Triumph in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  After less than thirty seconds, all sounds stopped. The clearing was covered in a low cloud of gunsmoke, and Cooper and Jersey’s ears rang, deafened by the loudness of the firing.

  They waited for five minutes, watching for any sign of life across the clearing. There was none.

  Cooper said, “Cover me,” and slowly crawled on hands and knees to circle around behind their attackers.

  Jersey lay on her stomach, the SAW out in front of her, sights trained on the bushes near the bodies. After a moment she heard a low whistle, their team signal that all was clear.

  She picked up the SAW and walked from behind the tree, finding Cooper standing over a pile of bodies, the M-16 on his shoulder, his face pale and sweating.

  He looked up at her. “It’s over. We got them all,” he managed to say. Then his eyes crossed and he fainted, falling on his face in the soft dirt.

  It took Jersey almost an hour to revive him, during which she redressed his arm, applying a pressure dressing to help stop the bleeding.

  “Did I leave you again?”

  She smiled, watching the surrounding jungle so they wouldn’t be surprised again. “Just for a short while.”

  She cut her eyes back to him. “Do you think you can walk, or am I going to need to carry you to the river?”

  He struggled to his feet, face pale and sweating. “That’ll be the day, girl. Let’s go.”

  She carried the SAW in her right hand and slung the M-16 on its strap over her back. Placing his right arm over her shoulders, she half carried and half supported his weight as they made their way slowly through the jungle.

  It was late in the day when they finally came to the banks of a wide, slow moving river.

  “This has to be the Congo,” Jersey said, glancing at her compass to see which way they had to turn.

  Cooper inclined his head to the right. “The coast lies that way, to the east. Just put the sun at our backs, and let’s make tracks.”

  She shook her head. “No can do, sport. You’re about ready to drop, and I’m tired, too. Let’s make camp, and let’s hope we can make the crossing at Soyo by tomorrow night.”

  He took his arm from around her and flopped to the ground, leaning back against a tree trunk after first making sure there were no snakes or spiders on it.

  He looked up at her standing before him, shoulders slumped, exhausted and sweaty. “I know why you want to make camp here.”

  “Oh? Why is that, pray tell?”

  “You just want another night to lie next to this magnificent body of mine, to worship at the altar of my manhood.”

  Jersey threw back her head and laughed. “Boy, you’re getting delusional again. If I wanted to worship at the altar of your manhood, I’d need a magnifying glass.” She arched an eyebrow. “Don’t you remember, Coop, I’ve seen all you’ve got? There are no secrets between us any more, so don’t try to bullshit me.”

  He waved a hand at her. “Don’t remind me. I’ll probably never live this down, assuming I somehow survive the night.”

  She arranged their weapons next to them as darkness fell suddenly, as it does in the tropics.

  “Don’t worry, Coop. Your secrets are safe with me . . . as long as you don’t piss me off, that is.”

  His eyes closed and he snuggled back into her arms, wrapping them around him and holding them as he began to shiver when the temperature dropped.

  Jersey noticed his body temperature was sky high, and she gave a short, silent prayer that he would be okay.

  She was thirsty and hungry, but didn’t dare make a fire, as she knew there were bound to be hostiles this close to the river. She would have to worry about getting some safe water and food tomorrow.

  It promised to be a long night, and an even longer day tomorrow. She knew if she didn’t get Cooper some medical care soon, the infection would turn septic and enter his bloodstream, and he would die.

  She fervently hoped that wouldn’t happen. Life just wouldn’t be the same without Cooper to spar with. No one else on the team had his quick wit when it came to verbal jousting.

  Jersey realized for the first time in their long association just how much she treasured Coop’s company.

  SIXTEEN

  Bruno Bottger’s gaze passed across the assembled New World field commanders. No one knew his eyes were brown, that their blue color was due to contact lenses. Nor did any member of his staff know his brown hair was dyed blond to hide an ancestry he despised, for his mother had been Jewish.

  A Nazi could never be considered pure if he admitted to Jewish lineage, and even though the great Hitler had a similar background, Bruno meant to take his genetic secret with him to his grave.

