Tyranny in the Ashes Page 2

  “Claire, is it you? We thought you’d been killed.”

  “No doubt,” she replied drily. “Well, as you can see, or rather hear, I’m alive, and I’m ready to get back to headquarters.”

  “Uh, sure, okay,” Otis stammered, playing for time as he frantically tried to think of what to do next.

  “I want you to send a pickup team immediately, Otis.”

  “All right, Claire. Just where exactly are you?”

  “I’m at a little log cabin in the woods about seven or eight klicks north of the crash site. You can’t miss it. There’s nothing else around for miles. There’ll be a rusted-out red pickup truck parked in front.”

  Otis nodded at the phone, forgetting she couldn’t see him. “Okay. I’ll have an extraction team there in a couple of hours.”

  “You’d better,” she snapped. “Oh, and Otis?”

  “Yes?”

  “When I get back, we’re going to have a very serious talk about this bullshit peace protocol you’ve been trying to push through.”

  “Yes . . . uh, Madame President.”

  He winced at the loud click as she slammed the phone down.

  General Joseph Winter knocked lightly on his door, and entered without waiting for his answer.

  “Good morning, Mr. President,” he said formally, as was his wont when addressing his old friend.

  “Can the shit, Joe!” Otis said. “We’ve got trouble.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. Claire Osterman just called me on the phone.”

  “What? But . . . she was confirmed dead”

  “No, she wasn’t. Evidently the plane went down without her on it. She’s at a little cabin just north of the crash site. She wants an extraction team ASAP.”

  Winter paused to stare out of Otis’s window, thinking.

  “We’re royally fucked, Joe,” Otis said, wiping more sweat from his face.

  Winter’s eyes found his. “No we’re not, Otis. Just because we missed once, doesn’t mean we can’t try again.”

  “You mean . . .”

  “Sure. We’ve got her location, so instead of an extraction team, we send a hit team. I’ll send an Apache gunship and blow the cabin all to hell.”

  “Have you got men you can trust to do this?”

  “Absolutely. As I told you, I’ve weaned out most of the men sympathetic to Osterman’s ideas.”

  He got to his feet. “Just leave everything to me, Otis. Remember, don’t sweat the small stuff, and . . .”

  “I know, it’s all small stuff,” Otis said, finishing the joke between the two men who had engineered a takeover of one of the most powerful governments on earth.

  “Let me know when it’s over, will you?” Otis asked.

  Winter nodded as he put his cap on his head and pulled it down tight. “Hang in there, Mr. President,” he said as he walked out the door.

  Otis swiveled in his chair so he could stare out his window. It was all so close to becoming reality. The war with the SUSA was days away from being history. Now was no time for that bitch to show up and put a monkey wrench in his plans.

  * * *

  Claire Osterman drove back to the cabin in the Holts’ truck, parked it in front, and went inside. She walked around the cabin, but found nothing she wanted to take with her.

  She made a pot of coffee, using the last of the grounds in the Holts’ cupboard. Ha, she laughed to herself as she emptied the can. They wouldn’t have need of it any longer.

  After she had been waiting for an hour, her stomach began to cramp from the four cups of coffee she’d downed. Damn, she thought, one more trip to that misbegotten outhouse.

  She walked the fifty yards down the path through the woods to the small shed and went inside. As she sat on the wooden bench with the two holes in it, she thought, Why in the world do they make these things with two holes? Surely people don’t sit here next to each other and use them at the same time.

  She was only half-finished when she heard the unmistakable whoop-whoop of helicopter blades overhead. Damn, she thought, wouldn’t you know it. The goddamned Army never comes at an appropriate time. She was in the process of pulling up her pants when the sound of the helicopter blades changed, becoming higher in pitch and much louder as it roared by less than twenty feet over her head.

  She jerked the door of the outhouse open just in time to see the tiny log cabin virtually disintegrate under the onslaught of thousands of rounds of ammunition from the Gatling guns of the attack ship. She ducked back inside the outhouse as the Apache warship made a sweeping bank to the left, lined up on the cabin, and fired two Hellfire missiles into the roof.

