Anarchy in the Ashes

“It had to be, Gale. I tried to tell them what they were going up against, but I’m not sure how much of it registered on them. I really hope my words sank in. We’ll know when we see the number that return.”

“I can’t believe you would do something like that, knowing that many of them faced death, would be sure to die.”

“The survivors will make it. The rest will either get tough or die. That’s the way of the world now. Those that don’t have the right stuff will die along the way. There is no momma to write home to, now, honey. No USO, no Red Cross, no State Department. This nation, the very laws upon which it was founded and which the high courts and our elected leaders chose to spat upon for decades, is standing on the brink, teetering,

first in one direction, then the other. A lot of people will die before any type of democratic process is ever again in force. If, in fact, any type of democratic government is ever again adopted. And I have very grave doubts about that. Right now, Gale, this moment, we are facing the greatest challenge since the bombings of ‘88. And if we don’t win, we can all kiss any hope of freedom and democracy goodbye.”

She looked at him. Blinked, then smiled. “Thank you, Professor Raines,” she said. She rose up on tiptoes and kissed him.

The small column, now minus the young people from the college, backtracked to Ottumwa. There, Ben told the villagers what was soon to go down.

“What do you want us to do, General?” he was asked.

“I’d like for you to come with us, back to Tri-States.”

The people of Ottumwa had already discussed this. The man shook his head. “No, sir, we won’t do that. This is our home, and we have agreed to die defending it. We may be making the wrong decision, but we’re going to stand firm.”

Ben knew there was no point in arguing. He shook hands with the spokesman and pulled out, heading south, leaving them with their shotguns and hunting rifles. Against trained troops and experienced combat officers, with mortars and long-range howitzers. Maybe, Ben figured, just maybe, if they were lucky, and had the time to group before the IPF hit them, they might last six hours. If they were lucky. But Ben

could understand the desire to defend homes and a free way of life.

Ben ordered his column to head west until they intersected with Highway 65, then to cut down into Missouri, staying to the west of Kansas City by about sixty miles, for Kansas City was radioactive and would be for centuries. During the trek, they found survivors in Princeton, and Trenton, and about a hundred in Chillicothe. Thirty families elected to go with the Rebels, the rest stayed, despite Ben’s warnings they didn’t have a prayer of defeating General Striganov’s IPF.

But they would not leave their homes.

The column crossed the Missouri River and found more than a hundred people at Missouri Valley College. It was there Ben made up his mind, there Ben put the smugglings of his brain to rest.

“Get me General Striganov,” he told his radio operator. “You’ll have to search the bands, but I feel sure he’s got people waiting to hear from me.”

“Yes, sir.”

She began searching the bands, carefully lingering over each frequency. She would broadcast for a few moments, then listen, seeking some reply.

Ben looked over the band of people on the campus of the old Presbyterian college. They were a grim-looking lot. Most of them wore a defeated look, and once more, that flaw appeared in Ben. He was not now and had never been the type of man to give up. No one who was ever a part of any hard-line special military unit was a quitter. One could not make it through the training by being a quitter, and very few special troops have anything but contempt for a quitter. Past training had been too brutal, too dehumanizing

for a man to face failure by just rolling over and giving up.

With very rare exceptions, no man who was once a part of any tough military unit, the elite, if you will, will ever beg or quit in a bad situation. And they do not like to be associated with those that do.

Ben shoved his personal feelings back into the dark recesses of his mind and asked, “Where are you people from?”

“South Dakota, mostly,” a woman replied. “Aberdeen-Watertown area. Thought we were making a sort of life for ourselves. Then the IPF came in. They suckered us, General Raines. They were nice, at first. Real nice young people. They helped us. But our minister, Ralph Dowing, he was the first to figure them out, what they were really all about and up to. He called them on it. They didn’t do much about it, at first. No rough stuff, nothing like that. But we noticed that after that, they all started carrying automatic weapons. So my husband-no, he’s not here, he’s dead-he started carrying a pistol wherever he went. He and several other men. They-the IPF’-THEY didn’t like that. They told my husband they would rather he not wear a gun. They would protect us if the need arose. My husband told them he didn’t give a jumping good goddamn what they liked or disliked or wanted.” She wiped a hand across her face and sighed heavily. “Shortly after that, there was an accident-so the IPF called it. My husband was run over by a pickup truck. The IPF said my husband fell in front of the truck.” She shook her head. “It was no accident, General. He was deliberately killed to get him out of the way.”

“Yes,” a young man standing beside her said. “Then

they started rounding up all the privately owned guns. That’s when we started to fight them. But let me tell you, General Raines: They’re tough and mean. And Lord, are they quick. Those of us you see here got out just in time, “bout fifty of us. We picked up the other people outside Watertown. Same thing happened to them. General, what in the hell is going on?”

Briefly, Ben told them what he knew. He could see by the expressions on their faces many did not believe him, but the majority did.

“I’ve got General Striganov’s HQ, sir,” the radio-operator called from the communications van.

Ben keyed the mic. “This is Ben Raines. To whom am I speaking?”

“My dear Mister Raines,” the familiar voice rolled from the speakers in the van. “This is Georgi. I trust you have had a most pleasant trip thus far?”

“Just dandy, General. But I am not contacting you to exchange social amenities. Interstate 70 is your stopping point, General. Starts in what is left of Baltimore and cuts right across the center of the country. That’s your southern boundary, Georgi. You keep your IPF people north of that line.”

“Are you buying time, President-General Raines, or tossing down the gauntlet?”

“Maybe a little of each, General.”

“And if I don’t comply with your demands?”

“Then that little war we talked about just might come to be a whole hell of a lot sooner than you expect,” Ben said bluntly.

“I see,” the Russian said after a short period of silence. His mind was racing as fast as Ben’s. “Then may I have your word you will not interfere with my

personnel north of the line?”

“I most certainly will interfere, General. If you disarm the citizens, I’ll send teams in to rearm them. If you use any type of force or torture, I’ll meet it with force.”

There was an edge to the Russian’s reply. “I don’t like this game, General Raines. You’re not even being slightly fair with your demands.”

“It’s the only game in town, General Striganov. Take it or leave it.”

“I’ll think about it,” the Russian said.

“You do that, partner.”

The connection was broken from the Russian’s end. Rather rudely, Ben thought.

A crowd had gathered around the communications van. A man asked, “Is there going to be another war, General?”

“Do you want to live under communist rule?” Ben answered with a question.

“I don’t care,” the man replied. He had the pinched look of a man who had been born into poverty and never escaped it. His expression was sullen. “I ain’t gonna fight them people. I don’t think what they’re doin” is all that wrong, noways. I just want to live and be left alone.”

“Then you’re a damned fool!” a woman cried, her face flushed with anger. Ben noticed she had a pistol belted around her waist. “Man, have you lost your courage or your senses-or both?”

“I won’t fight them people,” the man insisted. “So what if the niggers and the spies and Jews are wiped out? Be a better world without them people.”

About a third of those present agreed with the man.

Gale stirred beside Ben, but kept her mouth shut. But if her eyes could speak, they would be speaking volumes. Her fingers dug into Ben’s arm with a hard fury.

“Then why don’t you take those of like mind and join up with General Striganov’s people?” Ben asked the man.

“By God, maybe I’ll do that little thing!” the man flared, his eyes furious. “I just cain’t see what is so wrong with what he’s doin’. And a lot of others around here agree with me.”

“Mister.” Another man stepped forward, his hands balled into hard fists. “Why don’t you just take those that agree with you and carry your goddamned ass out of here? My wife is Mexican, and I don’t like what you’re saying or what you’re all about. And if you open your fat mouth one more time, I’m going to knock your goddamn teeth down your throat.”

The man who thought he might like to join Striganov’s IPF opened his mouth to speak, then thought better of it. He walked out of the small encampment with about two dozen other men and women following him.

