Slaughter in the Ashes Read online

  “Where did you get that?” Ben asked.

  “I stole it,” the young woman said matter-of-factly. “I’m going to knock a hole in that line across the street.”

  “Are you now?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “All by yourself?”

  Anna flashed a grin. “I might require some small amount of help, thank you. Are you volunteering, General Ben?”

  “Oh, why not?” Ben replied, as the rest of his team chuckled.

  The Mark 19-3 grenade launcher, affectionately known as a Big Thumper, was belt fed and could spit out approximately 35 to 40 40mm grenades a minute, with a range of about 1750 feet and with a killing radius of about 16 feet. The cases the Rebels had lugged over for Anna contained loaded belts of M383 High Explosive grenades.

  Beth crawled over and positioned herself on the left side of the Big Thumper, and locked a belt into place. Ben backed off a few feet to avoid getting hit by the ejected casings and waited.

  “Everybody ready?” Anna asked.

  “Let it bang,” Ben said, an amused look on his face. The kid was certainly inventive, he thought, and didn’t mind at all taking the initiative.

  Anna sure as hell let it bang. She thumbed the trigger, working the muzzle left to right, and began clearing half a block of real estate.

  “Open fire!” Ben shouted, and all along the line, Rebels opened up with weapons on full auto.

  “Jesus friggin’ Christ!” someone yelled from across the street, the shout filled with panic, as every Rebel within firing distance opened up.

  Through the hard falling rain, the Rebels could see indistinct shapes—those that were still able to move—running and crawling away from the lethal hail of grenades and bullets that seemed to be coming at them as fast as the rain was falling.

  “Smoke!” Ben yelled. Then, to Corrie, “Both ends move out and flank as soon as the smoke is thick enough. This weather will keep it close to the ground.”

  The Rebels started hurling smoke grenades. A few minutes later, the punks along Battery Place were on the run, having no stomach to fight angry Rebels close up and personal. The Rebels to the east used the same tactics and within minutes everything south of a line stretching from First Place over to Bowling Green Park and then to the Vietnam Veterans Plaza was in Rebel hands, the punks’ first line of defense was broken, and the punks were running for their lives.

  “No pursuit!” Ben told Corrie, and she quickly radioed the message. “This could be a planned move on their part. Although I doubt it. We’ll hold what we’ve got and wait.”

  Two hours later, the rain had stopped coming down in sheets; now it was a slow and steady fall. Scouts had moved forward and found no trace of the creeps or the punks; they had pulled out when the incoming got hot.

  Ben gave the order and the Rebels rose from their positions and slowly began their advance. They encountered no resistance in their cautious move forward. Fifty yards, a hundred yards; Ben and his team were moving straight up Broadway, pausing and then climbing over the piles of rubble and using the many burned-out and mangled hulks of automobiles for cover.

  A block south of Exchange Place the punks made their second stand of that day, and this time they held. From West Thames Street on the Hudson River side over to Old Slip to the east, the gangs of punks held firm and stopped the Rebel advance cold . . . and wet.

  Ben had ordered in as many snipers as the other battalions could spare just for moments such as this. He told Corrie to get on the horn and get the long-distance shooters into place and start taking out punks.

  Artillery was a terrifying experience for the Grunt; the sniper surely came in a very close second. One second you were whispering to a buddy and, depending on the type of weapon the sniper was using, the next second your buddy’s head was splattered all over you and you were wiping off blood and brains. Heavy artillery was demoralizing; a mine field was terrifying; a sniper could cause brave men to shit their pants. And Rebel snipers were the best in the world.

  One of Dale Jones’ gang members stuck his head out of cover to take a peep and a 7.62 match ammo round, fired from 800 yards away, took him in the throat and sprayed the punk crouched next to him with blood. A punk from Dave Holton’s gang stuck his head out from behind a pile of rubble and a sniper using a specially built .50-caliber rifle blew half his head off from a hidden position almost 2500 yards away. The punk was dead and cooling before the sound of the rifle’s report reached those punks who had shared the pile of rubble with him.

