hung

one of your relatives,” Jersey fired back.

“Speaking of being hung …” Cooper

laughed as he was booed and hissed quiet from Beth and Jersey.

“General Striganov is across,” the speaker spewed the words. “What is your twenty, General?” Dan asked.

“Coming up on Houston.”

“I’m crossing Canal. I’ll wait for you, General.”

“Ten-fifty on that, Dan. You get across the bridge.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Khamsin’s people in sight, General,” Beth told him.

Ben rolled down his window and began tossing grenades out as fast as his people could hand them to him and he could pull the pins.

Khamsin’s column fell back several blocks.

Bullets began slamming into the back of the Blazer.

“That’s very annoying,” Ben remarked, as they sped past Delancey Street. He read the old street sign. “Just a couple of minutes more, gang.” He picked up his mike.

“Eagle to Shark?”

“Go, Eagle.”

“I think we just might have a few

vehicles on our tail when we cross. Have some reception waiting for them, please.”

“Ten-four, Eagle.”

Ben flipped the radio to scramble. “To all units crossing over. Do not go to the docks. Repeat, do not go to the docks. You will rendezvous with me just off the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway on Navy

Street. Shark, shove off.”

“Aye, aye, Captain.” Ike’s voice contained a lot of high humor.

“What the hell … ?” Cooper muttered.

They were on the bridge and staying in the ruts made by previous vehicles.

The sound of a ship’s horn drifted to them.

Jersey looked at Beth and Beth looked at Chuck.

“Don’t ask me,” he said. “I just work here.”

“Eagle to West.”

“Go, Eagle.”

“You may have the honors, sir.”

“That’s a big ten-four, General. But it is with a mixture of sadness and satisfaction.”

“I understand the emotions, West. Peel the Apple.”

Behind them, in several hundred spots throughout the city, massive charges blew, bringing buildings down and sending deadly gas wafting through the cold air. Electronically opened valves sent gasoline flooding into the subway system and the sewer tunnels under the city. The fumes ignited and exploded. Entire sections of streets were lifted high into the air. The methane was ignited and flames leaped hundreds of feet into the air as the methane mixed with gasoline.

And the poisonous chemicals reached human lungs and flesh.

“You across, Dan?” Ben radioed.

“Ten-four, sir.”

“So are we. Blow the bridges.”

Those who had chased Ben and his columns dirough the city were caught on the bridge as sections of both spans were blown. The fast-moving trucks could not stop in time. They plunged off the bridge, falling through the blown sections to the icy waters below, carrying their screaming human cargo to a watery death.

Ben did not immediately look back on the death of a city. Had he looked, he would have seen huge columns of smoke rising into the snowy air, flames dancing and twisting from the gasoline and methane as they touched and torched dusty old buildings.

On both sides of Central Park, and from 86th Street down to Battery Park, a fiery maelstrom had enveloped the city, one fire feeding another as the flames spread unchecked.

Only one battalion of Khamsin’s troops was above the deadly line of fire and poison chemicals. Khamsin ordered them into protective gear and began moving them back

toward the north, the taste of defeat bitter in his mouth.

Gene and Kay Savie and their collaborators made it away from the chemicals and flames with the clothes on their backs, their weapons, and damn little else. They got into their once-expensive cars and station wagons and raced toward the north.

John Savie sat in the backseat of his son’s car and muttered, “I always knew that Ben Raines was a no-good, no-talent son of a bitch!”

He looked back at the city and cursed.

Flames were rapidly moving up the dusty interiors of the tall towers of the city, building with a hideous fury as the tons of papers within the offices exploded in flames, the force blowing out windows and pocking the snow-covered streets with shards of glass.

As the water in the sewers and tunnels began to boil, steam began to build, producing pressure with no adequate release valve. The working energy finally reached the exploding point and blew, the collected masses blowing great holes in the streets of lower Manhattan and in the basements and lower levels of buildings. That action proved too much for structures already weakened by age and neglect.

Steel twisted and concrete buckled, bringing hundreds of thousands of tons of ragged debris down into the streets.

Khamsin looked back at the holocaust and cursed Ben Raines, damning him forever to the pits of Hell and the demons therein.

In the department stores of the city, mannequins melted as the fires reached near-impossible temperatures; silk and satin and cotton burst into flames; expensive jewelry melted; and five-hundred-dollar bottles of perfume and cologne exploded, one last and very brief touch of extravagance splashing an aroma-salute to a dying city.

