“What in the world?” Dan questioned.
Ben stopped and turned around. “All right, people, we pull out in the morning. First light. And we’re going to be driving hard. I don’t want us caught in the mountains after dark. Rat, take your Scouts out one hour before the main column leaves. That will be about six. Take plenty of explosives to clear any slides or man-made road blocks. We’ll trailer the Jeeps; you take APCs and button them down tight. We’re not stopping, people. Equipment breaks down, we leave it and double up. Cold rations and a minimum of liquids. We’re not going to be stopping for piss calls. Let’s get it done, gang.”
16
“Raines is on the move!” Satan informed Matt, just moments after first light.
Matt smiled and rose from the breakfast table. “He’s headin’ for his last showdown, Satan. I’m finally gonna get my revenge. Which route’s he takin’?”
“Southern.”
“I knowed it!” His expression changed and he viciously slapped a young girl. “Don’t just stand there, you stupid girl. Get Satan some bacon and beans and coffee. Move, you lazy bitch!”
Holding the side of her face, the teenager ran from the room.
Satan sighed. They had plenty of chickens and plenty of slaves to look after them and gather the eggs. They had hogs and all kinds of other animals. But Matt insisted upon bacon and beans for breakfast. A real drover’s breakfast, he said. Whatever in the hell a drover was.
Satan looked at the ass of the young girl as she disappeared into the kitchen, doing her best not to cry. Matt sure had him the pick of the slaves. Real cream of the crop and she couldn’t have been much over fourteen or fifteen. Satan got himself a boner just looking at her.
“You got the boys shifted to come in behind Slim?” Matt asked.
“Right. And I don’t want no breakfast. I done eat.”
Matt’s eyes narrowed. Anyone else refused to have grub with him, he’d have killed him over the slight. But he did give Satan a few allowances.
The girl served the coffee and left the room quickly, before she did anything else to bring Matt to slap or hit her. Matt liked to slap women around. And abuse them in the most disgusting of sexual ways—when he wasn’t fooling around with young boys, that is. And he always kept a couple of them chained in the basement. He never kept the same ones very long, and the reason for that was very simple: they usually died at Matt’s hands.
And there was no hope for escape. The ranch was more like a king’s castle in terms of guards and stuff. And she’d seen what happened to other girls who tried to run away. She’d been sick for a couple of days after seeing that.
But she did have one hope.
Ben Raines.
“Ten Sleep is clear, Eagle,” Buddy radioed.
“Ten-four, Rat. We’re about twenty miles behind you. Hold there for a few minutes then pull out.”
Buddy acknowledged the transmission.
“What a strange name for a town,” Corrie said.
“Lots of different stories about how it got its name,” Ben said. “The most popular one being about two Indian bands that were camped ten sleeps apart. The Indians used to measure distance in the number of sleeps.”
“And in case you’re getting all impressed with the General’s memory,” Beth said, “he’s reading from an old tourist guide about Wyoming.”
Ben grinned and held up the guide.
“What else is interesting in that thing?” Cooper asked.
“Six miles east of Ten Sleep, in the Bighorn Mountains, there’s a Girl Scout camp. Or used to be.”
That perked Cooper up. “You reckon there might still be some there? You know, like survivors, all grown up now?”
The women in the back groaned and Ben laughed. “I really doubt it, Coop.”
“I’m picking up something, General,” Corrie said. “Everybody stop talking and let me listen.” She listened intently for a moment. “I guess it was just a skip. They were talking about somebody called Slim.”
“Who?” Ben twisted in the seat.
“Slim.”
Ben looked puzzled for a moment, and then shook his head. “Slim. Sure. I never would have guessed that. Slim Henry.”
“Who is Slim Henry?” Jersey asked.
“A character of mine in a Western series of books that won me some awards one time. I beat out Matt’s character, the Rattlesnake Kid. Obviously he fooled both me and Meg with his taking it so calmly. I never thought it bothered him that much.”
“So now you’re Slim?” Beth asked.
