She turned the page and read to herself for a moment before continuing. “The Kalahari had its origin as a great inland basin, which filled with sands blown in over the ages as the ancient lavas that once covered southern Africa slowly eroded. Kalahari sands now extend from Congo and Angola right down to the Northern Cape Province of South Africa, and across the continent from Namibia to western Zimbabwe. Kalahari sands underlie more than eighty percent of Botswana. Although often called a desert, most of it is grassland with scattered bush and trees, except in the extreme southwest. Water is so scarce that the native word for rain and the name for the country’s currency are the same—pula.”
“So, we won’t have high dunes and massive sandpits to contend with on our journey?” Ben asked, leaning over the back of his seat to look at Beth.
“No, sir. Not according to this map. It looks as if we’ll pass south of Ghanzi and the central Kalahari National Park, if we head straight southeast toward Tshane.”
Ben turned back around. “That’s where we’re going.”
As Cooper pushed the big SUV to its limit, Ben’s team slowly pulled away from the column of tanks and personnel carriers following them.
After about an hour of steady travel across the flat bushland, scattering occasional wildlife, Cooper began to slow the vehicle. The change in speed brought Ben, who had been lightly dozing in the front seat, fully awake.
He rubbed his eyes, turning his head back and forth to see what caused Cooper to slow down.
“What’s going on, Coop? We got trouble?”
Cooper shook his head. “I don’t know, Boss. Caught something out of the corner of my eye a minute ago . . . maybe I’m just spooked, but I got a funny feeling something out there ain’t right.”
“Keep a sharp eye. Coop thinks something’s—” Ben started to say, when he was interrupted by Jersey’s shout from the back seat.
“There, over to the left . . . I saw a reflection—”
Suddenly all hell broke loose. Two hundred yards off to their left a camouflage netting was thrown back from over a shallow gully in the sand.
An M60 machine gun was pushed up on the lip of the gully on its tripod and immediately began to stutter and fire. The heads of several soldiers popped up at the same time, pointing AK47s and firing as fast as they could.
Hammer blows of 60 caliber bullets rocked the SUV, cracking the front windshield, punching holes in the left front fender and down the side of the vehicle.
Smaller dents puckered the thick metal but didn’t penetrate as the AK47s found the range.
“Ambush!” Ben shouted, as Cooper jerked the steering wheel to the right and floored the accelerator, slamming the big wagon around in a sliding turn.
Both left side wheels blew out as the M60 slugs tore holes in their rubber, and the SUV lost balance and rolled three times, finally coming to rest partially on its side, its roof toward the enemy, engine smoking and ticking after it stalled.
Inside the SUV, Ben braced himself against the side-wall and popped his seatbelt, almost falling into Cooper’s lap when it let go.
“Everybody okay?” he asked, glancing over his shoulder into the rear seats.
Anna stammered, “I think so.”
“I’m all right,” Jersey answered.
“I’m good to go, but the radio’s had it . . . smashed to pieces,” Corrie piped up.
When Beth didn’t answer, Ben leaned back over the seat to see if he could locate her in the jumbled equipment and supplies that were thrown all over the rear of the vehicle.
Beth was lying on her side with her eyes closed, blood streaming from her nose, and her left arm was cocked at an impossible angle, apparently broken just above the wrist.
“Shit!” Ben shouted. “Beth’s down! Jersey, see if you can check her out.”
More slugs pounded into the roof of the SUV, which was made of reinforced steel to protect against strafing by airplanes and helicopters. Even the large 60 caliber bullets couldn’t penetrate the double thickness of the top of the wagon.
Ben tried to open the door, which wouldn’t budge. He lay back and kicked out with both feet at the same time, finally popping it open.
He scrambled out of the door, reaching back inside to help Cooper, who grabbed his squad automatic weapon as he tumbled out of the door and fell to the ground.
While Ben pulled the rear door open, Cooper crawled to peek around the front fenders of the SUV, bringing his SAW to his shoulder when he saw enemy soldiers crawling out of the ditch two hundred yards away and running toward them.
