Valor in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  “Hell with it,” he muttered. “But damned if she’ll work in my office.” He looked up as an engineer approached him.

  “If we had the time, General, we could fix it. But it’s going to take some time. Whoever planted those charges knew what they were doing to attain the max structural damage to this side.”

  “Well, one thing’s for sure,” Ben said. “We can’t use it, but then, neither can they.”

  “Pardon, General,” Beth touched his arm. “Buddy is reporting that Monte’s people are on the move. Heading straight for the Teterboro airport.”

  “Advise Tina to prepare for immediate attack. Tell Rebet and Danjou to stay out of the airport area and to hold what they have. Tina’s already worked out a hole for her bunch to use to get out of there.”

  Dan had joined them on the bridge, and with that remark, he looked at Ben, questions in his eyes. “You’re going to pull them out today, General?”

  Before he replied to Dan’s question, he said to Beth, “And tell Rebet and Danjou to sit very quietly. We’ll leave the pinchers wide open. Give Monte’s people lots of room. Let’s see what they’ll do.”

  With that, Dan began smiling. “Now I see, General.”

  “If Monte will bite. But this Colonel person seems to know a lot about me. I’ll wager that he’s the one who had Monte bypass the airport in the first place. I’ll also wager that he’s the one who planned blowing this bridge. I wish to hell I knew who he was.”

  “General Ike coming under heavy attack, sir,” Beth informed.

  “The offensive is on, people. Let’s go to work.”

  Tina’s forward observers had been forced to shift positions a half-dozen times during Monte’s meanderings. Now, with Monte on the move with a definite goal in mind, the FO’s could attack the warlord’s movements.

  The 155’s Ben had assigned to Tina’s command could lob a shell over fifteen miles with near-pinpoint accuracy. The 81mm mortars had much less range, about 3500 meters.

  “We’re gonna cream the Interstate system usin’ those One-fifty-fives,” the most forward of the FO’s radioed to Tina.

  “Can’t be helped. Are they in range?”

  “Approximately two more minutes.” He called out the coordinates. “And you can walk them in and be right on target.”

  “You hope,” Tina said.

  The gunners started counting with thirty seconds to go. They commenced firing one twenty seconds behind the other, to give the FO’s time to call in adjustments. The first outgoing HE blew a hole in Interstate 95. The second round took out two vehicles, and the third round of WP hit a truck carrying ammo. The impacting round, combined with the exploding ammo, knocked out a section of the overpass the column was on, forcing them to fall back.

  Monte’s force had never come under sustained artillery fire before. Even the most battle-hardened men and women cringe before it, especially when every third round is white phosphorus that eats through skin and burns through bone.

  “No, god damn it!” Ashley yelled. “Monte! Split your people and press on. Get under the artillery. They’re firing at twenty-second intervals. That means they’ve only got three of the big pieces.”

  “How you figure that?” Monte yelled over the crash and boom and screaming.

  “Rate of fire for a self-propelled One-fifty-five is one round a minute. If you let your troops panic now, you’ll never get them back together.”

  Monte stuck a pistol in Ashley’s face. “Then you lead, hotshot. We’ll follow.”

  Ashley had toughened considerably over the years. He pushed the pistol away and said, “You and me, Monte. Together, we will lead.”

  “Done. Let’s go.”

  Screaming out orders, finally having to physically confront the men, Monte and Ashley rallied their frightened troops and shoved and pushed and threatened and promised them the moon and stars. They shoved on, driving as fast as they could, just staying ahead of the shelling.

  “Cease firing! Cease firing!” another team of FO’s radioed. “I’ve lost them. They’re just north of Two-eighty between the Expressway and Twenty-one. Shut it down.”

  The 155’s fell silent.

  Monte had split his troops up into five groups, approximately 800 per group. He had never commanded this many troops, usually maintaining a force of about a thousand men. But as his territory grew, he had been forced to take in other warlords and their outlaw followings. Without proper organization, Monte was discovering, commanding this many men could be a pain in the butt.

