Crisis in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  Corrie slung her portable radio over her shoulder and climbed in the back of the Jeep.

  Ben was in the passenger seat, with Anna driving. “See if you can find a road or trail that heads in that direction, then we’ll cut the lights and use the moonlight to guide us. No need giving the USA troops any more help than we have to.”

  “Do you think we’ll be able to find them, Daddy Ben?” Anna asked as she threw the Jeep into gear.

  “Oh, we’ll find them, all right,” Ben answered, a grim look on his face. “I just hope they’re alive when we do.”

  “If they’re not, God help the USA,” Corrie growled, jacking back the lever on her M-16, her eyes as hard as the metal she was holding.

  SEVEN

  President Claire Osterman paced back and forth in the war room beneath military headquarters . . . what was left of the building outside Indianapolis after a number of missile strikes and bombs from the Rebel forces. Massive layoffs due to a shortage of military funds had left the USA with precious few men qualified to effect repairs of the damage. Two-thirds of the converted warehouse were empty now, drab offices gathering dust.

  Colonel Baxter interrupted her train of thought, thoughts of how the war against the Rebels was going after the debacle in Mississippi.

  “Harlan Millard to see you, Madam President,” Baxter said, one eye on a security screen tied to a video camera at the outer door of the war room. “He has an FPPS agent with him . . . Agent Bob Reil.”

  “Let them in,” Claire snapped, wondering why Harlan would come here at this hour in the company of an agent of the Federal Prevention and Protective Service. Something had to be seriously wrong.

  Harlan and Reil were shown in, under the careful scrutiny of Claire’s personal bodyguard, Herb Knoff. With Knoff at six feet and ten inches, over four hundred pounds of muscle and sinew, trained for close-quarters combat, his marksmanship unequalled by anyone on her private staff of presidential henchmen, Claire wasn’t worried about her own safety. Herb had saved her skin a number of times.

  “What is it, Harlan?” she asked, ignoring Bob Reil for the moment.

  “I need a few minutes of your time. It won’t take long, but it’s of the greatest national security importance, and we should talk in private about it. I hope you can spare a minute. It’s classified.”

  “OK. Follow me into the radar room. We’ll be able to be alone there.”

  Harlan dutifully followed her through an armor-plated door in the basement. Claire motioned for a radar technician to leave them. The young soldier left his bank of screens quickly without saying a word, closing the heavy door behind him, leaving them alone.

  When the door was shut, Claire asked, “What the hell is so damn important?”

  “An idea—one I believe has strategic military value in our present situation.”

  “The world is full of ideas,” she remarked. “Most of them are bad. This had better be a good one. I’m not in the mood to listen to bullshit today. Raines and his damn Rebels have broken through our lines again north of the Georgia border, and we haven’t been able to stop them.” She hesitated and looked at the rubble-strewn room around them. “Hell, we don’t even seem to be able to protect our headquarters or,”—her eyes turned dark and dangerous—“my own personal houses!”

  “I know, Claire. I think I have a way to halt him. I’ve just spoken with General Maxwell about it.”

  “Go on.”

  “Do you remember the Japanese scientist we almost sent to a firing squad last year? Yiro Ishi is his name. A little guy who worked for Science and Development . . . until our ethnic cleansing policy went into effect.”

  “Why the hell should I remember him? He’s just another Jap science freak, isn’t he? It does seem as if his name is a bit familiar.”

  “He had this weird idea. No one would listen to him at the time I first spoke to him.”

  “I’ve never met a damn Jap who had a good idea, except when it came to preparing sushi.”

  “Hear me out. Please, Claire.”

  “Keep talking, Harlan. This is taking way too much time for what it’s probably worth. You have a way of turning anthills into mountains.”

  “Ishi has his grandfather’s records from back before World War II. General Ishi was a Japanese biological and chemical weapons expert. He was in charge of their special weapons unit called Unit 731.”