He sighted down the barrel, braced himself against the recoil, and pulled his trigger on the machine gun. Dozens of slugs exploded out of the barrel, kicking it up and to the right as it slammed back into his shoulder, rocking him back on his heels as he knelt in the hot sand of the veld.
Four of the attacking troops went down immediately, screaming in pain as the bullets tore into them, spinning them around to fall backward, dead before they hit the ground.
Within seconds the remaining troops had scrambled back under cover of the ditch, but kept up a steady stream of fire with their AK47s.
Ben managed to get Jersey, Corrie, and Anna out of the wagon, then crawled to look over Cooper’s shoulder.
“What’s our situation, Coop?”
“Looks like about twenty or twenty-five men about two hundred yards away, hunkered down in that dry wash over there. They’ve got good cover, and at least one M60 along with automatic small arms, AKs, I think from the sound of them.”
Ben looked back over his shoulder. “Damn, we’ve separated ourselves from the rest of our troops and materiel. They’re not even in sight yet over the horizon, which means they’re at least several miles back.”
“Boss, the radio’s had it. I can’t even get static.”
“How about our combat mikes?”
“Still operational, but Michaels doesn’t answer, so he must be out of range.”
“Anna,” Ben said, “How is Beth?”
Anna was bent over the floorboard of the vehicle, her head and upper body inside as she worked to free Beth from all the debris covering her.
“Unconscious, Ben. Probably only a mild concussion, since her pulse is strong and her breathing is steady. Broken left wrist, and maybe some internal injuries that I can’t determine yet.”
“Damn! See if you can get her out of there, while I try to figure some way out of this mess.”
Jersey crawled to the rear of the wagon and stuck her M16 around the corner and fired several short bursts into the soldiers across the sand, just to let them know she was there.
“Looks like a Mexican standoff, Chief,” she called, firing another burst. “If we can keep them from attacking, the cavalry should be here before too long.”
“Yeah,” Ben agreed, easing his head up to look over the top of the vehicle. “Michaels can’t be too far behind us.”
From across the way a deep rumbling vibration began, and black diesel smoke could be seen to rise in a dark cloud.
“Uh-oh,” Cooper said. “I don’t like the sound of that . . . I think they may have a tank over there, or at least some big vehicles, maybe an APC.”
As the camouflage net moved, a sand and brown colored APC began to pull out of the ditch, a soldier in the open top behind a post-mounted 50 caliber machine gun.
He opened up with the fifty, sending sparks and chunks of metal flying off the SUV as he raked the roof and fenders with bullets.
Jersey cursed as she pulled her head back just as the tire she was behind began to disintegrate under the impact of hundreds of slugs.
She smirked, calling out, “Hey, Anna, come on down here. We got some of that action you’ve been hankering for all day.”
Anna nodded. “Yeah. Jersey, do me a favor, will you? Next time I say I’m bored, just kick me in the butt and tell me to shut up, okay?” Jersey laughed. “You got it, girl.”
“Ben, I don’t mean to rush you or anything, but what the hell are w
e going to do now? Our M16s and my SAW aren’t going to make a dent in that APC, and it looks like the troops over there are lining up to use it for cover as it heads toward us.”
“Do we have any LAWs or TOW-Dragon anti-tank missiles in the SUV?”
“Not a one,” Corrie replied. “We had to take them out when we packed the Racal suits in. There wasn’t room for them with all the germ and chemical warfare gear.”
“Wait a minute, Boss,” Jersey said. “I have an M203 grenade launcher in there somewhere. Maybe we could use it to lob some HE or phosphorous grenades over there. The range is about a hundred to a hundred and fifty yards.”
“Crawl in there and see if you can find it, Jersey. The grenades won’t put the APC out of commission, but maybe it’ll slow it down enough until we can get some help from Michaels.”
Jersey handed her CAR to Corrie, who took her place behind the rear of the SUV and started to fire intermittently at the APC as it climbed out of the ditch, knocking two soldiers to the dirt who were walking behind it.
