Battle in the Ashes Read online

  Soon the others filed out, until Ben was sitting alone at the scarred old once-lovely dinner table in the huge dining room of the big ranch house. Cooper walked over and refilled Ben’s coffee cup. Ben thanked him and rubbed a palm over the wood. “A lot of good times were had around this table,” he said aloud, speaking to no one in particular. “Families gathered for anniversaries, birthdays, family reunions, Christmas, Thanksgiving. From the old pictures we found scattered about, several generations have sat around this table. Years of meals were enjoyed here. Families were planned, futures all mapped out, engagement parties held here, wedding gifts were shown here and baby shower presents piled high. Today, I sat here and planned the deaths of hundreds, perhaps thousands of men. And tomorrow, the home will be burned to the ground. Is it the end of one era and the beginning of another, or just the end, period?”

  “You always get this way before a campaign, General,” Beth said. “Go have a drink or two.”

  Ben’s eyes widened, for Beth was the quiet one. Then he started laughing, for what she had said was true. He quickly sobered when Corrie said, “Dr. Chase is here, General.”

  “Chase! Hell, he’s supposed to be in the neutral zone in Louisiana, setting up hospitals for the wounded.”

  “He’s pulling up right now. He flew into that strip on the Llano and had a driver bring him here.”

  “Goddamned old goat. Doesn’t he realize this whole area is only hours away from being a free fire zone?”

  “Oh, shut up, Raines,” Dr. Chase said, stomping into the room. “You don’t have enough medical people here to handle the job and you know it. You’re going to have badly wounded and you know that too. So stop bitching about it and pour me a cup of coffee.”

  Cooper was terrified of the old doctor. Jersey just sat and stared at him. If she was afraid of anything, no one knew what it was.

  “You, girl,” Chase said, looking at her. “Stop giving me the evil eye. I’ve known this middle-aged Don Quixote a lot longer than you.”

  “So what does that make you?” Jersey popped back. “Sancho Panza?”

  Lamar Chase blinked and Ben laughed at the expression on his face. “So let’s hear your comeback to that, Lamar.”

  “Impudent child,” Chase grumbled, and sat down. He glanced over at Jersey, smiling at him. “You really read Cervantes?”

  “Sure.”

  “I would have thought your tastes would be more in line with Cosmopolitan.”

  Jersey blinked. “What the hell is that?”

  SEVEN

  After chatting for a few minutes, with Lamar bringing Ben up to date on conditions in the neutral zone, he asked, “Where do you want my MASH units, Ben?”

  “I’ve got dust-offs and fully set-up medivac planes spotted around the area north of both battle sites. Put your field hospitals here at Junction and at Caldwell. Landing strips at both places. I’ve made agreements with Hoffman to honor his field hospitals and he has agreed to honor ours.”

  “Do you think he will?”

  “For awhile. Until the battles start turning sour on him. And they will.”

  “You are a supremely confident man, Ben. Considering all that we’re up against.”

  “It’s been written that the right cause always wins, Lamar.”

  “Oh, yes. God on our side and all that,” the doctor said. “I just hope somebody remembered to tell Him about it.”

  “Didn’t Joan Baez sing a song about God On Our Side, or something like that?”

  “Raines, how the hell would I know? You listened to Joan Baez?”

  “Sure. And Bob Dylan and Procol Harum . . .”

  “Do you have something stuck in your throat?”

  “No! That’s the name of a group. They did “A Whiter Shade Of Pale.” Good tune.”

  “You listened to Bob Dylan?”

  “Sure. I can borrow Cooper’s guitar and sing you some of his songs?”

  “Oh, God, no! The last time you tried to sing your dog ran away from home, women miscarried, and it rained for a week straight. Spare me your dubious vocalizing.”

  “Now you’ve hurt my feelings, Lamar.”

  “Nobody can hurt your feelings. You’re an insensitive oaf.” He looked at Ben and shook his head. “Don’t pout, Raines. It doesn’t become you.”

  “Can I giggle and simper instead?”

  “You’re making me nauseous. Do you have anything to drink around here?”

  “Water.”

