Flames from the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  “But your medication,” the medico bleated.

  “Send all your little pills along with me. I’m taking the home division to what used to be Amarillo, Texas, to set up a unified field command.” With that, Jefferys stomped out of the hospital and walked to his office. He had a spring in his step that had been lacking since before the operation.

  At his staff conference half an hour later, he began outlining how he saw the upcoming campaign. “We can’t use nuclear; the tactical units of Hoffman and Volmer are too small and widespread to make that practical. Ben said use all means, so we can use gas shells and aerosol application. I want those loaded onto cargo planes immediately. All artillery that is transportable by air is to go also. Ammunition, fuel, and food are to go forward also. Well leapfrog men and materiel all the way until contact is made with the enemy. Troop movements will begin at 1300 hours today. I want the whole division mobilized immediately after noon chow.”

  “General, what about those rednecks down in Bayou Gatoon? They’ve been getting bolder of late,” Colonel Morris remarked.

  “We’re leaving enough personnel behind to deal with those inept scumbags. Hell, a couple of squads from the Middle School UMT class could handle them.”

  “Ah, General, only boys and girls twelve and over are qualified on the M-16.”

  “Ain’t we got enough of them?” Jefferys teased, laughing, his spirits high once more. The staff joined him, then sobered to listen to the rest of Cecil’s planning to date.

  Buddy Raines looked toward El Paso, Texas, from a high, conical hill on the edge of what used to be the Fort Bliss Military Reservation. He noticed only minimal activity on the part of the Nazi troops who occupied the ruins of the suburbs. That suited him fine.

  “Well go through them like a dose of Ex-Lax,” he remarked to his battalion commanders.

  “What’s that, Ex-Lax?” Lieutenant Colonel Morris asked.

  “A laxative from the old days,” Buddy explained. “Dad told me about it. Came in the form of small chocolate squares. He said it really turned you loose. Anyway, it appears they are not expecting us. Or at least not this early. Deploy your men on a broad front, armor up front, and we go in at sixteen hundred. By the way, General Jefferys is on his way to Amarillo with a division. He’s assuming overall command.”

  “We’re doing all right, aren’t we?” Morris asked.

  “We are, but in some places this thing with Dad is playing hob with efficiency. In fact, we’re getting the shit knocked out of us up north. We’ve got a purpose, to get Dad out, now that we know where he is.”

  A grin opened a line of white in Lieutenant Colonel Morris’s ebony face. “That was real obliging of Volmer to use that powerful radio station to show off on.”

  “Yes,” Buddy agreed. “We’d still be trying if they had stuck to low-wattage transmitters. We have a perfect triangulation from the audio direction finders in the Apaches. Speaking of them, I want them up and hitting the area along the river when the assault begins.”

  The American Nazi co-commander in El Paso was sitting opposite his NAL counterpart in a modular home that had been converted to an officers’ club. On the low table between them was a bottle of excellent Hueradura tequila from Mexico. As one they licked salt from the web of one hand, drained off the shooters, and bit lime. The South American bent to pour another round.

  “I tell you, Fritz, the Rebels are all but defeated. They cannot survive without Ben Raines.”

  Colonel Fritz Rivera nodded and then peered at his American ally through his monocle. “Walter, you take too much for granted,” he stated. “Ben Raines is not the whole Rebel army. We have fought them before. Once the rank and file, and their commanders, are over the shock of Raines’s capture, they will come back at us with a vengeance.”

  Colonel Walter Hauber lifted his tequila. “Then we publicly execute Ben Raines.”

  “That, I’m afraid, would prove terribly unwise,” Rivera responded a moment before his brows rose in astonishment and the eyeglass dropped from his face.

  Outside the window of the O-club, directly in front of the Nazi brass, the blunt snout of an AH-64 Apache lowered into position. It hovered a moment while Colonel Rivera gaped in disbelief. Then it blew off a Hellfire missile that crashed through the window and exploded in the laps of the El Paso area commanders.