  An underground room serving as his headquarters outside of Pretoria, South Africa, had been fortified against any form of aerial bomb or rocket attack, with a highly specialized air purification system to guard against the anthrax spores Bruno’s New World planes and rockets had previously released in Cameroon.

  Bottger’s anger showed, his cheeks a flaming red below a shock of his dyed blond hair.

  “General Raines and his 501 Brigade have marched through western Cameroon, Gabon, and Cabinda as if he were in some kind of festival parade. I want to know what the hell is being done to halt his advance.”

  Bottger stared directly at Colonel Walz, his officer in charge of attack helicopter air support for the New World Brigades assigned to stopping the Rebel army in Cameroon. Walz had sixteen Hind M24 gunships at his disposal, based in Pretoria.

  Then Bruno turned his hard glare upon General Ligon, the germ warfare specialist who had engineered rocket heads for launching deadly anthrax spores his medical research team had developed for release in enemy territory.

  General Ligon spoke first, looking nervously at Walz as if asking for some help in convincing Bottger it wasn’t his fault Raines had not been stopped in Cameroon.

  “They have clearly been inoculated with some sort of anti-bacterial serum. We’ve heard they were working on one at SUSA. Apparently . . . obviously, they have perfected a vaccine like ours now. No human could walk through that part of Cameroon without developing anthrax, unless they had been immunized, as our soldiers have been.”

  Ligon paused to wipe sweat off his forehead with a handkerchief. “We dropped enough active spores there and in Angola to wipe every human and animal out of the entire Republic—which it has done quite successfully among the native tribes. The entire western sector is full of rotting corpses and skeletons. We have aerial photographs showing bodies by the thousands. Animals are dead, both wild beasts and domesticated livestock. Virtually every warm-blooded creature there has perished, yet General Raines marched through both sectors without mishap. It can only be that they have a new serum. They must have been immunized before they came to Africa.”

  Muscles worked in Bottger’s thick neck. “Then your plan has failed, General. And you have failed our cause. The New World Order will not tolerate incompetence.”

  General Ligon shrugged, his eyes darting back and forth between Bottger and Walz, as if pleading for understanding.

  “We had no way of knowing. They are defeating our Intelligence sources there . . . unmasking our very best undercover agents, killing them off. How can I be expected to produce a germ weapon when we don’t know if these Tri-State soldiers have the correct vaccine and have already been immunized against our anthrax mutation?”

  Bruno knew what General Ligon said was true. New World spies were turning up dead all over the Western Hemisphere, all killed in the most brutal ways. It seemed the Rebel soldiers and undercover agents had special training in all forms of interrogation, and to make matters worse the soldiers under General Ben Raines were highly skilled in battle. Efficient, too damned efficient, and virtually unstoppable.

  Bruno eyed Colonel Walz again. It was abundantly clear the colonel had no better explanation for his failures.

  “And what of the HIND strikes, Colonel?”

  Walz glanced down at his hands, f
olded on the table-top. “We have lost five M24s to heat-seeking rockets, and the Rebels anti-aircraft gunners are crack shots. The Rebel’s 502 Brigade, commanded by an Ike McGowen according to our sources, is on the Congo, evidently moving south like Raines and the 501 Brigade.”

  He waved at a topographical map of the region as he talked. “The area is heavy jungle, making McGowen’s forces almost invisible from the air, hindering the effectiveness of any type of air strike. Our fighter planes are roughly equal in the air to their PUFF twin engine assault planes, the AC47s. However, fighter planes do not function well in the jungle. If they fly low and slow enough to strafe or bomb ground forces, they are exceedingly vulnerable to the Rebels’ SAM missiles and hand-held rocket launchers.”

  He loosened his collar, beginning to sweat under Bottger’s steely, unrelenting gaze. “And those damned Apaches they have are more maneuverable at low altitudes than our M24s, allowing them to drop below the rain forest canopy and pop up behind our pilots to knock them down with their forty millimeter cannons and twin mounted machine guns.”

