Flames from the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  “If I may be so bold as to inquire, Hen Generalfeldmarschall,” Colonel Webber boldly asked. “What is this occasion we celebrate?”

  Hoffman stopped his giddy dance. “Why, the fall of Cheyenne, gentlemen. The Rebels have abandoned their farms and village and the compound, and the survivors are in full flight to the east.”

  “Are our troops pursuing them?” Webber asked, afraid of the answer.

  “No. Why should they?” Hoffman responded, surprising and relieving his G-2. “It appears to me that General Ben Raines has conceded to us the entire western third of the nation.”

  “What, with one minor retreat?” Col. Rupert Hertl demanded.

  General Field Marshal Hoffman produced an “I’m so clever” expression and snapped fingers for an orderly to open the sparkling wine. “Hardly. Billings is ours, Greeley is crumbling, Denver will be ours by noon tomorrow. Ben Raines has been outsmarted. He had no expectation of an attack this late in fall.”

  “Perhaps with good reason, Herr Generalfeldmarschall,” the G-4, Gomez, prompted. “The weather is decidedly deteriorating.”

  “To our advantage. We hold the high passes, where I am told some snow is falling; we will now hold the lower ones as well. Raines can’t get at us and we have no reason to overextend our lines. General Rasbach is racing our way with reinforcements. Come spring, we will overwhelm all of the old United States. We will smash Ben Raines, and with him his Rebels. You can take my word on that.”

  Flutes of champagne came into hands that raised in salute not altogether sincere. Col. Joaquin Webber had serious doubts.

  * * *

  They loaded the survivors of Trasher’s outlaw gang into trucks and started back to where the mobile command post had been left off. Ben led the way in the armored Humvee. Along the way, as the rising sun banished darkness, Trasher saw medics tending to the wounded. Always Rebel wounded. None of his own men had received the least consideration.

  Gabe Trasher chewed through the bitter ashes of defeat and found hot anger on the other side. He’d see about that. He would force the issue of humane treatment as soon as they got to wherever it was they were going. Morning was an hour old when the trucks pulled into a cleared field on the opposite bank of the North Platte River. When everyone had been unloaded, Gabe Trasher asked permission, although it galled him to do so, to speak with Ben Raines.

  Two armed Rebels escorted him to where Ben sat munching on a savory-smelling breakfast. The aroma made Trasher’s stomach knot. There was the matter of food, too, he thought uneasily.

  “General Raines, I demand . . .”

  Ben held up a hand filled with fresh, hot biscuit and honey, to halt the flow. Brow furrowed, he asked, “You do . . . what?”

  “I — I demand to know why my people are not receiving proper medical care.”

  “Oh, it’s ‘demand,’ eh? You are in no position to demand anything.”

  “But my people are wounded, some seriously. I’m wounded, too, can’t you fuckin’ see that?”

  Ben finished the biscuit, wiped his lips on a napkin. “Oh, yes, I can see quite clearly. I gather that you are Gabe Trasher, leader of this scrofulous collection of dirt bags?”

  “Ye — yes, I am.” Driven by his own pain and his clever plan to get rid of Ben Raines, Gabe fought to keep his words and tone reasonable. “Surely you can’t refuse to treat them for their injuries.”

  Ben bounced off his folding canvas stool, energized by this exchange. “Oh, I can and will. You’ve not encountered any Rebel forces, so I’ll explain it to you. We have a simple and reasonable policy governing the expenditure of our limited medical supplies. Any Rebel wounded in action has received injury defending the whole. He is entitled to immediate and complete care. Next are any children who happen to be in the area of conflict. Following that, adult civilians. After that comes enemy wounded who have been cooperative. There simply aren’t supplies available for anyone beyond that.”

  For a moment a post-Great War sense of indignation awakened in Trasher as he stared up at Ben Raines, who towered over him. “Everyone is entitled to medical treatment,” he grated.

  “No. Certainly not your kind. Only those who out of loyalty, innocence, or cooperation received their wounds are entitled. You and this biker trash wallow in filth, decadence, and perversion. You glory in how much cruelty you can devise to visit on your fellow man. You live to see others hurt. Your kind aren’t worth the powder to blow you away. You’re less than the scum that floats on a septic tank. And you are definitely not deserving of medical treatment.”

