Terror in the Ashes Read online

  “Tell whoever is running this tub to put us ashore south of the battle,” Ben shouted. “One Battalion will stretch out along the coastline highway. Advise West of the change in plans and tell him to stretch his people along and north of the docks.”

  As soon as she had relayed the orders, Ike started screaming in her ears. “General Ike is pissed, sir,” she told Ben.

  Ben grinned. “Naturally. Tell Ike to calm down and to watch his blood pressure.”

  “Machine-gun emplacements on the bluffs overlooking the coast,” Corrie said.

  “Put us south of there,” Ben told her. “Split the company. First and second platoons with me, three and four go in behind the main force.”

  She relayed the orders to the coxswain and all felt the change in direction.

  They hit the wide beach running toward the bluffs. The ruse worked, for all gunfire was concentrated about a half mile to the north of their LZ. Stopping at the crest to catch their breath, Ben motioned Buddy to his side. “Take your Rat Team and check down that road toward the city. Bring me back one alive, boy.”

  Buddy grinned at his father and was gone into the darkness of early evening.

  Ben took that time to carefully look all around him. Those who had taken over the islands, or at least this island, had never really planned for any invasion, so when the Rebels came, they rushed everybody they could muster on short notice down to the docks.

  Buddy was back in only a short time, bringing with him two utterly terrified bandits. “De donde es ud?” one asked, his voice breaking with fear.

  Ben spoke enough border Spanish to get by. “America,” he told him. “Do you want to live?”

  “Sí, sí!” the man whispered.

  “Do you speak English?”

  “Sí. Yes, sir. A little bit.”

  “How many of you are there on this island?”

  The man looked confused. “Only me, señor. I am but one man.”

  “No, damn it,” Ben said. “How many others . . . how many soldiers in your army?”

  “Ah! I don’t know. Two, three thousand, I guess.”

  “I have twenty-five thousand waiting in ships out there.” Ben told the men a blatant lie.

  “Mother of God,” the other man whispered. He put both hands up. “We surrender.”

  “You’re already my prisoners,” Ben reminded him.

  “I surrender again. Sometimes battle is confusing and people forget.”

  “I have no intention of forgetting. Now, get up. You’re going to lead us into the city.”

  “We are?” the first man asked.

  “You are. Move!”

  The Rebels began walking right down the center of the highway, toward the ever-louder sounds of battle.

  “I have a wife and eight children,” the second bandit said. “And my aged mother lives with us. How would they eat if I am dead?”

  “You’re a liar,” Ben told him.

  The man shrugged his shoulders in resignation. “Sometimes it works. It was worth a try.”

  Ben chuckled.

  “Are you really the great American general Ben Raines?” the first bandit asked.

  “Yes.”

  Both men made the sign of the cross and said a quick prayer. They knew all about Ben Raines and the Rebels.

  “I have a great throbbing and much pain in my head,” the second bandit said. “I think I am going to pass out.”

  “You’re going to get a bullet in your ass if you don’t shut up and move.”

  “Alfredo, we have fallen into the hands of savages.”

  “Evaristo ... kindly shut up your mouth and perhaps we will not be killed.”

  “That is a very good suggestion, Evaristo,” Ben told him. “Tell us when we are approaching any spot where your soldiers might be located.”

  “They are not my soldiers, General. I ...” He shut up when Ben placed the muzzle of his CAR-15 against his cheek. “Si, patron. I will tell you and that is a promise. It would be foolish of me not to do that, since I am leading the way and any bullets meant for you would surely hit me first.”

  Alfredo sighed audibly. “He is the burden I must bear, General. He is my first wife’s cousin, and she made me promise on her deathbed to look after him. It was the most foolish promise I have ever made. Since he seems to have been struck mute, as well as stupid, I will tell you that just up ahead, General, there is a machine-gun emplacement.”

  “When was that put there?” Evaristo asked.

  “Yesterday. While you were drunk and in the company of whores.”