“I just can’t believe Americans are really doing this,” Gale said. “This is … unreal.”

“Oh, you can believe it, dear,” Colonel Gray spoke. “There is a lot of hate in this world. Or, rather, what is left of this world.”

“And it will get worse,” Ben cast more gloom. “Count on it.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Ben shook hands with Juan Solis and Mark Terry and then offered his hand to Al Maiden. Maiden merely looked at him and folded his arms across his chest.

Ben shrugged it off and gazed out the window. It was late June and the weather had been ideal. If these conditions prevailed, there would be a bumper crop of wheat and corn and thousands of acres of vegetables.

“So from what you have seen, General,” Juan said, “you think that perhaps thirty percent of those approached are buying the garbage the Russian is spewing?”

“At least that many, Juan. There’s a lot of hatred in this country directed toward minorities. Striganov is bringing it to an ugly head.”

“Placing yourself amid the pus of that boil, too, I hope, General,” Al said.

Cecil sighed and looked out the open window. Mark caught Ben’s eye and shook his head in disgust. Ben could but smile.

“Al,” Juan said, “you’re a real asshole, I hope you know that.”

“You’ll see someday, Juan,” Al replied. He smiled, but his smile was void of humor. “Big Ben Raines,” he said sarcastically. “The great white hope.”

Ben decided the best action he could take was none. He ignored Maiden. When he spoke, his words were directed to Juan and Mark. “I don’t see how any of us can sit on our hands and do nothing about this situation. Are we in agreement with that?”

“I agree with nothing you say,” Al said.

Juan said, “Are you suggesting we take the fight to them, Ben?”

“Have we any choice in the matter?” Mark spoke. “My people will work with you in any way we can, Ben. You can count on that.”

“Hey, brother!” Al rose from his chair in open anger. “I run the government of New Africa, not you-or have you forgotten that?”

“You run the political arm of the parts of North and South Carolina our people have settled in,” Mark said pointedly. “But I run the military arm of it. That is a position the people placed on my shoulders-not yours. Al, are you so full of blind hate for all whites that you can’t see that Ben is trying to help us?”

“Ben Raines never did anything except for Ben Raines,” Al retorted heatedly. “Are you forgetting he once threw the national president of the NAACP out of his office when he was in charge of this nation?”

“No, I haven’t. But did it ever occur to you the man might have deserved being tossed out? I never did learn what happened. All I got was the one side-the side the liberal press chose to report, as usual. And,

Al, I seem to recall that back in the early eighties, when Reagan was president, the same man, before he took charge of the NAACP, once referred to President Reagan as a California cow-shit kicker. Now, Al, playing devil’s advocate for a moment, I wonder how that man would have felt, being from Colorado, if President Reagan had stooped to his level, and called him a Colorado Coon?”

Cecil burst out laughing, as did Juan and Ben. Al Maiden bristled with anger.

“All I’m saying, Al, is how about some fairness? That’s all.” He again looked at Ben. “We’re with you, Ben. I’ll give you all the help and personnel you feel you need.”

Maiden kept his mouth shut, but the hate in his eyes was intense.

“Same here, Ben,” Juan said.

“All right,” Ben said, rising to his feet and walking to a large wall map in the office. “Gentlemen, let’s get down to nuts and bolts.”

Emil Hite stood in the bedroom of his quarters in the Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas and looked out over his growing kingdom. Not so little anymore, he thought. Growing daily.

On his bed lay a young girl, sleeping after her first initiation into sex. Her breasts were still developing and her pubic hair was sparse. She was just the way Emil liked his female sex partners: from twelve to fifteen. Younger than that and they screamed and cried too much; older than that and he felt inferior, inadequate in the act.

To say that Emil Hite was a bit twisted mentally would be putting it most subtly.

Emil walked back to the bed and caressed the soft skin of the child, smiling as he did so. Lovely. Lovely little children. Too bad they had to grow up and become such bitchy women.

His kingdom of followers now numbered almost fifteen hundred, and was growing daily. Not with the numbers of the past, but several came straggling in almost every day. And Emil had found the mutants responded-in their own peculiar way-to kindness. Ugly fucking brutes. But they did make great watch … watch what? Things. That would do. They made their homes on the fringes of the mountains, some of them actually constructing shacks of tin and scrap metal and wood. Emil had found that among the mutants, just as in normal human beings, there were varying degrees of intelligence. Some of them, Emil felt, might even be trained to do menial jobs-if he were so inclined to do that-which he wasn’t.

A knock on the door of the cabin meant that Emil’s lunch was ready, the tray left by the door. Honey-bread and fruit and nuts and raw vegetables.

Yuk!

Emil desperately longed for a thick, juicy steak, but that would have appalled his followers, all vegetarians, and he had too good a thing going to screw up this late in the game.

Jumping Jesus Christ, some of the people out there were real fruitcakes. They had built him a throne from where he held an audience twice a week. Emil had to sit very patiently, listening to his followers heap long, boring speeches of love and adulation upon him. And

he would smile and nod his head and make the sign of the cross and look pleased while the yo-yos ranted and raved and groveled at his feet.

And Emil had to read his Bible daily, darkly reshaping the passages to suit his own twisted mind and perverted desires.

He sighed, thinking: I shouldn’t complain about it. He had it made. Steady tight pussy from young girls and tight assholes from young boys. Love and servants and people to wash him and shave him and rub his feet and back. So he had to preach a couple of times each week.

Sure beat the hell out of selling used cars in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

The young black woman fought the hard hands that gripped her arms, dragging her to the van parked on a side street in the small Iowa town. She fought the men, but her efforts were fruitless. One of the men could not resist this opportunity to squeeze the woman’s breasts, causing her to scream in pain as he gripped them brutally. The other men laughed at this.

“You can’t do this to me!” she screamed. “I’m a human being, not an animal!” She cut her eyes to the few people standing on the Uttered main street of the town. “For God’s sake!” she screamed at them. “Please help me.”

The men and women looked away, not wanting to meet the woman’s eyes. But they could not close their ears to her panic-filled cries for help.

She screamed as the doors of the van were pulled open. Her eyes rolled in fear and desperation as she

spied the banks of medical equipment and the straps on the narrow, white-sheeted table inside the van. A man and woman stood inside the van, both of them dressed in white. They smiled at her.

She fought even harder. “My baby!” she screamed, hoping against hope someone would find the courage to help her. “My baby!”

She was four months pregnant.

“It won’t hurt,” the white-jacketed woman inside the medical van told her. “I promise you you will get the best medical care. We really don’t want to hurt you. But you are going to hurt yourself if you persist in this struggling.”

“Please don’t do this to me!” she wailed. “You have no right to do this!”

“You are impure,” the blond woman told her. “Although that is not your fault, you are imperfect. As with the mother, so goes the child.”

The young black woman began cursing the people as they forced her into the van.

She was screaming as she was lifted into the van and placed on the narrow table. Leather straps were tightened on her ankles and wrists. She felt her dress being cut from her. Cool air fanned her naked flesh. She was suddenly immobile.

“Look at the pussy on this one,” a man said. “God, what a bush.”

The young woman opened her eyes, looking into the hard, pale eyes of the blond woman standing over her. The woman licked her lips.

The young woman felt the weight of a man covering her, his hardness pushing against her dryness. He grunted his way inside her.

She was raped four times within an hour.

“Enough,” she heard the blond woman say.

The man on top of her climaxed and withdrew.

Coolness of alcohol touched the young woman’s arm, followed by the tiny, brief lash of a needle.

“That’s just to put you under for a time, miss,” a man’s voice spoke. “We promise you as little pain as possible. We’re not savages, you know.”

Laughter followed that remark.

