Crisis in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  “That’s bullshit!” Ben exploded, his eyes flashing.

  “Hey, Ben, they’ve been kinda busy lately. They sent out a notification to all of the Scout units in the area, but Buddy’s unit is over three hundred miles to the north. No one figured he’d contact them without letting the others in the area know about it first.”

  Ben held up a hand. “I know. I’m sorry, Mike. Buddy always was too impetuous for his own good. Always cutting corners . . .”

  Mike smiled. “He has some big shoes he’s trying to fill, Ben. He wants you to be proud of him.”

  “Yeah, the curse of a successful father is a bitch. Is there any way to get a message to him before he leaves?”

  Mike wagged his head. “No, I’ve already tried. As soon as the intake officer showed me the message I got on the horn. They said he’d already taken off in a small plane for the rendezvous point, and there’s no radio in the aircraft capable of receiving a long distance transmission.”

  “OK,” Ben said, accepting the inevitable. “Let’s see if we can contact the nearest Scout team. Maybe it’s not too late for them to meet the plane and get him out of there before Osterman’s people get to him.”

  “I’ll get right on it.”

  “And Mike, if this goes bad I want that traitor taken out, as soon as possible.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Claire Osterman’s lips curled in a malevolent smile as she read her own Intel report concerning Buddy Raines and his plan to attack her home base.

  “Well, well. Just what the doctor ordered,” she growled. She glanced up at General Wilford Hall, the man she’d promoted to take Leland Maxwell’s place as Commander of the USA armed forces. He was not a great tactician, but he was a confirmed ass-kisser, and could be counted on to do exactly what she ordered, no more and no less.

  “Willie,” she said, “I want you to get the best men available and have them transported immediately to the area where Ben Raines’s son is expected to land.”

  “You want him terminated, Madam President?”

  “No, not under any circumstances. He’s much too valuable an asset to kill. I want to look him in the eyes while he’s questioned. Then I want him broken, so that Ben Raines will know it was his own son who gave us the information we needed to destroy his army and win the war.”

  Hall knew in his heart that no matter what information they gleaned from the young Raines, the war was not going to be won by the USA, but as a career officer in the army he knew better than to contradict his commander in chief.

  “Yes, ma’am. There are a couple of men that are perfect for a job such as this. I’ll see that they’re stationed at the appropriate place immediately.”

  “Oh, Willie?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Did you attend General Maxwell’s funeral?”

  “Why, uh . . . yes, ma’am.”

  “Good. Then you know the penalty for failure.”

  “These men won’t fail, Madam President. You have my word on it.”

  “More than your word is riding on this, Willie. Your ass is on the line. See that I’m not disappointed.”

  Bob Angelo saw the single engine plane land on an airstrip hidden deep in the Indiana forest. It came down without running lights, an older Cessna painted camouflage green and brown. If the intelligence they had was accurate, Buddy Raines would be on board, son of the famous Rebel general, preparing to lead a strike team toward the heart of the USA’s military inventory, including bombers and an array of tanks being prepared to launch a major initiative into the heart of the SUSA Rebel stronghold.

  Angelo and his American partner had been lured out of hiding in Sicily by a huge offer of money. In spite of a number of attempts to get at General Ben Raines, commander of all Rebel forces across the North American continent, he had somehow eluded assassination and capture, even when the assassins were very good, on a world-class level, men such as Chris Bradley, Gerald Enger, even Hans Bosner, one of the very best.

  But Bob Angelo had never failed to complete an assignment, and Ron Storm, a displaced New Yorker, was almost as good at reading trouble before it arrived. Storm was brutal, yet cunning in every respect. Angelo did not worry, so long as Storm was covering his back.

  “Looks like our information was correct,” Angelo said to a man lying behind a tree only a few yards away. “That’ll be Buddy Raines, the son of the mighty general of the SUSA armies himself.”

