Valor in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  Another of Monte’s people tried to jerk open the passenger-side door of Thermopolis’s VW Bug. Rosebud conked him on the noggin with a ball peen hammer. The deuce-and-a-half behind the Bug ran over the outlaw.

  Screaming their fury, Ashley and Monte rallied their people and sent a contingent to cut off the escape route of the Rebels. They ran into Buddy’s company lying in wait at the Meadowlands Sports Complex.

  Buddy and his company locked horns with the outlaws in close-quarter combat. And for the first time in their evil careers, the warlord’s men found themselves facing an adversary who asked no quarter and gave none. Ben Raines’s son did not take prisoners unless ordered to do so.

  The outlaws were stronger in number, but not as well armed. And for years, the Rebels Buddy commanded had eaten well-balanced meals and received proper medical care; they understood discipline, and were fighting for a cause as a motivating force.

  It was a slaughter, with not one outlaw left alive.

  Buddy pointed out temporary mortar positions, and his crews quickly set up mortars and heavy machine guns on the east side of the complex and began raking the warlord’s men who were advancing toward Paterson.

  Others under Monte’s and Ashley’s command tried to come down Highway 17 to flank Buddy and his people. They had cleared the road of mines but had not checked alongside the highway. The Claymores began firing as Ham detonated them from his Hummer, spraying the advancing enemy vehicles with flesh-ripping and life-taking ball bearings. Cars and trucks and Jeeps, their drivers dead or badly wounded and confused, piled into one another, creating a monumental mess in the road, and blocking it, giving Tina and her people even more time to complete their bug-out.

  The first vehicles in the convoy reached the sports complex and slid to a halt on the Berry River side, Rebels jumping out and setting up machine guns and mortars. Other Rebels raced to the top of the arena and set up their weapons positions there. From that height, they could also act as forward observers to call in range for the mortars and cannon.

  Several of Tina’s Scouts had jumped out at the radio towers and laid charges. When the C-4 blew, the towers came down, blocking part of the highway interchange, adding more misery to Monte’s and Ashley’s already maddening and growing frustrations.

  A few miles north of the complex, Rebet and Danjou were pulling their troops in closer, stretching them down south from Lodi and Bogota, preparing to close the pinchers if Tina was successful in pushing the warlord’s troops into the trap.

  But Ashley wasn’t buying it. He’d been a student of Ben Raines for years and thought he knew the man better than anyone else alive. He hated Raines, but he also admired him for his cunning.

  Ashley found Monte amid the chaos. “Raines is pulling more of his crap, Monte. Don’t fall for it. They’re trying to push us north. I’ll wager that’s where the Canadians are waiting for us. Let’s get the hell out of here and regroup over in Passaic.”

  “You’re runnin’ the show,” Monte reminded him.

  A few minutes later, from atop his vantage point at the sports complex, a Rebel radioed, “They ain’t taking the bait, Tina. They’re pulling out, heading west, toward the river.”

  “Ten-four. You acknowledge that, Colonel?”

  “Ten-four,” Colonel Rebet radioed. “I do not understand this game they are playing. This does not at all sound like Monte.”

  “Monte isn’t running the show. We need to meet, Colonel.”

  The Russian called out map coordinates, reversing them as they had agreed upon.

  “That’s ten-four, Colonel. I’m rolling.” She turned it over to Ham and took fifty Rebels, heading toward the arranged meet with the Russian and the Canadian.

  “You are very young and very pretty,” Colonel Re-bet said with a smile. “And as I have observed, very dangerous. Your father taught you well, Tina.”

  “Thank you, Colonel.” She was introduced to Danjou, and noticed that both men wore wedding bands. “I think, gentlemen, that if Monte were to stand and fight us, we could defeat him.”

  “But of course,” the French Canadian agreed. “That is something Stefan and I have discussed. “With your added battalion we could take them. But it’s obvious he has quite different thoughts on the matter. You think this Colonel person is now in command?”

  “That’s what my father believes, and so do I.”