  Bottger slammed a fist onto his desk. “Damn it, men! Don’t you have any good news for me?”

  Walz nodded rapidly, grinning weakly. “Yes. Our ground forces report some success with our own handheld rocket launchers. We were told a force of Zambian mercenaries was able to blow one of the Rebels’ Apache helicopters out of the sky with a Russian ZIP rocket. It was during the engagement on the Zambezi River—”

  “I remember the report, Colonel,” Bruno snapped. “They shot down one Apache gunship just before the Rebels destroyed General Mabota’s entire army.”

  He shook his head and turned his back on his two officers, staring at the map on the wall. He began to stomp around the room, waving his hands in the air as he talked, perhaps in unconscious imitation of his hero, Adolf Hitler.

  “These fools who call themselves generals in Africa, leading bunches of primitive tribesmen who don’t know the first thing about technical warfare, are a waste of our time when we try to train them with modern weaponry. They seem to neglect even the most simple maintenance procedures, using the equipment until it stops working, then discarding it and heading back into the jungle.”

  He turned to look at the two officers, spreading his hands, making an effort to sound reasonable. “It is simply more proof of white supremacy, gentlemen. These stupid Africans are nothing more than naked savages who don’t belong on this planet any longer. Their usefulness has passed, and when they no longer serve any of our purposes during this campaign we will annihilate them with viral and bacterial devices.”

  He pointed at the map of Africa. “This is a very fertile country that will serve New World Order agricultural and mineral needs. These ignorant natives will have to be eliminated completely in order to develop Africa as it should be. Perhaps of far more long range importance, we stand for white racial purity, and ultimately these blacks must be . . . removed from the world’s genetic pool.”

  He turned from the map to lean both hands on his desk, staring intently at the two generals sitting before him.

  “At some point, after we rid this continent of Ben Raines and his Rebels, we shall undertake a viral destruction program to be initiated as soon as we pull out of Africa for a time. It must be cleansed of all black natives, and even these damned white Dutchmen in South Africa, for they contain their own racial impurities. Our New World will be designed for peoples with no genetic imperfections. We have viruses and bacteria that will do the job nicely. Cleanly, so to speak.”

  Ligon glanced at Walz, who gave a small shake of his head, warning him not to interrupt. Ligon ignored him and decided to speak his mind.

  “That could be dangerous,” General Ligon warned.

  Bottger turned to him, staring as if he couldn’t believe anyone would question his plans.

  “Viruses have a way of mutating, surviving in many new forms,” Ligon continued, sweat forming on his forehead and running down his face.

  “Remember the HIV virus back in the eighties and nineties? It mutated from a green monkey virus into one that almost wiped out the entire world before a vaccine could be found.”

  Bottger growled, “What does that have to do with us?”

  “We might face the same thing here,” Ligon continued. “A mutant virus could potentially form here if we drop the wrong types of viral rockets in these warm climates. New host creatures could show up, and we would have nothing to halt their spread.”

  He shook his head, almost pleading with Bottger now. “Herr General Field Marshal, I strongly suggest another method. We could become victims of our own weapons if a new mutant virus for which we have no preventative drug or serum spreads to other continents which we inhabit.”

  Bruno’s anger returned. “First, General Ligon, we have to stop this brazen bastard Ben Raines and his armies.”

  He walked around to stand behind his desk, glaring at General Walz and General Conreid, his commander of ground forces in the south, as he spoke. “We don’t seem to be doing well at the task.”

  Walz blushed and looked away, while Conreid bristled and started to speak, to make new excuses for his failure to control Raines’ Rebel armies.

  Bottger held up his hand, cutting him off. “I will organize an all-out effort to crush him before he enters Botswana and Zimbabwe, or Namibia. They appear to be coming at us in a strange pattern, with some battalions moving toward the Atlantic coast while others come straight for us from the north. There is surely a means to Ben Raines’s madness, for he has proven to be a worthy adversary. We must find a way to strike his flank. Locate a weak spot, so we can break his armies apart a few at a time. By concentrating our best equipment and most highly trained soldiers on a specified target, there is no doubt we will be victorious.”

