D-Day in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  The Rebels had, up to this point, offered the creeps a quick and humane death. All that had abruptly changed during this rainy, bloody night. Now there would be no pity, no mercy, no compassion, no quick deaths for the Night People. The Rebels could be horribly brutal and savage when provoked—and they were provoked.

  “Bring up the flamethrowers,” Ben told Corrie. “And canisters of gas. Fuck these goddamn cannibals.”

  “The reporters?” Buddy questioned.

  “They’re idiots. They think war should be fought with rules. Savages don’t know rules. In order to win, one has to come down to the level of the enemy . . . or very close to it. The press can stay, they can leave, or they can go to hell. I don’t give a damn which one they choose.”

  Ben issued just one order. “Kill the enemy.”

  Ben viewed what was left of the first Rebel prisoner found. He knew there was no point in bringing the press in to see it. The majority of them would only come up with some excuse for the behavior of the Night People.

  The woman had been with the Rebels for many years and was a platoon leader. She could be recognized only by the missing tip of her little finger, left hand.

  Jersey said, “Knew her. She was a good person. Had two kids. Her husband lost a leg during the Hawaiian campaign.” Jersey spat on the ground. “I figure it took her long hours to die.”

  “Yeah,” Ben said.

  “We found a pocket of creeps that got themselves trapped,” a scout said. “’Bout a quarter of a mile from here. Part of their tunnel collapsed.”

  Ben’s eyes were as cold as the North Sea. “Let’s do it.”

  “We got a problem. They’ve been in radio contact with the press and have offered to surrender.”

  “And the press have gathered.” It was not a question.

  “All of them assigned to this operation.”

  The reporters began shouting questions at Ben as he walked up to the tunnel entrance, located in a small park on the outskirts of the city.

  “Why is that gasoline tanker truck here, General?” one yelled.

  “We’re going to have a cookout,” Ben said, and kept on walking.

  He was true to his word. Explosives had already been placed, and the tanker started pumping gas into the tunnel. The reporters were quick on the uptake.

  “That’s against the rules of war!” a woman yelled.

  “Idiot,” Ben muttered.

  The reporters were not as quick to notice the Rebels backing up. When the specially prepared explosives blew, igniting the gas fumes, about a dozen members of the press were knocked on their asses by the concussion. None were seriously hurt, except for their pride, which was considerably bruised, along with their asses.

  The Rebels stood by impassively as the flames ate the life from the creepies.

  “Those poor wretches offered to surrender!” a man yelled over the roar of flames coming from the seared mouth of the tunnel.

  A few members of the press were standing close enough to Ben to hear him say, “Nobody tortures Rebels and gets away with it. Nobody. Not without paying a terrible price.” He whispered to Corrie, “Tell the censors to let all copy from this incident go through as is. I want to see what side these people are on.”

  “Shit!” Corrie said, quite uncharacteristically. “I can tell you that right now.”

  “Let’s be sure,” Ben replied. “Bring me copies of all transmissions.”

  GENERAL RAINES DECLARES HIS TROOPS SUPERIOR TO ALL OTHER HUMAN BEINGS, one headline silently screamed.

  GENERAL RAINES IGNORES ALL RULES OF WAR, another stated.

  The rest were predictable. GENEVA CONVENTION TRAMPLED UPON BY RAINES’S REBELS.

  RAINES’S REBELS NO BETTER THAN THE SAVAGES THEY FIGHT.

  A few reported the incident without personal embellishment. They neither praised nor condemned Ben’s actions in dealing with the creeps. They told it exactly as it happened—no more and no less.

  “They stay, the rest leave,” Ben ordered.

  “That man has more cold nerve than Dick Tracy,” President Blanton remarked, after reading of the expulsions of dozens of reporters.

  “You can’t be supportive of that racist, honky, Republican pig!” Rita Rivers hollered. “I heard he carries around a book authored by Rush Limbaugh!”

  Homer almost told the woman to kiss his ass, but quickly thought better of it. Last time he’d done that, she told him to drop his drawers.

  Ben began tightening the circle around Paris. Each day the Rebels gained another block or two or three, slowly closing the noose, forcing the creepies toward the center of the city.