  The Russian and Canadian nodded their heads in agreement, Danjou saying, “I believe that we must defeat Monte and get across the river to your father. I believe that this Colonel person is going to play cat and mouse with us, tying us up, so to speak, while General Raines and his forces are slowly chopped up by the Night People.” He glanced at the Russian.

  Rebet picked it up. “From what we have been able to ascertain, there might be as many as fifty thousand, or more, of the Night People in the city. Your father is facing odds of perhaps thirty to one, or more. We must end this quickly and go to his aid.”

  “Agreed.” Tina met their eyes. “But how?”

  “They just may have unknowingly placed themselves in that box we’ve been trying to put them in,” Rebet said with a hard smile. “General Striganov is driving hard, rolling twenty hours, sleeping four. He is now one day away. He crossed the border several days ago, and will come up from the west. You have some artillery, we have some artillery, and my general is bringing more. We all have tanks and self-propelled howitzers capable of throwing chemical warheads.” Rebet hesitated, his eyes sad. “I suggested this with reservations. General Striganov will agree only if General Raines agrees to it. But while we are waiting for them to make their decision, it would be my suggestion that we erect three sides of the box, leaving the west open.”

  “I agree” Danjou said.

  “All right.” Tina sweetened the pot. “I’m for it. But let me ask this: why can’t we stand back and toss Willie Peter and HE into Monte’s position? I’m just afraid my father is going to nix the use of chemicals.”

  “Personally I hope he does,” Rebet replied.

  “As do I,” Danjou said. “But that will be up to the generals.”

  “All right, gentlemen, let’s start building that box.” Tina agreed to take the south side of Passaic, stretching her people along Highway 3, roughly from Nutley to the Upper Monclair golf links. Danjou would plant charges at the bridge over the Passaic at the junction of 3 and 21 and then stretch his people from that point up to the Passaic Avenue Bridge, and plant more charges there. The bridges would be blown when Striganov and his troops were in position. Rebet would take from Passaic Avenue and loop around to Elmwood Park. Striganov would plug up the last hole.

  The men watched Tina as she left. “A very lovely lady,” the Russian observed.

  “And like her father,” Danjou said, “as dangerous as a cobra.”

  “Hello, you old warrior!” Georgi Striganov’s voice boomed over the speaker.

  “Georgi!” Ben took the mike. The two once-bitter adversaries greeted each other as brothers. “How’s the gout?”

  “All cleared up. How’s your health?”

  “Fit as a fiddle.”

  “I have spoken with my people, Ben. My opinion is nyet!”

  “Thank you for that, Georgi. That is mine, as well. We stay with conventional.”

  “Da.”

  “Well, you old warhoss, I wish you well and good hunting. I’m looking forward to seeing you soon.”

  “The same to you, my brother. Farmer Brown out.”

  “Eagle out,” Ben said with a laugh. Since leaving California, the Russian had been working a farm in Canada, living peacefully. He had remarried and was raising a family.

  “Farmer Brown?” Rebet looked at Danjou. “He could have taken Bear or Wolf or any of a half a dozen others. Farmer Brown?”

  “He is mellowing as he ages,” Danjou told his friend. “And when you are not leading troops, Stefan . . . what is your vocation?” That was said with a smile.

  The Russian laughed. “I am teaching
world history in a high school. You are right, Major: we are all mellowing.”

  The questions had been nagging at Ben since the Rebels’ arrival In New York City: What happened to the people over in New Jersey, over in Brooklyn and Queens, and up in the Bronx? And why had the Night People — all of them — congregated in Manhattan? Why would they, why should they, all settle in the city, leaving the outlying areas?

  Questions he could not answer. But they bothered him, and Ben did not know why they continually nagged at him.

  And he did not understand why he occasionally experienced an uneasy sensation of impending doom.

  What had he missed in his planning? There had to have been something; why else would he have these odd feelings?

  But if there was something, he could not bring it to the forefront.

  Something for granted leaped into his mind. He was taking something for granted.