  “Left and right of the road, people,” Ben ordered. “Take it out quietly, Buddy.”

  Lying on the ground by the road, Alfredo whispered, “That is a very formidable young man you sent ahead, General.”

  “He is my son.”

  “I should have guessed.”

  “You don’t sound like a terrible bandit, Alfredo.”

  “Oh, I am a most reluctant one. I was a merchant seaman when the war broke out. We sailed for weeks, trying to find a safe port. We hit something in the night and a few of us made it to the lifeboats.” He looked at his first wife’s cousin. “Including this dodo. We landed here. Already, bandits had taken over most of the island. The bandits gave me a choice; actually, two choices. Join them, or die. I consider myself a sensible man. I elected to live.”

  Buddy returned, wiping his bloody knife on his trousers, the others in his team doing the same. “You may proceed now, Father.”

  Ben told the bandits, “Take the machine gun and several cans of ammo. You two just joined the Rebels.”

  “We did?” Evaristo asked.

  “Be thankful, stupid,” Alfredo said.

  “Let me get this straight,” Evaristo said. “We are now going to be fighting against the people we were fighting for yesterday?”

  “That is correct.”

  “I am confused.”

  “You have always been confused, Evaristo. But you have the strength of a bull. Pick up the machine-gun and follow me. Be brave in battle now. For if we win, we can leave this wretched place and return to Mexico.”

  “I am excited about that.”

  “General,” Jersey said. “If you had a choice between these two and Emil, which would you choose?”

  Ben glanced at her. “Do you even have to ask?”

  Eleven

  Ike had landed his battalion at the same spot that Ben had put ashore, while Danjou and Rebet had put their battalions north of the main docks and begun a slow circling of the city. While other battalions poured ashore, Ben and his small contingent were walking down the main highway straight toward the docks.

  “This is madness,” Evaristo said. “General, we are heading toward a thousand or more men fighting at the docks.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Ben told him. “Keep walking. Corrie, bump the SEALs and the Special Operations teams and tell them we’re going to punch a hole on the south side of the docks. That’ll give our people a path to the highway.”

  “Impossible!” Evaristo said. “We are much too small a force.”

  “Just carry the machine gun and try not to think,” Alfredo told him. “There, General,” he said, pointing below them. Below them, the battle for the docks raged. “But I do not know how you plan on us getting down there undetected.”

  “We walk down and set up directly behind them, in those warehouses,” Ben said. “Let’s go.”

  Evaristo made the sign of the cross and said, “Tonight I will meet the angels.”

  “You cavort with whores and drunkards one day and talk about angels the next,” Alfredo admonished him. “We are not going to die. The General is not going to walk calmly toward his own death, idiot.”

  “I think this General is un poco loco.”

  “You might be right, Evaristo,” Ben told him. “Move. We’re about to walk through enemy line, Alfredo. You handle the language. Bearing in mind that I do speak your language and if you screw up, I’ll personally shoot you.”

/>   “Sí, patron,” Alfredo said, as they approached several dozen bandits. “I am taking these men and meeting the enemy on the other side of the warehouses,” he told the bandits. It was so dark everyone looked the same; just a dark blob in the night.

  “That is good, Alfredo,” one of the bandits said. “You have much courage. The jefe will be pleased at your actions.”

  The Rebels walked on toward the warehouses. “Set up all along here,” Ben said.

  “I cannot believe we actually did this,” Evaristo said.

  “It ain’t over yet,” Jersey told him. “Just as soon as we open fire, we’re gonna have bogies all over us.”

  “You really are a very lovely young lady,” Evaristo told her.

  “Shut up,” Jersey told him. “And get down behind that machine gun.”

  “I never before in my life have encountered such savage women,” Evaristo muttered, on his belly behind the machine gun. Alfredo fed the belt into place and Evaristo jacked a round into the slot.

  “Well, look at this,” Ben said. “Here comes a whole company of bandits, running to join their compadres. When they get even with us, open fire.”