“I guess so. I sure hope Matt’s not counting on me standing up and shooting it out with him in some sort of fast draw thing.”
Corrie smiled. “Now that would be a sight to see.”
Ben grunted his reply.
Ten Sleeps was remarkably intact for a town that was totally deserted. Ben would have liked to stay and browse around, but he had about seventy miles of hard traveling before the column would be clear of the mountains.
“Go, Buddy. We’ll be only a few miles behind you.”
Buddy and his Rat Team pulled out in APCs.
Ben rolled a cigarette and smoked it down, then carefully ground it out under the heel of his boot. “Let’s go, gang.”
The long column began snaking its way toward Ten Sleep Canyon. No sooner had the last vehicle entered the canyon than snipers opened up. But owing to the steepness of the canyon walls, it was almost impossible for them to shoot out the tires. And after fifty or so rounds had been expelled, the snipers found, to their disgust, that all the vehicles had been armor-plated.
They radioed that information back to their base.
“Then cool it with the sniper fire,” Satan told them. “Roll some rocks down on the bastards.”
“All main battle tanks and Dusters swivel your turrets and give those up in the hills something to remember us by,” Ben ordered.
The big tanks could not use their 105s for fear of breaking the chains that lashed them onto the flatbed trailers. But they could use all their heavy machine guns and the Dusters could use their 40mm cannon.
All along the snaky column, Rebels began poking gun barrels out of the slits and opening fire. No one among the Rebels knew for sure whether they hit anything or not, but the awesome display of firepower sure put a crimp into any further plans those outlaws in the hills might have had.
They radioed the news of this new development to Satan.
“Well . . . piss on it!” Satan yelled. “Git out of there and come up behind them Rebels as soon as they pass. Them boys comin’ up from Worland will pick you up. Shit!” he yelled. There wasn’t nothin’ workin’ out.
Then Satan had him an idea. He grabbed up the mike. “All you boys in the hills. Don’t do nothin’ to keep Raines and his Rebs from leaving the mountains. We want them out. We’ll put them in a box in Buffalo and cream the hell out of them!”
Back at his ranch, Matt Callahan listened to the transmissions and shook his head. But he did nothing to countermand Satan’s orders. “It ain’t gonna work, partner. Ol’ Slim’s too slick for you. He’s got too much firepower for your boys to box him in. But I might as well let you learn a hard lesson about hard men.”
Matt propped his boots up on a hassock and rolled him a smoke and waited.
It really didn’t make any difference to him who won this war. Just as long as he got him a chance to put lead into Slim’s belly and see Ol’ Slim Henry die in the dirt at his boots.
Nope, it just didn’t make a damn to the Rattlesnake Kid.
It’d serve him right. How in the hell could anyone who lived in Louisiana write Westerns, for Christ’s sake!
“That always bothered Matt,” Ben said. “He was one of those die-hard Western writers.” The firing had ceased from the ridges above the column and Ben felt he knew why. “Matt figured a writer of Westerns ought to have been born on a ranch or have a stable of horses . . . or at least live in one of the Western states.”
“And you two were
friends?” Beth asked.
“I sure thought we were.”
“All firing has ceased,” Buddy radioed back.
Ben took the mike. “Yeah. They want us to clear the mountains so they can box us in at Buffalo, I’m thinking. I’m betting Matt had both routes covered, and just as soon as we took the southern route, he shifted men down from the northern route. They’re lying behind us a couple of miles.”
“You want me to set up an ambush, General?” Dan asked.
“Negative.” All Rebel radios had been set on scramble to avoid being intercepted. “We’ll do that just before reaching the edge of the Wilderness Area. We’ll teach them that it isn’t polite to tailgate people.”
“Ten-four, sir!” Dan said with a laugh.
“You hear that, Cooper?” Jersey stuck the needle to him. “So don’t tailgate.”
“Mind your own business, Short Stuff,” Cooper told her, cutting his eyes to Ben. “Can you just imagine being married to three or four women at once? No wonder they made it illegal back in the old days.”
