278

Denise and the man were buried side by side in unmarked graves. For a very brief moment, Ben actually contemplated finding a headstone and having the words, WE KNEW WHAT WAS BEST FOR EVERYBODY chiseled into the stone. But he quickly put that thought out of his mind.

The Rebels in the central part of the nation waited and read reports sent in by recon teams in the east. Blanton’s troops were very slowly giving up ground to the superior forces of Revere. Fighting was intense at times, and Blanton’s army was putting up much more of a fight than either Revere or Ben had thought them capable of doing.

“If that stiff-necked Blanton would ask us for help,” Ike remarked to Ben one morning. “Would you still give it?”

“I don’t know, Ike. A few weeks ago, I would have. Now, I just don’t know. Probably not, since he sent those troops against us.” He shook his head. “I just can’t figure the man. He’s supposed to be such an intelligent person, but he can’t see that hundreds of thousands of people are violently opposed to returning to his type of government. He wants a return to the form of government that was slowly bringing this nation to its knees … if the Great War hadn’t come along and hastened the process. He can’t see that there isn’t one nation in the entire world that is returning to the form of government they had before the Great War. He’s living in the past and I don’t know how to jar him out of that.”

279 “Well, if Revere’s army won’t, nothing will,” Buddy offered.

“I’m afraid you might be right, son.”

Blanton had been moved south, to a deep bunker a few miles north of the North Carolina line. His troops were beginning to show the signs of weeks of heavy combat without relief, and Homer Blanton finally got it through his head that his people were not going to win this war. But no matter how passionately his generals pleaded with him to do so, he adamantly refused to ask Ben Raines for assistance.

Then the generals began to talk quietly among themselves, as Ben had suspected (and hoped) they would.

“Maybe six weeks if we’re lucky,” General Holtz said, just back from the front.

“Or unlucky,” General Forrest added.

“A month, max,” General Thomas said.

“I can’t move the president,” Holtz said, toying with his coffee cup.

“He hates Ben Raines that much?” Forrest asked.

Holtz shrugged his shoulders. “Hate? No, I don’t think he hates him. I think Blanton is a raging liberal whose idea of government is meddling in everybody’s business and running their lives from cradle to grave, and Raines is a hard conservative who believes that it’s up to the individual to sink or swim on their own, and when you fuck up you pay the consequences.”

Thomas smiled. “And never the twain shall meet.”

“You got that right.”

280 “So? And?” Forrest asked.

“I swore allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. But we don’t have a United States. Those spies that Blanton planted deep in the Rebel movement were uncovered and shot.”

“How do you know that?”

“Raines intelligence section sent me a message.” He reached into his pocket and tossed three sets of dog tags onto the table. What he didn’t know was that the owner of the third set was alive and well and being groomed for use as a double agent, if necessary.

“What now?”

“I just can’t bring myself to betray the president. I thought about it. Hard. But I can order him physically moved to safer ground … if it comes to that.”

“It will,” Thomas said. “It will.”

Ike had dealt swiftly with Jeb Moody, scattering his people all over the place. Tina and Pat O’Shea had brutalized Carl Nations, and the Russian Bear had dealt quite harshly with Shazam. None of the leaders had been killed, but their troops had been demoralized and for the most part, ineffective. When that had been accomplished, Ben had ordered all battalions, with the exception of 13 and 11, who were attached to General Taylor, to start forming an L-shaped line, running straight south along the Ohio/Indiana line. The bottom of the L stretched out eastward from roughly Evansville, Indiana over to the West Virginia line.

All the Rebels knew what General Raines was doing: he just could not bring himself to fire against

281 the American flag. At least, not yet. He was going to Blanton’s aid, whether the man wanted it or not.

Corrie got General Holtz on the horn, on scramble, and handed the mic to Ben.

“General? Ben Raines here. We need to talk about defeating Revere. We can settle our differences, if any, at a later date. After Revere is finished.”

A deep sigh is difficult to scramble. Depending on the system used, it sometimes comes out sounding like a fart. “I agree with that, General.”

“Just let me lay out my plan to you, and I think you’ll like it. I give you my word this is not a trap.”

“General Raines, I know it isn’t a trap. I also know that you are a man of honor. All right, I’m going to catch hell from President Blanton, but let’s meet.”

