Flames from the Ashes Read online

  Flames From The Ashes

  The Ashes Series: Book #18

  William W. Johnstone

  BOOK ONE

  There are some children who can say that they have been born and raised their entire lives under the protective umbrella of the Rebel way. Ben Raines, soldier, writer, intelligence officer, and sometimes political figure, hadn’t started out to have it that way. What he wanted was peace and security for himself and his family. Like Topsey, that grew.

  Ben knew that “things” were rotten long before the Great War. He saw corruption winked at for years, until it became the norm for politicians, judges, the prosecutors and police. Not that there weren’t some damn fine policemen in the country. Even some laudable members of the FBI. Ben had tried, in his books and in his lectures, to call the alarm. He had been met at the best with indifference, at the worst with open hostility.

  “Don’t rock the boat” and “bend with the bamboo” had become the national philosophy. The Japanese were selling America televisions, VCRs, and what later proved to be cheaply made, and then buying up a whole lot of America with the proceeds. Every ayatollah and two-bit strongman in the Middle East thumbed his nose at America. The Chinese communists raped the minds of 600 million people and Uncle Sam paid the bill for it through “Most Favored Nation” trade status. Latin America made gringo bashing the national pastime. The European community looked down their haughty, pseudo-aristocratic noses and quietly loathed everything American. Idiotic adventures in Africa had sent the deficit skyrocketing, while the recipients of American largess secretly hated their benefactors and plotted to destroy the nation.

  Ben Raines saw all of this and recoiled in revulsion and disillusionment. There had to be a better way. Then came the Great War, and all that changed.

  Ben Raines had been a soldier, as well as a teacher and author. Sometimes, he believed he would spend the rest of his life as a soldier. Particularly after the Great War. Out of the ashes of devastation and disorder, Ben soon formed a small gathering of like-minded people. They journeyed through the country, seeking others who shared their stern, but fair, beliefs and their dreams of rebuilding a shattered nation. While what was left of the central government (read: politicians) of the United States still staggered around and pointed fingers of blame at one another and appointed and staffed endless (and certainly useless) committees to study this problem and that, Ben Raines and his growing band of followers, who would soon be known as Rebels, were cleaning out and setting up their own brand of government in the northwest.

  It was called Tri-States, and before the nitwit politicians who made up the new central government of the United States — its capital now in Richmond (Washington, D.C., had been destroyed, a condition that many Americans, whether a part of the Rebels or not, felt to be long overdue) — knew what was happening and stopped stomping on their hankies, they discovered that there was a country-within-a-country, and that everything was just fine in the Tri-States.

  To their shock and horror, the Tri-States had a zero crime factor, zero unemployment, clean, pure running water, electricity, social services, schools that actually taught useful subjects to the young, medical care for all, and all the other amenities that made life good for the law-abiding. Everything just hummed along peacefully in the Tri-States. And they did it all without help from the central government. They even had the audacity to tell the bureaucrats to keep their long, disruptive noses out of the business of Tri-States.

  “Good heavens!” shrieked the politicians, shredding more hankies and stomping them furiously. “We can’t allow this. Why, it’s — it’s subversive, positively . . . un-American!”

  Then, horror of horrors, the politicians and their toady bureaucrats in Richmond learned that criminals were actually being hanged in Tri-States, for such innocent pursuits as murder and rape and armed robbery and other such minor offenses that every politically correct person knows are not the fault of the perpetrator, but rather the fault of everyone else.

  After all, the bleeding hearts pointed out, if the homecoming queen won’t date a person, why, rape the bitch, right? Or if somebody has a nicer car or newer tennis shoes or flashier jacket, if they have a larger TV set, or a CD player, or a better boom box or Walkman, why, it made perfect sense for that less-fortunate person to go out and steal a gun to blow somebody away. For they all knew that the mental scars left by these horribly traumatic inequalities would certainly mark for life the afflicted individuals, and positively justified violent acts against such an uncaring society.