  “What a goddamn joke,” Ronnie Storm said, “calling a bunch of hoodlums with guns an army, or a goddamn government. Raines is a damn fool. He ain’t nothing but an outlaw who took advantage of a bad situation. He’s a damn thug, is all he is, a thug with a bunch of stupid followers. This is gonna be easy, Bob. I’ll damn near feel like we’re stealin’ the money from President Osterman. They’re all a bunch of idiots.”

  The plane taxied to a halt at the end of the airstrip, and its engine went silent.

  “So is Raines’s son,” Angelo replied, lowering his voice, for they were very close to the plane. “I hear Buddy ain’t no better than his old man, and he ain’t nearly as smart.”

  “Did you ever read that stupid old Tri-States Manifesto?” Storm asked.

  “Nope. I wiped my ass on a copy of it one time while we was down in Georgia. Ran out of toilet paper.”

  “You ain’t missed nothin’. Biggest bunch of bullshit ever put on paper.”

  “I didn’t know you could read, Ronnie.”

  “Screw You, Angelo. I can read as good as anybody. I read all that shit written by Ben Raines. It went something like this—Freedom, like respect, is earned, an’ must be constantly nurtured and protected from those who would take it away from the people.”

  “Sounds like communism to me,” Angelo replied, watching two men get out of the small Cessna.

  “It gets worse. Raines goes on to say how it’s the right of every law-abiding citizen to protect his or her life, liberty, and personal property by any means, without fear of arrest or criminal prosecution. The right to bear arms is essential to maintaining true personal freedom. Have you ever heard such bullshit in your life? Most people in this country don’t know which end of a gun to put the bullet in, and it’d take ’em all week to find the trigger. Raines can’t be that much smarter than the rest of ’em.”

  Angelo grunted. “His boy, Buddy, had better hope he has a gun. It’ll be the only chance he has to keep from going to an early grave.”

  “How come we don’t just shoot the son of a bitch from here?” Storm asked.

  “Because President Osterman and her advisers want to ask him some questions. We’re being paid to bring him in, so they can question him.”

  “Questions? What kind of questions?”

  “About the flea bombs.”

  “Have you been drinking, Bob? Nobody puts fleas in a bomb. What the hell good would it do? Fleas come on dogs. Nobody puts ’em in a fuckin’ bomb. What the hell’s wrong with these people?”

  “They were sick fleas, Ronnie. That’s what I was told. Bombs full of sick fleas.”

  “You gotta be shittin’ me.”

  “Fleas that had some sort of plague. That’s how come we took those shots last week. It’s to keep us from getting sick on account of the fleas.”

  Angelo raised his night vision binoculars to study the two shapes emerging from the plane.

  “Do you see him?” Ronnie asked, his mind back on the business at hand.

  “I sure as hell do. Let’s go, and remember not to make any noise.”

  “Is it OK if we rough him up a bit?”

  “Hell, yes,” Angelo growled, coming to his feet. “It’s always a help when you bust up a prisoner . . . just enough to get him to cooperate.”

  “What if he makes a run for it?” Storm continued, raising his rifle as they began creeping through a dense stand of tall oak trees.

  “Shoot him in the leg. Hell, shoot the son of a bitch damn near anywhere, just so you don’t kill him. We’re getting paid to bring him i
n so they can question him.”

  “I gotcha, Bob. A stiff—a corpse—don’t give up too many answers.”

  “You’re goddamn near a genius, Ronnie,” Angelo muttered as they started toward the airplane in the dark.

  “What the hell?” Buddy Raines felt the cold steel of a rifle barrel behind his head.

  “Stay real still, shitface,” a deep voice warned. “Otherwise I’m gonna blow your skull all over this cow pasture. Your daddy won’t be able to find enough pieces of you to be worth the trouble of burying you.”

  At the same instant, a gunshot went off near the tail section of the Cessna. Pilot Roger Deleware’s spine snapped when the bullet passed through him.

  He groaned and slumped to the grass on his rump, then he toppled over on his back.

  “Why did you do that?” Buddy asked, swallowing bitter bile when it filled his mouth. “Roger was a pilot. He wasn’t carrying a gun.”

  “In case nobody told you, Mr. Raines, this is a goddamn war.”