  For two days prior to the assault, Ben had asked for the punks’ surrender by voice and by leaflets dropped from planes. He had warned them repeatedly that once the assault began, surrender would not be an option. The punks who didn’t believe that did not know Ben Raines very well. Ben would give almost anybody a second chance, providing they took his initial offer to surrender. If he had to chase them all over North America before they decided that surrender just might be a good idea, they suddenly found the offer withdrawn. It had been oftentimes repeated by the press—back when there was a press—that when it came to war, Ben Raines was not a nice person.

  The punks had plenty of mortars and rounds for the tubes, but they were useless against snipers, for the long-distance shooters were unseen; sudden death coming out of the gray falling rain followed only the crack of a rifle heavily muffled by the lousy weather.

  The Rebels sat behind piles of rubble, behind what was left of the walls of burned-out and blown-up buildings, behind long-rusted hulks of trucks and automobiles, and sipped water, ate field rations, smoked cigarettes or chewed gun and let the snipers work.

  And as had been the case in wars since the beginning of time, the Rebels found puppy dogs with whom they shared their rations and dried off with a spare shirt or towel, then tucked inside their field jackets to make pets out of them. Ben had long tried to discourage that practice, but without much enthusiasm on his part or success in the field. Soldiers will do what soldiers will do. Besides, Ben loved dogs.

  As he watched a Rebel—veteran of a hundred countless battles on several continents—feed and pet a small dog he’d found among the ruins, he thought of his own beloved Huskies, the dogs that Ray Brown had brutally killed back at Base Camp One. Ben stared through the silver falling rain and once more silently vowed that he and he alone would deal with Ray Brown.

  Ben looked forward to beating the man to death with his fists.

  “Punks beefing up their lines,” Corrie said, breaking into Ben’s dark thoughts.

  “We have all the time in the world,” Ben replied. “Let the snipers have fun.”

  For two hours, the Rebels rested and stayed out of the rain under whatever cover they could find and let the snipers—some of them shooting from almost three quarters of a mile away—pick their targets and bring down their quarry.

  “They’re pulling back,” Corrie said. “They’ve had enough of this long-range shooting.”

  “How many kills?” Ben asked.

  “Sixty-one confirmed. ’Bout a dozen unconfirmed.”

  “Let’s move out.”

  Rebels moved north, pausing only briefly to look at the dead punks sprawled in the dirt and rubble and rain. Crews moved in right behind the main body, collecting weapons and ammunition, searching the bodies for maps of the punks’ location, scraps of paper that might contain strength numbers, anything that could aid them in this fight. The bodies were then carried to a predesignated area for disposal. Usually they were buried, but in Manhattan they would be burned.

  The Rebels crossed over into what was left of the financial district, pulling up and digging in as best they could on the south side of Wall Street.

  The Rebels were surrounded by devastation; the few tall buildings remaining had huge holes knocked in them from Rebel artillery of a few years past. Some of the piles of rubble on the sidewalks and in the streets were higher than the Rebels’ heads, and behind each pile might be an ambush waiting to be sprung.

  Ben halted th
e slow advance when the ruins of the World Trade Center came into view. “I’m guessing that in the bowels of those buildings is where we’ll find the first of our creepies, gang. Send scouts up to take the nose test.”

  Scouts advanced slowly toward the ruins, expecting an ambush from the punks. None came.

  “Another sign that we’ve entered creepie territory,” Ben said.

  “Reports from our left and right flanks indicate the punks split up just south of our present location,” Corrie said, after listening to her headset for a moment. “They avoided this area and cut east and west, then cut north two blocks from here.”

  “That confirms it,” Ben replied.

  “Scouts report a strong odor coming from the ruins,” Corrie added a moment later. “Rubble had been moved and entranceways cleared.”

  “Oh, boy!” Jersey muttered, grimacing. “Nightmare time.”

  For once Cooper didn’t have a smart-assed reply. To a person, the Rebels hated fighting the creepies. The smell alone was enough to cause a goat to puke.

