Crisis in the Ashes Read online

  “Right, Boss. What’s the target?”

  “Primary targets are the missile launch sites. We should have them pretty well-documented on our radar since the launch.”

  “Secondary targets?”

  “Downtown Indianapolis, the seat of the government of the USA. Specifically, Osterman’s homes, the penthouse apartment in town, and her vacation home on the Mississinewa Lake—the one that looks like a castle up on a bluff overlooking the water. I want them flattened and burning before noon.”

  Corrie grinned. “Yes, sir. Anything else?”

  “Yeah, if there are any bombs left over, dump them on the congressional buildings there in Fort Benjamin Harrison. It won’t hurt to let the legislators know what the cost is of supporting that crazy bitch’s orders.”

  Corrie nodded and walked out of the war room toward the communications room.

  President Jeffreys smiled. “You made the right choice, Ben.”

  Ben didn’t answer. He was deep in thought about what he had to do next. “Cec, you’d better get hold of Jean-Francois Chapelle over at the UN and let them know what Claire’s done.”

  Cecil shook his head. “There’s not much they can do.”

  “No, but they can at least put diplomatic pressure on Sugar Babe. It won’t stop her, but it may distract her a bit, and that’ll help. Besides, I want the UN to know why we’re taking the steps I’m about to take.”

  Cecil’s eyebrows raised. “Which are?”

  “We’re going into the USA, going on the attack all along the border. Plus, I’m going to drop Scout teams all over the USA.”

  “With what purpose?” Cecil asked, knowing the Scout teams were the equivalent of the Army’s Ranger/Special Forces. They were small forces, very highly trained in the art of stealth and killing, and were used both as assassination squads and advance forces for any Rebel column.

  “I and D mostly—infiltrate and destroy. I’m going to sabotage the USA back into the dark ages. Every television station and relay tower, every power plant or sewage treatment plant, everything that makes life comfortable to the average citizen, is going to be systematically destroyed.”

  “But thousands will die if we do that,” Cecil argued.

  Ben’s face was hard. “Better thousands than millions, Cec. They supported a woman crazy enough to declare war on us, so now they’ll have to pay the price, albeit a lower one.”

  “What else are you going to do?” Cecil asked.

  “The Scout teams will also have a secondary purpose—to assassinate every politician they can find, especially those from Indiana. I want Osterman to know she can run, but she can’t hide. Eventually, we’ll get to her and make her pay for what she’s done.”

  Ben walked to the door of the war room, closely followed by his team members. “Now, I’m going to talk to my brigade commanders. Mike Post, my chief of Intel, is going to take over and run things around here for the time being.”

  “Ben, what are you going to do?” Cecil asked.

  He didn’t like the look on Ben’s face.

  “My team and I are going to be dropped behind enemy lines. I started a few resistance cells up there a few weeks ago, and I’m going to see if we can’t make them a little more active.”

  “But you’ll be taking a terrible risk.”

  “Cec, you’ve got to get it through your head, I’m no armchair general. It’s just not my style. Ike is more than capable of taking over if something happens to me, as are almost any of my brigade commanders.”

  He walked out of the room before Cecil could muster any more arguments against his plans. He wanted to get moving before the team of babysitters Cecil had assigned to him were able to track him down and get in his way.

  “Mike,” Ben said to Mike Post as he and his team were donning their black night ops gear, “you know what we have to do. Push Osterman and her merc troops hard all along the front. Advance slow and steady, without outrunning our lines of supply, and keep the pressure on.”

  “Will do, Ben. Of course, you know this may cause the fifty percent of the regular USA forces that refused to fight us to join in the fracas, now that we’re invading their territory.”

  “Can’t be helped. We’ve got to make Osterman pay for the missile attack, and her use of BW.”

  “Dr. Lamar Chase says we’re in good shape as far as our military force is concerned. All of our men and women are inoculated against every bug Osterman’s scientists have at their disposal.”

  “What about the civilians?” Ben asked, strapping a K-Bar knife to the inside of his left leg.

