Fire in the Ashes Read online

  “Guerrilla warfare is a dirty business. Several of you men fought in Vietnam; you know firsthand what I'm talking about. For you inexperienced people, guerrilla warfare is this: hit hard and run like hell. For the enemy, guerrilla warfare is fear, confusion, disorganization, distrust, and terror. No great thundering land and sea-battles. No clearly defined battle lines. Guerrillas pop up anywhere, do their jobs, and get out. The enemy doesn't know where they come from or where they're going when they're through."

  A hand went up from the ranks of the new people. Ben nodded his acknowledgment and said, “Name, please?"

  “Steve Mailer. How much time will we have, General?"

  “Hopefully, six months. It's enough time, for you'll be mixed with combat-experienced men and women when the full unit is formed.” Ben smiled. “I read about your ... incident. You seem to be well-versed in firearms. Pistols, at least."

  “When I saw how our government was ... the direction it was taking, I began giving myself lessons in firearms.” For a moment the slender young man was flung back in time...

  * * * *

  The agents had entered his office and faced him, smiling and arrogant. “Where's the old broad?"

  Steve gritted his teeth. “Mrs. Rommey took the rest of the afternoon off. I trust that meets with your approval?"

  “Watch your smart mouth, schoolteacher. Turn around, face the wall, and spread your feet."

  Steve had smiled. “Man's rapidly dwindling individuality will someday end with an act of frightened, submissive obedience, groveling at the feet of near-cretins. I have no intention of being a party to that final fall of the curtain."

  “Huh?” one agent asked.

  “It means, fuck you!” Steve said. He raised the pistol and turned. The angle of his body had prevented the agents from seeing the .38. He fired twice into each man's chest. He fanned their bodies, taking their weapons, then ran out the rear door...

  * * * *

  “...you all right?” Steve caught the last of Ben's question.

  “Oh. Yes, sir. I was recalling the ... incident in my office."

  “First time to kill a man?” Ike asked.

  “Yes, Colonel."

  “It won't be the last,” Ike told him.

  A very blond-haired lady put up a hand. Ben realized then where he'd seen the woman. In Penthouse. He'd seen quite a lot of the lady in that spread. Although he knew her name, he said, “Name, please?"

  “Bellever. Dawn Bellever.” She couldn't believe the general was as old as people said he was. Except for his gray-streaked hair, he looked ... well, kind of boyish. “What's to prevent the president from sending in the Air Force and bombing us here in the park?"

  “The president is not our enemy,” Ben said. “President Addison is a good, fair man—even if he is a liberal..."

  That brought a roar of laughter from not only the new people but from Ben's seasoned Rebels.

  When the laughter had died down, Dawn asked, “I don't understand, sir. Are you saying that all the rumors we've been hearing; by we, I mean the press—about Vice President Lowry really being the man in power, are true?"

  “That is correct, Ms. Bellever."

  Ike and Cecil looked at Ben, then at each other. In all their years of association with Ben, neither had ever heard him use Ms. toward any lady.

  “Would you explain, sir?” she asked.

  “Gladly,” Ben smiled.

  “Oh, shit,” Ike muttered. He ignored the look he received from Ben.

  “Poor Jerre,” Cecil muttered.

  Ben looked at him. “What is this, a conspiracy?” he asked softly.

  Both men looked straight ahead, in strict military fashion.

  “We must maintain military decorum, General,” Cecil said with a straight face.

  “Comedians,” Ben muttered. He turned his gaze to Dawn. Very easy to look at. “Yes, we have proof that VP Lowry was really the man behind President Logan. That should not be difficult to believe—the man was a fucking idiot."

  Again, roars of laughter from the troops.

  Ben said, “After Logan's death at the hands of one of my Zero Squad members—Badger Harbin—Lowry, with the help of selected members of both houses of Congress, wormed his way into the second spot, and the second phase of Lowry's power play was complete. Unfortunately for the American public, we have a number of people in Congress who are interested only in looking out for themselves and the devil with the citizen. It is my intention to dispose of those so-called ‘public servants’ when the government is wrested from the hands of those now in power and restored to the people."