She felt herself falling, falling. She fought the blackness that promised soothing, inky arms. Lights spun in her head, pinwheels whirled and sparkled. Blackness overtook her and she sank into midnight. There was some pain through her unconsciousness, but the young woman did not recognize it as such. She could feel herself falling deeper.

The midnight darkness began to be tinted with light. When she opened her eyes, she was in a hospital bed, in a clean, white, sterile room. An older black woman was standing over her, looking down. The woman smiled.

“How do you feel?”

“Shitty.”

The black face smiled. “So did I. It was a forced miscarriage, honey. And I’ll tell you straight out: You will never have any children.”

“They?” She could not bring herself to speak the awful words.

“Yes,” the older woman said. “It just takes one shot to destroy everything that God gave us women. The same with men. I don’t know what’s in that shot, but it’s a devil’s mixture, for sure.”

The young woman turned her face to the pillow and

wept hard, uncontrollably, the tears savage, soaking into the pillow.

“Hell, sister, that won’t help none. I know. Was you raped, too?”

“Yes,” she sobbed.

“I was raped so many times I don’t know how many men took me. Look, honey, I thought I’d kill myself after… after they give me that shot. But then I got to thinking-why? Then I thought some more, and came up with a better idea.”

The young woman looked up at her through a mist of tears. “What?”

“Keep on livin’ and think of more ways to stop these Russian bastards.”

“That won’t help my baby.” She turned her face away from the woman.

“You right, it sure won’t. But nothing on this earth will. Listen, we can help save some others from what was done to us. Honey, this is just one of a dozen or more hospitals the IPF has set up-and this one, like all the others, is jam-packed full. This place is full of blacks, Jews, Hispanics. Anybody that don’t have fair skin is in trouble with these Russian honk bastards, let me tell you that for a fact, honey, and you’d damn well better believe it.”

Through her pain, the mental anguish much more severe than the physical, the young black woman asked, “What can we do?”

“That’s more like it.” The older woman smiled. “All right, we don’t do nothin’ “til you get to feelin” better. Right now, though, we can talk. It’ll help some, believe me. What’s your name?”

“Peggy. Peggy Jones.”

“I’m Lois Peters. The IPF put me in here after I was … was worked on,” she spat out the last. “Made me kind of a den mother, you might say. I’ll tell you this: Be careful who you talk to, “cause they’s some black women copped out, agreed to breed with light-skins, anything to stay fertile. I thought about it some-rejected it. You?”

“They didn’t even ask me that. I ran and hid for several weeks, but they finally ran me down and caught me. Lois, I’m not going to take this. Someway, somehow, I’m going to fight.”

“Good girl. That’s the spirit. You gonna make it now, talkin” like that. All right, what do you know about guns?”

“Nothing. I was born in New York City.”

Lois shrugged. “Ever’body has their faults, I suppose.” She smiled. “That’s a joke, honey. Well, we can teach you about guns. OK. Now then, you ever heard of a man named Ben Raines?”

“Are you kidding! Sure, I have. General, president. That’s the man who broke away from the union to form his own country. Why?”

“Word I get is he met with the commander of the IPF, a guy name of General Georgi Striganov. That man is, so I hear, one bad dude.”

“Sounds like something you’d eat.”

Lois laughed softly. “Son of a bitch stick it in my mouth, hell pull out a nub. Talk is General Raines put the evil eye on the Russian, gave him a double whammy. Said he was gonna fight him, stop him and his IPF from doing this-like what was done to you and me.”

“Anybody can,” Peggy said, “General Raines is the man’ll do it.”

“Damn right. That’s the way I feel, too. You get better, honey. It won’t take long. And you be careful who you talk to “round here. Soon as you’re up and about, we’ll talk some more.”

“You’ll teach me how to shoot a gun?”

“Somebody will, don’t worry. We ain’t got all that many guns, now, but we’re gettin” some.”

“The people in that little town where the IPF finally caught up with me, they just stood and watched them take me away. I couldn’t believe it. They just watched, didn’t do anything.”

“Most of them couldn’t do nothing. The IPF come around, gatherin’ up all the guns. You too young to remember the way it was back in the mid-eighties, honey. The goddamn government of the United States passed laws that gave the Feds the right to take all the privately owned pistols. That was the worst law Congress ever passed. Ain’t no son of a bitch ever gonna take no gun of mine-not ever again. I’ll die first; but I’ll go out shootin’. Believe it.

“Some of the white folks are in favor of what the IPF is doin’. A lot of them hate it. White folks is just like black folks: No two think alike “bout ever’thing. But General Raines got all kinds of folks in his new Tri-States, so I hear. EverTsody works together. No hate, no KKK, nothing like that white-trash group of people. God! Just think how wonderful that must be.”

“Maybe we can link up with General Raines’s people.”

“Could be. It’s a dream to sleep well on.”

“Anything we plan on doing, Lois,” Peggy said, a new firmness to her voice. “It can’t be passive resistance.”

“Lord no, child. Them days is gone forever. Let me tell you something else t greater-than out this General Striganov: He’s got folks testin’ other folks’ intelligence. Lot of fancy machines and words. He’s weedin’ out what he calls the mental defectives. Anyone under a certain IQ is in bad trouble. They just been disappearin’. The IPF is takin’ it slow and easy and quiet on that, not wantin’ to stir up a bunch of people. But they’re collectin’ folks and takin’ them away. Where is up for grabs. Nobody ever sees them again after they’re taken, so you can guess what is happenin’ to them.

“Something else: That evil Sam Hartline was in here this mornin’. Just after you come out of the operating room. I heard him tell one of the orderlies that after you got all better, he wants you in his stable.”

Peggy looked at the older woman. “Just what in the hell does that mean?”

“You a beautiful woman, Peggy. Young, light-skinned. You could pass, you know that?”

“I’ve thought about it.”

“Sure you have. Don’t blame you. But Hartline wants you for one of his women. He’s an evil he-goat, honey. Likes to hurt women. And he’s built up real bad, if you know what I mean.

“Son of a bitch will never get me!”

“Just settle on down, now. Think about it. You be the first black gal he’s put his evil eyes on. Be nice to have someone reportin’ back to us on ever’thing he says.”

Peggy could not believe what she was hearing. “You actually want me to prostitute myself?”

Lois smiled. “A stiff cock never killed no one I ever

heard of, honey, and women been spreadin’ their legs to get information out of men for centuries. My grandmother told me that her grandmother told her that back in the olden days they was called house niggers. Kept them down in the quarters informed as to what was goin’ on in the big house. You get my drift?”

Peggy nodded.

was “Sides, once a man gets it up and hard and in you, you got him in a damn good position to slide a knife ‘tween his ribs. You follow me, girl?”

Peggy’s smile was grim. “I can dig it, honey.”

“I’ll talk to you later. For right now, you beside” get some rest.”

“How?” The question was bitter.

“Just close your eyes, girl. It’ll come. You may think it’s the end of the world, but give it some time-it’ll heal.”

“Yeah,” the young woman said. “Just give it time.” She closed her eyes as the door to her room hissed open and closed. Peggy was asleep in five minutes. But her sleep was restless and troubled. She dreamt she was hearing a baby screaming. Tears rolled from sleeping eyes to dampen the pillow.

Refugees from the IPF’S brutal tactics began drifting into the only known safe havens in the country: Juan Solis’s southwest, Ben Raines’s Tri-States and Al Maiden’s New Africa. The stories they told were horror stories.

And in the three areas of freedom, the commanders pushed their troops hard during training. The people, of all races, all religions, realized the urgency of the

training. No one complained.

As summer began to wane, Al Maiden grudgingly began to realize Ben Raines was not a bigot or a racist, and that if any type of democratic government was to survive, the three leaders had best work together. They maintained daily radio contact, using a scrambler network of codes.