  * * *

  Death slashed at the Nazis around the former city of El Paso. It came in the form of 30mm explosive rounds, whirring flechettes from 105 and 155 artillery, and from the barrels of rifles in the hands of screaming Rebels, who charged into the unsuspecting black-shirts before many of them could grab their weapons. Rockets and grenades crashed and added to the carnage. Buddy Raines stayed close on the backs of the lead elements of the assault.

  Riding a BFV, he watched closely as laser target designators flashed green and red across the battlefield, “painting” enemy armor for the smart projectiles fired by the 4-inch mortars in the Bradleys. His dad would call it a scene out of Star Wars, whatever that was, and refer to LTD spotters as Hans Solo. Even without those images of the past, Buddy still enjoyed himself.

  “Take us in a little closer,” he told the driver.

  “Yes, Colonel, but-”

  I’ve got a feeling these crud are fighting without orders. I want to find out. Let’s go get me a prisoner,” Buddy replied.

  Three Nazi slime ran at the BFV a quarter of a mile deeper into the rubble of El Paso. They had their hands over their heads. Eyes filled with fright glittered out of powder- and dirt-grimed faces. Buddy ordered the vehicle halted. He climbed out the door at the rear of the Bradley. He had his .40 caliber P7M10 in his hand, the muzzle steady on the chest of the nearest black-shirt.

  “On your bellies,” Buddy roared, then repeated it in Spanish.

  Instant compliance. Buddy waited while two Rebels from the Bradley searched and secured the prisoners. Then he stepped forward and raised one Nazi to his feet. “Okay, put them in the Bradley, one at a time.”

  Inside, he asked the camo-clad prisoner, “Do you speak English?”

  “Yeah. I’m an American. You’ve got no right treating us like this.”

  “You want to snivel, I’ll kick your ass back outside where our troops have orders to take no prisoners,” Buddy coldly told him.

  “That’s inhuman,” the man wailed.

  “Bullshit! Are you a member of the Super Race or a whining hanky-stomper?”

  “I’m a guy who’s scared shitless, that’s what.”

  “Then try answering some questions and you’ll live longer.”

  “What do you want to know?” the bound man asked, head hung.

  “Start with your name. Then tell me who’s running the show here?”

  “I’m Victor Lawson. No — no one is running anything any more. W-we’re drivers, see? We were with our staff cars outside the officers’ club when one of your helicopters blew hell out of it. It was right at cocktail time. There ain’t anybody left above the level of company commander.”

  Buddy produced a broad grin. “Well, Vic, that’s nice to know. Thing is, can I believe you? Yes, I think I can. Where is this club?”

  “Back the way we came from. It’s still burnin’. It was one of those big, two-piece trailers they hauled down here.”

  “If you’ll guide us, we’ll go have a look.” To the Rebel guarding Lawson, Buddy said, “Take him outside and keep him away from the others.”

  With a little difficulty, he got much the same story from the second black-shirt. Although Buddy’s Spanish was good, the prisoner spoke a South American dialect that made understanding difficult. The third proved to be a defiant fanatic.

  “I’ll tell you nothing, you Rebel bastard,” he snarled.

  Buddy Raines eyed him icily, nodded, and spoke through a smile. “Okay. No problem. Open the door, Sam,” he told the Rebel trooper. With the prisoner out on the ground again, Buddy put the muzzle of his H&K P7M10 an inch above the recalcitrant Nazi’s nose and blew awa
y the left side of his head.

  “Now, let’s go to the O-club,” he said lightly.

  * * *

  Resistance in the El Paso area unraveled even faster than Buddy Raines had expected. His BFV had barely reached the smoldering remains of the former officers’ club when reports from different companies came crackling in. He began to develop a picture of a battle rapidly concluding.

  A large corridor had been blasted right through the middle of the defending line. Caught by complete surprise, the Nazis frequently chose to swim the Rio Grande rather than try to face the Rebels. They were not aware that the young man leading these yelling killing machines had every intention of going on into Mexico. Some black-shirts stood by their guns and fired until destroyed. Buddy climbed from the Bradley Fighting Vehicle to examine the remains of the modular house that had taken a hit from an Apache.