  “Order all your people to lay low in the buildings,” Ashley suggested. “Make them come to us.”

  “Good idea.”

  Tina radioed her father, telling him Monte’s people had disappeared.

  “Spotter planes up from the old naval air station, Beth. Tell them to stay high and out of range.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Ben turned to a map. “They’re over here in the Belleville, East Orange, Nutley area. The FO’s said they’d split up, right? So that means that this Colonel somebody is probably calling the shots. Monte is a thug, not a tactician.”

  “Spotter planes going up, sir.”

  Ben looked at the map. “Tell Rebet and Danjou to fall back north of Eighty, into Hackensack. Leave the area between Lodi and Bogota wide open for Tina. When she’s inside, with whatever of Monte’s battalions on her heels, she can turn around and Rebet and Danjou can swing around and close the trap.”

  “Orders for Buddy, sir?”

  “None. He knows he’s to lone-wolf it and stay loose.”

  West and Ike had radioed that they were up to their butts in creepie-crawlers, literally coming out of the woodwork. But that they were having no difficulty holding.

  “The latest from General Striganov?” Ben asked.

  “Still several days out. I believe he had been living in Alberta, General. Is that right?”

  “I think so. Several-thousand-mile pull anyway you cut it.”

  Ben had her check with half a dozen of his posts, stretching west to east along 171st Street. None of them had seen any creepies nor had come under any hostile fire.

  “Strange,” Ben muttered. “And what were the crawlers doing with that diversion?”

  Ben now had six bridges to defend, although he still did not believe the Night People would attempt to storm their way across the bridges. “Check the bridges, Beth.”

  The Rebels guarding the bridges had seen nothing. Boring.

  “Spotter planes are reporting nothing, sir,” Beth told him.

  “That’s what they’re waiting for then.”

  “Sir?”

  “Night. Monte probably didn’t plan it that way. But they’ll hit Tina tonight, and the creepies will throw it at us tonight. I’d bet a month’s pay on it.” He smiled at Beth. “If any of us were getting paid, that is. Double the sentries, Beth. Pass the word to arm the electronically fired Claymores.” He looked at his watch. It would be dark in less than an hour. “Order all personnel to eat now and return to their posts.” He glanced out the window. It was snowing. “Wonderful. It’s going to be a crappy night all the way around.”

  TEN

  Dark had just closed its dusky wings over the city. The snow had tapered off into only an occasional burst of whiteness as the temperature dipped below freezing, gradually turning the slush into frozen, dirty-looking piles.

  The men and women of the Rebels had draped pieces of dark cloth over their weapons to keep the oil from freezing during the cold waiting period. The Rebels wore face masks for protection against the weather, the interior around the mouth hole lined with silk to prevent the breath from freezing the cloth against the lips.

  The Rebels waited in silence, moving only when absolutely necessary. The snowy calmness was very deceiving. In every alley lurked waiting death; behind many doors and windows Rebels crouched with weapons set on full auto. Hidden in the shadows — especially in the dark alleys — were deadly Claymores, ready to be activated electronically; others w
ould spew their killing hail of ball bearings when a trip wire was touched. In the alleys of the city they would be doubly dangerous, for the lethal balls of death would bounce off the brick walls time and time again after the initial blast, whining in fury until they found a target.

  The Night People learned just how dangerous the Rebels could be this cold evening in the city. They learned why Ben Raines and his Rebels had earned the reputation of being the most feared force in all of what had once been known as America. They learned their first lesson when a dozen of the black-robed creepies slithered into an alley. One of them tripped a wire that set off a antipersonnel mine. The roaring shattered the deceptive calmness of the night, followed by hideous shrieking from men whose bodies had just been mangled by the ball bearings.

  Not one Rebel close by gave away his or her position by opening fire. They were too wise in the ways of combat; this was nothing new to the Rebels. Many had been doing this for more than a decade. Many a Rebel trigger-finger actually had calluses worn on the skin from years of weapons’ use.

