269

Ben had worked close to town and knew without any doubt that Jackman’s men had taken over the place. It was real easy to tell: the Nazi swastika could be seen everywhere one looked. There were a lot of black-shirts in evidence as well, and only those troops and the cammie-clad men of Jackman’s carried weapons.

“Fair game,” Ben muttered. “Now I start having some fun.” He was crouched inside an old fast-food restaurant and peering out through a crack in the boarded-up windows. He smiled, a grim curving of his lips. Come the night, darkness was not the only thing that was going to fall.

A walking patrol of two heavily armed men stopped in the shade of the building to smoke and talk. Ben listened.

“I ain’t never seen Jackman so pissed. I thought he was gonna shoot them ol’ boys who was bringin’ Raines in.”

“Me, too. At least I heard he was pissed. I’m glad I wasn’t around.”

“You think Ben Raines is around this area?”

“Hell, no. Man, he’s workin’ south toward his own

270 people. He’s a hundred miles from here by now.”

“That’s what I think, too. You going to the citizen-hangin’ tomorrow?”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world. Folks got to learn if they collaborate with the enemy, they gonna get hung.”

“Damn shame to hang that fine-lookin’ piece of ass. Jackman could have give her to us.”

Laughing, the men moved on.

“Ummm,” Ben said.

For reasons that were still unknown to Ben, years back, when the plague had run its course and the final collapse of governments came about shortly afterward, many jails and prisons were destroyed. Most courthouses were blown up or burned. Perhaps it was to destroy public records and erase past crimes. Ben never had been able to figure that out. But on this night, it would prove to be a good thing, for the six people who were to be hanged the following morning were being held in an old motel on Highway 62. Ben had learned that by listening to people talk as they walked past his hiding place during the day. Two women and four men.

By nine o’clock that night, Ben was lying in the tall grass about a hundred yards from the motel.

It was easy to see which rooms were being used as cells. The big windows had been removed and bars were in their place. Directly in front of the holding rooms, about fifty yards out, was a sandbagged machine-gun nest, manned by two men. Three armed guards patrolled the walkway in front of the converted rooms.

“I got to piss,” one of the machine gunners said. “Be right back.”

“Take your time,” his buddy told him. “Bring us back some coffee and a doughnut, will you? After

271 you wash your hands,” he added with a laugh.

His buddy gave him the bird and walked off into the gloom.

Ben slipped through the soft wet grass and wormed his way down the embankment and snaked his way to the rear of the sandbags. With one quick movement, he grabbed the man’s long hair, cut his throat, and gently let the chin go forward until it was resting on the man’s chest.

The next part was going to be tricky.

The second machine gunner came walking back, both hands full of coffee cups. Ben hoped he could salvage at least one of the cups. He needed a cup of coffee.

The sandbags were about three feet high and Ben lay close to the rear bags. The guard came up and stood for a moment.

“Jesus Christ, Denny. Jackman come by here and see you sleepin’ it’d be your ass in a sling. I told you to stop layin’ out with that damn woman. She’s sappin’ all your strength.” He sat the cups on the top of the bags and stepped into the square. “Go on and sleep. I’ll jab you if I need you.”

Ten seconds later, all he needed was a good record with the Lord. Something Ben doubted he had.

Ben lay behind the bags and ate the doughnut and drank both cups of coffee, even though one had cream in it and Ben liked his coffee black with one sugar.

Working very carefully, glancing over at the walking guards every few seconds, Ben removed the pistol belts from each man, their battle harnesses, and took their M-16s.

Now it was going to get dicey.

He slipped back into the tall grass and worked his way to the end of the motel grounds. He stashed

272 the gear and squatted in the darkness behind a car, wondering what in the hell he was going to do now.

“I got to go shit,” one of the guards said. “That greasy crap that my wife fixed for supper is workin’ on me hard.”

“Go crap over yonder behind my car. If Jackman comes up, we can say you was checkin’ out a noise.”

Ben smiled. Come on, come on. He was pleased to see the man was about his height and had a dark stubble of beard. It might work. It just might work.

