23 Three

Ben Raines, Commander in Chief of the Rebel Army of the Southern United States of America, threw the rubber ball as far as he could. His malamute puppy, Jodie, took off in a lumbering run after the ball, her tongue hanging out as she panted from the workout Ben was giving her.

Cooper, Ben’s driver and friend, squatted on his haunches nearby. “That’s a pretty good throw for an old man, Ben. You missed your calling. You should’ve been a major-league pitcher.”

Ben glanced at the young man as he sleeved sweat off his forehead. “I don’t know who’s getting the best workout here. Me or the dog.”

Jersey, Ben’s female bodyguard who was never very far from his side, said, “It’s a shame you don’t have two balls, Ben. Then you could throw one for Coop to fetch, too.”

Coop glared at Jersey. “Ben, what’s another word for female dog?”

Jersey pointed her finger at him. “Don’t even go there, Coop, or you’ll be wearing those little ornaments hanging between your legs on your head.”

Coop snickered. “Hell, might as well be wearin’ ‘em for all the use they’ve gotten lately.”

As Jodie brought the ball back to Ben and dropped it at his feet, he leaned down and petted her head. “That’s enough, girl. You’re wearing Daddy out.”

Jersey, unwilling to let Coop off the hook, observed, “Well,

 

24

 

Coop, now that the war with the USA is on hold, maybe you can find some undiscriminating females at a local bar who’ll consent to go out on a date with you.”

“Unlike some of the female members of this team who haven’t had any dates since reaching puberty, I won’t have to look too far. The babes are lined up waitin’ for me to ask ‘em out.”

Jersey turned to follow Ben into their offices in SUSA headquarters. “That’s gotta be the shortest line in the country,” she muttered.

“Hey, I heard that!” Coop said, falling in behind her and Ben. “And if I hadn’t been so busy this past year pulling your butt out of the fire, I’d’ve had plenty of chances to score.”

Jersey’s heart fluttered at the words, and her mind flashed back to the night Coop was referring to …

The jump master and his helpers shoved large wooden crates out the door, alternating equipment drops with the jumps of Ben’s team so the materiel would land within easy reach of the Rebel forces. Finally, only Coop and Jersey were left in the big C-130.

Coop gave a low bow, sweeping his hand to the side. “After you, my pet,” he said with a sardonic leer, glancing at the way Jersey’s battle fatigues fit snugly over her buttocks.

“Pervert,” she said, noticing where his eyes were fixed. “Have a good look, ‘cause that’s all you’ll ever get!”

She hooked her chute cord on the overhead line and bent to step out of the doorway. Just before she jumped, the Big Bird hit an air pocket and suddenly lurched and dropped fifty feet straight down.

Jersey was thrown out the door, tumbling uncontrollably in the updraft as the plane plummeted earthward. Her chute deployed and was immediately snagged on the tail fin of the

 

25

 

airplane, ripping to shreds and streaming behind her as she fell.

I “Shit!” screamed the jump master, leaning out the window to watch her fall. He turned an ashen face to Coop. “She’s I a goner.”

Coop whipped out his K-Bar and slashed his chute line. I “Uh-uh, pardner, nobody dies tonight,” he said, and dove out of the door after her.

I He tucked his chin onto his chest and put his hands tight I against his sides to minimize drag, and blinked his eyes I against the hundred-mile-an-hour-wind as he arrowed down-Iward, desperately trying to catch sight of Jersey’s black silk I against the darkness.

I Jersey’s body tumbled, her arms loose and flopping like la rag doll’s, unconscious from the jolt she’d received when her chute was ripped apart.

This saved her life, as she fell much more slowly than Coop did, and he caught up with her in a matter of seconds. When he came up to her, he spread his arms and legs to slow his fall, and grabbed the tangled shreds of her chute, wrapping his hands around the silk.

He took a deep breath, grabbed the D-ring of his chute release, and jerked. When his parachute opened, the jolt nearly took his arms off, and he felt as if both his shoulders were dislocated by the force of the sudden slowdown.

