D-Day in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  “Teachers teach here, Mr. MacKensie. They demand respect from their students and they get it. They don’t show up in blue jeans, and they aren’t buddy-buddy with their students. They teach. There has been only one incident of a student assaulting a teacher in high school. The principal was walking by when it happened. He physically stomped the crap out of the kid, then put one foot on the kid’s neck, held the kid down on the floor, took off his belt, and wore the kid’s ass out with it. Then he dragged the student down the hall to the office, called the kid’s parents, and told him to come get the kid and keep him until he could behave in a civilized manner. That young man is now a senior at Pal Elliot University and on the honor role. He plans to be a doctor. All he needed was a slight attitude adjustment. Are you beginning to understand how we work here, Mr. MacKensie?”

  “Did the young man’s parents sue?” MacKensie asked.

  Cecil burst out laughing. “Are you kidding? You’re not kidding. Hell no, they didn’t sue. Even if they could find a lawyer to take the case—and in the SUSA that would have been extremely difficult, if not impossible—it would have been tossed out of court.”

  MacKensie was obviously shocked. Linda Lambard was amused at the recalling of the incident, as were the others seated in a half circle around Cecil’s desk. With the exception of MacKensie, these were men and women who believed strongly in a law-and-order, capitalistic society—the only type of government that history proves actually worked.

  “Your form of government is rather harsh, President Jefferys,” MacKensie remarked.

  “Works for us,” Cecil replied.

  “It is based on violence and total disregard for human rights,” MacKensie countered.

  “It’s based on common sense, respect for the rights of others, and discipline,” Cecil said with a smile.

  MacKensie stood up. “I don’t think I like your society, President Jefferys. My company will not be relocating here.”

  “Your option, sir.”

  When MacKensie had left, Cecil looked at the others. “And the rest of you?”

  They were all relocating to the SUSA.

  Cecil smiled. “Seven out of eight ain’t too shabby,” he said.

  * * *

  “Why is he waiting?” Bruno Bottger muttered the question as he stared at the wall map of Europe. Bruno did not expect a reply from any of the others in the room, and none was offered.

  The harsh winter had broken, and a glorious spring had blossomed several weeks earlier than usual. The roads, for the most part, were clear and the valleys open. Bottger had repositioned his troops and all was ready. Still, Ben Raines did nothing.

  Nothing was a word only in Bottger’s mind, for Ben was doing plenty. Ships were arriving daily from the States with supplies for the next campaign. Fuel was being trucked to various jump-offpoints. Tankers were being made ready for the long pull into central Europe . . . and beyond. Special ops teams were training in preparation for the assault. Operations were being planned and carefully gone over and revised and honed to a razor’s sharpness.

  And Ben also had to separate, widely, Rene Seaux, commander of the Free French and General Matthies of the German Resistance. The two men did not get along at all. Especially after General Matthies said, “Goddamn French. You fuck with your faces and fight with your feet! You always have.”

  It took a half dozen men to break up the fist fight before the two inflicted serious injury upon each other. Ben then assigned Rene far to the north and General Matthies far to the south. General Matthies had a slightly higher opinion of the Italian Resistance . . . but only slightly.

  Several times Ben put his people on high alert, knowing that Bottger had eyes watching him, as he had eyes watching Bottger. Each time he did that, Bottger was forced to throw his people on full alert, creating a lot of nervousness and unneeded tension among his people.

  “The son of a bitch!” Bottger cursed Ben, after each alert proved to be false.

  Bottger was learning, albeit slowly, about Ben Raines and his tactics.

  Ben had moved his 1 Batt up and Dan’s 3 Batt back to Geneva and shifted Ike and his 2 Batt down to the south of France. Everyone else remained in place. The Rebels knew it was time. They waited.

  “We go in tomorrow morning,” Ben told Corrie.