  Mike shook his head. “We’re going to lose some, probably in the neighborhood of twenty-five percent.”

  “Damn!”

  “Yeah, exactly. However, Doc Chase says the other thing that’s bound to happen is that the plague will spread northward as people try to flee the areas hardest hit.”

  Ben looked up. “So, Osterman’s going to have to live with the plague killing her own people, too?”

  Mike snorted. “Yes, but the crazy bitch will probably try to blame us by claiming we used BW, too.”

  “You’re right, Mike. Better get Cecil on that right away. Tell him to let the UN know what Doc Chase said, and that we won’t be to blame for the spread of the plague when it occurs.”

  Mike glanced at Ben and his team. They were dressed all in black from head to toe, and had at least one sidearm on their belts, a short automatic carbine slung over their shoulders, and K-Bar assault knives on their legs.

  “You guys look mean as hell,” Mike said, grinning.

  “We are mean as hell, General,” Jersey snarled, her hand on the butt of a .45 pistol on her belt.

  “We’re counting on your intel to keep us informed about the situation as it changes in the USA, Mike,” Ben said.

  “I know. We’ve got pretty good resources in most of the areas, so it should be fairly up to date. You can bump me periodically and I’ll let you know what we’ve got.”

  “Good.”

  “Where are you going to have them drop you?”

  “Upstate New York. I started a resistance squad up there a while back. I heard most all of them were killed, so I’d like to see if anything can be salvaged of the group.”

  Behind Ben’s back, Anna and Jersey gave each other knowing glances. All of Ben’s team knew of his short-lived romance with Lara Walden, and of her and her team’s death at the hands of the USA Black Shirt squads. It looked as if Ben wanted to get some personal revenge on the men who’d killed his lover.

  Anna smiled at the thought. Probably be good for him. He’d been alone for so long, and then to find someone and have her taken away . . . if he needed to kick some ass to get over it, then his team would be more than happy to help him do it.

  Jersey tapped Ben on the shoulder. “We’ve got to get a move on if you want to follow the bombers in.”

  Cooper grunted. “Hell, we’d already be on the plane if you hadn’t taken so much time fixing your hair and putting on your makeup,” he said to Jersey.

  She glanced at him, fire in her eyes. Rubbing a hand on his cheek, she murmured, “Coop, feels like you forgot to shave.” She pulled her K-Bar out and held it up in front of his face. “Want me to do it for you?” she asked sweetly.

  “Come on, guys, let’s saddle up,” Ben said as he walked out the door, smiling.

  THREE

  General Maxwell listened attentively to the report being given by Harlan Millard, second in command to the president, Claire Osterman.

  “Ben Raines and his Rebel forces are about to counterattack with a wave of missiles. We suspect their missiles carry nuclear warheads, though our spy says they also have ones containing anthrax, like those they used in Africa, and like the ones President Osterman just launched against SUSA.”

  “His troops have been inoculated, as they were before,” Maxwell remembered. “Quite frankly, I’m surprised. Raines has always shown reluctance to harm innocent civilians. An attack by nuclear missile
s or anthrax-loaded missiles will kill tens of thousands who have no immunity. This is a side of Ben Raines and his SUSA Rebels we’ve never seen.”

  “Perhaps Madam President has made a mistake in launching BW weapons against Raines and his rebel forces,” Millard said. His eyes were wild with fear, and he was sweating profusely. “He would never have considered this if we hadn’t struck first,” he added, his voice a full octave higher than usual.

  General Maxwell fixed Osterman’s second in command with a stare. “You want to be the one to tell Madam President she’s opened Pandora’s box, and that her actions most certainly have caused the imminent death of millions of her own followers . . . perhaps even all of the USA?”

  “Uh, not really, General. I’m sure she never thought Raines would be crazy enough to retaliate in this manner. But our intelligence reports have almost always been accurate before. We have an operative inside his high command, and the information we’ve gotten has always been good.”