Even though the Ranger parachutes were specially made for low-level drops, they weren’t designed to hold two people at once. Coop and Jersey fell with alarming speed through the night.

Coop gritted his teeth and bent his knees slightly, hoping he’d be able to hit and roll without breaking a leg, or even worse, his neck. “Mamma always said there’d be days like this,” he muttered to himself.

In a stroke of great good fortune, Jersey and Coop plummeted into the outer branches of a giant sugar maple tree,

 

26

 

the limbs slowing their fall enough to cause them to suffer only minor bruises and cuts.

As soon as he could untangle himself from the lines of his chute, Coop took a quick inventory of his body. No major bones seemed to be broken, and other than a deep gash on his left thigh, which he wrapped with a piece of silk from his chute, he seemed in fair condition.

When he was satisfied the bleeding from his leg was controlled, he scrambled through the darkness to where Jersey lay, still unconscious.

He gently unwrapped her from the shroud of silk covering her, and spread her out on the ground. He was running his hands over her limbs and body, checking for major wounds or broken bones, when she opened her eyes and stared angrily at him.

“Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?” she asked, propping herself up on her elbows.

Coop sat back on his haunches. “Just coppin’ a quick feel, darlin’,” he answered, more relieved than he cared to show that she was all right.

“Well, unless you want to pull back a nub, keep your hands to yourself, Coop.”

He grinned. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, holding his hands out palm up. “Whatever you say, Jersey.”

“What happened?” she asked, and tried to stand up, collapsing when she put her weight on her right ankle, which was already swollen to almost twice normal size.

He leaned forward and took her leg in his hand, untied her combat boot, and pulled it off, causing her to shout in pain.

“Hold on there, big boy,” she said. “What’re you trying to do, pull my foot off?”

He gave a low whistle when he saw her ankle. It was black and blue and grossly misshapen. Slowly, he moved it through a complete range of motion, again bringing tears of pain to her eyes.

 

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“I don’t think it’s broken, but you’re not going to be walk-ling on it anytime soon,” he said.

As she stared at him, her eyes glistening with moisture in Ithe half moonlight, he explained what had happened, and |how her chute had fouled on the tail fin of the C-130.

“Damn!” she exclaimed, looking heavenward.

“What is it?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Now I owe you my life, and I can’t |think of a worse thing to have happen.”

“Oh, things could be worse.”

“How?”

“I could be scraping your body up with a spatula about |now,” he answered.

She snorted. “I don’t know if that would be worse or not.”

He leered at her. “Oh, don’t make such a big thing of it,” Ihe said. “I figure you did this on purpose, so we’d be ma-|rooned alone out here in the woods, like we were in Africa.”*

He shook his head. “Hell, you didn’t have to go to all this |trouble to be alone with me … all you had to do was ask.”

She kicked at him with her injured ankle, then moaned in Ipain. “Don’t flatter yourself, pervert. I’d sooner be alone with | a snake than with a lecher like you.”

“Speaking of being alone, why don’t you try to bump Cor-Irie on your headset? Mine got ripped off when I sky-dove to catch up with you.”

Jersey reached up to trigger the speaker on her headset, only to find it smashed to pieces, hanging uselessly around her neck.

“Damn, no can do, Coop. Looks like we really are alone. Do you have any idea where we are, or where the rest of the team is?”

“Don’t have a clue. After the plane hit the air pocket, we could have turned in any direction. There is no way of telling where we are, at least not until daylight.”

“Triumph in the Ashes.

 

28

 

Jersey glanced at the chronometer on her wrist. “It’s about one A.M. now, so that gives us at least five hours until dawn.”

Coop got to his feet and dusted his pants off. “I’ll cut some branches and make us some sort of shelter against the cold. We can use the silk from the chutes to form a windbreak, and maybe we won’t freeze to death before the sun comes up.”

After he’d fashioned a lean-to from maple branches and strung pieces of their parachutes around them, he scraped together a mound of pine needles into a makeshift bed underneath, out of the wind.

He helped Jersey to her feet, putting his arm around her to support her weight.

She took his hand where it lay against the side of her breast and moved it down on her ribcage. “And don’t try that old standby about using our body heat to stay warm,” she said.

