Triumph in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  “You nailed it right on the head.” Cecil laughed. “Of course, I had no doubt that you would. I’ll keep you up to date. You take care now, Ben, and I’ll see you.”

  “Do that, partner.”

  Cecil Jefferys was the first black man elected to such a high office in America . . . and it had taken the separation of the nation and the men and women of the South to accomplish it.

  Cecil and Ben had been friends for many years. Cecil had left the grueling life in the field to enter politics after a heart attack nearly killed him during a campaign.

  Ben walked outside and stood for a moment. His mind was already busy adding up the troops he could take back to The SUSA when it was time to go . . . if the job here wasn’t finished. Ben had guesstimated that this campaign might take anywhere from a year to as much as five. Ben now felt he would be leaving Africa with his 501 Brigade and several other brigades as yet unchosen in a matter of weeks, not years.

  Might even be days.

  He walked back into his tent and opened a map case, spread the map out on a table, and began studying it. He found a port in the country of Congo, just south of where the Rebels were now stalled. The small city had an airport that would be just large enough for the planes coming over from The SUSA to use. He put the map away and stepped outside again, to stand in silence for a moment.

  Ben knew the day was coming when he would have to leave the field. He also knew that he would know when that time came. There was certainly no way to hold back the clock. He would voluntarily, without being asked, retire as a field commander. Nobody would have to tell him he was through, too old.

  “Deep thoughts, General Ben?” Anna asked, suddenly appearing at his side. The young woman could move like a ghost, and kill just as silently and with just about as much emotion.

  “Oh, just thinking about when it’s time for me to retire, Baby.”

  “You can bet that won’t be anytime soon, Daddy Ben,” Anna said.

  Ben smiled at that. She had just recently begun calling him Daddy Ben, but only when they were alone. Any other time it was General Ben. “Soon enough, Baby. I’m no spring chicken. . . .” He chuckled. “I’m an old rooster.”

  “Sure, you are,” Anna replied, sarcasm dripping from the words. “Can’t hardly get around anymore. I’d better start looking for a cane for you to use.”

  Ben’s team, never too far away, was listening in silence to the exchange between the two, and they began to chuckle.

  “Yeah, he’s such an old goat, Anna,” Jersey called. “I think we ought to get him a wheelchair.”

  “You’re probably right, Jersey.”

  “Maybe one with a motor on it,” Beth suggested.

  Ben braced himself and tried to hide his grin. But he just couldn’t pull it off. He started smiling. He knew he was in for it now.

  “Maybe we should contact the engineers,” Corrie suggested. “See if they could come up with a wheelchair with a machine gun mount on it.”

  “Hey, that would be neat,” Cooper said.

  Lamar Chase strolled up with his security team, and Ben sighed. Now he really was in for a ribbing. “What’s the joke, boys and girls?”

  “The old rooster,” Anna said, jerking her thumb toward Ben. “Says he’s getting old.”

  “I’ve been telling him that for years,” Chase replied, peering at Ben. “So you finally admitted you’re too damn old for the field, hey?”

  “I admitted no such thing,” Ben quickly said. “But none of us is getting any younger.”

  “My, what a profound statement,” the Chief of Medicine came right back. “I shall have that matted and framed, and carry it with me at all times.”

  “You, of all people, should not talk about aging, you old goat,” Ben told the man. “You’re so ancient you remember The Great Depression. My father was just a gleam in his daddy’s eyes back then.”

  The shadows were beginning to gather. Soon it would be dark, and when night falls in Central Africa, it does just that . . . in a hurry.

  Down by the river huge portable floodlights had already been set up so the combat engineers could work through the night laying down the Bailey Bridge.

  Ben did not expect another attack by Bruno’s people or by any of the many roaming gangs that were terrorizing the land, but he was taking no chances. He had ordered the guard doubled and there were choppers in the sky, the gunships slowly moving in a huge circle.

  “What you doing over here, Lamar?” Ben questioned. “Aside from irritating me, that is?”