“I was wrong about Maiden,” Ben told Cecil. “He’s not a bad sort.”

“I was even further off base with my thinking,” Cecil said. “He’s coming around. It’s the damnedest metamorphosis I have ever witnessed.”

“I wish to hell ya’ll would speak American,” Ike said with a smile. “I’m a Mississippi boy, “member? We ain’t used to them big words.”

Cecil groaned and Ben laughed. They both knew Ike was one of the most intelligent people in Tri-States; he just liked to act the redneck part. And did a very convincing job of it.

“I’ve got over two thousand in here,” Juan informed Ben. “I spoke with Mark and Al yesterday. Al said close to that number have drifted into his territory. How about you?”

“Just about the same, Juan. Most of them in pretty sad shape, both mentally and physically. I’ve found very few fighters among my group.”

“Same here,” Juan told him. “And Al reports the same.”

“Well… it seems General Striganov is stepping up his moves, and getting rough with it. I’ve heard some grim stories.”

“Same here. There are some pockets of resistance in Wisconsin, but Hartline and his boys are brutal. No

prisoners, except for women, and then they’re used pretty badly.”

“My LETTERRP’S say Striganov is staying above the line, Juan. What do your patrols report?”

“Same thing. But, Ben-we can’t allow this to continue. My wife has just about stopped speaking to me, and Al said Mark’s wife has closed the door on him, if you know what I mean. I think that’s next with me. How about you?”

Ben knew exactly what he meant. Gale had turned decidedly cold. But Ben could live with that; he understood-or thought he did-how she felt. This was the 1930’s and “40’s all over.

Ben felt sick every time he thought about the IPF and their selective breeding program. But he was realist enough to know even with the three forces combined, they were not strong enough to smash Striganov’s people, not without committing all free forces in an all-out war. And if they did that, leaving only a token force behind, the Russian could-for he had enough people-pull an end-around their flanks and come up from behind, putting them all in a box with no exit.

But Ben knew the free forces had to do something. The time for waiting was over.

“Juan, you know how I feel. Whatever you and Mark decide is OK with me.”

“We’ve got to talk, Ben. Nose to nose.”

“To keep Al happy, let’s meet in South Carolina. You fly in here and we’ll fly east together.”

“Done. When?”

“Next week. How about … Friday, August second?”

“I’ll see you then, compadre.”

“Tri-States, out.”

Ben turned to Ike. “Feel like traveling?”

The ex-Navy SEAL nodded. “We’ve got to do something, El Presidente, even if it means running the risk of destroying everything we’re attempting to build. My wife says she’s sick and tired of me pacing the floor at night. And Gale says you’re getting hard to live with.”

“Yeah,” Ben said. “I keep remembering pictures I saw of Dachau and Auschwitz and Buchenwald.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen those same pictures. And it’s going to come to that, isn’t it, Ben?”

“If it hasn’t already and we just don’t know about it.”

“I thought about that, too.”

“The survivors are telling us that Striganov and Hartline have instituted a new program of I.d. papers. Person doesn’t have papers is in serious trouble.”

Ben nodded. “Yeah, I heard that, too. How about the young people who returned?”

“You were close on that, Ben. Close enough to scare me. “Bout sixty-five percent made it back. But those who died saved the lives of several thousand.”

“I wonder how many died hard?”

Ike shrugged. “And how many just quit.”

Again, Ben nodded. “Denise?”

“She made it out. She’s all right. Reminds you of Jerre, don’t she?”

“In a way.” Ben stood up, stretched. “What is the mood of the people?”

“Ready to go, Ben.”

“They understand this could destroy everything we

have managed to build?”

“Yes.”

“They understand we are going to take heavy losses?”

“Yes. But they love freedom that much, Ben. They know Striganov has to be stopped-whatever the cost. And you know every man, woman and child in this area would follow you up to and through the gates of hell.”

Ben did not have to be reminded of that. He sometimes had to fight to push it from his mind. “I’ll leave logistics to you, Ike. Whatever you’re doing, drop it. I want a complete rundown on equipment: tanks, APC’S, howitzers, weapons, ammo-the whole bag, Ike, from pencils to panties.”

Ike waggled his eyebrows. “Do I get to inspect the latter on the hoof?”

“How would you like me to call Sally and tell her what you said?”

“Lord deliver me from that!”

“You get in touch with Juan and Mark, have them do the same with their equipment. I’ll get Colonel Gray to wind up training. It’s too late now if the new people didn’t learn the first time. I’ll get with Cec, find out how many people we’re going to have to leave behind as a rear guard. I hate to do it, but we’re going to have to leave the older ones behind to shore up our rear.”

“They’ll handle it, Ben.”

“I know it. I just hate to ask them to do it.” He sighed heavily. “Looks like we drop the plows and pick up the guns-again.”

“It has to be, Ben.”

“Maybe after this, we can all settle down and try to pull together.”

Ike nodded his head but looked dubious. “It’s a nice thought, Ben.”

CHAPTER NINE

Hartline hurt her every time she was chosen to be his woman for the night, but it was a hurt curiously mixed with pleasure. She hated herself when she began to respond to him. And she fought her responsiveness until it broke like a dam within her. She knew she had to win his trust and his confidence, but nevertheless, her pleasure made her feel like a whore.

She knew she was small; nothing could change that. And Sam Hartline was built like a bull in the sex department. She thought those men were only found in porn movies. He groaned and cursed and had to force his way inside her. And she hated herself for loving it. Even when she became wet and willing, he still complimented her on what a nice, tight pussy she had.

First nigger he’d ever kissed, too, he had informed her.

He had, at first, been angry when in the heat of passion Peggy had pulled his mouth to hers and slipped her tongue between his lips. He had pulled back and almost out of her. She thought for a moment he was

going to hit her. Then he had looked at her, in the soft light from the night stand and smiled.

Supporting his weight on his elbows, he asked, “How much white you got in you, honey?”

The question was not new to her, having been asked by both white and black men and women many times in her life. “None.”

“Bullshit,” Hartline said. “You ain’t full nigger, baby. No way. I figure you’re about half white. At least a third. Your mammy must have done some stepping over the back fence a time or two.” He grinned at her.

“I rather doubt it,” she replied, an edge to her voice. Her parents had both been professional people, very religious and believing strongly in the bonds of marriage. Her husband had likewise been a good person. They had been married only four months before he was gunned down by the IPF.

Hartline laughed. “Tell me how you love this cock of mine, baby.”

It was a game they played. Hartline was proud of his manhood, and liked to be reminded how much man he was.

She told him, profanely and lewdly, the words ugly on her tongue, but nevertheless containing more than a modicum of truth.

“Well, good,” Hartline said, a strange glow to his eyes.

Then he brutally shoved himself deep within her.

Peggy screamed in shock and pain.

Hartline ravaged her, with no feeling, no compassion in him, merely taking her as an animal might.

He wiped himself clean with a pillowcase and then

tossed it on the bed beside the sobbing woman. There had been no pleasure for Peggy this night.

Hartline said, “For a jigaboo, you got the tightest cunt I ever seen. You must not have done much fucking around as a kid. I thought all you niggers started fucking when you were about ten.”

Peggy refused to answer.

“Well, since the cat’s got your tongue, I got an idea. Next time you can suck me off.”

Then he proceeded to tell her, in the most profane and ugly manner possible, what would happen to her if she bit him. His voice and harsh, ugly words made her sick to her stomach.

But she had absolutely no doubts as to his sincerity.

All that had been weeks ago. Now, Sam visited Peggy more than any other woman in his stable. He seemed loose and relaxed around her, even kind to her at times, in his own peculiar manner. She acted as a docile servant, completely devoted to Sam’s every whim and need. And Sam talked a bit more each time he came to her; whatever he said, Peggy reported back to Lois, and Lois to the underground.

