Anarchy in the Ashes

mountains and the deep timber, Mr. Raines. We are as much at home in the wilderness as you are in your house. Have you ever tried to capture sunlight or a moonbeam and hold it in your hand?”

And the dangerous children were on their way west to assist the man they believed to be a god.

Ike walked up to Ben and said, “Just got off the horn with Cecil. He’s comin’ out with his people.”

“I knew he would.”

“You could order him to turn back, Ben.”

“You seem to forget, Ike. I put Cecil in charge.”

“He just resigned. Left Dr. Chase in charge. Chase told him to kiss ass. The old bastard is comin’ out with Cecil.”

Ben could but shake his head.

“There’s more.” He waited until Sylvia had walked up. The young lieutenant had staked her claim and wanted, by God, everybody to know it. Ike hid his smile. “Deep Scouts report that underground society we’ve heard about … you remember?”

“Those that live in tunnels and caves,” Ben said. “Yes. What about them?”

“They’re going to fight with us.”

Ben sighed. “We are certainly going to have some strange allies, Ike.”

“You shore right about that,” Ike drawled. “But there’s more.”

“The underground people?” Sylvia asked, her eyes wide.

“Get Ben to tell you about it.”

“He’s already promised to tell me about Valkyrie,” Sylvia said.

“Who?” Ike looked puzzled. “When’d you run that one by me, Ben? I don’t remember her at all.” But his eyes were twinkling. “Ike!” Ben said. For his bullshit, Ben knew Ike was a highly educated man.

“Them underground people, they been buildin’ shrines in the deep timber. And you know to who, whom, whatever.”

Ben sighed. He had warned Cecil, in a rather heated discussion, that he did not wish to discuss the matter of various peoples worshipping him.

“Ike …” he warned.

“I’m just tellin’ you what’s goin’ on, Ben. Don’t get your ass up at me.”

Sylvia suppressed a giggle and Ike had to grin, the grin taking years from his tanned and rugged face.

“How are these people armed?”

“Clubs and bows and arrows. Just like Ro and Wade, I reckon.”

“I wish I had known about this before the trucks pulled out. We need to have some way of marking our people.”

“They know, Ben. We’re all in tiger-stripe and lizard camo. They’ll know us.”

“How about Ro and Wade and the woods-children?”

“Them people know all about them, too. Everybody’s all right.”

“I’m curious about something, Ike. Ever since I got here, I’ve had the damnest feeling of being watched. Has that feeling touched you, too?”

“Yeah. I think it’s … them underground people, Ben. Both of you come with me. There’s something I

got to show you. I wasn’t goin’ to. But you’re gonna see it sooner or later. Or one like it,” he added mysteriously.

With Rebels flanking the trio, for nobody was going to let Ben Raines get too far out of sight-not again-they moved out. About a mile from the compound, in the deep timber, there sat a crudely carved wooden monument; the carvings were very fresh. A thick tree had been felled, the stump about five feet tall. There, the woodcarver had gone to work with knife and axe.

Ben stood and stared in shocked silence.

It was his face carved into the wood. His face, and the outline of something else.

“Jesus, Ben!” Sylvia blurted.

The Rebels seemed very nervous as they gathered about the wooden monument.

Then Ben recalled how nervous Wade and Ro had been looking at his Thompson. And that day when he confronted many of his young Rebels with the weapon, telling them it was only a weapon. Nothing more.

Beneath Ben’s profile, there was the outline of his old Thompson submachine gun. Chapter Four

Back in ‘88, when the world exploded in war, every nation around the globe, including the U.s., went through a period of disorganization and confusion. And for a time, it appeared the battered nations, most of them, would recover. But the gods of Fate continued to laugh darkly, and through the laughter, hurled thunderbolts of destruction at the world.

First came a deranged President, Hilton Logan, who was instrumental in ordering the wiping-out of Ben Raines and the Tri-States.

Hilton Logan paid dearly for that decision.

With his life.

A full decade after the bombings, the world still seemed unable to pull itself out of the ashes. Only one man and one grouping of peoples had managed to rebuild and pick up their lives: Ben Raines and his Rebels.

Then came the rats, carrying their deadly cargo of fleas, spreading death all over the world, further reducing the earth’s population.

Still, Ben Raines and his Rebels survived and grew in strength. Ben’s dream seemed impossible to kill:

He would bring law and order back to America; he would rebuild from out of the ashes of war.

And the man did not, really, seem to age. That phenomenon only served to heighten the myths and rumors about the man.

Ben Raines was indestructible.

Ben Raines was more than flesh and blood.

Ben Raines was a god.

Nature, as surviving humankind was finding out, could recover much faster than so-called superior humankind. Nature was rapidly reclaiming its own, now that humankind was not fighting her with chemicals and axes and chain saws and bulldozers and choking smoke from millions of cars and trucks and other types of human-produced and often needless pollution.

The trillion-dollar mistake called the interstate highway system now lay like great twisting snakes throughout the land, broken only by the rushing waters of creeks and rivers.

And nature was slowly but steadily reclaiming much of that, too.

With no maintenance for almost fifteen years, the super-slab was rapidly deteriorating. For the first time since its inception, the 55 mph speed limit made sense.

More than 25 mph now.

And if the interstate system was in bad shape, the two-lane highways could best be classified as awful.

Trees were blocking many of the two-lanes, bridges were out, abandoned vehicles squatted like rusting

old time machines, mute memorials to an age long ago and far away; an age that would nevermore exist.

And the people. The survivors.

What about them?

Many had forsaken the various religions they had once embraced, believing that if indeed there ever had been a God, He would never have allowed this … this awfulness to have occurred. Hell, you couldn’t see Him; you couldn’t really talk to Him and expect any reply; there never was really any proof that He existed. So … all we have is our wits, our strength, our own two hands. Let’s stop this other foolishness and survive.

Inhabited towns either became haven for thugs and outlaws and perverts and lawlessness, or they became walled, barbed-wired, bunkered-in fortresses, with the people finally learning to pull together.

Of course, the people now did not have to contend with Big Brother Government and the mumblings of the Supreme Court interfering in their lives.

And many thought that was a blessing. Something good came out of the horror of war.

Now, there was no sign, anywhere, of factory smokestacks, no humming of machinery, no assembly lines, no commuting to work in car pools

…

 

… and no lawyers.

But there was silence.

Sometimes the silence, for those who knew what went on Before, was loud. Too loud. They would wander away from the safety of fortress, and never be seen again.

Women became rare prizes, to be taken and used and then traded for a gun or a horse or a car. It was

not an easy time to be a woman.

Or a child. Of either sex.

It was as if law and order had never existed. Now, there was no law-only the law one was strong enough to enforce. Despite all his efforts, the country that Ben Raines held in his dreams was slowly sliding back into a dark abyss, an abyss that many felt was too deep and too dark to even consider crawling out of.

This, then, was what Ben Raines and his Rebels faced-discounting the Russian and Sam Hartline.

“What is God, Ben?” Sylvia asked. They were sitting outside the command post as dusk softly gathered her skirts around the land, casting purple hues, creating a false illusion of peace. “Haven’t you ever read the Bible, Sylvia?” “Yes. Sure. But I can’t make any sense out of that, Ben. It’s too … well, contradictory for me. And I don’t know what a lot of the words mean. Besides, if God is all-powerful, He wouldn’t have let this happen. He could have stopped it, right?”

“I guess he could have. But if you’re asking for my personal opinion as to why He didn’t … I think He just got tired of it all. I think He became weary of humankind’s pettiness, greediness, cruelness, and inhumanity to fellow humans. So He started over.” “He created a flood the first time, didn’t He?” “Yes. And said He’d never do it again. And He didn’t.”

“You think God did this, don’t you?”

“I think He had a mighty hand in it. He just let

humankind destroy itself. There are those of us who always maintained our priorities were always wrong. I wrote about them, as writers are prone to do. Didn’t do any good, as far as I could tell.”

“I’ve read all your books. You sure wrote a bunch of them, Ben.”

“Yes, I did.”

“Some of them were pretty sexy, too.”

Ben grinned. “Sure were, Sylvia.” He hoped she was not leading up to what he thought she might be.

She was. “Every Rebel has at least one copy of a book you wrote, Ben.”

“When they should be carrying a pocket Bible, Sylvia. My words are not chiseled in stone, babe. I wrote paperback books for the mass market.”

“You never had a book done in them stiff covers, Ben?”

He thought for a moment. By God, he couldn’t remember. “No, I never did, Sylvia. I wrote to entertain, not to change the world.”

She didn’t understand that; and Ben really wasn’t sure he did, either.

Ben took a sip of water from his canteen and rolled the liquid around in his mouth for a moment before spitting it out on the ground.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

“I can’t get the taste of those goddamned eggs out of my mouth.”

In the gathering darkness, Ben leaned over and kissed her laughing mouth.

In his command post, General Striganov sat

behind his desk, gazing at a map of the United States. He had just received intelligence that some of Raines’s command had moved out in trucks, heading west. But only a part of Raines’s command had left.

What was the man up to now?

It didn’t make any sense to Striganov. He had Raines heavily outnumbered as it was, so why would the man split his forces?

Curious.

Striganov sat quietly, puffing contentedly on his pipe. Georgi Striganov was a strikingly handsome man; tall and well-built, with pale blue eyes and blond-gray hair. A very intelligent man, Striganov liked Ben Raines. Of course, that would not prevent him from killing Raines when the time came. Well, perhaps like was too strong a word … but he did admire the man. As to his intelligence, that sometimes worked against Striganov, for he thought himself to be brilliant, when he was merely very intelligent.

Why would Raines cut his forces? Why?

He rose from his chair and walked to the huge wall map, studying it more closely. He shook his head. Possibly some of Raines’s Rebels were airborne qualified, but Raines was too smart to jump in with them, for the man was about the same age as Georgi. And when one gets to fifty years of age, combat jumping was not only reckless but foolish.

And Raines had not left with the truck convoy. His deep recon people were sure of that.

So, Striganov thought, that meant Raines was going to wait awhile before launching his attack.

Good. Then he could take his time about setting up

defenses; go slowly and make certain of each and every detail.

But where in the hell was that one battalion of Rebels going and what did they hope to accomplish when they got there?

Obviously, he would not know the answer to that for some time. And he couldn’t order an attack against a force that large; didn’t have enough people out in the field. And another bad point was that his deep recon scouts were on foot, with no way to keep track of the truck convoy once they passed their position.

No matter, he brushed that away. He had enough force to crush a battalion like a dry piece of toast.

The Russian turned away from the maps and returned to his desk, picking up the latest photos of the babies born to human mothers, mutant fathers.

“Ugly bastards,” Striganov muttered, gazing at the enlarged photos. It would be at least a year, probably longer, before their intelligence could be truly tested and the Russian could know for sure if he had succeeded in producing a worker race; a select breed to serve as servants and houseboys and field hands.

But his scientists were sure they had done it.

“We’ll see,” Striganov said. He pressed a button on a panel on his desk. An aide stuck her head inside.

“Sir?”

“I need a bath. Send a girl in to assist me.”

“Yes, sir.”

Striganov waited patiently until there came a timid knock on his office door. “Come!” he called.

A girl, no more than fourteen, at the most, entered the lushly appointed office of the

supreme commander of the International Peace Force.

“Sir?” she said, keeping her eyes downcast.

“You’re new,” Striganov said. “When did you arrive in camp?”

“About two weeks ago, sir. I have been tested by the doctors.”

Which meant the young girl was free of any disease and ready, if not willing, to be on call to General Striganov. The general had developed some rather curious sexual habits over the past few months.

He attributed that to his association with Sam Hartline.

“What is your name, girl?”

“Jane.”

“Jane, sir.”

“Yes, sir. I won’t forget again.”

“Fine. Remove your robe.”

Jane unbelted her robe and let it fall to the thick carpet. Striganov licked suddenly dry lips at the sight of her nakedness. The girl was a rare blooming flower, he thought. No doubt about it.

Her pubic hair was thick and lush. Her breasts forming up nicely, centered with brown-cherry circles. Her little nipples looked delicious.

Striganov had long ago given up on finding a virgin. Any girl over six who still had her virginity would be a rare find, indeed.

But his men were still looking.

“Come to me,” he said, his voice thick with growing passion. His trousers bulged with his erection.

He pulled her onto his lap and began stroking her flesh. Georgi Striganov felt this was going to be a good year. He had a full complement of willing

young girls to satisfy his sexual needs, and very soon he would see Ben Raines die. Yes, a good year indeed. Chapter Five

The morning broke to a gray sky and a hard-falling rain. It was just as well. For Ben had made up his mind to cancel the jump anyway. By doing that, he would give his first battalion more time to get in position, and the Rebels coming from the east more time to arrive.

Leaving Sylvia to sleep amid the warmth of their blankets, Ben dressed and pulled a poncho on and stepped from his command post. He walked over to Ike’s quarters and knocked on the door.

“Come on in, Ben.”

Ben shucked his poncho and hung it up. He moved to the coffeepot at Ike’s wave of his hand and poured a cup.

It really wasn’t coffee, but a mixture of coffee and chicory and other things that Ben would just as soon not know.

“You and Sylvia decided to just shack up and to hell with what the others think?” Ike asked, a grin on his face.

“Might as well. Her idea. But fine with me. Ike, we both can’t buy it on this run. Have you given that any thought?”

“Sure have. And I think you ought to stay back here and-was

Ben waved him silent. “You can take that thought and shove it, pal. Ike, after Sylvia went to sleep last night, I couldn’t sleep …”

Ike paid him back for cutting him off. “I’m sure you couldn’t. Probably laid there and wondered if you was goin’ to have a heart attack.”

Then the ex-Seal roared with laughter at the expression on Ben’s face.

Ben unsuccessfully fought to hide his grin and took a sip of the awful-tasting brew. At least it was hot. “I’ve got to be thinking of a successor, Ike.”

“When you finally buy it, Ben,” Ike said, “the movement goes with you.” There was a flatness, a finality, in his voice that Ben did not like.

“Ben, I’m an ol’ curly wolf; not an administrator. Cecil is one of the finest men I have ever known in my life, but he’ll be first to tell you: he won’t be able to hold it together. No, Ben, it’s your show all the way. Hell, partner, it always has been. I knew that when you showed up down in Florida … Christ, how many years ago was that?”

“More than I care to recall,” Ben said with a sigh. “Okay. We’ll talk about that later. Let’s get down to business. You’re sure you want to take your people in from the south?”

“You bet.”

“You’re going to have some hot area behind you,

buddy. No backing up for your bunch.”

Radioactive areas.

“I don’t intend to back up, Ben. Just go forward and sideways and every other which way.”