General Holtz, commanding General of Blanton’s Army, and General Ben Raines of the Rebels met clandestinely in a lonely forest in Kentucky. Each man brought one platoon of troops and their personal aides.

Holtz was shocked and showed it when Ben told him how he had repositioned his Rebels. “But my intell didn’t inform me of this!”

“Your intelligence people probably don’t know it was done,” Ben said calmly. “We can be very quiet about things when we so desire.”

Holtz studied the map and nodded his head. “I think I know what you have in mind, General, and if I’m right, it’s brilliant. Regardless of what Blanton says, we’ll go along.”

“Good. When you’re in place, we’ll force Revere

282 to fight on four fronts. He doesn’t have the people to do that.”

The two men smiled and shook hands. “For the record, General Raines, I think our two societies could coexist very nicely together.”

“Oh, they will, General Holtz. They will. Just give us time.”

283 “Never!” President Homer Blanton shouted. “I will never agree with this.”

“You don’t have any say in the matter,” General Holtz bluntly informed the president.

“I am President of the United States!” Homer hollered.

“That’s right!” VP Hooter sounded off.

“Down with the military! Up with people power!” Rita Rivers stuck her lip into the matter.

General Holtz almost told Rita to get fucked. But he was afraid she might take him up on it. He cut his eyes to Blanton. “Mister President, with all due respect, without assistance from General Raines and his Rebels, we’ll be defeated in a matter of weeks, possibly days. Your presidential guard can only protect you for a short time once Revere’s people break through our lines. And when Revere takes you and your people prisoner, he’ll either shoot you all or hang you. Now, am I finally getting through to you, sir?”

“I urge you to take General Raines’s offer,” Senator Hanrahan said.

284 “As do I,” Blush Lightheart agreed.

“Ben Raines is nothing but a nasty, filthy, disgusting Republican pig!” VP Hooter dissented.

“And a honky, too,” Rita said.

“Revere’s troops are on the verge of breaking through our lines,” General Holtz said. “We’ve got to act now. And I will. With or without your approval.”

“All right,” Blanton said, bitterness in his words. “Tell General Raines I accept his kind offer of assistance.”

General Holtz left the room immediately.

“That decision will go down in history as the biggest blunder of your administration,” VP Hooter prophesied.

“Oh … kiss my ass!” Homer told her.

It didn’t take Revere long to discover he was in a box and the lid was about to be nailed down. He sure as hell didn’t want to have to fight both Blanton’s troops and the Rebels. He ordered an immediate retreat.

“Pull back to the north!” he ordered all commanders. “Get the hell out of this box.”

Ben had anticipated that and had ordered his Rebels at the top of the L to swing east. Holtz ordered his people to swing west. Those moves left Revere with only a small escape hole and it was fast closing. Ben added five battalions of his Rebels, with armor and artillery, to Holtz’s two regiments, at the bottom of the L, and ordered them to start advancing straight north.

The walls began closing in on Revere and he

285 could do little except watch as what began as an orderly retreat soon turned into a rout and his soldiers began fleeing north, trying to reach the dwindling hole to safety.

General Revere got out of the trap just in the nick of time and immediately began setting up new lines in southern New York State. He sent planes and dispatched trucks to bring the punk army of Big Foot Freddie to him. But all that move did was to free General Taylor and his troops, and Ben’s 11 and 13 Battalions to beef up the eastern front. Jake Starr, facing a solid line of Cecil’s Rebels, ordered his people to retreat back into central Florida. From there, they moved over to the east coast and boarded ships. They set a course for New York, or Connecticut, or some damn place. Just get the hell away from Raines’s Rebels and somehow link up with Revere. Shazam, Carl Nations, and Jeb Moody and their followers were doing the same thing.

Cecil sent word to Ben that Florida was more or less clear of punks.

The defeat of Revere and his people was remarkably anticlimactic. Those troops caught in the box had sense enough to know that to continue fighting was foolish. They laid down their arms and surrendered.

“Shoot the hard-liners,” Ben suggested to General Holtz. “They’re easy to spot if you know what you’re looking for.”

“I can’t do that!”

“Then you’d better realize that you’re going to have to fight them again someday.”

“Suit yourself,” Ben told him. He turned to Cor-rie. “It’s over. Let’s go home.”