Treason in the Ashes Read online

  TREASON IN THE ASHES

  The Ashes Series: Book #19

  William W. Johnstone

  “The first requisite of a good citizen in this Republic of ours is that he shall be able and willing to pull his weight.”

  - Theodore Roosevelt

  “Behold, I show you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.”

  - The Bible

  PROLOGUE

  Mexico

  So this is how it ends, Ben thought, as the sun began gradually casting its light over the land. He stared at the Nazi firing squad, staring back at him. Then that old familiar recklessness filled him and he grinned at the line of men.

  “I believe I will have that last cigarette you offered me, Volmer,” Ben called. “If the offer still holds.”

  Peter Volmer, leader of the Nazi Party in what used to be known as America, looked at Jesus Hoffman, self-proclaimed Fuhrer, and the man nodded his head. “Give him a cigarette.”

  “His hands?”

  “Untie them,” Hoffman said. “What can he do now? He is a mere shell of what he used to be. The interrogations have weakened him and his knees tremble with fear. Go on. This could be amusing.”

  “Stand the men at ease,” Volmer ordered the thirteen men who made up the firing squad. He walked across the courtyard and up to Ben. Volmer untied Ben’s hands and handed him a cigarette.

  Ben flexed his hands several times before taking the cigarette. “They’re really bad for your health, you know?” he said with a smile.

  “You won’t have to worry about that for very much longer, General Raines.”

  “I guess not.” Ben bent his head to take the offered flame from a cigarette lighter. He got the tip glowing red hot and then suddenly jammed the lighted end into Volmer’s right eye, grabbed the Nazi’s pistol from his holster, and scrambled over the low part of the crumbling adobe wall.

  Volmer was rolling on the ground, screaming in terrible pain, both hands to his blinded eye. From the balcony of the hacienda, Fuhrer Jesus Diguez Mendoza Hoffman screamed, “Shoot the son of a bitch!”

  But Ben had vanished from sight.

  The next thing he knew, he was face to face with a very startled Nazi SS man. He wasn’t startled long. Ben shot him twice in the chest. He ripped the submachine gun from the dead hands and tore off the full ammo pouch, then he took off at a dead run for the main house. Ben didn’t think he had a snowball’s chance in hell of getting out of this pickle alive, so he had made up his mind to take some Nazis with him.

  Ben was not nearly so mentally and physically worn out as Hoffman and Volmer thought. He had resisted the drugs and the brainwashing, and for some reason, the few physical beatings had been half-hearted.

  Ben heard running feet behind him, and he scrambled out of sight. The footsteps stopped, the door to the room flung open and a tall, rangy SS officer stepped inside. Ben drove the butt of his submachine gun into the man’s belly, bringing him to his knees. One more blow broke the SS man’s neck. Ben opened a canvas pouch and smiled. Grenades. He took those and the dead man’s clips, all fully loaded.

  Dragging the body to the other side of the room, Ben stood for a moment, staring at the corpse. “Well . . . why not?” he muttered. He and the dead man were about the same size. He stripped the body and put on the hated black of the SS, wondering why there was so little pursuit of him and virtually no gunfire since he’d jumped over the low wall of the execution site.

  After dressing the dead man in his own uniform, he squatted down beside the body for a moment. “Might work,” he muttered, and slung both submachine guns and the ammo pouches over his shoulder, and took out two grenades, pulling the pins and holding down the spoons. “Achtung! Achtung!” Ben yelled, then added in German: “Here he is.”

  Ben quickly put one grenade under the man’s belly and the other one beside his head and got the hell away from that area.

  Ben entered a storeroom and closed the door just as the grenades blew. He sat down wearily behind some crates and boxes and thought: How in the hell did I ever get into this mess?

  Ben remembered the ambush by the Nazi kids, some of them as young as eight or ten, somewhere in New Mexico, he thought. The damn drugs he’d been force-fed during his captivity had really screwed up his thinking and memory. That and his time on what he’d heard called a “sensory-deprivation” machine—whatever the hell that was. The important thing was, Ben had fought it and won. He knew he was in Mexico, but how deep into Mexico he had no idea.

  Now everything began coming back to him. The year-long war with Jesus Hoffman and his Nazis. They’d come out of South America with grand plans to take control of what remained of the United States. Ben Raines and his Rebels had kicked that nightmare right in the head.

  Ben wondered how long he’d been in captivity? Weeks, surely. Maybe months. He wondered how the war was going? Who was winning? Was it over? He shook his head. No, not as long as just one Rebel lived, the fight for freedom would never be over. And he knew for a fact that one Rebel was damn sure alive.

  Ben Raines.

  A voice shouted out in German: “Here he is. The man is dead. Ben Raines is dead!”

  So far, so good, Ben thought.

  “Get the Fuhrer out of here!” a voice filled with panic screamed, just as hard gunfire slammed the early hours of the day. “Paratroopers. Look!”

  Interesting, Ben thought, sitting amid the mops and buckets and crates and boxes.

  Ben heard cars and trucks crank up, the sounds of what seemed to be hundreds of running feet. Just to be on the safe side, Ben removed the SS officer’s shirt. If those were his people parachuting in, he sure didn’t want to be mistaken for a Nazi and catch a Rebel bullet.