He shrugged. “It worked in the jungle, didn’t it?”

She glared at him. “I seem to remember you promised never to mention that night again,” she said with some heat.

“That was before I knew what lengths you’d go to in order to spend another night with me,” he answered as he lowered her into the lean-to.

She lay on the pine needles, her back to him as he gently covered her with a piece of parachute silk. “Wake me when it’s dawn,” she mumbled, already almost asleep.

“Women,” he whispered as he lay next to her, “can’t live with ‘em, and can’t kill ‘em.”

Later, just as he was dozing off, he felt her turn and wrap her arms around him, spooning against him to get warm, her breath stirring the hairs on the back of his neck and causing thoughts he knew he’d never dare mention to her.

She moaned once, and her breathing slowed as she fell asleep, leaving him wide awake and acutely aware of her breasts pressing against his back.*

 

29

 

Jersey stopped and turned, her hands on her hips, pushing the memory of that night from her thoughts. “Look, Coop. I told you thank you for saving my life already. What more do you want?”

He grinned and waggled his eyebrows. “Well…”

“In your dreams, mister!” she exclaimed, and whirled around, her mood of thankfulness evaporating like ice on a hot stove.

“More like my nightmares, you mean,” he rejoined as they entered Ben’s office complex.

When they walked through the door, they found Dr. Lamar Chase, Ben’s team doctor, waiting for them.

“Howdy, Doc,” Coop said.

“Hello, Lamar,” Ben added.

“Hi, guys,” Doc said.

“What brings you to visit?” Ben asked. “Time for more inoculations?”

“Please say no,” Coop begged. It was a well-known fact that Coop, who feared almost nothing else on earth, was deathly afraid of needles.

Doc Chase held up his hands. “No, Coop, no more shots.” He grinned. “And it’s a good thing, too. Last time I had to give you an injection, you used up my entire supply of smelling salts.”

“Sissy,” Jersey whispered under her breath.

“Bitch,” Coop replied, his face flaming red, continuing the constant game of sarcastic rejoinders the two played on a daily basis. Ben had often said they ought to get married, as much as they fought. Both Coop and Jersey acted aghast at the very idea.

“Actually it’s to tell you the plague in the northern states is on a rapid decline,” said Doc. “With our shipments of antibiotics and the new vaccine Yiro Ishi gave us, the citizens

 

30

 

of the USA are healing and very few new cases of anthrax are being reported.”

“No thanks to Sugar Babe Osterman, God bless her memory,” Ben said sarcastically.

Doc Chase nodded. “You’re right there, Ben. Her … uh, untimely death probably saved more lives than anything she’d ever done in life.”

Ben bent and rubbed Jodie’s head as he took his seat at his desk.

“How are the peace negotiations going with Otis Warner?” Doc asked.

Ben shrugged. “Okay, I think. Cec Jeffreys says Warner and his new cabinet are much more reasonable to deal with than the Osterman regime was.” He grinned. “Warner at least seems to have the citizens’ welfare uppermost in his mind, rather than some misguided feelings of revenge against me personally as Sugar Babe did.”

“What are the latest terms?” Coop asked.

“Warner has agreed to reset the boundaries between our two countries back to their status at the time Osterman began her attacks against us.”

“What about reparations?” Jersey asked.

Ben wagged his head. “There are to be none. There wouldn’t be any use anyway, ‘cause the treasury of the USA is just about empty.”

Beth, the statistician on Ben’s team who was responsible for keeping track of resources and materiel during times when they were at war, nodded. “It’s just as you predicted, Ben. The hideously high taxes they’ve been collecting all these years have been used to support the vast bureaucracy of their government and their stupid welfare programs instead of for the good of the working citizens who are paying them.”

“Maybe they’ll finally glom onto the fact you simply cannot pay people not to work and expect workers to keep propping up the system. It goes against all human nature,” Ben said.

 

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“Well, folks, politics is your bailiwick,” Doc said. “I just came to tell you about the plague, so I’m off.”

