Destiny in the Ashes Read online

  “How would you have done it then?” Goddard asked.

  “I would have inserted my men into the region quietly, either by ground vehicle or by HALO drop, so the enemy wouldn’t have known they were there.”

  “You’d send your men in by high-altitude, low-opening drop at night?” Goddard asked, his voice showing his disbelief.

  “Of course,” Ben said. “My Scouts are all trained in such maneuvers. Aren’t your Rangers?”

  “Well, yes,” Goddard said. “But that kind of drop is so dangerous, you’d probably lose a high percentage of men in the drop itself.”

  “In our hands, casualty rates from the drop alone are less than five percent,” Ben said. “But how many men did you lose by inserting your Rangers into a hot zone in choppers so loud the enemy could hear them coming half an hour before they got there?” Ben asked.

  There was a long hesitation before Goddard answered, “Your point is well taken, Ben.”

  “Now, regardless of all that,” Ben said, “we are still willing to help you out if you want us to.”

  “How do you propose we work it?” Goddard asked.

  “How about this?” Ben asked. “I’ll come over with my troops and work out of your headquarters and coordinate our operations with your troops through you. But my men will be under my exclusive command and will answer only to me.”

  “So, we’d share command of the Army?” Goddard asked, his voice skeptical.

  “Not at all,” Ben said. “I would only be in charge of my Scouts, and I would keep you well informed of what my plans were. Whatever you decided to do with your men would be entirely up to you, as long as your plans didn’t put my men at risk.”

  “That sounds acceptable,” Goddard said. “What would we need to do to set this up?”

  “Simply send us a letter from President Osterman stating the terms of the agreement so we’ll have something to show the U.N. that we’re not invading or interfering with your government, and we can have our men on the way within twenty-four hours and on site within forty-eight.”

  “You’ve got a deal, Ben.”

  “Good. Get the letter drafted and sent and I’ll begin to get my men ready. And Max,” Ben added.

  “Yes?”

  “We’ll be flying directly into your base at Indianapolis. Get with Mike Post and set up some code words so your anti-aircraft batteries don’t get too nervous when we come into your airspace.”

  “Roger,” Goddard said. “And for what it’s worth, I’ll have the latest intel on the movements of the invaders ready for your perusal upon your arrival.”

  “Thanks,” Ben said, and hung up the phone.

  He turned to Mike Post. “Get my team in here as soon as you can.”

  “Yes, sir!” Post said, getting to his feet.

  Eighteen

  Ben kicked back in his desk chair and put his feet up on the corner of his desk as Mike walked into his office followed by the rest of Ben’s team.

  Ben took a close look at Jersey to see if she was fully recovered from her recent head injury.

  “How’re you doing, Jersey?” he asked.

  She grinned, her hand unconsciously moving to the back of her head. “I’m doing great, Boss,” she said.

  “No nausea or double vision?”

  She shook her head. “Nope, not since the first week anyway.”

  “Good. Now, down to business. I’ve just gotten off the phone with President Osterman.”

  “She didn’t call to tell you she’d gotten tetanus from her wounds, by any chance, did she?” Coop asked sarcastically.

  “No such luck,” Ben answered with a grin. “Actually, she called to ask for our help against the terrorists who’ve invaded her country.”

  “What, her Army gone on strike?” Harley Reno asked skeptically.

  “It’s not that,” Ben answered. “It’s that the terrorists have started a sort of guerrilla war by breaking up into small groups of fifteen or twenty men and spreading out over the countryside.”

  “How does that keep her Army from going up against them?” Anna asked, glancing at Harley, who was sitting next to her.

  He looked at Ben, who nodded. “Go ahead, Harley. Tell her the difference.”

  “In normal warfare,” he said, “you pit huge crowds of soldiers against one another, using all the appliances of modern warfare . . . tanks, ships, aircraft, and even artillery. The men and the generals are used to thinking in certain ways about troop and matériel movements.”

