Chaos in the Ashes Read online

Cooper had pulled Jersey from the wreckage of the house. She was unconscious and bleeding from a head wound. Beth and Anna had gone back to the rear on an errand for Ben and had been cut off. Corrie had stepped outside for a breath of air just moments before the mortar rounds came in and she had been standing on the sidewalk, talking to a friend. Both of them had been knocked down and addled by the concussion. They had been picked up by friends and tossed into the bed of a truck to be taken to the rear to a MASH unit. In the confusion, it would be almost half an hour before someone realized that Ben was missing.

  Ben came slowly to his senses. He opened his eyes to a world of darkness and hurt. From long experience, when he opened his eyes, he lay still. From the waist down, he was in water. He listened intently, but could hear no voices. Slowly, he turned his aching head to the left. Nothing. Then it all come back to him. The mortar rounds exploding. The sting of shrapnel in his legs. Sailing a few feet in the air and impacting against the ground and into the old drainage ditch. He lay still and tried to think things through, sort matters out. His head hurt and that made thinking difficult.

  First things first, Ben, he concluded. Get out of this damn wet ditch. Moving as silently as a snake, Ben crawled out of the ditch and onto dry ground. Just that made him feel better. Then he heard voices. Faint, but very real. He could only catch a few words.

  “Didn’t kill as many of them as . . .”

  “Taught ’em a lesson, though, by . . .”

  “Get all their equipment and leave the bodies where . . .”

  Then the voices faded away.

  Ben felt around for his helmet but could not locate it. He got his bearings and crawled over to a shed and slipped inside, closing the door behind him. The shed was windowless and still snug. It had been well built. He pulled his trousers down and, using his flashlight, he doctored the puncture wounds on his legs, picking out one piece of shrapnel with his fingers. There was a knot on his forehead where he’d hit whatever the hell it was he’d landed on.

  He pulled up his pants and stood. No dizziness, but his legs hurt somewhat. He took a couple of painkillers from his small aid kit and sat down on an overturned old wheelbarrow. Obviously, the gangs had counterattacked in such force the Rebels had been forced to withdraw. But they wouldn’t stay withdrawn for long. And when they did advance, they would first use artillery and air support. So that meant that Ben had best get the hell gone from this area, before the incoming started.

  Ben smiled in the darkness. He’d pull out, all right, but it wouldn’t be in the direction that was expected.

  He’d do some head-hunting.

  Ben checked first his CAR then his sidearm. Neither weapon had been damaged. He slipped out of the darkened shed and squatted for a few minutes outside, letting his eyes adjust to the night.

  There was no point in attempting to search the ruined house for any of his team. If they were wounded or dead, they were buried under several tons of debris. He put them out of his mind and started moving toward the north.

  He saw the motionless body of a Rebel on the ground, half hidden by brush. He walked over to the body and pulled off the Rebel’s battle harness, taking the full magazines and the four grenades.

  “All right, you sons-of-bitches,” Ben muttered. “Now it’s my turn to play.”

  THREE

  Ben slipped past the darkened old houses, staying in the shadows as he worked his way north. He saw several small groups of punks and gang members, but did not attempt to engage them in any fire-fight. He wanted a larger group, all bunched up in some house. Then he would announce his presence.

  He stepped to one side and flattened against the side of a home when he saw half a dozen shadowy figures moving toward him, all carrying weapons.

  “I heard one of them bastards talkin’,” the voice came to him. “On an open frequency. Ben Raines is missin’.”

  “I don’t believe it!”

  “Me neither,” another said.

  “It’s true. They think he’s dead. Killed when we attacked.”

  “We couldn’t be that lucky.”

  The group stopped about forty feet away from Ben, standing in the raggedy yard of a long abandoned house. Four more walked up to join the original six.

  Ben smiled and slipped a fire-frag grenade from his battle harness. The fire-frag was perhaps the deadliest grenade ever invented; indeed, it was a mini-claymore. Ben pulled the pin and chunked the pineapple, tossing it underhanded with a high arc before the drop. It came down right in the center of the dozen punks and exploded about three feet off the ground.

