Crisis in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  A grim smile curled her lips. “I trust these men will be considerably more alert in their new duties?”

  “Oh, yes, ma’am. Their motto is ‘if it flies, it dies’.”

  “Good. So within three weeks at the outside we should be seeing some results from Dr. Ishi’s plague bombs?”

  “According to our scientists, that is correct.”

  “Have you been able to determine who planned and carried out the attack on my air base?”

  Max’s face looked as if he’d tasted something bitter as he answered, “Yes, Madam President. Initial Intel reports say it was Ben Raines and his team of Scouts who stole the helicopter and flew the mission.”

  “Am I never going to be quit of that bastard?”

  “He is daring and resourceful.”

  “And do we know where Mr. Ben Raines is at the present? Is he still in New York, as was reported previously?”

  “No. We intercepted radio reports that he is being extracted by jet back to SUSA headquarters today.”

  “Is there any chance of us shooting the son of a bitch down en route?”

  “No, ma’am. Our radar installations have been damaged so severely by the almost constant bombardment from SUSA that we don’t have the capability of tracking his flight.”

  She thought for a moment. “Do you have any men who might be able to get to him at SUSA headquarters and take him out?”

  Max hesitated. “There are two. Men we’ve used before and have proven . . . quite resourceful in their missions. But, they’re expensive.”

  “I don’t care what it costs. But they don’t get paid until they’ve accomplished their mission.” She stared hard into Max’s eyes. “And they’d better do a better job than the last two men you sent.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’ll contact them right away.”

  “See that you do, Max. It’ll give me something to look forward to while I wait for my bombers to be repaired.”

  The sprawling military compound of SUSA was quiet. Security guards patrolled the perimeter. An electric fence and motion sensors covered every inch of the razor wire surrounding the enclosure. Guard towers stood at three hundred yard intervals along the perimeter fence, illuminated by giant lights revolving back and forth accompanied by the whine of electric generators. It had the look of a maximum security prison.

  This was where General Ben Raines directed the activities of his vast armies, according to the intelligence reports gathered at USA headquarters in Indianapolis . . . if the reports could be trusted.

  James Scott lay on his belly in knee-deep grass, three hundred yards from the fence. His AK47, equipped with a night scope, lay beside him.

  He disdained the black shirts and berets worn by others who held high rank among the USA’s elite assassination forces, as did his partner. James did not need a black shirt or a beret to make him invisible in the night. He relied upon his skills as a hired killer . . . instinctive, a part of his nature, needing no special clothing.

  He spoke to Frank Brown, who lay in the grass next to him. “Real quiet tonight. It don’t appear they suspect anything. This should go off smoothly.”

  Brown merely nodded.

  “We’ll cut through this fence on the east side,” Scott continued in a whisper. “We’ll place the landmines on the road running beside the fence. Scatter ’em out, so there’s no way General Raines can avoid ’em. We’ll be real close, so we can send a grenade underneath his armored personnel carrier at just the right time. All we gotta worry about is those goddamn dogs sniffin’ us out.”

  “You’ve got the shit to spray on the dogs?” Brown asked, a wad of chewing tobacco stuffed into his cheek, muffling his words.

  “You know damn well I do. I never come on a mission without it.”

  “Just checkin’. All this can go to hell in a basket if the dogs start barkin’.”

  “This ain’t my first assassination, Frank.”

  “Never said it was.”

  “You don’t act quite right, Frank. How come you’re so damn quiet?”

  “We ain’t exactly on no church picnic, James. We’re bein’ paid to kill the top general of SUSA . . . an’ we already know he’s underground. He’ll be covered with security guards no matter where he is.”

  “I never let the small stuff worry me. Besides, our Intel says Raines don’t always use a lot of guards. Seems there’s usually only his personal team of four or five that travel with him.”

  Frank cleared his throat. “Still, it ain’t no small thing when our target is fifty feet under the ground. We gotta be real damn careful how we go about this or we’ll wind up dead. To me, you ain’t takin’ this serious enough.”