  “Yeah, I know that. But I still don’t see why the Regular Army wouldn’t be effective against the guerrillas.”

  “It’s a completely different scenario, Anna,” Harley said. “When you’re fighting as a guerrilla, you use your enemy’s strengths against them.”

  “Huh?” she asked, confused.

  “Well,” Harley said, pursing his lips as he thought of a way to explain it to her. “If your enemy is big and you are small, that means he will have to move slow and you can move fast. If he has a lot of troops, they’ll have to be supplied with food, ammunition, medical care, and all that. The guerrillas, on the other hand, confiscate the weapons of those they defeat and then use those weapons against the bigger foe, and they live off the land, taking what they need when they need it. They don’t have to worry about supply lines or support troops or any of that nonsense.”

  “So, they can hit and run and by the time the big Army units respond, they’ve moved on to hit another location,” Anna said, nodding her head.

  “You got it, babe,” Harley said. “Like Ben said, it’s a completely different type of warfare, and it takes a specialist to win at it.”

  “How can you beat something like that?” Beth asked.

  Ben leaned forward, his elbows on his desk, and grinned at his team. “Exactly like Harley said, by using the enemy’s strengths against them.”

  “How?” Beth asked again.

  “If they’re small and mobile, we send troops against them who are smaller and more mobile. We use their tactics against them—we hit them and run, we strike and pull back with small, elite groups that can move and disappear quickly.”

  “You’re talking about Scout units,” Coop said.

  Ben nodded. “Yep. And they will have the one advantage of being able to call in air strikes when and if the need arises.”

  “You don’t mean you’re thinking of sending our Scouts over there to take orders from those idiots that are running Osterman’s Army, are you?” Hammer Hammerlick asked incredulously.

  “Not for a minute,” Ben answered. “I’m gonna go along and I’ll be in charge of our men and women, and I’ll coordinate our fighting with the Rangers of the U.S. who’ll be under Goddard’s command.”

  “You didn’t call us in here just to tell us about a fight we’re gonna be left out of, did you, Ben?” Jersey asked, her eyebrows arched in a way that made her look very dangerous indeed.

  “Of course not, Jersey. I intend for my team to go with me, and to be used as a special strike unit for the most important jobs that come up.”

  “I don’t know if Jersey’ll be up to it, Boss,” Coop said, a devilish glint in his eye. “She took a pretty nasty blow to the head and the doc says it may have scrambled her brains just a bit.”

  Jersey turned to glare at Coop. “My ass!” she said. “I would’ve been all right if you hadn’t thrown all your weight down on me. That’s what caused my head injury.”

  “Oh, so that’s the thanks I get for saving your hide?” Coop asked, a hurt expression on his face.

  “Saving me? Hell, you damned near killed me with your clumsy attack—”

  “All right, people,” Ben said, trying to hide his grin at the goings-on between Jersey and Cooper.

  They settled back in their chairs, refusing to look at each other, as Ben continued. “I want each of you to get fitted out in the typical Scout outfits,” he said. “And Harley, you and Hammer get the ordnance together the team’s gonna need, including some HALO chutes
and gear.”

  “Damn!” Coop said in a low voice. “I hate HALO drops.”

  “Puck-puck-puck,” Jersey said slowly, mimicking the sound of a chicken.

  Less than twelve hours later, Ben had fifteen hundred Scouts geared up and ready to travel. He’d assigned Buddy Raines, his son, to be the commander of the Scout squadron and to act as his second in command for the operation in the United States.

  It would be Buddy’s job to assemble the Scouts into teams of from five to ten men and women each, and to coordinate communications among the various teams as they were sent out on find-and-destroy missions against the terrorist groups.

  In a meeting in his office with Buddy, Mike Post, Dr. Larry Buck, and Harley Reno, who would assume command of Ben’s team, Ben explained the procedures to his leaders.

  “We’ll transport everyone to Indianapolis in a couple of C-130 transport planes, and we’ll also bring along a squadron of Ospreys for the drops into hot zones, and a few of our Apaches and Cobras for backup air support that can be called in by the various Scout squads when and if they need it,” Ben said.

