Vengeance in the Ashes Read online

  Whatever reception the attorneys were expecting from Ben, this certainly wasn’t it. They left in a huff.

  “Twits,” Dan said, spreading fresh-put-up jam on a piece of bread.

  Ben sat down and began eating his breakfast. “They must be brainwashed in law school. That’s all I can figure out. Either that, or they are actually much more decent and fair-minded men than I.”

  Dan was coughing and choking on his toast, his eyes bugging out in astonishment at Ben’s remark, when Jersey, Beth, Corrie, and Cooper came running in to see what all the commotion was about.

  TEN

  Ben stood with his team on the side of the highway, looking up at a long row of homes perched on a mountainside. “Two- or three-million-dollar-plus houses,” he said. “Back when the world was whole, the people who lived in those mansions had servants, security, the very best of everything . . . or so they thought.”

  “What do you mean by that last bit, General?” he was asked by a young woman.

  “They were prisoners, trapped by their own wealth. They lived in fear of extortionists, kidnappers, terrorists, and burglars. They couldn’t move without security. And you can bet on this, too: when the end came, their money couldn’t save their lives or make their lives any safer . . . because it was worthless. Let’s go check out those mansions.”

  “I can’t believe the crud would be so stupid to hide out in something so obvious,” a young Rebel recently assigned to Ben’s A Company remarked.

  “Wanna bet me a week at KP the homes are empty?” Ben asked with a smile.

  “No, sir!” the young man was quick to reply. He was walking beside Ben; Cooper had parked the wagon off the paved and curving drive of the first mansion.

  Ahead of them, a scout suddenly raised his hand and made the hit the dirt movement. The Rebels scattered, jumping off the drive and into the bushes.

  A dog barked, then another joined in. They came running down the drive, two dogs of so mixed a breed they were mutts. But they were happy, playing and jumping and barking and rolling and yelping as they came. Ben stood up and watched the dogs at play until they were out of sight. He looked at the embarrassed scout.

  “Don’t be embarrassed,” Ben called. “They could have just as easily been bandits.”

  A rifle round slammed into the helmet of the scout and knocked him to the ground. The round was not of sufficient caliber to penetrate the much-improved-upon Kevlar helmet, but the scout would have one hell of a headache when he woke up.

  “I’m glad I didn’t take that bet,” the young Rebel lying beside Ben muttered.

  With precision movements, one squad of Rebels opened fire, covering medics who dashed into the drive and hauled the downed Rebel to the safety of the brush.

  “He’s okay,” a medic called. “But he’s gonna have a whopper of a headache.”

  “First squad come with me,” Ben said. “Corrie, advise the company commander we are going around to the back of the first house. Do it and let’s go.”

  Corrie bumped the CO and the team was off, first squad running behind them. Most of them were used to the general’s antics and thought nothing of it, but some had just come in and were not yet accustomed to seeing the commanding general of the army taking such chances.

  Flinging themselves down behind some huge flowering bushes at the rear of the house, one young Rebel said, “Jesus, the old man must be fifty at least and he’s ahead of us!”

  “Don’t count the Eagle out of it yet,” a sergeant told him. “A lot of folks have tangled hand-to-hand with him. I helped bury some of them.”

  “Been with him long?”

  “Five, six years. I was a young punk outlaw when the Eagle jerked me up by the nape of the neck and saw something worth saving in me. I’d die for that man,” the sergeant said, fierce loyalty behind his words.

  From his position near the rear of the house, Ben leveled his M-14 and waited for a shot. It was not long in coming. One outlaw exposed a forearm and Ben sighted it in, gently squeezing the trigger. The big slug tore into the outlaw’s elbow, shattering the bone and knocking the thug to the littered tile of the kitchen. He howled and thrashed on the floor, cussing the Rebels through his pain.

  “Rifle grenades,” Ben ordered those equipped with launchers.

  All but one of the grenades bounced off the stone of the house and exploded on the patio. One 40mm grenade sailed right through a shattered window and made a mess of those in the kitchen.

