Betrayal in the Ashes Read online

  Betrayal In The Ashes

  The Ashes Series: Book #25

  William W. Johnstone

  BOOK ONE

  Let the chips fall where they may.

  - Roscoe Conkling

  AT FIRST…

  . . . it was just a thought in the back of the minds of a few, just a dream. A place where people of like mind could live and work and play and raise their children without fear of crime.

  “Impossible!” cried the socialist-leaning liberals who controlled the government of the United States.

  “Bullshit!” said Ben Raines, pointing his finger at yet another pair of federal agents who had come to his home to harass him again for his articles attacking the government. “I have committed no crimes. I am a tax-paying, law-abiding citizen who has the right to address the problems I believe are destroying this nation. And I’m looking at two of them.”

  “Mr. Raines, we’re only doing what we were ordered to do,” the senior agent said. “Personally, I agree with you. But you’re advocating violent overthrow of the government. Tone it down just a little bit.”

  “No. I won’t do that. The policies of the present administration are destroying this nation. You gentlemen had better get a firm grip on the edges of the commode, ’cause this nation is going right down the toilet.”

  The younger of the two, a blow-dried fanatical devotee of President Blanton, flushed and said, “Now, you listen to me, Raines. There are charges we could bring against you. You—”

  “Go sit in the car,” the senior agent told his younger partner. “Right now!”

  Alone with Ben in the living room, the older agent said, “I’ve got one year to go, then I pull the pin, Mr. Raines. I want my retirement.” He sighed. “Look, what I’m about to say, I didn’t say. OK? Hey, I agree with you—one hundred percent. But you’re fanning the flames of insurrection through your writings. You have too many people ready to pick up a gun and start a revolution. This administration is out to get you, Ben. Not just you, but every writer who advocates change through violence.” He jerked a thumb toward the outside, where the younger agent was sitting pouting in the car. “You see the type of men we’re actively recruiting now. They kiss the ground around President Blanton’s feet. And they’re dangerous, Ben. The liberals have firm control of the government, and they’re not about to turn loose.”

  “Death will make them turn loose.”

  “Goddamnit, Ben, don’t say things like that in front of me! You’ve got to tone it down, Ben. If you don’t, it’s going to get rough. And I mean that.” He walked to the door, then turned to face Ben. “Tone it down, Ben. If you don’t, they’ll silence you. And I’m telling you straight.”

  It wasn’t about to get rough, it was already rough. Several writers of popular fiction, those men and women who were openly scornful of the present administration and were demanding change through their writings, were getting hassled by federal agents and agencies in an attempt to shut them up. They were making the liberals in power (the touchy-touchy; kissy-kissy; disarm-and-stomp-on-the-rights-of-the-law-abiding-taxpaying citizens, take-a-punk-to-lunch bunch) very nervous.

  Ben and others could clearly see the writing on the wall. And it was being written by hands who, politically, leaned so far to the left it was nothing short of a miracle they could even stand up straight.

  Thanks to liberals, conditions in America had deteriorated to the point of anarchy: discipline in public schools was virtually nonexistent; the juvenile justice system was a joke; teachers lived in fear of their lives; law-abiding, tax-paying citizens were afraid when they went out shopping, out for a drive, even sitting in their homes. The land of the free and the home of the brave had become the land of the frightened and the home of the powerless. The liberals in control were so terrified that some decent, law-abiding taxpayer might actually use a gun to defend or protect self, family, home, or possessions against some slobbering, quasi-literate, shit-for-brains asshole, carefully orchestrated programs were put into motion to disarm the American public . . . and the majority of the nation’s press went right along with it.

  According to liberals, criminals, you see, were really not bad people. That was a terrible ol’ ugly myth started by Republicans and other conservatives. Criminals, you see, had all been forced into a life of crime by an uncaring society. If you leave your keys in your car and someone steals it, it’s your fault, not the fault of the thief. That is wisdom from the mind of a liberal. Not exactly what one would call on a par with Solomon.

  Thanks to liberals, the hands of cops trying to do their jobs were not just tied, they were chained and locked.

  “Ooohhh!” cooed the liberals to the men and women who wore the badges. “You must protect us.” And when the cops tried to do just that, the liberals moaned, “Ooohhh! But don’t you dare hurt that poor unfortunate criminal while protecting us.”

  The cops found themselves between a rock and a hard place.

  The average time served for murder was about eight years; for rape, about two-and-a-half years; for stealing a car, about six months; and for home burglary, the criminal got a lecture. If you beat somebody’s head in with a tire iron, that was assault with a deadly weapon. However, if you used a brick during a riot, the charge was less.

  Ben Raines had a simple solution for crime: Allow the hard-working, law-abiding, tax-paying citizens to protect family, self, home, and possessions by any means possible without fear of arrest, prosecution, or civil suit.

  “Ooohhh!” moaned the liberals. “That’s a big No-No!” It had begun to appear to many that a liberal would rather see a law-abiding taxpayer get raped, mugged, assaulted, robbed, or killed than have just one lawless punk get shot while committing a crime. “Besides, we’re going to take all your guns away from you so only the criminals will have guns.”