  Ben smiled as he heard his son, Buddy Raines, yell, “Where is my father, you goose-stepping son of a bitch?”

  The reply was given in German. Ben winced at the sound of a blow. His son was built like a tank and possessed enormous strength. If he’d struck the man, the man was now seriously hurt.

  “Where’s the General?” he heard Jersey yell.

  “I’m in here!” Ben yelled, standing up.

  Silence in the hallway. But outside, the battle was raging. Angry Rebels were apparently taking few, if any prisoners. The sounds of screaming and moaning was loud even through the thick walls of the old hacienda.

  “Did you hear that?” Beth’s voice drifted to him.

  “Where’s here?” Corrie demanded.

  Ben tapped on the door. “Right here, gang. I’m coming out, so ease up on those triggers.” Ben opened the door and stepped out into the hall. He looked at his team, at his son, and smiled. “Took you long enough to get here. Where the hell have you been?”

  BOOK ONE

  ONE

  It had long been said that when the United States stumbles, the world staggers. Whoever said that knew what they were talking about. The beginning of the end came not suddenly, but in a quiet, insidious manner. As silently, slowly, and carefully as a leech crawling across the edge of a straight razor to get to a drop of blood. The seeds of collapse, which would eventually lead to the end of what was once the greatest nation on the face of the earth, came with a lessening of morals, a country misplacing its values. A few people did see what was happening but their voices were ignored, and in some cases, stilled permanently by Big Brother Government. Our political leaders had moved us too far to the left, trying to be all things to all people, all the time. Our Great Nannies in Washington bankrupted the citizens trying to do that which they should have known was impossible.

  There was no one thing or happening that led to the collapse of America. No historian will ever be able to point the finger of guilt at any single person or governme
nt program or world event.

  But the signs were there. Evidence was all around that many citizens were worried. Americans were buying guns in record numbers, in the face of liberals frantically launching programs to disarm Americans. Many Americans were stockpiling emergency food and water and ammunition. But instead of our elected and appointed officials trying to determine why these thousands and thousands of people seemed to be preparing for some sort of Armageddon, the government sent armed federal agents in to seize the weapons and prosecute and jail (and sometimes kill) those who felt they had a constitutional right to own weapons. The national press belittled the men and women called “survivalists,” mocking them and downplaying their warnings and actions. Liberals were prancing about, waving their hankies and shrieking that more money must be gouged from already overburdened taxpayers to pay for more social programs.

  The warning signs were in place, and there were people who read them with alarming clarity. Writers wrote books about the end of civilization. Those men and women were immediately branded as nuts and kooks (some were), racists (some were), right-wing lunatics (some were), and enemies of America (most were not). Federal agents followed them, bugged their phones, and read their mail.

  Most members of the press, liberal to the core and completely out of touch with the true feelings of millions of Americans, could predictably be counted on to lean to the left, weeping and blubbering and sobbing about those terrible guns and how the government should forcibly disarm the law-abiding, tax-paying citizens. Finding a true conservative among the national press, print and broadcast, would have been a real test of sleuthing.

  So now, at the beginning of the last decade of the millennium, those men and women who felt the nation was teetering on the edge of collapse went about their business of preparing for the end quietly, staying away from groups who sought the limelight. These people had sensed, accurately, that it was too late. Nothing could be done to save America. The nation had sunk into an undrainable cesspool, and the politicians, both liberal and so-called conservative, and the press (always liberal) were skipping merrily along, hopping from turd to turd, blissfully unaware that beneath their feet lay collapse, chaos, and anarchy.

  To many Americans who did not walk around with their heads up their asses, it was inconceivable that those in power could not see the end fast approaching.

  In his last published book before the world exploded, Ben Raines wrote, “As a nation, we lost our way. We lost sight of one very important item: America must come first. We must first solve our many problems here at home, then, and only then, turn our attention and resources to other countries. That sounds hard and cruel, but if we are to survive as a nation, we must keep jobs at home and see to the needs of Americans first. We cannot be the world’s problem solver and we must not become the world’s policeman. We can’t afford to be either.”

  But of course, the politicians ignored that and critics branded Ben and others like him as racist, right-wing lunatics.

  Religious fanatics in the Middle East (and other places) declared America the “Great Satan” and openly called for terrorist attacks against the U.S. And what did our great leaders do about these madmen? Why, nothing, of course. Finally terrorism struck the U.S. (as Ben Raines and others predicted it would) and the press was outraged. Never once did the know-it-all network commentators suggest we go over and bomb the shit out of the host country. That might involve some collateral damage (that means civilian dead). Of course between 1939 and ’45, we had civilian dead in Berlin, Dresden, Cologne, in Holland and France and Belgium, England, the Philippines, Japan (to name only a few of the countries involved), but the press seems to have forgotten all about that. We still won the damn war. And it just never dawned on our Great Nannies in Washington, D.C. that to fight terrorism, you must think like a terrorist and act like a terrorist. And we had military units trained to do just that. But the sobbing sisters and hanky-twisters set up such a squall at just the thought of it that it was never really considered seriously.