It was to be the type of war that Ben and Gray and Ike were trained to fight: a cut-and-slash, hit-and-run, guerrilla-type action.

Ben nodded. What deep recon intel they had been able to receive showed that Hartline had few planes. He could not escape by air. And since the nuclear blasts, the tides had been affected; the oceans that hammered the coasts on both ends of the United States had become a raging torrent of fury. Scouts reported gigantic waves crashing against the shoreline; the seas bubbled and roared, creating a non-survivable maelstrom.

No one was coming in by the sea along the California coast.

And Ben was not sure he wanted to see the once-peaceful Pacific in such a rage.

Dan Gray entered Ike’s quarters and poured a cup of what now passed for coffee. He sipped and grimaced. “So so, is good, very good, very excellent good; and yet it is not; it is but so so,” Dan said.

“Shakespeare on a rainy morning, Dan?” Ben asked.

“It’s the best I could come up with in describing this dreadful brew,” the Englishman replied.

“Why don’t you say it just tastes like shit and be done with it?” Ike needled him, knowing Dan would have a quick retort.

“I shall leave crude remarks to people of your ilk,” Dan said.

Ike feigned great personal affront. “The man has cut me to the quick.”

Dan set the coffee mug aside. “Doubtful.” He looked at Ben. “To insult someone of his boorish nature would require a much more eloquent person than I.”

“Don’t he talk pretty, though?” Ike said, grinning.

The men joked and insulted each other for several minutes. They’d been friends, good friends, close friends, for years, and they were the type of men who did not, or would not, allow their feelings to show in any type of overt manner. This was their way of showing affection for the other.

The rain continued falling, harder now than before. Ben cocked his head and listened to the drumming of the raindrops. “Dan. Double the guards. Tell them “heads up.” If we’ve got unfriendlies out there, this would be an ideal time for them to hit us.”

“Right, sir.” Dan left the small hut.

“Expecting trouble?” Ike asked.

“No. But I do wonder if all those eyes out there are friendly ones.”

“Good point.”

Dan returned in a few minutes. He had a small tin of tea with him. “Now we shall enjoy a gentleman’s drink,” he announced.

“Does that include me?” Ike questioned.

“Heavens no!”

The water boiled, the tea steeping, Ben said, “Ike and his bunch will be going in from the south, Dan, as we agreed. You and your Scouts still want to play

it the way we planned?”

“Wouldn’t have it any other way, General,” Dan cheerfully replied. “We shall have a gay ol’ time doing our bloody bit.”

“Always knowed there was something funny about you,” Ike said.

“Imbecile!” Dan told him.

“Flea brain!” Ike returned the cheerfully given insult.

Ben shook his head and took his mug of steaming tea, sweetening it with a bit of honey from a jug.

Sugar was very nearly a priceless commodity.

The men sat and sipped, enjoying the tea, as the rain drummed on the roof.

“Something puzzles me, General,” Dan said.

Ike picked up on the serious note in the question and did not stick the needle to Dan. Yet.

Ben waited.

“In less than fifteen years,” the Englishman said, “how could intelligent men and women revert from civilization back to the caves, as these so-called underground people have done?”

“You’re asking me a question I don’t have a ready answer for, Dan. Maybe they thought underground would be safer. With the roaming gangs of thugs and punks and assorted creeps prowling the land, these people returned to the caves, perhaps driven by some primal urgings. I just don’t know. Maybe on this run we’ll find out, since they’ve indicated they’ll fight with us.”

“And maybe they just gave up on the promise of civilization,” Ike interjected. “A lot of folks have.

You both know that; we’ve all seen it.”

“I shall surely never understand that kind of thinking,” Dan said. “I do not understand people who just give up without a fight.”

“And speaking of that,” Ike said, after draining his mug of tea. “I’m gonna ask one more time, and then I’ll shut up about it. Ben … stay back on this one.”

“No. I’m taking my team in, dead center. We’ll be jumping in as planned. And have you heard from your Pathfinders, Ike?”

“Only that they all made it. They’re probably busy laying out the DZ’S.”

Ben nodded his head. “Now comes the hardest part, boys.”

And they knew what that was: the waiting.

The Rebels waited all that day, that night, and the following day. Still the rains continued. Ike’s Pathfinders called in from their positions. The drop zones were laid out, the coordinates given. Yes, it was raining there, too. Had been for two days. It was a bitch!

The building where Sylvia’s riggers had worked so feverishly leaked; the chutes would have to be unpacked, dried out, and repacked.

If it ever quit raining.

Another full day lost.

And the battalions coming in from the east were bogged down, having to make many detours due to the bad roads. More delays.

And Ben knew that Striganov was not sitting on his

hands. The longer his Rebels had to wait, the more time the Russian had to beef up his defenses. For Ben did not delude himself: he knew the Russian knew where he was. And the Russian would be wondering what his old enemy was up to.

And worse yet, the human suffering at Striganov’s experiment stations would continue unabated.

Ben paced his command post and cursed.

“Goddammit!” Cecil cursed, standing in the rain beside his Jeep. “We’re a hundred miles out and bogged down. “Son of a bitch!”

The Rebels maintained a respectable distance from General Jefferys. The almost-always-eloquent and soft-spoken black man-one of General Raines’s closest friends-rarely used profanity. But when he did … stand clear.

Cecil Jefferys had been with Ben since the inception of the Tri-States, and, for a very brief time, Vice-President of the United States. Cecil was the man Ben Raines leaned on most heavily for support.

Cecil turned to an aide. “Bring a tank up here,” he ordered. “And blow that goddamned bridge clear.”

“Yes, sir!”

An M109A1 was off-loaded from a flatbed and rumbled into life. It roared up to Cecil’s position. The commander of the twenty-six-ton vehicle spoke to Cecil through a headset. “I think we can push that crap free, General.”

“Then do it,” Cecil said tersely.

The commander reversed his howitzer and ordered

the massive machine forward, slamming into the rusting debris that blocked the bridge on the interstate. The tank backed off, allowing a truck with a scoop-mount to roll into place. The scoop shoved what remained of the blockage off to one side and the column began rolling.

“Hang on, Ben,” Cecil said, climbing back into his canvas-shielded Jeep. “We’re almost there.”

Cecil ordered the hammer down. About fifty miles from Ben’s base camp, Cecil’s column caught up with Ike’s motorized battalion. His Jeep skirted the front column and Cecil waved them forward, clenching his fist and working the clenched fist up and down; the infantry signal to Go!

By late afternoon, the sun began poking through the clouds, the air warming. Forward scouts radioed back that the road was clear and free of any obstacles all the way to General Raines’s camp.

Just before dusk, Cecil’s battalions rolled into the old Tri-States.

It was the first time Cecil had been back since the government assault against Raines’s Rebels. The familiar terrain brought to the man a myriad of emotions. His wife, Lila, had died not too many miles from here, during the government assault on the Tri-States; she had stepped in front of a Claymore mine.

Then, all of a sudden, Ben was standing by the side of the road, tall and erect and seemingly ageless, his beret cocked on his head Ranger fashion. A young woman stood by Ben’s side. Cecil recognized her. Lieutenant Barris.

He grinned, thinking: Ben and his women.

But he was glad for Ben. The men did not shake hands. They embraced. “Ugly bastard!” Ben told him. “Old goat!” Cecil responded, cutting his eyes toward Sylvia.

“Ready for a war?” Ben asked. “I’ll follow where you lead, Ben.” “Then, let’s do it!” Chapter Six

General Georgi Striganov’s forward deep recon scouts would make no more radio reports back to the Russian. They would never do anything again. Ever. They lay motionless on the damp ground, widely separated, the earth soaking up their blood. And they had been unable to fire one Shot in their defense.

None of the IPF people had lever gotten so much as a glimpse of the men who killed them.

They had encountered the underground people. Silent and deadly.

The first IPF scout to die had risen from his concealed position-a position he thought was concealed. He took an arrow through the head, the point driving out the other side, carrying with it bits of bone and brain and tissue. The scout dropped to the earth, only a bit more loudly than he had risen.

The scouts were widely separated; none of his comrades knew of his death.

The second IPF scout to die never heard the person

who crept silently through the brush and timber behind him. He felt only the eyes on his back. He turned to check the source of his concern. The hand axe bit deeply into his skull; blood and fluid splashed from the massive wound. The attacker grabbed the IPF scout before he could tumble loosely to the ground and make any noise as his body came in contact with the ground. The underground man lowered the body to the damp earth. The underground man, dressed in clothing of earth tones, turned and slipped silently back into the timber.

The third scout to die felt first the leather strap-loop around his neck and then the knee in the small of his back, pinning him to the earth. His head began roaring as life-sustaining air was closed off. His frantically clawing fingers could not slip under the tightly pulled leather strap around his neck.

The roaring in his head dimmed all other sounds as life began oozing away from the Russian. He could but vaguely remember his mother and father back in Russia. Most of his boyhood and young adult life had been spent in Iceland. But he thought, now, of his parents. He wondered what had ever happened to them?

And he thought too of the teachings of Marx and Lenin. Was there nothing after life? Only death? were they wrong?

He knew he was about to find out.

His lungs began to collapse as his heart seemed to literally burst in his chest.

The underground man swiftly tied a knot in the leather as he felt the young Russian’s body grow limp. He slipped away from the body, back into the timber,

knowing that they would be back when all the scouts were dead. They would show Ben Raines they were sincere in their offer of help.

The last IPF member of this forward team tried to raise his comrades by radio.

He received no reply.

The team leader placed the radio on the ground. With a terrible feeling in his guts-a feeling that would soon be replaced by a terrible pain-he knew his friends would never again answer anything.

Not on this earth. Not in this life.

His own thoughts startled him, and for a few seconds, shamed him.

Then he turned to meet his fate.

A spear flew out of the lush greenery. The young soldier had but a few seconds to respond, but he seemed unable to do so. Or unwilling. He did not know which it was. He knew only a horrible pain in his belly as the spear tore open his guts. He dropped to his knees in the forest, in a vague praying position.

It was in that fashion that life left him.

The underground man who had hurled the spear stepped out of the timber, walking to the cooling body of the IPF scout. “Gather them up and take them to the camp of Ben Raines,” he ordered. “Tonight. Leave them.” He turned to face another man dressed in earth tones. “Send a runner out. Your very best. He must travel far and fast to warn the others that Ben Raines will need our help in this fight. Warn him to travel only at night. Our like kind will offer him shelter during the light hours. G.”

And then the forest was once more as silent and nature-controlled as it was ten thousand years ago.

With no sign of human life.

“I suppose,” Ben said to Dr. Chase, “you’re going to tell me you plan on jumping in with us?”

“I hope your leadership qualities are better than your wild suppositions,” the doctor fired back. “I have no intention of hurling my body out of a moving airplane with only a few pounds of silk-if it opens-to float me to earth. Piss on you, Raines.” Dr. Chase had never been one to tap dance around Ben. The ex-Navy doctor, now in his seventies, was yet another of the few remaining who had been with Ben from the beginning. And one of the few who would treat Ben as Ben wished to be treated: as a mortal man, nothing more.

“What are your plans, Lamar?” Ben asked him.

“There will be wounded to be cared for. I shall set up my field hospitals as close as is possible to the front. As soon as a front is established, that is.” He looked at Ben and Ben knew what was coming. “I shall treat all wounded, Raines. But our allies will get top priority.”

“All right. As yet, we have no communication with Striganov or Hartline. I suppose you’ll want to lay down some sort of honor system with them concerning the treatment of prisoners and the wounded?”

“If at all possible, Ben, yes.”

“Well try. But don’t expect too much, Lamar. For our part, we’ll be engaging in a guerrilla war. There aren’t too many amenities offered guerrillas.”

“I am aware of that fact.”

“Just clearing the air, Lamar.”

“It’s clear.”

A sergeant stuck his head into Ben’s command post. “General. Would you come see this, sir?”

Ben, Cecil, Ike, Dan, Lamar Chase, and Sylvia walked out into the cool, starry night of spring in the Northwest, following the sergeant.

He led them to a pile of bodies, piled in a heap on the outskirts of the compound. The bodies still had the arrows and spears and leather.

“Good God!” Lamar blurted.

Ben looked at the sergeant. “No one heard them being brought here?”

“No, sir.”

“They’re IPF scouts,” Dan said, kneeling down beside the stiffening carcasses. “See the shoulder flash?”

“They were brought by those who live in the caves and tunnels,” a young voice spoke from behind the gathering.

All turned.

Ro and Wade stood in the night. The young leaders of the woods-children had arrived with the motorized battalion, but this was their first public appearance. They chose to sleep in the timber, shunning tents and other shelters offered them by the Rebels. They carried their survival with them.

“Ro. Wade,” Ben greeted them. “Did you see the bodies brought here?”

“Yes,” Wade said. “The underground people are telling you, in their way, they are ready to fight for you.”

“Why didn’t they just come talk with me?”

“Because that is forbidden,” Ro informed him.

“Who forbids it, Ro?”

The question confused both the young men, really no more than boys, and in the starry light their uncertainty was evident.

“It is forbidden,” Wade ended it, reaching the end of his understanding.

“All right,” Ben said softly. “We all have to accept some things on faith alone.”

Chase and the others were looking at Ben strangely.

Ben said, “I want to meet with all commanders first thing in the morning. Wade, you and Ro be there.”

“We shall be.” The two leaders of the woods-children turned and vanished into the starlit darkness, leaving without a sound on footgear made of animal hide.

“Them kids spook the shit outta me,” Ike said. “They woulda made fine SEAL instructors.”

Dan grinned in the night; the opportunity was just too great to resist. “Indeed?” he said. “So would have the Boy Scouts, I should imagine.”

It took about two seconds for that to sink in to Ike. He started jumping up and down and hollering, waving his arms and cussing. He looked like a large fireplug with a mouth, cussing the British SAS.

And Cecil told him he looked like a fireplug … a fat one.

Ike started jumping up and down with even more fierceness, cussing Cecil’s old outfit, the Green Berets.

Laughing at his friends’ antics, Ben and Sylvia melted into the night. It was getting late, and jump-off time was growing close.

Ben looked at Ro and Wade. It cut against his grain to commit children to war. But he knew there was no way he could keep the woods-children out of it. One way or the other, they were going in. Question was … how?

“Are you hesitant to use us, General?” Wade asked, picking up on Ben’s thoughts.

“Some of those with you are children, Wade. No more than twelve or thirteen.”

“The youngest one has, I believe, eleven years,” Ro informed Ben.

Dan shook his head in disbelief. He said nothing. Cutting his eyes, he could see the other commanders felt the same way as he did.

But they all remained silent.

