“Good luck,” Buddy said dryly.
“How many prisoners did you take?”
“Nearly all of them, Father. They didn’t have anything to fight with except blanks.”
Muttering under his breath, Ben walked over to greet President Blanton.
“I can truthfully say that I am very glad to see you, Ben,” Homer said with a smile, shaking hands with Ben.
“Are you all right, Homer?”
“I’m fine. Can you tell me what is going on?”
“I have no idea. But I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. Corrie, order all battalions to attack with everything they’ve got. Tell Ike to start his push through to Martigny and we’ll link up with him there.”
“Right, sir.”
“Does this operation have a name, Ben?” President Blanton asked.
“Yeah,” Ben replied. “Operation Fuck-Up!”
Bottger stepped off the plane outside Berlin and was handed a message by a frightened young soldier. The messenger backed up a few feet.
Bottger read the communiqué concerning the attack on the castle, wadded it up, hurled it to the tarmac, and started jumping up and down on the paper. “Goddamnit!” he shouted.
Another messenger came rushing up. “General! The Rebels have launched a full-scale attack all along our lines.”
“Lines!” Bruno screamed. “I’ve got lines north, south, east, and west. What goddamn lines are under attack?”
The young messenger was so badly frightened at his supreme commander’s fury, he began stuttering. Bottger grabbed him by the shoulders and started shaking him. “What lines?”
“I don’t know, sir,” he finally managed to say.
“Good God!” Bottger shouted, shoving the soldier away from him. “Find me somebody who knows what the hell is going on!” Bruno roared.
Troops of Bruno’s MEF had expected an attack right after the abduction of the president. When none came, they began to relax. A lot of them would now be relaxed forever. Right on the heels of the fighter attack, artillery began pouring in rounds, then tanks roared in, followed by ground troops. Raines’s Rebels, aided by resistance fighters, broke through at dozens of locations. The MEF were confronted, quite briefly at most points, by Rebels who were fighting with a fury that Bottger’s troops had never before encountered.
Bottger’s troops were spread out over hundreds of miles of lines, many of them far away in the east in what used to be called Poland.
The Rebels cut through Bottger’s western lines like a heated knife through butter.
Ben and President Blanton were suddenly confronted by several dozen reporters who had survived the crash of the second plane in the early morning hours. The reporters were banged up and bruised, but none appeared seriously injured. The press, about half of whom were American, were startled to see the president among Ben’s troops.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Blanton asked. “What happened to you people?”
“The Rebels shot down our planes!” one reporter shouted. “Our pilot managed to land in a field. These Rebels plan to kill you, Mr. President, and then take over the remainder of the United States.”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” Blanton snapped at them. “Ben and his people jumped in about an hour ago to rescue me.”
“I don’t even want the rest of the United States,” Ben said. “It’s filled with malcontents, ne’er-do-wells, liberals, and assholes like you people.”
Ten minutes of shouting, cussing, and much arm-waving ensued before the Rebels—aided by Cassie Phillips, Nils Wilson, and Frank Service—managed to get some semblance of order restored.
“Listen to me!” Ben shouted. “We’re smack in the middle of about five divisions of Bottger’s troops. Let’s get out of here and then we can argue about what happened.”
“Scouts report a regiment of MEF coining hard at us from the west,” Corrie said. “Five miles away and closing.”
“Get into ambush positions,” Ben ordered. “We’ll need their vehicles. So aim for the drivers and spare the vehicles. Get our cars and trucks off the road and hidden and get set. Move!”
Three battalions of Rebels sought cover in the small crossroads town only a few miles south of Thun, along the shores of the lake. The reporters—now that they had gotten over their anger at Ben and realized they had been had by Bruno—all marveled at the precision of the Rebels as they set up the ambush. It seemed to the reporters that one minute the streets were filled with Rebels, and the next minute they had vanished.
“How large a force is a regiment, General?” a reporter asked Ben.