  “You need irritating, Raines. What is the word from back home?”

  “How would I know?” Ben asked innocently, with a very sneaky smile.

  “Because I know you’ve been talking with that other old rooster, Cecil Jefferys, that’s how. Now give.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “A little bird landed on my shoulder and told me, Raines. Now what’s going on?”

  Ben held nothing back from his team, never had, never would. As a matter of fact, Corrie usually knew what was going on before Ben did.

  “Things have taken a turn for the worse back in the States, Lamar. As we knew they would.”

  “That bad, Ben?”

  “I think it might be even worse than Cece is telling me.”

  Lamar nodded, looking up as a very sweaty and very dirty combat engineer came walking up.

  Ben turned to face the engineer.

  “We’ve just about got everything wrapped up. We’ll be ready to take vehicles across in a few hours, General.”

  “Good deal. You’re in command of this detachment now, Captain. I’ll put the paperwork through promoting you to major.” Just as soon as one of my team tells me your name, that is, Ben thought. There was a time when he knew the name of every officer in his command. But those days were long ago and far away. Once there were a few hundred men and women in the Rebel army. Now there were thousands.

  “Thank you, sir,” the engineer said.

  “You earned it.”

  The man walked away and Ben turned to Beth. He opened his mouth to speak, and she said, “Adam Mat-son, Boss.”

  Ben smiled. “Thank you, Beth. See that the paperwork on his field promotion gets through pronto, will you?”

  “Will do, Boss.”

  “What next, Ben?” Lamar asked.

  “We secure a port and an airport. Probably in a few weeks. Then we’ll start the drive that will end Bottger’s reign of terror once and for all.”

  “And a new reign of terror, if that’s the right word, will be about to erupt in America?”

  “I’m not sure if terror is the right word, Lamar. Millions of people want to live under what the leaders outside The SUSA are calling the New Democracy. But the rub comes when other millions say they don’t want any part of it, and by God they won’t live under it.”

  “Are you about to give me a lecture, Raines?” Lamar asked, a smile playing on his lips. “If you are, kindly save your breath and my ears.”

  Ben laughed at the expression on his old friend’s face. “I wouldn’t dream of doing that, Lamar. What would be the point? You haven’t changed your mind about anything in fifty years.”

  Lamar did his best to work a hurt expression on his face. He couldn’t pull it off. “I don’t have to stand here and be insulted by you, Raines. I’m leaving. Goodnight.”

  “Be careful, you old goat,” Ben told him.

  “Blow it out your ass, Raines,” the doctor called over his shoulder.

  “That isn’t very professional, Lamar. Not coming from a man of your stature and advanced age,” Ben called.

  The Chief of Medicine flipped him the bird and kept on walking.

  Ben’s team laughed at the exchange between the two men. They’d seen and heard it all before, dozens of times.

  Ben’s eyes caught a shadow of movement at a corner of a parked vehicle. He blinked a couple of times. Stared at where he was sure he’d seen movement. Nothing. But he was certain he’d seen so
mething out of the ordinary.

  A monkey that slipped into camp? That would be about the only thing that could slip through the Rebels on guard. Unless . . . pretty farfetched, he thought, slightly shaking his head, but certainly possible if someone had done some careful planning—and that was something to be considered.

  “Gang,” Ben said in a low tone. “I think we’re about to be hit, and hit hard. Corrie, pass the word to the troops.” He deliberately turned his back to the shadows and faced his team. “Do it quietly. No one gets in a hurry.”

  “OK, Boss,” she replied in an even voice. “Will do.”

  Cooper got up and stretched nonchalantly, scratched himself, then wandered off a few yards to the bed of a truck. Ben knew that was where he kept his SAW and extra 200 round containers of 5 .56 ammo.

  Beth placed a hand on her CAR and continued sitting on the tailgate of a truck. Jersey was staring into the darkness that had dropped over them as suddenly as death. . . . probably bringing a lot of that with it. Jersey stiffened just a bit, and Ben felt certain she had seen something moving in the darkness.