  “What do you mean, General?” Steve Mailer asked. “Dispose of them?"

  “I intend to try them for treason and shoot them,” Ben replied.

  “Jesus,” someone among the ranks of the new people muttered.

  A young man stepped forward and faced Ben. The young man—no more than a year or two out of his teens—had the look of a boy born into poverty and never finding his way out of it.

  “Jimmy Brady, sir. Tennessee. When do our trainin’ start?"

  “It's started right now, son."

  “No, sir—I mean the killin’ part."

  Ben smiled. “You want to explain that, Jimmy?"

  Jimmy spat a brown stream of tobacco juice on the ground. “Hartline's men come to my momma and daddy's house once they learned I was a part of the Rebel underground. They raped my momma and dragged her off. I still don't know whether she's alive or dead. My little sister, Lou Ann ... well, was only eleven. They raped her, too. She bled to death in the dirt where they throwed her down when they finished. They tortured my daddy and then hung him. That tell you what you want to know, General?"

  “Yes, Jimmy, it does. You a good shot, Jimmy?"

  “As good as any man in this camp, sir. I can knock the eye out of a squirrel at a hundred yards."

  Ben looked around and found a sergeant. “Sergeant, take this man and see what he can do with a sniper rifle."

  Questions were hurled back and forth for another hour. Ben finally called a halt to the session. “You people take it easy for the rest of the day—get something to eat. P.T. and field training begins tomorrow, at 0600. I'll see you then."

  Ben walked back to his bunker and opened a can of field rations. He ate slowly, his thoughts many. He thought once of Jerre, and again wondered why she had refused to accompany him east. She'd been moody and irritable of late.

  “Probably needs to meet someone her own age,” he muttered. He could not help but think of her as a kid, even though a decade had passed since their first meeting. “God knows, the kid hasn't had an easy time of it."

  He lay down on his bunk and closed his eyes. He was asleep in two minutes.

  * * * *

  “I kind of backed into this thing,” a young man was saying. A small group of the new arrivals were sitting in the shade, talking.

  “How do you back into being branded a traitor?” he was asked.

  “Chain of events,” the young man grinned. “I was going to school at the University of Virginia. This would have been my senior year. Pre-med. I was walking down the street one Saturday afternoon with some friends; we were all laughing and joking. But not disturbingly so; not vulgar or even boisterous. I bumped into this federal cop. That's all—I swear it. Just bumped into him. He grabbed me and tossed me against the building. Scared the hell out of me. Called me a punk ... called me all sorts of names. I just couldn't believe it. That's when it all came rushing to me. A police state. This is really a police state.

  “I looked at the cop and I said, ‘Hey, man—just fuck you!’ He hit me and I hit him back; I mean, I really knocked the snot out of him. Knocked him flat on his butt. Other cops came and arrested me. They ... uh ... well, they worked on me some in my cell. Stripped me and ... it got pretty embarrassing and perverted, if you know what I mean.

  “Well, that damned judge gave me five years for hitting that cop. Five years. I got a chance to make a break for i
t and took it. Hid out for several weeks until a group of young people found me and took me to Memphis. You all know the rest."

  The Rebels were a strange cross-section of Americana. College students and professors, lawyers, clerks, doctors, truck drivers, pipeliners, engineers, artists, musicians, writers—a hundred other professions that made up not just the field units of the Rebels, but people whose jobs were to stockpile and cache food, clothing, weapons, ammo, bandages, boots, socks, jackets, tents, blankets, sleeping bags, fuel, lanterns, rope and wire, tools, and the hundreds of other items essential for guerrilla warfare.

  And they were becoming more skilled in hiding their true occupations from the always-seeking eye of Big Brother; from Hartline's mercenaries, and from Cody's agents.

  It was infuriating to VP Lowry.

  * * * *

  “I told you to lean on the families of those suspected Rebel sympathizers,” Lowry said, his face ugly and mottled with rage.

  “And just as Alice Tyler predicted, it backfired,” Cody replied. “It just made the people turn against the government that much quicker. I stopped it."

  “I also told you to put a lid on the press."