“Isn’t that a bit young for-combat?” Ben asked.

“Have you ever tried to grab hold of a young mountain lion, sir?” Ro asked.

Good point, Ben thought. “Would some of your people consider staying back and guarding the hospital area?”

“No,” both young men said simultaneously.

There it was. Ben faced the young leaders of the woods-children and slowly nodded his head. “All right. Then tell me this: how can I best use you and your people?”

“We cannot jump from the skies to float to the earth as some of you are planning,” Ro said. “We have had no training in that sort of thing. But you said just a few moments ago that you are going to fly in some of your people; land them on the earth in the

plane. I would like that way to be our way in.” He smiled, and he looked very young. “It would be fun, for none of us have ever been in an aeroplane.”

Ben had no idea where the young man picked up the British pronunciation. Perhaps he was English. There was much Ben did not know about these strange, wild, elusive woods-children. But he knew firsthand they were savage, vicious, no-quarter fighters.

And the woods-children did not take prisoners.

That would not set well with the people they would be going up against. Ben pointed that fact out to Wade and Ro.

Both young men shrugged it off. Ro said, “We spoke of that with the others last night. None of us wish to be taken as prisoner by the Russian, Hartline, or any warlords. They would sexually abuse us, and then torture us to death. Believe me, we know.”

“Then, get your people ready. You’ll lift off with the second contingent this afternoon. Scouts report a deserted airstrip at Big Lake. That’s where you’ll deplane. A platoon of Gray’s Scouts will be going in there, too. You’ll take orders from the team leader. Understood?”

They understood.

“Draw what supplies you’ll need and get ready.”

Ro and Wade wheeled about and left without another word.

“To tell you the truth,” Dan Gray said. “I rather feel sorry for any IPF people who encounter that bunch.”

“They didn’t say it,” Ben said. “But I’m guessing they know where underground people live in that

area. That’s the area they both told me they wanted … earlier this morning.”

“They are so young,” Sylvia said, her words gentle.

Ben looked at her. “How old were you when you killed your first person, Sylvia?”

“Eleven,” she said very quietly. “After he raped me.”

“They wanted in,” Ben said. “They’re in. And they know what is ahead of them-or have a pretty good idea. All right, now. Dan, you and the remainder of your people are dropping in when?”

“We’ll be leaving straight away, General.”

“Luck to you, Dan.”

The Englishman saluted Ben and the others, then left the command post without another word.

Ike moved to the open door and called, “Hey, limey!”

Dan stopped and turned around.

“You bring your ugly face back here in one piece, you hear, you toy soldier?”

Dan grinned. “I shall certainly endeavor with all my might to comply with your request, swabby.”

On the runway, the old prop engines were growling, warming up.

Ben looked at Cecil. The man’s hair was almost all white now, but he still wore his beret proudly. And Ben knew the man was in excellent physical condition.

“Yet another battle for us, Cec,” he said.

“And after this, there will be another, and another. We should be used to them by now.”

“Yes. I know you don’t like your assignment, but someone has to do it.”

“That isn’t the reason you gave it to me, and you know I know it.”

“Yes. The belief that one of us must come out of this alive certainly played a part in my decision. I won’t deny that.”

Cecil nodded his head. Ben noticed for the first time that the man’s face was lined with age. But Cecil wasn’t that old, he thought. Fiftyish … but certainly not ancient, by anyone’s standards.

“My people will form the eastern line, Ben. We’ll stand in reserve.”

Ben extended his hand and Cecil took it. “Luck to you, Cec.”

Cecil smiled, nodded his head, and left the command post. A few moments later, the engines of his truck convoy coughed into life.

Ike stepped back into the command post, joining Ben and Sylvia. “Gettin’ down to the wire, now, Ben.”

“Your people ready?”

“Sittin’ on Go, Ben.”

Ben nodded his head.

“You’re gonna be cuttin’ it pretty fine, Ben, goin’ in last.”

“Can’t be helped. We’re short of planes and pilots. All my people have studied the terrain. If the winds don’t screw us up, we’ll be in good shape. And we’ll be a hell of a lot harder to find at night.”

“I never did like night jumps,” the ex-Seal admitted. “I made a whole bunch of “em. But I never did like them.”

“Keep your boots together, Ike,” Ben gently needled the man, a grin on his face. “I don’t want you coming back with a cracked spine.”

“Yeah? Well, you do the same, skinny. And don’t land in no damned tree.”

The men shook hands. Ike looked at Sylvia. “You take care of the old man, now, you hear?”

Her reply was a smile.

“Geronimo, and all that crap, Ike,” Ben said.

Ike smiled. “The truth now, Ben. Did you ever holler that leavin” a plane?”

“Not one time in my entire life.”

Ike laughed and left the command post. Chapter Seven

With his forward scouts no longer listed among the living, General Georgi Striganov had no idea when General Ben Raines might strike.

He just knew the man was coming at him. When, and how, was up for grabs.

And Striganov had accepted the fact that his forward people were dead. That bothered him. For those recon people were the best he had at that type of work.

It was those damnable people who lived in caves and tunnels and only moved about at night who ambushed his men. The same people who erected monuments to Ben Raines.

Which Striganov’s people tore down whenever one was found.

And was promptly rebuilt the next day.

Goddamned little pockets of resistance could drive a person insane if one would let it, he thought.

Problem was, he mused, northern California was honeycombed with caves and tunnels and mountains

and deep timber. It would take twenty divisions to rout them all out. And even that many might not be able to do it.

Striganov looked toward the east. “Come on, Ben. Come on. Let’s do it!”

Sam Hartline was restless, and he did not understand the why of it.

Things, conditions, were better now than they had ever been for him. Well, at least since the world fell apart, that is.

He had the finest foods available; all the women he could ever hope for; more men than he had ever commanded. But still he felt … well, odd.

Like something was about to pop.

True, he knew, from radio contact with Striganov, that Ben Raines was going to do something. But the Russian didn’t know when; only that Raines was going to strike.

Hartline again fought back that ever-growing feeling in his guts.

He could not remember ever being afraid of any living man in his life.

But he was afraid of Ben Raines.

The son of a bitch just wouldn’t die! Jesus H. Christ! The man had been hit so many times he should have been dead ten times over.

Instead, he just kept on coming at you. And people kept on joining his ranks.

Hartline paced the den of his home. Stopping abruptly, he looked toward the east.

“Come on, you bastard!” he shouted. “Goddamn

you, let’s get it over with once and for all.”

Ben stood on the edge of the tarmac and watched the planes take off, circle, and then take a westerly heading. He lifted a salute toward the vanishing planes and the men and women in them.

He turned to Sylvia. “Let’s check our gear.”

Ben and his short battalion checked all their gear and laid it out in rows on the edge of the tarmac. They would wait for the return of the first wave of planes before suiting up for the drop.

For now, all they would do is recheck equipment, field strip and oil and reassemble weapons … and wait.

Something every soldier knows is a nerve-stretching ordeal.

The Rebels could but marvel at General Ben Raines. He laid down, his head on his pack, and took a nap. A picture of calmness.

Ben napped for an hour, then lay still, with his eyes closed, and let his mind roam free, settling on whatever issue came up. Memory, problem, or philosophy.

Take care of us from the cradle to the grave, and we’ll give you one hundred percent loyalty. That was the Rebels’ attitude and philosophy toward Ben Raines. Basically the same philosophy of the old-line, hard-party Communists of years past.

With notable exceptions, of course.

The Rebels were perfectly free to express their sentiments; live as they chose to live; be whatever they chose to be in the civilian aspect of their lives; defend life and property without fear of unjust penalty …

The sounds of plane engines cut into his thoughts…. Free summed it up and closed the subject.

Ben stood up and stretched just as the planes lined up in the sky for a landing. The pilots would refuel plane and body, take a piss break, check engines and tires, then Ben and his people would climb on board.

“Platoon leaders!” Ben shouted. “Start forming up your sections. Secure gear.”

Dr. Lamar Chase climbed out of a Jeep and walked up to Ben. “Don’t break your damned legs in this insanity,” the doctor said sourly. As was his manner of showing affection toward Ben.

“I’ll do my best. Give us a full two days to get set up, and then try to contact the Russian by radio. Make your medical peace with the man … if possible.”

“All right. I just heard about that woman … Rani? I’m sorry, Ben.”

Ben nodded. “I intend to finish it this time, Lamar. If at all possible, I intend to settle the matter. Then we’ll get cracking on the outpost idea.”

“It’s a good idea, Ben. If you can get the Russian and Sam Hartline off our backs, we can try to bring some semblance of order back to this land. Productivity will naturally follow that.”

“You’ve got to include God in there somewhere, Lamar,” Ben said softly.

“The first two will come about a lot easier than the latter, Ben,” he was reminded.

“Don’t you start on me, you old goat.”

Lamar grunted his reply. Just before he turned to walk back to his Jeep, he said, “Take care, General. God be with you all.” Even though, he thought,

keeping it silent and to himself, many of the men and women with you think God is already here.

The Rebels were almost staggering under the weight of their loads. Ben knew they were going in too-heavy-loaded. But a lot of paratroopers had done so before.

He wondered, watching his people being boosted up into the planes: For how many would this be the last jump?

He shook that away and motioned the lead pilot over to him. “Give her all she’s got,” he ordered the woman. “I want to be over the DZ just before dusk. Then you people get back here, get a good night’s sleep, and start ferrying in supplies to us first thing in the morning.”

The woman opened a map and pointed to pre-marked locations.

“That’s it. Thank you, Jean.”

“Yes, sir, General.”

He looked at Sylvia. The woman was almost buried under the load of equipment carried. “You ready to go head hunting, Lieutenant?”

She nodded, her eyes large under the protective plastic headgear. Once on the ground, that would be discarded and a black beret would take its place.

“Let’s do it.”

The cold winds howled through the open doors of the planes. Conversation was very nearly impossible. Some of the sticks of jumpers would be going out the side, others would jump from the rear. All would be on static line.

And Ben would be the first one out of the lead plane.

Using a headset, Ben stayed in constant communication with the pilot. “Anyone heard anything from the others?” he asked.

“General McGowen and his people are on the ground and moving,” she radioed back. “Just got that word.”

Ike had made it.

“Colonel Gray’s people are down and all right,” she continued.

Dan and his Scouts were okay.

“First Battalion is in position along the border. The Scouts and the woods-children were off-loaded. It all went without a hitch.”

“Very good. How much further to the DZ?”

“Forty minutes, sir.”

“Advise us five minutes before jump off.”

“Yes, sir.”

Ben looked up at the jumpmaster, James Riverson. The huge ex-truckdriver from the boot-heel of Missouri was yet another who had been with him since the outset. Ben held up four fingers and then made a circle of thumb and forefinger. Riverson nodded.

The minutes ticked by. Those who wait for combat can attest to how tricky time can be. It can seemingly drag or speed up.

The sun was dipping dramatically toward the western horizon.

Ben’s headset cracked. “Five minutes, sir.”

“Stand “em up and hook ‘em up!” Ben shouted to James.

The red light came on.

“Check equipment!” James shouted.

Equipment was checked.

“Stand in the door!” James said to Ben.

The webbing was lowered; the door yawned into empty space.

James smiled and gave Ben the thumbs-up signal. Ben returned the smile and added a wink.

James grinned.

Ben positioned himself in the door, hands on the sides of the door, ready to pull himself out. His boots were together. His heartbeat quickened. The wind howled around him.

The green light came on. James slapped Ben on the butt and hollered, “Go!”

Ben left the plane, boots together, legs slightly bent. He grunted as the static line pulled him up short, jerked out the chute, blossoming above him. Another grunt as the slight opening shock seemingly pulled him back toward the sky.

The ground was coming up fast.

The sky was filled with chutes.

The ground met Ben’s boots. He was too heavily loaded for a stand-up landing, even with the slitted dash chutes. He rolled and popped his harness free, running, gathering up the silk, trying to keep his feet out of the shroud cords. Shouts filled the dusky air as section leaders called for their teams to gather around them.

The drop had been very nearly letter-perfect, the Rebels landing some twenty miles east of Interstate 5, between Redding and Red Bluff.

“Scouts out!” Ben called.

The recon teams took off at a run, heading west.

“Points forward!” Ben called.

The point people ran forward.

Ben waited for three minutes, then called, “Force march, route step. Let’s go!”

There was no silly, sophomoric growling or clapping of hands as the lines surged forward-this was not a game. The Rebels did not need cheerleaders. They were, to a person, professional warriors. Their arena was a battleground. The stands were filling with stars, silently watching; there would be no cheering when a Rebel died from an enemy bullet, or mine, or wire, or silent ambush. These were not paper tigers. And neither were their enemy.

Both sides were fully combat-tested.

The Rebels force-marched for fifty-five minutes, rested for five minutes, then moved out. That was the pattern they would follow until Ben called a halt.

They halted three miles from the Redding airport at a signal from the recon teams.

Ben keyed his walkie-talkie. “Talk to me.”

“IPF personnel control the airport.”

“How many additional people do you need to take them out?”

“None!” the terse reply came back into Ben’s ear. Ben grinned. The recon team leader had sounded insulted that Ben would even ask that.

“Take them out, Sergeant. Silently.”

“Yes, sir.”

The IPF guard was bored. His boredom was about to end. So was his life. Silly having to maintain such security at this place, he thought. It was so secure a gnat couldn’t penetrate their outside defenses.

He was still thinking that as a great gaping wound

appeared in his throat. His blood gushed hotly down his chest. The razor-sharp knife edge withdrew and his dying body was lowered to the tarmac.

Another sentry never saw the black wire looped around his throat. He felt only the panic as air to his lungs and brain was shut off tightly. He dropped his AK assault rifle. Other hands grabbed it before it could clatter to the cement and alert the other IPF members. be

The guards on the east side of the airport were quickly and silently taken out, their bodies lowered to the ground, or to the tarmac, or to the cement. It was done with about as much noise as a soft summer breeze.

A deadly, knife-wielding, black-tinted wind.

The Rebels that stealthily performed their deadly, bloody work did not attempt to take any prisoners; they did not have the additional personnel to guard prisoners, and they knew the IPF people would go to their graves without giving up any worthwhile information.

And because of that, they died.

But the recon people knew, in all probability, their luck would not hold one hundred percent that night. And when they were discovered, the night would suddenly turn noisy and very bloody. “Hapy-Haoer!” a voice yelled in Russian.

And the night rocked and rolled with gunfire.

A Rebel tossed a grenade into a room filled with IPF personnel. The large fragmentation grenade blew, scattering bits and pieces of IPF personnel all about the room. The Rebel stuck the muzzle of his M-16 through the screen-less, open window and

finished what the grenade had not.

