Triumph in the Ashes Read online

  “Give it up, Jersey,” Corrie told her. “It’s hopeless. Hell, Cooper’s hopeless.”

  “I think he needs professional help,” Jersey said. “Of course, I’ve thought that for years.”

  Beth looked up from her reading of old travel brochures and smiled. “I know we’ve got a long way to go before we get there, but Point-Noire used to have a population of over half a million, and fly-bys say it’s almost deserted. What happened to the people?”

  “Bottger probably killed them all,” Cooper said.

  “Half a million of them?” Jersey questioned. “I don’t think so, Cooper.” Then she frowned. “Well . . . maybe you’re right, as much as I hate to admit it.”

  “He might have used the gas on them,” Ben said. “Or a form of experimental gas while his scientists were working all the bugs out of it—so to speak. We’ll know when we get there, I suppose.”

  “I don’t understand why he’s killing off all the people,” Jersey said.

  “Cuts down on the resistance problem, Jersey,” Ben told her.

  “And damn sure helps to keep the rest of the people in line.”

  “I can see where that certainly would,” Jersey replied.

  “Says here that there are over forty ethnic groups, each with their own language,” Beth said, reading from the travel brochure. She winked at Anna and added, “And Cooper, here’s something for you—watch out for the Gaboon viper.”

  “The what?” Cooper asked.

  “It’s a snake, Coop. The largest and heaviest viper in all of Africa, Grows to a length of about eight feet, and can weigh up to twenty-five pounds. It’s very deadly. Likes to crawl into sleeping bags at night and snuggle up to the sleeper.”

  “The son of a bitch wouldn’t snuggle up to me for very long,” Cooper said. “I’d be out of that sleeping bag before it could open its mouth.” He shuddered and made a terrible face. Cooper hated snakes of all types, sizes, and descriptions. “Jesus, I don’t even like to think about that.”

  “Relax, Cooper,” Beth told him. “This snake is found in central Africa, in the tropical rain forests.”

  “Of course, Coop,” Ben said, “there are all types of poisonous snakes here in Africa. For instance, the one you’d really better look out for is the spitting cobra.”

  Cooper shook his head and cut his eyes to Ben for a second. “I read all about those nasty things. They spit venom that can blind you.”

  “Always keep your sun shades on, Cooper,” Jersey told him.

  “Protect your eyes.”

  “If I do that, how the hell am I supposed to see at night?”

  “Carefully, Coop,” Jersey told him with a straight face. “Very carefully.”

  After a moment, Cooper slowly held up his right hand and gave Jersey the bird.

  Beth covered her face with the travel brochure to stifle her giggling as Jersey and the others burst out laughing. The laughter lasted only a few seconds. Corrie suddenly held up a hand as her headset began crackling with transmissions.

  “Scouts report the town just up ahead is populated. Lots of sick and dying. No apparent gunshot wounds. The interpreter is trying to make some sense of it all now.”

  “How many people?” Ben questioned.

  “Several thousand. They’re not unruly. Just sitting and waiting to die. The Scouts’ words, Boss.”

  “Are the Scouts in protective gear?”

  “Gas masks only.”

  ‘‘Halt the column, Ben,” Doctor Chase’s voice popped over a speaker. “If the Scouts haven’t dropped dead or started showing some signs of sickness in thirty minutes, we’ll proceed into the town . . . the advance party of medical people wearing full protective gear.”

  “You’re the boss on this, Lamar,” Ben replied. “It’s your call from here on in.” Ben then gave orders to halt the column.

  “Some of Bottger’s gas?” Cooper questioned.

  “Probably,” Ben said. “But it might be starvation or some natural cause. It’s all up to Chase’s people now. Corrie, tell the troops to unass their vehicles and stretch. Double the guards.”

  “Now we wait,” Anna said.

  Ben nodded his head, “Now we wait.”

  FIVE

  Chase’s bio/med team entered the town and got their equipment ready. Several of them took the Scouts into their mobile lab to check them out while the others began inspecting the town and the residents, checking the air and the water and the soil.