  But what was it? It had to be something of importance. Something vital. But vital to what or whom?

  He mulled it around in his mind until he gave himself a headache.

  He looked up at a slight scraping sound in the doorway. Jerre stood there on crutches.

  Here’s lookin’ at you, kid.

  Ben rubbed his aching temples with his fingertips.

  “You feel bad, General?”

  “Will you knock off the ‘General’ business, Jerre? We’re not exactly strangers.”

  “Protocol, and all that, General.”

  Ben opened his mouth to cuss, then realized that would not help or solve a thing. “You’ve had radio training?”

  Jerre nodded.

  “Beth!” Ben roared. She stuck her head in the doorway. “Familiarize Miss Hunter with the radio and how we use translators. She can handle that from the office. Take some of the load off you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And bring me some aspirin, please.”

  Jerre smiled at Beth. “I give him headaches.”

  Beth stared at her through dark brown eyes. “You like cows?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Nothing. Forget it. Come on.”

  Out of Ben’s hearing, Jerre asked, “Cows, Beth?”

  “I love a man very much. Lev. But I don’t like cows. Lev raises cows. What is there about General Raines that you don’t like?”

  Jerre’s eyes turned frosty. “I believe you were going to go over the equipment with me?”

  “Right. But I think I could learn to put up with the cows.”

  “Anytime you’re through babbling . . .”

  “So I tried with Lev. At least I did that. Come on, I won’t bring it up again.”

  Ben caught Jersey making a terrible face and sticking her tongue out at Jerre’s back as she and Beth disappeared into the next room. “Let’s all try to get along, Jersey,” he said softly.

  The little bodyguard looked up at him and smiled. “We gonna be stuck with her for the duration, sir?”

  “As soon as she’s well, she’ll be sent back to line duty with Tina.”

  “So I’ll pray for a speedy recovery.”

  Ben laughed and his headache disappeared. He returned to his desk and the reports. Ike and West and Cec’s people were holding their own — even gaining a little ground. A few blocks, but that was something. Cecil was still in the hospital. Striganov would be in position in a few hours.

  Everything looked good. But again, that odd sensation of impending doom settled its cloak of darkness around Ben. He did his best to shake it off. They would settle Monte’s hash once and for all, and then, as a combined force, start effectively dealing with the Night People.

  Ben looked at his watch. It wouldn’t be long now.

  He leaned back in his chair and waited for Georgi to start raining down destruction on Monte’s army.

  THIRTEEN

  “All units report,” Georgi gave the orders to his radio operator.

  “In position and ready,” Tina radioed.

  “Ready,” Danjou said.

  “Ready.” Rebet sealed the fate of Monte and his outlaws. Or so they all thought.

  “Fire!” The Russian general brought his hand down.

  Far back behind the lines, the big guns roared. Closer in, the 81mm mortars and Dusters began spitting out death and mayhem.

  “You bastard!” Monte cursed Ashley as the shells began dropping in on them. “You put us in the box we’ve been trying to avoid! I oughta kill you!”

  Ashley’s reply was lost as a building across the street exploded as a HE round was lobbed in.

  Each battalion had been assigned a specific sector of the city on which to concentrate their fire. Some began walking in their rounds from the outside of the perimeter; other gunners began at the center of the city and walked their rounds back. Not a generally accepted method of shelling, but in this case it produced panic among the troops locked inside the corridors of the shelling.

  The incoming mail was mixed: high explosive, Willie Peter, incendiary. The corridor was soon sending up billowing clouds of smoke as the dry interiors of the buildings ignited and went up in flames.

  The shelling was relentless, one type of round or the other landing somewhere in the city every eight seconds. From his offices in Manhattan, Ben could watch the smoke and hear the booming as one of the oldest cities in New Jersey, originally named Acquackanonk by the Dutch back in the 1600s, was destroyed, block by block.

  The shelling went on, all day, without stopping. At dusk, the hot guns fell silent.

