Triumph in the Ashes Read online

  As their wagon bounced and rocked over the rutted road, weaving to miss the larger chunks of broken concrete and felled trees, the radio under the dash squawked.

  Ben grabbed it and clicked the send button. “Raines here.”

  A familiar voice came out of the speaker. “Ben, it’s Ike McGowen.”

  Ike McGowen, ex-SEAL and leader of Batt 2, Ben’s second in command and best friend, was leading Batt 2 on Ben’s left flank, and was traversing south through the Congo.

  “Go ahead, Ike.”

  “These roads over here on your eastern flank are giving the armor fits. The battle tanks and half-tracks are having a rough go of it. If it’s not the jungle, it’s rivers and plains. They’re lagging behind the column a good distance.”

  Ben glanced out the window at the torn and battered countryside. “Yeah, Ike, and from over here on the west coastal areas of the country, it doesn’t look like it’s going to get better any time soon.”

  “Do you want us to hold up the troops and wait for the armored units to catch up?”

  Ben stared out the window for a moment before answering. He knew it wasn’t safe to put his troops in jeopardy without armored support, but if he slowed the advance any more it would take them too long to get to the southern coast of Africa and finally engage Bottger’s force. Every day that they delayed Bottger was getting stronger, with more reinforcements coming in from his friends in the old US.

  “No, Ike. Keep ’em moving. But pass the word to the troops to keep their eyes and ears open for ambushes. We’ll just have to use the Apache gunships and PUFFs to make sure we don’t run into any surprises. We need to keep the heat on Bottger’s army as much as we can, partner. Otherwise, I wouldn’t want you to risk it.”

  “We’ll turn up the heat and ratchet it down tight, General, you can count on that. Ten-four, McGowen out.”

  “I always know I can count on your guys and gals, Ike. Raines out.”

  Cooper cast a worried glance at Ben. “Boss, our armor isn’t keeping up, either, and we’re hanging our butts out a mile here without it. What happens if we run into a superior force?”

  Ben smiled grimly. “Then we’ll kick the hell out of it the old-fashioned way, man-to-man combat.”

  His eyes lit up as he spoke, for in spite of all the high-tech weaponry he commanded Ben Raines was first and foremost a combat infantryman at heart. He felt that the current war would be won by the fighting force that had the most heart, the stronger will to win not by who had the most deadly weapons.

  Ben’s 501 Brigade made as much distance as they could southward through Gabon, encountering scattered resistance and a few short-lived firefights from roving gangs, but nothing of any note for almost a week.

  They crossed into the Congo and traveled a few miles inland from the Atlantic Ocean until they were almost at the southernmost city in the Congo.

  As their wagon crested a small hill Cooper called out, “Town ahead, Boss.”

  Beth held up her travel brochure. “I think that’s Pointe-Noire,” she said. “Just past that lies Angola, and part of Zaire.”

  “And the fly-bys report Pointe-Noire is deserted?” Ben asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Jersey said from the back seat.

  Ben double-clicked the mike. “Raines calling Michaels.”

  John Michaels, Ben’s XO, answered immediately. “Michaels here.”

  “John, we’re approaching Pointe-Noire. It’s about two klicks ahead. Fly-bys say it’s deserted, but I want the troops ready for anything. I don’t want to be surprised by an ambush, especially since we can’t count on our tanks to bail us out. Pass the word for the column to spread out laterally, going into the jungle on the inland side and along the beaches on the seaward side, to approach the town from both sides. My squad will take the middle and go in straight down the main street.”

  “Will do, Boss. Be careful.”

  “Watch your own ass, John.”

  “Will do, Ben.”

  Ben hooked the mic, then glanced right and left. The jungle, never far away, seemed to narrow down on their left as they approached Pointe-Noire. On their right was the ocean. The effect was almost as if they were entering a tunnel.

  “Like rats in a maze, only one way to go,” Ben muttered to himself.

  “What’s that, Boss?” Cooper asked.

