Flames from the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  “Then, that’s what you had better — ”

  “Iiin-coooming!” shouted a Rebel nearby, cutting off Tina’s sentence.

  Fluttering wings of the Angel of Death brushed over the airport, in the form of mortar rounds dropping on the field in random pattern. With a 4,800-foot runway, there was a lot more space than inbound bombs. The mortar shells exploded harmlessly enough. That would change, Tina knew.

  “Get those planes under cover,” she commanded. “Those Nazis may be assholes, but they’re smart enough to get an FO up where he can walk those mortars in on something that counts.”

  Two drivers fitted jerry-rigged towbars to their Hummers, and the aircrews attached those to the nose-wheel struts of the C-47s. Slowly the tall-tailed craft disappeared inside the hangar. All the while the mortar rounds kept falling, although with little more precision than the first salvo.

  Deployed to protect the critical-services area of the airport, the company had made sandbag bunkers and set up in an overlapping pattern that provided interlocking, enfiladed fire. The company’s SAWs opened up while Tina and the pilots still anxiously watched the huge doors of the hangar slide shut on the Puffs.

  Three M-60 LMGs per platoon, augmented by two more in the weapons squad, and .50 calibers on the pintle mounts of Hummers, brought a great volume of scalding pee on the heads of the charging Nazi troops. The router roar of the 30mm chainguns in the BFVs sang a death song that could be heard on the far side of the ruin of Laramie. Grenade launchers made their hollow barks and added to the carnage.

  Storm troopers of Volmer’s Bodyguard division made it halfway along the main runway before the steam went out of their assault. In withering fire they began to falter. The regulars of Brodermann’s division yelled and tried to rally their American counterparts. Deadly Rebel accuracy gradually changed their minds.

  “They’re breaking!” a Rebel sergeant shouted. “Pulling back all along the runway.”

  Tina had set up her CP in the control tower. From there, she had an excellent overview of the disintegrating assault. Part of her mind remained alert to the flow of radio traffic. When the last of the black-shirts streamed through the gaps in the sagging cyclone fence at the perimeter of the airfield, the call she had anticipated came through.

  “We got it,” came the calm voice of a scout. “Those assault troops led us right to their CP.” He read off coordinates.

  “Good work. Pull back far enough to direct fire,” Tina ordered. Then she got on one of the cigarette-pack-sized radio to the four-inch-mortar crews. “I have a fire mission.” Quickly she conveyed the elevation and declination. “Fire one for effect.”

  Two seconds later the big mortar round left the tube. It arched through the sky and descended on a block of rubble-strewn, but-still-standing buildings on the west side of Laramie. Its explosion sent a shower of brick chips whizzing along the deserted boulevard.

  “Right two, up one,” crackled from the scout. Tina relayed it.

  The second and third rounds slammed into the gutted second floor of what had been a brick bank building. They blew out two of the remaining three walls and brought cries of alarm from those below, in the underground vault.

  “Right on,” the scout reported cheerily. “Right on the button.”

  “Fire ten rounds, alternate HE and willie peter,” Tina commanded.

  In pairs, the 4-inch rounds descended on the building that sheltered and concealed the Nazi CP. It and the ones to either side came down in a crashing roar. The dust cloud they raised could be seen from the airport. Nodding in satisfaction, Tina spoke again. “Now drop in four AP rounds.”

  Three men in the command post, out of fifteen, survived, severely wounded and deafened. For the time being, the threat from Hoffman’s black-shirts had ended. Tina Raines had time to think of other matters.

  “I wonder how Dad’s doing?” she asked herself aloud.

  Ben Raines stood beside the Humvee on a slight knoll along I-80 and watched the long column of troops and heavy weapons stream past. They were only some twenty miles east of Cheyenne. By late afternoon the artillery would be in position to pound Hoffman’s occupying force. The radio report from Tina had been promising.

  She and her company had been able to fight off the Nazi attack, and the Puffs were being refueled. A little behind schedule, but still in time to paste the large concentration of enemy around the ruins of Cheyenne. Elsewhere, things moved well also.

  Buddy, as the new XO of the rump-regiment formed for Dan Gray’s command, would be well into Kansas and on the way to forestall any attempt by the black-shirts to retake Pueblo or Colorado Springs. Ike McGowan reported good progress in that direction also.