  Instantly he jerked violently and went to the ground, unmoving. A second later the BFV crew heard the crack of the sniper rifle. One of Buddy’s staff, Major Harmon, arrived a moment later. Everyone still hugged the ground, assuming the sniper to still be there, and Buddy to be dead.

  Harmon ignored the possibility of a sniper and rushed to Buddy’s supine form. He knelt and examined the young dark-haired man. Anger, doubled by what he found, burned in him.

  “He’s alive, no thanks to you,” he complained to the BFV crew. “His helmet took most of the damage. Knocked him colder than last week’s pea soup. He’ll be all right, but have one hell of a headache. That’s the trouble with you people livin’ in those turtle shells,” he complained of the crouching men. “You develop awfully thin skin.”

  He gestured to two infantrymen who had come with him in a Humvee. “Go find that sniper.” To the immobilized crew, “Someone hand me a canteen. We have to bring Colonel Raines around.”

  By the time Buddy Raines regained consciousness, he had been handed the largest single victory of his career with the Rebels. When the defenders had heard over their radios that the entire command structure had been wiped out, and heard it from one of their own — the American Nazi Buddy had questioned volunteered to broadcast it — they had given up in droves. Most had chosen to flee to the eastward, or south into Mexico.

  “I don’t remember tying one on,” Buddy grunted as his throbbing head steadied enough for him to sit up.

  “Sniper,” Major Harmon advised him. “I have people out hunting him.”

  “How long have I been out?” Buddy asked.

  “About fifteen minutes. That ballistic helmet took most of the shock, but you got a good rap on the skull.”

  In the distance, muffled firing could be heard as the diehards did just that. Harmon told Buddy that the Rebels now controlled all of the Nazi AO. Buddy made to rise when a short crackle of shots sounded from about a quarter-mile away. Harmon nodded in satisfaction.

  “I think that takes care of our sniper.”

  “Good. I want to get on the horn to all batt commanders. We’re crossing over into Mexico.”

  Juárez, being on the border, had suffered as much as El Paso from the ravages of the Great War, the plague, and the reclamation by the Rebels. Surprisingly, one bridge remained intact. Not the fancy, gracefully curved, pre-stressed concrete ribbon that once carried four lanes in both directions; rather, the old, stone two-lane bridge built in the late 1800s. When Buddy Raines arrived, behind the first wave that drove the Nazis out into the desert, he climbed from the BFV and stood looking over the devastation of a once large, prosperous city. His head still throbbed as his gaze went beyond the piles of Juarez debris to the south, toward a town called Villa Ahumada.

  “Hang in there, Dad,” he said softly. “We’re coming for you.”

  THIRTEEN

  Ben Raines floated in limbo. He experienced no light, no sound, no sense of movement or gravity. IV tubes in his arms fed and hydrated him and kept him in a mild drugged state. After the first few hours, he even lost consciousness of the tidal flow of his own blood and pulse of his heart. Slowly, a light began to form in his mind. Ben stirred, although not conscious of the movement.

  With a powerful effort of will, he concentrated his consciousness and struggled to keep control of his mind. The light grew. Symbolic, he thought. That’s not a real light. But I can make it come and go.

  That realization encouraged him. After a timeless time, he began to focus his attention on days gone by. He visualized the itinerary of his lecture tour, shortly before the Great War. He had spoken at such prestigious institutions as Notre Dame, Stanford, Columbia, and Georgetown University. Often his speaking engagements had been interrupted by the brainwashed, loudmouthed, politically correct offspring of the hanky-stompers.

  Gradually his mind formed the pinkly scrubbed, baby-faced features of one long-haired, politically correct punk who had mindlessly chanted, “Get the Contras out! Get the Contras out!”

  Too bad that the little idiot had his brain so drug-soaked that he didn’t realize that with the election of Violeta Barrios de Chamorro the previous year, the Contra cause had collapsed in Nicaragua. The little mullet had become so enraged that he charged down the aisle and spouted his stupidity directly into Ben’s face.

  Ben had kept a blank expression, but covered the microphone with a big hand and spoke with soft, deadly force. “Shut the fuck up and sit down, you ill-mannered brat.”