  It did not take the bio/med team long to determine that the air was fine to breathe but the water had more germs in it than a city garbage dump. They were nature’s bugs, not man-made. The people were not contagious, and posed no threat to the Rebels.

  The bio/med team gave the column the OK to enter the town.

  “Bottger’s gas cause this?” Ben asked, stepping out of his vehicle and looking around.

  “We’re running analysis now, General. But if I had to make a guess I’d say yes.”

  “What has the interpreter been able to find out?”

  “Just that one day everybody felt fine, and the next people were getting sick and dying all around them. Whatever it was, it touched everyone with violent nausea, uncontrollable diarrhea, and high fever . . . breathing became very difficult and then death came to most. Those who survived are very weak, but we think they’re going to make it.”

  “Bottger’s crap,” Ben said.

  “Probably.”

  “What can you do for the people?”

  “Well, actually very little, sir. Give those who are dying a shot to ease them on their way out. That’s about it.”

  “Do it,” Doctor Chase said, walking up and catching the last part of the report.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Chase turned to face Ben, then grimaced and said, “Why should I tell you, Raines? You’d just turn around and tell Corrie. I might as well start giving all orders to her from the outset. Besides, she’s a lot easier on the eyes than you are.” He turned to face Corrie. “You know the drill, dear—no drinking of the water, no petting of animals, no fraternization with the locals. See that those orders are passed up and down the line promptly, please.”

  “Certainly, sir.”

  Chase smiled. “It’s so nice to see that someone in this team knows something about military courtesy.” He turned and strolled off before Ben could retort, chuckling as he walked.

  “Somebody must have put thumbtacks in the old goat’s oatmeal this morning,” Ben said. “Feisty old bastard.”

  Lamar Chase was definitely too old for the field . . . Ben knew it, and Lamar knew it. But he was in excellent health and showed no signs of slowing down. As long as he could keep up, he would stay in the field. Like Ben, when it came time for him to leave the grinding world of combat campaigns, he would know, and would do so voluntarily. He would not have to be told. Both Ben and Chase knew that day was coming for them, but neither of them liked to dwell much on it.

  “Let’s see what we’ve got in this town,” Ben said. “As if we didn’t know,” he added.

  Death, suffering and hopelessness, Beth wrote in her journal as the team walked along. And: Nearly all of Africa is the same. No matter where we go we see the same thing. Bruno Bottger is not responsible for everything that has happened to these poor people, but he is certainly to blame for most of it. He is an evil, immoral man, probably insane, who must be destroyed . . . no matter the cost.

  She carefully noted the name of the town, dated the page, then closed the journal and tucked it away in her rucksack and buckled the flap.

  Ben was also keeping a journal, and it was surprisingly very similar in content to the one Beth was keeping.

  The other members of the team felt the same way as Beth and Ben about Bottger, as did the entire Rebel army. They had all been pursuing the rotten bastard for too long—over thousands of miles and two continents.

  It was time to bring it to an end.

  “Gas masks on,” Ben ordered. “The smell is going to be tough
.”

  That order did not have to be repeated, for the odor was very foul.

  “Corrie,” Ben said after only a few minutes of walking through the human suffering, “get the engineers up here with their equipment. We have to get these bodies in the ground. Many of the dead are rotting. We’ve got to get these dead buried, and do it damn quick.”

  No matter where the Rebels looked there were rotting, maggot-covered bodies. It wasn’t a matter of the living not caring: the survivors were just too weak to bury their dead. They just did not have the strength.

  Wild dogs and hyenas had made their way into the town to join the birds of prey in dining on what appeared to be hundreds of bodies. There was plenty of dead and rotting flesh to satisfy even the most indiscriminate of appetites, and hyenas and vultures were neither picky nor dainty eaters.

  The birds of prey did not seem to mind the Rebels walking among them as they ripped and tore off strips and hunks of flesh. The hyenas were another story: the savage animals with their bone-crunching jaws presented a clear menace.