  Cody's chuckle was totally void of mirth.

  Hartline sat in the VP's office. So far he had said nothing.

  Cody said, “This is America, Weston—not South America. We've had a free press in this country for several centuries; that isn't something that can be squelched overnight. I..."

  “I can censor the press,” Hartline said quietly. “You just give me the green light—and a written promise you'll back me up—and watch me go to work. I'll muzzle them so goddamned fast they won't know what hit them."

  “How?” Lowry asked.

  “Same way we did in ... ah ... certain countries in South America and Africa back in the mid-eighties."

  “Can you guarantee your plan will work?” the VP was interested, leaning forward, eyes shining. “Will there be torture?” A tiny dribble of spit oozed from one corner of his mouth.

  Cody did not notice the flow, but Hartline did, and thought: a lot of repressed emotions in the VP. A lot of dark, covered emotions. “Yes,” Hartline smiled. “I surely can."

  “Do it,” Lowry ordered. “And start here in Richmond. Film it, too. I wanna see it."

  While you beat your meat, Hartline thought. “Yes, sir. Right away."

  Six

  The warm days of late summer passed quickly for the Rebels in the Great Smoky Mountains. They were up with the sun and trained until dusk. They were all nut-brown from the sun and lean and hard from the training. Long, lung-straining uphill runs were twice a day; push-ups, sit-ups, duck-walking uphill until one's legs felt muscle would surely rip from bone. Brutal demanding physical training was a fact and a part of everyday life. They learned rappelling, demolitions, how to make homemade bombs from chemicals found in any farmer's supply outlet.

  They were taught disguise techniques, running the gamut from street beggar to businessman to apple Annie. Reflexes were honed down to a razor-sharp edge.

  In close combat training, Ike circumvented the unnecessary and went straight to the killing blows. A few of the new people were hurt during this, one was killed, but the training never stopped.

  The mountains exploded with the sounds of grenades and mortar and automatic weapons fire. In rifle training, both Ben and Ike were adamant on one point.

  “You've all got to become expert shots. In many instances, the enemy will be wearing flak vests, body armor; so you've got to learn to hit the leg, the arm, or the head. The leg or arm is good in one sense. Knock a leg out from under a man and he'll lie on the field and scream. That's demoralizing to his buddies and pretty soon someone will come to his aid. Then you can kill them."

  * * * *

  Hartline and his men, backed by FBI agents with warrants charging several newspeople with treason for refusing to cooperate with the congressional mandate to submit all copy before airing, entered the Richmond offices of NBC. This was to be the test network.

  Hartline, carrying an M-10 SMG, shoved the elderly guard away from the doors, knocking the man sprawling, and marched into the executive offices. He jerked one startled VP of programming to his feet and hit him in the mouth with a leather-gloved right fist. The man slammed against a chair and fell stunned to the carpet.

  “Here, now!” a news commentator ran into the room. “You can't do that."

  One of Hartline's men butt-stroked the newsman with the butt of his AK-47. The man's jaw popped like a firecracker. He was unconscious before he hit the carpet, blood pouring from the sudden gaps in his teeth.

  “Where is the bureau chief?” Hartline said. “Or whatever you people call the boss. Get him in here, pronto."

  A badly shaken young secretary stammered, “It isn't a him—it's a her. Ms. Olivier."

  “Well now,” Hartline smiled. “That's even better. Get her for me, will you, darling?"

  Before the secretary could turn, a voice, calm and controlled, spoke from the hall. “What is the meaning of this?"

  Hartline lifted his eyes, meeting the furious gaze of Sabra Olivier. He let his eyes drift over her, from eyes to ankles and back again. “You kind of a young cunt to be in charge of all this, aren't you, honey?” he asked.

  “Get out!” Sabra ordered.

  The words had just left her mouth when Hartline's hand popped against her jaw, staggering her. She stumbled against the open door, grabbing the doorknob for support.

  “Dear,” Hartline said, "you do not order me about. I will tell you what I want, then you see to it that my orders are carried out. Is that clear?"

  “You're Sam Hartline,” Sabra said, straightening up, meeting him nose to nose, no back-up in her. “Vice President Lowry's pet dog."