“Oh, just a bit larger than three of our full battalions. We’re under strength because we couldn’t drop in tanks and artillery and engineers and all the other personnel that usually make up and go in with a Rebel battalion.”
“Why are you suddenly being so nice to us?” the reporter with a cut on his forehead asked suspiciously.
Jersey looked at the man and shook her head in disgust. “Can’t please the bastards,” she muttered.
Ben chuckled. “Would you rather I be rude to you?”
“That’s what we’ve come to expect from you, General,” the reporter said honestly.
“Only because you people can’t or won’t understand that there are no rules to a war. That among other things.”
“On the outskirts of town, boss,” Corrie called.
“Get out of the way and don’t interfere,” Ben said to the reporter.
“Now you’re back to normal,” the man said, softening that with a grin.
“Yeah, welcome back, boss,” Cooper said.
Ben grunted. “Nobody breathe. Here they come.”
There were dozens and dozens of heavy trucks, and many other smaller vehicles. Many of the trucks were towing light artillery pieces.
Ben smiled when he saw those. “We might not have to run too far,” he muttered.
“I see them,” Jersey said, crouched by his side. “With them, we could make a stand.”
“You got it, Little Bit.”
“The lead truck is passing recon,” Corrie whispered loudly enough for Ben to hear. “The convoy is so long we’re going to have to let the first ten or so trucks clear the other side of town.”
“Tell Buddy. Some of his people can take care of them.”
“This is murder,” a reporter whispered. “You can’t call it anything else.”
Ben cut his eyes. Beth had laid down her weapon and pulled a razor-sharp knife from a leather sheath sewn onto the outside of her jump boot.
“I don’t care what else you killers call it, it’s just plain cold-blooded murder!” the man said, standing up. “And I won’t permit it. I’ve got to warn those soldiers. I’ve got to. Damn you all!”
The man jumped up to make a dash for the door and Beth tripped him, then cut his throat from one side to the other.
The reporter that had been talking with Ben puked all over his shoes.
Beth wiped the sharp blade clean on the man’s jacket and sheathed the knife. Then she picked up her weapon and resumed her position by the shattered window.
“Back when I was working for the Company,” Ben said, “I recall a saying we used a lot: ‘Never bother the woodchopper when the woodchopper is busy chopping wood.’” He looked at the group of reporters in the building with him. “I’d keep that in mind if I were you.”
The sounds of motors was getting louder.
Cooper bit off a piece of chocolate bar and passed the bar to Jersey, who bit off a chunk and handed it to Ben, who bit off a piece and handed it to Corrie, who took a bite and handed it to Beth, who finished the bar.
“Barbarians!” another reporter hissed at Ben. “None of you are fit to associate with decent human beings.”
“Shut up, Paul,” Nils told the man. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Shut your mouth.”
The reporter ignored the advice. “Charles Breedon was a good moral man.”
“You want to
join him?” Ben asked, as the first trucks began passing Ben’s position.
Paul felt the coldness of a silenced pistol press against the back of his head. He had not seen or heard one of Buddy’s special ops people slip up behind him.
“Shut your goddamn mouth,” the special ops trooper whispered in Paul’s ear. “And keep it shut.”
“Buddy says it’s now or never,” Corrie called.
“Fire,” Ben said.
FIVE
It was a slaughter—and a damn quick one. Rebels on rooftops rose up and raked the beds of heavy trucks with automatic weapons fire, while those at ground level on both sides of the street opened up. At the edge of town Buddy and his people were finishing up the front of the convoy. Rebels then swarmed over the vehicles, collecting arms and ammo and grenades and anything else they might be able to use.
“Hundreds of artillery rounds and cases of ammo for heavy machines guns and plenty of 80-mm mortar rounds,” Corrie called to Ben.
“Good, good!” Ben said. He turned to President Blanton. “You up to a stand, Homer?”
“No retreat?”
“No.”