  “The Nips never had an expert on anything except TVs, transistor radios and microwave ovens. They used to build decent cars, if you didn’t need to pass anybody on the highway. Tell me why this Ishi is so damn important to us. And I’m warning you again, this had better be good.”

  “General Ishi killed half a million Chinese with a dozen cheap bombs back in nineteen thirty-five. They had perfected a weapon without the means to deploy it.”

  “I like hearing the word ‘cheap.’ We’ve depleted all our discretionary funds. This damn war with Ben Raines and his Rebels is costing the hell out of us, and so far we’re getting almost nothing for our money.”

  “Ishi’s plan just might work.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “I know it will sound strange, at first. It’s one of those ideas you have to think about.”

  “I’m thinking about having you thrown out of here, Harlan, unless you get to the point. You’ve already wasted five minutes of my time.”

  Harlan looked down at his shoes. “Bubonic plague,” he said after a moment.

  “That’s stupid. We already know Raines and his soldiers have been inoculated against it. Where the hell have you been during our war room briefings?”

  “His men aren’t protected from a very old strain of the bacteria, according to Ishi. Ishi has kept his grandfather’s notes, and samples of the bacterium, since General Ishi died, back in the seventies.”

  “Bullshit. Bubonic plague is bubonic plague. Why would you pay any attention to something a goddamn Jap said? Have him exterminated. Do it today. I’m beginning to wonder about your sanity, Harlan.”

  “I think we should try his idea.”

  “Have you been drinking, Harlan? What will the public and the press say about us if we listen to some Jap? We’ve employed a plan to get rid of all of them in our ethnic cleansing program. How would it look if we let some Nip tell us how to win a war against Ben Raines? That would make us all look like a pack of idiots.”

  “I should think, Madam President, that all we really care about is getting rid of Raines and his Rebels. If Ishi’s idea works, we can have him killed and give the press information that it was Captain Broadhurst’s solution. Or a program developed by our own War Science Department.”

  Claire sighed. This war was wearing away at her nerves and she couldn’t sleep at night, with more and more reports coming in that Rebel armies were breaking down the USA’s defenses all over southern regions, wiping out entire companies of her best troops in many cases. “Okay, Harlan. Tell me about his cheap and easy solution to our problem. But I’m warning you . . . it’d better make sense.”

  He cleared his throat. “It won’t sound good at first, but if we have Ishi explain the details to General Maxwell and Captain Broadhurst, I think they’ll agree it will work. I just spoke to Maxwell about it.”

  “You keep beating around the bush,” Claire said, chewing a fingernail. “Tell me what the hell this Jap has to offer us that we can’t come up with on our own.”

  “Fleas,” he said softly. “Contaminated with an ancient form of bubonic plague. They survive a bomb’s blast quite well, and then they infect every individual they come in contact with. A blood meal sets the bacteria in motion, and within a few days whoever has been bitten dies a horrible death—as we’ve seen with more modern strains of bubonic plague bacteria.”

  “Now I know you’ve been drinking.”

  “It could work, Claire. We’re almost out of long-range missiles and surface-to-air rockets. If Raines finds out how weak our present position is, he could launch an attack all the way to Indianap
olis.”

  Claire watched one of the green radar screens absently, her mind on Ben Raines. Who could have dreamed that some upstart Rebel commander would have so much success against a mechanized army of the USA?

  At first she’d convinced herself Raines was only lucky . . . that geography and small pockets of public sympathy were on his side. But now, there was no denying he had some keen military savvy to go along with his luck. She’d missed her first guess. Raines was proving to be a worthy adversary . . . in fact, the bastard was winning the war on most fronts when it seemed all odds were against him.

  “How much will these damn fleas cost?” she asked. “What sort of planes do we need?”

  “I won’t know until I hear all of Ishi’s story, but the campaign isn’t going to be too costly. I’m sure he’ll expect to be paid handsomely, though, for his grandfather’s secret weapons. If he’s as smart as I think he is, he’ll hold out on some detail until he has a guarantee he’ll be well-paid for his secrets.”