Ben had started his people forward the instant he had given the orders to secure the airport. The Rebels at the point were running across the tarmac when the shouted Russian words reached theirs ears. The Rebels forced tired legs to churn a bit faster, to get them there a few seconds earlier.

“Try to contain the west side!” the recon leader shouted the order. He keyed his walkie-talkie and asked for Rebels on the north and south sides of the airfield. Box the IPF personnel in.

One IPF man made it to the radio room and got off part of a message to the IPF headquarters on the coast, near the King Mountain Range, some one hundred and fifty miles away. “Rebels attacking airport. Need help. Almost overrun by-was

A bullet to the head ended the message before it could be completed.

Striganov was furious. “What airport?” he screamed.

“I don’t know, sir,” the radio operator said. “I’m contacting them all now.”

Striganov waited, and paced the floor.

At the airport in Red Bluff, the battle was almost over. The small contingent of IPF personnel were overrun by Raines’s Rebels. Half a dozen very valuable cargo planes were seized along with tons of supplies: food and weapons and ammo.

Ben stepped into the bloody radio room and slipped on the headset, sitting down at the radio. He could manage a few words in Russian, and hoped the upcoming transmission was brief.

“Red Bluff!” the voice cracked out of the speaker.

“Red Bluff,” Ben radioed back.

“Are you under attack?” “Nyet.”

“Have you heard of anyone under attack by Rebels?” “Nyet.”

“Stay alert, Red Bluff.” “Da.”

The set went silent.

Ben leaned back, a smile on his face. By the time Striganov learned the truth, the airport’s supply depot would have been stripped bare and the planes ferried back to the forward base camp of the Rebels.

The speaker crackled again. “Red Bluff.”

Ben recognized the voice. Striganov.

“Red Bluff,” Ben radioed.

“This is General Striganov. Is everything all right?” “Da, cynapb.”

“Speak English, you fool.”

“Yes, sir,” Ben replied, muffling his voice with a handkerchief.

“The airport is secure?”

“Yes, sir. Very quiet.”

Ben could hear the Russian’s sigh. “Very well. Go to full alert for the remainder of the night.”

“Yes, sir.”

The set went silent.

Ben leaned back in the blood-and brain-splattered chair and laughed. Chapter Eight

Ben told the radio operator to get on the scramble horn and order a planeload of pilots to be at the airfield by dawn, to ferry captured aircraft back to the base camp.

He ordered half his personnel to rest for an hour, the other half to start loading equipment on the planes and trucks and other vehicles found at the airport.

He called his platoon leaders together. “How many did we lose?”

“One dead, three wounded.”

“Bury the dead. We’ll send the wounded back with the planes in the morning.”

Ben looked toward the south. He wondered how Ike was doing.

Ike was cutting a throat, the hot blood of the Russian IPF man bathing his right hand in thick stickiness.

“Yuck!” Ike muttered, lowering the body to the ground. He wiped his blade clean on the Russian’s

shirt, then wiped his hands clean.

The southernmost outpost of Striganov’s IPF forces had been neutralized without a single Rebel getting so much as a scratch.

He turned to his XO. “We’ll neutralize everything between 101 and Interstate 5,” he said. “I don’t wanna get trapped with the ocean to our backs and no place to cut and run. Six-man teams …” He looked at a woman sergeant and grinned. “Six-person teams. Get ‘em moved out pronto. We’re gonna be stretched pretty thin, but what the hell? So is everybody else.”

“How about the civilians?”

“They’re either with us, or agin” us,” Ike drawled. “And if I have to explain that, you’re in a heap of trouble, boy.”

His XO grinned. He was just old enough to remember that TV commercial. He saluted and left.

Ike’s eyes turned toward the north. He wondered how Dan was doing.

“My good fellow,” Dan said, looking at the IPF colonel. “You must realize you are in a perfectly dreadful situation.”

The Russian’s eyes were as cold as his heart.

Dan held out the map his Rebels had seized from the colonel’s quarters. “These outposts you have Xed. They are still operational?”

The Russian said something terribly vulgar.

“How crude! And to the best of my knowledge, physically impossible. Is that all you have to say, Colonel?”

It was.

Dan turned to Tina Raines, Ben’s daughter and a longtime member of Gray’s Scouts. “Shoot him.”

Tina shot the Russian between the eyes, the .45 slug swelling his head before it exited out the back, removing part of the man’s brain as it traveled.

Dan spread the map out on a table and studied it. “This is going to make our mission infinitely easier.” He began assigning teams to sectors. When he was finished, his teams fanning out, he turned to Tina. “We haven’t got enough personnel to neutralize all these outposts, so I’m going to have to contact our northern teams. We test the mettle of the woods-children now.”

“They’ll stand,” Tina opined.

“Oh, I have no doubt of that. It’s these underground people I’m a bit uncertain of.”

He was thoughtful for a few seconds.

“If I could just see them perhaps I’d feel better.”

“You want to bet they’re not looking at us?” she tossed the challenge at him.

“I think I’ll pass, Tina.” But he did look around him, at the dark forest with its deep timber.

Did something move in there?

Dan wasn’t certain. But he thought his eyes had picked up a flash of earth-colored clothing flitting through the vegetation.

“I saw it too, Dan,” Tina said.

“Yes. But what did we see?”

“A friend,” she said, adding, “I hope.”

Dan picked up his submachine gun. He looked at Tina. “Good luck, Tina.”

She smiled and winked. “Yeah. Let’s go kill a

commie for mommie.”

Dan laughed, loud and long. “Where in the world did you ever hear that, Tina?”

“I read it, back when I was just a kid.” Tina was every bit of twenty-three.

“Oh?”

“Yeah. In one of Dad’s books.”

The young IPF soldier was so frightened he forgot his English and spoke in Russian.

Gray’s Scout looked at Ro and Wade and the other woods-children who had captured the young IPF soldier. The young people’s eyes were as cold as a glacier.

“He’s asking for mercy,” the Scout said softly.

Wade glanced up at the Scout. “Mercy? Ask him how many children, both male and female, he has had sexually. Ask him how many men and women not of his race or color he has helped capture and transport to the Russian for butchering.”

The IPF soldier could speak perfect English. He dropped his eyes, refusing to meet the eyes of Wade or any of the others around him.

“Ask him,” Ro said, “how many times he’s killed men and women and children who refused to accept the IPF’S demands. Ask him how many of Ben Raine’s Rebels he has killed. And ask him if he will tell us the location of every IPF outpost in our sector?”

The Russian soldier shook his head.

Ro met the Scout’s eyes. “Would Ben Raines let him live?”

“No,” the Scout replied in a low tone.

Wade reached down, jerked the soldier’s head up, and with one quick cut sliced the man’s throat. The body flopped on the ground and then was still.

The Scout’s face and eyes remained impassive. He had been warned just how savage these young people could be, and that they all, to a person, had good reason to hate the IPF and any warlord.

“We’ll rest here for a time. While we’re taking a break, I’ll assign sectors.” He walked off.

A young girl stood off to one side, but close enough to have seen the entire execution and its method. She was among the youngest of the woods-children. She was eleven. The carbine she carried was very nearly as large as she. Her name was Lora. She did not know her last name. She did not know if she even had a last name.

She was dressed in patched jeans and a man’s flannel shirt, way too big for her, the sleeves pinned back. She carried a .38 caliber pistol in a holster belted around her slim waist, right side. A very sharp hunting knife in a sheath on her left side.

She had joined Ro’s group of woods-children when she was eight, after being seized and raped repeatedly by a gang of roaming outlaws. She had managed to escape from them after a particular savage night of drinking and lust. With her blood streaking her inner thighs, so sore she could hardly walk after being raped and sodomized, Lora had slipped away from the sleeping circle of men and made her way deep into the timber of Kentucky.

But not before she killed the man who had last taken her. She had calmly and viciously, with all her

strength, driven a sharpened wooden stake through his right eye, penetrating the brain.

Lora shoulder-slung her carbine and walked off to sit by herself in the shade of a huge old tree. The butt of the carbine almost dragged the ground as she walked.

Seated on the ground, she ate some berries she had picked that morning and sipped water from her canteen. Then she opened her rucksack and took out a ragged magazine she had found back in one of the buildings at the airport in the old Tri-States.

It had such pretty pictures in it. Pictures, in color, of kids about her own age, she guessed. But they were dressed so fine, and all of them seemed so happy. And they were so clean, with shining hair and pretty rings on their fingers. They had little gold and silver and shiny things on the bottom part of their ears.

She wondered what those things were.

But what really grabbed her attention and held it, was the fact that none of the kids carried a gun.

Not even a knife.

That seemed very odd to Lora.

And some of the girls wore fancy dresses. Lora thought she might have had a dress one time in her life. She seemed to have that memory. But she couldn’t bring the memory into full light of consciousness. But she thought she had had a dress on sometime.

Maybe it was Before.

No. She had been told that was … twelve years ago. And Lora only had eleven years. So it had to have been After.

Oh, well, she thought, suppressing a sigh. It didn’t matter.

She didn’t know anything about Before. Just After. And now that could be called Here.

Sitting alone, she turned the page. More pretty pictures of smiling and laughing kids.

Lora could not understand why they would all be so happy.

She wished she could read the words.

She could make out some words. But she wasn’t too sure she understood what they meant. She had seen the funny-looking word TV many times. She wished she knew what a TV was.

And a moving star. Or something like that. Movie star, that was it.

Now she wished she knew what a movie star was.

Stars were up in the heavens. Everybody knew that. Stars were far away and untouchable. Why would anyone want to be far away and untouchable?

Well … Ben Raines was untouchable, but he wasn’t far away.

It was all so confusing.

The other woods-children had told her that when things were better, Ben Raines was going to have them all attend school where they would all learn many things.

Lora thought that might be fun. Maybe.

“Let’s go!” the shouted command reached her.

Lora carefully replaced the magazine back into her rucksack and stood up, slinging her carbine. She looked down at her ragged tennis shoes. She’d have to find a new pair pretty soon. Soon as they came up on a house she’d look. Maybe she’d find a pair the rats and mice hadn’t chewed on.

She took her assigned place in the short column and moved out.

The plane from the old Tri-States had landed and the pilots were busy inspecting the newly acquired aircraft. Jean walked up to Ben.

“They’re in fine shape, General,” she said. “And we found an old Puff-believe it or not-in the far hanger.”

“All the guns operational?”

“They seem to be. We’ll check them out when we test fly the plane.”

“Fine. Get the planes back to a safe zone as quickly as possible. I’ve asked Dan’s Scouts to hit every airport they can. Striganov seems to have set up posts at airstrips. That’s good for us if it holds true. I’m taking my contingent straight up the interstate into Redding as soon as you people get airborne. We’ll reconnoiter the area and if possible hit the airport just before dark. I sent recon teams out before dawn, in seized vehicles. They’ll be reporting back any minute. Get cracking, Jean.”

She saluted and turned to leave.

Sylvia walked to his side. “Recon teams just radioed back, Ben. They report only a small force of IPF personnel at the airport in Redding. And the airport has been cleaned up and is fully operational.”

“Thank you, Sylvia. You heard it, Jean. Get the planes back and stand ready for my call to return.” Ben grinned. “Pretty soon now, we’re going to have more planes than pilots, huh?”

She returned the grin and said, “At last count,

General, we’ve got about a hundred and fifty people who are, or were, qualified pilots. Checked out in everything from props to jets. You’re going to have an air force before you know it.”

“I’ll make you the first commander of it, then,” Ben said.

“For the first time in history,” Jean said drily.

“That may well be what we’re all trying to do.” Sylvia said.

“What?” Jean asked.

“Trying to keep history from repeating itself.”

“Very profound, Sylvia,” Ben said.

“Oh, I’m just full of surprises, General,” she replied.

Ben glanced at her, smiling.

Jean left before it could get mushy. Chapter Nine

Early that morning, before dawn, Ben had ordered the residents of Red Bluff-those that could be found-rousted out of bed. IPF sympathizers were quickly pointed out to the Rebels.

And just as quickly disposed of.

Ben and his Rebels had no sympathy for those who would willingly surrender their freedom. And no use for them. And no place for those types within the ranks of the Rebels.

The handful of survivors found in Red Bluff, less than two hundred in all, were armed with weapons taken from the IPF garrison and told they had damn well better get ready to fight. To the death if it came to that, and that it might just come to that.

Ben’s Rebels pulled out, with Ben’s Jeep leading the column, his Scouts ranging far out in front of the main column. Sylvia driving.

“Isn’t this awfully brazen, Ben?” Sylvia asked. “Just driving right out on the interstate in broad open daylight?”

“No. We’re driving vehicles with IPF markings. If Striganov has spotter planes out, the pilots will think

it’s a column of their own people. I would think our greatest danger would come from Americans along the road; maybe with a sniper rifle.”

Sylvia muttered something under her breath that Ben ignored with a smile. It sounded suspiciously like, “Smartass!”

Ben halted his column on Highway 273, just west of the interstate, and waited for another report from his recon team. Redding was about five or six times the size of Red Bluff, so the airport would be much larger, and probably with a much larger contingent of IPF personnel assigned to guard it. While they waited, Ben studied maps taken from the slain IPF guards at Red Bluff.

“Curious,” he muttered. “But typical of the arrogant bastard.”

“Who?” Sylvia asked.

“General Striganov.”

“What’d he do?”

“Put his back to a wall of raging ocean. He might have a spectacular view, as I’m sure he does, but he cut off a valuable escape route.” Ben thought for a moment, then said, “No, he didn’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“If by some chance we do trap him in there, he can walk right out of there. He could put the women and children in front of him, knowing we wouldn’t shoot through them to get him. Or he’d stay put and start killing hostages if we tried to rush him.”

“He’s ruthless enough to do it, too.”

“Tell me.” Ben’s thoughts were flung through a mist of bloody events, back to when Hartline and the Russian had tied naked men and women to the front

of tanks and trucks and Jeeps and APC’S, and used the helpless men and women for cover while they advanced on Rebel-held positions. And mixed in with the advancing mercenaries and IPF forces were several hundred elderly people, stripped naked and forced to jog and trot ahead of and mingled in with the advancing forces.

If the elderly couldn’t keep up and fell down, they were run down and crushed by the vehicles behind them.

Ben sighed and lit one of his rare cigarettes. “Yeah,” he said. “Tell me about Hartline and the Russian.”

“You say contact is poor from the Red Bluff end of the transmission?” Striganov asked his radio operator.

“Yes, sir. It’s the atmosphere again. That radioactive belt must be dipping closer again.”

