Warriors from the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  THIRTY-NINE

  When the C-130 airplane carrying Claire Osterman, Herb Knoff, a U.S. pilot, and Jackie Malone and her band of scouts began its final descent over Base One in Louisiana, Jackie walked over to where Claire and Herb and the pilot sat on the metal benches along the side of the aircraft.

  Jackie stared down at Claire and Herb, clad only in military style overcoats to cover their nakedness.

  “I have a few things to say to you before we land, Claire,” Jackie said in a low voice.

  “I think you’ve said quite enough, Ms. Malone,” Claire said in a haughty voice, having regained some of her confidence now that she knew she wasn’t going to be killed or kept as a prisoner of war.

  “No,” Jackie said, shaking her head, “I don’t think I have. I think you’re planning on trying to go back on your word again, as soon as you’re back at your base.”

  Claire didn’t speak, but just stared up into Jackie’s eyes.

  “I’d like to advise you not to do that, Claire,” Jackie said, drawing her K-Bar assault knife.

  Herb’s eyes widened, and he moved over a bit on the metal seat to distance himself from whatever was about to happen.

  Jackie bent down and put her face close to Claire’s. “You really should keep your word this time, Claire, because, you see, I own you. I can get to you any tune I want to. President Lincoln, the Kennedy brothers, and President Reagan proved that there is no one so guarded they can’t be gotten to if someone has the will to do it. Look deep in my eyes, Claire, and realize I have the will and the skill to take you out if you go back on your word this time.”

  Claire’s face paled as she realized this woman was crazy enough to do just that.

  “Now,” Jackie continued when she saw she had Claire’s full attention, “I’m from Texas, and we have a habit of marking things we own, like cattle and sheep. But since I don’t have a branding iron handy, I’m gonna do the next best thing.”

  In a lightning-quick motion, Jackie flicked the knife at Claire’s head, cutting a small V-shaped notch in the top of her right ear.

  “That’s called notching, dear,” Jackie explained as Claire gave a short scream and grabbed her bleeding ear. “It’s mainly used on cattle, but in your case, I made an exception. Now, every time you look in a mirror, you’ll think of me and what will happen to you if you piss me off.”

  Jackie wiped the point of her knife on Herb’s coat, put it back in its scabbard, and strolled back to her seat just as the C-130 touched down for a landing.

  Fifteen minutes later, the plane took off again and the pilot made a sweeping turn to the north, heading back to Indianapolis.

  Herb sat in the back with Claire, holding her tight against his chest while she sobbed.

  “Don’t worry, Claire,” he said in a soothing voice. “As soon as we get back you can countermand your order to pull the troops back.”

  She pulled away from him and stared at him, her eyes wild. “Are you crazy?” she almost shouted. “I’ll do no such thing.”

  “You’re not afraid of what that bitch said, are you?” Herb asked.

  “You didn’t see her eyes, Herb. She meant every word of what she said.”

  “But we can protect you. . . .” he began.

  Claire shook her head back and forth. “No . . . no, I don’t think anyone could protect me from that . . . woman. She’s a demon!”

  As dawn lightened the skies to the east, Raines and his team took their places in one of the buildings of the base at Durango. Guerra had his troops spread out along a perimeter spreading in a wide semicircle facing both east and west. The base was protected to the north by a wide river that would prevent any organized motorized attack from that direction.

  Bulldozers had worked throughout the night to build berms, high dirt walls, around the base. The troops were arrayed behind these berms with fifty-caliber machine guns spaced evenly along the entire length of the wall of earth.

  Snipers, fitted with Heckler and Koch sniper rifles, were placed on the roofs of all the buildings, with orders to concentrate their fire on officers and drivers of any vehicles they could target.

  Twenty-millimeter antiaircraft machine guns were stationed on all four quadrants of the base to help keep the helicopters and gunships away from the troops as much as possible.

  Ben and General Guerra had done all they could until Georgi Striginov and his Bat 505 arrived to help. Now they just had to hold the enemy off until the cavalry arrived.