Ben stuck his CAR over the top of the wagon and began to fire his Thunder Lizard from the shoulder, making the man in the turret duck for cover as his rounds pinged off the armored steel of the big vehicle.
Moments later Jersey jumped down to the ground, the M203 in one hand and a flare gun in the other. She handed both to Ben, along with a satchel of grenades and flares.
Ben took the flares and loaded a red one in the pistol, aimed it skyward, and let it go with a loud bang. The flare arched into the sky, then exploded in a red fireball high in the sky.
“Maybe that’ll let John know we need some help up here,” Ben said, as he bent to affix the M203 to a spare M-16 from the wagon.
He crawled up on top of the SUV, ignoring the shells ricocheting around him as he elevated his barrel at forty-five degrees to get the maximum range and fired a fragmentation grenade at the APC.
It exploded twenty yards short of the vehicle, sending a geyser of sand and dirt into the air, but causing no damage to the personnel carrier.
As the APC and its following troops pulled closer, the grenades began to land on or very close to the vehicle, but still were not strong enough to slow its advance or to do any real damage.
Finally, Ben was down to two fragmentation grenades and one white phosphorous grenade.
He shook his head. “Looks like we’re down to the bottom of the barrel, team. Any ideas?”
Cooper thought for a moment, then said, “Not a one. . . .”
After he heard it, Ben grinned. “Hell, Coop, I’ve got one.”
Ben quickly reloaded the M203 with a white phosphorous grenade.
This time, the white phosphorous exploded just above the APC, sending flaming sheets of burning phosphorous into the interior of the APC through the turret opening on top.
Two soldiers scrambled out of the APC, the phosphorous clinging to their skins and clothing, which were burning brightly as the screaming men ran for a few yards and then fell to the ground, their flesh bubbling and melting under the white-hot heat of the chemical.
Ben and Cooper and Jersey and Corrie then dashed toward the remaining troops, their CARs blazing and chattering as they poured hundreds of rounds into the enemy troops.
Corrie took a superficial wound to the left thigh, making her stumble, but not knocking her to the ground.
Jersey’s kevlar helmet was hit dead center by a round, snapping her head back and dazing her, causing her to stand still halfway to the APC and look around, as if she didn’t know where she was.
The battle was over in less than two minutes, with all the enemy troops either killed, wounded, or surrendering to the small band of warriors.
Half an hour later, when a Huey gunship helicopter arrived with John Michaels riding in the rear, manning the M60 machine gun, Ben and his team were sitting in the shade of their overturned SUV, with eight prisoners standing before them, hands on heads.
Michaels jumped down from the chopper and ran over to Ben.
“We saw your flare and called in the Huey, but it looks like we were a bit slow.”
Ben grinned. “Yeah, my team has everything under control now.”
Then he grew serious. “However, we do have some minor injuries. Beth has a broken left wrist and nose, Corrie has a flesh wound to the thigh, and Jersey is still a bit addled. Could you airlift us back to the main force so Doc Chase can take a look at them?”
“But there’s no need to hurry,” Cooper added, looking over at Jersey, who was sitting with a dazed look still on her face. “This is the first time since I’ve known her she isn’t talking at full tilt. I’m kind’a enjoying the silence.”
THIRTY-THREE
Bruno’s defenses were crumbling. Ben Raines’s 501 brigade had finally been joined near the city of Tshane in southern Botswana by Ike McGowen and his 502 brigade.
Together they were marching through Botswana, and had broken through a perimeter of tanks and howitzers, destroying most of the big 105 millimeter New World artillery bunkered north and east of Pretoria.
Marsh’s strike force and two more armored Rebel units were pushing across the southern savannas and miombo woodlands and massive granite domes, or dwalas, of lower Zimbabwe, heading straight for Johannesburg virtually untouched and unopposed.
There was silence in the underground bunker’s War Room while Bruno and two of his top commanders listened to frantic radio reports from all fronts.
Air support for Bruno’s embattled troops was virtually nonexistent now, with only a few HIND attack helicopter gunships still airworthy, and most of his MIG fighter planes had been downed by rocket fire or grounded due to mechanical problems and lack of parts to repair the ancient engines.