“You mean back before the Great War, Coop?”
“Right, sir. The old days.”
“Keep talking, Cooper,” Jersey said with a smile. “You’re just about to stick your boot in your mouth.”
Cooper got it then. He flushed and said, “No disrespect meant, sir.”
“None taken!” Ben laughed. “To people of your age, Coop, I guess they are the old days.”
The miles passed slowly as the convoy wound its way over and through the Bighorn Mountains.
“What’s your mileage, Eagle?” Buddy radioed the question.
Ben glanced at the odometer and called it out.
“You’re eight miles from the end of the wilderness area, Eagle. It’s about five or six miles from there to Buffalo.”
“Ten-four, Rat. Hold what you’ve got. Dan, check your odometer. Two miles inside the exit point, set up an ambush.”
“Ten-four, Eagle.”
Ben knew that any ambush the ex-British SAS officer set up would be extremely deadly and one hundred percent effective. He would use his team of Scouts, all of them multitrained and especially skilled in guerrilla tactics and the use of explosives.
Ben listened to Dan’s radio traffic. “Fall back and join me, Tina.”
“Ten-four, Colonel.”
“That’s gonna be interesting,” Jersey commented.
“At least that,” Ben agreed.
Dan hid his team’s vehicles in the deep timber and heavy brush some five hundred meters east of where he was setting up the ambush site. His Scouts began placing electronically detonated Claymores along both sides of the road, being very careful that THIS SIDE TOWARD ENEMY was properly positioned. The Claymores were set up along a two-hundred-meter stretch, on both sides of the highway.
The Rebels melted back into the brush, above the Claymored stretch, and got into position. Any who survived the murderous wrath of the Claymores would not survive the equally murderous gunfire from the Scouts.
Ben joined Buddy at the end of the wilderness area and halted the column. The town of Buffalo lay only a few miles to the east of them.
“A fair-sized little town,” Buddy observed, glancing at a map. “But no mention is made about whether or not it has, or had, some sort of airport.”
“I’m sure it had a strip large enough for our birds to land on. If it didn’t, we’ll carve one out, after we take the town.”
“Are we going to save the town?”
“I would like to. I’d like to use both the towns as outposts. But if Buffalo has to be destroyed, then we’ll just do it. With the bridges blown on Interstate 87, those outposts in the south will have to rely on those set up in Colorado. Sheridan will connect with those we carve out in southern Montana.” He took the map from Buddy and studied it. “If all works out, those will probably be Hardin and Miles City. We’ll just have to see.”
“There they are,” Dan said into his walkie-talkie. “Coming along like strutting cocks of the walk. We’ll be able to take out about half of the vehicles. We’ll use rocket launchers on the rear half. Get ready.”
Those outlaws in the first fifteen cars and pickups had only a few seconds of very painful knowledge that they had driven into a death trap. The Claymores blew and their hundreds of ball bearings literally shredded the vehicles and the occupants. Machine guns and rockets took out the rear half of the column. Those outlaws who jumped from the burning tangle of twisted hot metal, or who were thrown out from the initial blast, were shot down by automatic weapons’ fire from the Scouts above the road.
One man did manage to get off one frantic and short-lived message via his radio.
Satan sat stunned in his headquarters in Sheridan. Raines had taken out about a hundred men in less than a minute. The outlaw biker sat with his mouth hanging open, too shocked to utter a sound.
Matt sat with his boots propped up, sipping strong cowboy coffee. “I told you, Satan,” he muttered, a grim note to the statement. “You just don’t jerk around with Ben Raines.”
Matt unzipped his fly and motioned to the young girl he had summoned to his side. “You know what I want. So get to it.”
Dan and his Scouts picked their way among the burning vehicles. There was little left to salvage and no prisoners to take.
Using his .45, Dan made certain of that. And it was not done with any type of wonderful humanitarian motives in mind.
The Rebels put out any small fires that were burning along the roadway and cleared out fire breaks that would, hopefully, stop any blazes from spreading once they were gone.
