Crisis in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  “Yeah,” Enger groaned through bloodstained lips. “I’ll see you in hell, Raines.”

  “Maybe,” Raines answered, not unkindly, “but don’t wait up for me. It may be a while.”

  Back at the safe house, Ben told Corrie to bump Mike Post. He wanted to inform him of the attempt on his life by the assassin sent by Claire Osterman.

  “Mike,” Ben said once radio contact was established. “There’ve been some new developments.” He described how Osterman had sent Enger to kill him.

  “But that’s against all the rules,” Mike said, worry evident in his voice even over the radio.

  “Yeah, it always has been up until now. Now, it seems Sugar Babe has changed the rules. I want you to get a message to Sied Sadallah for me.”

  “The Jackal?” Mike asked. “What in the world do you want to talk to that bastard for?”

  “I have an assignment for him, Mike. Offer him what you have to, but get him to take the job.”

  “What job?”

  “I want him to pay Sugar Babe a visit,” Ben said, “to let her know there is some danger when she takes it upon herself to change the rules of combat.”

  “What do you want him to do?”

  Ben told him, in no uncertain words.

  FOURTEEN

  Ben and Lara arrived at the rendezvous point accompanied by five of her Freedom Fighter comrades. They found Jersey and Coop sitting in their confiscated Jeep on the edge of a clearing.

  Ben bounded out of the SUV they were riding in and embraced Jersey and shook hands with Cooper.

  “Where’s the rest of our team?” Coop asked, glancing at the strange men and women riding with Ben and Lara.

  “They’re back at a safe house,” Ben answered. “We didn’t know how much room we’d need in the SUV” He grinned, glancing at the stolen Jeep. “We didn’t realize you’d managed to confiscate another vehicle.”

  “Yeah, well, it was the only way we knew to get our hands on a radio. Our headsets were out of service after our jump,” Jersey said, holding up the pieces of her radio.

  “And you suffered no injuries?” Ben asked.

  “Jersey’s got a banged up ankle, but otherwise nothing major,” Coop answered.

  Lara stepped over to the Jeep and took a quick look at Jersey’s swollen leg. “Chuck back at the safe house used to be a veterinarian before the war. We’ll have him take a look at it when we get back.”

  Coop opened his mouth to make a smart remark about a veterinarian working on her, but Jersey held up her hand, a dangerous look in her eyes. “Not a word, Coop. Don’t even go there!”

  Ben laughed. “It’s good to see you two haven’t changed any. Now, let’s mount up and get out of here before we have uninvited guests.”

  “You want us to bring the Jeep?” Coop asked.

  Lara nodded. “Yeah. We can always use another vehicle, especially one with a radio tuned to the USA frequency.”

  “That reminds me,” Jersey said. “We promised the soldiers we left tied up we’d let their headquarters know where they are so someone would come for them.”

  Ben raised his eyebrows. “You left them alive?”

  Coop shrugged. “Yes. They weren’t Black Shirts, just some kids barely old enough to shave. It seemed like the thing to do.”

  Ben nodded. “You’re right, of course. We’re not here to make war on children, especially regular USA troops. It’s the mercs and Black Shirts we want to eliminate.”

  After making the call and giving a startled sergeant the location of the captured soldiers, the Freedom Fighters piled back in their SUV and Ben rode in the Jeep with Jersey and Cooper. On the way back to the safe house, they told him what had happened, and how they’d managed to get the drop on the soldiers.

  Jersey turned in the seat and glanced back at Ben. “So, that’s the infamous Lara, huh?”

  Ben’s face reddened slightly. “Yes. What do you think of her?” he asked.

  Jersey smiled. “Very pretty, and to survive what she’s been through she must be pretty tough, too.”

  “She is. As a matter of fact, she reminds me of you when you first started out, Jersey.”

  Coop shook his head. “Uh-oh. Better watch out then, Ben. She’s liable to stick a knife in you if you get outta line,” he said, cutting his eyes at Jersey.

  “If that were true, Coop, you’d’ve been dead meat a long time ago,” Jersey said, her eyes flat.