  Anna had not moved from her crouch beside a HumVee. But her CAR was held in a position where she could bring it to ready in an instant.

  “Tunnels,” Anna whispered just loud enough for Ben and the team members close to hear her. “The bastards used tunnels and holes in the ground. This was carefully planned out by someone with some sense.”

  “The first ambush failed, so they waited until dark,” Ben said. “They must have been nearly roasting in those holes and tunnels.”

  “Too bad they didn’t,” Corrie remarked. “That would have saved us a lot of trouble.”

  “I heard that.” Cooper spoke from a few yards away. He was standing close to his SAW, ready to grab it and hit the ground when the action started.

  Ben shifted positions, walking over to the bed of the truck to stand close to Anna. He had left his CAR in the tent and carried only his holstered 9mm.

  “There can’t be more than a handful of them,” he whispered. “Not unless they’ve been digging tunnels and holes for days . . . which is certainly possible,” he added.

  “They must’ve hidden when our choppers came close, then crawled out of the brush and started digging the instant they left,” Beth whispered.

  “That has to be what happened,” Ben said. “This is going to involve a lot of grenades and very close work on their part. Pass that word, Corrie.”

  “Right, Boss.”

  “We’re going to take some casualties,” Ben said. “It’s going to get real nasty in a hurry.”

  The moments dragged by. Five minutes passed with nothing happening. Ben began to wonder if he had been wrong; had he really seen movement? Was an attack imminent? Or was his imagination running wild?

  “Intelligence on the horn, Boss.” Corrie’s whispering broke the silence. “One of those mercs finally broke. The jungle on both sides of the road is filled with hostiles. Several companies at least.”

  “Shit,” Ben muttered.

  “The camp’s as ready as it can be,” Corrie added, after a few second pause.

  Ben thought about walking over to his tent to retrieve his CAR, then rejected that idea. This fight was going to be eyeball to eyeball, and a pistol would be easier to handle. In short, it was going to be a real bloodbath.

  “All patrols in?” Ben asked.

  “Everybody’s in camp,” Corrie answered.

  “OK. Everyone holds his position. No moving around. If it moves, shoot it.”

  “Orders given, Boss,” Corrie said, ten seconds later.

  A few heartbeats later, the huge encampment erupted in gunfire and the screaming of the wounded.

  FOUR

  Enemy troops began pouring out of the ground on both sides of the camp like ants out of a rotting tree. The darkness was filled with running shapes. Ben did not have to give the order to fire. The Rebels had a horde of screaming enemy troops right on top of them, and literally in their faces. Hundreds of Rebels began firing at very close range, most of them using pistols, one in each hand. Machine guns and grenades were useless to both sides this close.

  Ben had dropped down to a kneeling position and was picking his targets; not a difficult task, for the enemy was bunched up all around him.

  “They’re after The Boss!” Cooper yelled. “Has to be. The attack is too concentrated.”

  “Get those fuckin’ flares up,” Ben shouted.

  Cooper was right: the main thrust of the attack was at the center of the encampment, where Ben had his CP. Only lighter probes were being conducted north and south of his location.

  The night skies suddenly sparked into harsh light as flares were sent up and popped into illumination. Ben lifted his 9mm and shot an enemy soldier in the face. The man was so close Ben could smell the body stink of him.

  He shifted his boots to face another soldier and put three rounds of hollow-points into the man’s belly and chest. The soldier screamed and fell against Ben, dead, almost knocking Ben off his boots.

  Anna jumped onto the back of an enemy soldier and grabbed the man’s hair, jerking his head back. She cut the man’s throat with one hard swipe of her knife and rode him down to the ground. Rising to her feet, the young woman drove her knife into the belly of another of Bottger’s soldiers and twisted it savagely. The man howled in pain, his scream silenced when Anna kneed him in the balls and ripped her knife from him. The man fell forward on his face, his legs jerking as agony tore through his body just before death claimed him.

  Cooper had left his SAW and was taking a deadly toll of the enemy, a 9mm in each hand.