“Ambush concluded,” Dan radioed to Ben. “Do you want us to clear the roadway?”
“Negative, Dan. Any type of retreat is not in my plans. Toss the dead into the ditches for the carrion birds and scavenger animals and link up with me.”
“Ten-four, General.”
The Scouts began dragging and dumping the bodies of the outlaws into the ditches.
Ben had deliberately gone off scramble with his last remarks, wanting them intercepted by the outlaws.
“Goddamn!” Satan said. “That there ain’t nothin’ no decent man would do.”
Matt just smiled as he approached climax, the girl on her knees between his wide-spread legs. The callousness of Ol’ Slim did not surprise him. He’d accurately pegged Ben as a hardcase when he’d first met him, years back. The man had the mark of the warrior all over him . . . if you knew what to look for.
Some of the outlaws in Buffalo shifted nervously and looked at one another as Ben’s calmly given orders on how to dispose of the bodies came over the speakers and earphones. And the thought came to them all that if any of them had second thoughts about this operation, now was the time to act on them.
A few did. They walked to their cars or trucks or motorcycles and cranked up, heading out and away from Ben Raines and his Rebels. They fully understood that they were all hard men in a hard time, but those with any sense at all knew they didn’t want to become hard men in a hard bind facing a much harder man.
Ben Raines.
Ben leaned against a fender of his Blazer and alternately sipped a cup of coffee Jersey had brought him and studied a map of Buffalo that the Chamber of Commerce had issued years back, the map taken off one of the dead outlaws miles back.
He really wanted to save the town. He would have liked to have both Sheridan and Buffalo as outposts. He just didn’t know, at this time, whether that was feasible. Ben glanced up at the sky. The trek through the mountains had taken far less time than he had imagined. They still had hours of good light left them.
Dan walked up to his side.
Ben met the man’s eyes. “We’ll attack the town, Dan.” Ben’s smile was hard. “But not in any manner they might be expecting.”
17
Dan Gray’s Scouts slipped close to the town and its now very nervous defenders. The outlaws all knew that somewhere south of their position, Pete Jones and his gang were coming north h
ard; but no one knew exactly where they were or when they were due to arrive.
What they did know was that Ben Raines was close enough to practically stick the muzzle of a rifle up their collective asses and pull the trigger while the hard bastard laughed at their discomfort.
One outlaw made the mistake of showing an elbow. A slug from a .50 caliber sniper rifle took off his lower arm. Another caught a bullet right between his eyes when he peeked around the side of an old warehouse on the edge of town. A third outlaw tried to run from one house to the other and was spun around and around like a lurching top as half a dozen slugs from Rebel rifles struck him.
“Man, we need some help down here!” a biker yelled into his mike. “We got three or four guys down dead or dyin’ and we ain’t even seen no Rebs.”
“They’s five hundred of you guys down there!” Satan screamed into his mike. “You got machine guns, mortars, and enough ammo to last a fuckin’ year! Start droppin’ some rounds in on them Rebs!”
“How the hell can we drop rounds in on people that we cain’t even see, you asshole!”
And while they were arguing, Buddy and his Rat Team were silently infiltrating the town. On this trip, Buddy was armed with his crossbow for more silent killing. Colonel Dan Gray was personally leading the rest of his Scouts into the town.
Had the outlaws been a bit more industrious about keeping the brush and grass cut around the outskirts of town, it would have made the infiltration much more difficult.
One team of Scouts had swung wide, coming up on the south end of town and planting explosives all along a thousand-meter stretch. At Dan’s orders, the explosives blew.
“They’re attackin’ from the south end!” the leader of the bikers in Buffalo yelled. “Gary, swing your people around and beef up Leadfoot.”
But Leadfoot was cursing and kicking and trying to get his butt up off the floor where he had been knocked when the building next to him was demolished by C4. The force of that explosion had caved in one wall of the building he had occupied.
Death in the Ashes Page 13