  Buddy turned to his captors. “It takes a gutless bastard to shoot an unarmed man,” he snapped, staring into the strange blue eyes of a man in a black beret with a deep scar running down his face.

  It was the other man, the man who shot Roger, who swung the butt of an automatic rifle into Buddy’s jaw, lifting him off his feet.

  He landed on his back in blood-soaked grass, with his mind reeling.

  “Nobody asked you for your goddamn opinions, asshole,” the man said.

  Buddy rubbed his jaw and sat up slowly, seeing flashing lights from the blow to his face. “Okay, you yellow sons of bitches,” he said, biting down around each word. “What is it you want from me?”

  The man who struck him with the gun butt took a step closer, a leer on his face. He glanced at his companion in the black beret. “Did you hear what this chickenshit just called us, Bob? He said we was sons of bitches. He was talkin’ about my mama, an’ yours too.”

  “Maybe Mr. Buddy Raines needs a few lessons in proper manners, Ronnie,” the second man said.

  “Here. Hold my rifle. I’m gonna teach a little school before the APC comes to pick us up.”

  “Don’t take too damn long about it. Somebody might have heard that gunshot.”

  Ronnie grinned. “I won’t need but a minute . . . maybe two . . . to teach Mr. Raines some manners.”

  “To hell with both of you,” Buddy said, midway through a jump to his feet.

  He was struck again by a crushing blow to the top of his scalp, folding his knees like cardboard. He went down in the grass on his face, gasping for air, knowing his mission to lead a strike force against USA headquarters had backfired. He wondered how these men had known where they would land the plane. Was there a traitor in their midst?

  A powerful hand seized his right wrist, while another took the pistol from his holster.

  “Are you a right-handed man, Buddy?” the one named Ronnie asked.

  “Fuck you,” he groaned, trying with all his might to remain conscious.

  “He was wearing his forty-five automatic on his right hip, Ronnie. Means he is damn sure right-handed. How come you’re too dumb to notice shit like that?”

  Ronnie did not answer. Buddy felt a vise-like grip encircle the fingers on his right hand.

  “How does this feel, Mr. Raines?” Ronnie asked, his teeth clenched as he bent all four of Buddy’s fingers backward at an unnatural angle.

  “Damn!” Buddy hissed, struggling against the pressure as a heavy weight landed on his back and shoulders.

  “How about a little more, Mr. Buddy Big Shot Raines?”

  Gristle popped in his knuckles. An involuntary shriek of pain came from his throat.

  “Hurts, don’t it?”

  “Fuck . . . you,” he gasped, promising himself that he would not give the location of the Rebel force away, no matter how much these two men hurt him.

  More pressure, and he heard the small bones across the back of his hand snap like green kindling. Tears trickled down his face.

  “Where is your daddy’s new headquarters, Buddy Boy? An’ how come them fleas ain’t making you sick?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking . . . about. Go fuck yourself. I have nothing more to say.”

  “Nothing more to say?” A short laugh. “We’ll see about that, Mr. Raines. My money says you’ve got plenty more to tell us.”

  “Fuck . . . you, asshole,” he stammered. Then pain rendered him unconscious.

  * * *

  He awakened in a tiny cell with no windows. A plump woman dressed in battle fatigues stood next to his cell door as a uniformed soldier came toward him.

  “Make him talk,” the woman said, and now he recognized her from television news coverage. She was President Claire Osterman, political and military leader of the USA.

  “Hello, Sugar Babe,” Buddy croaked from the corner of the cell where he was lying on a cot.

  Her eyes narrowed, and her lips pressed together in a tight line. “You don’t know me well enough to call me that, pup.”

  He glanced at her uniform. “All dressed up for war, huh?” he asked, letting scorn show in his tone of voice. “‘Course, I notice your fatigues don’t have any dirt or blood on ’em.” He chuckled, “Hard to get dirty ridin’ out the war behind a desk, huh Sugar Babe?”

  “Somebody busted his hand pretty bad, Madame President,” the soldier observed. “Then they drove eight-penny finishing nails underneath his fingernails. He’s hurt pretty bad.”