  He would take Denver and then sweep southward to link up with Dan for the big push to the Mexican border. By splitting the Nazi line and hitting on the flanks, Ben expected to roll them up easily. He intended to keep his headquarters and R Batt with the northern theater under Georgi Striganov. Ben breathed deeply of diesel and gas fumes in satisfaction and clapped his hands together to summon Smoot, who had been off watering trees.

  “Time to go tear off Hoffman’s ass and hand it to him,” he announced.

  “All the way, General,” Jersey urged through a grin.

  * * *

  By three that afternoon, Colonel West reported that his troops held the ground to the west of Cheyenne. General Striganov had his people in position to the north and east, supplemented by the R Batt. There had been a few minor skirmishes, though the two competent commanders had handled it easily. The big guns had been laid and waited only for the command to open fire.

  General Striganov generously gave that honor to Ben Raines. “This is Eagle, you may commence firing,” Ben spoke into the mike.

  One hundred three 155s opened up on the doomed enemy deployment around Cheyenne from three sides. The fat shells whistled over the heads of the outer perimeter, whitening faces as they sailed by. Five rounds from each gun had taken to air before an answering rumble came from the Nazis.

  “They’ve got counterbattery fire going,” Ben snapped. Tell the SPs to haul ass. Fire hit-and-run from now until I say stop. That should give the rest of the guns time to limber up and get the hell out of there.”

  Georgi Striganov shared a comfortable chair with Ben Raines in the mobile CP. He raised a stubby finger and bristly eyebrow to emphasize his soft reminder. “Ben, their 130s and 126s don’t have the range of our 155s.”

  “That’s right, though the 126s do if they add an extra powder bag and stress out the breech locks.” Ben grinned. “It’s good drill for our people, and they damned well need it. Some of those artillery boys are getting fat and lazy.”

  A few 126mm shells fell among the artillery batteries. They caused few casualties, mostly a lot of ringing ears. Within half an hour, Ben took the handset from Corrie, along with her summary of the incoming call.

  “It’s Colonel West. He wants to know when you’re gonna stop jacking his gunners around and get serious.”

  “Are you serious?” Ben asked.

  “No. Just wanted to see if I could rile you, General.”

  “Eagle here, Merc, go.”

  West’s voice came tinnily over the scrambler. “We’ve got a lot of black-shirt shit doing a bug-out our direction, Eagle. What do you advise?”

  “Stomp butt on them, of course. But keep those shells dropping in. We want those Hitler-loving assholes to think they have the whole Rebel army on their nines.”

  “From their uniforms they appear to be the American variety.”

  Ben’s eyes glittered. “Take no prisoners, Merc. No time, no facilities.”

  “I hear ya, Eagle. What was it your friend Peyon called it? El Desgüello, the Cutthroat Song? No quarter.”

  Ben thought of the tough, competent soldier from Mexico, every inch a man, without the swaggering pretense of machismo, yet strangely gentle, scholarly, a reflective man. “Yeah. That’s exactly what I want,” he told West.

  THIRTEEN
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  For three hours the artillery duel raged on. The slightly more mobile self-propelled 155mm guns whipped around the city to give fits to the counterbattery radar operators of Hoffman’s command. Sometimes they fired singly, others in groups of up to five, like a static battery.

  By the time the return salvo had been plotted and loaded, they had dashed away to other locations. Repeatedly the Nazi commanders heard the jubilant news that another battery of Rebel guns had been silenced. After the count exceeded twenty batteries, they began to have serious doubts about the accuracy of their information.

  A mounting tide of desertions had been halted when a number of sergeants shot down men fleeing the utter terror of an artillery bombardment. Gradually, the high-velocity 126mm guns of the NAL began to actually score on Rebel positions. A stream of wounded and dead began to pour into Rebel field hospitals. Ben Raines had awareness of this turn of events brought forcefully to him by Dr. Lamar Chase.

  “Goddammit, Ben, you are spending men’s lives like lead slugs in a penny arcade. I have two field hospitals and they are both full to overflowing.”

  Ben’s eyes burned like shovelfuls of sand had been dumped into them. He stared blankly at his old friend for a moment without registering the doctor’s complaint.

  “Yes, I know,” Ben said regretfully.