  James hesitated, giving the compound a lingering examination requiring several minutes. “I’m takin’ this shit real serious,” he said after a moment.

  “Don’t seem that way. You act like all we gotta do is run in there with our landmines and grenades an’ kill the bastard. I can promise you it’s gonna be more complicated than that. They’ll have all kinds of guards on that lower level . . . good ones, men who ain’t afraid of dyin’.”

  James appeared to be thinking. “It’s the goddamn dogs I’m worried about. It ain’t all that much trouble to fool a careless man, but have you ever tried to pull the wool over the eyes of a trained guard dog? Or one who’s been trained to protect a wartime general?”

  Frank didn’t answer him.

  “Have you, Frank?” James persisted.

  “It can’t be done. Not if the dog’s any good. You gotta take ’em with a chemical . . . like our pepper spray we got in these here cans. As to the guards, they ain’t nothing but men with guns. I’ve faced ’em a hundred times before all over the globe, an’ I never found one who was any better than I am when it comes to killin’ folks.”

  Frank wagged his head. “First thing we gotta do is get close. We gotta get those landmines in place an find a position where we can launch them grenades under Raines’s APC.”

  “That ain’t no trick.”

  “It sure as hell is a trick, if we aim to keep the bastard dogs from barkin’.”

  James watched a pair of K9 guards leading big German shepherds across the compound. “It’s liable to be easy. Those boys leadin’ them dogs ain’t payin’ any attention to what’s going on around ’em. It’s just night duty to them. All they’re really thinkin’ about is going home to their wives . . . or maybe to their girlfriends.”

  “How do we get close enough to use the spray on the goddamn dogs?” Frank wondered again. “We gotta bury those mines in the road next to the fence.”

  “You just leave that part up to me. I’ll get behind them dog handlers an show you how it’s done.”

  “We’ll see,” James muttered. “We ain’t got through that fence yet . . .”

  A pair of wire cutters sliced through the bottom of the razor wire. No alarms went off, and James was thankful for the silence.

  “Crawl through,” Frank whispered.

  James complied, inching forward on his belly.

  “Push your rifle through first,” Frank said. “What the hell good is it gonna do if you get in there without havin’ no kind of gun?”

  “I forgot,” James groaned, grabbing his AK47 by its stock, shoving it under the fence. He wore a silenced Glock at his waist, and carried a dagger in his boot.

  “One of these days you’re gonna forget you’re a goddamn soldier,” Frank warned. “Then all you’re gonna be is dead meat in a six-foot hole.”

  “Let’s not be talkin’ about no six-foot hole while we’re in here,” James said. “I ain’t plannin’ to be part of no grave for Ben Raines.”

  Frank and James waited beside each other, lying on their bellies in the dark.

  “Raines scares me,” Frank said. “He seems like a nice enough feller, but I hear he’s killed some of his own people who turned on him.”

  “We could be the next ones to die,” James told him. “For what we’re gettin’ paid by that woman, Osterman,
to assassinate Raines we’d better make damn sure we get it done without any screwups.”

  Frank hesitated, with an eye on the compound. “I heard a story . . . ’bout a Lara Walden, who was a double agent.”

  James wagged his head. “What’s that got to do with Ben Raines, Frank?”

  James chewed his lip. “I heard that Lara Walden was Ben Raines’s lover for one hell of a long time.” And the story goes that once Raines found out she was a spy, he made her disappear. The fact they was lovers evidently didn’t cut no ice with Raines.” He shook his head.

  Frank chuckled. “Hell, it won’t come as no surprise to most men that a woman is capable of a double-cross.”

  “That’s the God’s truth. It just don’t pay to talk about your work, ’specially to a woman.”

  Frank nodded again. “That’s always the smartest thing to do in any army—keep your mouth shut, and your head down. Don’t volunteer for a goddamn thing, and if somebody asks you if you heard this or that, you deny the hell out of everything. Tell ’em you never heard of that before.”