  “General,” Alfredo said. “Evaristo and myself, we have never killed anyone in our lives. We always fired into the air.”

  “To kill is a great sin,” Evaristo said.

  “I have priests coming ashore very soon,” Ben told them. “They’ll hear your confessions and forgive your sins.”

  “Okay,” Evaristo said. “When do I fire?”

  “Right now,” Ben said, and lobbed a grenade.

  The attack from behind and almost within their own lines turned the dock area into chaos. The Rebels cut down the running bandits, knocking them spinning and screaming to the ground and confusing those who were facing the invaders from the sea.

  Buddy and his team ran to the rear of the warehouse area and cut toward the sea, coming up behind a thin line of bandits who had several companies of Rebels pinned down with heavy machine gun fire. A half a dozen grenades and two dozen M-16’s spitting death fixed that situation and the Rebels swarmed inland through the gap in the lines.

  The bandits began running back toward the city, leaving their dead and wounded behind them.

  “Secure the docks,” Ben ordered. “No pursuit. They know the city and we don’t. We’ll finish it in the morning.”

  “They have gone into the hills, patron,” Alfredo said. “That is very rugged country back there.”

  “Can we go home now?” Evaristo asked.

  When dawn broke and the bandits saw just how many Rebels there were, and several battalions never left the ships, the fight went out of the majority. They began surrendering.

  “What the hell are we going to do with them?” Ike asked.

  “I don’t know. We’ll stick around until some form of government is set up and we distribute arms, then shove off.”

  A priest sought audience with Ben. “Alfredo and Evaristo,” the priest said with a smile, “are basically good men. They have never harmed a soul. Evaristo is not, ah, well, he’s slow, I suppose would be the kindest way of putting it.”

  “They won’t be harmed by any of us,” Ben assured him. “We want to turn the running of this place back over to the civilian population and shove off as quickly as possible. Tell me about the other islands.”

  “Much the same as this one. Bandits and thugs run parts of them. In other areas, the people have weapons and keep them at bay. Weapons are the key.”

  “We’ll arm you with the weapons taken from the bandits. From what I can see, conditions are pretty grim here.”

  “Very bad, General. We have plenty of medical personnel, but no medicines. We’ve been cut off from the rest of the world for a decade.”

  “We cleared the British Isles, and I’ve been in contact with them this morning. They’re going to be sending ships down soon and trade can once more resume. Have you heard any news about conditions on the Azores? There was no sign of life on the Madeiras.”

  The priest shook his head. “We have heard nothing from them, General. But you are going to have a lot of trouble when you land on the Cape Verde Islands. Thugs and pirates control everything there.”

  Georgi stuck his head into the room. “We found the leader of the bandits, Ben. The townspeople just hanged him.”

  “Oso,” the priest said. “So the Bear’s reign of terror finally ends. He was an evil man. But he was a Catholic. So I must go. I will see you before you leave, General.”

  Georgi came in and poured a cup of coffee. “Our troops are working with the citizens of the island, Ben. They’re tracking down the bandits and destroying them. Dr. Chase says we cannot leave until he and his medical people tend to the needs of the sick.”

  “I know. He told me the same thing. Medicines are on the way from the States, but God alone knows when they’ll arrive. Well, we’ll take this time to clean out the other islands. We’ll take the big island tomorrow.”

  But those bandits on the island of Tenerife had fled the coastline and headed into the rugged interior. Ben ordered gunships off-loaded from the ships and the hunt-down began.

  Ben hopscotched from island to island — Hierro Ferro, La Palma, Tenerife, Gran Canaria, Gomera, Fuerteventura, Lanzarote — as his troops, aided by locals, hunted down and destroyed or captured the fleeing bandits. As usual, wherever there had been outlaws and warlords for any length of time, the people they conquered were malnourished and sick. Among the adults, venereal disease was rampant — brought to the islands by the bandits, and spread as the bandits raped their way through the female (but not always) population, and certainly not always adult women. To see a ten-year-old girl or boy dying of syphilis was not something the Rebels were accustomed to witnessing. After seeing a few cases of that, the number of prisoners taken by the Rebels dropped dramatically.