  Maxwell glanced down at the three stars on the shirt collars of his uniform, reminded of his rank and how quickly he’d risen to the top during Claire Osterman’s presidency. “It has indeed. Our survival has depended upon the accuracy of those reports. Far too often, I fear. Raines is an enigma. He makes all the wrong tactical military moves, and yet he defeats us at every turn. His Rebel army seems to have the capacity to disappear into thin air, and he hits us with weaponry we believed no longer existed after the Final War. We have no way to stop them other than anti-aircraft guns and a few ground-to-air rockets. Raines has scientists who can make modern weapons out of plowshares.” He shook his head. “Our death toll is going to be unimaginable, while SUSA’s will only be minimal since most of the rebels have been inoculated against our BW.” He looked up into Millard’s eyes. “Madam President’s miscalculation of Raines’s resolve may have cost us the war.”

  Captain Broadhurst burst through the door. “General, we’ve just received another message from Intel. It seems Raines has called off the missile attack. The word from our spy is that he’s going to counterattack with conventional bombs instead.”

  Millard sat up straighter in his seat and sleeved sweat off his forehead. “Thank God . . . someone has finally shown some sense in this war.”

  Maxwell gave Millard a flat look. “I’ll be sure to pass along your sentiments to Madam President.”

  “Uh . . . I didn’t mean to criticize—”

  Maxwell held up a hand. “Don’t start crawfishing on me, Harlan. I was just kidding.” He paused and glanced at a map laid out on his desk. “Although, our position is really not much better. The plague we’re sending to SUSA will cause them only relatively minor problems, mainly among the civilians. And when the sick ones try to flee they’re gonna come north, bringing the plague right back to us, where we have no defenses against it.”

  He turned weary eyes on Millard. “Hell, less than ten percent of our troops have been vaccinated, and virtually none of our civilians.”

  Millard suddenly got a crafty look on his face. He licked his lips and stared back at Maxwell. “I have an idea,” Millard said. “I want you to hear me out, sir.”

  “I hope it doesn’t cost money. Our treasury is in bad shape. President Osterman has spent money recklessly on strategies that did not work. She listens to the wrong counsel, in my opinion. Too many of the wrong people can bend her ear.”

  “By that you mean Otis Warner, of course.”

  “Yes, and that blithering idiot, Andy Schumberger. In my opinion, Schumberger is totally incapable of tying his own shoes. I don’t see why she trusts him, or why she would listen to anything he has to say.”

  “I agree,” Harlan said quietly, after a glance around to look for hidden microphones or camera lenses.

  Maxwell fixed Harlan with a chilly stare. “So, tell me about your solution to the Rebels’ sick civilians bringing our plague home to roost, and to their troops’ immunity to our own BW. What the hell can we do?”

  “Bring in Yiro Ishi. Listen to what he has to say, and his germ warfare proposals.”

  “That crazy little Jap? He’s out of his goddamn mind. He couldn’t help us. I’ve heard him talk to the president before, and he didn’t make any sense. He rambles on about nothing, and our top advisers insist he’s crazy. Why the hell should I listen to him?”

  “With all due respect, General, you may be wrong. Ishi is brilliant, in an intellectual way. And he has a background in things that might help us. You could be mistaken about him and his ideas.”

  “And how is that?” Maxwell demanded, scowling. There were times when Harlan championed lost causes and old-fashioned ideas having to do with the past, before the Final War.

  Harlan glanced down at his hands. For a moment the silence was heavy in Maxwell’s office. When he looked up again, his face had lost some of its color. “I take it you’ve never heard of his grandfather? The famous Japanese scientist from World War II who pioneered many of their secret weapons?”

  “Why the hell should I know anything about his grandfather? Get to the point, Harlan!”

  “Have you ever heard of Unit 731 that was operational during World War II?”

  “Can’t say as I have. That was before my time.”

  “Unit 731 was a very primitive biological weapons research facility in Japan. They experimented with all manner of organisms, including anthrax and bubonic plague. Nerve agents, the whole works. History records that General Ishi was decades ahead of his time, in many respects. What he lacked was the technology to implement his ideas, or the delivery systems to put them to use during World War II.”