  Ben was moving two seconds after the blast, leaving behind him men whose flesh was peppered with shrapnel, about half of them dying from the wounds.

  Punks and thugs and assorted human crap and slime came running toward the sounds of screaming, running from all directions. Ben changed directions and joined in with a group of punks, jogging along with them for a few seconds; just long enough to take another grenade from his harness, pull the pin, and pop the spoon. He tossed it over the heads of the running group, then ducked in between two houses.

  The group ran right over the grenade and when it exploded, it took out half of them, shredding flesh, breaking bones, and blinding and maiming.

  Ben jumped up on what had once been a screened-in back porch and slipped through the long-looted old home. He squatted down and smiled as he listened to the sounds of confusion.

  “It’s mortars!” someone yelled.

  “Run!” another yelled.

  But before they could run, Ben raised up and emptied a thirty-round magazine into the knot of punks.

  Ben ejected the empty and slipped in a full magazine before jumping out a side window and vanishing into the darkness. He did not realize it, but he was smiling. He was having more fun than he’d had in a long time.

  Both Corrie and Jersey were in bed and challenged by Doctor Chase to just try to set one foot on the floor. Both of the women were suffering from concussions. Jersey’s head wound had required half a dozen stitches and she was going to be out of action for about a week. Corrie’s shoulder had been dislocated when she hit the sidewalk, and she also suffered cuts on her face and arm that had to be stitched.

  Ben’s second in command took over and ordered Anna, Beth, and Cooper not to even think about going back to look for Ben.

  “Communications is reporting that someone is raising hell up in the area we just left,” a runner told Doctor Chase and those standing close to him. “But we don’t have any special ops people there.”

  Cooper smiled and winked at Jersey. “Oh, yes, we do.”

  “Oh?” Chase questioned.

  “Yes, sir.” Jersey smiled as she spoke from her bed. “And his name is General Ben Raines.”

  Ben had stumbled upon two more dead Rebels that the punks had not found and stripped them of their weapons and gear. Ben knew one of them personally, and he paused for a moment, saddened. He shook away the grief and quickly took the men’s ammo and grenades before slipping away into the night.

  Ben figured he had about seven more hours of darkness before dawn would force him to hunt a hidey-hole. He intended to make the most of the cover of night.

  Ben slipped through the darkness, looking for groups of punks to attack. Quite by accident, he stumbled on what appeared to be someone’s communications center. Peeking in through a crack in the boarded-up window, he could see that for punks, it was quite elaborate. He smiled as he took a grenade from his harness. It sure as hell wasn’t going to be elaborate for very much longer.

  Ben slipped around the house until he found an open window. He popped the spoon and blew the radio operator and his equipment into blood and junk.

  “What the goddamn hell is goin’ on here?” a man yelled, stepping out of a house to stand on the porch.

  “We think it’s Rebel mortars, Fred!” the answering voice sprang out of the darkness.

  Fred LaBelle, Ben thought, one of the major gang leaders. ’Bye, Fred. Ben lifted his C
AR and put a burst into Fred’s chest. The impacting .223 rounds knocked the punk leader off the porch and sent him dead and cooling to the ground.

  Ben got the hell gone from that area, slipping from house to house. He found a five-gallon container filled with gas sitting by the side of an old pick-up truck and grabbed it, moving on until he came to a house that had portable lanterns burning inside. He peeped in through a window. A number of punks lay sprawled in sleep on the floor in many of the rooms.

  Ben took a fire-frag, wired it to the gas can and took off the cap. He pulled the pin and then hurled the full five-gallon container through a window just as hard as he could.

  Then he took off running.

  The fumes from the gas must have been just right, for the explosion nearly knocked Ben off his boots. Recovering from the concussion, he glanced back. The center of the house was in ruins, the side that he could see blown completely away, and the wood frame structure was in flames.

  Ben ran past a back porch that was rapidly filling with men and women and gave the crowd a full magazine of .223 rounds as he loped past.