  So after the liberals in Congress ended months of hand-wringing, snorting, and weeping, and trod to shreds a ton of hankies, and after forty-seven committees had concluded five thousand five hundred and ninety-three meetings and fact-finding junkets (all at taxpayer expense), the central government reached its decision: the Tri-States must be compelled to cease and desist and disband and stop all this unpatriotic foolishness.

  Derisive laughter came from the citizens of Tri-States, who, through their elected leader, Ben Raines, told the President of the United States and the members of both houses of Congress to go fuck themselves.

  Well! those august beings snitted with a limp flip of their wrists. Nobody tells Congress to do that!

  Immediately the government of the United States declared war on the Tri-States. After extensive and expensive effort, they thought they had wiped out all those malcontents who had the nerve to think they knew more about running a government than the professional politicians.

  Wrong!

  Ben Raines gathered a handful of survivors around him and proceeded to rebuild his army. Once he had accomplished this, the Rebels set out to kick the crap out of the thugs and bullyboys the central government sent after them. With victory came fame.

  The Rebel philosophy spread and the Rebel army grew rapidly. Right when Ben Raines and the Rebels had seized control of the central government, tragedy of another sort struck the world. Like the horror of the Middle Ages, a rat-borne plague spread through the world. When it was over, there remained not a single stable government anywhere in the world.

  For a few years, anarchy reigned. Gangs of hoodlums and warlords ruled the cities and countryside, wreaking havoc and misery on the battle-worn and weary population. Everywhere except inside the borders of the new Tri-States, that is.

  Ben Raines took his Rebels to the Deep South. There the rednecks and the black racist juju artists came on every bit as ferociously as the depraved warlords of the north and west. When the Rebels had their sector cleaned out and running smoothly, they began the job of sweeping out the dregs of the nation, coast to coast and border to border. It would take them years.

  Meanwhile, down in isolated areas of South America, an even more deadly and virulent cancer had metastasized. Field Marshal Jesus Dieguez Mendoza Hoffman had built and trained an army of black- and brown-shirted Nazis. Like himself, many of Hoffman’s officer corps came from the result of fraternization between the local ladies and the “pure” Aryan survivors of the collapse of the Third Reich who had fled to Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, and Paraguay.

  Now the New Army of Liberation, as Hoffman styled his Wehrmacht, controlled most of the continent, Central America and had inroads in Mexico. Their Führer had given them a new mission: to conquer what was left of North America and reeducate its citizens . . . those that would be left after a bloody purge of men, women, and children they considered to be untermenschlich, subhuman.

  How, one could ask, could Nazism once more rear up its ugly face and be on the march, its ranks tightly closed, goose-stepping its way north? It all had to do with the infusion of Latin American genes into the Aryan supremacy madness.

  The new leader of Hitler’s rantings and r
avings was much more subtle in his methods of indoctrination. Within the ranks of the New Army of Liberation could be found men and women of all races, all nationalities, all colors. Hoffman’s mad psyche told him he must use people of all colors in order to win. After the battle was won, he shrewdly advised his backers and civilian bureaucrats, then he would start his new putsch, which, as the Night of the Long Knives had once purified the ranks of the SA, would rid his own Sturmabteilungen of racial and mental inferiors. Yet, in order to do that, once the battle was won, he would need the help of a certain type of North American . . . a rather ignorant and bigoted type of person.

  Unfortunately that type still existed in large numbers in North America. People who hated “spicks” and “jigs” and “kikes” and “slopes.” Men, women, and even children, who lusted after their mythical Aryan ideal. Hoffman felt confident they would rally to his cause.

  So the modern-day Hitler invaded Mexico and the United States. His superior numbers and blitzkrieg tactics overwhelmed General Payon and his Army of Mexico. General Payon never really had a chance, because those who remained of the aristocratic upper class of Mexico, who were also the government and thus controlled the army, fawned on the Nazis and treated them as liberators. The Rebels had hardly begun their task of restoring order and steady commerce to the United States, after their prolonged odyssey over the oceans and continents of the world, but they had soon found themselves facing the Nazi menace on the Rio Grande.