  “Like I said,” Ben said with a laugh, “it’s good to see you two back to normal.”

  “Have you and the team had any trouble since you’ve been here?” asked Cooper.

  Ben shrugged, a tight smile on his face. “Just a tad. Osterman must’ve gotten word I was up here in the north country, ’cause she sent a team of assassins after me.”

  “Assassins?” Jersey asked.

  “Yeah, a team of airborne Black Shirts parachuted in about ten klicks from one of the safe houses maintained by the Freedom Fighters. One of our spies in Osterman’s headquarters managed to warn us they were coming, so we were ready for them.”

  Jersey’s face wrinkled in amazement. “How in the world did they know so fast that you were up here?” she asked.

  Ben shrugged. “Who knows?” he said, but his mind was asking the very same question.

  “Any of ’em left to give us future trouble?” Coop asked.

  Ben shook his head, “Not enough so’s you could tell.”

  At the safe house, after Coop and Jersey had been introduced to the band of Freedom Fighters and were sitting down to a real meal, Ben stepped outside and walked down a path to a small clearing in the woods. He sat on the stump of a fallen tree and rolled and lit a cigarette. As he smoked and drank a cup of coffee, Lara walked up to join him.

  She sat on the stump next to him and put her hand on his back, gently rubbing as she talked. “I like your team, Ben. They seem like real nice people.”

  He nodded. “They are. Too damn nice to spend their lives in this miserable war.”

  Lara looked up at the night sky, full of stars. She took a deep breath, enjoying the scent of pine and wildflowers on the evening breeze. “You’re right. It is a helluva way to spend your youth . . . always fighting, scrabbling just to stay alive, never sure if you’ll live to see another dawn.”

  Ben flipped his cigarette away, watching the sparks as it tumbled into the darkness. “How about you, Lara? What was your life like . . . before?”

  She hesitated, her eyes far away. “I was engaged to a nice young man, a farmer with a small family farm up in the hills. We were both loyal citizens, leading a rather dull, normal life. Then Carl made a few disparaging remarks about the mayor of the town we lived in, how he seemed to be living a shade too high on the hog.” She glanced at Ben. “He wondered out loud about the exorbitant amount of taxes we were paying, and how they were being used to support people who didn’t have any inclination to work. Do you realize that under the new Socialist Democrat government, no one has to work if they’re too lazy, or too incompetent to earn a living?”

  Ben nodded, but didn’t speak. He didn’t want to interrupt her train of thought.

  She looked down at her hands, which were balled into fists in her lap. “The next day, he disappeared. Some men in black shirts came to the farm and said they’d heard he was talking treason.” Tears formed in her eyes. “They said they were going to take him into town to answer some questions. Two days later, his farm was posted with signs saying it had been taken over by the township. Most of his farm equipment and all of his stock animals ended up on the mayor’s farm.”

  “I’m sorry, Lara,” Ben said, placing his hand over hers on her lap.

  She looked into his eyes. “They never found his body, but it was general knowledge around town that he wouldn’t be coming home.” She sighed. “The next day, I packed up what little belongings I had and joined the Freedom Fighters.”

  She brushed a tear from her cheek and tried to smile. “And the rest, as they say, is history.”<
br />
  “The USA is facing the same problem that brought down the Roman empire hundreds of years ago,” Ben said. “When a majority of the populace is on the dole and still retains the right to vote, they’re just naturally gonna elect officials who will continue the handouts. That means more and more taxes on those who are productive, until the citizens realize they’re working double time to support those who have no intention of putting anything back into the system.” He shook his head. “It just doesn’t make sense.”

  “How do you handle welfare in the SUSA?” she asked.

  He grinned. “We’re not heartless, as Osterman’s minions would have you believe with their propaganda,” he answered. “We make provisions for those who are too old or too infirm to work, and they are taken care of, but they’re not allowed to vote. However, if someone is able-bodied and able to work but chooses not to, that’s a different matter. They aren’t allowed to starve—we make food and basic medical care available to them—but they get no extras. We don’t have welfare queens in SUSA. If someone has children and doesn’t work to take care of them, the children are taken and given to people who will provide for them.”