  Two Rebels ran through the brush behind the house, carrying a Big Thumper, a third Rebel just behind them, carrying the mount. The team quickly set up and began pumping 40mm grenades through the back windows of the mansion. Explosions rocked the earth as the grenades blew, the concussion inside the rear rooms of the house blowing out what remained of windows and doors and bringing with the debris various body parts of thugs and outlaws.

  The Rebels on both sides of the mansion and those behind cover on the gently sloping front lawn waited for the thugs to exit the now-burning house.

  The outlaws made no move to surrender, for they had seen what happened to others who did surrender . . . when the Rebels were in a charitable mood. The locals promptly took them out and hanged them.

  The Rebels waited with the patience of the trained man-stalker for their prey to show themselves. They would. They always did.

  The outlaws in the house made a screaming suicide charge out the front of the house. The luckiest got about twenty feet from the door before relentless Rebel fire from three sides cut them down.

  “Secure the house and put out the fire in the back,” Ben ordered, rolling to one side and pulling out his canteen, taking a long swig of the now-tepid water.

  Gunfire came from the house near the end of the secluded row of fine homes overlooking the Pacific.

  “Locals,” Corrie said. “They’re working this way. I’m in contact with them. One of the lawyers who talked to you this morning, General?”

  Ben snapped his canteen cover closed and cut his eyes to her. “What about him?”

  “He got in their way.”

  Ben didn’t have to ask what happened to the man. He knew. He didn’t particularly like mobs or vigilante movements, but in cases where the lawless have held sway over decent people for years, he sure as hell didn’t blame the newly freed locals for their actions . . . or overreactions.

  “We’ll rest here,” Ben said. “Let the locals handle the remainder of the homes along this strip. Set up a line running west to east in case any of the crud try to escape in our direction.”

  Corrie gave the orders and the Rebels repositioned and waited. Corrie listened to her headset for a moment and said, “Hang on.” She looked at Ben. “The locals are asking if we have any rope to spare.”

  Ben’s eyes were bleak. “Give it to them,” he said. “It’s their show.”

  Moments later, a half-dozen husky young men of Hawaiian descent yelled for permission to approach the Rebel position. They were armed with weapons of various calibers and makes and some of them were vintage. “Rearm them with the outlaws’ weapons,” Ben ordered. “And give them all the rope they need.”

  After they were rearmed and briefly instructed on the nomenclature of the weapons, one of the young men said, “We’ll take care of the thugs along this stretch, General, if you have someplace else you’d like to go.”

  Ben smiled at him. “I hear you had some trouble with some of your own citizens today.”

  “The one who was shot always did think he was God’s gift to humanity,” the young man replied. “He was also a collaborator. For him, it was just a matter of time.”

  “We’re not hanging them indiscriminately, General,” another young man said. “We’re sparing nearly as many as we hang. But they’ll serve many years on forced construction and cleanup crews, working to put this island back in shape.”

  “That’s as it should be,” Ben replied. “Good luck to you all.”

  Ben and his people pulled out, leaving this battle
to the locals. They glanced once at the swaying bodies hanging from limbs and lamp posts and moved on up the highway.

  Ben and his battalion rolled into Makakilo City to find that the small town had been turned into a battleground between locals and small groups of thugs. Scouts halted the column a few hundred yards from the city limits and Ben walked forward to the checkpoint, his personal team strolling along with him.

  “The locals control this end,” the scout told him. “The assholes are in the downtown area and everywhere else. A bunch of small groups came together, I guess.”

  One of the locals came running up to the blocked road. He was carrying an old World War Two vintage .45 caliber spitter that the troops nicknamed a grease gun. “We’ve taken prisoners, General.” Although Ben wore no insignia of any kind, he had a command bearing about him that only an idiot could miss. “Over twenty of them. We have no way to house them. First thing the thugs did when they invaded us was to burn down most of the jailhouses.”