  THIRTEEN

  The assault was nothing fancy and nothing tricky. The campaign began with a straight-ahead push, and it caught Bottger by surprise, for he was not expecting anything so simple as that—not from Ben Raines.

  This time Bottger did toss a bit of a temper tantrum. He stomped around his luxuriously appointed office and kicked wastebaskets and cussed and shouted at the walls. He had only the walls to curse, for everyone else had beat a hasty exit seconds after Bottger received the news of the assault.

  Rage vented, Bottger shouted into the intercom, “Staff, in here! And don’t disturb us for any reason! Any reason!”

  The huge room slowly filled with staff members and field generals.

  “Nothing from the north, south, or east?” Bottger demanded, hands on his hips, eyes burning as they glared at his people.

  “No, sir,” a ranking general said. “It was a straight-ahead assault. And it was very successful. Enemy troops are now inside Germany, Switzerland, and Italy.”

  But just barely. All along the battlefront, after the front-line troops of Bottger had recovered from their shock, they threw up defensive positions and held.

  “The Free French came across the border and took Norden, Emden, and Leer,” Bottger was informed.

  Bruno blew his top again. “Are you telling me that a bunch of pussy-faced French Frogs overran my troops and routed them?” he screamed.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That’s impossible!” Bruno shouted. “The French can’t fight. Everybody knows the French can’t fight. There must be some sort of mistake in decoding the communiqué.”

  The room fell silent as all could faintly detect a low roaring sound.

  “What the hell is that?” Bruno asked, after listening for a few seconds.

  “Probably a minor malfunction in the heating system, sir,” a junior officer said.

  It was about to get plenty hot, for a fact. But it had nothing to do with the old castle’s up-to-date central heating system.

  “Sounds like . . . planes,” a colonel observed, involuntarily looking upward. “Prop planes. But the pitch is . . . well, stronger, somehow.”

  “Planes?” Bruno said. “Planes? Here? We are almost five hundred kilometers from the nearest border fighting. Don’t be absurd!”

  Before Bruno’s words were through echoing around the marble-floored room, .50-caliber wing guns and cannon opened up from the lead planes of the three squadrons of P-51E’s that had dared to cross nearly the whole of Germany, flying at treetop level, just to show Herr Field Marshal General Supreme Commander of the MEF Bruno Bottger that no matter where he might reside, he was not out of the reach of General Ben Raines and the Rebels.

  Bruno hit the hard marble floor as slugs raked the room, whining off the marble and in general raising hell among the expensive vases and paintings around the room. One slug ruined the huge portrait of Adolph Hitler, stitching der führer from groin to nose. The heavy frame came loose from its mount and conked a general on the noggin, knocking him unconscious.

  Bruno unceremoniously crawled under a desk just as a nearly spent slug slammed into his left buttock. It had enough force left to bring a wail of protest.

  “Are you hurt, sir?” an aide yelled.

  “Yes, goddamnit! I’ve been shot!”

  “Where, sir?”

  “In the ass, you idiot!”

  Then there was no more time for words as the modified P-51E’s banked and came around for a second pass, wing guns yammering and booming. The bombs they dropped on their first pass had exploded cars and trucks and set outbuildings on fire, and the smoke was thick and blinding to those on the ground. Bruno’s people had surface-to-air missiles, but the pl
anes were flying so low the missiles were useless against them.

  One of the pilots was about a hundred feet off the ground and flying at over five hundred miles an hour. He grinned at an MEF officer as he roared past. The officer stood and gaped at the plane. A huge fist with a good ol’ American middle finger was painted on the side of the plane. The officer stared in disbelief at the clearly visible rigid digit. By the time the officer recovered from his shock, the plane was out of sight, heading southwest to Switzerland.

  Portions of the old castle has taken several direct bomb hits and were on fire. Limping badly, one hand holding the bruised left side of his ass, Bruno managed to clear the castle and give his men a chance to start pouring water on the flames.

  “Get me a cushion!” Bruno bellowed.