  The massive size of the invasion force caused Ben Raines to break his light divisions into smaller units and fight a delaying, guerrilla battle against Hoffman. His watchword: “Make them pay for every inch they take.”

  From the outset, the storm troopers of Hoffman’s Army of Liberation paid dearly. Even with the support of American Nazis, rednecks, and juju leaders, Hoffman soon found himself starring in the punchline role of that old British Army joke, with his thumb up a tiger’s arse.

  In short, Ben Raines and his Rebels, with a little help from unexpected allies, kicked the living shit out of Superman Hoffman and his Nazis. In the initial engagements not a Rebel life was lost, and only a handful wounded. Later, as Hoffman expanded his foothold into the breadbasket of America, it got grimmer. Even so, Hoffman’s Nazi army lost ten to fifteen men for each Rebel wounded, a hundred or more for each one killed. At last Ben concluded that they simply could not fight worth a damn and had an idiot for a commander.

  He turned up the heat and soon had a total rout on his hands. Nazis fled singly, in pairs, in platoon-sized units, and finally entire divisions surrendered. Those that remained fled in terror to the Pacific Northwest, or split for South America with the only seasoned military mind, General Frederich Rasbach. A few remained in Mexico.

  Ben and his Rebels soon encountered and wiped out pockets of stubborn resistance. As the number reported fleeing the “free” part of the United States to join Hoffman grew, they knew full well that the Rebel army would have to contend with the Nazi monster again.

  So they rolled up their sleeves and made ready.

  What they didn’t know was how soon they would once again be thrown into the crucible of war.

  “The tree of Liberty must oft-times be watered with the blood of patriots.”

  - Benjamin Franklin

  ONE

  Ben Raines stood outside his Hummer. A lot more gray showed at the temples of his black hair; more than a decade of combat accounted for that. His jaw had lost none of its firmness, nor had the square cut of his chin diminished. His eyes squinted as he looked over a wide expanse of rolling landscape that had once more filled with undulating fields of amber waves of grain. This wheat had been planted by farmers living peacefully under Rebel protection. Big fists on hips, Ben turned to study the land. He and his headquarters team, Ben knew, were situated not far from what used to be Concordia, Kansas.

  Their Humvee was parked along the cracked two-lane U.S. Highway 81. They had just come off old I-135. Ben stood alone, except for Jersey, on a knoll overlooking the rippling prairie. Somehow it . . . calmed him.

  He needed the calming, considering what Intelligence had compiled in their latest summary. It consisted of three items, none of which pleased him. Carefully, he combed through them again.

  First, Field Marshal Jesus Dieguez Mendoza Hoffman had rallied his demoralized troops in eastern Oregon and northern Idaho. The mountain valleys and passes to the east were held by the fanatic survivors of SS Brigadeführer Hans Brodermann. Something new had been added: reinforcing Brodermann were the American SS counterparts under SS Hauptsturmbannführer Peter Volmer, who led the ambitiously named Leibstandarte Hoffman. Volmer had been a neo-Nazi skinhead before the Great War, raised by Nazi-loving parents to hate since infancy. Peter had sworn a sacred oath on his SS dagger to bring to his commander the head of Ben Raines.

  Second, General Frederich Rasbach was reported as having taken ship from South American seaports, destination unknown. It had taken him only six weeks to reorganize an army.

  And third, what scattered meteorological data were available indicated that unseasonably early storms were building in Canada and the Pacific Northwest. They could threaten to close the passes in the Rockies and Big Horn Mountains.

  “We can’t afford that,” Ben said aloud at this last reflection.

  “Sir?” Jersey prompted, no longer surprised at Ben starting a conversation in the apparent middle.

  “If we’re compelled to wait until spring to dig out Hoffman and his Nazis, we’ll have lost the campaign. I have an uncomfortable feeling that Jesus Hoffman is not going to wait for warmer weather.”

  “Yeah,” Jersey agreed. “Like now he has all these homegrown scumbags to help him. We’ve been in the Pacific Northwest before, General. For my part, he’s welcome to winter in Oregon.” Jersey shifted the M-16 in her hands to give an impression of severe shivers.