“Then it would affect both ends of the signal, fool!” Striganov shouted. “Goddamn, I’m surrounded by idiots! Get Red Bluff.”

With shaking fingers, the young woman operating the radio keyed her mike and called Red Bluff.

But in the time the IPF had occupied northern California, the Americans had learned a lot of Russian. And the man Ben had left in charge of the civilians in Red Bluff, George, had grinned and agreed when Ben had given him instructions as to what to do when his base was contacted.

George smiled and keyed his mike. “Da … Red Bluff…” He paused for several seconds between

each word, as if his radio was faulty. “Kaxkb … bee … tyt.”

He hoped the other end would understand that everything was quiet here.

Striganov cursed as he listened to the man’s voice break up. “I don’t like it. I just don’t like it. Start contacting the others, all of them. Chart their responses and have it sent to me as soon as you are finished.”

“Yes, sir.”

Redding reported that everything was quiet. So did Youreka and Old Station. Yuba City, Marysville, Oroville, Paradise, and Chico all reported everything normal.

But when she tried to contact anything south of Highway 20 and north of Highway 299, she once more experienced that odd breaking-up of transmissions.

Strange, she thought.

But everything was all right in Susanville, Lake Almanor, in the Pumas National Forest, and Grass Valley.

She checked a few more locations and called her relief operator, walking to General Striganov’s quarters in the newly built command post.

She could hear the gruntings and the whimpering cries before she reached his office door. She for certain was not going to interrupt the general’s fucking. The general was getting as bad as Sam Hartline.

She felt certain that was the young girl, Jane, in there with him. He probably had her bent over a desktop and was screwing her butt.

The woman sighed. The general didn’t used to be

this way, she remembered. He had always been such a proper man. A gentleman, even.

Except with the minorities, of course. But who cared a whit about them?

It was not until he became associated with that pig, Sam Hartline, that General Striganov became so … perverted with his sexual appetites.

The girls kept getting younger and younger.

The sounds of a blow reached her. The sounds of a hand slapping naked flash.

“Stop your whining, you bitch!” Striganov’s voice carried to her. “You know you like it. Reach around. Spread the cheeks further apart. That’s it. Good.”

His gruntings picked up in tempo.

The radio operator shook her head and walked away, out of earshot. Walked to the secretary’s desk and sat down on the edge of the desk. The two women’s eyes met for an instant.

The secretary said, “It is not for us to criticize the general’s activities.”

“No one did.”

“The look in your eyes did.”

“I’ll remember to be more careful.”

The girl screamed and the secretary’s hand shook as she lifted her teacup to her lips.

The radio operator smiled and put the needle to her friend. “You must remember to be more careful, Val. Your emotions gave you away.”

“Watch your mouth, Hedda. I outrank you, remember.”

Hedda laughed. “He’ll be calling for the medics now. He probably split her.”

The secretary’s intercom buzzed. “Yes, sir.”

“Call the medics to come get this stupid bitch,”

Striganov said. “Yes, General.”

“And where is that damned Hedda?” “Standing right here, sir,” she said with a wink at

Hedda.

“Give me a few minutes, then send her in.” “Yes, sir.” She looked up at Hedda. “Take a seat.

He’ll shower before he buzzes me again. He’ll want to

wash the blood away,” she added bitterly.

“The radio room first,” Ben told his people. “We’ve got to take those people out but leave the equipment intact. The longer we can keep up this farce, the better off we’ll all be.”

“About fifty IPF men there, sir,” Ben was informed.

“All right.” Ben spread a map of the airport-compliments of the IPF back in Red Bluff-on the hood of his Jeep. “This is how we’ll go in.”

“Have you made contact with the Big Lake outpost?” Sam Hartline asked the man in the radio room.

“Yes, sir. But it’s very poor; breaking up badly. I can just make him out.”

“Contact the Mount Shasta outpost.”

“Yes, sir.”

Mount Shasta was contacted, the signal clear and loud. Everything was five by five. Okay. Boring.

Hartline’s cold green eyes held a thoughtful light

for a few seconds. “Get me General Striganov’s CP.”

The general came on the horn.

“Georgi? Is everything all right down your way?”

“So far as I can tell, yes. We’ve had some difficulty reaching some stations. But you’re coming in very clear. It’s baffling.”

Hartline agreed. Baffling. But … maybe not. He said as much to the Russian.

“Explain, please?” Striganov radioed back.

“We know Ben Raines is on the move, right?”

“Yes. But there has been no sign of any Rebels in our sector. And our network of outposts would have picked up any unusual movements. No, it’s too soon for Ben Raines.”

“Don’t be too sure, Georgi. I’m going on full alert; sending out recon.”

“Very well. I’ll do the same. Keep in touch.”

Hartline turned to his radiomen. “Contact our people on the border. Tell them we’re going to full alert. Tell them to be very careful. Ben Raines is on the prowl.”

“In our territory?” the radioman was startled.

Hartline nodded his handsome head. “I think so. My guts tell me it’s coming down to the wire.”

Late afternoon began settling softly into dusk as Ben’s Rebels, one by one, attracting no attention from the woebegone-looking people scattered about Redding, moved into position around the airport.

“Folks around here look like all the fight’s been kicked out of them,” Rebel observed.

“Sure looks that way,” his partner agreed. “I haven’t seen anyone so far I’d trust.”

“I think what we’re seein’ is the losers; they’d be losers war or no war.”

“Then where are the others?”

“Watchin’ and waitin’, I’d bet.”

The Rebel’s walkie-talkie, clipped onto his web belt, crackled softly.

“Go ahead,” the Rebel spoke.

“This is Raines. I’ve just been informed there is a very active resistance force of Americans working out of Redding. They know we’re here and will be linking up with you point people very soon. Leader’s name is Harris.”

“Ten-four, General.”

“Over to your right, Mac.”

Mac looked. A man was standing in the doorway of what had once been a drugstore. He waved the Rebels across the street.

They approached him cautiously.

“I’m Harris,” the man announced. “Man, are we glad to see you people.”

“Is that right?” Mac asked. “You look like you’re big enough to kick ass and take names. Why didn’t you?”

Harris smiled bitterly. “I’ve got about seventy-five people in my group. Seventy-five out of three thousand. That tell the story?”

Mac was sorry he had spoken so sharply. But while he knew what the Rebels were doing was necessary, he, like so many Rebels, including Ben Raines, was getting damn tired of fighting other peoples’ wars for them.

“Yeah, Harris. It does. Sorry I popped off at you.”

“I understand. Believe me, I do. Many times I’ve had to just grit my teeth and walk off before I shot some of the roll-over crybabies around here.”

“Many sympathizers around?”

Harris spat on the littered, dirty sidewalk.

Mac and his partner got the message.

“What do you want me and my people to do?” Harris asked.

“Lay back and stay out of it. When we’re finished, I imagine General Raines will put you in charge. Then you can deal with matters the way you see fit.”

“With pleasure.”

Mac and his partner waited on the outskirts of Redding, waited with Harris in the looted shell of the drugstore in the small shopping center … or what had once been one. Mac and his partner were just one of many two-person teams scattered in a loose circle around the airport. If any IPF people managed to escape the initial attack on the airport, they would be cut down by the Rebels encircling the area.

“You speak any Russian?” Mac asked Harris.

“Some. I’m no expert. But I picked up some while a prisoner of the IPF.”

“How’d you get away from them?”

“Broke and ran one night. They shot me.” He lifted his shirt; his stomach was pocked with bullet scars. “They thought they’d killed me. Left me and took off chasing the other guy who broke out with me. I managed to crawl into a ditch before I passed out. My people found me before morning. I just made it. Charlie didn’t. He died pretty damned hard, so I was later told. Never again will I allow my freedom to be taken from me. Never!” the word was spoken hard.

“And I’ll kill any person who tries.”

Mac smiled through the gathering gloom at his partner. Harris would do to ride the river with.

“Any weak links in your group?”

“None. But there was … for a long time. I kept wonderin’ why the IPF knew every move we were gonna make. We’d change hideouts; they’d be right there. Lost a lot of people durin’ that time. Better than twenty-five percent of my group bought it. That’s how I got captured. After I got on my feet, I started some hard checkin’. I found out who it was and killed him. We’ve had no more leaks. But it was a damned hard thing for me to do.”

It was a story the Rebels were accustomed to hearing. “Friend of yours, huh?”

Harris looked at him. “Yeah. He was my brother.” Chapter Ten

Like silent ghosts in tiger-stripe and lizard camo, the Rebels moved along the buildings of the Redding airport. Those IPF personnel who happened to be on foot patrol, or just unfortunate enough to be outside while the Rebels were moving into position, met silent, abrupt death with black wire or darkened blades. Their bodies were dragged out of sight and dumped.

Swiftly and softly, the Rebels took their positions, all of them just a bit nervous about this raid. For the general was personally leading this attack.

“Damned fool!” Sylvia whispered to him, as they crouched inside the tower, on the tarmac. “You’ve got men and women thirty years younger that you and Ike personally trained to do this sort of work. What are you trying to prove?”

Ben’s smile flashed in the night. He leaned close and whispered, “Are you trying to tell me I’m over the hill, kid?”

Sylvia flushed and blushed. She knew damn well Ben was far from being over the hill. In more ways than one. Then her eyes widened in shock as Ben

leaned closer still and blew softly in her ear.

“Ben! Quit! Shit!” she whispered. “You’re insane!”

Ben kissed her cheek and chuckled softly. “Are you trying to tell me this is not the place for romance, kid?”

Sylvia could but shake her head and sigh. All her life she had heard stories about how totally unpredictable General Ben Raines was.

She could damn well believe it now.

Ben looked up at the tower. “Into the jaws of death, Into the mouth of hell, Rode the six hundred.”

“What’d you say, Ben?”

“Tennyson. You ready?”

She looked at him. “For what!”

He chuckled. “My daughter, Tina, is fond of quoting something she says she read in one of my books. Kill a commie for mommie. I swear I don’t remember ever writing anything like that. But it’s a good phrase for this night.”

Ben and Sylvia looked up as footsteps sounded on the stairwell above where they crouched inside the tower building. A man had stepped out of the tower area to have a smoke. His lighter flashed in the darkness, for a moment illuminating his face. His face was cruel-looking. He wore the insignia of a major on his collar points. He turned his back to the stairs and stood looking out a small window.

Ben handed Sylvia his Thompson and drew his long-bladed knife, the edge honed to razor-sharpness. Ben had shaved with it more than once.

He slowly climbed the stairs toward the Russian. On his hip, for this mission replacing his .45 caliber Colt Army automatic, he carried a Colt Woodsman

automatic. If he missed any of his targets in the tower, his repair people might be able to fix what a .22 slug caused. But with a hollow point .45 slug? …

And he was not going to give the Russian any chance to struggle during the conventional hand-over-the-mouth, knife-across-the-throat business.

Ben swung the heavy knife, decapitating the man. Blood splattered on the walls and floor as the man’s head struck the floor with a sticky thud. Ben grabbed the body and slowly lowered it to the floor.

He motioned for Sylvia to stay put. Ben removed a gas mask from its container and slipped it over his face, checking it. It worked. Ben had never liked the damn things. He slipped a combination irritant gas and smoke grenade from his web belt and glanced down at Sylvia. He nodded at her. She returned the nod and lifted her walkie-talkie, speaking just one word: Go!”

Ben pulled the pin, released the spoon, and jerked open the door, tossing the grenade inside with his left hand. His right hand was full of Colt Woodsman. He shot one IPF man in the chest and another in the face, then stepped inside, closing the door behind him.

The room was filled with smoke and the shouted alarms of the IPF personnel. One blindly bumped into Ben and Ben stuck the muzzle of the Colt into the woman’s throat and pulled the trigger.

There had been four people in the tower when Ben had stepped inside. Two had been shot before the gas and smoke erupted, he had just shot the third-now where was the fourth?

Ben heard choking cries from across the room. He inched his way toward the source. The man was trying to operate the radio, but he was blinded by the irritant, tears streaming down his face. Ben spun him around and shot him between the eyes.

The tower was secure.

Ben shot each of the four in the tower in the head, making certain they were going to stay down, then began opening all the windows. He stepped out onto the stairwell and removed his mask, closing the door behind him. He stood in the thickening blood from the Russian major and grinned at Sylvia.

She glared up at him. “You worry the hell out of me, you know that? You … you … asshole!”

Ben laughed at her.

A few of the IPF personnel got away from the wrath of Raines’s Rebels, fleeing into the night. Safe, but only for a very short time.

No matter which way they ran, they ran into more Rebels, lying in ambush.

Mac, after listening to Sylvia, and only then, turned to Harris and said, “Take out the rest of the IPF in town.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“Because I didn’t trust you,” Mac’s reply was blunt.

“Believe me,” Harris said, “I know the feeling.”

It had taken them years to reach America, for America had not been their destination of choice. Just the thought of America still left a bitter, ugly taste in their mouths. They had traveled first to France, or what was left of it, and then to Spain,

there again, what was left of it. They had lingered for a couple of years in each place, gathering their own, recruiting others, accepting them into the Faith, then moving on, always moving on.

And always gaining strength.

They had moved to the island of Corsica, finding it and overwhelming the small garrison of French Foreign Legion troops still there. They had tortured and mutilated and raped and killed, leaving behind only a lonely, blood-stained reminder of a place that had virtually escaped the horror of the final war that very nearly wiped out earth.

From Corsica they had traveled to South America, finding some areas hot from radiation, others reverting back to barbarism. They had found recruits in every place they visited. And ships.

They had traveled around the Horn and back, looking, always looking, but never really satisfied with what they found.

Then they looked toward the United States. They set sail for Florida. But Miami was a mess. They had no desire to dock there.

They sailed north and reached the Georgia coast. They anchored off Wassaw Island and sent teams into Savannah to look the situation over.

They found the city almost deserted.

A week after they landed, the city was totally deserted.

Any Americans found there were killed. Outright, if they were lucky. The unlucky ones were tortured and raped. And then killed.

“We shall travel no more,” the leader of the thirty-thousand-plus-strong force said. “I find it darkly

amusing that we have come full circle and now find ourselves here in the most hated land in the world.”

His fellow officers agreed.

The Islamic Peoples Army, the IPA, was made up of the survivors of every terrorist group known to exist before the world blew up. The PLO, Baader-Meinhof, Rengo Sekigun (japanese Red Army), YPR, Black September, Also Fatah, PFLP, Dev Gench, TPLA, the Liberation Front, the Socialist Patients-Collective, the DGI, the Red Cell, German Action Group, and others.

As maggots tend to gather on the unattended dead, terrorist groups have a way of gathering like lice on the unwashed.