On this night, just moments before Hartline was due to arrive at Peggy’s small home, provided for her by Hartline, Lois had sent word that Ben Raines was gathering his forces to march against the IPF, along with Juan Solis from the Southwest, and Al Maiden’s black troops from the Southeast. Peggy was to find out how much Hartline knew about the upcoming invasion.

But how?

“Baby,” Hartline said, a very slight and somehow strange smile playing across his lips, “you’re not yourself tonight. What’s wrong?”

Something in his voice caused her to turn around and look at him as he lounged in an easy chair. His smile was filled with sarcasm. And suddenly she knew-knew- he had been playing her for a fool. She had underestimated the man from the beginning. Everything he had told her, and she had told Lois, had been false information. Those people from the local resistance, those people who had been picked up …

Her fault.

“You goddamn son of a bitch!” she cussed him.

He laughed at her. “Whatever in the world is the matter, sweetmeat?”

“Bastard!”

He rose from his chair with the fluid motion of a man in superb physical condition, and Hartline was all of that. He walked toward her. “Honey, don’t you think I know what a house nigger is? My grandpappy came from Alabama. All us Hartlines fought for the Gray way back then. Seems like you coons would wise up after a time. You shines blew it, baby. Everything that’s coming at you jungle bunnies, you folks did to yourselves.”

Peggy could not believe her ears, could not believe what Hartline was saying.

“History proves you niggers aren’t as good as white people. And history is seldom wrong. That’s what’s the matter with the world, why it got in the shape it’s in. Folks just refused to study the mistakes of the past. They just kept repeating them.” He grinned at her. It was not a pleasant sight. “Strip, baby.”

“W-what?”

“You heard me, sweetmeat: strip! Get bare-assed. Shuck your clothes. Do it.”

Hartline was overpowering to almost all who met him. He was big and tough and quick and mean. He was powerful, immensely strong. And he enjoyed hurting people. Peggy had heard stories about his methods of torture.

“Dealing with male prisoners,” Hartline began his lecture to a group of government agents, “is quite different from dealing with female prisoners. Man is and has been traditionally the protector of the home, the strong one. You must handle the male roughly-right from the beginning. You must assault his male pride, his virility, his manhood, his penis power. You take the clothes from him by force and leave him naked and feeling defenseless before you. He will immediately lose much of his arrogant pride.

“With a woman it is quite different. Use physical force with a woman only as a last resort. You order her to remove her own clothing. You demand it. Make her disrobe. By doing that her dignity has, from the beginning, rotted. That is a very important first step in dealing with a woman prisoner.

“Don’t allow them sleep. Interrupt a prisoner every few moments while they are trying to rest in their cell. They will be imagining all sorts of dire and exotic tortures lying in wait for them. Lack of sleep disturbs the brain patterns-disrupts the norm, so to speak.

“I will give you gentlemen an example.” Hartline motioned toward a man standing by a closed door.

The door opened and two of Hartline’s men pushed a young man out into the large meeting room. The man was in his mid-twenties, unshaven, red and bleary-eyed. He was pushed onto the small stage.

“Good morning, Victor,” Hartline said cheerfully. “Did you sleep well?”

Victor said nothing.

“Remove your clothing, Victor.”

“Fuck you.”

Hartline laughed and motioned toward the two burly men. They wrestled the young man to the floor and ripped his clothing from him. They pulled him to his feet to stand naked, facing the roomful of strangers.

“You see, Victor,” Hartline said, “you are a baby. I can do anything I wish with you, anytime I choose to do so. Remember that, Victor, it might save you-or someone you love-a lot of pain. Now then, Victor, who is the leader of your cell?”

Victor refused to reply.

Hartline shook his head and clucked his tongue in a scolding manner. “Victor, why are you doing this? You know you’re going to tell me-sooner or later.”

“If you’re going to torture me,” the young man said, “get it over with.”

Hartline laughed, exposing strong, white, even teeth. “Oh, Victor! I’m not going to torture you, my boy. Oh my, no.” He cut his eyes to the man waiting by the closed door.

The door opened and a young woman was dragged into the room. Both Victor and the young woman had the same pale eyes, delicate features and skin coloration.

They were brother and sister.

“Rebecca!” Victor yelled. He tried to get to her. Strong hands held him firm. “You son of a bitch!” he cursed Hartline.

The mercenary laughed at him. “Tie him into that chair over there,” he said, pointing. “Hands behind the back, ankles to the legs.”

Hartline looked at the woman. Something evil and perverted touched his eyes. “Now, my dear, you may disrobe.”

“No, I won’t,” she said defiantly, holding her chin high.

Hartline chuckled. “Oh, I think you shall, Rebecca. Yes, I believe you shall.”

He picked up a small cattle-prod and adjusted the level of voltage. He walked to Victor’s side, then lifted his eyes to the woman. “Take off your clothing, dear.”

“No,” she whispered.

Hartline touched the battery-operated prod to Victor’s bare arm. The young man jerked and screamed in pain.

“Don’t do it, sis,” he yelled. “I can stand it.”

Hartline laughed and touched the prod to Victor’s penis. The man screamed in agony and thrashed against his bonds, his jerking toppling over the chair.

“All right,” Rebecca said. “Don’t hurt him. I’ll do what you say.”

“Good girl,” Hartline told her.

As she disrobed, Hartline walked around her, commenting on her figure: the slender shapeliness of her legs, the firmness of her breasts, the jutting nipples, and finally the mat of pubic hair.

The agents in the room whistled and made lewd remarks. Hartline smiled. “You see, boys. There are benefits to be reaped from all this. Or should I say raped?”

The men laughed.

Hartline ran his hands over the young woman’s naked flesh, lingering between her legs, his middle finger busy. He laughed at her embarrassment as his finger penetrated her. He glanced at Victor, now righted in his chair. “The name of your cell leader, young man. For I assure you, game time is over.”

Rebecca urged her brother not to tell him. “We’re not worth anything to him dead, Victor.”

“How astute of you, dear,” Hartline said. “But sometimes death is preferable to living.”

Doubt sprang into her eyes.

“Oh yes, my dear. I have seen human beings reduced to madmen, every inch of skin stripped from them-and still they lived, begging and praying to die. I have seen, ah, I do so hate to be crude … various objects forced into a man’s anus, including rather large penises. I have seen what happens to a man when a thin, hollow tube of glass is inserted into the penis and tapped lightly with a club. The pain is quite excruciating-so I’m told.”

She spat in his face.

Hartline wiped the spittle from his cheek and chin. “You’ll pay for that.” He looked at Victor. “Talk to me, Victor baby.”

Victor shook his head.

Hartline leaned down and kissed one nipple, running his tongue around the nipple, thoroughly wetting it. He straightened and placed the cattle prod on

Rebecca’s breast. “One of you will,” he said.

The rape had been going on for more than two hours. Victor watched as the tenth man mounted his sister as if she were a dog. He could no longer tolerate her screaming. She was bleeding from vagina and anus.

“All right,” the young man said. “I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

Late that night, a man’s front door was kicked in and the man dragged from his bed. Later, the man faced Sam Hartline in an old office building. Somewhere in the dark building, a woman was screaming in pain.

“Mr. Samuelson,” Hartline said, “you have certain information I wish you to share with me.”

Samuelson shook his head.

“Don’t be too hasty with your reply, sir,” Hartline said. “Before you make any rash statements, perhaps you should visit your daughter. She’s just down the hall, entertaining some of my men.” He listened as the woman wailed in pain. “She is, ah, obviously not getting into the spirit of things, is she?”

“I don’t believe you,” Samuelson said.

He was taken down the hall. The screaming grew louder. He was halted in front of a closed door.

“Believe, Mr. Samuelson,” Hartline said with a smile. He pushed open the door, exposing the hideous torture of the man’s daughter. “Believe.”