  “Colonel Marsh’s unit,” General Conreid suggested, snapping his fingers as the idea occurred to him. “You called it a strike force, I believe. We could send fighter planes and helicopter gunships over Zambia.”

  He stopped to consult a sheaf of papers in his hand. “She has just crossed the Zambezi River, according to our latest intelligence reports. That means she’s headed into either Botswana or Zimbabwe.”

  Bottger nodded, as if the idea appealed to him. “And just how would you attack this strike force, General Conreid?”

  “As soon as the Rebels are located Walz could send our bombers over them, dropping napalm and Agent Orange, or a nerve gas, perhaps even the old reliable mustard gas, since the anthrax bombs have failed. He could follow up with the attack fighters and HINDs. Then I will order a march on them with an armored division and infantry wearing gas masks.”

  The general came to attention and practically clicked his heels together, standing ramrod straight. “I can personally assure you that with a well-orchestrated air and land assault, we will wipe this strike force off the face of the earth.”

  For years, Bruno had trusted General Conreid’s instincts, for he was a proven military tactician with a number of solid victories around the globe to his credit.

  “Can you devise such a plan?” Bruno asked.

  General Conreid nodded. “Of course.”

  “How long will it take to designate the number and type of aircraft and ground forces, and the weaponry?”

  “A day. Perhaps less.” He glanced at Walz. “If Colonel Walz agrees to cooperate with me on it.”

  Bottger fixed Walz with a steely stare. “That will be no problem, I assure you.”

  He looked back at Conreid. “But only one day? I want this attack well thought out—”

  “I’ve been working on it for the past few days, waiting to mention it to you until I was sure of its success.”

  “Finish it immediately,” Bruno said, slamming his hand down on the desk, “Bring it to me the very minute it is ready in every detail. And I want an estimate of how long it will take to get our forces in place for an attack on the strike force. We’ll pay back this bastard Colonel Marsh, for his one-sided victory
over General Mabota—if it can be called a military victory to crush a Zulu warlord armed with weapons he scarcely knows how to use.”

  “I’ll notify you later this afternoon,” Conreid said. “I’ll have every detail specified.”

  “Good,” Bruno declared. “I respect your military judgement, General. Devise the plan.”

  Colonel Walz cleared his throat. “We have ten HINDs located in Namibia. At least a dozen fighter planes ready to fly. They could be launched behind a triad of bombers dispatched from our airstrip here, bombers carrying the gas and napalm. One of our air surveillance reports indicated this woman’s battalion only had three Apache gunships in flying condition. They abandoned five more in eastern Zambia, and we presume it was because they were unable to fly. Three, or even four Apaches, should offer little resistance. We will control the skies above Battalion 12.” Bruno rubbed his angular chin. “We must find them first. In those rain forests it can be difficult for a spy plane to get us anything.”

  “We have an informant west of the Zambezi River,” Walz said after a moment of thought. “A local Bantu tribesman. We supplied him with a radio. I’ll see if we can contact him to find out if he has seen any Rebels. From the air it may be easy to hide from us, but moving heavy tanks and other armor is impossible without making noise or leaving signs. The Bantu will know if they are there, and in what direction they are moving.”

  “Get us that information,” Bruno said. “Do it now. We have wasted enough time as it is.”

  Colonel Walz pushed up from his chair and walked quickly to a security door. A pair of armed guards let him out.

  General Ligon spoke again. “I will see what our napalm bomb inventory is like, and I’ll check on the nerve gas. However, I am quite sure this Rebel army will have gas masks. They always seem to be well equipped.”

  “Get moving on it,” Bruno told Ligon, his mind on other things, wondering about Ben Raines and where he was now.

  Raines was an enigma, according to all reports. He had a sensitive side, and even kept adopted children along with him on many campaigns. But he was a predatory hunter when it came to fighting enemy soldiers in the field, and his own brigade was widely known for cunning and ferocity in battle. It could be an interesting meeting if the two should happen to meet on a battlefield, a game of deadly chess.