Flames from the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  “With our American Nazis as a sound base, I can build an unbeatable force to take on the rest of the United States in the spring. Go, now, and get busy with all of this. Your Führer has spoken.

  Colonel West greeted Ben Raines with a broad smile, then he produced a worried frown. “I gather Tina has her neck stuck out quite a ways at Laramie.”

  “No more than usual,” Ben dismissed.

  He knew that West and Tina planned to marry once the fighting ended for all time. That day, the cynic in Ben told him, would likely be far in the future. West made a good prospect. He was handsome, healthy, a damn fine soldier, completely dedicated to the Rebel cause. What disturbed Ben about the relationship could be attributed to a factor that could be traced back to the days of Ancient Greece.

  A commander had to consider the chance that the emotional involvement of lovers serving in combat units might cloud the military judgment of one or both. Not that West had ever exhibited such instability, nor Tina, for that matter. Just the opposite, in fact. Both had a fierce pride in their professionalism. West’s next remark only reaffirmed that.

  “I gather you’re out here to get a look at our enemy. I’ve detailed a main battle tank and two BFVs to accompany you. Also a platoon of my best.”

  Ben cut him a gimlet eye. “You’ve been talking to Georgi and Lamar,” he accused.

  “It might be that we did discuss certain matters,” West hedged. Then his personal concern entered the picture. “Dammit, General, if you won’t cover your own ass, we have to cover it for you.”

  Ten minutes later, Ben and his team set out in a small convoy toward the black-shirt lines around the destroyed heart of Cheyenne.

  Tina Raines looked up from the map with a cold light in her eyes. Unaware of Hoffman’s order to direct all available forces into the battle of Cheyenne, she saw this evidence of increased Nazi action around Laramie as an attempt to dislodge her small detachment from the airport.

  She was right in part. The Puffs were down and drinking, Tina added to her equation for holding the field. If they could get off again, before a major assault, everything would be all right. Although the Nazis had no idea of the airfield’s importance, they knew about the Rebel occupation and would seek to neutralize it on the way to Cheyenne. She had to consider that, also. It turned out she had less time than expected.

  Mortar rounds struck the grass median strips between runways and walked toward the control tower and administration building. Light artillery shells slashed into the terminal, completing the destruction carried out by Rebel troops during the campaign to exterminate the Night People.

  Camo uniforms mingled with the loose, rumpled outfits of Brodermann’s regular SS. They came in a determined wave that spread out across the runways and pressed in on the defending Rebels. Conscious of the short range of her Sidewinder, Tina grabbed up an M-14 and set the selector to single-fire.

  That recoil smarted, Tina acknowledged as she put a round through the chest of a screaming fanatic halfway down the main runway. It didn’t get any better, she discovered as she continued to fire from her vantage point in the control tower. Time to relocate, she decided when a mortar round impacted fifty feet from the slender concrete spire.

  They had beaten back the first assault. Tina had moved the CP to the hangar where the Puffs sat fueled and ready, but unable to take off. Bodies littered the runways and shell holes pocked the surfaces. The Rebels worked to make repairs during a lull in the fighting. They had even managed to take a few prisoners for interrogation.

  What Tina learned set her mouth in a hard line. It also verified what their intel people had developed from other sources. Fanatical Americans of the SS Hoffman Bodyguard brigade had joined forces with SS Brigade Leader Brodermann’s troops. She reached Ben with this information while his recee detachment swept along the Nazi lines around Cheyenne.

  “Really, Eagle, these homegrown Nazis are more Germanic than Hoffman’s South American variety. They all have German names, even those who are of evident French, Irish, or Italian origin. They all chanted Sieg Heil while we tried to interrogate one of them, so I had the questioning done in another room. They sang old Nazi songs, too. Still are, for that matter.”

  “Remember my order for no quarter,” Ben reminded her, tight-lipped.

  “Yes, sir, General Daddy, sir,” Tina answered stiffly. She had never liked killing unarmed men, with the uniform exception of the creepies. Never a Rebel had shed a tear over those slime.