  “Team one!” Ben yelled. “Take the south side. Team two! Attack from the north. Teams three and four, scatter and hit them hard!”

  Then Ben ran into the darkness, just as far away as he could get from the burning house.

  The punks bought the false commands. A man yelled, “The bastards are counter-attacking!” His voice was filled with panic. “Get everybody up and to their posts. Hurry! The Rebels are all around us.”

  An army of one, Ben thought with a grin.

  He tossed a grenade through the window of a house that had lamps burning in it and kept on running, cutting to his left. He ran right into a man who was carrying what appeared to be an old Russian RPG-16 and struggling with a pouch filled with six-pound rockets. Both of them went down to the ground from the impact. Ben slammed the butt of his CAR against the man’s head and heard the skullbone pop under the smashing blow. Grunting with the effort, Ben slung his CAR, grabbed up the RPG and the heavy pouch and moved away from the scene as quickly as he could, considering the heavy load he was toting.

  I’m sure as hell not getting any younger, Ben thought, as he paused for a moment to catch his wind and rest the straining muscles in his legs.

  But I’m doin’ pretty good for a man my age, he amended.

  Ben moved on until he found himself in what he guessed was the punks’ version of a motor pool. He squatted down and rested for a moment, a slow grin creasing his lips as an idea began forming in his mind.

  He stashed the RPG and the pouch of rockets and began moving from vehicle to vehicle, removing the gas caps from as many vehicles as he could safely reach. In the back of half a dozen pick-up trucks, he found many full five-gallon gas cans and began pouring the gas all around the cars and trucks and motorcycles. Then he moved back to his stash and moved away about five hundred yards. He fitted a rocket into the RPG and smiled.

  “Have fun, boys and girls,” Ben muttered, then fired the RPG.

  The entire motor pool went up in a whooshing roar, the heat concussion reaching Ben in a blast of hot air. Ben moved further back as the cars and trucks and motorcycles began exploding, sending hot steel flying in all directions.

  Ben hummed a few bars of the old song “In the Heat Of The Night,” and then moved further back into the night as a dozen or more figures came screaming out of the inferno; moving balls of fire staggering about in the parking lot.

  Several thousand yards away from the burning motor pool, in the shelter of an empty house, Ben counted the rockets left in the carry pouch. Six 6.6-pound rockets left. He knew the weapon was accurate up to about nine hundred yards . . . providing no wind was blowing with any intensity.

  Resting, Ben ate a thoroughly disgusting emergency ration bar and drank some water. The ration bar tasted like sheep shit smelled. Ben knew it was packed with nutrients and vitamins and other stuff essential for the human body to survive—but he didn’t have to like the damned thing.

  He rinsed his mouth out with water from one of his two canteens and felt better. Just as he was standing up, an old Michigan National Guard APC came rolling up the street. The words painted across the front of the armored personnel carrier brought a smile to Ben’s lips: Big Tommy.

  That would be Tommy Monroe, more than likely. Ben hoped the gang leader was inside.

  He fitted a rocket into the slot, lined it up, and let it bang. The APC went up like a Roman candle; obviously the APC was an older model, for many of the newer models would not have exploded in that manner.

  Ben grabbed up his gear and took off.

  He was looking for a hidey-hole, for he had been working full-tilt for hours, the adrenalin pumping hard, and he was getting tired.

  He began making his way more cautiously now, working his way toward the northeastern edge of town. He damn sure did not want to be in this immediate area when the Rebels opened up with artillery at dawn. He stayed in the alleys and back streets, occasionally looking back toward the punk motor pool, which was still blazing, lighting up the sky.

  Ben walked for what he guessed was about four miles before stopping. He had put most of the city suburbs behind him before he found a half-burned-out house that looked as though it was dangerously close to falling in. That would make a perfect hidey-hole. Punks being what they were, they would not think of looking for him in a ruined home when so many perfectly good homes were available.

  He took a leak in a ditch and then walked into the weed-grown yard. Ben circled around to the back and slipped inside, working his way under some fallen timbers in what had once been a cathedral-ceilinged dining room. He made himself as comfortable as possible, and drifted off to sleep in a matter of minutes.