“Headin’ for the golf course?” Coop asked with a smile. He was always kidding Doc about his quest to break 100 on the golf links around the base.

Doc smiled. “Yeah. I’ve got this new driver that is guaranteed to let me hit the ball three hundred yards.”

“That just means you’ll have to trek that much farther into the woods to find it,” Coop said.

“Ain’t that the truth,” Doc said as he waved good-bye and headed out the door.

Corrie, the team’s communications expert, looked up from one of the portable headsets she was fiddling with. “What are you going to do now that peace is threatening to break out, Ben? Take up golf like Doc Chase?”

Ben smirked. “Oh, I wouldn’t worry too much about us warriors being out of a job, Corrie,” he answered. “If I remember my history correctly, there haven’t been too many years since man crawled out of the primordial muck that warriors weren’t much in demand. It seems human beings just can’t seem to get along for any length of time with each other. If it’s not the color of their neighbors’ skins that causes them to go to war, it’s the fact that one nation has something another wants and doesn’t want to work to get it. It’s always easier for politicians to send us in to do their dirty work rather than have the courage to pass laws that are painful to the voters who keep them in office. So, no, I’m not going to take up golf. I’m going to keep my .45 cleaned and oiled and be ready for the next hot spot to pop up, as one always does.”

 

32

 

Claire Osterman was sweaty, exhausted, and covered with mosquito bites by the time she’d walked the five miles to the service station and the nearest phone.

She stood the shotgun in a comer and walked into the office. “I need to make another phone call,” she said.

The proprietor, a tall, skinny man with several days’ growth of whiskers on his face, looked up at her from under the brim of a large, black, flop-brimmed hat as he cut a piece of tobacco off a plug with a pocketknife.

“You got money? Long-distance calls ain’t exactly cheap, ya know.”

Claire felt in the pockets of the pants she’d appropriated from the Holts. Damn, she thought, she’d forgotten to take the stash of money Bettye Jean Holt had squirreled away in her sugar bowl, hidden from her husband.

“Listen, I’m calling a friend to come pick me up. I’ll tell him to bring the money to pay you back for the call.”

The man grinned, exposing teeth yellowed by years of chewing poor-grade tobacco. “That ain’t gonna cut it, little lady,” he drawled in the soft accent of south Tennessee. “No money, no call, It’s as simple as that.”

Claire tried to put a seductive smile on her face, in spite of the swelling that still remained in her broken jaw. “How about I pay another way, handsome,” she purred, unbuttoning the top two buttons of her shirt. What the hell, she thought,

 

33

 

r

I was that old saying, any port in a storm.

I The owner of the station stared at her body, thinner than

? before due to the near-starvation rations of the Holts, but

? still twenty pounds overweight, and her sagging, lifeless I breasts.

I “That might git ya some food, but yore not near pretty

I enough for a long-distance call, lady.”

I Claire’s face blushed red and her heart hammered in anger.

H Why, that lousy no good son of a bitch, she thought, humili—

I ated at the rejection.

I “Okay, have it your way,” she said quietly through teeth

? gritted tight.

I She turned around, picked up the Holts’ shotgun, and

opened the door. After making sure no one was around, she whirled and pointed the barrel at the man.

“What’s your name, mister?” she asked.

He looked up, eyes widening at the sight of the scattergun pointing at his face. He held up both hands, as if he could stop the buckshot if she fired. “Uh … I didn’t mean no disrespect, ma’am. Go ahead an’ use the phone.”

“I said, what is your name?”

“Kyle, Kyle Truman. Why do you want to know?”

She grinned, feeling better suddenly. ” ‘Cause I make it a practice to know the names of men I kill,” she growled, pulling the trigger.

The shotgun exploded, kicking back against her shoulder as the buckshot took Kyle Truman’s head almost completely off at the neck, blowing his body backward to land spread-eagled on his desk behind the counter.

Claire walked around the countertop and punched the No Sale key on the cash register. When the drawer opened, she pocketed the two hundred dollars in bills and as much of the change as she could stuff in her pockets. When the register

I was empty, she walked to Truman’s cooler, took out a couple of beers and three Butterfinger candy bars, and carried them

 

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to the phone. As she dialed, she tore the wrapper off the chocolate bar and popped the top on the beer.