Peggy pushed those stories from her, but fear kept

them faintly in her mind. Slowly, reluctantly, she began removing her clothing. “Ben Raines will stop you,” she suddenly blurted.

Surprisingly, Hartline did not lose his temper or hit her. “Could be,” he said. “He’s a tough bastard. And those people with him are fanatics. But Raines can’t do it alone. Hell, sweetmeat, everybody knows niggers can’t fight worth a shit, and greasers can’t fight any better. Only chance Raines has is to beef up his own forces with white folks. And he doesn’t have the time or the people to do that.”

Hartline cupped a breast, smiling as he squeezed. He pinched the nipple between thumb and forefinger, enjoying the look of pain that registered on the woman’s face.

“General Raines has a lot of nationalities under his command. Lots of minorities in Tri-States-so I’m told,” she reminded him, relief on her face as he removed his hand from her breast.

“Yeah,” Hartline once more agreed, “that’s true. I think what he did, though, was gather up the cream of the crop.”

Hartline slid his hand downward, caressing her satin belly, his fingers dipping into the crispness of pubic hair. “Get down on your knees, yellow gal. Start working that mouth and tongue of yours. Get me wet.”

She knelt down, afraid to do otherwise.

“Get me ready for the back door,” he concluded with a smile.

She looked up from her naked, kneeling position on the floor. Cold fear touched her with a chilling hand., “Hartline-don’t, please. I can’t take you there. You’ll kill me.”

“I never heard of anybody dying from it,” Hartline told her with a grin. “But I sure have made more than my share holler, though. You got to be taught a lesson, honey, for your lies. And both of us might as well get some pleasure for it.”

Pleasure? she thought. No way. She unzippered his trousers and removed his thickening penis, already massive. It was at that moment she made up her mind. She opened her mouth, worked her lips over the head, took it as deeply as possible, and bit down hard.

Hartline screamed from the white-hot pain and tried to jerk away, but Peggy held on with the determination of a bulldog, with Hartline literally dragging her across the carpet.

He slammed a hard fist against her head and she saw bright lights and shooting stars. Releasing him from her strong teeth, she grabbed his ankles and jerked. His feet flew out from under him and his head banged against the floor. He groaned once and then was still.

She searched him for the key to the dead-bolt locks on the house, locks that had kept her a prisoner, and located the keys. She dressed hurriedly and then kicked Hartline on the side of the head, insuring he would stay out for a few moments longer. She prowled the house, in hopes he had brought some sort of gun with him, but she could find no weapon. She peeked out the drapes and saw the street was dark and deserted.

Peggy Jones slipped out the back door and melted into the night.

“How many personnel can we field?” Ben asked.

“I’ve got two thousand,” Al Maiden said. “And that isn’t leaving many at home.”

“Don’t spread yourself too thin,” Ike cautioned. “The Russian might try to flank us and then come up from behind.”

“Yes,” Al said. “There is that danger.”

Al Maiden seemed a bit more human each time Ben met the man-more likable. And Ben found that he did indeed like the man. He had found a sense of humor that heretofore had been kept hidden.

Al sighed and rubbed his face with his hands. “If we don’t stop this … this madness, this horror, and stop it right now, there won’t be much point of having a home to return to.”

All agreed on that.

“I can field about twenty-five hundred,” Juan said.

Ben nodded. “By stretching it, I can put three thousand in the field. But I’m wondering if all that force at once is the way to go.”

Ike perked up. “You thinkin” guerrilla action, Ben?” That was getting to Ike’s liking.

“Yes. Hit and run. Neutralize one town, then move on quickly. But we’re going to have to arm the people. And then have the worry of wondering if they’ll fight after we do arm them.”

“There is a hitch to that, Ben,” Juan said. “How about the people who like what General Striganov is doing? Those that actually support his policies? What about them?”

“That is one fly in the ointment,” Ben said. “There are partisans working up there, right?”

“Yes.” Mark Terry spoke up. “A mixture of black and white and Hispanic. But they are poorly organized and even worse off when it comes to arms. Radio contact with them is spotty, at best.”

Ben could understand that. “And I’d bet they are infiltrated.”

“Yes,” Al replied. “We’re sure of that.”

“Name one you can trust.”

“Lois Peters,” Mark said. “She’s put herself on the line dozens of times. She runs an underground railway out of that area. Lot of the people who came to us got there with her help.”

“Has she secure communications?”

Both Mark and Al shrugged. “Doubt it,” Mark said.

Ben glanced at Ike. “Get a few people infiltrated up there. Tell them to get in, get to Lois-if possible-plant the radio, and then stay low until they hear from us. I don’t want any heroics, Ike. It’s too early in the game for that.”

“Got it.” Ike left the room.

Ben looked at each man. “How many of your people have training in a regular military unit?”

“Quite a few, Ben,” Juan said.

“I have several hundred,” Mark said.

“All right. Start forming them into teams of ten. Juan, on my signal, you’ll send your people in from the west.” The Mexican nodded. “Mark and Al, your people will go in from the east. My people will go straight up. I’ll contact those people we met up in Iowa and tell them to hunt a hole if they’re staying, or pull out now.”

Ben rose from the table to pace the floor. “People, you are not going to like what I’m about to say, but it

has to be this way, or not at all. This is the way the operation is going to be run: no prisoners.”

Juan, Al and Mark stirred in silence.

“I’ll return to a 1950’s slogan that was pretty popular until our government lost its guts: If you’re Red, you’re dead.”

“Ben …” Juan began.

“No! Any person willing to switch sides that easily is not to be trusted again. That is something that has been proven time and time over. Those of us who were in actual combat-most of us-whether it was World War II, Korea, or especially Southeast Asia could never understand why those people who attempted to destroy or undermine the war effort were not branded traitors and shot. A person cannot have it both ways; one is either against communism or for it. Against liberty, or one hundred percent for it. You can’t be wishy-washy on the subject.”

Ben’s smile was grim as he looked at Al Maiden. “Al, you want all the bigots that support Striganov over in New Africa?” “Hell, no!”

“Well, I don’t want them either. Juan, how about you?”

“You have got to be kidding, Ben. A macabre joke, but I get your point.” He met Ben’s eyes. “My people have traditionally loved life, Ben. If we have a flaw, and that could be called a flaw, that is it. It is going to be very difficult for them to kill wantonly.”

“They won’t be killing wantonly, Juan-not at all. They will be killing to preserve liberty, as strange as that sounds.”

“Yes, there is something dreadfully wrong with that

statement,” the Hispanic said, shaking his head. “But, again, I see your point.”

“If they can’t cut it, Juan, let me have it all up front.”

“They will do what I tell them to do,” Juan replied, just a touch of stiffness in his tone. “They might not like it, but they will do it.”

Ben shifted his eyes to Al and Mark. Al met his gaze with a hard stare. “I will personally hand-pick the people that go in, Ben. I can assure you, they will not hesitate to kill a bigot.”

“That’s what I like to hear, Al,” Ben said with a grim smile.

“You’re a cold-blooded son of a bitch, you know that, General?” the black said. He said it with a smile, meaning no offense.

Ben took no umbrage. “I sure am, bro. I damn sure am.” “Pax vobiscum,” Emil Hite said to each of his followers at that morning’s service. “Pax vobiscum and absit omen” He didn’t have the foggiest notion what either term meant, but they sounded good.

His followers returned his smiles and the love they felt for him shone through their eyes. Those that weren’t so stoned they couldn’t smile, that is. Or wired. “Pinxit obiter dictum and whop bop a loo bop a lop bam boom!” Emil proudly announced. He was a little high himself. Damn good grass they grew in these mountains. Shit hit you like a bomb. It was as good as Maui Wowie used to be, back in the good old days

when Emil was selling grass along with well-used cars in Tennessee.