  The shock wave from the explosion hit the outhouse like a mighty fist and knocked it over on its side. This probably saved Claire’s life, as the outhouse was now flat among a row of bushes at its rear and covered from sight.

  As the flames from the explosion died down, the helicopter landed and two men jumped to the ground, automatic rifles cradled in their arms.

  They walked into the smoldering wreckage of the house, and Claire could see them stirring a smoking lump of charred flesh with their boots. One of them turned and gave a thumbs-up to the pilot, and both men ran back to the helicopter.

  After it took off, Claire pushed broken boards off her body and struggled out of the bushes, finally getting to her feet. She ran to the house to see what the men had been looking at. She held her nose as she stood over Mrs. Holt’s still-burning corpse. Those bastards were making sure a female had been killed in the attack! she thought. The sons of bitches were sent to kill me!

  The realization stunned Claire as nothing else ever had. She stumbled from the burnt-out shell of the cabin, thinking furiously. She had to clear her mind and be sharp, or else she’d never survive this.

  She walked around the ruins of the cabin and found the pickup on its side, flames licking the rusted red paint from the metal. So much for transportation, she mused.

  She ran back to the outhouse, picked up the shotgun she’d carried with her, and began to walk toward the gas station. She figured she had a couple of hours’ walk to figure out her next step. But one thing was sure. She was going to make that son of a bitch Otis Warner rue the day he fucked with Claire Osterman.

  THREE

  Ben Raines, Commander in Chief of the Rebel Army of the Southern United States of America, threw the rubber ball as far as he could. His malamute puppy, Jodie, took off in a lumbering run after the ball, her tongue hanging out as she panted from the workout Ben was giving her.

  Cooper, Ben’s driver and friend, squatted on his haunches nearby. “That’s a pretty good throw for an old man, Ben. You missed your calling. You should’ve been a major-league pitcher.”

  Ben glanced at the young man as he sleeved sweat off his forehead. “I don’t know who’s getting the best workout here. Me or the dog.”

  Jersey, Ben’s female bodyguard who was never very far from his side, said, “It’s a shame you don’t have two balls, Ben. Then you could throw one for Coop to fetch, too.”

  Coop glared at Jersey. “Ben, what’s another word for female dog?”

  Jersey pointed her finger at him. “Don’t even go there, Coop, or you’ll be wearing those little ornaments hanging between your legs on your head.”

  Coop snickered. “Hell, might as well be wearin’ ’em for all the use they’ve gotten lately.”

  As Jodie brought the ball back to Ben and dropped it at his feet, he leaned down and petted her head. “That’s enough, girl. You’re wearing Daddy out.”

  Jersey, unwilling to let Coop off the hook, observed, “Well, Coop, now that the war with the USA is on hold, maybe you can find some undiscriminating females at a local bar who’ll consent to go out on a date with you.”

  “Unlike some of the female members of this team who haven’t had any dates since reaching puberty, I won’t have to look too far. The babes are lined up waitin’ for me to ask ’em out.”

  Jersey turned to follow Ben into their
offices in SUSA headquarters. “That’s gotta be the shortest line in the country,” she muttered.

  “Hey, I heard that!” Coop said, falling in behind her and Ben. “And if I hadn’t been so busy this past year pulling your butt out of the fire, I’d’ve had plenty of chances to score.”

  Jersey’s heart fluttered at the words, and her mind flashed back to the night Coop was referring to . . .

  The jump master and his helpers shoved large wooden crates out the door, alternating equipment drops with the jumps of Ben’s team so the materiel would land within easy reach of the Rebel forces. Finally, only Coop and Jersey were left in the big C-130.

  Coop gave a low bow, sweeping his hand to the side. “After you, my pet,” he said with a sardonic leer, glancing at the way Jersey’s battle fatigues fit snugly over her buttocks.

  “Pervert,” she said, noticing where his eyes were fixed. “Have a good look, ’cause that’s all you’ll ever get!”