  “Nothing, Coop, just thinking out loud.” He waved a hand back and forth. “See the way the natural terrain funnels us into the main part of town? It’d be a great place for an ambush, especially if the troops had time to really dig in and prepare for our coming.”

  Jersey leaned forward to look at the speedometer. It read fifteen miles per hour. “As slow as we’ve been going, they would have had plenty of time to get ready for us.”

  Cooper turned a pained expression on her. “Hey, backseat driver, if you think you can go any faster on these roads and still have kidneys left to pee with, be my guest.”

  Ben smiled. “Okay, children, enough bickering.” He took his M-14 Thunder Lizard from the clamps on the dash. “Get ready, gang. I have a feeling the dance is about to begin.”

  Jersey smiled. “I can’t wait to hear the music, Boss.”

  “Ready, Boss,” Cooper said.

  “Let’s do it, Coop.”

  The column entered the outskirts of Pointe-Noire.

  SEVEN

  As Cooper slowly drove the nine passenger wagon down the main street, Ben glanced over his shoulder at Corrie. “Corrie, keep in constant touch with the other squads, and have them stand by their radios. At the first sign of trouble, I want everyone else notified immediately.”

  “Yes, sir. You really think this is a trap, don’t you, Boss?”

  Ben nodded. “Yeah, I do.”

  “Why, General Ben?” Anna said. “I don’t see any evidence of gangs or punks hanging around. The place looks totally deserted.”

  Ben smiled. “Call it a gut feeling, Anna. I’m like an old firedog who can sense there’s a fire before he can smell the smoke.”

  He turned in his seat to look at Beth.

  “Beth, get out your guide book and tell me about Pointe-Noire. What can we expect to find?”

  She thumbed through the pages of her old copy of a Central Africa guide book. After a moment, she started to read.

  “The city started out as a center for the petroleum industry.” She stopped reading and looked up. “Hey, Boss, that may be why Bottger was so interested in this town. Plenty of gasoline and diesel fuel for his tanks and aircraft.”

  Ben nodded. “You’re probably right, Beth. Go on.”

  She continued. “The city is divided between the modern section near the water and the African section to the east, called the Cite, with the airport area to the south. Avenue de Gaulle is the main drag in the modern section, stretching for three kilometers eastward from the railway station through the center of town. The main attraction for tourists is the beautiful beach, which is only a fifteen minute walk from the Avenue de Gaulle. The lagoons around the coast abound in swordfish, barracuda, tarpon, tuna, and skate.”

  Ben turned back around and cradled his M14. “Well, I doubt we’ll have time to enjoy the fishing.”

  As in almost all coastal towns in that part of the Dark Continent, the outer buildings were small, one or two story shacks, some made of corrugated tin roofs with driftwood serving as walls. The floors were for the most part dirt, and there were few sanitary facilities, with rancid ditches serving as communal latrines.

  “God, how did the people stand living here?” Jersey asked, with a grimace. “Reminds me of parts of the reservation.”

  Cooper grunted. “Probably didn’t have a hell of a lot of choice in the matter.”

  Ben nodded. “Like most cities in the so-called third world, there wasn’t much of a middle-class. The residents here were either desperately poor, to the point of daily starvation, or fabulously wealthy.”

  He pointed several blocks ahead, to where multi-story condominiums and office building
s could be seen shimmering in the heat haze of the noonday sun, overlooking the beach much as the high rent district of Miami Beach did in the states.

  “The have-nots lived like this, while the haves lived in opulence in those dwellings up ahead.”

  “No wonder so much of the third world chose to support communism.”

  “It is easy to see why,” Ben said. “Kind’a like how the slaves in America in the eighteen hundreds turned so solidly to religion. Promise the poor folk a greater reward on down the line, and they’ll put up with almost anything in the here and now.”

  “Yeah, like the soldiers told my ancestors, ‘Move on over to those nice reservations and everything will be just grand’,” Jersey said.

  “The difference is, your ancestors fought a war and lost. These people never had a chance to fight for their rights,” said Beth.