  The screaming finally faded away as the snow in the alley soaked up the blood of the night crawlers.

  A few miles away, over in New Jersey, Tina and her people were lashing out at Monte’s people as the warlord made his first tentative thrusts at the airport. Mortars and heavy machine-gun fire, from .50’s and .30’s and M-60’s, ruptured the cold air and tore into flesh. Dusters, hidden behind recently scooped-up mounds of earth around the airport, cut loose with their 40mm cannon and quad .50’s. Big Thumpers thumped out deadly red balls of death.

  Monte’s people were stopped before they even reached the chain-link fence.

  “Fall back, fall back!”

  Monte’s people did not need to be told more than once.

  Ashley gathered the CO’s and PL’s around him. “All right, we took some hits, but we found out what we had to know: a brute force frontal attack won’t win it for us. Set your mortars up on flatbed trucks and start lobbing them in. After a half-dozen rounds, change positions so the Rebels can’t get a fix on you. Monte, I would suggest you get teams of your best riflemen and have them work in close enough for some sniping. We agreed that this was going to be a long campaign. Tonight proves it. We’re just going to have to wear them down and make them back up.”

  “And then we go in and kill them, right?” a CO asked.

  “No,” Ashley smashed that thought. “That’s what Ben Raines is famous for. When they retreat, we don’t follow. That would mean a death trap for us. Raines is famous for trapping people who are foolish enough to follow his so-called retreats. We just keep pushing at them and staying back, avoiding any major confrontations.”

  Monte stared at Ashley through eyes that the Louisiana man could not read. Finally Monte cleared it up. “You all right, Colonel. You’re an educated man. I didn’t think much of you at first, but I was wrong. And I admit it. You’re now second in command of my army. And you call the shots in this here campaign. She’s all yours, Colonel.”

  * * *

  Ben had picked up an M-14 assault rifle and moved two floors up from his office. He kicked out a window and made himself as comfortable as possible. Waiting to begin making whatever black robe he happened to spot as uncomfortable as possible from his vantage point above the street.

  He spotted a dark movement in the building across the street from his. Shifting his eyes, he spotted the boards the creepies had used to move from rooftop to rooftop. Still he waited.

  Another dark shape joined the one he’d first spotted. “Hand me those night glasses, Jersey.”

  The shapes leaped into his eyes through the night lenses. A whole room filled with bogies.

  “Jersey, Beth. Pick a window but don’t kick it out. Step back and fire through it.” He handed Jersey the night glasses. “Look at your targets.”

  Ben lifted the old Thunder Lizard, with a thirty-round clip in its belly and set on full rock and roll. “You ready, ladies?”

  “Let’s give ’em hell, General,” Jersey said.

  Ben emptied half the clip, his shoulder taking some punishment from the hard-hitting recoil of the old dinosaur. But those .308’s from the M-14, added to Beth and Jersey’s .223 slugs, made a great big mess in the room across the street. The creepies were all caught standing up, totally unaware that anyone had spotted them.

  “Get on the radio, Beth. Advise our people that the creepies are on the rooftops.” He rubbed his shoulder where the M-14 had pounded him just as his eyes caught movement on another roof. Ben lifted the assault rifle and let it bang. The slugs knocked the legs out from under one night crawler and sent him screaming down a dozen floors, to land in a sprawl of smashed bones and a spray of blood that left its mark on a storefront.

  Ben slipped home a fresh clip and waited for some more action to materialize.

  It was not long in coming.

  Creepies began popping up on rooftops, hurling firebombs and grenades.

  “How in the hell did they get up there without our spotting them?” Beth called over the rattle of gunfire and booming of grenades.

  “They’ve had a decade to prowl this city, Beth. No telling how many tunnels they’ve dug just in that time alone. And no telling how many secret passageways they’ve carved out of hundreds of houses and buildings . . .”