“Be bop a lula,” Emil said.

One of his flock gave him a curious glance, shook her head and hurried out. She had to prepare her twelve-year-old daughter for Emil’s attentions that afternoon. And that was quite an honor. She wondered if she had really heard what she thought she heard the Master say.

No matter, she decided. Gods sometimes meant one thing while saying quite another. Maybe it was the pot. Or the speed. Or the coke. But regardless, everyone knew Emil the Master was a god. There could be no doubt about that.

And there was no doubt Emil had probably saved a few of the men, women and kids that had drifted into and were now residing in his camp. They had straggled in, half-starved, some of them beaten and sick. And Emil had cared for them.

But early on another thought had come to Emil: What was he getting out of all this good will on his part? The answer was: nothing. The next day he had discarded all manner of conventional dress and had appeared in a robe. Actually, it was a wool army blanket that itched like hell, but it had slits for his arms and head and looked pretty damn good.

He had held out his arms and announced to the few hundred or so men and women that he had just had a vision while praying, and he wanted to share it with them.

Emil had not prayed since he was a child in a local Holy Roller church (actually it was a tent) back in rural Tennessee. But he remembered vividly how that

lay preacher could work the folks into a wild frenzy, with many of the churchgoers jumping up and down and staggering around the pews, babbling in the unknown tongue.

And Emil had watched more than one so-called preacher squeezing a goodly number of tits and asses while spreading the word, folks. And Emil figured that ol’ boy was probably getting more than his share of pussy, too.

So Emil thought he’d give that act a whirl here, see if it worked with these folks.

It did.

He told them God had spoken to him. He told them God had ordered Emil to look after the survivors and to take care of them, to open his arms and give him succor. (and lots of stiff cock, but Emil kept that thought to himself.) He told them God said if they were to survive, they must band together and live in a commune and follow Emil’s orders.

Emil prayed long and hard, with that fucking wool blanket about to drive him nuts. He whipped the people verbally, causing many of them to weep uncontrollably. Emil went to each member and laid on hands, and really poured on the B.s. He hadn’t been named the best damned used-car salesman in Chattanooga for nothing. All that morning and well into the afternoon, Emil prayed and preached and led the people in songs. Then he began waving his arms and shouting, babbling, inventing a language he would later tell them only he and God knew how to interpret.

Actually, what he was doing was speaking in carny. Many carnival and circus workers of years back used to converse in pig Latin when they did not wish the

townies to know what they were saying. But too many citizens could understand pig Latin. So someone-it is not known who-invented carny talk. It was not that difficult to learn. Take the sound of “ease” and put it behind the first letter of each syllable. Thus Bill comes out sounding Beaseill. Number would be neaseum-beaser. One can become surprisingly fluent in carny in only a short time. And to someone who has never heard the language, it sounds like a snake attempting to talk.

After a time, one can vary the position of syllables and still be understood by those who speak the language.

lease ceasean seasepeak ceasearneasey.

Most of the people in the camp were, by this time, ready to believe and accept anything. They had survived a nuclear and germ attack; they had seen subhuman mutants and rats as big as dogs. They had been starved, beaten, many of them tortured and robbed and chased, many of the women sexually assaulted (and some of the men) and brutalized. Only a very few walked out when Emil began his pitch. The rest stayed and became believers. Soon the word went out and every nut and goofball and wacko and banana cream pie in a three-state area was drifting in, eager to join.

And Emil had it made.

He had been a corpsman in the navy, and knew something about medicine. He began visiting deserted towns nearby, grabbing up every book he could find on the subject of doctoring. He studied herbal medicine, and really became pretty good at healing-as long as it wasn’t anything too serious. If the medical problem was beyond his rather limited realm of

knowledge, Emil would pray, babbling in his personal unknown tongue. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. When it didn’t work, and the patient died, Emil would simply say it was God’s will.

And anyone who was dumb enough to join a cult in the first place would believe it.

But, Emil mused on this day, all that was secondary to this communist thing that was shaping up in a rather nasty fashion up north. Emil did not want the communists in this area. Ben Raines was bad enough. Emil was scared to death of Ben Raines. But the communists would really frown on his little scam. They would take away his robes and sandals and steady pussy.

And he would have to go to work. Just the thought of that was appalling.

What to do?

Emil didn’t know what to do. But one thing was certain: His little kingdom of wackos would come crashing down around his ankles if the commies ever took over.

Emil thought and pondered and schemed and connived and finally decided he might have to take the problem to his followers and place it at their feet. But that was risky, for Emil was supposed to be the head Pooh Bah, Lord of the Beasts, direct communicator with the Almighty, Master of the Multitudes, and all that happy shit.

Emil sighed and scratched his head. He just didn’t know what the hell to do.

“What we have to do,” Peggy Jones said, “is get it

together and fight.”

“Child-was Lois looked at her-“we gonna fight.” She shook her head. “But we need guns and bullets and training. We don’t none of us know nothin’ much about that sort of thing. We got a few shotguns and rifles and pistols-and that’s all. I know General Striganov has spies among us, but I don’t know who they are. What you’re sayin’ is all well and good, honey, but we got to keep our wits about us, too.”

“You just told me General Ben Raines is sending people in here to help us, right?”

“That’s the word I get, yes.”

“When and how?”

“That, child,” Lois said with a smile, “is something you beside’ not know-not at this date. Believe me, it’s for the good of everybody you not know.”

“Don’t you trust me?”

“With all my heart, honey-you know that. But Sam Hartline is an expert at torture. He gets his hands on you, Peggy, you’ll tell everything you know and even make up stuff, just to get the pain to stop.”

Peggy started to protest, but the older woman waved her still. “Peggy … listen to me. You wouldn’t want to tell, but you would. Ever’body has their breaking point, you, me ever’body. Sam Hartline would get it out of you or me or anybody.”

Peggy nodded her head in agreement. She was very frightened of Hartline. “When will the people from General Raines’s camp be here?”

“Soon. I don’t know just when, and that’s the truth. For now, you stay in this basement and don’t you stick your head out for nothin’. Sam Hartline has said when he finds you, girl, he’s going to torture you for days

until you’re beggin’ him to let you die. And he means it, honey.” She smiled. was “Cause you shore did a number on that white man’s cock. You didn’t bite it off, but you shore skin it up good.”

“I tried to bite it off.”

Lois laughed softly, the sound muted in the semi-darkened basement of the old farmhouse. “I shore would have liked to seen it. I really would have. I don’t know if I’d’ve had the courage to do what you done.”

“I’m afraid of that man, Lois. I will admit I am scared to death of him. He’s … twisted all up in his mind. He’s … he’s

…”

“Evil,” the older woman finished it.

“Where is Peggy Jones?” Hartline asked the tortured man.

“I don’t know.” The man gasped the reply. He spat out a mouthful of blood.

Hartline looked at another man in the room and nodded his head. “Pull out another tooth.”

The tortured man screamed and fought the leather straps that held him. At a silent signal from the husky man wearing a blood-splattered butcher’s apron, the victim’s mouth was pried open.

A man wielding pliers leaned forward, a smile of satisfaction on his thick, wet lips. His crotch bulged from sexual arousal. The screaming in the small room became hideous.

Sam Hartline left the room, disgust obvious on his face when the tortured man passed out from the intense pain. He walked down the hall to another room and opened the door.

A dark-haired young woman was strapped to a table; the table was bolted to the floor. The woman was naked. She was strapped belly-down on the table, her legs spread wide and her ankles attached to straps run through thick metal rings bolted to the floor. Her eyes were dull from the pain and humiliation. She had been beaten, raped and sodomized. Vivid marks crisscrossed her flesh from the savage lashings with leather belts and whips.

Hartline looked at her through cold, emotionless green eyes. “Are you ready to cooperate with us now, Miss Brinkerhoff?”