  Panic started to touch Trasher. He pointed to Venusian Snot, writhing on the ground, most of the skin on his front ground away. “But my men are going to die.”

  “Some of them. The women, too. And good riddance to them.”

  Gabriel Trasher’s hand began to shake as he sank to one knee. “Look, it’s not like that at all. We’re not the sort you say. I know these people, like them, love some of them. Sure, we’re a little wild, but we don’t go in for any of what you accused us of. Please, you’ve got to give us a chance.”

  While he spoke, Gabe surreptitiously moved his hand to one boottop. From it, he cautiously and skillfully drew a small, flat, .25 autopistol. Eyes fixed on Ben Raines and the short dangerous-looking young woman near him, Trasher flexed the muscles of his legs and made a sudden, desperate leap toward Ben’s nearer side.

  He grabbed the point of Ben’s shoulder and used it as a pivot point to swing himself around behind the Rebel general. All in the same motion, he jammed the blunt muzzle of the little .25 Browning in Ben’s right ear.

  Ben Raines heard a soft groan from the direction of Jersey. Her anguish and shame registered plainly on her face. “Sorry, Chief. I screwed this one up real good,” she spoke calmly, eyes fixed on Trasher. “He moved so fast, I woulda hit you if I shot him.”

  “You’ll get your chance,” Ben assured her.

  Everyone nearby froze and stared unbelievingly. The only sound came from Venusian Snot, who screamed away what life he had left. A Rebel medic raised his eyes to search Ben’s face.

  “No, she won’t,” Gabe hissed. “She shoots me, I turn your brain to fuckin’ pudding.”

  “Think it through, asshole,” Ben snapped gruffly. “You shoot me and she chops you into fine pieces.”

  “No, goddammit, no. It don’t work that way,” Trasher shouted in a babble, unnerved by the image that generated. “I got the gun on your boss, you bitch, an’ he’s gonna do what I say. You’re gonna order my wounded taken care of, Raines, you hear me?”

  “I hear you, but I’m not going to do it.”

  “You will or I’ll blow you away. I’ll splatter your brains all over the ground!” Trasher added as his voice rose to a shrill shriek.

  Ben remained silent for a while, then sighed and sagged in resignation. “All right,” he said softly. He caught the eye of the immobile medic. “Medic, take care of that vermin over there.”

  “Sure, no problem, General.”

  Walking cat-footed, the medic approached Venusian Snot. With slow deliberation he took an H&K P-9 double-action 9mm pistol from its holster and shot the wounded Secretion between the eyes.

  In the stunned moment following, Ben employed his rusty command of aikido against the gaping leader of the Alien Secretions. With a rising butterfly he swept the .25 auto away from his ear. Ben sank on flexed knees and closed his hand over the weapon after its first discharge. Pivoting, he used Trasher’s reactive force against him, bending the gun back and removing it from Gabe’s hand, after breaking his index finger with the trigger guard.

  Gabe Trasher howled in pain as Ben continued his pivot, which brought him face-to-face with his enemy. In a blur, Ben drove stiffened fingertips into Trasher’s solar plexus. Foul wind gushed out of Trasher’s mouth and his eyes bugged. He went deathly white and gagged in desperation against a paralyzed diaphragm. For good measure, Ben did a cross-over sidestep and chopped Trasher at the base of his neck. In a flare of
red and black, the lights went out for Gabe Trasher.

  “You should have let me pop him, General,” Jersey gasped out as she stared in awe at the recumbent Trasher.

  “No. It became suddenly personal. I’m getting out of practice. That round he got off cut hair from the top of my head. That made me take more of an interest in him.”

  Jersey wanted to laugh. She also wanted to cry. This made a second time she was just a hair slow in judging a situation and taking the proper action. Was she losing her edge? Corrie approached with a portable radio.

  “I’ve got General Striganov on, sir.”

  Ben took the handset and settled at the table again. “This is Eagle, Bear, go.”

  “We are moving along briskly, old friend.” Georgi Striganov came across jovial even through the mechanical rendering of the scrambler. “So far we have met little resistance. I’m wondering if they aren’t making an elaborate mousetrap for you?”