  “Then what are you going to do about it? You haven’t even launched an assault as yet. The troops are spread too thin. We’re going to have increased casualties. There’s a shortage of whole blood, bed space, and medical personnel.”

  Smarting from what self-criticism told him — that he was fighting a losing campaign — Ben failed to guard his tongue when he responded to Lamar Chase’s criticisms.

  “I haven’t any choice. We have to break through Hoffman’s line and go at them from the flanks or it’s all in the toilet. Now, I strongly suggest, Doctor, that you confine yourself to the healing arts and let the strategy and tactical decisions be made by those qualified to make them.”

  Chase went white. Ben’s harsh words deeply hurt him to his crusty soul. He turned on one heel and stalked to the door. There he paused to throw words back over one shoulder.

  “I — well, I — at least you know how I feel.”

  Ben cursed himself silently, eyes squeezed shut. He had not intended to be so preemptive with his old friend. He was, Ben admitted, mad at himself, not at Lamar Chase. He had a way of fixing that. He always felt better when out mixing it up with the troops.

  “Corrie, bump West and tell him I’ll be over his way in a short. The first assault wave is to jump off in twenty minutes.”

  Major Dieter Furst, known before his conversion to Nazism as Wally Whipple, stared at the panting young American Nazi standing at his desk. “Their artillery has stopped firing, Major. What do we do now?”

  Every bit as much a neophyte as the youthful storm trooper, Major Furst didn’t know how to answer that. “They may have run out of ammunition. God knows they dumped enough on us.” He gestured beyond the command trailer.

  Dust, flame, and smoke still hazed the air so thickly that visibility had been reduced to thirty feet. Dazed men, not yet recovered from the ferocity of the Rebel shelling, wandered aimlessly around the small cut between low hills that bordered U.S. 85 at its junction with I-25. Elated that the terrible explosions had stopped punishing his ears, Dieter Furst hoped sincerely that the silence would go on forever. Then a horrible new thought burst in his head.

  “They — they wouldn’t fire on their own men, would they?” he asked uncertainly of the shocked, silent men in the command center. Suddenly, fearfully, he knew the answer. “They’re coming! They are going to attack us. You, Trooper, get out there and tell the sergeants to roust their men out of their shelters.”

  “I c-can’t tell sergeants anything, sir,” the nonplussed storm trooper pleaded.

  “That’s right,” Furst’s rattled brain made him say. He rounded on two lieutenants, barely out of their teens. “You two, get out there and get those sergeants’ whistles blowing. Turn out all the men to repel an attack.”

  Whistles began to blow along the Nazi positions. Men came reluctantly from their hastily dug shelters. Many had been all but buried by the ground heaves of the exploding Rebel shells. They stood alone or in clusters, dumbstruck and fearful of a resumption of the bombardment. What came instead were the feathery whispers of mortar rounds.

  They fell as a sprinkle, then a shower, then a deluge. Whizzing fragments of shrapnel sliced through vulnerable flesh and men screamed their last amid the sharp crack of exploding rounds. Right behind the thunderous hail of death came a low roar, filled with menace, that grew louder. The brutalized soldiers of the American Nazi movement turned stark faces to the direction of this clamor and, in utter dread, witnessed the swift, ground-covering approach of the Rebel infantry.

  Some of the quicker-minded among them leapt to man machine guns and make an effort to save themselves. Belatedly the sergeants kicked and bullied the storm troopers into some sort of order and directed defensive fire.

  Ben Raines’s Hummer careened around a shell hole with one rear wheel hanging over the rupture in the ground. Corrie looked back at Ben and offered the handset. She made a chastened little girl big-eyed expression.

  “It’s Dr. Chase for you, General. And boy is he mad.”

  “This is Eag — ” Ben began, but Lamar Chase already had his sails filled and ran before the wind.

  “Listen to me, goddammit, Ben Raines. You can’t go out hot-rodding around in the middle of an assault. I won’t let you.”

  Hot-rodding? Ben asked himself. At least the testy old fart had gotten over his hurt feelings, Ben mused. He wouldn’t be on that tired old high horse if he hadn’t. He spoke with a prim, schoolteacher-ish voice that he knew aggravated Chase.

  “It seems that I am already out here, Doctor. I don’t propose to run back through what we’ve already encountered just to return to the CP.”