“I fear the end is near,” General Conreid said. “There is nothing we can do to stop them.”
General Ligon nodded his silent agreement as an artillery brigade commander north of Pretoria called in his damage report.
“The men are deserting! Running for their lives! Shells are falling all around us!”
“Cowards,” Bruno hissed, his jaw clenched. “No one can win a war with an army of cowards.”
“They are being shelled to pieces,” Conreid said, “and in places it has come down to hand-to-hand combat. Our ammunition supply trucks bound for Petersburg were hit from the air. We lost everything. They control the skies completely now in the northern sectors. There is nothing we can do. Before long our antiaircraft gunners and rocket launchers here at the compound will be shooting at their fighter planes and B17 bombers. I’m sure the Rebels know where we are by now, after tracking our radar and radio signals. They’ll be trying to blast us out. General Raines will have us completely surrounded, with our backs to the sea.”
Bruno’s rage had reached its full boiling point. “We had every opportunity to whip these motley Rebels and their mongrel gene pools of inferior races. Field commanders made poor choices. They lacked conviction that this war could be won. Fear has been our worst enemy, gentlemen, fear of a mere mortal calling himself a general. Ben Raines is no better and no smarter than anyone else. He is, at best, fearless. And when he faced indecisive cowards on the battlefield he won engagements easily.”
General Ligon turned away from a map of South Africa, where pins denoted bunkers and artillery and tanks guarding the outer reaches of The New World Order compound in Pretoria.
“If I may say so, General Field Marshal, most of our men have fought with great courage. The Rebels have an uncanny knack for knowing our weaknesses, and they came to Africa well prepared and with the best military equipment, most of it salvaged from the old United States. We have battled them with what were primarily inferior Soviet-made aircraft and rockets. The Southern United States of America has devoted technical resources to developing and maintaining modern weaponry, and General Raines has access to whatever he needs in the way of arms and supplies from SUSA—”
General Conreid interrupted. “I agree completely with General Ligon. However, it
goes beyond that, in my opinion. These Rebel soldiers have a will to win which I fear may be lacking in our troops. It is a state of mind they possess, not just better weapons. They believe strongly in their so-called manifesto—granting so many liberties, punishment of the most severe kind for those who break their laws. While I believe it is a concept meant for desperate, hungry people, it seems to have instilled the Rebels with more than determination. They see themselves as a part of something larger than a country or a region. Calling it a unified spirit is far too simple. It defies all logic how committed they are to their political cause and beliefs. They have marched through our best offensive and defensive efforts with scarcely a pause, hiding when we have the advantage, reappearing where we least expect them to be, striking our flank at its weakest spots. I’m not sure what we could have done differently that might have stopped them. Even our anthrax spores were useless against them, no doubt due to inoculation, and they were apparently prepared for our gas deployment. They marched right through everything we dropped on them.”
Bruno passed a meaningful glance to Rudolf Hessner, near the sealed door into the War Room. In addition to his Steyer-Hans 9mm automatic pistol Rudolf always carried a lightweight Valmet Oy M62 assault rifle with a telescoping stock, dangling from a strap over his shoulder, a Finnish gun he preferred over an AK47, due to its smaller size and tremendous firepower.
Bruno turned his attention back to General Conreid and General Ligon. Colonel Walz had already been dispatched to the downstairs incinerator immediately after the failure of the air strike against Battalion 12 in southern Namibia.
Two low-ranking radio operators sat at consoles against a far wall, changing frequencies to bring in reports from New World armies. A third officer monitored radar screens suspended from the ceiling, watching blips from various radar installations all across South Africa. None of the communications officers were armed.
“Are the two of you suggesting we surrender to Raines?” Bruno asked, doing his best to disguise the anger in his voice when he spoke to Ligon and Conreid.
General Conreid took his gaze from one radar screen. “It would seem the best choice, General Field Marshal. In point of fact, we are putting up very little resistance now.”
Triumph in the Ashes Page 24
