Hatred in the Ashes Read online

  KIDNAPPED

  “Why kidnap Anna?”

  Cecil explained: “To use her as leverage.”

  “Leverage against me,” said Ben. “But . . . why? I hold no political office. What the hell do they hope to gain by kidnapping a girl not even twenty years old?”

  “They plan to try her for treason, among other charges. And hang her.”

  “Treason?” Ben almost shouted. “Anna is not a citizen of the USA. She’s a citizen of the SUSA. How the hell could she be tried for treason?”

  Cecil shook his head and took Ben’s arm to lead him off the tarmac, but Ben could not be restrained. “We’re talking about a criminal act here,” Ben said. “An international act of conspiracy. We’re talking about spies and the kidnapping of a citizen of an internationally recognized sovereign nation. I want Anna back, safe and unhurt.” He paused. “You’ve got seventy-two hours.”

  Ben turned away and walked toward a line of military vehicles. He got into a HumVee and drove off.

  Cecil watched Ben leave, then turned to an aide. “Get all the members of the emergency council together right now. We’ve got seventy-two hours before God only knows what hell breaks loose. And if Anna isn’t on her way home by then . . . a lot of people are going to pay a very heavy price. . . .

  “In blood.”

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  HATRED IN THE ASHES

  William W. Johnstone

  Pinnacle Books

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  http://www.williamjohnstone.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  KIDNAPPED

  BOOK YOUR PLACE ON OUR WEBSITE AND MAKE THE READING CONNECTION!

  Title Page

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty six

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  Twenty-nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-one

  Copyright Page

  Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events, is entirely coincidental.

  Prologue

  If we accomplished nothing else, Ben thought as he stared out of the window at the clouds below him, at least Bottger is dead . . . we’ve seen the last of that bastard.

  But we lost a lot of good men and women doing it.

  The Rebels had suffered their first major defeat in years at the hands of Bottger’s troops . . . and had lost hundreds of troops. But the Rebel spirit was not that easily crushed, and Ben had quickly rebuilt his army with raw recruits and seasoned veterans pulled in from the SUSA. He had changed the structure of his army into brigades: ten large brigades, four battalions to a brigade, and one lone battalion—19 Batt—commanded by Thermopolis, the ex-hippie turned warrior. Therm and his people kept track of everything, from troop movements to who needed toilet paper. 19 Batt was comprised of some of the strangest people to be found in any army anywhere. Most of Therm’s people wouldn’t know military protocol from Adam’s off ox, but they all did their vitally important jobs and did them superbly. Ben had no complaints about 19 Batt. For the most part he left them alone and let them do things their own way . . . even though Dan Gray, the commander of 503 Brigade, a former British SAS officer and a stickler for military discipline, cringed and muttered a lot under his breath every time he got near the longhaired, bead-adorned, bandana-wearing members of 19 Batt.

  Ben just smiled at the Englishman.

  The Rebels had won the battles and the ambushes and the final confrontation with Bottger’s troops in Africa, and now they were returning home to America to face the growing threat of another civil war on home soil.

  The government outside the SUSA just would not stop their campaign of hatred against the SUSA. Just would not or could not understand there were millions of people who did not wish to live under a crybaby, whiny, ultra left-wing, liberal form of government. Those who refused to knuckle down and kiss the ass of big, constantly intrusive government chose to live in the Southern United States of America—the SUSA: The individualists, the freethinkers, the law-abiding, those who accepted responsibility for their own actions and deeds. Outside the SUSA were those types who wanted the government to take care of them from cradle to grave, people who blamed someone or some thing for every mistake they made, who would never take personal responsibility for their own actions.

  “Oh, it wasn’t my fault or his or her fault that convenience store was robbed and the clerk killed,” those who lived outside the SUSA whined. “Oh, no, not at all. You see, here’s where the fault lies—the homecoming queen wouldn’t date the young man, and he got upset about his rejection and decided to vent his rage against an uncaring society by robbing that store. So it really wasn’t his fault, and it’s terribly unfair for you to blame him. Don’t you see?”

  Or: “He didn’t have enough orange juice in his diet during his formative years and that created a chemical imbalance in his brain. That’s what caused him to rape and torture and murder that little neighbor girl,” the ultra liberals sobbed and moaned.

  Or, the left wingers would squall: as they stomped on hankies and flung snot in all directions: “He watched too much violence on TV and in the movies. That’s what made him kill all those people,” OOOh.