  The mopping up and clearing out of the bandits was slow, dirty, and dangerous work, for they were dealing with the hardcore now.

  Ben intercepted a radio message from a team working in the rugged mountains of La Palma. “This is the Eagle. What do you have?”

  “About a hundred bad ones, Eagle,” a platoon leader radioed back. “And they’re well-armed. I’ve got one Rebel dead, and half a dozen more hit pretty hard.”

  “You stay put. I’m coming in with the dustoffs.” He glanced at his team and winked at Jersey as he picked up his M-14.

  She returned the wink, picked up her M-16, and said, “Kick-ass time.”

  The bandits, including the man who was second-in-command before Oso got his neck stretched, were holed up in a large stone house with a magnificent view of the valleys all around. There was no way the Rebels were going to breech that near-fortress without taking a lot of dead and wounded.

  As it was, the medivacs had to come in low and twisting around the base of the mountains to avoid being hit by bandit fire, and the wounded carried more than a mile to the dust-offs.

  Ben studied the situation for a few moments. “All right. They’re got .50’s on three sides, but that south side is semiblind for them. Corrie, I want two Apaches in here, fully armed. Give the pilots our coordinates, and emphasize this grid here.” He pointed to the map. “That’s the mountains I want them to hover behind until I give the word. When I say so, lift up and give that minimansion up there every damn thing they’ve got.”

  He turned to the platoon leader. “Son, when those gunships open up, we’ve got to be in place to cream the survivors when they come out. So the instant the gunships fire, we’re going to be running up that path over yonder with everything we’ve got to get into position. Pass the word.”

  “You, of course, will not be running up that path,” Buddy said.

  “Who the hell says I won’t?”

  “Merely wishful thinking, Father.”

  “Wish for Holly Hunter or Julia Roberts, why don’t you?”

  Buddy blinked and stared at his father for a moment. “What battalion are they in?”
/>   Ben shook his head. “Son, your education is sadly lacking, I’m afraid.”

  Buddy nodded his head. “They are attractive women, I suppose.”

  “Very. Now go tell your team to get the kinks out of their legs. We’ve got about three hundred yards of exposed ground we’ll be covering.”

  The Apaches came quickly and settled down just behind the crest of the mountain.

  “We’re going to be running when you fire,” Ben told the chopper pilots. “So kindly make those birds fly hot, straight, and true.”

  “That’s a roger, General. Will do.”

  “All right, gang,” Ben said. “Everybody in place. Tell the pilots to rock and roll, Corrie.”

  As soon as the props were whining in lift, Ben and team leaped in front of the platoon leader and were running across the vacant expanse of ground.

  “God damn it!” Buddy yelled, and took off after his father.

  The Apaches opened up, and it was hell on the mountain for those bandits in and around the small mansion. One entire end of the house blew into thousands of pieces as rockets impacted and their chain guns opened up, hurling 30mm rounds into the house.

  Ben did a little dance step as a bandit got his range and opened up with an automatic weapon, the slugs kicking up dust and dirt all around his boots. But firing downhill is tricky, and Ben made the rocks and timber without losing anything except breath, and that was only temporary.

  Buddy and his team piled in behind him and laid down covering fire for the others.

  “Head-rush,” Ben said with a smile.

  “Whatever that means,” Buddy said. “I am not into the quaint colloquialisms of your youth, Father.”

  “Youth!” Ben laughed. “Hell, I was a grown man when that expression came around. It means,” Wow, what a kick.’ ”

  “Sometimes I worry about you,” Buddy muttered.

  “Come on, kid-of-mine,” Ben said. “Let’s go make bang-bang with the bad guys.”

  Buddy was still muttering as he followed his father up the now-protected slope toward the minimansion, which was smoking from the rocket attack.