  An armored personnel carrier came lumbering out of a Quonset hut next to the entrance into the compound. K9 handlers with guard dogs walked in front of it.

  A SUSA soldier manning a tripod-mounted machine gun sat on the front of the APC, as it drove slowly along a razor wire fence leading to a gate exiting the compound.

  “Here he comes,” Frank whispered from hiding.

  “They’re gonna drive right over them landmines we planted as sure as stink comes with shit.”

  “Exactly the way we planned it.”

  “All we gotta worry about is them goddamn dogs sniffin’ ’em out,” James said.

  Frank gave James an impatient glare. “You saw me spray that pepper all around ’em. All those fuckin’ hounds are gonna do is start sneezin’.”

  “I sure as hell hope you’re right,” James muttered as he watched the APC move toward the spot where the mines were buried in the roadway.

  “I was only wrong two times in my life,” Frank said. “I got married twice.”

  “You gotta be bullshitting me.”

  “No bullshit. Those were the only two mistakes I ever made. Now shut the hell up and get ready to toss a grenade under that damn machine when it passes by us.”

  “Are those mines gonna blow dirt an’ rocks all over us when one goes off, Frank?”

  Frank let out an impatient sigh. “Would you rather have a little bit of dirt on you, or six feet of it coverin’ your goddamn grave?”

  The snap of a twig behind them made Frank stiffen. He had been so careful to watch their backtrail as they laid the mines in the road.

  “What was that?” James asked softly.

  Frank pursed his lips as he glanced over his right shoulder in the direction of the noise.

  A giant, hulking figure stood behind them only a few yards away.

  “Holy shit,” Frank breathed.

  James turned around, just in time to catch the glint of an automatic rifle barrel in the moonlight. “Oh no!” he gasped when he realized what was happening. “How did the sumbitch get behind us?”

  His answer came in the form of a staccato of weapon fire, thirty large-bore slugs thudding through the silence of the night as they tore through Frank and James.

  Frank was lifted off the ground, twisting slowly in midair, landing on his back with eleven bullet holes in his torso and legs, dead when he fell.

  James managed to let out a scream of pain when a series of bullets passed through his lungs. He fell flat on his face as a gurgling came from his chest.

  Within seconds, both men lay still, their bullet-riddled bodies leaking blood onto the grass.

  Ben Raines shook his head. He walked over to a spot about five feet from where the men lay and toed the grass with his boot. Lying there, half-buried, was a microphone pickup for the audio-sensors scattered across the compound.

  “Guess you boys haven’t kept up with the latest technology in alarm systems,” he said to the dead assassins. “Too bad.”

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Claire Osterman was looking over the latest Intel reports on the progress of the war and getting madder by the minute. It seemed that everything that could possibly go wrong was going wrong.

  Her secretary barged into her office, a stricken look on her face. “Madam President,” she blurted.

  “What is it, Clara?” Claire barked. She’d told that stupid cow at least a hundred times to knock before entering her private office.

  “There’s a phone call for you.”

  “You mean you came storming in here to tell me that?”

  “But . . . but . . . it’s General Ben Raines calling.”

  “Oh?” Claire said, a surprised look on her face. She hadn’t heard anything from the assassins she’d sent, so evidently they’d failed to rid the world of Ben Raines. The bastard’s probably calling to gloat, she thought. Well, I’ll be doing the gloating after we bomb the shit out of his precious SUSA with my new plague bombs.

  She picked up the phone. Might as well let him crow, while he has the chance. “Hello, this is President Osterman,” she said, unable to keep a smug tone out of her voice.

  “Hello, Sugar Babe,” Raines said, as if he were talking to an old friend.

  “Oh, hello, Raines,” she answered, refusing to use his title of general.