  Stunned, the youthful agitator went silent. No one had ever spoken to him like that. This big, hard-faced man in front of him must not love him. By the time he stumbled away from the podium, he was on the verge of tears. Ben had finished the rest of his talk, “World Conditions and Their Impact on the American Novel,” without further interruption.

  Deprived of all sensation, the world drifted by for Ben Raines while he reviewed those terrible days of the robotic war called the Great War. Ben had done his share, more than most. Out of the ashes of that holocaust, Ben had pulled together like-minded people and established the Tri-States.

  That had been fortunate for many, Unfortunately, time revealed that the politicians had survived the bombings and thwarted invasion. The left-leaning whiners and snivelers and would-be tyrants could not tolerate the idea of a state within the state, so they went to war against Ben Raines, called him a rebel and worse.

  Rebel had become a label of pride under the leadership of Ben Raines. Impressions of those days brought on a touch of sadness, too. He recalled his first wife and the children they had adopted. How little time the demands of statecraft and war allowed for him to spend with his family. So precious few hours. And he had paid for that, Ben noted. At least Tina had survived.

  Thoughts of Tina brought Ben inevitably to Buddy. For years he had not even known that Buddy existed. When they at last met, he had seen how time had weighed on the boy. A man grown, even then, Buddy had known nothing but fighting against overwhelming odds since. Which eventually brought Ben to speculate on what Buddy had in mind for rescue. Ben relaxed into picking that apart, and his delta waves altered dramatically.

  Peter Volmer slammed his fist onto the counter under the observation window. “He’s resisting it. Somehow he has found a way to stave off the process of breaking down his mind.”

  “We have been at it for less than three days, Field Marshal Volmer,” a technician protested. “The subject has a strong ego, a powerful mind. It is going to take time.”

  “We don’t have time. I’m compelled to face Führer Hoffman’s impatience and counter his demands for the execution of Ben Raines. I have to tell him something. Are you sure there has been no progress?”

  “Nothing measurable. If anything, I’d say the subject is enjoying a long, comfortable rest. One long overdue.”

  “He’s not here for a rest cure,” Volmer snapped at the technician. “Do something. Break him, dammit!”

  By the end of the day in which Ben Raines established his defenses against sensory deprivation, the supply of gas shells for the 155s, 105s, and 4-inch mortars sent by Cecil Jefferys had arrived in all operati
onal areas. Along with them came aerosol canisters for the aircraft. The deadly nerve poison was quickly distributed to the waiting batteries. Particularly glad to receive this ultimate means of subduing the enemy were Colonel West and General Striganov.

  General Georgi Striganov had joined Colonel West at the Ouster Battlefield and deployed his troops on the heights around the fateful “valley of Montana.” West arrived at the hastily called staff meeting softly singing an old ballad.

  “‘Do you hear their tomtoms ringing, Sergeant Flynn? Do you hear the Sioux out singing, Sergeant Flynn? Do you hear the tomtoms ringing? It’s a war dance they are singing, but they’ve yet to learn the words to Gerryowen. Gerryowen, Gerryowen, Gerryowen, in that valley of Montana all alone. There are better days to be for the Seventh Cavalry, when we charge again for dear old Gerryowen.’”

  “What’s that, Colonel?” General Striganov asked.

  “It’s an old song about George Armstrong Custer and the Seventh. It happened right here, June 25, 1876. Custer and 286 troopers charged seven thousand Sioux and Cheyenne warriors. The Indians ate Custer’s lunch.”

  “So it amuses you to see us in Custer’s boots?” Striganov asked.

  “No. It amuses me to see us in the Sioux’s moccasins,” West answered levelly. “The gas canisters arrived half an hour ago. Hoffman’s Nazis are making up to attack us. It strikes me that now is a good time to teach them something about Rebel arms and tactics.”

  Georgi Striganov smiled for the first time in days. “I do think you are right. We’ll deploy at once.”

  “We hold the high ground. The terrain compels the black-shirts to come at us from below. The natural valley of the river will contain the gas long enough to be fully effective,” West listed the rest of his plan. “I think we’re going to give the Nazis a Little Big Horn of their own, with Brigadeführer Brodermann as Custer.”