  Hilda Koller, Bruno’s love at the moment, who was a 100 percent sadist and a closet dyke, came rushing out of her quarters of the castle, dressed in black leather and carrying her favorite whips and chains. She was cussing a blue streak.

  “Mein Gott!” she hollered. “Vas is happening?”

  Bruno gave her a very dirty look and tried not to grimace at the pain in his ass—literally and figuratively.

  Dan had split off from Ben at Lausanne, taking Highway N1 toward Yverdon, Neuchatel, and Biel, while Ben stayed with E27 toward Bern. Ben ran into trouble at Bulle. A group of MEF regulars were racing toward the French border, and Ben’s 1 Batt nearly collided with them. For fifteen minutes it was a battle of tanks. But in this war Bruno’s tanks were no match for Ben’s MBTs. The Rebels’ main battle tanks were far superior in nearly every way: bigger and carrying heavier guns and armament. They blew Bruno’s tanks off the road, and then it was infantry all the way as the two forces mixed it up.

  Bruno’s forces carried heavier-caliber rifles, mostly 7.62’s. But they did not possess in any great numbers what the Rebels called Big Thumper: an automatic 40-mm grenade launcher that could spit out the mini-bombs at an incredible rate of fire.

  After the MEF tanks were destroyed, Bruno’s men slowly began giving up ground to the Rebels. But the commander decided to give ground too late. Ben had ordered two of his companies to flank the MEF, trapping them in a hellish cross fire. The commander of this contingent of the MEF was many things, but a fool was not one of them. He ordered his men to surrender.

  It was particularly irritating to the commander when he saw what a mixed bag the Rebels were: Spanish, Negro, Indian, and just about every other race and creed one could name were included among their ranks.

  “I don’t know how you managed to whip these inferiors into any kind of effective fighting force, General,” the MEF major said to Ben.

  “I promised the Spanish people lots of tequila and tortillas, the blacks watermelons and chitlins, and the Indians lots of scalps,” Ben said with a straight face.

  Right on cue, Jersey whipped out a long-bladed knife and smiled at the major.

  The major shut his mouth and did not open it again. But he could not understand why all the Rebels who were standing around General Raines were laughing at him as he was led away.

  * * *

  The Rebels rammed into Bottger’s claimed territory and hung on with the tenacity of a bulldog. Bottger’s men backed up, grudgingly giving the Rebels and the resistance fighters a few miles that first day, then began to dig in and hold as the first units of reinforcements reached them.

  Ben had warned his people that this was not going to be an easy fight. He knew that Bottger’s men were highly trained and just as motivated in their own way as the Rebels were in theirs.

  The older Rebels could understand the motivation of the MEF, the younger Rebels could not. And Ben was very much aware that he had a few borderline men and women in his command who just might decide to adopt the views of the MEF and go over to them. The question of race had long been settled among 95 percent of the Rebels. But hates and blind prejudices could run deep, and among some, could never really be erased.

  “There are good people and bad people among all races,” Cooper said, the second evening of the eastern push. Ben’s 1 Batt was bivouacked in a small town about fifteen miles from the city of Fribourg. “But no race of people is entirely bad. That’s ridiculous.”

  Ben looked up from his maps. “You’re all too young to remember the riots that started a few years before the Great War,” he told his team. “It was a very touchy time in America. With certain members of the black community blaming all their troubles on the whites. And many whites blaming the crime upswing and dope dealing and drive-by shootings and personal assaults entirely on the blacks. Many whites just simply stopped watching the evening news on television because it seemed as though every evening some reporter was interviewing some black about some real or imagined problem. There was more racial discontent and hate bubbling just under the surface then than when I was a kid back in the sixties, when civil rights legislation was signed into law and real integration began.”

  Ben got up and poured another cup of coffee and picked up a sandwich from a tray brought over by the mess people. He sat down behind his camp desk and was thoughtful for a moment.