  “Try to chase them off,” Ben ordered. “They’re only doing what they were put on earth to do, as disgusting as it is. If they won’t back off, shoot them.”

  After a dozen of the hyenas were shot, the rest began backing away, reluctantly, from the dead, long enough for the Rebels to toss the bodies into the beds of trucks. If the bodies didn’t fall apart when they were picked up. Then it got really interesting for the Rebels—interesting being a totally inadequate word.

  “Jesus Christ, Ben,” the XO, John Michaels, said after a few moments. “We came over here to fight, not to be subjected to this.”

  “I know, John. I know. I’m not real thrilled about it either, I assure you.”

  “Then why are we doing it, Ben? We sure as hell don’t have to.”

  “Because there is no one else to do it, John. If there were no living watching us—many of them relatives of the dead, I’m sure—I’d have the bodies scraped up into a pile and use the town for a funeral pyre.”

  The XO shook his mask-covered head. “Sorry, Ben. I’m just blowing off steam.”

  “I know you are, John. And I understand your frustration. I feel the same way. Believe me, I do.”

  “What a fucking, thankless, miserable job for these young men and women,” John replied, his eyes on the Rebels struggling with the rotting bodies.

  “It wasn’t all that thrilling an experience for the dead, either, John. Especially when you take into account they didn’t know why it was happening to them . . . or even what was happening to them. But as long as my Rebels are handling the dead, their officers are going to stay with them and witness all the horror of it. I want us all to understand what manner of men we’re fighting.”

  “I believe they will all know that, Ben, to the fullest extent.”

  “So they shall, John. I want them to know the stink and the rot and the total evil of Bottger and his dream, so when they move against that son of a bitch and his men there will be damn little pity or compassion shown.”

  “I think we can both be sure of that, Ben.” John looked into Ben’s eyes and shuddered inwardly. He felt as though he were gazing through the fiery, smoky gates and into Hell itself.

  This last leg of the campaign is going to be a brutal, bloody bastard, the XO thought. There won’t be a survivor left from the other side—not unless they give it up right now and beg for mercy. John had been with Ben for a long time, and he had witnessed firsthand how lowdown, mad dog mean Ben could be when he got pissed—and right now he was plenty pissed.

  SIX

  After the last of the bodies had been buried, and the few remaining survivors cared for as well as could be, Ben ordered his force out of the small town and southward once again.

  Ben was somewhat apprehensive about traveling in Gabon. Most of the country was densely forested, and teeming with all manner of wildlife. However, Ben’s main concern was the roads, which were continually muddy and in poor repair throughout the interior.

  The natives were another concern, as the initial settlers of Gabon—the Pygmies—were still present and reported to be very savage, with no love for any of the white race.

  A later group to arrive, the Bantu Fang, were also reported to be hostile to whites, and legend had it that some still practiced the ancient art of cannibalism.

  Due to reported heavy concentration of natives friendly to Bottger, Ben and his column bypassed Libreville and went inland a bit as they crossed the low-lying mountains toward the Gabon-Congo border.

  The farther south Ben traveled the more sour his mood became. Gone was his former jocularity. He was grimmer, more determined than ever to catch the evil Nazi after seeing what he had done to the people of the town. In all Ben’s years of fighting against some of the worst trash on the planet, he had never seen anything like what he had witnessed the last few weeks.

  John Michaels had picked up on his new mood earlier, and now his personal team began to notice the change in him. As their wagon moved down the rutted and partially destroyed road, Cooper glanced sideways at Ben, then into the rearview mirror to catch Jersey’s eye.

  Jersey always rode directly behind Ben. As she looked at him in the mirror, Cooper inclined his head in Ben’s direction and gave a tiny shrug. She stared at the back of Ben’s head for a moment, then leaned forward, putting her arms on the back of the seat and resting her chin on her arms.

  “Boss?”

  Ben glanced at her, then back up the road. “Yes, Jersey?”

  “You were saying the other day you thought Bottger was going to bug out to South America.”

  “Yeah.”