  “That’s where you’re wrong, Beth. People never have to take what’s offered to them. They always have the option to leave the system if it doesn’t work for them, or to fight for what they think they deserve,” Ben said.

  “Like the way we’ve set up The SUSA,” Corrie added.

  “Right,” Ben said, nodding. “If you want freedom it’s there for the taking, but no one is going to give it to you free. You have to work to support it, and sometimes you have to fight to preserve it. As a famous science fiction writer once said, Tanstaafl.”

  Anna raised her eyebrows. “Tanstaafl? What is that?”

  “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch,” Ben said, smiling. “It always has a price, and if you’re not willing to pay that price, then you don’t deserve the freedom.”

  The group was silent for a few moments as the wagon cleared the first collection of hovels and shacks and began to make its way into nicer neighborhoods, where the houses on the sides of the street were larger and more lavish. There was still no sign of habitation.

  “Hold it, Coop,” Ben said, putting his hand on the driver’s arm.

  Cooper stiffened and slowed the big wagon to a crawl. “What is it, Boss? You see something?”

  “No. It’s what I don’t see that’s bothering me. Quick, Corrie, radio the others that this is definitely a trap, and to proceed with utmost caution.”

  Corrie didn’t bother to reply to Ben as she grabbed her shortwave and began to repeat his message to the other units in his brigade.

  “Come on, Boss.” Jersey said. “What gives? What are you basing that on?”

  “Look around you, gang. What has been present in every town we’ve been through?”

  After a moment, Cooper snapped his fingers. “Bodies! There aren’t any dead bodies lying around.”

  “Right,” Ben said. “No one can tell me half a million people were either killed or forced to leave suddenly, and someone took the time to bury all the corpses. No. Someone has cleaned up the area so we wouldn’t be suspicious, so we’d walk right into their trap.”

  Jersey said, “Hold on tight, people. I just saw a flash in the window of that house on our left. Looked like either a telescopic sight or binoculars reflecting the sun.”

  “Okay, team, activate your combat mikes and put on your helmets. It’s time to go to work,” Ben said.

  Combat mikes were small, two-way radios that consisted of an earpiece and small speaking tube that curved around just in front of the mouth. They enabled the team members to keep in contact and coordinate their attack. The helmets were bulletproof kevlar that would stop all but very large caliber rounds.

  Ben readied his Thunder Lizard. “Coop, when I give the word, cut the wheel toward that house and let’s take out the garbage . . . Now!”

  Cooper spun the wheel to the left and gunned the big engine. The wagon lurched forward as if it had been kicked in the butt and raced across a lawn toward a large, two story, Mediterranean-style house.

  After a few seconds flashes began to appear in the windows, and a stream of bullets crashed into the wagon, pinging off the armor-plated metal and making dull thumps off the bulletproof glass.

  When the wagon slowed as its huge tires spun on the grass of the lawn, Ben jerked his door open and dived out of the vehicle, to land rolling on the ground. As soon as the wagon passed he jumped for cover behind a large palm tree in the center of the yard.

  He popped the safety on his M-14, elevated the muzzle to point at the roof, and pulled the trigger. The rifle slammed back into his shoulder and chattered and roared. Bullets raked the roof with murderous fire, causing two men to scream and tumble to the ground to land spread-eagled on the lush, green lawn below.

  The wagon made a full turn and, with engine still racing, crashed up onto the porch of the house. Ben’s team members jumped from the vehicle and in perfect coordination spread out to assault the house.

  Corrie and Beth crouched low and ran around the porch to the left, ducking under windows as they ran, popping keys off frag grenades and throwing them into the windows as they passed.

  Jersey and Anna did the same thing, running to the right.

  Cooper stood in the middle, in front of the huge, main double doors of the house. He watched as the team all threw their grenades into the windows, counted to three, and then he cut loose with his SAW. Within seconds the doors to the house were blown to splinters. Cooper stepped to the side, his back against the front wall just as four frag grenades exploded almost in unison.