  “Promise the bastard anything. When he’s told us all he has to tell, have someone from FPPS kill him. That should have been obvious to you.”

  “I’ve already considered that, as I’m sure General Maxwell has. We can’t afford to have some Japanese scientist come out of this looking good.”

  “It’d make ethnic cleansing look bad,” Claire agreed, her mind on the slow but steady demise of minorities being carried out by special units across the USA. Leaders of different racial groups were being targeted first, killed off by doses of nicin, a poison that couldn’t be detected during an autopsy conducted within a few hours after a victim died.

  “Precisely. As soon as we strike a deal with Ishi and he gives us everything, we’ll rub him out.”

  “Be sure you do it quietly. Make damn sure his body doesn’t turn up.”

  “I’ll have him sent to the grinder in Richmond. If people in Virginia only knew what they were eating—”

  “Meat is meat when it’s ground up, Harlan. The main thing is to get rid of the evidence. If hungry people are eating the evidence, so much the better.”

  Harlan turned for the door. “I’ll report back to you as soon as I know what Ishi has, and what types of airplanes we’ll need to deliver the bombs.”

  Claire chuckled, yet there was no humor behind her eyes. “Keep a lid on this, Harlan. If anyone with the press finds out what we’re spending what’s left in our war budget on they’ll have a field day with me. I’m relying on you to make goddamn sure this will work like the Jap says it will.”

  “I’ll give you a full report within a few hours. Someone is picking up Yiro Ishi now, bringing him to General Maxwell’s office in the basement.”

  “Put something . . . a hood . . . over his head so no one will be able to recognize him.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that, Claire.”

  She gave him a chilly stare. “That’s your biggest problem, Harlan . . . you don’t think of the little things, and they can make a difference.”

  “I’m sorry, Claire. I do the very best I can, but I’ll be the first to admit I make mistakes.”

  “Drop by tonight . . . after you give me the report on Yiro Ishi and the bombs. I’m horny as hell. I think all this pressure is getting to me.”

  “I’ll need to tell my wife something . . . some sort of excuse for leaving.”

  “Tell her it’s a national emergency. Tell her the president of the USA is horny, and unless you drop by my bedroom I’ll have you shot. What better reason do you need?”

  “I’ll see you tonight, Claire.” He let himself out of the radar room, beckoning to Bob Reil for him to follow him out of the basement, hoping he’d be able to function with Claire. After all, trying to make love to a female with bigger balls than his own wasn’t easy.

  EIGHT

  Ben put his arm on Anna’s shoulder. “Slow down. I thought I saw some flashes over to the right, just beyond that hill up ahead.”

  Anna applied the brakes, staring off toward where Ben had indicated.

  Several quick flashes of light, like camera flashbulbs going off, flickered in the darkness, followed a few seconds later by the muffled sound of gunfire.

  “Someone’s in a firefight over there,” Ben said, jacking back the loading lever on his M-14—Thunder Lizard, as he called it.

  In the back of the vehicle, Corrie and Beth sat up straighter, coming awake out of the light sleep they’d been in.

  “What’s goin’ on, Boss?” Corrie asked, stifling a huge yawn with the back of her hand.

  “Sounds like action just ahead. We’re gonna take a look-see and see who’s involved.”

  “You think there might be some Rebels this far north?” Beth asked.

  “Yeah, could be,” Ben answered. “Only up here, they call themselves Freedom Fighters.” He hesitated, his eyes far away for a moment. “At least they did when I was with Lara,” he finished, blinking himself back to alertness.

  Anna pulled the Jeep over to the side of the road, behind a small strand of trees where it wouldn’t be seen by anyone passing by unless they were looking for it.

  The team piled out of the Jeep, readying weapons, stuffing extra magazines in their BDU pockets, and generally getting ready to kick some ass if need be.

  Ben led the way as they hunched over and walked to the top of the rise overlooking a small valley below.

  He stuck out his arm and pointed. “There they are.”

  The team could see a group of vehicles—three HumVees and a truck with a canvas cover over the back—parked haphazardly around a small farmhouse and old-fashioned red wooden barn.