  “Each squad will be given a coded cellular phone as well as a long-range portable radio transceiver to use to keep in touch,” Buddy explained. “Corrie has agreed to be in overall charge of communications, with several junior communications officers working under her in case Harley needs her when his team is deployed.”

  Ben nodded. “What if some of the teams are overrun and their phones or radios are captured?” he asked.

  “Neither the phones nor the radios will work unless the proper code sequence is keyed in prior to use,” Buddy said. “They’ll be useless to anyone except the people who know the correct codes to use.”

  “What if one of the Scouts is forced to give up the codes?” Mike Post asked.

  Harley grinned. “You’ve obviously never tried to make a Scout talk,” he said. “Every one of them would die before talking.”

  Post nodded. “And as far as medical care in the field?” he asked Dr. Buck.

  Larry answered. “I’m taking a large team of surgeons and med-techs along. We’ll set up a MASH unit on the Indianapolis base for the use of our troops, and we’ll have some special medevac teams ready to travel to hot zones by chopper when they’re needed.”

  “What about supplies?” Post asked.

  “We’re gonna do like the terrorists,” Harley said. “Live off the land, use weapons and ammunition we take from the terrorists, and confiscate whatever else we need from the local economy.”

  “Okay, if there’re no further questions, let’s load ‘em up and move ’em out,” Ben said, getting to his feet.

  Nineteen

  The twin C-130’s lumbered through the skies over the United States, heading toward the airfield at Fort Benjamin Harrison in Indianapolis, Indiana.

  Ben Raines, his team, and another few hundred Scouts sat on metal benches lining the wall of the big cargo hold. A handful of Ospreys and Apaches and Cobras were flying in formation with the C-130’s, but they would fall behind as they had to make frequent refueling stops, whereas the C-130’s could make the trip on one tankful of av-gas.

  The noise inside the hold of the C-130 was loud and the ride was bumpy, discouraging much talk among the passengers, but Coop was never able to go very long without some chatter.

  He was sitting next to Jersey, which was their usual arrangement. Even though they were almost always at each other’s throats, when they were going into hot zones they were also never far apart.

  Jersey was, as usual in these circumstances, moving her K-Bar slowly back and forth across a whetstone, honing it to a razor-sharpness.

  Coop glanced at her and shook his head. “Jeez, Jerse,” he said, “we’re just goin’ in to kill these motherfuckers, not scalp ’em.”

  She cut her eyes over to him and laid the blade of her K-Bar on his thigh, the point near his privates. “Who said anything about scalping them? I’ve got better plans for them.”

  “Whoa,” Coop said, pushing the knife away, “take it easy there, Geronima.”

  “Geronima?” she asked, raising her eyebrows.

  “Yeah, female for Geronimo,” he said, referring to her Apache ancestry.

  “Jesus, Coop, you’re a very sick puppy,” she said, shaking her head back and forth.

  “You just say that ’cause you love me and are afraid to admit it,” he teased.

  “I love you like a blister on my backside, mister,” she retorted, and went back to her sharpening.

  The convoy landed at Fort Benjamin Harrison in Indianapolis without incident, the choppers hovering on the periphery of the landing field until all of the C-130’s made it safely onto the tarmac.

  As Ben, followed closely by his team, and then the remaining Scouts in his plane disembarked, they were met by a welcoming committee consisting of President Claire Osterman, General Maxwell Goddard, and several of Claire’s cabinet ministers. Herb Knoff was not present because his wounds were not healed well enough for him to make the trip out to the landing field.

  Buddy Raines, Ben’s second in command, took charge of the Scouts, and had them move immediately to the quarters that had been provided on the base for their use, leaving Ben and his team to greet the greeters.

  Claire stepped up to Ben, a half smile on her face. “Hello, Ben,” she said, sticking out her hand. “It’s been a long time.”