  Ike and Georgi took Charles de Gaulle Airport after a bitter two-day fight, while Rebet and West took Orly Airport. Now the Rebels could resupply by air . . . after cleaning up the runways and airing out the stink of creepies from the buildings. Ever so slowly the Rebels were pushing out of the suburbs and inching toward the city proper. Thanksgiving passed and November was gone. During the first week of December, the area was blanketed with a heavy covering of snow, and then the temperature plummeted, turning bitterly cold.

  The nine battalions chased Duffy’s army of thugs and punks and malcontents but could not make them close and slug it out.

  “They plan to fight us guerrilla-style,” Mike Richards told Ben. “Small units. Every scrap of intelligence we have, including information from the prisoners, points in that direction.”

  “Then they’re fools,” Ben said. “There are no better guerrilla fighters in the world than the Rebels.”

  “But Duffy doesn’t know that,” Mike replied.

  “He soon will,” Ben countered.

  The Rebels began hammering at the creepies day and night, without letup. They flooded the sewers with tear gas and pepper gas and drove them aboveground, then shot them as they staggered out of their stinking lairs.

  When the first battalions of Rebels hit the edge of the city proper, known as Ville de Paris, they were stopped cold by the Night People. Had the Rebels been able to use heavy artillery, the fight would have been much simpler and not nearly as costly to the Rebels. As it was, the Rebels suffered far fewer fatalities than the experts predicted, but their number of wounded was far more than first calculated. Ben had suffered a slight hand wound. Jersey had been burned on the thigh. Corrie had a radio shot off her back, and that left her badly bruised for a few days and out of commission.

  The months-long campaign was taking its toll on the Rebels.

  And they hadn’t as yet entered the city proper.

  Duffy’s people had broken up into small units and were preparing to launch a guerrilla-type war against the Rebels. That act itself did not worry Ben . . . but what did worry him was that it would tie up more people in the field, and out of Paris, than he first anticipated. Duffy’s people were also raping the countryside of food and warm clothing, making the already overburdened residents pay a terrible price in human suffering.

  “Your hand is healing nicely,” Doctor Chase said, after changing the bandage.

  “That bandage is bulky and gets in my way,” Ben replied. “Take it off and put a Band-Aid on it.”

  “Not yet. And don’t argue with me.”

  Fat chance of that happening.

  “It was only a scratch to begin with!”

  “You let it get infected, ding-dong.”

  “Ding-dong!”

  “That’s what I said. If you had gone to an aid-station shortly after it happened, a Band-Aid would have sufficed. But since you continue to believe yourself invulnerable to wounds that we mere mortals suffer . . . well, what’s the point of arguing? You let it get infected.”

  “Ding-dong!”

  Nick Stafford walked in the room just in time to put a momentary end to the bickering that had been going on for years between the two men. Nick was limping badly, and there was a bloody bandage on one leg.

  “Good God!” Lamar said. “Another old soldier who thinks he is immortal. Sit down, you overage Rambo.”<
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  “I don’t have time for that,” Nick said. “I—”

  “Sit down, goddamnit!” the chief of medicine roared. “Take off that boot and cut those fatigues away from that leg. And that’s an order.”

  Ben was smiling, happy to have Chase direct his acid tongue toward someone else.

  Chase took one look at the wound and said, “Hospital. Period. You’re out of the field.” He glared at Corrie. “Get an ambulance over here. Right now.”

  Nick started to protest and Ben said, “Don’t say a word. Not unless you want a visit to the proctologist added to your chart.”

  That shut Nick up.

  Chase smiled wickedly.

  “I’ll have your XO take over your battalion,” Ben told the mercenary.

  “Chuck Gilley,” Nick said. “He’s a good man. Ben, we’re spread thin in the countryside. Too damn thin. Intell just reported that the Spanish army is up to their eyeballs fighting the Basques along the mountains. They’re not going to be able to help us much. I personally think Duffy is planning to move his people east. Some batt coms agree with me, others don’t. But I think the signs point that way.”

  Ben looked at map of Europe thumbtacked to the wall behind his desk. After a moment he asked, “Why, Nick?”