  Hartline never lost his cold smile. He faced the woman, again taking in her physical charms. Black hair, carefully streaked with gray; dark olive complexion, black eyes, now shimmering with anger; nice figure, long legs.

  Sabra turned to a man. “Call the police,” she told him.

  Hartline laughed at her. “Honey, we are the police."

  Sabra paled slightly.

  The man on the floor groaned, trying to sit up, one hand holding his broken and swelling jaw.

  Hartline said, “Get that pussy out of here. Toss him in the lobby and have that old goat call an ambulance to get him.” He looked at Ms. Olivier. “We can do this easy or hard, lady. It's all up to you."

  “What do you want?” she said.

  “For you to cooperate with your government, stop taking the Rebels’ side in this insurrection. And to submit all copy for government approval before airing."

  “No way,” Sabra said, and Hartline knew he was dealing with a lady that wasn't going to back up or down. Yet. “Then you want it hard,” he said, the double-meaning not lost on her, as he knew it would not be.

  Her dark eyes murdered the mercenary a dozen times in a split second. Her smile was as cold as his. “I never heard of anyone dying from it, Hartline."

  “Oh, I have, Sabra-baby. I have."

  * * * *

  The students at the University of Virginia, after hearing of the government takeover of the NBC offices and studios in Richmond, marched in protest at this blatant violation of the First Amendment. But this was not the 1960s; the newly federalized police had no restrictions on them as the police in the ‘60s had.

  They were met with snarling dogs and batons and live ammunition. The Dobermans and shepherds literally tore one marcher to bloody rags; three others died from slugs fired from M-16s; another died from severe head wounds from a beating. Dozens were arrested in the process, beaten bloody.

  VP Lowry ordered classes suspended at the university and the doors closed and locked. Only hours after the takeover at NBC, the faculty and many students refused to leave the building, barricading themselves in the dorms and classrooms. They were driven out by tear gas, and maced as they ran almost blindly from the buildings into the street. There,
they were manhandled and bodily thrown into vans to be transported to local police stations.

  Many people do not realize just how precious the Bill of Rights is ... until they no longer have it.

  * * * *

  “All right,” Sabra Olivier said to Hartline. “Stop it—stop your men. I'll cooperate."

  The moaning and screaming of her female employees had finally broken her spirit. As Hartline knew it would. And he had not touched Ms. Olivier. Yet.

  Hartline nodded to a man standing by the door to the office. Within seconds, the screaming and moaning had ceased.

  “You see,” Hartline smiled at her. “That wasn't so difficult, was it?"

  If looks could kill.

  Sabra watched, a curious look in her eyes as a Minicam was brought into her office, carried by an agent. She did not understand the smile on Hartline's lips.

  The mercenary pointed to a TV set located just behind her desk. “Turn that one on."

  She did as instructed. A naked man appeared on the screen. She recognized him as one of her anchormen and also knew this was live. “What is the meaning of this?” she demanded. “I said I'd cooperate."

  “This is just a little insurance, Sabra-darling,” Hartline replied. He picked up a phone on her desk and punched a button. “Do it,” he ordered. He looked at Sabra. “Watch, darling."

  She swung reluctant eyes toward the screen. A cattle prod touched the naked newsman on the thigh. His scream chilled her. He rolled on the floor as the prod touched his buttocks and his feet. His screaming was hideous.

  “Stop it!” Sabra shouted.

  The prod touched the man's genitals. He ground his teeth together with such force several broke off.

  “Goddamn you, Hartline!” Sabra rose from her chair. “Stop it!"

  “You'll cooperate with us?” he questioned.

  “I said I would!"

  “Anything I say?"

  "Yes!"

  “I have your son ready to perform for us. Would you like to see that?"

  “Goddamn you!"

  Hartline laughed. To the operator of the camera, “Start rolling it.” He unzipped his pants. “Come here, Sabra-baby. This one is for VP Lowry. And if you ever fail to obey an order; if you ever let any copy air without government approval ... this tape gets shown—in its entirety—on the six o'clock news."