  “What does that have to do with our perilous situation now, Millard?”

  “As I said, Yiro Ishi is the grandson of the Japanese General who conducted and supervised all the experiments at Unit 731. He has most of his grandfather’s notes, and another very important item we may need.”

  “Please get on with it,” Maxwell snapped, growing weary of Harlan’s tendency to beat around the bush.

  “Yiro contacted me in secret a few days ago,” Harlan continued. “We talked for hours. The problem the Japanese had during World War II was a way to deploy their somewhat primitive biological weapons. In particular, a bacterium. Bubonic plague. At the time, they had no practical method for distribution of the disease. Exposed to the elements, the bacteria died too quickly, rendering their application useless.”

  “That’s old hat. The Rebels have inoculations against it now, protecting them from bubonic plague just as they do against our anthrax weapons.”

  Harlan wagged his head. “Not an older form of the bacteria, one that was developed in the nineteen thirties. At the present time, there is no vaccine to prevent the spread of this variant strain of bubonic plague. Ishi assured me of it. He has kept the bacteria alive in test tubes all these years.”

  “You’ve been paying too damn much attention to that crazy Jap. A disease is a disease. Raines and his scientists would only find a vaccine against it.”

  “Not necessarily, sir. Older forms have different growth patterns. Ishi explained it to me. The one used by his grandfather in China during World War II acts differently, causing a number of different symptoms. By the time the Rebels realize what has hit them, it will be too late, according to Ishi. This was what the Japanese were working on while the United States developed the atom bomb.”

  “Yiro Ishi is a fool. We can’t gamble on his being right about this. President Osterman would never approve of any idea put forth by Ishi. She regards him—properly, in my opinion—as a lunatic.”

  “I wish you’d look at his data. During World War II, the Japanese, led by General Ishi, dropped bombs filled with infected fleas on a city in China. Half a million Chinese died within a matter of weeks.”

  “Harlan, have you been drinking? Are you asking me to listen to ideas about dropping fleas on Ben Raines and his armies? Have you lost your mind?”

  “No, sir. The fleas were taken from infected rats developed in lab
oratories at Unit 731, after the rats were injected with the bubonic bacteria. They were packed in canister bombs that could be dropped from high levels, to avoid anti-aircraft guns. The infected fleas were kept in a medium of flour. When the bombs landed, thousands of Chinese in one of the remote provinces reported seeing snow falling from the sky. Along with the flour were millions of plague-carrying fleas. A single flea lays a million eggs when it feeds on a blood meal. You can do the math for yourself.”

  “This sounds idiotic.”

  “It’s all true. Half a million Chinese died from bubonic plague as a result of the fleas dropped on one village. It’s a matter of record, sir. I can get you copies of the records if you like.”

  “I’d sure as hell like to see them.”

  “It was all classified. When the war crimes trials were being conducted in the old United States, a deal was cut. None of the researchers from Unit 731 were charged with war crimes, in return for information dealing with biological weapons. The United States wanted to develop their own biological weapons arsenal, and they thought General Ishi and his staff might have the formulas which had eluded American scientists for years.”

  Maxwell sighed, leaning back in his swivel chair. “President Osterman will put me before a firing squad if I go into her office suggesting that we drop bombs full of sick fleas on Ben Raines and his Rebels. Or she’ll laugh me out of her office.”

  “She won’t . . . if you have the scientific data to substantiate the result, sir.”

  “I’d have to be outta my goddamn mind to go to her with a plan like that.”

  “With all respect due our president, General, all she wants is to rid this continent of Ben Raines and his Rebel army, as you well know.”

  “She’ll have me shot.”

  “Just listen to Ishi. Hear what he has to say. Don’t come to any conclusions until you’ve heard the facts. Half a million Chinese villagers died from these plague-infected flea bombs that Ishi’s grandfather designed. That alone should get the president’s attention.”