  “Knock it off, Tina,” Ben growled, the closest he usually came to harsh discipline of his children.

  “Yes, Eagle. I can see your point. We may have time to get the Puffs up if they get the corpses off the runway soon.”

  “Do so. I want a major assault to begin before more reinforcements reach these black-shirt bastards.”

  “Is it that bad, Eagle?”

  “Worse. Hoffman is calling up people from everywhere and they are streaming into the triangle held by the black-shirts. We’re taking more casualties all the time. So, hold what you’ve got, sweetheart, and get those birds in the air.”

  FOURTEEN

  Tango Alpha One and his wingman screamed down the runway nose to tail and rotated smoothly into flying their craft. Small arms fire began immediately from the left side of the runway. A brief, shattering roar from a door gun silenced that. At 20 rounds a second slapping into the position of the hidden gunners, nothing living survived. The command pilot reached Ben Raines at Colonel West’s CP.

  “Welcome to the party,” Ben responded dryly. “We have forward air controllers and guides in place.” He gave the frequencies they would be operating. “You’ll work inward from the friendly panel markers.”

  “Roger that, Eagle. Concentrate them and cream them,” Chuck summarized.

  “I will be mobile after your first pass on this side. Eagle out.”

  Chuck Yount wondered what the general meant by that. Mobile from where? To where? He shrugged it off and concentrated on flying his airplane. It took only minutes to approach Cheyenne. On the ground, Chuck could see small figures swarming toward defensive positions. Time to ruin their day.

  “Foxtrot Gulf X-ray, this is Tango Alpha One. Over.”

  “Tango Alpha One, this is Foxtrot Gulf X-ray. Observe orange marker panels forward of all friendlies. I have you in visual and am passing you on to Foxtrot Charlie One.”

  “This is Foxtrot Charlie One. Tango Alpha One, I have a fire mission. On a heading of two-eight-niner, pick up panel markers. Deliver free fire to the north and east of those markers.”

  “Roger, Foxtrot Charlie.”

  “Your field of fire has a depth of 480 meters. You will observe tanks in the northern quadrant of your fire zone. Sustain maximum autocannon fire in this area.”

  “Roger. Enabling now.”

  With all systems armed, the lumbering C-47s became deadly dragons. They spit fire that scorched the Nazis below. In the initial salvo, the Puffs shuddered and appeared to come to a halt in the air. Individual gunners picked up a rhythm to their targets and the illusion dissolved.

  From the belly of Tango Alpha One, the 75mm autocannon opened up on a company of main battle tanks, the superhardened shell casings easily driving through the light armor over the engine compartments. Tanks are designed to take on the enemy face-to-face. Their thickest armor is located on the face of the turret and driver’s compartment. Their bellies and rear decks are vulnerable to all but small-arms fire.

  So when the big gun hosed down the backsides of the MBTs, they began to erupt in nasty red blossoms, black-tinged harbingers of doom. Diesel tanks went first, followed by the superheated ammunition magazines inside the armored behemoths. The barrels of their main guns whipped through the air like skinny telephone poles in a tornado. Turrets lurched upward, revealing sheets of orange-red flame from inside the tank bodies.

  Slowly a modicum of control developed in the pandemonium of the sudden, violent attack. Lines of tracers sought the slow-flying C-47 Puffs.
Chuck heard the familiar gravel-on-a-tin-roof sound of rounds impacting the skin of his craft. Unconsciously he winced. Ground fire could be a bitch.

  That which pierced the sides of the fuselage generally came in at high enough an angle to punch out the top with little harm done. Rounds that raked the belly were another story. During the battle for Los Angeles, Chuck had a door gunner who took a .50 caliber round through the foot. The flight deck had a light armor flak shield under the pilots, which would stop small-arms and nearly spent .50s, but one of the latter could produce the granddaddy of all crotch traumas. That’s what bugged Chuck as he altered course under direction of the forward air controller.

  “Fire mission! Fire mission! Tango Alpha One, I have a fire mission. Jesus, where’d they get all those tanks?” Taking a firm grip on his cavorting nerves, the FAC read off the coordinates of a whole column of armor advancing to the north of the demolished city.