  “It’s crazy, Ben. It’s damn foolishness,” Dr. Chase hurled at his commanding officer. “You’re going to get yourself killed. We can’t afford that. The Rebels need you, Ben. I — need you.”

  Enough of this, Ben thought. Next thing he’ll be admitting he actually likes me. “Get a grip, Lamar,” Ben said gruffly, moved by his old friend’s show of emotion. “Before I know it, you’ll be crying crocodile tears and stomping on a hankie.”

  “You’re a prick, Ben Raines,” Lamar Chase responded, the tension draining from his voice.

  “Is that anything like a schmuck, Doctor?” Ben asked lightly, recalling the outburst of the captured American Nazi in the drive-in.

  “Damn you, you always could push the right buttons. Have it your way, Ben, as I’m sure you will. But, damn it, man, be careful.”

  “We link up with West in about five minutes and I’ll have three battalions around me.”

  “I still won’t rest until you’re back here,” the doctor groused. “You tell that little lady that watches over you to make you keep your butt down. Chase out.”

  Ben spoke to his team. “That, boys and girls, was lecture number one thousand five hundred seventy-nine on covering the commander’s ass. I want to gauge the caliber of men Hoffman has on this thousand-mile front of his. And that means going in and mixing it up close and personal.”

  “You mean get in their face, General?” Beth asked sweetly.

  “You got it, Beth. When we reach West, we go into Cheyenne to kick ass and take names.”

  Word of the Rebel attack on Cheyenne reached General Field Marshal Hoffman within minutes of the opening of the artillery duel. Immediately he summoned his staff. Striding about the room in a posture he aped from old, grainy black-and-white films of Adolf Hitler, Hoffman muttered darkly for a while, then came to a halt at a large situations map spread on a plank table.

  “Right here,” he shouted, finger stabbing Cheyenne. “And only days after we ran out the Rebels there and established a major defensive position. Ben Raines must ha
ve his entire army with him. He would not dare attack so strong a position otherwise.”

  Colonel Webber cleared his throat, reluctant to bear further bad news. “We have also lost radio contact with the detachment in Laramie,” he informed Hoffman.

  Hoffman looked like a man with an attack of apoplexy. After his face had gone white, then red, and white again, he gasped out an incoherent jumble of words, some in Spanish, others in German. He kicked a table leg, then pounded a fist on the map. Then both fists. At last he regained command of speech.

  “This has to be a diversion by Raines. He can’t have wiped out the entire force at Laramie. Maybe he’s jamming the radios. It has to be something minor. It must be. But, if we cannot reach them by radio, how can we order them to reinforce Cheyenne?”

  “We cannot, obviously, Herr General Field Marshal,” Webber felt emboldened to say. “There is more, Herr General Field Marshal.”

  “What? What else can there be?”

  “The — ah . . .” Webber’s face molded into an expression of distaste, “Alien Secretions are reported as having engaged Raines on his way to the Cheyenne area. They were completely annihilated.”

  “Blut und Donner!” Hoffman bellowed. “Blood and thunder,” he repeated, liking the phrase. “Can anything else interfere with our orderly progress?”

  “That I do not know, sir,” Webber replied quietly.

  “I want,” Hoffman began with a wide circular gesture over the map, “I want every unit within a hundred miles of Cheyenne mobilized at once and sent there.”

  “If I may suggest, Herr General Field Marshal,” Webber cut in. “It might be that Ben Raines does not have his entire army with him. We could be seriously weakening other positions to draw off so many men.”

  “Cheyenne is the key. We must hold onto that territory or the whole of my plan goes awry. I will have Cheyenne secured, gentlemen. It is up to you to see I have it. Dismissed.”

  “But, Herr–”

  “No ‘buts,’ Webber,” Hoffman snapped, a hand held up in caution. “By expending ammunition and lives, the Rebels will be weakened and forced on the defensive, fighting isolated guerrilla actions while I, the brilliant Führer — yes, I have decided it is time to claim my rightful title — while I conquer and subdue everything from Canada to the tip of Baja California. Cheyenne drains the Rebels of blood. Cheyenne is the pivotal point of a line that will extend our eastern border on Rebel territory north to south from Minot, North Dakota, to Sanderson, Texas.