  “We’ll take them off your hands,” Ben told the man. “You need some of my people in there with you?”

  The man grinned. “You betcha, sir!”

  “We’re going to tear up your town when I send tanks in,” Ben cautioned the man. “And I will send tanks in to spearhead.”

  “Hell with the town. It can be rebuilt.”

  Ben smiled at the man’s exuberance. “Corrie, order third and fourth platoons in and send four Dusters in with them. First and second platoons stay here. Bring your prisoners to us, sir.”

  “Yes, sir!” The local ran off down the road, hollering that the Rebels were here.

  “I guess after years of being shoved around and beaten and enslaved, I’d be jumping for joy myself,” Beth remarked.

  “If the damned United States Congress hadn’t taken the guns away from people,” a older Rebel said, “I don’t think much of this would have happened. Do you, General?”

  “It would have happened in certain areas of the country,” Ben said, taking time to hand roll a cigarette after looking around to see where the medics were. Lamar Chase had them spy on Ben, reporting back to the crusty old bastard how many cigarettes Ben smoked a day. There were times when Ben felt as though he were back in grade school, sneaking off behind the gym to take a few puffs. “It would not have happened in the rural areas of the nation. But the punks would have taken over the cities. And also the towns located in heavily industrialized states. The northeast and California especially. For in those areas were where the strictest gun-control laws were enacted. There is this, too: for years Americans were literally beaten over the head with public-service ads—written by nitwits—that one should never shoot simply to protect personal property. And a lot of people just can’t pull the trigger on a human being.” He watched as the prisoners were led up, being prodded along by rifles in the hands of Rebels. “Even worthless pieces of shit like that.”

  “What do you want done with these dickheads, General?” a woman asked.

  “Who you callin’ a dickhead, you goddamn whore?” the outlaw standing nearest to her asked.

  She turned and put the toe of one jumpboot into his crotch—hard. The outlaw hit the pavement, puking and howling.

  A burly Rebel leaned over, jerked him to his feet with one hand, and shook him like a naughty child. “You will learn to watch your mouth, punk.”

  “Take them to the medics. They’ll draw blood and run tests checking for communicable diseases. These bastards probably have everything, running the gamut from TB to AIDS.”

  “Son of a bitch!” one outlaw cussed Ben.

  Ben waved it off. There was nothing they could call him that he had not been called a thousand times before, and by better men than these trash.

  “Get them out of here. The first couple who check out clean, bring them to my CP. It’ll be around here somewhere. We might as well bed down here. It’ll be dark in a few hours.”

  “I ain’t tellin’ you a goddamn thing, Mister Hot Shit General!” an outlaw blustered.

  Ben smiled and then chuckled. “That’s what they all say, partner. That’s what they all say.”

  ELEVEN

  “Sit,” Ben told the outlaw. He had been checked out and bathed and then fumigated for fleas and other bugs that sometimes inhabited the unbathed human body’s exterior.

  The outlaw had lost all of his bluster. The Rebels had learned what prison guards had known for centuries: order a man to strip naked—if he refuses, you take his clothing by force, and do it with no more effort than handling a little child—and that man loses much of his resistance. Then after an anal probe is done, and not done gently, he is tossed into a shower and scrubbed pink, all his hair is shaved from his head, and he is forced to stand holding his britches up with one hand—for he has no belt—you usually have a very passive person on your hands. Not always, but usually.

  The outlaw sat.

  “Were you fed?”

  “Yes, sir. Good grub, too. I was hungry. I appreciate it. I reckon that’s my last meal, ain’t it?”

  “I doubt it. I don’t know what you’ve done, so we won’t try you. The locals will.”

  “That’s even worser.”

  “Now what do we do? Do you start telling me about your poor, miserable childhood and how your father beat you and all that happy crap?”

  The outlaw chuckled. “I would if I thought it would do any good. But with you, I’d be wastin’ your time and mine.”