Blanton did not hesitate. “Let’s give them hell, Ben!” Then he grinned as hundreds of Rebels began cheering the president. Blanton was not accustomed to the military cheering him.
“What the hell’s come over him?” Paul questioned.
None of the other reporters chose to reply to such a stupid question. Many of them were too busy having Rebels explain the use of the weapons to them.
Ben left West’s 4 Batt at Thun and took his 1 Batt, Dan’s 3 Batt, and Buddy’s special ops batt and drove up to Bern. Homer Blanton went with him. Ben had put the president into body armor and surrounded him with Rebels, but Homer insisted upon being armed and not left out of any fight.
“The Secret Service is not going to be happy with me about this,” Ben said.
“The Secret Service isn’t here,” Blanton replied. “Besides I’m having more fun than I’ve had in years.”
Ben shook his head at the new Homer Blanton. “I’ve created a monster,” he muttered. “Just be careful, Homer. Anything happens to you and I’ll get the blame.”
But Ben’s warning was not necessary. Bruno Bottger’s MEF people had pulled out of Bern. They had set up a line roughly fifty miles east of Bern, running north to south from the Federation border in the north, well into Italy to the south.
“Damn!” Blanton said, when the Secret Service swooped down on Bern and took away his M-16, his 9-mm pistol, and his knife.
“You’re the president of the United States,” they told him. “Not Rambo.”
“I can’t have any fun at all anymore,” Homer bitched.
But pictures of him in full combat gear, smiling with anticipation as he rode with the Rebels into what everybody assumed would be a full-blown firefight forever shattered his ultraliberal image.
And reporter Paul, who had watched Beth cut his friend’s throat, was going to see to that.
After the rescue of Homer Blanton, even those reporters who hated Ben Raines were forced to write something positive about the man and his army . . . but Ben knew that would soon pass and many of the press would be right back taking verbal potshots at him and the SUSA.
“Shit!” Harriet Hooter said, upon hearing the news that Homer Blanton was still alive. She’d begun making plans to remodel the Oval Office. She thought the south wall would be a very nice place to mount the heads of Republicans.
Even the military leaders breathed a sigh of relief when they heard the news about Blanton being alive and rescued . . . especially the bit about being rescued by Ben Raines and the Rebels. As long as Blanton stayed in office, there would be no more talk coming from the White House about invading the SUSA.
But the military did know for a certainty that world war was imminent, and the United States, what was left of it, would be drawn into that war.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff flew to Switzerland to meet with his commander in chief and Ben Raines.
General Bodinson and his aides and staff members sat in stunned silence in the conference room of the hurriedly remodeled and refurbished hotel in Geneva and listened to the full briefing from Ben Raines, Mike Richards, and finally, President Blanton.
“Monstrous,” General Bodinson said, his voice no more than a whisper.
Ben sat on the edge of a table and looked at General Bodinson. “How many troops can you let us have?” he said, asking the question that the generals and the colonels in the room had been dreading to hear.
“A regiment,” Bodinson said softly.
“Four full battalions?” Ben asked.
“Four short battalions,” Bodinson replied.
About 2500 men under the United States Army’s current system of 180 men to a company. Four companies to a battalion, four battalions to a regiment.
Ike’s sigh was audible in the hushed room.
“Get them moving,” Blanton ordered.
“It’s going to be a mixed bag,” Bodinson said. “Army and marines. We just don’t have the men to spare since the goddamn liberals in Congress slashed us down to nearly nothing.”
Homer suddenly got real busy studying his fingernails. He’d been warned by older heads not to cut the military so drastically. Something always came up where the military was needed. Now that “something” had reared its ugly head . . . and he didn’t have the personnel to fight it.
“General Raines,” a colonel said. “Back home we’re having to act as policemen, firemen, guards, social workers; everything that we aren’t trained to be.”
“I know,” Ben said. “It isn’t your fault.” He looked at Homer. “And I won’t lay all the blame on you, Homer.”