  Ben ran that over in his head, in light of what had just happened. “You may be right, Georgi Alexandrovich. So far Hoffman has thrown a large gang of biker garbage at me. I mean me, personally,” Ben related the attacks by Trasher’s Alien Secretions.

  A blurt of static answered Ben. A scrambler doesn’t know how to translate a whistle. “You are still short of your objective, I gather,” Striganov inquired.

  “That’s a roger. Too damn short, I think,” Ben responded.

  “Our mercenary friend is well on his way.”

  “Good. We’ll be through here in a short and back on the road,” Ben advised his northern-theater commander. Because transmit and receive were on separate frequencies, the two men could converse rather like on a telephone. “We took a few casualties. Too many, to my way of seeing it,” Ben added curtly.

  “Omelets and eggs, my friend. But I know what you mean. Hoffman seems to grow troops out of the ground, while every loss we take spreads us thinner. There’s a reported concentration of black-shirts in the area of Glendive, Montana. I’ll contact you when we clear them out. This is Bear, out.”

  “Roger, Bear.” Ben sighed, and handed Corrie the handset.

  At Ben’s feet, Gabe Trasher began to twitch and show other signs of life. He groaned after a couple of seconds, then doubled into a fetal position and vomited. Gagging, he cried out in misery and clutched his head with both hands. Slowly, consciousness swam back into focus.

  “Goddamn, what did you do?” he croaked up at Ben.

  Ben’s response went not to Trasher but to Sergeant Bourchart. “Sergeant, get a couple of men and take this filth over there and hang him.”

  Gabriel Trasher started to scream in abject terror. He kept on screaming until the rope cut off his wind.

  TEN

  General Field Marshal Jesus Dieguez Mendoza Hoffman looked up at his G-2 and G-3, standing at rigid attention in front of his desk.

  “Herr Generalfeldmarschall, we wish to report that everything is in readiness. Operation Adlermeister can commence at your word.”

  Hoffman clapped his hands in enthusiasm. “Excellent! This spells the end of Ben Raines. Let Adlermeister begin at once. You have your duties to attend to, I’ll not keep you.”

  “Zu Befehl, Herr Generalfeldmarschall! Heil Hitler!” they chorused.

  “Heil Hitler!” Hoffman responded, wondering when the world would start hailing him like they still did the master of the Third Reich.

  Bemused, he turned away to a large sand table on which the symbols of his various units had been laid out. Ben Raines was in for a major surprise. Volmer had done well in leaving behind convincing evidence that the NAL forces would be thinly spread along a thousand-mile front. From all reports, Raines was reacting as anticipated.

  He had already split his forces. The only item that bothered him, Hoffman reflected, was that rather-large concentration of troops under the Russian bastard, Striganov. They were at that moment reported to be overwhelming the NAL garrison at Glendive.

  Had the old communist son of a bitch had a falling out with Raines? Could it be that Raines had already been weakened by this loss?

  No matter. His brilliantly conceived, two-pronged blitzkrieg would put the finish to General Ben Raines. A worthy opponent, though, Hoffman thought in his conceit. One befitting a contest with the most capable, powerful general in all the world. When he was master of the entire Western Hemisphere, he might, in his magnanimity, graciously pardon Ben Raines and let him live out his life in genteel exile.

  Outside his office, Col. Joaquin Webber confided to Col. Manfred Spitz, “I think he’s taken on more than he can handle.”

  “You mean our brilliant leader?” Spitz asked with a sneer. “I think he does that every morning when he undertakes to pull on his boots.”

  Webber looked around suspiciously. “Be careful. There are some of those SS big-ears everywhere.”

  “Not out here in the open, Joaquin. At least not unless they are close enough you can see them. It remains that I have a bad feeling about this Eagle Master operation.”

  “Time will tell, Manfred,” Webber said gravely, his own doubts resurfacing.

  During the first campaign against Field Marshal Hoffman, Ben Raines had left strong Rebel outposts at secure compounds outside of what had been Colorado Springs and Pueblo. Over the ensuing months, the Rebels who occupied them had enlarged on their defenses. Dragon’s teeth had been set up in depth, randomly armed with contact-detonating explosive charges powerful enough to disassemble the best tanks Hoffman had. Lateral trenches, deep, steep, and wide enough to trap any armor that got past the concrete pylons. The ground all around had been sown with antitank mines and nasty little daisy-cutter AP mines.