  Chuck leveled off onto the new heading and checked the expended-ammo indicator for the 75mm. “Foxtrot Charlie One, we’re down to twenty rounds for the big gun. Over.”

  “Then cook them, Tango Alpha One. Descend to level one-five-zero and sew napalm along that column.”

  Chuck glanced back into what had been the cargo compartment. A quick count of the ovoid gray containers produced a grin. “Roger that, Foxtrot Charlie One.”

  At 150 feet, the ground fire became a sustained hailstorm on the skin of the Puffs. Risking their lives, the crew unloaded napalm canisters in a long, steady line. Rivers of flaming goo splashed along the column of MBTs, wrapping them in sticky, burning death. An abrupt, loud clank from the port engine nacelle jerked Chuck’s attention that way.

  Black smoke began to pour from the cowling. Quickly Chuck hit the fire extinguisher and cut the throttle. His copilot feathered the prop. Regretfully, Chuck keyed his mike.

  “Foxtrot Charlie One, we took a hit in the port engine. We’re going to have to abort. Over.”

  “They’ll run right over us,” the FAC protested. “We’ve hit them with everything we have. You’re all that’s holding them back.”

  Chuck hated it, but he had no choice. “Let me check our base and find out the status on the other two birds. I’ll contact you before we’re out of range. Tango Alpha One, out.”

  From the jump seat, the flight engineer leaned forward and changed frequencies. Right away the good news leapt at them. “Tango Alpha One, where are you? We’ve been trying to reach you, over.”

  “You got me. What’s your ETA Cheyenne?” Chuck asked rapidly.

  “Ten minutes.”

  “We took a hit in one engine,” Chuck told him. We’ve turned back. Go for it, ol’ buddy.” He gave the frequency used by the FAG and FAC and signed off. To the flight-deck crew, he confided, “It’s going to be dicey landing. They may have hit the wheel, too.”

  “Nothing like landing on a flat tire,” the flight engineer grumbled.

  “We’ll see.”

  Three minutes later they flew by the incoming Puffs. A wing-waggle greeting was exchanged and the aircraft bore on their separate courses. The C-47 flew like a lead brick. Chuck fought the control column and throttle to nurse more altitude. They were too high for the ground effect and too low for a normal glide slope. When they labored to 500 feet, he gave it to the copilot and contacted the tower.

  “We’re not in the tower anymore,” Laramie told him. “The black-shirts mortared hell out of it.”

  “They came again?” Chuck asked.

  “They’re still here,” came the reply.

  “We’ll make a pass and dust them off, then we’ve got to land.”

  A minute later he had the runway in sight. “Winds at two-six-eight, at fifteen, gusting to twenty, altimeter three-niner-niner-five.”

  “Roger, Laramie.” To the right-hand seat, “Gear down. Flaps thirty percent.”

  Servomotors whined and the landing gear lowered. Chuck would have sold his soul for a look at the port wheel. Well, they’d know when he set the bird down. One of the ground crew must be manning the radio, Chuck decided when the radio crackled to life.

  “Both down and locked, looking good.”

  True to his word, Chuck led the two aircraft down the runway from the west, both door guns blasting at the scrambling figures below. An APC bounced on its carriage with the impact of a hundred rounds. Parts began to fall off. Then they were past the apron and over the threshold. Chuck fought to bring about a smooth 180 far enough out to pull off a normal descent.

  He sideslipped to line up the centerline as he crossed the threshold on the way in. Lower now, lower. The venerable Douglas airframe shuddered violently as they dropped through two hundred feet. Now a hundred. The runway streamed by below, littered with corpses. Chuck felt the landing with his fingertips. Lips tightly compressed, he judged the right second and flared out.

  On a single engine, the overloaded C-47 dropped the last few feet to the runway like a stone. The plane lurched to the left and a shower of sparks sprayed out from the trailing edge of the wing. So much for appearances, Chuck thought. The tire was flat after all. Throttling back, then powering up, he fought to keep the wounded craft from groundlooping.