  A number of USA soldiers could be seen sprawled on their stomachs, aiming rifles and machine-guns at the dwelling. As they fired, bits and pieces of the walls and windows were pockmarked with shell holes from the fusillade of bullets.

  “I wonder who’s in the house,” Anna whispered, though they were so far away that their voices couldn’t be heard.

  “Whoever it is, if they’re enemies of Osterman’s troops they’re our friends,” Ben replied, his eyes narrowed, as he tried to figure out a way for them to help the people under attack.

  After examining the surrounding countryside for a few minutes, he squatted down out of sight and gave his orders.

  “It looks like about forty or fifty men in the attacking force. That’s only about ten to one, odds we’re used to,” he said with a sardonic grin.

  “Anna, you and Beth circle around to the left and see if you can set up a range of fire on that small knoll over there,” he said, pointing to a rise in the valley where a copse of maple trees stood. “Hunker down good, and make sure you can see all of the attackers from your position. You’ll have the advantage of height on them, so they shouldn’t be able to get a good bead on you until it’s too late. I’ll keep Corrie with me so she can relay and coordinate my orders through your headsets.”

  He glanced back at the Jeep. “I’ll get the Mark 19-3 auto-grenade launcher out of the car and try to set up within range of those bastards. After the Big Thumper drops a couple of 40mm grenades in the middle of them, you two open up with your CARs and give them everything you have.”

  He glanced back over his shoulder in time to see light flashes from the windows of the farmhouse, and the high-pitched popping of M-16s.

  “Good. Whoever’s in that house is returning fire. With any luck it’ll be some Freedom Fighters, and they can help us get in touch with others like them.”

  “Ten-four, Boss,” Anna said as she and Beth crouched down and disappeared in the darkness, making no sounds as they ran toward the hillock across the valley.

  Ben got the Mark 19-3 out of the Jeep, grunting with the effort of lifting the seventy-six pound weapon. He handed a box of 40mm grenades to Corrie, slung his Thunder Lizard over his shoulder, and picked up the Big Thumper.

  His teeth flashed in the night. “Let’s go kick some ass, Corrie.”

  “Right on, Ben,” she answered, grinning back at him in antici
pation of a good fight. Corrie was second only to Jersey in appreciation of a fierce battle, and was second to no one in her ability to dance with the best of them in combat.

  It took thirty minutes for Ben to get the Big Thumper set up and aimed. He nodded at Corrie, who whispered into her com mic and then stuck her thumb up, indicating Anna and Beth were in position and ready to join in.

  Ben fitted a grenade over the end of the barrel of the Mark 19-3, set the angle of fire at about forty-five degrees to give the longest shot possible, closed his eyes against the flash, and pulled the trigger.

  A low-pitched thump from the Mark 19-3 was followed by a slight whistling as the grenade sailed through the night.

  Ben opened his eyes and saw several of the soldiers below turn to look back to see what had made the odd sound behind them.

  Ben had another grenade loaded and ready to fire by the time the first one exploded below. He saw he was about twenty yards long, so he decreased his angle of fire by five degrees and fired again.

  When the second grenade exploded, only seconds after the first, it was right in the middle of the attacking force. Screams of agony pealed out as men were torn asunder by the six ounces of gunpowder and almost a pound of razor-sharp shrapnel in the grenades.

  Men could be seen scrambling to get away from the blast sight as Ben loaded and fired another grenade. The men below began to jerk and wave their arms—as if engaged in some ritualistic dance—when the bullets from Beth and Anna’s CARs blasted into them.

  Confused shouts and screams and yells rang out as the men discovered they were surrounded and under attack from all sides. What had been an easy assignment—to assassinate the occupants of a rural farmhouse—became a rout as the soldiers were cut down before they had time to mount a defense. Some even got to their feet and ran toward the house, as if they might find shelter there.

  Instead, they were met with withering fire from the windows and doors of the house, cut down before they’d gone twenty yards.