The guard was moaning and holding his stomach as he approached the car. He fumbled with his battle harness and laid it aside, then tore open his belt and dropped his trousers. The only relief he got was the blade of a knife tearing into his back and ripping upward as a hard hand clamped over his mouth. Ben picked up the man’s fallen beret and plopped it on his own head. He waited a few minutes, then stood up, walking slowly toward the motel. Several cars drove past and the last one pulled in.

As the car was pulling in, the driver called, “Hey, Fuller. Come over here. I got a message from Jackman.” He pulled the car past the corner of the building and out of sight.

Go on, Fuller, Ben silently urged. Go on.

Fuller went, leaving just the one guard.

‘“Bout time you got back,” the guard said as Ben walked up. The man’s eyes widened and he opened his mouth to yell.

Ben’s knife, which he had been holding close to his right leg, flashed in the dim light and the guard went down, blood spurting from his torn throat. Ben tore the ring of keys from the man’s belt and fumbled with the keys for precious seconds until he found the right one. He pushed open the door and stood for a few

273 more seconds looking at a very lovely woman. He blinked and tossed her the keys.

“Get the others and get down to the end of the parking lot,” he told her. “Move. Quickly now. There are guns at the front of that old Mercury. Move!”

“Who are you?” she breathed. Then her eyes widened. “My God. General Raines.”

“Move, darling,” Ben said. He heard a car pulling out. “We’re all out of time. Move, goddammit!”

He ran to the edge of the building and knocked Fuller sprawling to the concrete. A kick to the head put Fuller out of it for a long time. If his skull wasn’t fractured, he’d have one hell of a headache for a day or so.

Ben ripped the battle harness from him and took off the web belt containing pistol and clips. He ran back to the holding rooms. The woman had unlocked the doors and the prisoners were standing outside, all of them looking dazed and scared and slightly confused.

“Move!” Ben called in a hoarse whisper. “Let’s get the hell out of here.” He tossed the M-16, web belt, and ammo pouch to a man and pushed the others toward the far end of the parking lot.

Then Lady Luck lifted her skirts and crapped all over everybody.

A car pulled in, the headlights highlighting them all. “Hey!” a man yelled, and floorboarded the old Cadillac. Ben leveled the Uzi and gave the windshield half a clip. The car slewed to one side and went crashing into the lower level of the motel.

“Go!” Ben yelled. “Into that field and keep going straight.”

“No,” the woman said. “I know where to go.”

“Lead the way, then. But for God’s sake, move!”

274 They ran into the field just as sirens began splitting the night air and headlights of fast-moving cars and trucks were darting in all directions behind them.

They ran until Ben thought his sides would bust open. When they reached a deserted and nearly burned out old subdivision, the woman stopped and they all bent over, gasping for breath.

“I can’t do it, Ann,” a man about Ben’s age said, bending over and holding his sides. “I can’t go on.”

“Come on, Larry,” the woman urged. “It’s not that much further.”

“Let’s go,” Ben said. “So we all drop dead of a heart attack. Beats hanging any day. We’ll walk for a minute then run for a minute. Lead the way, Ann.”

She led them through a maze of burned homes and rubble. They crossed a creek and rested for a moment.

“Names,” Ben said.

“I’m Ann,” the woman whose beauty had stopped Ben for a few seconds back at the motel. “That’s Larry, Paul, David, and Frank. This is Carol. We heard you were dead, General.”

“Greatly exaggerated and very premature,” Ben said with a smile. “Did Hoffman find our weapons cache here?”

“What weapons cache?” Frank asked.

Ben chuckled. “Come on. Let’s find us a place to hole up for the night and then we’ll really start doing some damage. Lead the way, Ann.”

They skirted another line of darkened houses and crossed an open meadow, all of them keeping low. They crossed another creek and then heard the baying of bloodhounds behind them.

“Shit!” Ben said. “I might have known these ol’ boys would have those. We find us some transporta—

275 tion and throw them off. Where’s the highway?”

“Secondary road just up ahead,” David said. “But how will you get a vehicle?”

“Is there a curfew on?”

“You bet. No one but Jackman’s people are allowed out after dark.”

“That makes it easy then,” Ben told the small group. “We just kill the driver.”