  “It seems to make a whole lot more sense than the way the USA does it.”

  “It’s a system that works, and that’s what counts.”

  “What’s going to happen if you win the war? Will you try to change the way the USA operates?”

  He shook his head. “Not at all. In fact, in the SUSA, we don’t force anyone to do anything they don’t want to. Anyone is free to leave at any time and move to the USA, if that’s the system they want to live under. All we’re trying to do with the war is to get the USA to let us live in peace, to have the kind of government we want without any interference from the north.”

  They were silent for a moment, until Lara leaned over, her face close to Ben’s. He put his hand on her cheek and pressed his lips against hers as her arms came up to embrace him.

  Corrie called from the cabin, “Ben, it’s Mike Post on the radio for you.”

  Ben pulled back, breathing heavily, his face flushed. “Damn. What a time to have to go back to work.”

  Lara smiled and caressed his face with her palm. “We’ll have plenty of time for that, later,” she said.

  “Plan on it,” Ben said, and got to his feet and trotted back to the safe house. He took the microphone from Corrie, who smiled briefly at his flushed appearance.

  “Is the scrambler on?” he asked. When Corrie nodded, he continued, “Eagle One, go ahead Eagle Two.”

  “Ben, this is Mike. I have some news for you.”

  “What is it, Mike?”

  “You know those missiles that got through and hit Arkansas and Mississippi? Well, there were a number of SUSA citizens who’d refused our offers for vaccines. They got sick with the plague. Some others, who were sick but weren’t showing symptoms yet, got scared and fled to the north, into USA territory.”

  “I was afraid that would happen.”

  “Well, you were right. Now, the plague is beginning to spread like wildfire throughout the USA cities. It seems President Osterman didn’t have the money to vaccinate her own citizens against the BW bugs they were using, and now thousands of her own people are coming down sick.”

  “Damn. I can’t believe her medical advisers would’ve let her use BW they weren’t prepared for,” Ben said.

  He could hear Mike chuckle over the open microphone. “When did you ever know Sugar Babe to listen to what her advisers tell her?”

  “Never,” Ben answered, “especially if it’s something she doesn’t want to hear. Anything else, Mike?”

  “No, except that the other Scout teams are reporting good success recruiting new Freedom Fighter teams, and there are widespread reports of entire cities without potable drinking water or electricity after our sabotage teams did their work.”

  “Good. Then things are going according to plan?”

  “So far, so good,” Mike replied. “Eagle Two, over and out.”

  Ben put down the mic, slowly shaking his head. “The stupidity of politicians never ceases to amaze me. I’m sure Osterman’s advisers warned her something like this was bound to happen, but, as usual, her hatred for me and SUSA led her down a path filled with her own destruction.”

  “No,” Lara said, an infinitely sad look in her eyes, “not her destruction—tyrants will hang on to their power at all costs—but the death of the very people who trusted her with the most important job in the country.”

  “You’re right, of course. I fear Sugar Babe will hold onto the presidency as long as there are mercenaries to protect it for her, no matter what the American people think.”

  He stood up, “I guess now is as good a time as any to start planning how we are to proceed. Lara, when I was here before I left you and your group with a plan to start taking back the smaller towns from the Black Shirts and militia. How is that going?”

  “Pretty well, actually,” she answered, with a glance at Harris. “Why don’t you tell him?”

  Harris looked up from where he was examining Jersey’s ankle. As he spoke, he began to wrap a tight bandage around the joint, to give it support and reduce some of the swelling. “We’ve managed to take back about ten or eleven of the smaller towns skirting the national park up here. We’ve had the most success with the smaller ones, those with populations less than two thousand. If they’re much larger than that, the revolt attracts too much attention, and the army sends troops to establish martial law and retake the cities.”

  Ben nodded. “Good. For every town like that we’re able to free from Osterman’s yoke, we should be able to recruit at least ten or fifteen new Freedom Fighters.”