  Red hot shrapnel whistled as it spread throughout the first floor rooms of the house, making men scream in terror and then groan in pain as their bodies were shredded where they stood.

  When Ben saw the front door crumble under the assault from Coop’s SAW, he yelled into his mike, “Into the house, now!”

  He scrambled to his feet and sprinted toward the house in a low crouch.

  The barrel of a rifle came out of an upstairs window and opened fire on him, stitching holes in the lawn as the bullets made a path directly at Ben’s running form.

  A shell slammed into the right side of Ben’s helmet, the hammer blow kicking his head to the side and knocking him to the ground, semiconscious.

  As the team streamed through the front door Anna looked back over her shoulder and saw Ben sprawled on the ground.

  “Daddy Ben!” she screamed as she ran to squat next to him. With one hand she aimed her CAR at the window and sprayed it with fire while she grabbed his collar with the other and dragged Ben to the relative safety of the front porch.

  While Corrie and Beth cleared out the downstairs rooms, advancing through thick smoke and smoldering flames from the grenades, Jersey and Cooper ran up the stairs side by side, their weapons jerking and bucking as they fired ahead of them.

  At the head of the stairs Jersey pointed Cooper to the right, and she turned to the left. At the first doorway she paused to shuck an empty magazine onto the floor and then slammed another into her CAR.

  Without exposing herself she stuck the barrel into the doorway and sprayed the inside of the room, eliciting two quick screams followed by thumps as bodies hit the floor.

  Cooper dropped his SAW to the ground when it clicked on an empty chamber, and pulled two 9mm automatic pistols from holsters on both hips.

  He dived through the door, hitting the ground in a roll and coming up firing with both hands.

  Automatic rifle fire buzzed over his head, stitching holes in the wall behind him as he shot two gunmen in the chest at point blank range, the bullets punching small holes in the front of the men’s shirts and blowing out larger holes in their backs as the slugs exited. One of the men was blown backward through the window behind him, to fall screaming out of sight. The other was thrown back against a wall, where he slipped to the floor, leaving a blood trail down the expensive wallpaper.

  Within minutes it was over, and the first building was cleared of hostile forces. There were ten men dead, and two wounded severely but able to talk.

  The team assembled on the first floor, where Anna was standing next to a couch where she had laid Ben. Her back was to him, and she stood
with CAR at port arms, ready to kill to protect him should anyone survive the assault and come her way.

  Upstairs, Jersey spoke into her mike. “Jersey clear.”

  Cooper, as he popped a fresh magazine into his 9mm, said, “Cooper clear.”

  Beth and Corrie also checked in with their own ‘clear’ messages.

  Anna looked over her shoulder at Ben, who was shaking his head and trying to sit up on the couch. “Anna clear, but Ben’s hit.”

  The team rapidly assembled in the living room, the two prisoners made to lie face down in a corner with Cooper standing over them, nervously looking over at Ben to see how serious his wounds were.

  A large bruise was beginning to form on his right temple area, and a small trickle of blood ran down his cheek where the edge of the helmet had made a gouge.

  He looked around at his friends. “Good work, team.”

  Jersey placed a hand on his swollen face. “You okay, Boss?”

  Ben smiled. “Yeah, but I must be getting old and slow to get clipped like that.”

  Beth shook her head. “Sure, Boss. In the old days you could’ve outrun that bullet.”

  “Good thing it hit you in the head, General Ben,” Anna said in a low voice, her lips curved in a slight grin. “The hardest part of your body.”

  Ben stood up, swayed a moment, and had to grab the arm of the couch to steady himself. Then he said, “Corrie, get on the horn and tell the other squads what happened.”

  He turned to Cooper, “Coop, bring those two over here and we’ll have a quick field interrogation.”

  While Corrie was in the wagon, talking to the other squads, Ben faced their prisoners. They were both black men with ritual scars on their faces, indicating membership in some local tribe.

  “You men understand English?” Ben asked.

  The prisoners glanced at each other and then back at Ben and shook their heads, eyes downcast as they stared at the floor with defiant expressions.