51

The outlaws on Maui just quit.

Communications intercepted no radio call and no flares went up; the outlaws, bandits, pirates, and trash just threw down their weapons, put their hands in the air, and quit. It was the most astonishing sight Ben and the others had ever seen.

Ben walked up to one group and stared at the men and women. None of them would meet his sharp and piercing eyes. “Look at me!” he said. To a person, they jumped at his voice. They lifted their eyes and Ben could see they were scared half to death. “Why?” he asked them. “Why just give up?”

The group exchanged glances and a woman said simply, “We can’t win. Not here. Books and them others with him won’t give up, and neither will them stinkin’ Believers, but we can’t win. So why fight on? Besides, we really didn’t want to fight anyway.”

Ben blinked at that, then looked at a young man; no more than a boy. “How old are you?”

“I… don’t rightly know, sir. I think I’m fifteen.”

“I’m Jenny,” another woman said. “The boy has never killed, raped, nor tortured,” she said. “He’s basically a good kid. He was the only survivor on a

52 pleasure boat that drifted up here a couple of years ago. A big yacht. Me and Marge here kind of took him in.”

“The pleasure boat?” Ben asked. “It belonged to your parents?”

“No, sir. Slavers. They grabbed me and my sis and mom off Midway. We were shipwrecked there. No one else alive. Some sort of disease hit us about four days out of here. I got sick, but I got well. I was the only one left alive. It was… kind of bad. I buried my mom and sis at sea, along with the others as they passed.”

“You think you can look after Jenny and Marge, boy?”

“What? Oh. Yes, sir. I guess so. They sure took care of me.”

“Then the three of you take off and find you a piece of ground to farm and get to doing it.”

Jenny and Marge exchanged glances. Jenny said, “But we were-“

“I don’t care what you were. General Georgi Striganov was once my bitter enemy. Colonel West was a mercenary who fought against me in the south of the United States. I’ve got two thousand or more men and women in the ranks who used to be outlaws. But I saw a spark of decency in them, just like I’m seeing in you.”

“How about us joining up with you?” Jenny asked. “There is a lot of crap and crud on this island, for sure. But there are a number of pretty decent sorts who never took a part in torture or rape or murder. They stole, yes. They had slaves, yes. But they didn’t mistreat them. You see these locals standing around here. They aren’t making any threatening moves toward us. That should tell you something.”

Ben looked at a local, standing with a shotgun in

53 his hands. The man nodded his head. “She’s telling the truth, General Raines. Of all the islands, the people on this one were the most easygoing. It’s on Oahu, Kauai, and the big island that you’re going to run into trouble.”

Ben smiled and shrugged his shoulders. “All right. But you people better get ready for the roughest time of your lives. Joining this outfit is anything but fun.”

Buddy and some of his Rat team rode up on motorcycles, accompanied by Beerbelly and Lead-foot and Wanda and some of her Sisters of Lesbos. The prisoners blinked at the sight.

“Like I said,” Ben told them. “We have a strange mixture in the Rebel ranks.” He turned to his son. “Take your … contingent, son, and go with these people. We have a lot of new recruits to train and not a whole hell of a lot of time in which to do it.”

Not all the outlaws on the island were so willing to give up the fight. Plenty remained that were brutal hard-core criminals. But within a week’s time, those who chose to fight on were either dead or prisoners.

By the time the Rebel doctors, under the command of Lamar Chase, had checked out the new recruits, Ben found that he had over three thousand people to train. He knew that approximately twenty percent of them would not make it through the training. But if six hundred fell out, that would still leave him enough to form three new battalions. He pulled Major Greenwalt from Dan’s command to head up Eleven Battalion, Lieutenant Jackie Malone from his own command platoon to head up Twelve Battalion, and Captain Raul Gomez to take over Thirteen Battalion. He split up the volunteers into three groups and told the new batt comms to each take a

54 group and get to it.

Immediately, several men decided they didn’t want to take orders from a female. Jackie washed them out on the spot and central records recorded the reasons why. Those three would never be a part of any Rebel organization.

There were those who were blatantly racist. They were kicked out quickly. Still others could not or would not respond to the discipline needed to be a part of the Rebel army. They were soon gone. Some could not meet the physical requirements and others just dragged their butts.

While the weeding out and the training of the new members intensified, the war went on.