  “Howdy, Claire,” Ben said in his usual informal way. He inclined his head at her left arm, still in a sling from her wounds suffered when the terrorists attempted to assassinate her. “How’s the arm?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “It’s healing,” she said quickly.

  “Hello, General Raines,” Maxwell Goddard said, stepping forward.

  He was tall and lean, and his bearing reminded Ben of the character played by Henry Fonda in the old movie In Harm’s Way.

  “Good afternoon, General Goddard,” Ben replied, taking his hand and giving it a firm shake.

  Claire introduced her ministers, and Ben made the rounds, saying hello to each one, putting a face with the names he’d heard before in intel briefings by Mike Post.

  “We have a table set up in the officers’ mess if you’d care for some lunch,” Claire said.

  “Absolutely,” Ben replied. “One thing I’ve learned over the years is to eat at every opportunity, ’cause you never know when you’ll get another chance.”

  “My feelings exactly,” Claire agreed, “though lately, I’ve been cutting down quite a bit.”

  Ben smiled, noticing her new, svelte figure. “I see you’ve lost quite a bit of weight, Claire,” he said as the group began to move across the landing field toward a line of cars waiting to take them to the base itself. “Was that doctor’s orders, or is it the result of your recent wounds?”

  She smiled, obviously pleased that he’d noticed. “Actually, it began a couple of years ago, when I was . . . when a plane I was riding in crashed in the countryside. I was marooned without a lot of food for several weeks and the diet was a matter of necessity at that time, but I felt so much better with the weight off, I decided to continue working at it.”

  “Well,” Ben said diplomatically, “it certainly becomes you.”

  “Thank you,” Claire said demurely.

  Behind her back, where she couldn’t be seen, Jersey glanced at Coop and made a motion of gagging at the syrupy sweetness of the talk between the two leaders.

  Coop tried to keep a straight face, failed, and gave a short laugh.

  Claire turned at the sound, spied Jersey, and unconsciously fingered the notch in her ear left by Jersey when she’d had Claire as a prisoner one time in the past.

  “Oh,” Claire said quickly, “I know you.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Jersey replied, her face flat with no expression. “We met briefly a while back.”

  Claire nodded, but didn’t speak further of the incident, obviously not wanting to put a damper on the new cooperation between the two countries. />
  When they got to the officers’ mess, Claire hesitated, looking at Ben’s team as if she didn’t quite know how to tell them they would have to eat in the enlisted men’s mess, until Ben told her quietly that his team stayed at his side at all times as a matter of precaution against assassination attempts.

  She nodded, her face somewhat grim at the implied statement that he didn’t feel safe on her base.

  Once all of the participants were seated, and Buddy had joined the group and been introduced, they began to eat.

  After the meal, which had been accompanied by only small talk with no important things being discussed, Claire invited Ben and Buddy to join her and General Goddard in her office.

  On the way, Ben told his team to get their gear arranged in their quarters while he talked with Claire.

  Jersey, who was Ben’s self-appointed bodyguard, started to object, until Ben told her he was sure he’d be safe in Claire’s office.

  “Come on, Jerse,” Coop said, taking her by the arm and physically leading her toward their new quarters. “Maybe we can find a room and bunk in together,” he explained, a salacious leer on his face.

  “That’ll be the day,” Jersey said, though she grinned as she said it.

  In Claire’s office, Ben listened as she went over the most recent happenings, including the news that a significant portion of the populace was joining the terrorists and giving them aid and comfort.

  “Even a few Army and National Guard units have deserted to join the Freedom Fighters of America contingent in their support of the invaders,” she told them.

  “You think there’s any chance of a widespread movement to join the terrorists?” Ben asked.

  She shrugged, glancing at Goddard.

  “We just don’t know yet, Ben,” Goddard said. “Times have been pretty rough since our last . . . hostilities. There’ve been widespread shortages of food and gasoline and other sundries, so there are quite a few citizens who may feel things will be better for them under a new government led by these Arabs.”