  “Now you can add lying to your other faults,” Chase said. “There hasn’t been a time in all the years I’ve known you that you didn’t have a bottle stashed somewhere.”

  “Sorry, Lamar. You’re out of luck.”

  “Isn’t it about time for your annual visit to the proctologist?” Chase asked sweetly.

  “The booze is over there in my knapsack,” Ben said quickly, pointing.

  “I knew you would never even consider refusing an old man a drink of whiskey,” Chase said, chuckling as he walked to the knapsack.

  “You’re an evil old man, Lamar,” Ben told him.

  “I’ll never deny it. But it sure has been fun on the journey to that point.”

  Stretching out east to west for almost two hundred and fifty miles, the Rebels quietly got into position. They moved out in tiny units of two and three vehicles, too small for detection. Hoffman had learned not to put helicopters in the air, for the Rebels had the most sophisticated SAMs in the world, and not one chopper Hoffman sent out had ever returned to the pad.

  There were still a lot of people in Texas, and in every other state, whose loyalties did not lie with the Rebels, but they had learned that the Rebels, in this fight for survival, dealt very harshly with collaborators. If a turncoat was not shot or hanged on the spot, they were shipped to California, put on board ship, and off they went to some godforsaken island thousands of miles away, and dumped. And Ben Raines had lots of ships and lots of crew for them.

  Those who supported neither Raines nor Hoffman were advised in the strongest of terms to keep their mouths shut. Just behave like those three monkeys: hear nothing, see nothing, and do not speak. And after seeing the cold killing grimness in the eyes of the Rebels, those who wished to remain neutral, and not make the retreat north to the thirty-sixth parallel, quickly agreed that it would be best if they saw nothing, heard nothing, and spoke not a word.

  On the night preceding the attack, aides came to the trailer of General Hans Brodermann. Brodermann had a headache and was in no mood to listen to the gloom and doom reports.

  “Don’t be ridiculous!” he snapped at his people. “The Rebels are not going to attack us. We’re too strong and they are too weak. Raines made a mistake in breaking up his battalions into small guerrilla units. He rendered himself nearly impotent. He’ll realize that mistake in time, but by then it will be too late. We will hold our positions until long range artillery can join us. Then we shall begin the forward march, clearing out great swatches of territory as we advance. Now return to your commands and get a good night’s sleep. We have forward observation posts on alert, and they are manned by the best people we have. Raines and his little mosquito bands will not trouble us here.”

  Brodermann was correct to a degree. He did have forward observation posts, and they were manned by some very good people. But not as good as the Apache, Pina, Navaho, and Zuni Indians who made up Ben’s Special Operations Teams. While Ben and his Rebels had been overseas, those units had been training Stateside in preparation for this. Brodermann’s SS units were about to discover what the U.S. Army had learned more than a century past: never underestimate the fighting skills and the stealth of the warriors who made up the Southwest Indian tribes. The SP teams had learned that the SS forward observations teams, with predictable Germanic precision, reported in at 00 hours and again at 0030 hours. On the dot. To the timed second. Which was why Ben had timed the assault to begin at 0535. For at 0531, the forward observation people would be dead in their bunkers. Brodermann would learn to nev
er underestimate the savage and unorthodox fighting techniques of Ben Raines.

  The fast attack vehicles of the Rebels had driven to within a couple of miles of the forward observation posts and then cut their muffled down engines and waited. Strict noise discipline was being observed. No one moved, no one talked, no one lit up smokes. At 0525 radio operators turned up the volume and began listening more intently to their earphones for the clicks that would tell them the outposts were cleared of all hostile living things. Except for perhaps a stray scorpion or a rattlesnake.

  The sky was just beginning to tint a faint silver in the east when Corrie said, “There it is, General. Two clicks. Repeated. We’re clear.”

  Ben looked at luminous dial of his watch. 0533. “Two minutes to go. Start engines.”

  Brodermann was beginning to stir under his blankets. He opened his eyes and stretched, reluctant to leave the warmth, for the night had turned unusually cool.

  In about sixty seconds it would, quite unexpectedly, warm considerably.

  “One minute,” Ben said.