“The creepies live in underground bunkers,” a special-ops spokesman told the batt comms, after he and his team had returned from a dangerous visit on the big island. “One of their main breeding farms is located at the old Kulani Prison site. It’s going to be a real bastard to get into. Establishing a beachhead will be easy. Most of the towns along the coast have been long deserted. But digging the creeps out of the interior is going to be time-consuming.”

“We destroy as many as we can,” Ben told the commanders. “We don’t have to kill all of them, just knock them down enough so the locals can come in after us and manage it. Has Jim Peters really put together a fighting battalion?”

“I’ll say he has,” Tina told her father. “And he’s itching for designation.”

“Call it Fourteen Battalion,” Ben told Beth. “We’re going to need everybody just to hold our own against those people coming up from South America. G-2 has informed me that the advancing

55 divisions do not have nuclear capabilities. That surprises me, but it’s welcome news. Our new battalions are shaping up, and by the time we’re finished here, they should be fully operational. Now then, I have gone against my own policy and offered surrender terms to those on Oahu and Kauai. Their commander, someone called Books Houseman, refused. The only way they would consider surrender is if we offered them full amnesty. That is unacceptable to me. I warned them that once we start, it’s going to be harsh. Books personally told me by radio to, in his words, ‘Get fucked.’I told him he wasn’t my type.”

After the laughter had subsided, Ben walked to a wall map and picked up a pointer. “All right, people, here it is: I’m taking my battalion straight into Hilo. I’ll secure the town and the airport. Dan, you take the airport here at Upolu Point. Georgi, you go in here at Paauhau. West, you’re going in down here at KaLae. Rebet, take your battalion in here, at Hookena, drive straight in and take and hold the airport just outside of Waimea. Danjou, go in here at Kalapana. Therm, you seize the airport at Kaupulehu, then split your battalion, move south, and take the airport at Keahole Point. Everyone else stays in reserve. Once our objectives are secure, we’ll start using gunships to punish the creepies. Map packets are in front of you.”

“Bastards!” Books said, sitting at his desk and looking out the window. “I should have guessed those wimps over on Maui would roll over.”

John Dodge had come over by boat from Kauai and said, “The Rebels are beginning to shift their armada around. They’re layin’ just outside the channel now. This will probably be the last time I’ll be able to come

56 over. They’re runnin’ PT boats all over the damn place. I’ll go back tonight and that’ll be it for me. The run is gettin’ too risky.”

Books nodded his head. “No vacillation on the part of any of the gangs on your island?”

“No.” John was adamant. “Don’t none of us want no part of Rebel law.”

Books looked at him. “Start killing your slaves. We can’t have them at our backs once it starts. I ordered the extermination on this island this morning.”

John nodded his agreement. “I noticed. Bodies are beginnin’ to pile up and stink. You better start burnin’ them ‘fore you have a disease problem.”

“Communications says that Raines is going to hit the big island soon. Two, three weeks over there, and then it’ll be our turn.”

John Dodge stood up and shook hands with Books. “I got to say hello and good-bye to some buddies over here. I’ll see you in hell, Books.”

Bobby sat in a corner of the room, listening and watching the two gang leaders. He was scared and doing his best to hide that fear. He had never thought it would really come to this. Actually, none of them had. He didn’t want to even think about dying. He had gone to a church and tried to pray. But he felt so guilty about being there, after all the hideous things he’d done over the long years, he’d left the old sanctuary. He didn’t know what to do. Now the slaves were being killed … those that had not fled into the brush. Bloated bodies were littering the streets, rats eating on them. It was terrible. For the first time in his life Bobby was seriously considering suicide. He knew one thing for a fact: he wasn’t going to allow himself to fall into civilian or Rebel hands. He’d been Books’s aide for too many years. They’d hang him for sure.

57 “Did you find a church to pray in?” Books asked him with a smile, breaking into Bobby’s thoughts.

“A church?” John said with a sneer. “You really went to a fuckin’ church?”

“Yes,” Bobby said. “I went to church. But I didn’t stay very long.”

“What’s the matter, Bobby?” Books asked, that same sneering smile on his lips. “Was your conscience bothering you?”

Bobby did not choose to reply. He walked out, leaving the derisive laughter behind him.

“What’s wrong with him, is he queer?” John Dodge asked, the words reaching Bobby.

Whatever was Books’s reply, the words did not reach Bobby. The gunfire of outlaws killing slaves blotted them out. Bobby looked at the body-littered and bloody streets and shook his head in disbelief. Bobby was anything but a prude. He’d done his share of killing and raping. But this was so … senseless. Needless. The gang leaders were acting like a bunch of spoiled children: if they couldn’t have it, then destroy it.