  As the sun peeked over the horizon, fingers of light illuminated low-lying clouds in the sky with an orange and yellow glow.

  Ben glanced over the wall around the roof he and his team were on and said, “Should be any minute now.”

  Seconds later a whistling drone could be heard and mortar rounds began falling on the grounds of the base. Explosions threw up dirt and dust as the rounds pockmarked the hard-packed dirt of the compound. Guerra and Ben had told the soldiers to hold their fire until the enemy was close, but some of the Mexicans, excited by the sound and fury of the explosions, began to fire their weapons at shadows.

  Suddenly, on the horizon, thousands of enemy troops could be seen beginning their advance, walking alongside tanks, halftracks, armored personnel carriers, and HumVees and old-style jeeps.

  Simultaneously with the appearance of the troops, shadowy shapes flitted overhead, coming in low and fast, as Kiowas, Defenders, and even a couple of older-model Cobra helicopters buzzed the base, their machine guns blazing a trail of death toward the defending Mexican troops behind their earthen walls.

  Harley had given up his SPAS shotgun for a Browning automatic rifle, which he placed on a tripod on the wall around the roof, a belt of ammunition trailing down to an ammunition box at his feet. He squatted and aimed at one of the Defenders as it made a pass. The BAR danced and jittered in his hands as he pulled the trigger, his teeth gritted and his body shuddering under the recoil of the big rifle as it poured thousands of rounds at the approaching helicopter.

  Jersey and Anna and Beth held their fire, their Uzis not long-range enough to be effective yet.

  Hammer, on the far corner of the building, held an M-60 machine gun in his huge arms at his waist, Rambo style, and stood up, firing along with Harley at the onrushing helicopter.

  The wall along the building top behind which Ben squatted shattered under the impact of the Defender’s 20mm Minigun as it screamed overhead.

  Harley and Hammer both turned, continuing to pour fire into the rear of the chopper, until smoke began to billow from its turbine engine and it shuddered under the impact of hundreds of fifty- and sixty-caliber shells.

  A stream of tracers from Hammer’s M-60 danced toward the tail rotor and finally merged with it, chewing it to pieces. The Defender began to gyrate and whip back and forth, out of control, until it finally nosed down and crashed in the middle of the compound with an expanding fireball that roared fifty feet into the air.

  Several of the Mexican troops cheered and waved their rifles, evidently thinking they had brought the chopper down with their small-arms fire.

  Harley and Hammer ceased firing and grinned at each other, then ducked back down behind the wall and looked for other targets.

  The troops advancing across the desert sands toward the base from the east faltered under the withering fire from the berm around the base, and even began to pull back a little, just as another line of troops appeared on the western horizon, also accompanied by a motorized company of light tanks and several Kiowa and Huey helicopters.

  “Shit!” Ben exclaimed to Jersey and Coop, who were squatting next to him. “That must be Bottger’s troops. Now we’re in for it.”

  A HumVee with a fifty-caliber machine gun on a post in the rear roared close by the berm, raking the troops along the top with rapid fire from its fifty.

  Several Mexican soldiers were blown off the back of the wall, to lie twisting and screaming in the dirt, their blood staining the earth as they died.

  When the Hum
Vee got within range, Jersey, Anna, Beth, and Coop leaned over the wall and opened up with their Uzis, each firing six hundred rounds per minute into the vehicle as it tried to draw a bead on more soldiers.

  The 9mm shells stitched a line of holes in the sides of the HumVee, blowing out the two near-side tires. The driver grabbed his head, blood spurting from his Kevlar helmet, and let go of the wheel. The HumVee veered right, then left on the ruined tires and rolled three times, throwing the dead driver and the rear-seat gunner out of the vehicle.

  Three Mexican soldiers stood up behind their wall and pumped round after round into the gunner until he too was dead.

  In spite of murderous fire from the Mexican defenders, the troops on both sides began to close the gap, moving forward despite tremendous losses of men and machines in a do-or-die assault.