  She hooked her chute cord on the overhead line and bent to step out of the doorway. Just before she jumped, the Big Bird hit an air pocket and suddenly lurched and dropped fifty feet straight down.

  Jersey was thrown out the door, tumbling uncontrollably in the updraft as the plane plummeted earthward. Her chute deployed and was immediately snagged on the tail fin of the airplane, ripping to shreds and streaming behind her as she fell.

  “Shit!” screamed the jump master, leaning out the window to watch her fall. He turned an ashen face to Coop. “She’s a goner.”

  Coop whipped out his K-Bar and slashed his chute line. “Uh-uh, pardner, nobody dies tonight,” he said, and dove out of the door after her.

  He tucked his chin onto his chest and put his hands tight against his sides to minimize drag, and blinked his eyes against the hundred-mile-an-hour-wind as he arrowed downward, desperately trying to catch sight of Jersey’s black silk against the darkness.

  Jersey’s body tumbled, her arms loose and flopping like a rag doll’s, unconscious from the jolt she’d received when her chute was ripped apart.

  This saved her life, as she fell much more slowly than Coop did, and he caught up with her in a matter of seconds. When he came up to her, he spread his arms and legs to slow his fall, and grabbed the tangled shreds of her chute, wrapping his hands around the silk.

  He took a deep breath, grabbed the D-ring of his chute release, and jerked. When his parachute opened, the jolt nearly took his arms off, and he felt as if both his shoulders were dislocated by the force of the sudden slowdown.

  Even though the Ranger parachutes were specially made for low-level drops, they weren’t designed to hold two people at once. Coop and Jersey fell with alarming speed through the night.

  Coop gritted his teeth and bent his knees slightly, hoping he’d be able to hit and roll without breaking a leg, or even worse, his neck. “Mamma always said there’d be days like this,” he muttered to himself.

  In a stroke of great good fortune, Jersey and Coop plummeted into the outer branches of a giant sugar maple tree, the limbs slowing their fall enough to cause them to suffer only minor bruises and cuts.

  As soon as he could untangle himself from the lines of his chute, Coop took a quick inventory of his body. No major bones seemed to be broken, and other than a deep gash on his left thigh, which he wrapped with a piece of silk from his chute, he seemed in fair condition.

  When he was satisfied the bleeding from his leg was controlled, he scrambled through the darkness to where Jersey lay, still unconscious.

  He gently unwrapped her from the shroud of silk covering her, and spread her out on the ground. He was running his hands over her limbs and body, checking for major wounds or broken bones, when she opened her eyes and stared angrily at him.

  “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?” she asked, propping herself up on her elbows.

  Coop sat back on his haunches. “Just coppin’ a quick feel, darlin’,” he answered, more relieved than he cared to show that she was all right.

  “Well, unless you want to pull back a nub, keep your hands to yourself, Coop.”

  He grinned. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, holding his hands out palm up. “Whatever you say, Jersey.”

  “What happened?” she asked, and tried to stand up, collapsing when she put her weight on her right ankle, which was already swollen to almost twice normal size.

  He leaned forward and took her leg in his hand, untied her combat boot, and pulled it off, causing her to shout in pain.

  “Hold on there, big boy,” she said. “What’re you trying to do, pull my foot off?”

  He gave a low whistle when he saw her ankle. It was black and blue and grossly misshapen. Slowly, he moved it through a complete range of motion, again bringing tears of pain to her eyes.

  “I don’t think it’s broken, but you’re not going to be walking on it anytime soon,” he said.

  As she stared at him, her eyes glistening with moisture in the half moonlight, he explained what had happened, and how her chute had fouled on the tail fin of the C-130.

  “Damn!” she exclaimed, looking heavenward.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “Now I owe you my life, and I can’t think of a worse thing to have happen.”

  “Oh, things could be worse.”

  “How?”

  “I could be scraping your body up with a spatula about now,” he answered.

  She snorted. “I don’t know if that would be worse or not.”

  He leered at her. “Oh, don’t make such a big thing of it,” he said. “I figure you did this on purpose, so we’d be marooned alone out here in the woods, like we were in Africa.”*

  *Triumph in the Ashes.