Suddenly Bobby wanted out. Just to get away. He could get on his motorcycle and ride up into the mountains and hide. Grow a beard and stay hidden for a long time. He could…

Do nothing, and he knew it. He was too well known. Sooner or later, those former slaves who had escaped into the interior when the wholesale executions started would find him and kill him.

He walked around the corner and started to step over a woman who was lying in a gathering puddle of blood. She moaned and rolled over, looking up at him through anguish-filled eyes. Somebody had shot her twice in the stomach and left her to die a painful death.

58 “Big brave man,” the woman sneered at him, blood leaking from her mouth. “It’ll take me hours to die like this. Finish it, for the love of God, finish me. Stop the pain.”

An outlaw called Big Jess stepped out of the alley. “No, Bobby, you don’t do nothin’ of the kind. I want her to holler. This is the one that no matter how I beat her, she never would suck me off. So I want her to holler.”

Bobby looked at the outlaw, disgust in the gaze. He stepped over the woman. She grabbed at his jeans and he kicked her hand away.

Big Jess chuckled. “You a good boy, Bobby. Faithful to his woman, too,” he said to the gut-shot woman. “Yes, sir. He’s been with the same wahine for some years now.”

Bobby turned his back to the outlaw and walked to his motorcycle. Whole goddamn island was going crazy.

“Beg, you bitch!” Big Jess said.

“Go to hell!” the woman told him.

Bobby cranked his motorcycle and headed for his house, up in the hills around the city.

Not wanting to be left out of all the action, Ike was now in command of a reworked and refitted modern-day PT boat. Ben knew about it and kept silent. If Ike wanted to roar around the ocean looking for trouble, that was fine with Ben, just as long as the ex-Navy SEAL returned to the armada every now and then to check things out. Actually, Ben had been about to let Ike come ashore with his battalion when Ike decided to shift the armada around. But now that Ike was having so much fun roaring about the ocean in a seventy-foot rocket, Ben decided to leave him alone.

59 Ben walked to the wall map and checked out the new positions of the ships. When Ike was finished shifting vessels around, he would have effectively closed off all island travel for the outlaws and pirates. Any ship or boat found in the channels was subject to being blown out of the water. Several already had been and the pirates had gotten the message.

With a sigh, Ben returned to his desk and looked at the mounds of reports on it. With the addition of the four new battalions, the paperwork had drastically increased. Ben picked it all up and threw it on the floor, in piles. Hell with it.

Jersey watched him from the door. “You need some aides, General,” she told him. “You’re either gonna be out in the field, or tied to a desk. You’re gonna have to start delegating authority. Now, which one is it gonna be? ‘Cause everybody is tired of hearing you bitch.”

Ben looked at her and started laughing. General of the Army he might be, but Jersey pulled no punches with him. She told it like she saw it.

“Enlarge my staff, is that it, Jersey?”

“Has to be, General. The army’s gettin’ too large for one man to do it all. When we had nine battalions, it was too much. Now it’s really gotten out of hand.”

Beth and Corrie and Cooper came in. Ben stared at them and they stared back. “Speak your minds,” he said.

“We been talkin’ to Doctor Chase,” Corrie said. “He’s worried about the work load on your shoulders. So are the rest of the batt comms. Tina and Jersey have been meeting with them from time to time. General, you’re a soldier’s soldier. You hate the office and love the field. You enjoy planning and tactics, but you’re happiest in the field. We now have

60 more than twelve thousand people in infantry units alone. I don’t even know how many others are in armor and artillery and engineers and truck drivers and cooks and medics and all the other stuff.”

Ben smiled. “Tell you the truth, Coop … I don’t either. But I do have the figures around here someplace.”

“That’s the point, General,” Beth said. “You’ve talked for months about setting up a real Headquarters Company with a real XO to take all this crap off of you. Let’s do it and take some strain off of all of us.”

“Who do you have in mind?”

“Thermopolis.”

That startled Ben. But the more he thought about it, the more logical it became. Thermopolis was a detail man; he loved that kind of work. And while Thermopolis was a good battalion commander, he did not like the killing involved with being in the field and had often said so. Therm was a gentle man by nature, and so were the people who had come with him several years back.

“Therm might not go for it,” Ben said.

“Oh, I think he will,” Beth replied with a grin.

“Suckered again,” Ben grumbled, but with a smile.