  Each outpost possessed a stockpile of beehive rounds for their 105mm howitzers. They also had the standard issue of CNDM — nausea and tear gas — canisters for the 81mm mortars and in hand-grenade form. Colorado Springs enjoyed a special advantage.

  It sat atop the huge underground complex that comprised the central supply depot for the Continental Defense Command. For a long while, its copious inventory provided for all the munitions, supplies, vehicles, and spare parts the Rebels needed. A respectable amount remained on the shelves and forklift pads.

  Entrusted with the security of this cornucopia, the Rebels at Colorado Springs remained doubly alert. Their sensors picked up the rumble of heavy armor at 0830 hours the next morning. Passive IR and other stealthy surveillance equipment soon verified that a major troop movement was under way and they were the target. Instantly the compound went to full alert. Condition Red warnings were radioed to Eagle’s mobile CP.

  “We have a Level One alert from Colorado Springs,” Ben Raines was told a minute later.

  “Dammit,” Ben snorted. “I have a feeling the fecal matter is going to hit the rotor blades. Tell them to hold with what they’ve got, but not at the cost of all their lives. No, let me tell them.”

  “Understood, Eagle. That’s a big roger. We’ve got this place nicely covered. It would take a major offensive to penetrate to our main bunker,” Capt. Victor Sanchez of the Rebel command at the Springs responded to Ben’s call. When Ben signed off, he turned to his four platoon leaders.

  “I know we’re what could be considered Reservists. But now we’ve got the shit in our left hands and it’s headed for our faces. Start in with the LTDs and ‘smart’ AT mortar rounds at maximum range. I want the fifties set up with the Norwegian ammo General Raines brought back. That shit will penetrate up to seven inches of armor and do a real number on the inside of a tank pronto.”

  “We have everyone in body armor, Vic. What about you?” Lieutenant Price nodded to the sweat-stained OD tank top the captain wore.

  Sanchez shrugged. “Yeah, I guess I’d better dress for the dance. Before I do, though, I want all of you to see that your men have a double issue of ammunition. We want to keep those fuckers as far away as we can. Have the gun crews gotten in from their R & R at the farm?”

  “Last one is due in five minutes,” Price informed
him.

  “Good. Then, quick like bunnies, get this show on the road. The general’s counting on us.”

  Sgt. Emilio Sandoval didn’t know what the hell to make of that little green spot of light on the rear deck of his MBT. Maybe he should button up just to be sure, he considered. He never heard the incoming mortar round. The hardened, armor-piercing nose of the projectile landed within an inch of where the laser target designator beam had “painted” the main battle tank.

  It slammed loudly into the motor compartment and detonated in less than an eyeblink. The resultant massive explosion blew the top half of Sandoval out the commander’s hatch. Like a huge Frisbee, the turret set sail through the smoke and exhaust-fumed air when the magazine let go.

  Instantly deprived of their arrogance, the Nazi tankers began a wild, erratic series of evasive tactics. It did little good. Every time an LTD painted a tank, the high-angle projectile that locked onto it killed the MBT.

  Such sophisticated equipment was a mystery to the South American black-shirts. It resulted in terrible confusion. “Fire! Fire on them. Open fire!” the company commander screamed over his radio. He said to the gape-mouthed infantry officer beside him, “Nobody can adjust his guns that fast. How are they hitting my tanks?”

  “I don’t know,” the black-shirt captain responded. “Magic, maybe?”

  A third of the initial armor reached the dragon’s teeth. The first tank to nudge into a pyramid of concrete went up in a flash-bang of intense white light. The plastic explosive blew the main gun off the turret and stripped the treads with rippling blast effect. Inside, concussion did for those in the turret.

  Eyes blinded and streaming from dust and paint chips, the driver threw the monster in reverse and rolled out of his treads. His head throbbed and blood ran from his ears. He could hear nothing and didn’t know the tank commander lay dead in his harness above. All he knew was he wanted the hell out of there. When the bogies ground to a stop in the soft earth, he threw open the hatch over his head and squeezed out.