  As the last decade of the millennium began to wane, that prophecy came true and the liberals got their way: All pistols and most rifles and shotguns were gathered up by federal agents, and the citizens of the United States were left defenseless against the lawless.

  “I told you so,” Ben Raines said, among others who had been prophesying that once the anti-gun crowd got their feet in the door, they would never be content until they totally disarmed American citizens. The law-abiding ones, that is. The criminal element was delighted with the new law. They never had worried about going to jail if they were caught with a gun, and now they didn’t have to worry about getting shot by some law-abiding citizen while committing a crime.

  “Oh, goody!” the liberal gun-grabbers and punk-ass-kissers said as they danced with joy. “Now we can all be safe in our beds and on the streets. Those big ol’ horrible nasty guns have all been collected from Americans.”

  “From law-abiding Americans,” Ben said, watching the news one evening. “Not from the criminals, you goddamned fool!”

  It was all moot anyway, for shortly after the greatest gun-grab in the world’s history, the whole world blew up.

  Ben had been predicting that, too; and so far, he was right up there with Nostradamus in his predictions. And he had also predicted that thousands of Americans, rather than giving up their guns, would seal them up tight and bury them. And many of them did just that.

  Although those citizens did not realize it at the time, in that single act, the Rebel movement had been born.

  After a very limited nuclear-and-germ war, and the collapse of every single government around the world, Ben roamed the countryside with the intention of writing about the fall. He began seeing billboards asking him to call in on a certain frequency. After encountering about a dozen of them, he found a radio and called in. Startled to learn that he had been named a general in some sort of army, he laughed and
signed off. But the billboards kept appearing, and finally he met with some people.

  The Rebel movement took another step toward full-blown reality.

  A year later the Tri-States were born: three states in the northwestern section of the nation that the Rebels seized and settled. They held on for a few years, and then the newly restored federal government launched a full military assault against the Tri-States and smashed them. But the Rebel movement would not die. Ben rebuilt his forces and when they re-emerged, the movement simply could not be stopped.

  The Rebels moved their base of operations into the south, first claiming the northern part of Louisiana. As the movement gathered strength, the Rebels branched out until they now claimed eleven southern states. Ben, head of the largest standing army in the world (as far as anyone knew), petitioned the newly formed United Nations for official recognition.

  Over the heated and often-quite-profane objections of President Blanton and his newly formed liberal Congress, now headquartered in Charleston, West Virginia, the Secretary General of the U.N. agreed to give the SUSA—the Southern United States of America—sovereign nation status if Ben and his Rebels would do just one little job for the U.N.

  “Just one little job,” Secretary General Son Moon told Ben.

  “Little job, my ass,” Ben muttered in response.

  After meeting with the elected President of the SUSA, his old friend Cecil Jefferys, the first black man to be elected to this high an office anywhere in the northern hemisphere, and meeting with all his Batt Coms, Ben agreed to take the job.

  And what a job it was: Stabilize the world.

  “Is that all you want us to do?” Ben asked, his tone martini-dry.

  “That’s it,” Son Moon replied, his usually unreadable eyes holding a definite twinkle.

  “OK,” Ben agreed casually. “You’ve got a deal!”

  ONE

  Geneva, Switzerland

  Ben had gone off to sit by himself on the roof of the newly remodeled and refurbished hotel in the city. He had just had his head filled with a lot of facts—and they were facts—that he really didn’t want to hear.

  He sat for several hours on the roof of the building before returning to the designated conference room in the hotel. He met the President of the United States, Homer Blanton, on the way, and the men walked silently together for a time down the long hallway. General Bodison, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, joined them on their walk.

  “How’s the First Lady taking all this grim news, Homer?” Ben asked.

  “Badly.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. I really am. I know she doesn’t like me . . .”

  Homer waved that off with a curt slash of his hand. “That’s her problem, Ben. Don’t worry about it. We have more important things to concern us.”

  General Bodison caught Ben’s eyes and smiled knowingly as they walked. Both men knew Homer Blanton had matured dramatically. He was still a Democrat, and always would be. But hard reality had slapped him right in the face more than once over the past year, and many of his liberal views had gone flying right out the window with each slap . . . much to the chagrin of his wife, Vice President Harriet Hooter, and many members of Congress. Homer would probably never adopt the hard-line political views of the Rebels, but he would never again return to the totally liberal outlook he had brought with him into office.

  The three men sat down in the conference room and were silent for a moment, occasionally looking at one another. General Bodison finally broke the silence. “Mr. President, if you will allow the law-abiding citizens of the United States to use force to protect what is theirs against the criminal element, without fear of arrest, prosecution, or civil suit, I could free up several more full battalions of troops to aid General Raines over here.”

  Blanton shook his head. “I don’t have the power to do it. That would be up to the courts and Congress, not necessarily in that order.”

  “The people could vote on it, sir,” the general said.