  “It don’t look too good, podna,” Coop said out of the corner of his mouth to Ben as the troops got within a hundred yards. The number of Mexican soldiers seemed pitifully small in comparison to the forces arrayed against them.

  Suddenly, from off to the side, small vehicles began to appear, moving at great speed toward the oncoming troops, spitting fire from 120mm cannons in their noses as they maneuvered in and out of the scattering troops.

  “Look,” Ben shouted, “it’s Vulcans from Striginov’s battalion.”

  As Jersey and Coop and the other members of Ben’s team turned to look, other vehicles began to appear. Two huge M-1 Abrams tanks thundered over a distant hill and began to fire at the smaller Sheridans accompanying Loco’s troops. The Sheridans tried to return fire, but began to explode one by one under the rapid laser-guided fire of the Abrams.

  Two helicopters, a Kiowa and a Huey, turned from their attack on the base and flew toward the Abrams, evidently hoping to take them out with missiles.

  From out of the low-lying sun, three Apaches screamed between the Abrams and the two helicopters, their Chain Guns blazing as they arrowed at the hapless choppers.

  The Kiowa, much faster than the Huey, managed to turn and run, but the Huey disintegrated under the Chain Guns’ fire, dropping like a stone to burn brightly on the desert floor, sending clouds of oily black smoke toward the sky.

  The Kiowa tried to gain altitude and make an escape, but the lead Apache let one of its Hellfire missiles go, and it ran right up the exhaust of the Kiowa’s turbine, blowing it out of the sky in a thousand pieces that fell like rain on the parched desert below.

  Seeing the battle turn, the attacking troops slowed, then turned to run as more vehicles, including several Bradley Attack Vehicles, appeared from the north. Soon, both attacking armies were in full retreat, running and firing over their shoulders at the Mexican troops, who boiled over the berm and began to chase the attackers back the way they came.

  In less than an hour, the field in front of the base was littered with thousands of bodies and hundreds of broken, twisted piles of burning metal, from Jeeps to HumVees to half-tracks, that had been destroyed by Striginov’s motorized madmen.

  The Mexican troops, enraged and encouraged by the turn of the battle, were taking no prisoners. They mowed the retreating troops down with wild abandon, cheerfully pouring lead into their backs as they rushed forward onto the battlefield.

  “Jesus,” Beth said, shaking her head. “It’s a slaughter.”

  Ben nodded. “Yeah, exactly what would have happened to us had Georgi been an hour later.”

  Soon, the troops of Striginov’s battalion appeared on the field and began rounding up prisoners, calming the killing rage of the Mexican troops and ending the slaughter of the defeated armies.

  Two hours later, General Herman Bundt and General Enrique Gonzalez were brought before Ben, Georgi Striginov, and General Jose Guerra in the officers’ wardroom of the base commander’s office.

  Ben conducted the interrogation. “Where are your leaders, Perro Loco and Bruno Bottger?” he asked the two men standing before him.

  “I refuse to answer under the terms of the Geneva Convention,” Bundt said sourly. “All you are entitled to are my name, rank, and serial number.”

  “Is that so?” Ben asked. “Are you aware that under the terms of the Geneva Convention, you are guilty of high war crimes for the manufacture and release of biological weapons?”

  Bundt stared fixedly ahead, while General Gonzalez looked at him in horror. “What biological weapons? I have no knowledge of such a thing.”

  “I believe the penalty for war crimes is a firing squad, at which the Mexican troops are more than proficient,” Ben said calmly. “General Guerra?”

  Guerra stepped forward to stand in front of Bundt. “I think a firing squad is too good for this one,” he said. “I believe I will simply turn him over to my troops after telling them this is the man responsible for the plague which even now is sweeping across our country, killing thousands of their families and friends.”

  Bundt looked up, showing for the first time fear at what the general was saying. “You wouldn’t dare!”

  “Take him away,” Guerra said to an aide.

  “Wait a moment,” Bundt said hurriedly. “Field Marshal Bottger and Perro Loco are in the Presidential Palace in Mexico City.”

  “Are they aware of your defeat?” Ben asked.