  “And the availability of all those terrible nasty evil guns! ” the liberals would piss and moan. “Oooohhh,” The left wingers would go through another box of tissue, wiping tears away. “We must pass more legislation concerning gun control. We must immediately gather up all the guns in the nation, and that will solve all the problems.”

  Or: “He was spanked as a child for torturing animals, and that traumatized the
poor little dear. It wasn’t his fault he opened fire on a schoolyard filled with kids. Oh, no, not at all. You see, he read all those nasty, right-wing books by that horrible, evil gun nut from Louisiana. That’s what it was. That’s why he did it. I think the FBI should launch an immediate investigation of that writer.”

  Now, Ben and his team were on their way home.

  Ben pushed his thoughts away for a moment and looked up as Jersey, his bodyguard, brought him a fresh mug of coffee. He took the coffee and thanked her. She smiled at him and returned to her seat, and he buckled his seat belt. The air was a bit turbulent.

  She should be married, raising a family, Ben thought, not knocking around the world with me. The whole team should be married and settled down.

  He looked around at his team, seated a few rows away from him:

  Corrie, Ben’s radio tech, a very pretty and highly intelligent young woman. Beth, the team statistician, quiet and studious, very attractive and shapely and smart. Cooper, Ben’s driver, a young man who could take a screwdriver and have a worn-out engine humming like new. Anna, Ben’s adopted daughter, in her nineteenth year of life on this war-torn planet. A beautiful young lady who would soon be going through the most brutal training ever dreamed up by humankind to become a Rebel Scout.

  They should all be settled down, Ben thought. But he knew they would never leave him, not voluntarily. And to tell the truth, he didn’t want them to.

  Ben looked out the airplane window again. A few more hours and they would be home, back in Base Camp One, the capital of the SUSA. Hell of a name for a town, Ben thought, but it had been called that for years and no one seemed at all anxious to change it.

  Ben frowned as he thought of the growing troubles outside the SUSA. Conditions were worsening hourly. He had spoken with Cecil Jefferys—the President of the SUSA—just before leaving South Africa. Cecil had told him he wasn’t sure just who was running what was left of what used to be called the United States of America. The Congress of the United States had met in secret session and invoked their slightly altered version of The Emergency Powers Act.

  “Where is the President, Cece?” Ben had asked.

  “The official word is he’s very ill and not receiving visitors.”

  “That might mean he’s dead.”

  “It might, Ben. But I think it means he’s being held prisoner in the new White House.”

  “Then just who is running the country—the vice-president?”

  “No. No one knows where he is. It just came over the news that his helicopter went down somewhere over Michigan. The VP is missing and feared dead.”

  “Do you believe any of that, Cece?”

  “Only that the VP is dead. I believe that. But I don’t believe his chopper crashed.”

  “His crew was working for the other side . . . whoever that might be.”

  “That’s what we believe.”

  “Cece . . . you’re holding back, ole’ buddy. Who is really running the country?”

  Cecil’s sigh was audible. “We think it’s the senator from California.”

  “Which senator?” Ben had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. “Not that it would make much difference. They’re both socialist to the core.”

  “Claire Osterman.”

  “Oh, shit! Sugar Babe, herself. That bitch.”

  Sugar, as she was called (presumably because she just loved everyone who agreed with her left-wing politics) hated Ben Raines above everyone else on the face of the earth, or in the pits of Hell. She had once publicly stated during a press conference—when she was the lieutenant-governor of California and before the Great War tore the world apart—that the world would be a much nicer place if Ben Raines wasn’t in it. Furthermore, she stated, his writing was awful, the characters much too macho for her delicate sensibilities. (Sugar was, Ben thought, about as delicate as a tractor.) In her opinion his books, along with all the privately owned guns in the nation, should be banned. Later, when away from the press, she had added that Ben was a rabble-rousing, right-wing, gun-loving, politically incorrect son of a bitch.

  Ben had called her a ten dollar a night whore selling five dollar pussy.

  She had later become one of President Logan’s advisors. Ben had thought that typical of Logan’s administration—hiring as many flakes and kooks and left wingers as he could. Ben had lost track of Sugar after Logan was killed with a briefcase filled with explosives—handed to him by a member of one of Ben’s Zero Squads. (They were called Zero Squads because that was the odds of their returning alive from an assignment—zero.) Now Sugar was a senator, and still praising the government’s confiscation of all privately owned firearms above a .22 caliber or a 20 gauge shotgun. And absolutely none of those nasty, horrible pistols would be left in the hands of law-abiding, taxpaying citizens, Oh, heavens no! Positively not! How unthinkable! Tsk, tsk.