The commander of the IPA was a Colonel Khamsin. His idol was Muammar Kaddafi.

The gunfire had long died away; every member of the IPF stationed in the Redding area had been accounted for. No prisoners had been taken.

Harris and his people were now in control of the city.

And not all of the citizens liked it.

A fat, obviously well-fed and well-cared-for man was shoved in front of Ben. “John Stoggen,” Harris informed him. “Big buddies with the local IPF major.”

“Would you like to see your buddy now?” Ben asked him.

“Yes,” John said. His voice trembled. He stank of fear.

“All right,” Ben said. “Excuse me for a moment.

I’ll be right back.”

Ben returned in a moment, carrying something in his left hand. He held the dripping head of the major up to John. “Here’s your buddy, now, Stoggen. Say hello.”

John Stoggen fainted on the tarmac.

Ben tossed the head to one side.

Harris swallowed hard. He had heard that General Ben Raines was one hard-assed man. Now he knew for certain. “Stoggen was responsible for the deaths of a lot of good people, General. Men and women. And a couple of young people, as well.”

“Do what you want to with him,” Ben said. “I’ve spoken with several people about you, Harris. They seem to think you’re a good man. I’m putting you in charge. We’ll outfit you with our tiger-stripe or lizard cammies. I’ll meet with your people in the morning.”

“Yes, sir.” Harris saluted and left.

“General,” a Rebel approached Ben. “We’ve just been in contact with Base Camp One. They want to know if you’ve ever heard of a Colonel Khamsin?”

“Khamsin? No. Why?”

“Well, sir, it’s kind of confusing and not, as yet, confirmed, but a small group of people came to Base One a couple of days ago. They’re from south Georgia. They claim that a large force landed in Savannah about a month ago. They’re commanded by this Colonel Khamsin.”

“How large a force?”

“About forty to fifty thousand men.”

Ben stood stunned for a moment. “Forty or fifty thousand?” “Yes, sir.”

“They must be mistaken. Do you have any idea how many ships it would take to transport that many men and supplies?”

“No, sir.”

“I don’t believe there are that many ships still seaworthy, anywhere. Khamsin,” Ben said.

“Yes, sir. The people said it means a hot wind.”

“Wonderful,” Ben said drily. “Back in 1941, it was a divine wind. Now sixty years later we have a hot wind to contend with.”

“Divine wind, sir?”

“Pearl Harbor, son.”

“I … don’t know that I ever heard of that place, sir.”

Ben smiled. “Well, believe it or not, I wasn’t born then either, son. But I do know a little something about history.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Get Base One on the scrambler. Tell them I said to send out some recon teams; try to find out what in the hell is going on down in Georgia.”

“Yes, sir.” He saluted and left.

Ben looked for his XO. “Let’s get this airport cleaned up and the bodies disposed of …”

A shot cut the darkness.

Ben had a hunch that John Stoggen had collaborated his last.

“… Get Cecil on the horn and have him get our pilots back here to ferry these planes out. Let’s start inventorying supplies and moving it out for shipment back and caching in this part of the country.”

“Yes, sir.”

Sylvia came to stand by Ben’s side. “A hot wind, Ben?”

“That’s what the man said.” “Forty or fifty thousand troops, Ben?”

“That’s what the man said.”

“Ben, we can’t fight that many troops.”

“Something tells me we’re going to have to do it, kid.” Chapter Eleven

Once again, Raines’s Rebels had lucked out, in more ways than one. They had uncovered several tons of supplies: food, clothing, guns and ammo, walkie-talkies, and planes.

The Rebels outfitted Harris and his people, then waited for the pilots from the old Tri-States.

While they waited, Ben radioed back to Cecil, asking if Dr. Chase had attempted any contact with General Striganov.

“Not yet, Ben.”

“Tell him to forget it. We’re on a roll out here and I don’t want to tip our hand.”

“Ten-four. What about this Colonel Khamsin business, Ben?”

“Bring me up to date.”

“I just spoke with Base Camp One not half an hour ago. They’re convinced those people are telling the truth about the IPA.”

“About the what, Cec?”

“The Islamic Peoples Army. It was the children

with them that convinced our people they’re telling the truth. Seems the kids all say that several times a day, these … whatever the hell they are, stop whatever they’re doing, spread some sort of mat, and squat down, as the kids put it, and pray. All in the same direction.”

Ben’s sigh was audible over the miles. “I think, Cec, we’ve got big trouble.”

“I think you’re right, buddy. Even if the IPA’S force is only a quarter of what is claimed, we’re in trouble.”

“It never ends, does it, Ben?”

“It certainly appears that way. Talk to you later. Hold down the fort.”

Ben signed off. He turned to Harris. “Maintain this charade for as long as possible, Harris. I don’t think we can continue playing radio interference for very much longer. Striganov is probably suspicious by now, and I’m sure Hartline is. But if we can keep this up for another twenty-four hours, we’ll have shaved the odds down and gained a lot of ground. The more outposts we can seize, the more Striganov is going to have to split his forces to regain them.”

“But won’t that also cut down the size of your personnel?” Harris asked.

Ben smiled. “Perhaps,” he said, and would say no more about it.

Ben had no inclination to discuss his battle plans with anyone-not even his own people. Yet.

The northernmost IPF outpost in California, located at Youreka, just a few miles south of the Oregon

border, lay quiet under the springtime sun. It was a small outpost, but a vital one. It was also a lonely post for the soldiers stationed there. Before the bombings, now more than a decade past, the town’s population was about six thousand. Now it was down to about two hundred men, women, and children.

The IPF lieutenant in charge of the Youreka station had monitored all the requests of General Striganov’s radio operator; and listened to the garbled responses from some stations. It was puzzling, but, to his mind, nothing to get alarmed about. It probably was that radioactive belt that had hovered over the earth for years.

He stepped outside the building for a smoke and a breath of air.

The silence got his attention. He looked around him.

There were usually some townspeople about, begging for food or asking to see some friend or relative that had been seized by the IPF.

Or some local woman willing to sell herself for better treatment.

Sometimes a man or boy willing to do the same.

That always amused the lieutenant. He held Americans in contempt. The mighty Eagle. Now clawless, its people groveling about, willing to suck a cock for a can of beans or spread her legs for a package of cigarettes.

Or part of the cheeks of male or female ass for a good butt-fucking.

He wondered where the people were on this bright, beautiful morning.

He would never know the answer to that.

He heard a twang and lifted his head just as the fiberglass, field-pointed bolt, fired from a crossbow, hit his chest. He knew a few seconds of very intense pain as the point hit his heart, shattering it. He dropped to the ground, only seconds away from dying.

An attack, he thought. Against us! Here? Impossible, he thought. Not from these cowardly Americans.

Then he died.

The Eagle had risen, silently screaming its rage.

Lizard-camoed Rebels rushed the outpost, leaping over the body of the arrogant lieutenant. The point man reached the door and slipped inside, darting to his left; other Rebels quickly entered the blockhouse; they carried .22 automatics, the pistols silenced.

Two Rebels stepped into the radio room. They lifted the silenced .22’s and shot the two people in the room in the back of the head. They closed the door and pulled the bodies out of the chairs, taking their place behind the wall of equipment.

Other Rebels were going about their deadly work, silently and efficiently.

The Rebels assigned to the small barracks-room found a half dozen IPF personnel sleeping in their bunks.

The Russians never awakened from their sleep.

In less than two minutes the blockhouse was secure and in Rebel hands.

The section leader opened the door to the radio room. “Can you change to our frequency and scramble?”

“Yes,” he was told. “Just as soon as I change out some parts. Take me about five minutes.”

“As soon as you do, inform Eagle One we are secure here.”

The radio operator nodded his understanding.

Some two hundred and fifty miles south of Youreka, in Woodland, Rebels from Ike’s contingent slipped quietly and unseen around the IPF compound. The small band of Rebels was heavily outnumbered and Ike had told them to forget about salvaging any of the radio equipment; just knock out the installation and let the chips fall where they may.

Or in this case, the bodies of the IPF personnel inside the compound.

At a signal from the section leader, a Rebel lifted a 66mm rocket launcher, sighted it in, and put the rocket through the window of the radio room. The room exploded in a cloud of mortar, brick, wood, blood, and pieces of human bodies.

Raines’s Rebels gave no quarter to the IPF forces inside the compound. If Ben and his Rebels were to build something constructive out of the ashes he would play the fiddle and call the tunes. He had turned his theory into fact back in the Tri-States. He had proven that a society can exist without criminals or crime. For if you don’t have one, you won’t have the other.

And Ben’s philosophy was instilled into the hearts and minds of his Rebels.

Ike’s contingent hit the IPF hard, taking no prisoners. In less than half an hour, the battle was over; all that remained was the dust and smoke that lingered like a bitter reminder over the compound.

“Radio Eagle One that Woodland is ours,” the section leader said.

The Rebels now controlled nine of the IPF’S outposts, stretching from Youreka down to the Napa Valley.

Then Ben abruptly called a halt to it, confusing all his teams and team leaders, including Ike.

It was late afternoon when Ike finally got through to Ben.

“Cease and hold, Ben?” he questioned.

“Yes. I want to discuss it, but not over the air. There is always a chance our transmissions could be descrambled. I’ve already spoken with Dan. You both have access to small planes and people to fly them.” He gave Ike map coordinates. “Meet me there in the morning. We’ll go over the plans. I’ll see you then.”

Ben signed off.

Ike scratched his head and looked at his XO.

“What’s up, Ike?”

“With Ben, you just never know. But whatever it is, the Russian and Hartline ain’t gonna like it, you can bet on that.”

“Another outpost cannot be reached, General,” Hedda reported to Striganov.

“You mean the signals are garbled?”

“No, sir. Silent.”

Georgi turned slowly in his chair. He sighed deeply; a man in frustration. “Raines,” he said. “He’s making his move. I was wrong and Hartline was right. But where is the son of a bitch?”

“Hartline?” Hedda asked, confused.

“No! Goddammit, woman. Raines.”

Hedda wisely chose to remain silent.

“He’s pulling something. But what?-other than the obvious. Raines is a wolf. He’s circling, not yet showing me his plan. Just as sure as I commit personnel to one place, the guerrilla bastard is going to pop up in another. I know how his mind works.”

Wrong. He did not know how Ben’s mind worked. He just thought he did. Arrogant people always think they’re much smarter than they really are.

“Yes, sir,” Hedda said. She would never admit it to the general, but she was very frightened of Ben Raines and his Rebels. They were savages. Brutal Vikings. Ben Raines and his Rebels paid no attention to the rules of warfare. They were all, to a person, thugs.

“Contact Hartline,” Striganov ordered. “Have him fly down here first thing in the morning. We have to start planning our strategy. We cannot allow Raines to get the upper hand, in anything.”

“Yes, sir. Will that be all, sir?”

“Yes.”

When Hedda had closed the door behind her, General Georgi Striganov’s face tightened as he jerked out a map of his IPF’-CONTROLLED territory and

quickly scanned it. With a colored pen, he carefully Xed each outpost that had a garbled signal, and the one that had gone silent.

He stared at the map. He could make no sense of any of it.

There were two hundred and fifty miles between the northern outpost and the southern outpost. Raines just didn’t have that many men.

Or did he?

Striganov leaned back in his chair, his mind busy. Perhaps Raines had recruited more people … Yes! That had to be it. Just as he had recruited-or rather, Hartline-those warlords, Ben Raines had probably done the same.

But that would not be like Ben Raines. Raines hated even the thought of warlords.

But would he use them as a last resort?

Yes, Striganov thought, he probably would. The end would justify the means.

The Russian carefully noted each position he had marked on the map. Raines would be the strongest south of Highway 20, he felt. At least four of his outposts, probably five, had been knocked out there. So it reasoned that Raines would be the weakest at Youreka …

No!

Big Lake. Raines would have teams spread out north and south along Interstate 5. Big Lake would be stretching it thin for Raines, out of his supply route.

Big Lake would be the first outpost the IPF would retake. But first he and Hartline would monitor the

transmissions coming from the outposts. Raines would make a mistake; he would slip up. Striganov was sure of that.

And then the IPF would pounce.

He smiled. It was a good plan. Chapter Twelve

“Sneaky, Ben,” Ike said. “Real sneaky. But it’s risky, buddy.”

“I know. But I’ve already sent for Cecil and his battalion. There is an airstrip here”-he punched the map-“just a few miles from Big Lake. The strip is big enough to handle twin-engined cargo planes. Cecil’s bunch will slip into position along the southeast side. Dan, your bunch will take the north side, forming the top of the triangle. My people will be in position on the west side, forming the west angle of the scalene. When the IPF people enter, then I’ll close the box. If we do this right, we can really cut the odds down.”

“I like it,” Dan said. “It’s dirty and mean.” He looked at Ike and grinned.

“You would,” Ike said with a grunt and a grin. “But then, so do I.”

“Get your people into position and out of sight. For a fact, Striganov is going to make some fly-bys in recon aircraft.”

“And start transmitting between the outposts we’ve captured?” Ike asked.

“Right. But warn your operators not to make it too obvious. Just chitchat. Lots of Rebels between 101 and Interstate five to the south. Lots of people at the border. We’re waiting for fresh troops to arrive. But it’s lonely as hell at Big Lake. Keep it simple and plain. Let drop once or twice that we’ve got two platoons at Big Lake. I don’t really know Striganov’s mind-no one knows another’s mind-but if I were in his boots, I’d send at least a full battalion into the Big Lake area, just to be on the safe side. What do you people think?”

“Just to add a bit of spice to the tea,” Dan said, “I would suggest a conversation or two about some green troops mixed in with the regulars at Big Lake. Since it’s so isolated, and the danger of attack so slim, that would be a good place for new troops.”

“Yes,” Ben said. “Good idea. But not too obvious with it.”

“Right, sir!” the Englishman said cheerfully.

“I like it,” Ike said.

“Move out,” Ben ordered.

“I don’t like it worth a shit!” Sam Hartline said.

“State your objections,” Striganov said.

“You can’t trust that goddamned Ben Raines! I’m tellin’ you, Georgi, he’s pulling some crap on us. It’s not like him to put up with all this bragging his people are doing on the air. It’s like … well, he’s trying to goad us into doing something stupid.”

“Oh, I agree with that. But you’ve listened to all the

tapes we’ve made. Someone put a stop to any mention of those green troops at Big Lake. Raines, I’d wager.”

Hartline sat back down and calmed himself, mentally, silently, going over Striganov’s plan. It had merit, he was forced to admit that.

But Hartline felt he knew Ben Raines far better than Striganov did. He should, he thought, hiding a smile, for the two men were alike in a lot, well, some ways.