  “They know they can’t get into Spain. I think they’re trying to link up with all the punks now gathering in Germany, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, and Northern Italy. If that happens, they could put together a front that might take us months to bust through.”

  “The intel about Duffy’s planned guerrilla war against us?”

  “Pure bullshit. Duffy is not a fool. I think I know this guy. And if he’s the man I think he is, he’s got some good solid military experience under his belt. He came from a good, solid, upper-middle-class English family. You’ve read the file on him. He’s got lots of smarts. And some tough paratrooper training.”

  “What about the gangs he’s breaking up and forming into small guerrilla units?”

  “Expendables,” Nick said. “But they don’t have a clue as to Duffy’s real reason for breaking them up. It’s just guesswork, Ben, that’s all.”

  “But good guesswork. Thanks, Nick.”

  After Nick and Chase had left, Ben sat for a long time at his makeshift desk: an old door placed on two sawhorses. Ben didn’t like to be outsmarted, and if Nick was right—and Ben felt he was—Duffy had done just that.

  Problem was, there wasn’t a damn thing Ben could do about it. The cities in France had to be cleared of creeps. The countryside had to be cleared of roaming gangs. And while Ben and his people were accomplishing those tasks, Duffy and his main body of fighters were going to be heading east to link up with thousands of other punks along a north/south route that ran through a half dozen countries.

  “And they’ll be moving in small groups,” Ben muttered. “Probably at night, so that lets out strafing. Shit!”

  He called in Mike Richards and Rene Seaux and laid it out for the men.

  Mike frowned and then cursed. Rene stood up and paced the room. Rene was the first to speak. “They fed us false information, and we took the bait like a hungry fish. I am sorry, General. Truly sorry.”

  “It wasn’t anyone’s fault,” Ben said. “The prisoners we took were the expendable ones, and they had been given false information. But to correct the mistake, we’ve got to move very fast.”

  “You have a plan, General?” Rene asked.

  Ben nodded his head and frowned. “Not much of one. But it’ll have to do.” He walked to the door and opened it. “Corrie. Call all the batt coms in. I want them here like a hour ago!”

  THREE

  “I can’t even find the damn borders on these old maps!” the former Navy SEAL, Ike McGowan, bitched.

  “You redneck ninny,” Dan Gray, the former British Special Air Service officer, said with a smile. He couldn’t let this pass. “Don’t confuse that saltwater-logged brain of yours with international borders. It’s much too much for a fat frogman to absorb.”

  “SEAL, goddamnit!” the Mississippi-born Ike told him for about the one millionth time. “SEAL! You tea-drinkin’ Limey priss-pot. And I’ve lost fifteen pounds, thank you anyway.” He did his best to ignore Dan’s chuckling and said, “Ben, this idea sucks! We’re goin’ to be spread all over the damn map!” He shook his head. “But if we don’t do it, that bunch of punks and thugs stand a pretty good chance of boggin’ us down for months.” He held up a finger. “But . . . gettin’ supplies to you is goin’ to be tough, and where in the hell are the pathfinders goin’ to set up the DZ?”

  Ben pointed to a map. “Here, here, and here.”

  Ike shook his head. “It’s goin’ to be tight.”

  “Not with the type of chutes we’ll be using. Relax, Ike. You’ve jumped into tighter places.”

  “Ben,” Ike persisted. “Those were quick in and outs. Snatch-and-grab ops. The weather can turn shitty over there in a matter of minutes and lock you people in. And,” he added with enough ice in his voice to match the climate outside the room, “we both were much younger back then.”

  “I’ll be landing on a nice, soft field of snow,” Ben said with a smile. “Let’s stop bickering. It’s settled.” He turned to Thermopolis. “Therm, logistics?”

  “Are you kidding?” the hippie-turned-warrior said. “There is already snow between here and there that’s ass-deep to a giraffe. You won’t have tanks. You won’t have heavy artillery. The list of what we can’t immediately get to you is longer than a child’s Christmas list. You will have to seize and clear Cointrin Airport the very first thing. And if the weather turns lousy, you just may be cut off for days.”