  “I had been through a full-blown war in Southeast Asia and several brush wars in Africa and Central America before I settled down to build a more peaceful career. But those years before the Great War were the goddamndest years I had ever witnessed in terms of sheer absurdity and misunderstanding and miscarriages of justice . . . to name just a few things.

  “It wasn’t true, of course, but to many people, including myself, it appeared that every time a black was arrested for something, some damn group would jump up and scream racial discrimination. And I had never heard so many excuses for just plain lawlessness. A large percentage of whites just got sick of it—me included.

  “You couldn’t visit the nation’s capital without fear of getting mugged or caught up in a drive-by shooting or some other act of mindless violence. Our nation’s capital was a battle zone. That had to be one of the most disgusting and disgraceful pieces of news of the decade. I actually heard a damn network reporter say that he just didn’t know what was causing the violence in Washington, D.C., and more importantly, who to blame for it. I laughed all the way to the bathroom so I could puke. You see, Washington, D.C., was a federal district. It was set up to be governed by Congress. Not to have a mayor or its own police force—all that was shoved down Americans’ throats without their permission. But Congress was famous for things like that. The district should have been policed by the military. It should not have been allowed to turn into a welfare community.

  “Now, with all the mindless acts of violence around the nation, many heretofore fair-minded whites began quietly turning against blacks . . . not just the lawless blacks but all blacks. And that was blatantly wrong. But the majority of blacks would not go public and say: ‘Enough—we have a problem within our own community, and it’s not the fault of the whites. Stop blaming the whites for the problems caused by blacks.’ They wouldn’t do it. So that caused more discontent and distrust and hate among many whites. Then the riots started. Whites sat in their living rooms and watched blacks and other minorities loot and burn down block after block of cities . . . and get away with it. Whites watched on TV as minorities violently and savagely and brutally attacked and beat innocent people . . . and received no more than a slap on the wrist for it. And then they listened to whining liberal excuses for what had happened. It was sickening and disgusting, and that spawned more hate among many whites.

  “Not one mayor, not one governor had the guts to order looters shot on sight. And then, to heap more fuel on the flames of racial discontent, who had to pay for the rebuilding of the cities those goddamn savages destroyed? The hard-working, overburdened, law-abiding American taxpayer.

  “Oh, we could have stopped the drug traffic and the lawlessness and the terrible, mindless violence in America. But our elected leaders would not do it. They were too damn timid to take the harsh measures needed to do that . . .”

/>   The large room was now crowded with Rebels; young Rebels and older Rebels. Rebels of all colors and creeds. Corrie had signaled a friend in communications, and the friend spread the word in about three seconds. For when Ben Raines started lecturing, his people listened.

  “I lost my brother in a drive-by shooting,” a black sergeant said, his voice filled with emotion. “The boy was walking home from school. He was nine years old. The goddamn system—I don’t know exactly who was to blame—allowed a deal to be cut, and the shooters got a few years in prison and then walked free. If I ever find the judge who sentenced those punk niggers, I’ll kill that son of a bitch!”

  “That was part of the problem,” Ben said. “Many judges and most liberals were opposed to any type of mandatory sentencing laws. Like the ones we have in the SUSA.” Ben smiled. “And also part of the problem was the term you just used in describing the people who killed your brother.”

  The sergeant returned the smile. “A nigger is the lowest form of black person. Just like white trash is the lowest form of white person. I guess you have to be southern born and bred to understand that.”

  “So it’s all right for a black to use that term, but not a white. Is that it, Sergeant?” Ben pressed.

  “It sort of depends on who is doin’ the callin’ and who is on the receivin’ end of it, General,” the sergeant replied with a faint smile.

  Cassie Phillips had joined the crowd early on, as had Frank Service and Nils Wilson, the only three reporters Ben would allow to travel with his command battalion. Cassie asked, “But where is the line drawn when it comes to name-calling?”