  Cooper slipped the Hummer into gear. The bolts of mounted .50-caliber machine guns were pulled back. Big Thumpers were armed. Mounted 7.62 M-60s were readied. Grenades were taken from battle harnesses. People swallowed to relieve the mouth-dryness of tension.

  “Go!” Ben said.

  Corrie relayed the orders as the FAVs lunged forward, big fat tires digging at the ground. Cooper floorboarded the HumVee as Beth stood up and worked her way into the harness behind the roof-mounted M-60. She was bulletproofed from her head down to her hips. The material wouldn’t stop a .50-caliber slug, but it would stop anything up to that.

  The FAVs sped past the silent forward observation posts and silently screamed toward the still-sleeping camp of the elite SS troops south of Interstate 10 and east of Interstate 30. Ben and his battalion were taking the heaviest unit of SS troops, on Highway 181, next to the San Antonio River and the closest unit to Brodermann’s location. Rebet was tackling the SS troops located on 123, east of Cibolo Creek. Danjou and Ned were attacking the SS forces bivouacked on Highway 80, and Buddy was roaring in from the east, hitting those along the Guadalupe River and Highway 111-183.

  All units struck within seconds of each other. Striganov and Payon had slipped in and set up old 81-mm mortars and gave Brodermann’s camp a full 90 seconds barrage of HE and willie peter as they were storming in.

  Hans Brodermann heard the fluttering of mortar rounds and was out of bed and jumping into his trousers and boots just as the first round hit.

  “Mein Gott!” he muttered. “It can’t be. Raines wouldn’t dare!”

  But then he had no more time to think as a round exploded very near his quarters and tipped the trailer over. Brodermann went rolling and sliding ass over elbows on the tiled floor and banged his head on the base of the commode, knocking himself goofy for a few minutes.

  Outside, the scene was chaos, highlighted by tanker trucks being ignited, vehicles burning, and the area filled with racing Fast Attack Vehicles and pickup trucks and Hummers, the vehicles scooting around, the machine gunners pouring out heavy fire at anything that moved. Big Thumpers were knocking out grenades and spreading death and confusion all over the place.

  The central command of Hans Brodermann was in total chaos. Commanders were trying to rally their troops amid the clattering of machine guns and the roaring of 40 mm grenades. No one could believe it was happening. Something like this was simply not done to the elite troops of the SS.

  But it was being done. And being done devastatingly well. Along and south of a two hundred and fifty mile stretch of highway, the Rebels were kicking the shit out of the troops of Field Marshal Jesus Hoffman and enjoying the hell out of it.

  The Rebel vehicles made one long pass through the camps and when they pulled out, they left behind them a scene of burning, ruined confusion, the camps littered with dead, dying, and badly wounded.

  Ben and his teams hit the SS camp and caught the elite troops of Brodermann with their pants down . . . many literally so, with their bare butts hanging over the edge of the latrines.

  It was a dangerous but highly successful move on the part of the Rebels, but also one that in all probability they could never pull again. After this attack, Brodermann would reassess his security and tighten it down.

  But that wouldn’t help him a bit on this bloody gray Texas morning.

  Buddy and his battalion slammed into the SS camp from the east and caught Hoffman’s finest completely by surprise. It was a rout. Many of the SS troops weaponless, caught walking to or from the latrines, to or from the mess tents, or just getting out of bed. Some were naked except for a towel around their waist, ready to walk to the portable showers.

  At every location, the Rebels roared up and down between the lines of neatly pitched tents and chopped those SS troops still in their sleeping bags or blankets to bloody rags with automatic weapons’ fire. Many of the drivers of the heavier Hummers just took dead aim at the arrow-straight rows of tents and drove right over them, crushing and maiming those unlucky ones still inside.

  Hans Brodermann struggled to his feet and fought to claw his way out of the overturned trailer, which he knew could turn into a death trap at any second. He crawled out of the front door, now facing toward the sky, and tumbled to the cool earth, landing heavily on his belly and momentarily knocking the wind out of himself. Cursing, he fought his way to his feet and stood for a moment, shocked and stunned by the sight in front of him.