  His last words were cut off as a tank clanked up the street and came to a halt far enough back so its main gun could effectively be brought into play. The turret swiveled and the 90mm cannon began spewing out HE rounds, directed at the floor next to the top. The explosions knocked half a dozen creepies off the roof and sent them spinning to the concrete just before part of the roof collapsed under the heavy shelling.

  Another main battle tank joined that tank and directed its 105mm cannon at another building, soon producing the same results. That block cleared, the tanks rumbled and clanked on, to wreak more havoc wherever directed.

  Ben leaned against a wall and hand-rolled a smoke. “Pass the coffee thermos, Jersey.” He licked his smoke closed. “It’s going to be a long, cold night.”

  At the first graying of the eastern sky, the Night People pulled their stinking cloaks around them and vanished. Many weary Rebels, too tired to move, simply remained at their posts and closed their eyes, catching some sleep behind their guns.

  Ben walked down to his office and found the windows shot out, the walls bullet-pocked, and the floor littered with papers. He and Beth and Jersey and Cooper picked up what they could, and stuffed the papers into boxes. Ben retrieved his Thompson and in the other room, quickly field-stripped it and wiped it free of the moisture that had collected after the windows had been shot out.

  Ben ate a can of field rations while Beth called in for a casualty report. Three dead and fifteen wounded, two of the wounded in serious condition. The attack from the creepies had been widespread and savage. Rebels guarding the bridges connecting Manhattan with Queens and the Bronx reported heavy infiltration by boat during the night.

  Ben surmised that whatever losses the Night People had sustained during the fighting had been made up for threefold by the infiltrators. God alone knew how many Night People they were actually facing.

  Ben tossed a sleeping bag on the floor, wearily pulled off his boots, and went to sleep.

  He was a man who had always needed no more than a few hours’ sleep, so before noon, while the others still slept, Ben quietly bathed and shaved — no after-shave, for many soldiers had been killed because their location was pinpointed by the odor of after-shave or cologne — and dressed in clean BDU’s. He stepped out into another cold, dreary, and overcast day.

  The city was eerily quiet. The bodies of the slain creepies had been removed from the immediate area and tossed onto the death barges, moored on both the Hudson and the East River.

  Ben walked up Fort Washington Avenue for a block before he found where his cooks had set up a mess hall, and stood in line, waiting for breakfast and a very welcome steaming mug of coffee. Doctor Chase wave
d him over to a makeshift table.

  “Out wandering by yourself again, Raines?”

  “I didn’t have the heart to wake up the others. They were beat.”

  “You’re gonna be dead if you don’t stop your damned meandering about in a combat zone.”

  Ben looked at his tray. He could identify the biscuits and gravy and fried potatoes. He did not know what that inert lump might be. It vaguely resembled meat.

  “Eat it,” Chase told him. “It’s good for you.”

  “Whatever you say, Mother.” Ben took a bite, chewed and swallowed, then reached for the hot-sauce bottle. If he got it hot enough the sauce would hide the taste.

  Dan joined them. Ben noticed the Englishman had loaded up with fried potatoes, biscuits, and gravy. He had bypassed the meat substitute — a mostly grain concoction from the lab people at Base Camp One.

  “Wise choice,” Ben complimented him.

  “It’s worst than squid,” Dan said. “I ate that once. I refuse to ever again attempt to ingest any object that insists upon gripping the sides of the plate.”

  “Have you spoken with Ike or West this morning?” Ben asked.

  “Yes. Ike. Cecil is still in the hospital. All fronts were hit hard last night. Ike said that the guards on the bridges in his area reported heavy infiltration last evening. Ike says he figures we’re outnumbered about twenty to one just in the city.”

  “Tina?”

  “Monte is being very cautious. They started lobbing in mortar rounds last evening, and snipers are making things rather difficult for the boys and girls at the airport. Monte has changed tactics drastically.”

  “Then Monte isn’t running the show,” Ben stated. “He’s turned it over to this Colonel person.”

  “That’s the way I see it,” Dan agreed. “The troops I’ve personally spoken with have all resigned themselves to the fact that we’re going to be here for a long, long time.”