“What are you thinking, Sam?”

“A mixed bag of thoughts, Georgi. I’ll admit that I like most of your plan. All right, then, we’ll have a go at it.”

“I’ll order recon teams in and we’ll do a fly-by. Tomorrow morning all right?”

“Fine.”

The Rebels had worked furiously all day and well into the night. Teams had begun arriving at the Big Lake site only a few hours after the meeting of Ben, Ike, and Dan had broken up. Cecil and his reserve battalion had landed and were digging in along the eastern borders of Big Lake.

Machine gun emplacements, mortar pits, and bunkers were almost finished. Booby traps were being laid out; Claymores were going into place. Artillery was anchored and camouflaged.

And then they waited.

Ro and Wade had received their orders. It was up to them and their young charges to see that no member of the attacking IPF forces made it past the

triangle’s northern angle alive. At the Big Lake site, Ben watched the young boys and girls of the woods-children as they received their orders. If there was any fear in them, they did not allow it to show on their faces. They stood impassively.

And it almost broke Ben’s heart.

Ike was standing by Ben’s side; he picked up on his friend’s silent feelings.

“I don’t like it any more than you do, buddy,” he said. “But if they didn’t receive an assignment, they’d go off on their own and maybe get mauled.”

“You and me, Ike, we’ve seen a lot together. But I’ll be damned if I’ve ever seen anything to compare with this sight.”

“Kids have fought in every war since the beginning of time, Ben.” He sighed, a sign of frustration.

Dan joined them. “Those children should be in school. This should be the happiest times of their lives.”

Ben glanced at him, smiling. “Do you want to be the one to order them out of here?”

Dan grunted, remembering when he had first encountered the woods-children. He had offered one little sweet-looking girl of about nine or ten a candy bar. The child had bitten his hand to the bone, kicked him in the shins, grabbed his AK-47, and took off into the timber, leaving Dan hopping around on one foot, cussing.

“Thank you, but no!” he said flatly.

Ben and Ike managed to contain their laughter, both of them knowing what Dan was thinking. Dan had lost his cool. Ben’s eyes found a little girl, standing by herself, apart from the other children.

Her carbine was almost as tall as she was. But he had absolutely no doubt that she could, and had, used it. And used it expertly, too.

He left Ike and Dan and walked to the child. As he approached, he could see the fear build in her eyes.

Goddammit! he silently cursed. Why are these children afraid of me?

But he knew.

And knew that he must, at all costs, put a halt to the myths that were growing daily about him.

But how?

He knelt in front of her. “I’m Ben Raines.”

“Yes, General, I know,” the girl said, her voice small in the great living cathedral that was the wilderness.

“Call me Ben.”

She shook her head. “That is not permitted.”

“Nonsense! If I permit it, who can challenge it?” Wrong way to go, Ben, he cautioned. But it was too late; he had said it.

She shook her head, not replying.

“What is your name, girl?”

“Lora.”

“All right, Lora. How old are you?”

“I … think I have eleven years.”

Jesus God! Ben thought. Eleven years old and a warrior. “Your parents?”

She shook her head.

“Brothers, sisters?”

“I … think I had some. But they’re dead, I’m sure.”

“Lora, how would you like a job?”

“A job? But I have a job.”

“What?”

“Fighting for you.”

“Yes, well …” Ben cleared his throat and shifted his weight. Damn bad knee was beginning to ache. “I have another job for you. I’d like for you to be my aide.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Well, it would be a very important job. I wouldn’t ask just anyone to do it. You would assist me; be with me-most of the time,” he added. “Would you like that?”

“Yes, General.”

“Call me Ben.”

She shook her head.

“Well, we’ll… work on that part of it.” He stood up. Immediately his knee felt better. He held out his hand and Lora slipped her small, and very dirty, hand into it.

Ben and Lora walked to Dan and Ike. “This is Lora.” Ben said. “She’s going to be my aide.”

“Sure she can handle it?” Ike said straight-faced, looking at Ben. “That’s a high-falutin’ job.”

“Oh, quite,” Dan said. “Very responsible position for one so young.”

“I can do it,” Lora said, looking at Dan.

Dan looked at the child. She sure looked familiar. Great Scott! Dan thought. This is the child that assaulted me!

Ike was looking off into the distance, scarcely able to keep his laughter locked up.

“Don’t I know you?” Dan asked, kneeling down.

“You might,” Lora said.

“Yes,” Dan said. “I do believe we have met before.”

“You still got that candy bar?” Lora asked.

“No,” Dan said, ice in his voice. “I ate it.”

“Good,” the girl replied. “Bad for your teeth anyway.”

Dan stood up, drawing himself to his full height. “Impudent girl!”

“Blow it out your ear,” Lora told him.

Dan walked away, muttering.

Ike walked away to a tree, leaning against it, laughing so hard he could not see.

Sylvia walked up and looked first at Lora, then at Ben. “Who’s your friend, Ben?”

“My new aide. Lora, this is Sylvia.”

All the Rebels had been forced to harden their hearts toward the sights of the aftermath of total global war. Dan’s defense was a self-imposed coldness; but he ached just as much as the next person.

“She, ah, needs a bath,” Ben said. “Would you see to that, Sylvia?”

“Sure.” Sylvia put an arm around the child’s slender shoulders. “You’ll get used to Ben, Lora. His bark is worse than his bite.”

Lora had no idea what she was talking about.

“Speaking of bites!” Ike yelled, then burst into fits of laughter.

Dan wheeled about. “How would you like a good thrashing, you … dirigible!”

Cecil walked up, catching the last part of it.

“What in the world is going on, Ben?” Sylvia asked.

“Oh, Dan just recalled a rather biting memory.” Then Ben started laughing.

Sylvia walked away, shaking her head, leading Lora

off to a bath and a change of clothing. “Men!” she said. “They are the strangest things.”

Lora sneaked a peek back at Ben Raines. Funny, she thought, he doesn’t look like a god.

But then, what do gods look like? Chapter Thirteen

Striganov and Hartline did a quick fly-by of the Big Lake area. It looked just as Striganov expected. Unchanged. But his soldier’s eyes could see a few things out of place. New gun emplacements; a truck that did not belong to his IPF teams.

“Home,” he told the pilot. “We’ve seen enough.”

“Green troops or not,” Hartline said. “It’s going to take a full battalion to dig them out of there.”

“I want this to be a total defeat for Ben Raines,” Striganov said. “I want this to be humiliating for this so-called god among men.”

“He’s a god, all right.” Hartline looked down at the land. “He’s a goddamned nuisance. But, in a strange way, I’ll be sorry to see him killed.”

“He has been a fine adversary,” Striganov agreed. “But there will be others.”

Some of the Russian’s bubbling confidence was beginning to rub off onto Hartline.

“I feel better about this upcoming operation, Georgi,” Hartline said with a smile. “Kick-ass-and-take-names time.”

“Crudely put but certainly fitting the situation. Sam, have you been receiving any … well, rather odd transmissions from the east lately?”

Hartline was silent for a moment, staring out the window of the expensive twin-engined aircraft. He turned to Striganov. “Come to think of it, yes. My operators keep saying they’re picking up some foreign-language transmissions they think are originating from South Carolina or Georgia. But they can’t make any sense out of them.”

“Have you heard any of them?”

“Yes. It’s Islamic. I don’t speak it.”

“What about this “hot wind” that will blow over the land? What do you make of that?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t heard that one. The only thing I’ve heard about is some guy who calls himself Colonel Khamsim … or something like that.”

“Yes. Well. A khamsin is a hot wind. It originates in the Sahara and blows in the spring.”

“How interesting,” Hartline said, totally uninterested.

“You might become more interested when you learn the troop strength of this Colonel Khamsin.”

“Oh?”

“Something in the neighborhood of thirty to fifty thousand.”

That got the mercenary’s attention very quickly. He stared at the Russian. “Did I hear you right?”

“Two divisions. Yes.”

“Jesus God! Raines has maybe, at the most, five thousand Rebels, and that’s stretching it. And he’s

been kicking our ass every time we meet.”

“Don’t remind me. Besides, all that is about to change. I think Raines is rapidly becoming a secondary matter. I want joint teams of IPF recon and men from your command sent east. As soon as possible. I want this Colonel Khamsin checked out. They will have to go in by vehicle. Since Raines seems to have effectively grounded what remains of our air force.” “You’ve reached that conclusion, too?” “Yes. I tried this morning to reach our people at Redding and Red Bluff. More unintelligible garble.” He sighed. “Well, we fell for it for a time. And now we’re paying for our folly. Dearly. I don’t know how many people we’ve lost. But it will not happen again. We move against the Big Lake Rebels in two days, Sam. Get your people ready and in place.”

Ben felt the Russian had fallen for it. He was ninety-five percent sure of it. But he knew he was taking a very large gamble. A gamble that would cost the Rebels in blood should it fail.

Therefore, it must not fail.

He looked up from his studying of maps as Sylvia and Lora entered his squad tent. At first he didn’t recognize the young girl.

She was clean, her hair freshly washed and shining. The Rebels had found clothes to fit her, from her feet up. She no longer looked like a ragamuffin. Sylvia grinned at Ben.

“Here’s your newest aide, General.”

Ben smiled at the woman and the girl. “Good

afternoon, ladies.”

Lora grinned, proud of herself. “I look like one of them kids in the pitcher-books!”

“Oh?” Ben said. “What, ah, picture book is that, Lora?”

“I left it in my pack. But I found it back in … wherever it was we got on them planes. Found it in a building. It was all right for me to have it, wasn’t it?”

“Of course.” Ben had noticed the child still carried her carbine. “Where’d you get that rifle, Lora?”

“Took off a guy about a year back. He didn’t have no more use for it.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, sir. I killed him.”

When she was ten years old. Jesus Christ, Ben thought. Jesus and God alone only know what this child has gone through. “Was the man, ah, bothering you, Lora?”

“Tryin’ to rape me.”

It was obvious she did not wish to discuss it, so Ben didn’t push it. “Have either of you had lunch?”

Sylvia shook her head. “We haven’t had time. Lora, ah, well, it took some time to get her cleaned up. She, ah, had fleas. Among other tiny vermin. If you know what I mean.”

Ben knew. Lice. He resisted an impulse to scratch. It was a problem with all the woods-children.

It was not that they shunned baths, for they didn’t. But to a person they preferred the ground to a bed. The open starry sky to a building or tent. And back at the base camp, they all had dogs. Which they slept with.

Ben grinned as Sylvia scratched first one arm and then the other.

“I’m glad you think it’s so funny, General,” she said sourly.

“I’ve been there, Lieutenant,” he told her. “We all have. Remember the fleas and rats from not that long ago?”

She shuddered as she recalled that particular horror. “Only too well.”

“Well, on that happy note, let’s have some lunch.”

The IPA was pushing their lines of control out of the Savannah area. And they were savage and murderous in their advance. Those men and women and children they did not kill were taken prisoner, to be used as slaves on the farms they planned to put back into production. And since women had become a valuable commodity, world-wide, women under forty were spared, taken prisoner, and carefully guarded. Almost all the very young were spared. They would be schooled in the Islamic way and after a time accepted into the IPA’S society.

The Islamic Peoples Army now was in firm control of everything between Interstates 20 and 26, from Columbia back to the coast. Their advance had stopped at the Georgia line-for the time being.

There had been pockets of resistance, but those were few and very ineffective against the overwhelming numbers of the IPA. Only a few Americans had escaped, and those headed straight for Ben Raines’s Base Camp One in north Georgia, bringing with

them whatever they could hurriedly grab and carry on the run. And they brought horror stories. Stories of rape and torture and murder.

Terrorism in the twenty-first century.

Something else that Ben and his Rebels would someday very soon have to deal with.

But for now, Colonel Khamsin and his IPA seemed content with the land they had seized. They would spend some time indoctrinating the people they spared, and get the land back in shape for production. When that was done, then they would move out to claim more land in the name of Allah.

“Everybody ready?” Ben radioed to his commanders.

Everyone was in position and ready to go.

The Rebels were dug in tight, their positions deep and expertly camouflaged. Machine gun emplacements were angled to afford the best possible field of fire against approaching troops. And the bunkers had rabbit holes which would allow the Rebels to slip out and away.

They waited.

The first recon teams from Striganov and Hartline moved close to the western perimeter of Big Lake, approaching on either side of an old, once-state-maintained road. They moved cautiously, very alert for mines and booby traps, for the team leaders had been warned about Ben Raines and his Rebels. They had been warned to expect anything; for Ben Raines did not adhere to conventional rules of warfare. Ben

Raines was mean and dirty and vicious; a man thoroughly trained in the art of guerrilla warfare. They were armed to expect anything.

They found nothing.

And the recon teams of Hartline and the Russian could not understand this development. It confused them. What was happening here? Where were all the dirty tricks they had been warned to expect? And where in the name of Lenin were the Rebels?

The team leaders radioed back to the staging areas of their commanders, asking, What was going on? What to do?

Advance cautiously, came the order.

The recon teams moved out. And out. They encountered nothing human. Birds were singing and squirrels were chattering and barking happily in the timber. And that was a sure sign no Rebels were about. The recon teams began to relax a bit.

But human eyes watched them, watched them from bunkers and deep brush and heavy timber. The Rebels remained motionless, breathing shallow, eyes unblinking. They waited.

From the north the recon teams came, encountering the same thing as the teams who came in from the west. Nothing. And as their comrades had done, they radioed back to the staging area for instructions, not understanding the nothingness of the deep timber.

Striganov smiled as he turned to Sam Hartline. “Ben Raines has become what I knew he would, Sam.”

“Oh?”

“Overconfident. I knew it would happen. The man

has had things go his way for too long. His people have become lack; discipline has softened. They think we’re still falling for the garbled transmissions.”

Hartline agreed with the Russian, but damned if he’d give Striganov the satisfaction of knowing it. “I’m ordering my people in.”

“It’s time,” Striganov agreed. He nodded at an aide. “No prisoners. Kill them all. Wipe them from the face of the earth.”

The orders were given and the combined forces of Sam Hartline and the Russian moved out. One force from the north, one force from the west.

But Ben had suspected a trick, and he ordered his people to hold their fire and keep their positions, their heads down. Remain silent and unseen.

Lora stood with Sylvia in Ben’s bunker, watching the man.

“What’s the hang-up, Ben?” Sylvia asked. “What are we waiting for?”

Ben listened to his headset for a moment, not immediately answering. “I thought as much,” he spoke into his mike. “Let them come on.”