  The early morning grayness was torn by sounds of the deadly surprise attack. Fires were burning out of control and the dead and wounded were sprawled anywhere and everywhere he looked. It was chaos on a scale that he had never before witnessed. His people simply could not get a handle on it; they could not get organized enough to mount even a small counterattack.

  Brodermann hit the ground as a FAV came roaring past. The machine gun on the open roof, mounted on the roll-bar, opened up in his direction and the lead howled over his head, tearing great holes in the floor of his trailer. He could do little else but curse Ben Raines. And that he did, with great feeling.

  Danjou and Ned ripped through the SS camp at high speed, Rangers in the back of the fortified pickup trucks throwing grenades, manning heavy machine guns, and using Big Thumpers to hurl out their deadly charges.

  As Striganov and Payon were completing their final swing of Brodermann’s main camp, they gave the orders for the 81 mm mortars to resume their shelling of the camp, using HE and willie peter. Brodermann and his SS troops could do nothing except keep their heads down and try to survive this bloody, terrible, and totally demoralizing Texas morning.

  In every Rebel battalion, Ben had issued orders to certain teams to do nothing except concentrate on crippling or destroying Brodermann’s vehicles. When the assaults finally ended—the attacks lasting no more than three or four minutes maximum—the Rebels left behind them a scene that was enough to make even the most seasoned combat veteran weep.

  Flames were leaping upward, the smell of burning rubber offensively harsh in the cool air. The smoke from the many fires was thick, hanging close to the cool earth, and nearly blinding. The screaming of the wounded was awful. Many of those caught in their tents had crushed limbs from the Rebel vehicles running over them. Stores of ammunition were cracking and popping and for any of the SS troops to move was a danger from the exploding rounds of their own stockpiles.

  The Rebels had killed or wounded nearly fifty percent of Brodermann’s SS troops. They took no prisoners. They showed no mercy. The Rebels were ruthless and savage and to the survivors of the early morning attack, it told them what they had to look forward to in fighting Ben Raines and his people. Most did not relish the thought.

  An aide came running up to Brodermann as he was slowly getting to his feet. Brodermann was badly shaken. Nothing like this had ever happened to him. It was . . . unthinkable. Gnats like the Rebels were supposed to be merely irritating, certainly not deadly and dangerous
.

  “Do we mount a counterattack, General?” he yelled to be heard over the roaring of the fires and the cracking and popping of small arms ammunition.

  Hans Brodermann stared at the wild-eyed man with blood from a slight head-wound trickling down one side of his face. “No,” Brodermann finally found his voice. He coughed to clear his throat of the nearly choking smoke that swirled all around the camp. “Raines would love that. You may be sure he has planted ambush teams all along the roadways, hoping for us to pursue. Are we in contact with the other battalions?”

  “All units seem to have been attacked. The Rebels struck at every location. We have reports that bridges were blown all around us.”

  “Send out small patrols to assess the damage. Check the forward posts. I have a hunch you will find only dead men.”

  “Yes, sir. I will send men over to right your trailer and start repairs.”

  Brodermann turned and looked at his bullet-pocked quarters, lying on its side like some dead prehistoric beast. “Leave the son of a bitch where it is,” he said bitterly. “You can bet Ben Raines does not have such luxury with him. We can no longer count on fighting a conventional war, Willie. When all damages have been tallied, report to me. Then I must report to Field Marshal Hoffman. It is a bitter day, Willie. A bitter day.”

  Hundreds of yards away from Hans Brodermann, two senior SS sergeants looked at one another. One said, “I think we made a mistake in coming to North America. A very fatal mistake.”

  EIGHT

  The Rebels lost five people, with a dozen wounded, two of them seriously. Miles north of the burning camps of Brodermann’s troops, they quietly buried their dead in secluded places and conducted simple ceremonies.

  Then they mounted up and pulled out, heading for a central rendezvous point.

  “Spread out,” Ben told his people. “From the Devils River in the west to the San Jacinto in the east. Hit whatever you think you can successfully tackle. I want these goose-stepping bastards held below the twenty-eighth parallel for as long as possible. The longer we can contain them down here, the stronger our people get above the thirty-sixth.” The Rebel commanders shook hands all the way around and took off.