She drank half the bottle down in one long gulp, thinking she hadn’t tasted anything so good in a long time.

The operator at USA headquarters answered, “United States Capital Services.”

“I need to speak to BuPers, please,” Claire said, asking for the Bureau of Personnel.

After several clicks and some static from the satellite connection, Claire was finally connected to the correct department.

“Can I help you?” a feminine voice asked.

“Yes. I need to talk to Herb Knoff. He used to be assigned to President Osterman’s staff.”

There was silence for a moment, then the voice came back. “Military personnel aren’t allowed to receive personal phone calls.”

“This isn’t exactly a personal call,” Claire replied, wanting to strangle the bitch on the other end of the line. “This is Nurse Jenkins at Baptist Memorial Hospital. Mr. Knoff’s mother has had a heart attack and she’s requested that we notify her son.”

“Oh … in that case, I’m sure it’ll be all right. Lieutenant Knoff has been assigned to the motor pool. I’ll connect you.”

Motor Pool? Claire thought. So that bastard Warner is getting rid of anyone who might still be loyal to me.

After another series of annoying bursts of static, a surly voice came on the line. “Motor pool, Knoff speaking.”

“Herb, don’t say a word … tins is Claire.”

There was a long pause, “Oh … uh … hello. This is quite a surprise.”

“I suspect it is,” Claire replied drily. “How are you liking your new job?”

“Oh, I just love being a grease monkey,” Knoff replied sarcastically.

“Are you open to another more attractive offer?”

 

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“What do you think? Of course I am.”

“Good. Here’s what I need. Find as many men as you think you can trust and commandeer a couple of HumVees and as much small arms and ammunition as you can get your hands on.”

“That won’t be too hard. The… recent changes have left a lot of men unhappy with the new order of things.”

“I thought it might be that way. Who’s staying in my old apartment?”

“Harlan Millard and his wife took it over after your … accident.”

“Can you get to Harlan and talk privately?”

“Sure. Why?”

“I need him to open the safe I have hidden in the wall, behind a picture of the Capitol buildings. I’ve got some cash and a black book with the account numbers and bank locations where I’ve stashed enough cash to finance my return to power.”

There was a pause of a couple of minutes, and Claire added, “And Herb. Don’t even think of taking it for yourself. The book is in code and you won’t be able to get your hands on the real money without me.”

“I wasn’t …”

“I know you weren’t, but I thought it prudent to remind you of what’s at stake here. You can stay a mechanic, or you can join forces with me and be my second in command.”

“Sounds good to me. Nothing is more boring than the prospect of peace to a soldier.”

“When you talk to Harlan, offer him a job with us. He should be ready to do anything to get rid of that bitch of a wife of his.”

“And if he refuses?”

“Wait until you get the book from the safe, and then kill the son of a bitch.”

“Yes, ma’am. Where do I meet you?”

Claire gave him directions to the service station and ar-

 

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ranged to meet him there in one week’s time. She figured she could find a local farmhouse to hide out in for the time it would take him to get the vehicles and make the journey to Tennessee.

“You won’t have any trouble getting passes for the checkpoints, will you?” she asked.

“Naw, one of the men I intend to bring with us is a sergeant in the Intel division. He was demoted from a warrant officer for insubordination, so he’ll do whatever I ask to get the chance for some payback.”

“Just the type of men I need. I also want you to get Harlan to give you the file on Perro Loco.”

“Perro Loco? You mean that crazy rebel down in Nicaragua who calls himself Mad Dog?”

“Yeah. I was in negotiations with him to attack Ben Raines from the south just before my plane went down. I think he’s moved his headquarters to Belize, and we’re gonna need some help to finish what I started and get my old job back.”

“Will do. Anything else?”

“Yeah, hurry up. I’m hornier than hell and can’t wait to see you.”

“Give me a week and I’ll be there with bells on.”

“Don’t worry about the bells. Just bring me some hard sons of bitches and some guns. I’ll do the rest.”