  More than four thousand troops, Russian, American, Canadian, with all nationalities mixed in among them, ringed the smoking and ruined city. Gunners lay behind all types of machine guns, ready to repel any who might come charging out of the ruins. Tanks had pulled in close, leveling their cannons.

  The night was eerily silent except for the crackle of the fires.

  Not one sign of human existence became evident from the smoking ruins.

  Tina got Danjou on the horn. “What do you think, Major? Somebody has to be alive in there.”

  “That would be my thought. Monte had as many personnel as we now have.”

  “All personnel. This is General Striganov. Stand down to middle alert. Eat and rest in shifts. We’ll enter the city in the morning.” He turned to his radio operator. “Get me General Raines. Something is very wrong here.”

  “Georgi. Ben here.”

  “Ben, unless the gods of war smiled on us, something is dreadfully wrong. There is not one person from the warlord’s army staggering out of the city. Not one.”

  Once again, those nagging doubts entered Ben’s mind, accompanied by that sensation of impending doom. “I agree with you, Georgi. I just can’t see that bunch of ill-disciplined outlaws wanting to mix it up with you. Not after the pounding they took today. That doesn’t make any sense. You going in in the morning?”

  “Yes. Carefully. I’ll radio you then.”

  “Ten-four. Eagle out.”

  “Farmer Brown out.”

  Ben sat looking at Jerre. “Odd, Jerre. Very odd. People survived the atomic bomb. They survived the Great War. And some of Monte and Ashley’s people survived this. But where the hell are they?”

  He stood up and walked to the window, the fires from the burning city lit up the skies. “Where in the hell did they go?”

  “I want a sector-by-sector body count,” Striganov ordered the troops. “Be alert for man-made booby traps and falling walls. Those old buildings took a pounding. Move out.”

  The Russians, the Rebels, and the Canadians moved into the still-smoldering city cautiously, and began the grisly task of counting the dead. They worked all day to reach the total of six hundred and fifteen dead.

  “It’s very curious,” Tina said, after calling a meeting with Rebet and Danjou, prior to reporting in to Striganov. “We found over fifty bodies that had been shot in the head.”

  “Same here,” both the Russian and the Canadian said.

  “And I don’t like what I’m making of it
,” Rebet added.

  “And that is . . . ?” Tina asked.

  “The outlaws slipped out through a hidey-hole and shot their wounded so they couldn’t talk.”

  “So much for honor among thieves.” Rebet spoke the words contemptuously.

  “I’m glad I don’t have to look my dad in the face when I report this,” Tina said.

  The Russian grimaced. “Lucky you. But I have to face Georgi Striganov.”

  The Russian general took it calmly. His only sign of irritation came from drumming the fingers of his right hand on a battered desk in the building he was using as his CP. “It’s the only thing that makes any sense,” he finally spoke. “And your theory is . . . ?” He looked at Rebet.

  “I don’t have one, sir. It is inconceivable to me that three thousand people could be buried under the rubble.”

  Georgi nodded and told his radio operator to get Ben on the horn. He then saved Tina the trouble of telling her dad.

  “Well, Georgi,” Ben said, “there is one way to find out about the bodies.”

  “Oh?”

  “Bring in the earth-moving equipment first thing in the morning.”

  While Georgi’s people — Tina was under his command — began the task of digging through the rubble, Ike got Ben on the horn.

  “You notice anything unusual about the fighting last night, Ben?”

  “Heavy up here. How about where you are?”

  “Same thing. But there was something else. They seemed to be taking more chances, becoming much more aggressive. Did you notice that?”

  “Yes. What do you make of it?”

  “I don’t know, Ben. But something is up for sure, and whatever it is, I got a hunch we ain’t gonna like it.”

  After Ike had signed off, Ben sat behind his desk, deep in thought. He turned in his chair, looking out the window. The day was cold, but the sun was shining — a welcome relief after the days of snow and rain and sleet.

  “General Striganov on the horn, Ben,” Jerre said.

  “Georgi? What’d you find?”

  “A couple hundred more bodies, Ben. That pretty well confirms it. They had a hole to run into and they took it.”