Those troops of the Hot Wind who had been caught in lower Manhattan now lay choking on the snow, the deadly gases ending their lives just as the flames touched them, or they lay buried and forever forgotten beneath tons of rubble as buildings collapsed.

Those Night People who dared challenge Ben Raines and his Rebels, those who remained in the city, went up in a puff of fire and smoke, for they had no place left to run.

Ben ordered the Blazer stopped on an overpass of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. He stood by the railing, facing west, a hard wind blowing at his back. Lower Manhattan was completely enveloped in smoke and fire and explosions. Below him, on the streets under the overpass, Rebels waited in silence, all of them looking at the destruction across the cold and silent river.

One Rebel in the crowd of men and women standing in the cold and snow turned to face Ben, standing above him.

He raised his Ml6 high in the air and let a Rebel yell rip the air. Ben cut his eyes and looked at the man.

Others in the crowd turned, raised their weapons and cut the cold winds with wild Rebel yells of victory. Behind them, the black smoke roiled angrily and darkly into the air.

Soon all the Rebels on the streets and expressway were yelling, pumping their weapons up and down in a victory salute.

Ben let them work off weeks of collected steam, their cries of victory filling the snowy air.

Then he lifted his M14 into the air and joined in the celebration.

Far in the distance, the sounds of ships’ horns joined the victory yells as Ike led the three-ship, nearly empty convoy out into Lower New York Bay, past Fort Hancock, and then assumed a southerly heading.

Buddy stood by Ike’s side on the bridge of the lead ship, both of them looking back at New York City.

“This was a deliberate move by my father, wasn’t it, Ike?” the young man asked. “My being here with you, I mean.”

“Yes.”

“So I would not have to be a part of fighting against my mother.”

“Yes.”

“He had this in mind all along, didn’t he? This ruse,

I mean?”

“Just about from the git-go, boy.”

“Where will we land these monsters?”

Ike laughed at him. “We’ll find us some docks down south with the equipment to offload our vehicles, and then we’ll head on back to Base Camp One.”

Buddy stared at the smoke that was once lower Manhattan. “My mother is going to be highly displeased with this action,” he commented.

“That’s the general idea, boy.”

Spotters posted along the New Jersey shore had seen the ships leave, steaming stately along and then cutting out into the Atlantic. They had radioed back to Sister Voleta.

“Damn him!” she exploded. “This idea came to me but I rejected it as unworkable. Goddamn Ben Raines! Somehow he pulled it off.”

Ashley had been stunned as he watched the beginning of the destruction of New York City, and then he shook himself out of it and ordered everybody to move south, quickly, all the way down to Middlesex County.

“Why?” Monte demanded.

“Because I don’t trust Ben Raines,” Ashley told him.

They waited at the rendezvous point for the last men to arrive. They did not arrive.

“That’s about what I thought,” Ashley said.

“What the hell are you talkin’ about?” Monte challenged him. “Them boys was good soldiers. They wouldn’t run off. They’ll be along.”

“They will never be along,” Ashley told him. “Ben used some sort of chemicals; poisonous gases.

I wondered why he was waiting to cut and run. He was waiting for the wind to change, to blow straight out of the east.”

Even Sister Voleta was shaken. “If we had stayed, we

would all be dead.”

“Yes. I think that, too, was his plan.”

Monte shook his head. “This guy ain’t human.

He’s cruel! B… with him and his people all gone on them ships, what are we gonna do?”

Ashley squatted down and warmed his hands over an open fire. his Ben Raines and his Rebels are indeed on those ships.”

“Now what the hell do you mean by that?”

Sister Voleta listened in silence.

“You have to understand how Ben’s mind works. He is such a sneaky son of a bitch. I’ll wager that not one percent of his people knew what he was going to do until it was actually taking place.”

“You mean he don’t even trust his own people?”

“Oh, he trusts them. Of course he does.

That’s not why he does it. If one of them were captured and tortured, they might break and talk.

Be quiet and let me think for a moment. Your silence would be most gratifying.”

Monte closed his mouth and pouted.

Ashley was thoughtful for a momentand then said, “We know that Ben has spotter planes. Probably based down at this old military complex.” He punched at a worn map. “McGuire, Dix, the

Naval Air Station. Somewhere in there. What if, just for argument’s sake, Ben was not on those ships, but instead headed north out of Brooklyn … say, crossing into the Bronx here,” he pointed, “on either Six-seventy-eight or Two-ninety-five. He would then proceed up into We/chester County and cross the Hudson using the Tappan Zee bridge, then cut south and come down behind us.”

“So what’s with this spotter plane business?”