  Race relations in America began to deteriorate, finally reaching their lowest point in several decades. Riots became commonplace. The police, never enough of them, and now unable to enforce the law because of recent court decisions, could not hold back the violent tide. Los Angeles blew up. New York turned into a battleground, as did St. Louis, Detroit, Miami, and Atlanta. Much to the disgrace of this nation, our capital, Washington, D.C., became the most dangerous city in America.

  A few people in prominent positions, like Ben Raines, said, “Why don’t you just shoot the goddamn punks and put an end to this crap?”

  “You racist, right-wing, NRA, gun-loving, uncompassionate person!” came the collective shout from thousands of liberal throats.

  “Naw,” the law-abiding, tax-paying, so-called “silent majority” said wearily. “He’s just voicing aloud the thoughts of millions.”

  There were many injustices inflicted upon minorities by whites in positions of power. There were also injustices inflicted upon whites by people of color. Minorities were justifiably angry about the lack of jobs. Whites were angry about quotas and promotions based on race and gender and not seniority and/or ability. Minorities demanded respect—loudly. Whites responded by saying that respect is not handed out on demand—it must be earned. Blacks (by now the name had been changed to African American) appeared on TV talk shows dressed like something out of the Congo and wondered why many whites smiled.

  One white author appeared on a national talk show dressed in a Viking helmet and kilt, and carrying bagpipes. He said he was of Scandinavian/Scotch/Irish heritage and was just dressing like his ancestors. The black host was not amused.

  But she should have been. She should have known that it has to work both ways. If it won’t work both ways, it won’t ever work.

  We all should have had a sense of humor. And we all should have believed that we were Americans first, last, and always. And we should have known if we didn’t pull together, it just wasn’t going to work.

  And in the end, it didn’t.

  TWO

  The Rebel assault force that came in by land and air routed Hoffman’s troops and quickly moved Ben out of there and into a secured area. Two hours later Ben was back in Texas. Doctor Lamar Chase, a man who had been with Ben since the formation of the old Tri-States, ordered his doctors to check Ben out, head to toe. He got a clean bill of health.

  Ben was not a man who wasted time. By late that afternoon he had flown in all his batt coms . . . at least those that had responded to the call.

  “We’re all over the country, Ben,” General Georgi Striganov told him. The Russian and Ben had once been mortal enemies—until Ben kicked the Russian’s ass and forced him to lay down his arms. Now the Russian Bear was one of Ben’s closest friends and allies in the drive for freedom and the quest for democracy.

  “Anybody heard from Tina?” Ben asked.

  “Last word we got was that she and her 9 Battalion were up near the Canadian border,” Buddy told his father.

  Tina Raines was Ben’s adopted daughter.

  “Colonel West?”

  “At last report, West and his 4 Battalion were pushing hard to her last reported site,” his son told him.

  Ben had learned, much to his shock, that he had been in the hands of Hoffman’s Nazis much longer than he originally thought. He was completely out of touch with what was going on.

  But it wouldn’t take Ben Raines long to get back into the saddle of command.

  “The foreign troops?”

  “All the European troops were called back home to help put down rebellion in their respective countries,” Ike told him.

  Ike McGowan, the stocky ex-Navy SEAL, was another who had been with Ben since the outset.

  Ike continued, “The troops from Iceland got chewed up pretty bad. They requested to be assigned to various of our battalions and Cecil granted them permission.”

  General Cecil Jefferys, a black man, was second in command of all Rebels, and
another of Ben’s closest friends. Since suffering a heart attack during the Alaskan campaign, and undergoing bypass surgery, Cecil was in charge of Base Camp One, a huge section of what had once been known as Louisiana, now spilling over into much of what had been called Mississippi. Base Camp One was the only area in the battered nation that was totally, one hundred percent crime-free. Rebels did not tolerate crime . . . of any sort. And since they did not tolerate it, they had none. The Rebel philosophy toward crime was very simple, and very deadly.

  Ben sat down on the edge of a battered old desk. Everything in the nation was old and battered and scarred; the only area in the entire country that had been producing anything for years was Base Camp One. “Let me see if I have all this straight,” Ben said. “While we were chasing Hoffman’s goose-steppers all over the damn country, the thugs, punks, outlaws, war lords, and trash in the nation got together?”

  His batt coms nodded their heads in agreement.

  “Everything we accomplished over the years is right down the toilet?”

  “That’s it, Ben,” Ike said. “We’re back to square one. And we’ve taken a hell of a beating in running off Hoffman. Some battalions are down to quarter-strength. We’re tired, Ben. Just flat worn out.”

  “I know,” Ben said. “Believe me, I do. Equipment?”

  “More than we can use in a lifetime,” Colonel Rebet told him. “We’ve captured hundreds of thousands of tons of supplies and equipment from Hoffman and his allies. Everything from boots to tanks.”

  Ben nodded his understanding and turned to Corrie, his long-time radio operator and member of Ben’s personal team. “Get this out to all batt coms: Hold your positions and get some rest. Find out if they need air drops and what they need in the way of supplies.”

  “They need everything from SAMs to sanitary napkins,” Corrie quickly informed the General.