“You might as well,” the president said. “I signed the legislation allowing it to happen.”
“Under pressure from dozens of liberals in your party and a lot of the newly emerging press types,” Ben replied. “Now is not the time to drape yourself in sackcloth and ashes. We’ve all got to pull together.”
“There is something else we’d better talk about right now,” a Marine Corps colonel growled. “And you all know what it is. But I’ll be the one to bring it up. What happens when a certain percentage of our fighting men say, and they will say it: ‘Fuck the damn niggers!’”
Homer Blanton shook his head. He was still liberal enough to be unable to comprehend anyone saying something that cruel and unfeeling.
But not Ben. “I’m faced with that, too, Colonel,” Ben replied. “I told them that this might start out with the blacks of the world, but Bruno will eventually use it to control every human being on the face of the earth. Most of them agreed with me. A few did not.”
“I’d be interested in knowing what you did with those few?” another colonel asked.
“Nothing. They’re good fighting men. And that’s what war is all about.”
The room was filled with silence for a moment. Son Moon broke that silence. “North Korea is the joker in this deck of playing cards. For years we thought they were finished. We were wrong. They don’t have the army they once had, before the Great War, but what they do have is formidable still. And they still cling to communism. Even though they are definitely not the type of people Bottger cares to embrace, he just might in return for their support. We’d better think about that.”
“If North Korea throws in with Bottger, we’re finished,” General Bodinson said. “We’d be facing a combined army of three quarters of a million. And North Korea still has nuclear capability, albeit limited.”
“How about China?” a staff general asked. “Does anybody here know what’s really happening there?”
“Torn apart by civil war,” Mike Richards spoke up. “They’ve broken up into a dozen or more separate nations, with each nation fighting the other. For the time being, China is no threat to us.”
“How the hell do you know all this?” Mike was asked by the DCI of the newly organized Central Intelligenc
e Agency.
“My people are better than yours,” Mike told him.
“The hell you say!”
Mike smiled in reply. Truth was, he’d gathered together many of the spooks that he’d worked with during the years before the Great War, and they had recruited others of like mind and capabilities. Ben’s own version of the CIA was the best in the world. And it certainly should be, for many of the old hands who believed strongly that Congress should stay the hell out of CIA business and felt their continuous meddling would destroy the Company’s effectiveness—which it had, back before the Great War—were now working for Mike.
The DCI glared at Mike, who was smiling sweetly at him—about as sweetly as a mongoose smiles at a cobra.
“I say we strike a deal with this Bottger person,” a man dressed in civilian clothes said.
“What kind of a deal?” Blanton asked, his eyes narrowed and real steel in his voice.
“You know what kind of deal, Mr. President.”
“Say it!”
But the as yet unidentified man would only smile.
Blanton was steamed and made no attempt to hide it. “Goddamn you, Nichols. You’re talking about the eventual extermination of an entire race of people.”
“Who have been nothing but a thorn in the side of the white man for centuries . . .”
Ben now knew who Nichols was. He was a newly elected representative who had managed to get himself placed high on several important committees. Junior senators and representatives now held many of the top positions in the House and Senate, for most of the older hands were either dead, never returned after the Great War, or had retired. If Ben’s memory served him correctly, Nichols was from Ohio. From a very conservative district.
“Now, you listen to me, Nichols,” Blanton fumed.
“No, you listen to me, Mr. President,” Nichols cut him off. “I serve the people who elected me. Truly serve them. And you know I was elected by ninety-one percent of the vote. I am their voice, and I will be heard. I’ll be goddamned if I’ll stand by and see what’s left of the United States torn apart by your incessant kowtowing to every damn minority group that comes around whining and pissing and bitching about some problem they wouldn’t even have if they would only, by God, conform to standards that are tried and true and helped to build America into the finest nation in all the world.”
D-Day in the Ashes Page 27