  “If he’s going to leave, what’s he waiting for? He’s obviously planted plenty of gangs in our path to the south, and he’s brought in mercs from all over the world to harass and plague us, so why doesn’t he just jump a plane and take off?”

  Ben didn’t answer at first. He made himself a cigarette and lighted it, thinking about her question. After a few moments, he said, “I don’t really know, Jersey. Obviously that would be the smart thing to do, and Bottger, as evil as he is, is certainly very intelligent.”

  Cooper looked at Ben. “You think maybe he’s already flown the coop, Boss?”

  Ben shook his head. “I don’t think so, Coop. I have this gut feeling he’s still in the background, somewhere up ahead of us—like a spider at the center of its web, pulling on the strands to trap its victims—waiting to see how his plans play out.”

  Ben took a final puff of his cigarette and snubbed it out. “I believe Bottger is vain enough and megalomaniacal enough to want to be here to see us destroyed . . . crushed under the weight of his thousands of gangs and mercs. I think he’ll wait until the last minute to leave, until he’s absolutely convinced he has no chance of winning this little war, before he hightails it out of Africa.”

  Anna joined in the conversation. “General Ben, if Bottger is as smart as you say, why would he continue to hold to an obsolete doctrine like that of the Nazis?”

  Ben smiled ruefully. Anna had grown up in Europe, decades after the Nazis had been defeated in the second World War. The only knowledge she had of Hitler’s failed Third Reich was what she had read in old textbooks, written by liberals who gave scant credit for the benefits of early Nazi rule.

  “Anna, don’t believe all that trash you read in those old books. The Nazi form of government is incredibly efficient, as are all dictatorships. When Hitler first came to power in the old Germany the country was in ruins, physically and economically. His first project, after consolidating his power politically and rendering his political enemies impotent, was to have the state take over all business and industry. After he got those back on their feet, using slave labor, he undertook to shore up the old German money, which had become so inflated it took a wheelbarrow full to buy a loaf of bread, when bread was available, which wasn’t too often.”

  Anna’s forehead wrinkled. “Then you’re saying the Nazi form of governmen
t is good?”

  Ben turned in his seat to look at his adopted daughter, “No, Baby. What I’m saying is that a dictatorship, with everything under the control of the central government, is very efficient. Things work, products are produced, and the monetary system is stable. But other, more important things are lost, like personal freedom and individual rights. If the dictator is personable and charismatic, like Hitler was at first, the people hardly notice the erosion of their rights . . . especially if another group is made to take most of the abuse like the Jews were in Germany.”

  “But, from what I’ve read Hitler was a crazy man.”

  Ben nodded. “Crazy like a fox, dear. At first, his ideas took Germany from being a third rate country to being the most powerful in the world. He took a tiny country, about the size of New England in the old United States, and positioned it to take over almost half the world, and he did all this in a matter of six or eight years. If his mental illness and almost total obsession with eradicating the Jews hadn’t crippled his decision-making power, he might very well have pulled it all off.”

  Anna shook her head. “From what you say, General Ben, the Nazi form of government sounds a whole lot like socialism, or communism.”

  Ben smiled. “I’m proud of you, Anna. You cut right through the bullshit in all that liberal propaganda in those old textbooks to see the truth. The only real difference in socialism and Naziism is that the communists profess they are doing it for your own good when they take away your rights and force you to work for the state. The Nazis were more truthful, and said they were doing it for the good of the state.” He shrugged. “The end result was the same . . . no individual rights or freedoms were allowed.”

  Beth chimed in. “So you think Bottger is in this for personal power?”

  Ben frowned. “I don’t know, Beth. It could be the man sincerely believes the best way out of this mess the world has gotten itself into lies in the Nazi form of government. I don’t want to make the same mistake the liberals do, of branding everyone who doesn’t think like I do a charlatan. Bottger may believe his way is the best, and I’m perfectly willing to let him do whatever his country wants him to do. The problem is, he’s trying to force his way on the rest of the world, and that I will not allow, at least not without a fight.”