  “I’m just calling to tell you not to send boys to do a man’s job next time, or pretty soon you’re gonna run out of people stupid enough to try to kill me.”

  “Why, I don’t know what you’re talking about, Raines. You know attempted assassination of a country’s leaders is against the law.”

  “Yeah, I figured you’d say that. It’s a typical Socialist Democrat tactic to not have the balls to admit when something isn’t working.”

  “Did you call just to insult me, Raines?”

  “No. Actually, I wanted to see if you’ve had enough of this stupid war and are ready to enter into some serious negotiations for peace.”

  “Why would I want to do that?” she asked.

  “I just thought you might have some feeling for your citizens, who are being devastated by your insane continuation of a losing effort.”

  The word insane almost pushed Claire over the edge. “What do you mean, losing, you son of a bitch?” she screamed into the phone.

  “You’re beaten, Claire. Why not just admit it, and let’s both go on with our lives?”

  “You’re the one who’s going to be beaten, Raines. I still have a surprise or two up my sleeve.”

  “Oh, you mean your bubonic plague weapons?”

  How in the hell did he find out about that? she thought. We must have another spy in our midst. She made a mental note to have Harlan do yet another full security check of all the employees of her headquarters staff.

  “So, you know about that, do you? Well, it won’t do you any good, Raines. In a very short time, your beloved citizens will be puking and coughing their guts out, and you’ll be begging me to save you.”

  Raines chuckled. “Oh, Sugar Babe, if you only knew.” He hesitated a moment, faint hisses of static the only sound on the line.

  Finally, he spoke again. “I’m going to do you a favor, Sugar Babe,” he said, his voice now serious. “I’m going to tell you something you don’t know and hopefully save a lot of lives, mainly your citizens’ lives.”

  “What could you possibly tell me, Raines, that I don’t already know?”

  “Just that the vaccine that Dr. Ishi gave you is bogus. It’s worthless, Claire. He gave us the real vaccine, so the only people who’re going to die from your bombs will be your own troops and citizens.”

  “You’re lying, Ben Raines!” she shouted into the phone. “There’s no way you could have the vaccine.”

  “I’ve given you fair warning, Sugar Babe, so that I won’t have the deaths of millions of innocent people on my conscience. Of course, crazy people don’t generally have consciences, so you’re free to do wh
at you want with the information.”

  “I don’t believe you, Raines. This is just a dirty trick to try and save your own skins.”

  “OK, Sugar Babe, I’ve done what I can to help prevent a catastrophe. The next move is up to you. But, if you do decide to drop those bombs, you’d better make sure you stay away from fleas and anyone with a fever in the next few weeks, ’cause otherwise, you’re liable to get the plague, too.”

  “You’re a liar, Ben Raines, and don’t call me Sugar Babe!” she screamed as she slammed the phone down in its cradle.

  She sat there, breathing hard, sweat pouring from her forehead as she tried to think through the conversation. How had he known so many details of their plan, and how much of what he said was the truth?

  Considering her options, she realized she really didn’t have any. The only hope the USA had of winning the war, and the only hope Claire Osterman had of avoiding a hanging was for the plague bombs to work. Therefore, she reasoned, she’d go on and drop the bombs. She really had nothing to lose, for she was dead either way if Raines was correct.

  She picked up the phone and dialed General Maxwell’s number. When he answered, she said, “Max, I want those planes launched today . . . right now!”

  “But Madam President, we’re still two days away from being ready.”

  “You heard me, General. Obey my orders or I’ll come down there and personally blow your head off!”

  She could hear the general’s sharp intake of breath at her threat. Good. The son of a bitch needed to know she meant business when she gave an order.

  “Yes, ma’am. I’ll get the bombers loaded and send them on their way as soon as it’s dark.”

  “Thank you, General,” she said in a sweet voice. “Let me know the results of our raid as soon as you have them, no matter how late it is.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, his voice low and quiet.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  In SUSA headquarters, Ben hung up the phone, a defeated look on his face.