  And the people who lived outside the SUSA, most of them, dutifully handed over their weapons to the federal agents who came calling. Yes, sir, master, I’ll bow down and kiss the ass of Big Brother . . . you just mark the spot and I’ll get down on my knees and give you a great big sloppy smooch.

  Ben stirred in his seat, and his frown deepened as his thoughts grew darker. In his opinion—and in the opinion of millions of others—people like those had helped to destroy America. The Great War just nailed the lid on the casket, that’s all. All their pie in the sky, half-baked ideas about how best to educate kids had led to teachers being unable to maintain discipline in the classroom. Schools had turned into war zones, with metal detectors, students cussing teachers, sometimes physically attacking them. Many teachers lived in fear for their lives, and not just in the classroom. Many had their car tires slashed, received threatening phone calls at home, and much worse. And what type of punishment did the punks who attacked the teachers and threatened them receive? In many instances, very little. In some instances, no punishment at all. They certainly didn’t get their butts whipped. Oh, my goodness, no. That might traumatize the poor little dear, and we certainly don’t want that. Were charges brought against the punk, and was he or she hauled off by the cops and sentenced to a term in some juvenile detention facility—what back in Ben’s youth had been called reform school? Not very often. “My goodness gracious me,” whined the left wingers, “we couldn’t have that. Oh, my, no. Certainly not. After all, the teacher wasn’t hurt that much.” Sometimes the teachers wouldn’t even report the incident.

  “Shit!” Ben muttered. But he knew the kids were not entirely to blame for their behavior. Many parents couldn’t or wouldn’t instill or maintain discipline at home, for a variety of reasons, not many of them valid to Ben’s way of thinking.

  At times like these, Ben’s thoughts usually drifted back to his own youth . . . a period when life was supposed to have been much simpler . . . a statement that nearly everyone Ben’s age knew was total, absolute bullshit. Times weren’t that much simpler. Kids had peer pressure on them then . . . just as much as the next generation did. As far as the violence on TV and in the movies causing violence in youth, Ben placed no credence in that unproven theory, whatsoever . . . that was just more horseshit from the mouths of whiny liberals.

  Ben lectured often at the SUSA’s many colleges . . . and his lectures were well-attended, the auditoriums always filled to capacity. The students were well aware that all of Ben’s theories about government had proved to be correct, and they wanted to meet and hear the man himself . . . for Ben was that rare commodity: a legend in his own time.

  “We went to the movies and saw our western heroes kill dozens of bad guys and hundreds of Indians,” Ben told the students. “We watched captives being hideously tortured on the screen. We saw and heard Christians being fed to lions and nailed to crosses, whipped to death, drawn and quartered. We watched our western heroes beat people half to death with bullwhips, and watched gangsters and cops shoot it out in the streets. Did that provoke us to pick up guns or knives and shoot or stab our classmates, or attack our n
eighbors or our teachers or stick up a store? No, it certainly did not. I’m not saying those things didn’t occur, but they were so extremely rare they were aberrations.

  “We had—at home, in the schools, and in society—a sense of order and discipline. We had, and did our best to maintain, such now old-fashioned and out of date qualities as honor, morals, ethics . . . a code of conduct, if you will. Old-fashioned and out of date outside the borders of the SUSA, that is.”

  Ben believed that young people needed discipline. They want it, whether they admitted it or not. And the young people of the SUSA both loved and respected Ben Raines.

  In the SUSA everybody served in the military; the entire nation was an armed camp. There were weapons for everyone of age in every household in the SUSA, plus emergency gear, and plenty of ammunition. If war broke out, every resident knew his or her job assignment.

  Anna left her seat to come back and sit with Ben. She fixed her pale, blue eyes on him and said, “You’ve been sitting alone and speaking to no one for hours, Daddy Ben. What’s the matter?”

  Ben smiled at her. “Nothing really, Baby. Just doing a lot of thinking, that’s all.”

  “We going to have a fight in America?”

  “Looks that way . . . it sure looks that way. Unless I can somehow talk some sense into the heads of the powers that be outside the SUSA.”

  Before Anna could ask another question, Corrie walked back. “Pilot just got a flash from home, Boss. National elections have been suspended indefinitely. Martial law has been declared in some sections of the USA. Those sections that are considered sympathetic to us, that is. And it’s official—the vice-president is dead. The president has been declared too ill to work. The country is being run by a coalition . . . a decidedly left-wing coalition.”

  “Headed by?”

  Corrie shook her head. “That we don’t know for sure, but the word is it’s going to be Harlan Millard.”