  Metal shrieked in protest. Vibration gave Chuck a quadruple image of everything from the instrument panel forward. Gradually the cripple slowed. An intersection flashed past and Chuck made ready for the next. He never made it. With a brief, mighty moan, the port gear strut gave way and the wingtip touched concrete. In a shower of cement dust, the C-47 swung a quarter-turn and came violently to a stop.

  “Switches,” Chuck snapped. Blood trickled down from his forehead where it had made contact with the yoke. “Everyone out. Out now.”

  Vehicles raced toward them. At the sight of flames crackling up around the left wing, they stopped at a respectable distance. Chuck and his shaken crew did a fast 220 dash to shelter behind the nearest APC as the gas tank let go. They hugged the armored side while a firecracker rattle came from detonating ammunition. Another belly-shaking whoomph came from the starboard fuel bladder, then only the crackle of flames.

  Chuck looked at the white faces of his crew. He wondered if he shared their pallor. He forced a grin. “Like they say, any landing you walk away from is a good one.”

  For all their awesome ferocity, not even the Puffs could hold back the surge of Hoffman’s black-shirts. Shouting and singing Nazi songs, their American counterparts led the way. When the flying gun platforms ran out of ammunition and turned away for Laramie, the Rebels recoiled from the advances made against them.

  General Striganov wore a mask of bitter regret as his troops retreated over ground hard-won only two days earlier. Colonel West and his mercenaries fought a holding action to the west of the Nazi lines. Ben’s R Batt functioned as a flying squad to plug holes wherever they appeared. Only one place benefited by the determination of the NAL to hold onto their positions around Cheyenne.

  Fighting remained heavy at the Laramie airport, yet the enemy inflicted few injuries and did little damage. The Nazis that remained to harass the ground crew refueling the three remaining C-47s had only ancient 60mm mortars, and few of those. When it got real hairy for Tina, Ben summoned Thermopolis.

  “Therm, I want you to take the Headquarters Company and break out of here. Get the hell on to Laramie and reinforce Tina.”

  Captain Thermopolis looked concerned. “You mean the whole shootin’ match?”

  “Everyone. Leadfoot and Wanda, and Emil Hite, too. Take two Abrams with you. It’s a fifty-mile run from here, so take along a tanker truck.”

  “Good as done, General. But who’ll be watching you?”

  Ben cut his eyes to the short figure by the doorway of the mobile CP. “I’ve got Jersey. What else do I need?”

  “Flatterer,” Jersey griped, aware she was blushing.

  Thermopolis and the HQ company reached Laramie an hour and twenty minutes later. They rolled along the drive to the long-term parking lot in the middle of another assault by the sc
reaming Nazis. Therm collared a harried-looking young corporal and asked where he could find Tina Raines.

  He pointed to the parking ramps in what used to be the general aviation section. “She’s out there. Cap’n Young got wasted and she took the company. There’s hell to pay, sir. Good thing you got here.”

  Instead of the confusion of a hard-fought defense, Thermopolis found calm and order among the fighting Rebels. Tina was with two platoons making ready for a counterattack. She seemed cool and laid back to the ex-hippie.

  “Daddy sent you,” she accused when she recognized Thermopolis in his combat gear.

  “We heard you had a lot on your hands. You don’t look all that threatened.”

  “Even the best of all plans won’t survive contact with the enemy. That goes double for these Nazi scum. They’ve been trying to take us since we got here last night.”

  Emil Hite came forward, tripped on the knee-level sag of his rifle sling, and nearly bowled Tina over. “I have been summoned by my dear friend and benefactor, Ben Raines, to come to the rescue of fair maiden,” he bubbled. “To commemorate the event, I have created a new dance.”

  “Not now, Emil,” Tina said, face squinched in reaction to this announcement.

  “Oh, but it is most significant. A power dance, a sign that the Almighty favors the Rebels. It will strike fear into the hearts of those heathen Nazis. They will turn and run at sight of it.”

  “Oh, no doubt,” Tina replied dryly. “Likely, anyone would.”