  Blanton smiled, a rather sad curving of the lips. “And how do you suppose the vote would go, General Bodison? Ninety-nine percent of the lawyers who survived the bad times are living in the states that still fly the stars and stripes. Ben ran most of them out of the SUSA. When we reestablished the Supreme Court, Congress stacked it with liberals . . .” He grimaced. “With my help. I have to admit that. Besides, how can we have elections when we don’t even know how many voters are in what district? All the records were lost—destroyed, probably. It’s going to take months—years, perhaps—to get things back to some sort of normalcy. The only smoothly running part of the world is the SUSA and those states that aligned with them.”

  Ben kept his face expressionless and drew little doodles on the yellow legal pad in front of him.

  “That wasn’t meant as a criticism, Ben,” Homer said.

  “I know, Homer. I didn’t take it as such.”

  “What the hell are we going to do about Bruno Bottger and these hideous threats of his, Ben?” Homer asked.

  Bruno Bottger now controlled all of Germany, and half-a-dozen other countries. He had a standing army of a quarter of a million men and a reserve of over a hundred thousand, and his scientists were close to perfecting a drug that would make any who consumed it sterile. Bottger had laid it all right on the line to those attending the meeting in Geneva: He planned to control all of Europe before he was through; and if the Rebels were not out of Europe within twenty-four hours, Bottger’s men would drive them out.

  Secretary General Son Moon had joined the men in the room, and they talked quietly for several minutes. Coffee and sandwiches were brought in.

  “We can’t clear Europe in twenty-four days,” Ben said. “Much less twenty-four hours. Bottger knows that. He’s just looking for a fight. Besides, I’ve talked to my people about this. They don’t like the idea of running—unless it’s straight ahead.”

  Blanton looked at Ben. “Bottger said he’d use that serum if we didn’t get out.”

  “I’m betting he doesn’t have that stuff. I don’t think he’s even close to having it. He’s bluffing.”

  “You are betting the lives of millions and the possible extermination of an entire race, General,” Son Moon said.

  “I’m open to suggestions.”

  “If Bottger is not stopped here, he will continue to overpower other nations on the continent,” Blanton said. “In a few years, he’ll be so strong nothing or no one will be able to stop him. He’ll conquer the United States—I believe that is his ultimate goal.”

  “I agree,” General Bodison said.

  “Yes.” Son Moon spoke softly. “I concur.”

  Ben reheated his coffee and added sugar. He stirred the murky liquid for a moment and said, “Homer, I’m going to get my thoughts together here and then tell you something, and you’re not going to like it—”

  “What else is new?” the President asked with a genuine smile.

  Ben chuckled and took a sip of coffee. He looked at General Bodison. “Is the military willing to back the President, one hundred percent and all the way?”

  Bodison hesitated for a second, then nodded his head. “I’ll play this game,” he added, “Yes. One hundred percent and all the way. Whatever it is.”

  “It’s something that any sitting President could have done, should have done thirty years ago. I’m sure several Republican Presidents have considered it, or at least entertained the thought. I doubt if any Democrat ever did . . .”

  Blanton sighed.

  “Certainly sounds interesting,” Bodison said.

  “Homer, when you get back to the United States, you call the major networks and set up a nationwide radio-TV hookup to be followed with the entire text of your speech in the newspapers. Publicize it for a couple of weeks. When you feel that as many people as possible have heard about the broadcast and will be listening, you get on the air and you tell the American public that from that moment on, they control their own destinies . . .”

 
; Blanton leaned forward, his coffee and sandwich forgotten.

  “. . . No citizen has to fear being arrested, prosecuted, or being subjected to a civil lawsuit for protecting family, self, home, or possessions against thieves or intruders. Criminals have no constitutional rights until they are arrested by a duly constituted officer of the law or the military, which will be assisting the police and sheriff’s deputies. In short, Homer, just take a page from the Rebel philosophy and apply it to the United States. I give you my word that crime will drop by seventy-five percent within sixty days of your broadcast.”

  “But the lawyers—”

  “Fuck the lawyers and the liberals and the Congress and the Supreme Court. They won’t be able to do anything because the entire nation will be under martial law. The instant you get back, start a recruiting drive to beef up the military. You’ve got millions of people out of work; you should have no trouble finding good men and women to fill the ranks.”

  “Ben, what about those fifty thousand or so armed men and women who have surfaced in the Midwest ready to attempt to overthrow the nation?”

  “Use as many of them as you can in the military.”

  “What? Ben, they’re racists!”

  “Some of them, yes. But I’ll wager not the majority. You don’t have a choice in the matter, Homer. You’ve heard the reports from both your intelligence people and mine. Your nation is on the verge of collapse until you do something and do something damn quick. I’m telling you how you can keep your nation intact, Homer. I can’t force you to do it; I can only suggest.”

  “What is my alternative, Ben?” the President of the United States asked.

  “After we finish up here, I return to the United States and start kicking ass and picking up the pieces. Before long, the Rebels will be in control of the entire North American continent and you’ll be out of a job. You want that?”

  “You’re not serious, Ben!”