  Ben’s thoughts returned to how things had once been around here and how they had become that way again under Rebel rule. No, not rule, exactly, more like guidance. Only now the Rebel troops had left, called up to fight Hoffman and his New Army of Liberation. Ominously, the fields were abandoned, void of people. A faint brush of cold crossed Ben’s heart. Chaos could return again.

  Too bad Hoffman had chosen to pass this way. Too bad there had been so many Americans willing to follow him. He wondered which ones were responsible for the missing farmers, their wives and families. Static crackled from the backpack radio Corrie had sitting on the seat of the Hummer, its antenna stuck out a window.

  “Roger that, Far Eyes.” She shot a hard expression toward Ben. “Scouts on the horn, sir.”

  Ben sighed. He never had time anymore to look at the beautiful and peaceful. With measured, catlike strides, Ben returned to the Humvee. He filled his hand with the mike. “This is Eagle, go,” he announced, using his longtime call sign.

  “Eagle, this is Far Eyes. We have contact with the local citizens from around this area. At least those who didn’t join the Nazis. Over.”

  “I copy that, Far Eyes. What is their Twenty? Over.”

  “It’s bad, Eagle. A mass, open grave, just outside Bellville, over.”

  Ben’s brows knitted. He had dreaded something like this since first becoming aware of the emptiness and quiet of this farming region. “We’ll join you ASAP, Far Eyes. Oh, any fix on those homegrown Nazis?”

  “Ah, yes, sir. Right across the line in Nebraska. They seem to be holding some sort of rally. Over.”

  “We’ll tend to them soon enough. Eagle out.” To Cooper, his faithful driver of so long a time, “Fire it up, Coop. You have maps that show Bellville?”

  “Yes, General.” Coop delved into a map case, not unlike those once carried by airline captains. “Here it is. Thirty miles north of where Concordia used to be.”

  “Good. Take us there, and don’t waste time on the scenic route.”

  “You got it, General,” Cooper sang out.

  Jersey was last to enter the Hummer, her dark hair
abristle, eyes cutting from point to point. Her small stature made her a hard target for anyone over three hundred meters off, but her superb marksmanship could easily outdistance the 350-meter maximum effective range of the M-16. And do it by a good 175 meters. Her round, firm bottom had barely touched the seat when Cooper made the Humvee roar to life and spirited motion.

  “Maniac!” Jersey shouted at him as she tumbled against the backrest.

  Field Marshal Jesus Dieguez Mendoza Hoffman sat behind the wide ironwood expanse of his conscripted desk, his feet up on an open drawer and his tunic unbuttoned. A fire crackled cheerily in the large, fieldstone fireplace of a large, rambling, ranch-style house that had miraculously escaped the ravages of time and turmoil. It had the good fortune of being located on the shore of Wallowa Lake outside Enterprise, Oregon. Isolated in the Wallowa Mountain Basin, the small horse ranch had been by-passed by the plunderers, creepies, and even Ben Raines’s Rebels. Field Marshal Hoffman listened with intense interest to the reports of his staff. Personnel came first. Col. Rupert Herd, the G-1, stood in place at his chair and consulted a sheaf of papers in his hand.

  “SS Brigadeführer Brodermann has been reinforced with three thousand American Party members, they call themselves the SS Leibstandarte Hoffman regiment.” Everyone effected not to hear the snicker from Maj. Karl Richter, Hoffman’s senior aide. “They are commanded by Hauptstandartenführer Peter Volmer.”

  “Ah, yes, the ambitious and idealistic American who has kept the flame of our Führer’s dream alive in this country. I must say that I am impressed by him,” Hoffman added the praise generously.

  “There are reports that some four to five thousand more American Nazis or sympathizers are en route here as we speak. Not counting them, we have an effective force of somewhat over ten thousand fighting men. Ten thousand three hundred ninety-seven, to be exact. There are, of course, the usual support elements and air.”