Monte asked.

“If spotter planes go up more than just a couple of times,” Sister Voleta said, “that would mean that they weren’t just doing reconnaissance of the city. They would be searching for us.”

“Precisely!” Ashley beamed.

“It would be just like that son of a bitch to pull something of this nature,” Voleta said.

“We’ll rendezvous with Cecil at this point,”

Ben said, putting his finger on Gypsy Sprain Reservoir. “East side. He’s taken command of the units Ike left behind.” Ben turned to Chuck.

“Advise the spotters to do no flybys of any area until I order them up. Tell them to keep the birds on the ground. Do it now.”

Chuck nodded and walked to the Blazer.

“Now I’ll answer the question I know you all have in your minds: What in the hell is going on? I’ve already briefed Ike and Cecil; now it’s your turn.

“We’re going to finish Monte and Ashley and Sister Voleta once and for all. If we have to chase them all the way to California, then that’s what we’ll do. Georgi and Danjou and Rebet say they’re in diis fight for the duration. That’s good-I welcome their assistance.

“What we’re going to try is swinging north and then coming down on them. I’m sure you’ve all noticed that none of our heavy stuff was loaded on ship. Ike took just enough to get him through to Base Camp One … if he should run into trouble.”

Ben paused for a moment, turning to look at the smoke pouring into the sky from the hundreds of unchecked fires in the city. He shook his head and turned back to his people.

“Once we rendezvous with Cecil, we’ll continue north and cross over the Hudson here.” Again he punched the map. “ationorth of the Tappan Zee Bridge. It’s out of our way, but Ashley may have figured this move outgive him credit, he’s a jerk, but plenty smart-and have it ready to blow when we cross. Then we’ll head south, slowly, giving Dan’s Scouts plenty of time to range far out in front of us.

“When Monte and the others are located, we’ll hit them and hit them hard, and get this nasty business over with-at last.

“All right, people. Let’s mount up and head north.”

It was slow going picking their way through the rubble-strewn and snowy streets of the Bronx. It was a ghost town, with not one living thing seen by any of the Rebels.

“Eerie.” Even Ben said it aloud.

“Will the fires spread over this far, General?”

Jersey asked.

“I doubt it. The city will burn for several weeks, in spots, and then the fires will burn out when all the wood and other flammable materials have been used up. But for any left alive over there, it’s going to be damned uncomfortable.”

The column finally picked its way through the mess and rolled north into We/chester County. It was well after dark when they reached the rendezvous point and linked up with Cecil’s command.

They were all tired and cold and hungry.

Cecil moved them on a few miles north to a deserted town where his people had cleaned out a high school and adjoining buildings, including the gym. There, the Rebels had set up a kitchen and placed stoves all around the complex. Huge containers of water were being heated, providing the Rebels with a very quick but very welcome warm bath. To a person they were dirty and smelling of stale sweat and death.

“Hell of a fire,” Cecil commented, after Ben had bathed and shaved and had a bite to eat. “Any way of knowing whether we got Khamsin personally?”

“No. But knowing that thug’s luck, I doubt it. But we destroyed probably ninety-five

percent of his army. And the five percent remaining are going to be a long time recouping from this beating. If he’s alive, and I feel that he is, he’ll get off the island and set up someplace-on a much smaller scale, but we’ll see him again, somewhere down the road.”

“Monte and Ashley and Sister Voleta?”

“A thorn in our sides. And don’t count them short. They’re still a force to be reckoned with. For a time I toyed with the idea of just going on back home, bypassing them. But all that would do is delay matters and give them time to recruit more people, and we won’t have the time to deal with them later. So it’s now.”

“You want to explain that “we won’t have the time”

bit?”

“Trouble out west. Not even Ike knows of this, Cecil, so keep it between us for a time. Dan advised me a few days ago that two of his long-range recon patrols have been wiped out. When the first failed to report as usual, another was sent down from Washington State. They reported, through Katzman, that a very large force has set up in Wyoming, ranging in all directions. Then no more was heard from them. We can only assume they’re dead.”

“What type of force?”

“I don’t know. Whatever or whoever it is, it’s big and mean and nasty. Ramos dispatched planes up from the southwest base. They never returned and never reported one damn word.”

“Shit!”

“At least.”

“Who are you sending, Ben?”

Ben stared at him for a moment and then smiled his reply.

Cec got the message. “Oh, come on, Ben!”

he raged. “We’ve got the makings of a model city down in Louisiana. You’ve got it to run.”

“Correction, old friend.