  “We halt our advance right here, people,” Ben said, surprising his team. “Contact Base Camp One and have an engineer battalion gear up. I want them up here ASAP. Tell them to bring all the three-inch pipe and hose they’ve got. And all the heavy duty pumps.

  “Pumps?” Corrie questioned.

  “Pumps,” Ben repeated. “We know the punks and the creeps have gas masks, so we can’t use gas to drive them out. We’ve got the Hudson on one side and the East River on the other. Plenty of water.” He laughed. “We’re going to give the creepies a bath!”

  SEVEN

  “I don’t think there’s enough water in both rivers to fill up all the tunnels under this city,” Ike radioed to Ben.

  “Oh, I don’t intend to fill them up, Ike. Just put about a foot or so in the tunnels.”

  “What good is that going to do?”

  “Then we pump in a mixture of oil and gas,” Ben replied with a slight smile.

  “Ahhh . . .” Ike said. “Then you toss in a match, so to speak.”

  “Something like that.”

  It was the third day after the landing of the Rebels in Battery Park and the big transports had brought in the engineers and equipment from Base Camp One. The pumps were howling, as they poured hundreds of thousands of gallons of river water into the labyrinth of tunnels under the ravished city.

  Rebels had moved into positions several blocks north of the World Trade Center, stretching out in a line from the Hudson River over to the East River. Those troops to the east were just north of the South Street Seaport Historical District . . . or at least what was left of it.

  Ben had ordered a very volatile mix of oil, gas, and other highly flammable chemicals. The mixture was stacked in 55-gallon drums, ready to be pumped into the tunnels.

  Ben was under no illusions about this operation; there was no way he could pump water and mix into every tunnel that lay under Manhattan—that would take years. But this would give the Rebels a firmer hold on the ruins of the Big Apple and get rid of a lot of creeps without endangering Rebel lives.

  “Engineers say it’s getting sloppy down there, boss,” Corrie reported, pointing downward.

  “All right. That’s enough river water. Let’s give them the mix.”

  By three o’clock that afternoon, the 55-gallon drums were empty. “Everybody back away,” Ben ordered. “I don’t really know what this stuff is going to do.”

  “You going to let the fumes dissipate, general?” an engineer asked.

  “No.”

  “Oh, shit!” the engineer muttered.

  “When everybody is clear, drop the charges and get the hell gone,” Ben ordered.

  “Don’t you worry about that, sir,” the officer in charge of the engineers said.

  Ben grinned at him. “Think it’s going to go boom?”

  “I certainly do, sir.”

  Ben and his people backed up.

  Cooper asked, “Exactly, boss, how do we know the stuff isn’t going to blow our boots off?”

  “We don’t,” Ben replied. “So I would advise you to get off that old manhole cover.” Ben pointed. “As you can see, the creeps have broken the welds we did a few years back.”

  Jersey pulled Cooper off the manhole cover and vacated the area.

  “Hit the charges,” Ben ordered.

  For about a ten-block area, there was first a low rumbling, then the ground roared and shook as the fumes ignited. Manhole covers went flying several hundred feet into the air. Several buildings collapsed as the earth opened up and swallowed them. Flames shot out of the street.

  “Son-of-a-bitch!” the normally quiet Beth muttered.

  When the grumbling and rumbling had ceased under the Rebels’ boots, thick smoke began pouring out, along with the stench of burning human flesh.

  “I think,” Ben said, “we can forget about any creeps in this area of the city.”

  Just a few blocks north, the punks who waited for the Rebels looked at each other and shook their heads, letting their eyes follow the thick trail of dirty smoke that was slowly gathering over that part of the city.

  “Ben Raines is sure living up to his reputation,” Spooky Allen said.

  “I wonder if it’s too late to surrender?” another gang member questioned.

  “You want to try it and find out?” Spooky asked.

  The gang member shook his head.

  “I didn’t think so.”

  “Now what?” Fos Payne asked.

  “I’m pullin’ my people back.”

  “We got to stop and fight somewhere,” Dave said.