He turned to Sylvia, conscious of Lora’s unblinking eyes on him. “Striganov and Hartline have committed only about twenty-five percent of their troops. They’re holding the others back.” He smiled a warrior’s smile; the smile of a hunting tiger about to taste the hot blood of prey. “We’ll let them come; play their game. They’ll learn a hard lesson about me. And I think a very decisive one in our favor.”

“You knew the enemy was going to do this?” Lora asked.

“I suspected it,” Ben replied, looking down at the child.

“You knew,” she said flatly.

“All right; have it your way, then. I knew.”

“How?”

Ben softened his hunter’s smile as he looked at the child. “I’m an old soldier, Lora. There are things one learns over the years.”

She nodded her head. He knew, she thought. He looked through all the silence and knew. She would tell the others about this.

Ben’s headset crackled. “The underground people have halted their advance, General. How in the hell did they know to wait?”

“I don’t know,” Ben spoke into his mike. “They sensed it, probably. How many of them have you spotted?”

“Fifty, maybe. If I’ve seen fifty, there are probably five hundred more I can’t see.”

“I agree. Stay with it. Ike?”

“Here.”

“Cecil?”

“Here.”

“Dan?”

“Here, sir.”

All were on scramble, on a high-band frequency. “Let those few companies come on; let them get deep. When they meet no resistance, the others will be forced to follow. Striganov and Sam know better than to permit too much distance between their forces. Or I’m betting they do, at least. Hold what you’ve got.”

The commander of the point company of IPF men

radioed to Hartline’s point company, advancing from the north. “I have heard no gunfire.”

“Hell, there isn’t anything to shoot at!” Hartline’s company commander radioed back, knowing both Sam and the Russian were monitoring the transmissions. “So far as I can tell, all of Raines’s men are in the compound area. What in the fuck are we waiting for?”

Sam turned to Georgi. “We can’t let much more distance between companies.”

“I know. I believe your point man is correct. Raines has made a fatal mistake by bunching up his men. Commit your troops.” He turned to his radio operator. “Go! Go! Go!”

And the rear companies surged forward.

“Let them come,” Ben said, after receiving the message from his forward observers. “Let them get deep and link up with the forward company. Steady now, people. Keep it steady and cool. Just hold what you’ve got.”

“My people are getting edgy, Ben!” Ike radioed.

“Tell them I’m calm and confident, Ike. To all company commanders and section leaders, this is Raines. I’ll personally shoot the first person who opens fire without my direct orders to do so. Is that understood?”

Perfectly. And they all knew Ben Raines meant every word.

The Rebels waited. The woods-children waited. The underground people waited.

“West angle clear and free,” a forward observer radioed to Ben.

“North angle free and clear,” Ben was informed. “Close it off,” Ben ordered. “Plug it up.” “IPF and Hartline’s men about a mile from the compound,” Ben was informed. “Destroy them,” Ben ordered. And Lora looked at Ben, love in her eyes. Chapter Fourteen

Electrically controlled Claymores were activated, filling the air with explosions that maimed and killed. Mortar rounds were dropped down the tubes, thunking into life, popping up and out, fluttering their way to death-creating explosions. Artillery began pounding the IPF and Hartline’s men. 152mm, 155mm, and 8-inch howitzers began spewing out their lethal rounds. They were joined by 81mm mortars. Parts of once-living human bodies were flung high into the smoke and noise-shattered air of the living wilderness.

Fifty-caliber machine guns began hammering out death for those who escaped the initial onslaught of mines, mortars, and heavy artillery. For those men and women of the IPF and Hartline’s mercenaries who staggered through the torn earth and smoky, hellish air where they had been trapped, the woods-children and the underground people were waiting in the bush and deep timber, with knives and axes and bows and arrows and guns.

Caught by the totally unexpected, the IPF and mercenaries ran, not so much in fear, as in confusion

and panic. They ran to escape the exploding and yammering fury and ran right into booby traps. Swing traps with sharpened stakes, tripped by wire or cord, slammed into bodies, chest-high, the stakes driving through, bloody tips protruding out the back. Knees and ankles were broken when running feet stepped into punji pits. The pits were filled with sharpened stakes, the stakes jamming through boots or shoes, or puncturing the flesh of calf, leaving the victim pinned, unable to move. Those trapped remained there … until they were found and shot.

The cool earth of the wilderness, shaded by tall trees and flowering shrubs, was now littered with the dead and the dying and badly wounded. Screams of those in more pain than they could endure ripped the charged air; pleas for mercy were abruptly ended by pistol or rifle shot.

The rules of this battle and any upcoming battle were being laid down by the Rebels. They would give no quarter to the enemy, and they expected none.

“Cease firing all artillery,” Ben ordered, from his deep bunker.

The big guns fell silent.

“All mortar crews down,” Ben ordered.

The last of the projectiles fluttered to earth and exploded. The mortars fell silent.

“Search and destroy,” Ben ordered.

The hunters became the hunted as Rebels left their holes and bunkers and locked in combat with the mercenaries and the IPF.

It was a tribute to Ben’s planning that not one enemy made it out of the Big Lake area. Ben had so carefully placed his people that any who tried to

escape found themselves facing not one, but three, lines of Rebels to cross, each circle of Rebels forming a smaller loop from the outside of the perimeter in.

And not one enemy made it to within a mile of Ben’s bunker.

Long before the mopping-up was concluded, Ben stepped out of his bunker for a visual. Smoke still clung close to the ground and a few fires had been started by the exploding rounds.

“Get people working on putting those fires out,” Ben ordered. “Watkins was a smoke-jumper, wasn’t he?”

“Yes, sir,” an aide said. “Up in what used to be Wyoming.”

“Contact him and put him in charge. Who is he with?”

“Second Battalion.”

“Get moving.”

“Yes, sir.” The young man disappeared into the bunker, to contact the ex-firefighter.

Ben walked down the slope to level ground, causing Sylvia and his aides no small amount of nervousness, even though most had seen Ben walk calmly into the heat of battle many times before, seemingly unconcerned.

Ben stood for a moment, his old Thompson submachine gun in his right hand. The sounds of gunfire could still be heard around the smoking battlefield. A scream of anguish cut the air, ending with a gunshot for punctuation.

Ben began walking toward the nearest battle area. A dozen Rebels, in lizard camo, ran to join them, forming a protective box around him.

“Don’t you have anything better to do?” Ben asked a young sergeant.

“No, sir,” he replied.

Ben let it slide. He knew these Rebels had probably been ordered to him before the battle, either by Ike or Dan or Cecil. To order them away would only get them in trouble with one of the three.

He walked into the body-littered, smoking battle area, stopping often to look at the uniforms of the dead and dying. A mixture of IPF and Hartline’s mercenaries. Something was wrong, but Ben could not immediately dredge it up to visual mental light.

He walked on, stepping around or over the gorier messes made by parts of human bodies: still-steaming twisted ropes of intestines; a severed human head, the eyes wide open in pain-filled shock; a boot, with the foot still encased within the leather; a hand, just a hand, still gripping an AK-47; a torn-open torso.

He walked on, still trying to figure out what was wrong-if anything.

But he knew something was.

Then it came to him. He turned to a Rebel with a radio. “Contact the other commanders. Ask them if they’ve seen any of the warlord’s men mixed in with these regulars. Our intelligence stated their dress was oftentimes bizarre. They don’t wear any type of standard uniform.”

None of the others had seen anything other than regular troops.

“What does it mean, Ben?” Cecil radioed.

“It means, I think, that while we won this battle, one of our recently taken outposts, I’d guess Youreka, was hit by the warlords.”

“We only left a squad there, Ben,” Ike radioed, the sounds of gunfire mingled in with his words.

“Striganov pulled a fast one,” Dan said. Someone screamed in pain in the background of his words.

“Not the Russian; he’s too conceited,” Ben said. “This was Sam Hartline’s doing. Bet on it.”

“Then our people at Youreka are in for a very bad time of it,” Dan opined.

“To say the least,” Ben signed off.

Sonny Boy walked up and down the thin line of Rebels he and his men had taken at the Youreka outpost. Sonny Boy and his men looked like a scriptwriter’s nightmare of a twenty-first century motorcycle gang. They dressed in whatever suited their personality.

Bizarre would be too tame a word.

Their headgear ranged from Nazi helmets to berets. Some wore combat boots, others cowboy boots. Some had chains looped and wound around their chests and waists. Some wore only vests with no shirt. Others were dressed in leather from ankle to neck.

To a man, they were dirty, lice-infested, ugly, and vicious. Hartline had promised them a free hand to deal with the enemy in any way they saw fit, “The enemy” being anyone opposed to General Georgi Striganov.

But they had been getting bored. Life in the Northwest was getting too tame.

Until now.

This particular bunch of outlaws rode motorcycles

exclusively. This was Sonny Boy’s bunch.

Skinhead’s bunch rode motorcycles, drove souped-up dune buggies and chopper bikes.

Grizzly’s bunch rode motorcycles and drove souped-up pickup trucks.

Popeye’s gang rode motorcycles.

About five hundred strong in all, they were, to a person, a very odious crew. In more ways than one.

Sonny Boy walked up and down in front of the captured Rebels. When he grinned his mouth was filled with rotten and blackened teeth. His breath would fell an ox.

He stopped in front of a woman Rebel. “Lookie here, boys. This here is prime pussy.”

The woman spat in his face.

Sonny Boy reached out, grabbed a breast, and twisted harshly.

She screamed as pain bent her almost double. Sonny Boy brought his open palm around and slapped the woman, knocking her sprawling. Reaching down, he jerked the field pants from her and shredded her panties. He jerked her to her feet and threw her to his men. Several caught her, their hands roaming her body.

“Take turns with “er,” Sonny Boy said. “I wonder if it’s possible for a woman to be fucked to death?”

In less than a minute, Reba began screaming as the rape began.

Sonny grinned as he stared at the only other woman in the Rebel team. “My, my, ain’t you the pretty one. You gonna be my woman, bitch.”

The woman stared at him, her face impassive.

“Think you’re tough, don’t you?” Sonny Boy asked.

She shrugged.

Sonny Boy’s men laughed, their laughter bringing a flush to his face. “You’ll be beggin” me to quit “fore it’s all over, bitch,” he said.

She stared at him in silence.

“You got a name, bitch?” “Sally.”

“Ain’t that pretty? You be nice to me, now Sally, and I’ll be nice to you. You fuck up with me, and I’ll stick a grenade up your ass, you understand? And don’t nod your goddamn head, speak!”

“I understand.”

“Good. Hope for you yet.” He waved toward his people. “Take them men prisoners. Hartline wants to torture them; see if he can get anything out of them.”

Reba screamed as two men took her at once, front and back.

Striganov was silent, deep in savage thoughts, as he rode back to his command post by the raging sea.

He should have known better, he kept thinking. He should have known better than to try and second-guess Ben Raines. For every time he did … he failed.

And Georgi Striganov did not like to fail.

But what galled him more than Ben Raines destroying two full battalions of his people … was Sam Hartline sending those cretins in to seize the outpost at Youreka.

Sam had suspected Ben Raines was going to pull something. But if so, why hadn’t he voiced stronger objections?

Unless? …

No, that was unthinkable!

Or was it?

Striganov tried to clear his head of those thoughts. But they persisted.

Was Sam trying to pull something? If so, what could it be? For he lost men in the battle with Raines, too. Although not nearly as many as Georgi did.

Georgi would have to give this some thought. A lot of thought. But he could not believe Sam Hartline would be stupid enough to try some sort of coup. They needed each other to continue the fight against the common enemy: Ben Raines.

“Outpost at Youreka on the horn, General,” Ben was informed.

“It’s pretty bad. They’re raping Reba.”

“They call us?”

“Yes, sir.”

Ben walked to the communication truck. The battleground was nearly void of living beings, the Rebels pulling out, leaving the dead silent, for the earth to claim.

Ben glanced at his watch. Hartline would have had time to get there by car.

“Get them on the horn,” Ben ordered.

“Hello, Ben,” the cheerful voice of Sam Hartline cracked through the speaker.

“Hartline,” Ben replied, without the cheerfulness.

“You won one, Raines,” Hartline said. “Going to come get your woman warrior?”

“Doubtful,” Ben said honestly.

“You’re a hard man, Ben. ‘Bout as hard as me. Hell, maybe you’re harder. God knows I’ve tried to kill you often enough.”

Ben could hear faint screaming in the background. But it was not a woman’s screaming.

“That’s one of your Rebels, Ben,” Hartline told him. “One of my boys is burning his feet off. I don’t think he likes it very much.”

Ben cursed; got it out of his system before he keyed the mike. Keeping his voice level, he said, “What do you want, Hartline?”

“Why, just a friendly chat with an old enemy, Ben. That’s all.”

The screaming of the burning Rebel became louder.

Then Ben heard Reba screaming.

“I opened a window just in case you wanted to get a better … ah, picture, shall we say, of what is happening here.”

“I could have done without it, Hartline.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t want you to miss a thing, Ben. Oh, by the way, the woman you had in the cabin, Rani Jordan? I suppose you know by now that she’s dead.”

“I know.”

“I tortured her to death, Ben. Of course I fucked her, too. Several times. In several different ways.”

Ben said nothing.

“A lot of my, ah, newer colleagues had a whack at her, too. They’re anxious to meet you, Ben.”

“Oh, we’ll meet, Hartline. Bet on that,” Ben assured him.

“Oh my, Ben! I wish you could see this. It’s very entertaining. Two of my men are double-teaming Reba. Poor girl doesn’t appear to be enjoying it. I

wonder why?”

“Where is Sally?”

“Sonny Boy claimed her for his woman. He’s such a delightful man, Ben.”

“One of your warlords, Sam?”

“That’s a big ten-four.”

“I’m looking forward to meeting them all, Sam.”

Hartline chuckled. “I know what you’re doing, Ben. Oh, I’ll tell you their names. Sonny Boy, Grizzly, Skinhead, Popeye. Nice boys, all.”

Just before Ben signed off, he said, “I’m going to kill you, Hartline. That is a promise.” Chapter Fifteen

“You know what’s going to happen now, don’t you, Georgi?” Sam asked the Russian.

They were enjoying a late dinner in the Russian’s lovely home near Pepperwood, just off Highway 101. The Russian insisted on living as luxuriously as possible, considering the conditions around them. Not two miles away, people were just barely clinging to life.

When Striganov and his IPF first landed on American soil, after years in Iceland, Georgi had treated the Aryan race quite differently.

But all that had proved too expensive in terms of food and clothing and medical treatment.

Now anyone who did not willingly embrace the Russian’s lopsided philosophy was left to fend for themselves, as best they could.

“No. You tell me, Sam,” Striganov said.

“Ben Raines is going to pull out all the stops now. He’s going to hit us from all sides. He’s going to use