.

  But they stood as one, looking down the barrels of automatic weapons. They knew, to a person, that if any one of them made just one funny little move, there would be a bloodbath; and the blood would be theirs. Even though they outnumbered the Rebels, the Rebels looked so hard, so professional, so lean and mean.

  Cecil said, “Now that I have your attention, I’m going to tell you all a story. A southern cop told it to me, about fifteen years ago. Just before the Great War. And you will listen to me. In silence.”

  The sullen crowd looked at Cecil. In silence.

  “This cop was a very fair man, an educated man, and I like to think that he was representative of a good many southern cops in that. But some of his views were controversial back then, and they made me angry for a time . . . until I had the time to think them through, calmly and rationally.

  “This cop told me that he believed with all his heart that there were, always had been, and always would be, classes of people. Yes, and he used the term nigger at the bottom of the black scale. And in the same breath, he said redneck and white trash.

  “That balanced it out some, but it still made me very angry — at the time.

  “This cop told me that niggers and white trash were exactly the same; the only difference being the pigmentation of skin. He said the two groups were ignorant, and proud of it. They wore their ignorance as a badge of honor. And that they were dangerous. Dangerous because even when given the opportunity to improve themselves, most would reject it, scoffing at it.