  “Good. Break the other fingers. Do whatever it takes until he tells us what we want to know.”

  “Then what do we do with him?” the officer asked.

  Osterman smiled. “Take some pictures of him, and make sure the blood shows up real good. I want to send them to his father, with a note telling him how his weakling son betrayed everything he stood for. Then, keep him here. I’m gonna see if I can’t trade his worthless carcass for something very valuable from Ben Raines. We’ll ransom the son of a bitch to his father.”

  “And after that, Madam President?”

  “Have his body dropped from an airplane over SUSA headquarters in northeast Louisiana. I hope his corpse lands in Ben Raines’s backyard, the no good son of a bitch! Let’s send Ben Raines a message . . . that we’ve stopped fooling around.”

  THIRTY-NINE

  Otis Warner’s stomach felt as if it were full of ground glass. Ever since Ben Raines’s call, he’d been worrying over what, if anything, he could do to end this stupid, destructive war. He’d always been a thinker, not a man of action. Even as a child, he’d been overweight and something of a nerd. It was in politics that he’d found his true calling. He was a natural schemer, and had discovered he had a talent for organization and for getting other people to see things his way. In his years as adviser to President Osterman, he’d always tried to use his skills to keep her from making mistakes based on her somewhat naive political philosophy.

  As a matter-of-fact, he thought, he was much more closely aligned with the SUSA type of government than the outmoded, unrealistic Socialist Democrat form Osterman had chosen for the USA. He, unlike Claire, had no illusions about the basic nature of people. If they were allowed to get what they needed without having to work for it, most would choose the easy path of welfare and governmental dole rather than labor.

  His feelings had been borne out. Even before the disastrous war Claire had embroiled them in, the treasury of the US was almost empty from paying people to not work and trying to give everyone the same standard of living whether they were productive or not.

  In countless meetings, he’d pushed and fought to make her realize she was on a foolish course. He’d achieved some small victories, and many large losses—the worst being when she ignored his pleadings not to enter a war with SUSA, a war he felt sure they could not win.

  Now, the time had come to put up or shut up, he thought. Ben Raines had dumped the fate of his nation, a nation he loved dearly in spite of its mistakes, into his lap. He
had to figure out some way to change the government’s course of action, by changing Claire’s mind or by replacing her as head of the government.

  He opened his desk drawer and took out a bottle of antacid. Pouring a handful of tablets out of the bottle, he dumped them all in his mouth and began to chew, trying to ease the burning in his gut.

  Though not a man of action, he was the quintessential politician, and over the years had amassed a cadre of men and women loyal to him rather than to the president. He had his allies in all branches of the government and the armed forces, men and women he’d nurtured over the years, doing favors for them and otherwise helping them in their careers so they knew on which side their bread was buttered. Now he just had to figure out how to best use them to achieve the end of the war.

  He opened a secret compartment in his desk and took out a small black book. In it were the names of people he’d helped over the years, people whose loyalty he could count on. As he thumbed through the pages, a name jumped out at him.

  Joseph Winter, colonel in the intelligence department of the army, had been born Solomon Weintraub. Otis, realizing the poor chances for a Jew to succeed in the new Socialist Democratic state, had arranged for him to assume a new identity many years ago. Since then, the young man had risen through the ranks of the armed services, because of his natural talent for intelligence work and because of Otis’s constant behind-the-scenes help. He would be the first one Otis called on.

  Joe arrived in his office less than ten minutes after his phone call.

  “Hello, Otis. How are you?”

  “Not so good, Joe,” Otis answered. He glanced around the office and raised his eyebrows. “I’ve been thinking it might be time to have my office exterminated. What do you think?”

  Joe smiled. “There’s no need for that, Otis. Though there are ‘bugs’ in here, I review all the transcripts myself from the advisers’ offices, so it’s safe for us to talk.”

  Otis nodded. He knew Claire was probably bugging her own staffs’ offices, and it was nice to have confirmation. Somehow, knowing how devious and deceitful she was made it easier to do what he was planning.