  Both men shook their heads. “No, there wasn’t time to report back to them,” Gonzalez said.

  Ben looked at Striginov and Guerra. “That means we may still have time to intercept them before they attempt to flee the country.”

  He thought for a moment, then spoke to Striginov. “I need one of your Chinooks for my team, and a couple of Apaches to accompany us to Mexico City. I have some unfinished business with both of those gentlemen.”

  FORTY

  The Apaches came in high and fast toward the Presidential Palace in Mexico City. The soldiers guarding the palace were stationed around the front porch and along the sides of the building, leaning against the wall in the shade, trying to avoid the midday heat of the Mexican sun. They were expecting no trouble, for all the fighting was taking place two hundred miles to the north.

  The Apaches separated, diving on the building from opposite sides at over two hundred miles an hour, their Chain Guns chattering thousands of rounds a minute into the hapless, unsuspecting defenders of the palace.

  In the first pass, over half the guards were killed or wounded before they knew they were under attack, their bodies shredded and torn apart by the terrible impact of the bullets the Apaches were spitting with such ferocity.

  By the time the Apaches banked, turned, and began another pass, most of the remaining guards were running for their lives down the palisade in front of the building. Only a few were brave enough, and dumb enough, to try to return fire.

  The helicopters hovered and flitted around the building like angry bees protecting their nest, firing into the guards until there were none left to return fire.

  Once they radioed it was safe, the Chinook carrying Ben and his team landed on the tarmac in front of the palace.

  Harley and Hammer exited first, cradling their SPAS shotguns in their arms, followed by Coop, Jersey, Anna, Beth, and finally Ben.

  They ducked under the blades and ran to take up positions on the front porch, which had been chewed up and splintered by the fire of the Apaches, still hovering overhead, keeping a close lookout for any other threats.

  Harley leaned back and kicked the big double doors in the front of the palace open with his foot. Then he and Hammer rushed into the building side by side.

  Two shots rang out from guards on the second floor. Harley jumped to the side, leveled his shotgun, and blew them off the balcony, to fall twenty feet to the marble floor, landing with a wet-sounding splat.

  Hammer knelt, sweeping the rest of the balcony with his SPAS in case anyone else tried to make a fight of it.

  Coop and Jersey were next through the door, running crouched over to ascend the stairs and secure the second floor. Coop carried a SPAS, while Jersey had her Uzi rucked in her arms,
her trigger finger itching to find a target.

  As Beth and Corrie and Ben entered the building, a door at the end of the corridor burst open and three men charged out, firing M-16’s as they ran.

  Coop fired three quick rounds with the SPAS, the razor-sharp flechette needles in his shells shredding two of the men where they stood, blowing them back into the room they’d come out of.

  The third man managed to get off two shots, one of which hit Coop in the left arm and spun him around, before Jersey unloaded on him with her Uzi on full automatic.

  The guard danced and spun and tumbled to the floor under the impact of fifty 9mm rounds that tore him in half before dumping him on the floor in a pool of blood.

  The rest of Ben’s team went room by room, finding and killing three more guards before Harley declared the second floor secure and empty.

  Ben looked up the staircase. “That must mean our men are on the third floor.”

  Harley nodded. “There’s bound to be more guards with ’em.”

  Ben looked over at Jersey, who was kneeling by Coop’s side applying a field dressing to the wound in his arm.

  “Jerse, you stay here and take care of Coop,” he said.

  “Wait a minute,” Coop protested, trying to get to his feet. “I’m okay. . . .”

  Jersey jerked him back down. “Sit down and shut up, for once in your life, Coop,” she said, smiling, “and let me take care of you.”

  He grinned back. “Now, that’s an offer I can’t refuse,” he said.

  She glared at him fiercely. “Not if you want to live!” she said, taking his hand.

  Anna stepped next to Harley, covering his back as he and Hammer went up the steps, followed closely by Ben and Corrie and Beth, all holding their weapons at the ready.

  Harley peeked around a turn in the corridor and saw the barrels of several weapons sticking out of doors along the corridor.