At the road, Ben motioned the others down into a ditch and he squatted beside the road in brush. The first vehicle was a small car and he let that go past. Then a pickup truck came driving slowly toward them, traveling no more than five miles an hour, a spotlight on the passenger side searching the ditches. When the vehicle drew even with Ben, he put half a dozen slugs through the open window. The driver must have had his left foot on the brake pedal, for the truck stopped abruptly, then started moving forward slowly.

Ben jumped out of the brush and jerked open the door, dragging the dead driver out and dumping him on the blacktop. He got behind the wheel and stopped the truck.

“Get their weapons,” he told the group. “And get in.”

Ann and Frank got in the cab with Ben, the others in the open bed of the truck. “Lay down,” Ben told those in the rear. “This could get wild before it gets better.”

“You’re a cold one,” Ann told him, her hazel eyes on Ben.

“I’m alive,” Ben replied, then dropped the transmission into drive and took off. “Which way?”

“Stay on this road until I tell you to turn. We’ll head out into the hills. It’s a no-man’s-land out there. That’s where the resistance is located. Jackman’s

276 people don’t venture out there.”

“Does this take us out to the airport?”

“Right past it. But the airport is no longer in use. Jackman uses another strip south of here.”

“Good,” Ben said with a smile. “The airport is where the supplies are cached. They were modernizing it when the Great War hit. After the collapse of Tri-States, we hid supplies all over the nation.”

“How come we weren’t told of that?” Frank asked.

“If you didn’t know, you couldn’t have talked under torture.”

“Makes sense,” Frank said. “I guess.”

A vehicle roared past them, the driver slammed on his brakes, and spun around in the road.

“Open fire on that vehicle,” Ben shouted to those in the rear.

The night roared with automatic-weapons fire and the car behind them left the road and crashed into a huge old tree. If there were any survivors, they posed no immediate threat. Ben drove on into the night. At the old abandoned airport, Ben whipped in and drove to a hangar, parking inside.

“Are you insane?” Carol yelled from the rear of the truck. “We’ve got to get away!”

“Running away is not something I do well,” Ben told her and the others. “You people find something to dig with. Move!”

Ben ran to the old office building, which had been gutted by fire years back. Ben centered himself at the building and walked ten steps.

“We’ll dig here,” he said, as Larry handed him a shovel with half its handle broken off.

A few frantic minutes later, Ben’s shovel hit metal. He pried open the cleared lid and started handing out boxes to the group. “Load the truck and then meet me back at the road.” He opened a long box. “Ann,

277 grab as many of these as you can carry and come with me.”

“LAWs?” Paul questioned.

“You got it,” Ben said. “Come on, Ann.”

“Well, I’ll just be damned,” Paul said.

“Some of Jackman’s people soon will be,” Ben told him, and took off at a run for the road. He could see fast-approaching lights in the distance.

“It’s going to be close,” Ann panted by his side.

“Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades,” Ben replied, kneeling down in the center of the highway. He pulled the safety pins and extended the inner tube, cocking the LAW. “Stand clear and have another one ready for me,” he told Ann, shouldering the LAW and sighting in.

“Jesus,” Ann said. “Fire the damn thing!”

“Too far away. They’ll be in range in about five seconds.”

Ben did a slow count and fired the 66mm rocket. The lead car exploded in flames and the driver of the car behind it jammed on his brakes. But it was too close. The second vehicle slammed into the burning mass of twisted metal just as Ben fired the second rocket. The roadway was turned into a blazing death trap, the explosion blowing part of a body through the shattered windshield. A third vehicle tried to get the hell gone from that area, the driver attempting a state trooper turnaround in the road, and the vehicle stalled out, exposing its right side for a moment. That was all the time that Ben needed. He fired a third LAW. No one would be using that highway for a while.

“Bye-bye, assholes,” Ben said, standing up just as the now-heavily-laden truck pulled up.

“We got most of it and piled lumber and other stuff over the hole,” David said. “I don’t think they’ll findit.”

278 “We have other caches around the area,” Ben said, getting into the back. “Let’s go find someplace safe to rest and have something to eat. Excitement always makes me hungry.”

Ann shook her head at his words. “Everything I ever heard about him is true.”