  “Thank you. Sad stories always make me maudlin. I wouldn’t want to weep at all your recollections of past misfortunes. What can you tell me that might help us in this campaign?”

  “Probably nothin’, to be honest about it. You know who runs the show?”

  “Books Houseman.”

  “Right. We busted up into small groups at his orders. Most is still in small groups, probably. Don’t make no difference no way. We’re still gonna lose. They’s somethin’ about you people that just scares the shit outta lots of us, includin’ me. They’s somethin’ about you people that none of us ain’t never seen ’fore. I can’t name it.”

  Ben knew. Total dedication. Discipline. The hardest training in the world. Experience. And the knowledge that what they were doing was right. “Go on.”

  “There ain’t nothin’ left to say that you don’t already know. We ain’t got no fancy weapons like you people. No tanks, no artillery, no bazookas, no helicopters, nothin’ like you people. It’s just a matter of chasin’ us down and killin’ us.”

  “Then why don’t you people just give it up? Odds are, many of the locals are wearying of the hangings by now. So you would be imprisoned or work on a chain gang. You’d be alive.”

  The man smiled. “You don’t understand the criminal mind, do you, General?”

  “I am forced to say that I don’t.”

  “Oh, you’d get a few who would change. I mean, really change. But not the majority. You’d get a lot who would say they would change. But they’d be lyin’. Once you people pulled out, most would be right back stealin’ and killin’ and rapin’ and doin’ everythin’ they did ’fore you showed up.”

  “And you?” Ben asked, giving the man an opening, a way out.

  “I don’t know, General. I been on the wrong side of the law all my life. Years before the Great War come. My daddy was a farmer and my mamma a schoolteacher. They brought me up right—or tried to. It just didn’t take. Some people are born bad. I really believe that.”

  “So do I.” Ben studied the man for a moment. “I’m going to take a chance with you . . . what is your name?”

  “John Morris.”

  “All right, John. I think you’ve been honest with me, so I’ll reward that. You asked if I understood the criminal mind. Who does? So I’m going to send you back to let the shrinks pick your brain. But with a word of caution: you won’t find Rebel shrinks to be anything like the ones you probably came in contact with before the Great War. Don’t try to bullshit these people. They don’t play those kinds of games. Yo
u can go.”

  John stood up, holding his deliberately ill-fitting pants up with one hand. “And if I’m honest with these people, General?”

  “You might get another shot at making a new life.”

  “Or I just might get shot, period.”

  “That is always an option, John.”

  ***

  Ben stepped out of his CP long before dawn the next morning. Not a man who required a lot of sleep, Ben had slept his usual few hours and felt refreshed. He got a cup of coffee from the mess tent and walked back to his CP.

  “Must have been real quiet last night,” he said to the sentry.

  “It was, sir. It didn’t take the locals long to deal with the crud once they had the Dusters and the Rebels along.”

  Ben sat down in an old chair on the front porch and rolled a cigarette, then drank his huge mug of coffee—actually it was a beer stein—and smoked in the predawn hours. At 0430 his team was up and dressed and having coffee with him on the porch.

  “This has been a picnic so far, General,” Jersey finally spoke, after a refill of coffee. She was self-admittedly a real bitch in the mornings until she had at least one cup of coffee. Cooper gave her a wide berth until she had her coffee. “I talked with a guy from Tina’s battalion last night. Our people are kicking the crap out of them over on Kauai.”

  “Say what’s on your mind, Jersey,” Ben told her.

  “General Ike could handle this operation and we could get the hell back to the mainland and start setting up for all that crap that’s coming up from the south.”

  “These people aren’t professionals, General,” Beth said. “It’s nothing but target practice for us. It’s boring.”

  “A lot of strain on General Jefferys back home,” Corrie said. “And he’s not in the best of health.”

  Ben had been giving that a lot of thought. Cecil was not in good health and with this new threat from South America, Cec had a lot of pressure on him. But to leave in the middle of a campaign . . . ?