  He awakened stiff from the hard floor just as daylight was beginning to sift through the holes in what remained of the roof. Ben rinsed his mouth out with water and wished he could brush his teeth. He ate another of those awful emergency ration bars and daydreamed about a breakfast of bacon and eggs, hash browns and toast, and a tall cold glass of milk.

  Ben was screwing the cap back on his canteen when the first rumble of artillery reached his ears. He crawled out from under the fallen timbers and stood up, stretching until his joints popped and his muscles were straining.

  He had just worked the kinks out of his muscles when the muzzle of a rifle was jammed against his back.

  “Well, well,” the voice said. “Another Reb soldier. But you’re a little old for the field, ain’t you, Pops?”

  “Yeah, I am,” Ben said. “And I’m hungry, too. You got any food with you?”

  “Don’t try to be a comedian, Pops. I ain’t got shit with me except this rifle. Turn around.”

  Ben thought of spinning around and slapping the rifle from the punk’s hand, but rejected that almost immediately. His muscles were still stiff from the cool night on the floor. He slowly turned around to face the punk.

  His captor was about twenty-five years old, Ben guessed, and he’d been wounded in the side. The left side of his shirt was bloody and his face was pale from shock and pain and loss of blood.

  “I’ve got a first-aid kit,” Ben said. “Let me took at that side of yours.”

  “Huh? You gotta be shittin’ me, man. Where’s your rifle?”

  Behind the wall and under the timbers with the RPG and the rockets. “Lost it during the battle.”

  “Yeah? Gimme one of them canteens. I’m real thirsty. Do it slow, Pops.”

  Ben slowly pulled one canteen free and handed it to the wounded man. Keeping his eyes on Ben, the younger man drank deeply, draining the canteen.

  “Good,” he said, handing the empty canteen to Ben. “You got any food?”

  “No. That’s what I asked you.”

  “Oh, yeah. You did. Gimme that pistol, Pops. Do it slow, now.”

  Ben slowly pulled his 9mm from leather, reversed it, and handed it to the punk, butt first.

  “You givin’ up awful easy, Pops.�
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  “What else is there to do? You’ve got the gun pointed at me.”

  “For a fact. The Rebs is gonna attack, ain’t they?”

  “Yes. That thunder is artillery. Next will come the planes and gun ships. Ground troops will follow.”

  The punk squinted his eyes and stared at Ben. Ben suspected he needed glasses. “What rank are you?”

  “Sergeant.”

  “Yeah? What am I gonna do with you, Sergeant?”

  “You go your way, I’ll go mine. Unless we both want to stay here until we fall over from exhaustion. You’re not going to go far with that wound. It needs attention.”

  “For a fact.” He lowered the rifle and laid Ben’s pistol on the floor. “I give up,” he said, his voice sounding very tired. “I quit. I don’t wanna fight no more. I hurt.” He pushed both rifle and pistol toward Ben.

  Ben holstered his pistol and then checked the M-16. It was dirty. “You have a name?” he asked the wounded young man.

  “Jerry. What’s yours?”

  “Ben Raines.”

  Jerry’s mouth dropped open and his eyes widened as sudden recognition filled them. “Oh, shit!” he whispered.

  “Relax. You’re out of the war. I’ll see that you live.”

  “You might not live long enough to see to that, man. Not if Ray Brown learns where you are.”

  “Ray Brown is here?”

  “Sure. He’s runnin’ this entire operation. His headquarters is about two, three miles from here. He hates you.”

  “The feeling is mutual, I assure you. You been with Ray long?”

  “Naw. ’Bout two months or so. I come down from the upper peninsula just before winter. Me and my sister. She died and I linked up with Ray’s bunch. Bunch of crazy fuckers, you ask me. I was pullin’ out, gettin’ away from them, when I seen this house and decided to rest for a spell. I am so tired.”

  “Then go to sleep. I’m going to go look around.”

  “Man—I mean, General, sir, don’t do that. Ray’s got people out lookin’ for you. He wants you real bad.”