  “You’re right, Ben,” Harris said. “In this area alone we have almost two hundred new Freedom Fighters to help us out. Of course, not all of them are accomplished in combat, or are willing to shoot and kill USA troops, but most are at least willing to give us intelligence information and warn us if it looks like troops are planning anything in the area. It’s been quite a while since they were able to surprise us with a raid we weren’t expecting.”

  “OK, that’s really good news. Now, what’s the largest town or city in this area that is still under Osterman’s control?”

  “That’d be Buffalo,” Lara said, a questioning look on her face. “Why?”

  Ben grinned. “Because it’s time we made our presence felt in a big way. How does Buffalo get its power supply?”

  A slow grin curled Lara’s lips, as if she’d guessed where he was heading. “Most of it’s from a small hydroelectric plant and dam on a river north of the town. In the old days it came from New York City, but since it was nuked in the big war all of their power comes from the dam.”

  “Jersey, you and Coop and Beth break open that crate we brought with us, the one with the dynamite and black powder in it. I think it’s time we paid a visit to the dam.”

  Coop grinned. “Right on, boss.” He turned to Jersey. “You good to go on that ankle, partner?” he asked.

  Jersey nodded. “Right as rain, Coop,” she said, “as long as I don’t have to carry your lazy butt over any mountains.”

  He laughed. “That’ll be the day, sweetheart, that’ll be the day.”

  “Do you have any maps of the area?” Ben asked.

  “Sure,” Harris replied, pulling one from his duffel bag.

  They spread it out on the kitchen table and Ben studied it for a few minutes. “Okay,” he said, “here’s what we’ll do. I’ll split up my team and send them out with your Freedom Fighters, since you know the area well.”

  Harris leaned over the map as Ben made small notations on it with a pencil. “Here, and also over here,” he said, making Xs on the locations he was referring to, “is where we’ll plant our charges. We’ll attach some small radio-detonators to the explosives and blow them up after we’re all clear. Is the dam heavily guarded?”

  Harris shrugged. “Not to my knowledge. This is so far north there’s nev
er been any need before.”

  “Good, that’ll make our work that much easier.”

  FIFTEEN

  General Maxwell was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. News coming in from three fronts was all bad.

  Captain Federov’s assault team had been wiped out to the last man in the Pennsylvania woods.

  And things were worse. Major Adolf Wertz’s Black Shirts were annihilated, and a valuable captured Apache gunship was lost to a SAM rocket. A report said the helicopter was nothing but smoldering rubble now, a piece of scrap iron, rendered utterly useless.

  Then came the debacle with Sergeant Gerald Enger’s squad as they made an attack against what was said to be one of the Freedom Fighters’ secret underground fortresses in northwestern New York, where Ben Raines had reportedly been seen. Enger had been a top gun for the USA, and it bewildered Max how any group of Rebels might have taken him, a well-schooled Navy SEAL veteran, by surprise.

  This war is going worse than I expected, he thought. Raines was demonstrating an uncanny ability to know what the USA’s next moves would be, and it was happening far too often to be random chance. He wondered briefly if Raines had a spy on their staff, but dismissed the idea as too improbable to consider. All of the men and women working at USA headquarters had been there for years, and had been thoroughly vetted many times over.

  Finally he shook his head, concluding the man must just be incredibly lucky. Typical of military leaders since the dawn of time, he refused to even consider the idea that Raines might be a better strategist than he was.

  Maxwell’s intercom buzzed. “What is it?” he growled, putting his bottle of Jim Bean in a desk drawer. Hell, it was after midnight and he was drinking on his own time, to calm his seriously rattled nerves.

  “Harlan Millard to see you, General. He has the Japanese scientist, Yiro Ishi, with him. Otis Warner and Captain Broadhurst are on their way down now.”

  Maxwell sighed. “Show them in as soon as Warner and Broadhurst get here.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He leaned back in his chair, studying a map of their recent losses. President Osterman would be climbing walls, cussing a blue streak, perhaps even having men shot who were part of their military failures. He’d believed in Claire all these years and given his complete loyalty to her, but there were times lately when he began to wonder if she’d gone too far with this ethnic thing.