  “Oh, we will,” Spooky assured them. “But now ain’t the time or place. If this is gonna be my last go-’round with Raines, I want to make it a good one.”

  “Let’s get with Ray Brown,” another said. “Someone said he had a plan.”

  Spooky thought about that, then slowly shook his head. “All right. Let’s get the boys and girls out of here. This place is gonna be crawling with Rebels in a minute.”

  “Thing that bothers me,” one of Dale Jones’s lieutenants said, “is this—how come it has to be our last battle with Raines? Whose idea was that, anyways?”

  The leaders and co-leaders of a dozen gangs lay behind cover and looked at each other. Finally, a member of Robbie Ford’s gang said, “I think it was someone . . . no, it was Ray Brown. I remember now.”

  “That figures,” someone else said. “Ray’s the one Ben Raines has really got a hard-on for.”

  “Why you askin?’ You thinkin’ ’bout surrendrin’?”

  “I might be. Beats dyin’, don’t it?”

  “And once we surrender, then what?” Many of the others had drifted away, including Spooky, leaving only a handful of gang leaders and members.

  “Raines ain’t gonna shoot us down in cold blood,” a gang members said. “Lots of folks think the Rebels do that, but we all know different. If we were to walk out with our hands raised, we’d live. We ain’t had no NBA testin’ done on us—”

  “DNA,” someone corrected.

  “Whatever. Most of us hidin’ out in this pile of rocks ain’t even been fingerprinted or had our pitcher took. Look, people, I ain’t real anxious to die. I figure I could live straight if I tried. An’ I’d kinda like to try.”

  “Me too. So let’s pass the word around, real quiet-like, you know? We don’t want to get shot by our own people for talkin’ ’bout this. And some of them would do it, too.”

  “Damn sure would. Most of them is known to the Rebels; they ain’t got shit to lose, one way or the other.”

  “Pass the word. We’ll talk more tomorrow.”

  * * *

  The morning after the underground explosions, the Rebels moved north without resistance for several blocks. They now stretched out, running west to east, from the Washington Market Park over to what was left of the NYC Police Headquarters building.

  Not one shot was fired from either side that morning.

&n
bsp; “They can’t keep moving back forever,” Cooper remarked during a rest break. Even though the Rebels had advanced several blocks, it was still very slow and nerve-wracking work: advance a few feet, hunker down behind cover and wait for a few moments, then dart forward a few more feet, all the time expecting a sniper’s bullet to come screaming at them. “They have to stand and fight somewhere, sometime.”

  The sky was a clear cloudless blue and the temperature warm.

  “Something weird is going on,” Jersey replied. She was sharing the same small bit of cover with Cooper. Although the two argued and bickered and groused and bitched and picked at each other, they were as close as brother and sister. Scratch one and both felt it.

  “Something weird is always going on in your head, Jersey. You want to explain what it is this time?”

  “Almost funny, Coop. Ha. How the hell do I know what it is? I just think something weird is going to happen, that’s all.”

  “Hey, Corrie!” Coop called. “You hear anything from the scouts?”

  “Nothing,” she returned the call. “They’re back and said it’s deserted for two blocks ahead.”

  “Let’s go,” Ben said, rising to his knees. “One more block and then we knock off for lunch.”

  “General Ben!” Anna said, peering through binoculars. “Someone is waving a white flag about two, three blocks ahead.”

  Beth looked up from an old map of the city. “That would be Foley Street, I think.”

  “I’m getting reports from all units,” Corrie said. “White flags are showing up all over the place. Somebody over west of us is waving an old pair of longjohns. They need washing,” she added drily.

  Beth was handling the portable CB scanner and she shook her head. “Nothing coming over any of the forty channels.”

  “They might be afraid to broadcast,” Ben said. “Many of the gang leaders know we’ll hang them on the spot for past crimes. Those are the ones who have nothing to lose and will fight to the death.”

  “Scouts are out,” Corrie said.

  “Tell them to stay a full block away from the flag-wavers,” Ben ordered. “This could be a trap.”