  If that one enemy soldier had not gotten careless, Ben thought as he banged away with his pistol, the sneak attack might have turned into a disaster for the Rebels.

  Then Ben had no more time for any thoughts other than staying alive. The enemy soldiers came in another rush, and everything was confusion as the Rebels battled hand-to-hand with knives, clubs, entrenching tools, pistols, and their bare hands.

  For a few moments, it was a wild, savage, deadly scene in the African night. The enemy troops had, for the most part, ceased their yelling, and the battle was silent except for the grunting of men and women locked in combat and the moaning of the wounded.

  The intensity of the battle began to wane as the enemy troops began to realize their sneak attack had failed: many faded back into the jungle’s hot, humid density and slipped away. Those who stayed and fought, died.

  For those caught up in the deadly brawl, the attack seemed to last for hours . . . in reality, it lasted only a few minutes.

  “Keep those flares up and going east and west of us,” Ben ordered. “I don’t think they’ll try again, but they might.”

  “They sure might, General,” a medic called, kneeling beside a wounded soldier. “They’re popped up on something. Some sort of speed, I think. This man is incoherent, and his vital signs are racing . . . his heartbeat sounds like an M-16 on full auto.”

  “We’ve taken casualties,” Corrie reported. “Mostly wounded. So far, the death count is low.”

  “Any other brigade get hit?” Ben asked.

  “Negative, Boss. Not so far. I’m still checking on that. But I think we’re the only ones.”

  “They were after you, Ben,” Ben’s XO, John Michaels, said, walking up. “This was very carefully planned. No advance teams were hit, and they were all over this area. It was well planned, all right.”

  “We captured lots of their wounded, Boss,” Cooper called. “Fifty and counting. What do you want done with the really seriously wounded among them . . . those that the docs are sure aren’t going to make it?”

  “Give them a shot to ease their suffering and help them along their way in peace. We’ll scoop out a hole for them in the morning. Turn the rest over to Intelligence.”

  Ben turned to his XO. “We’ll probably be doing some shifting around very soon, John. I haven’t set a date for it yet, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be he
ading back to the States with my brigade.”

  The XO arched an eyebrow in surprise, but Ben could not see it in the darkness. “Oh?”

  “Conditions are getting a little rocky outside The SUSA.”

  “I knew they weren’t good,” his XO replied. “Do we fight again over there?”

  Ben sighed. “We might, John. We just might have to do that. I hope not, but it’s looking as though we’ll have to fight for our nation.”

  “Again.”

  “Yes. Again. Those bastards outside The SUSA can’t say I didn’t warn them.”

  The brigades mounted up and moved out the next morning, after engineers scooped out a hole for the dead soldiers and dumped them in. A much more dignified service was held for the Rebels’ own dead. Intelligence had told Ben, just before the brigade moved out, “White officers commanded the troops that hit us last night. Americans, for the most part. A few Europeans. They’re all being readied to ship back to The SUSA . . . including the three we took prisoner yesterday.”

  “Good, I want to be able to hold them up and point them out to the powers-that-be outside The SUSA. I want to see the expressions on their faces when I do that . . . especially after the prisoners have spilled their guts about who hired them. And they will tell us everything they know,” Ben added, a deadly grimness behind the words. “Bet on that.”

  The miles-long column pulled out, heading south, and hit no more trouble as they crossed the bridge and stretched out. Advance patrols and eyes in the sky reported no signs of the enemy. Fly-bys indicated that the port where Ben was heading appeared useable, and the small city itself looked to be almost deserted.

  “I still haven’t seen any tigers,” Cooper bitched as they rolled along . . . crawled along might have been a better way of putting it, for if the column averaged twenty miles an hour they were doing well.

  “For the umpteenth boring time, you halfwit ninny,” Jersey told him from the second seat in the big wagon. “You’re not going to see any. Lots of lions, no tigers.”

  “Tarzan fought tigers over here in his movies,” Cooper came right back.