  He shook his head. “Hell, you didn’t have to go to all this trouble to be alone with me . . . all you had to do was ask.”

  She kicked at him with her injured ankle, then moaned in pain. “Don’t flatter yourself, pervert. I’d sooner be alone with a snake than with a lecher like you.”

  “Speaking of being alone, why don’t you try to bump Corrie on your headset? Mine got ripped off when I sky-dove to catch up with you.”

  Jersey reached up to trigger the speaker on her headset, only to find it smashed to pieces, hanging uselessly around her neck.

  “Damn, no can do, Coop. Looks like we really are alone. Do you have any idea where we are, or where the rest of the team is?”

  “Don’t have a clue. After the plane hit the air pocket, we could have turned in any direction. There is no way of telling where we are, at least not until daylight.”

  Jersey glanced at the chronometer on her wrist. “It’s about one A.M. now, so that gives us at least five hours until dawn.”

  Coop got to his feet and dusted his pants off. “I’ll cut some branches and make us some sort of shelter against the cold. We can use the silk from the chutes to form a windbreak, and maybe we won’t freeze to death before the sun comes up.”

  After he’d fashioned a lean-to from maple branches and strung pieces of their parachutes around them, he scraped together a mound of pine needles into a makeshift bed underneath, out of the wind.

  He helped Jersey to her feet, putting his arm around her to support her weight.

  She took his hand where it lay against the side of her breast and moved it down on her ribcage. “And don’t try that old standby about using our body heat to stay warm,” she said.

  He shrugged. “It worked in the jungle, didn’t it?”

  She glared at him. “I seem to remember you promised never to mention that night again,” she said with some heat.

  “That was before I knew what lengths you’d go to in order to spend another night with me,” he answered as he lowered her into the lean-to.

  She lay on the pine needles, her back to him as he gently covered her with a piece of parachute silk. “Wake me when it’s dawn,” she mumbled, already almost asleep.

  “Women,” he whispered as he lay next to her, “can’t live with ’em
, and can’t kill ’em.”

  Later, just as he was dozing off, he felt her turn and wrap her arms around him, spooning against him to get warm, her breath stirring the hairs on the back of his neck and causing thoughts he knew he’d never dare mention to her.

  She moaned once, and her breathing slowed as she fell asleep, leaving him wide awake and acutely aware of her breasts pressing against his back.*

  *Crisis in the Ashes.

  * * *

  Jersey stopped and turned, her hands on her hips, pushing the memory of that night from her thoughts. “Look, Coop. I told you thank you for saving my life already. What more do you want?”

  He grinned and waggled his eyebrows. “Well . . .”

  “In your dreams, mister!” she exclaimed, and whirled around, her mood of thankfulness evaporating like ice on a hot stove.

  “More like my nightmares, you mean,” he rejoined as they entered Ben’s office complex.

  When they walked through the door, they found Dr. Lamar Chase, Ben’s team doctor, waiting for them.

  “Howdy, Doc,” Coop said.

  “Hello, Lamar,” Ben added.

  “Hi, guys,” Doc said.

  “What brings you to visit?” Ben asked. “Time for more inoculations?”

  “Please say no,” Coop begged. It was a well-known fact that Coop, who feared almost nothing else on earth, was deathly afraid of needles.

  Doc Chase held up his hands. “No, Coop, no more shots.” He grinned. “And it’s a good thing, too. Last time I had to give you an injection, you used up my entire supply of smelling salts.”

  “Sissy,” Jersey whispered under her breath.

  “Bitch,” Coop replied, his face flaming red, continuing the constant game of sarcastic rejoinders the two played on a daily basis. Ben had often said they ought to get married, as much as they fought. Both Coop and Jersey acted aghast at the very idea.

  “Actually it’s to tell you the plague in the northern states is on a rapid decline,” said Doc. “With our shipments of antibiotics and the new vaccine Yiro Ishi gave us, the citizens of the USA are healing and very few new cases of anthrax are being reported.”