  “Swiss Resistance people are going to meet us,” Ben said. “Up here,” he pointed to the map, “we have German Resistance groups ready to start blocking roads. Down here, Italian Resistance groups are in place and ready to go. It’s a piece of cake.” He eye-balled the group. “And it’s settled,” Ben ended the discussion.

  Ben and his 1 Batt, Jackie Malone and her 12 Batt, Danjou and his 7 Batt, Dan and the 3 Batt, Buddy and his 8 Batt special ops group, and West and his 4 Batt would be jumping into and around Geneva.

  Ike, Pat O’Shea, Tina, Rebet, Raul, and Nick would concentrate on clearing out Paris proper. Rene Seaux and his resistance people would be with Ike’s command.

  Georgi, Greenwalt, Jim Peters, Buck Taylor, Mike Post, and Paul Harrison would be out in the French countryside, after the dregs of Duffy’s army of punks. They would start north and south of Paris and work east, toward Ben’s position, working in a wedge-shaped march, with the point aimed at Geneva.

  “Therm,” Ben added, “Emil will stay with you. I don’t want to have to put up with him on this op.”

  “Thank you so very much, Ben.”

  “You’re welcome. Let’s get this circus moving.”

  The steel wall of secrecy came down with a bang. The press knew something was up, they just didn’t know what. And those in the know weren’t talking.

  Ben had long held the opinion that no military campaign could be completely successful as long as the press was in any way involved. His philosophy was to win the war first and then invite the press to visit. Ben was of the opinion that for years the majority of America’s press had hated the military and would stop at nothing to criticize, belittle, and nitpick anything the military did. And so far the majority of the press had done nothing to lessen that opinion.

  The head of meteorology had some good news. “The way it looks now, we feel you’re going to have about three days of excellent weather, General. The next two days will show a gradual deterioration, then snow.”

  Ben told the batt coms who were jumping in with him, “One day to take the airport, two days to gather the air-dropped supplies, two days to get the runways in shape.” He smiled at Thermopolis. “Would you like to jump in with us, Therm?”

  “No, I most certainly would not!” Therm said quickly. “But thank you so very much for the invitation.”<
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  Therm beat it out of the ready room and back to his own operations building. Throwing his body out of a perfectly good airplane held absolutely no appeal for Thermopolis.

  “We don’t have enough planes to drop five full battalions in at once,” Ben was told. “Not with supply drops as well. We can drop two battalions in with supplies, then two more that afternoon, then two more the next day. Sorry, General.”

  Ben had already figured that out. There was nothing he could do about it. “My 1 Batt and Dan’s 3 Batt will go in first, followed that afternoon by Buddy’s special ops group and West’s 4 Batt. At dawn the next morning, Danjou’s 7 Batt and Jackie’s 12 Batt will come in. The pathfinders are in place. They HALOed in. (High Altitude, Low Opening.) They’ll smoke the DZ. We go in tomorrow morning. That’s it.”

  What press remained had gathered at both Orly and Charles de Gaulle airports. Ben and his people loaded up without a word and took off. At Ben’s instruction, the pilots headed due north and then cut toward Geneva. Helicopters were originally planned to be used to land troops, but much to the surprise of the weather prognosticators, the weather turned so bad the choppers were all but useless.

  “So much for modern science,” Jersey muttered, sitting next to Ben in the plane.

  “The weather around Geneva is good,” Ben told her. “Cold, but ideal for jumping.”

  “Wonderful,” Jersey replied with a total lack of enthusiasm. Jersey had never developed Ben’s love of jumping.

  Ben laughed at her and stood up, walking—waddling, with all the equipment he was carrying—to the rear door. It was not a long flight, and he was going to act as jumpmaster. He would be the last one out of the big transport.

  Ben sat down and waited for the crew chief’s signal.

  Duffy Williams sat and stared at the message just handed him. Ben Raines and about six or seven battalions were in the process of leaving the Paris area by transport plane. The spy had said the Rebels walked funny; looked like they were loaded down with so much gear they were bowlegged. Duffy, an ex-paratrooper, knew exactly what that meant. Airborne troops had to carry so much gear they appeared to be bowlegged under all the weight. That’s where the term straightleg came from. Any nonjumper was sometimes sarcastically referred to by paratroopers as a straight-leg, or leg.