Tears dropped from the young woman’s eyes. They splashed on the cold metal of the table. “I don’t know anything.” She choked out the words.

A man, naked from the waist down, with a huge erection in his hand, stepped behind the woman. He penetrated her anally with one brutal lunge. She screamed in pain as he worked his way deeper.

“I don’t know anything!” she cried.

She was telling the truth. She did not know the whereabouts of Peggy Jones. She had never even heard of Peggy Jones prior to Hartline’s mentioning her name. She did not know anything about any resistance movement. She was a newcomer to this area. She knew nothing about any upcoming confrontation between Ben Raines’s troops and the IPF.

Her attacker’s hairy belly slapped against her buttocks. She screamed in pain and degradation.

Hartline and the other men in the room smiled. All were sexually aroused by the sight and sounds of the attack.

It would have been much easier had Hartline simply

given her a polygraph or PSE test; he could have used any of a number of truth serums at his disposal. But Hartline and the group of questioners-men and women-enjoyed seeing people tortured, enjoyed listening to them scream and beg and pray and promise anything and everything if only the pain would stop.

Hartline became sexually aroused when that happened. Hartline and his group of interrogators shared a great deal in common with Hitler’s SS and Gestapo agents. Many SS and Gestapo agents used to enjoy slowly strangling young men to death. Just before the final death throes, the naked victims would usually gain an erection followed by their final climax. The SS or Gestapo agents so inclined could then take the penis in their mouths.

So much for the master race.

Sam Hartline would have been at his dubious glory as an SS or Gestapo officer.

He would have experienced shivers of ecstasy had he been commandant of a concentration camp during Hitler’s reign of terror.

Hartline would have been the perfect mate for the Bitch of Buchenwald, that lady (referring only to her anatomical gender) who made lamp shades out of human skin taken from her victims while they were still alive and conscious. Said she just loved tattoos.

Hartline pulled the man away from the woman’s buttocks. Blood dripped to the floor from her mangled anus. He picked up a small whip from a rack and began beating her back and buttocks, smiling at her screams.

He beat her for a few moments, dropping her almost to unconsciousness. He ordered a bucket of

water to be thrown on her, reviving her.

Smiling as he spoke, Hartline said, when he was certain the woman was conscious enough to understand, “If she hasn’t talked in twenty-four hours, take her down into Missouri where the mutants gather. Strip her and tie her to a tree. They’ll find her.”

“No!” she screamed. She had seen the mutants before.

Hartline tossed the short whip to the floor and turned his back to the woman. He walked out of the room. Her screaming intensified as the perversion gained new heights.

Gen. Georgi Striganov knew of Hartline’s inclination toward torture. One of the reasons he wanted the man on his team. Striganov was not opposed to torture, he just did not personally want to be a party to it. He had found, years before, when he worked for the KGB, that drugs were much more effective and a great deal neater. And one did not have to listen to the shrieking and yelling or put up with the vomiting and all that other disagreeable mess that was associated with physical torture.

Georgi had known many men and women who enjoyed administering torture. He had closely observed them during the act: the quickened breathing, the glazed eyes, the sexual aspects of the torture act itself. He did not want to become one of those perverted types of people.

Besides, physical torture made him ill.

The Russian compartmentalized the issues before him, and took from one section of the mind the matter

of Ben Raines, placing the matter of Sam Hartline in another niche. A darker corner of the mind, where the mercenary could squat and pick at himself.

Ben Raines worried the Russian. Georgi knew the man was going to make a military move against him. He had placed informants in the ranks of Raines’s civilians and Emil Hite’s idiot grouping months back-but their information was sketchy, at best. And nothing of any use had come out of the camp of Emil Hite. Which was, according to the Russian’s way of thinking, perfectly understandable. In his mind, Georgi had already written off Hite and his foolish band. They might be of some limited use at a future date, but the Russian could not possibly think of how that might come to pass.

What kind of move was Ben Raines planning? When would it take place? And how would Raines go about it?

He didn’t know.

He did know his IPF personnel were much stronger in number than anything Raines or Solis or Maiden could put together, and they were better trained and equipped, for the most part. So Raines was probably contemplating some sort of guerrilla action. He knew Raines and the ex-Seal, McGowen, were both trained in guerrilla warfare and highly decorated during the Vietnam war. And Raines was an ex-mercenary to boot.

Guerrilla warfare. That was what the Russian feared the most from Raines, for that would mean his IPF forces would have to be spread all over three or four states, and his selective breeding program would have to be placed on the back burner for the duration.

Things had been coming along so very splendidly-especially that new program his doctors had suggested.

“Goddamn it!” he cursed, slamming a fist on his desk top. “Goddamn Ben Raines.”

He picked up the phone on his desk and punched savagely at the buttons. He snarled, “Get me Colonel Fechnor-quickly.”

The first intelligence reports back to Tri-States were grim and very much to the point:

“Tell General Raines the IPF is mounting up, getting ready for what looks to be a big push-south.”

Ben read the copied message. “Damn!” he said. He turned in his chair and looked at Ike. “Now we don’t have a choice in the matter, buddy. It’s been decided for us.”

Ike nodded. “Well have to meet them head-on.” There was a grimness to his voice. “And they’ll have us outgunned and out-manned.”

“But we can’t stay boxed in here,” Cecil said. Like Ike, the black man was spoiling for a good fight. An ex-Green Beret, he had earned his CIB in Vietnam. “They’d sit off our borders and lob heavy artillery in on us, and eventually kill us all.”

“Give me your votes,” Ben said, looking at Colonel Gray, the only person present who had yet to speak.

“Take the fight to them, General,” the Englishman said. “If we are going to die, then let us prepare to die for liberty.”

Ben smiled. He knew without asking that would be the reply of all his people. He looked at Ike.

“I’m with him,” Ike said, jerking his thumb toward

Dan. “I just can’t say it as pretty.”

“That line came, in part,” Dan said, “from a Rom-berg opera. When the street rabble were preparing to do battle for King Louis against the crown of Burgundy. They were ultimately successful in their efforts.”

“Do tell,” Ike said.

“Cretin,” Dan said with a smile.

“Smart-ass,” Ike responded.

Laughing, Ben glanced at Cecil.

“Take the fight to them, Ben. Let’s kick their asses all the way back to Iceland.”

“All right, that’s it. Pull back your people from Iowa. Those that were meeting with Lois Peters. I hate to leave what resistance there is up there defenseless, but I can’t risk losing anybody at this stage of the game,

“Gear up. I want the people mobilized and moving within forty-eight hours. Contact Juan and Al and have them get their troops moving-en masse. Right now. Juan will take his people in from the west, Al from the east; we’ll go straight up and in.

“Let’s do it people.”

CHAPTER TEN

“No!” Ben said. “And that is final, Gale. You are not going north with the column.”

Out came the chin. “I’d by God like to know why the hell not?”

“Because this is war, Gale. War. Full-scale warfare. You have no idea what war is like. It’s dirty, bloody, awful, dangerous. Can you get that through your head?”

She glared at him. Rose to her full height. All five feet.

“Can you, Gale?”

He towered over her; she glowered up at him.

“When do we pull out, Ben?” “Goddamn!”

“I better get us packed.” “Jesus Christ!”

“Do you want me to pack any long underwear for you?”

Ben stalked from the house, muttering. He was still muttering as he walked up the street. Tina pulled in next to the curb, motioning him into the Jeep.

Ben kissed his adopted daughter and smiled at her. He

had not seen her in several months and had missed her. “When’d you get in?”

“Late last night. I stayed with friends.”

Father and daughter looked at each other. Tina touched her father’s face with her finger tips.

“I’ve missed you, kiddo,” Ben said.

“How much?” She initiated the game they had played when she was young.

“Oodles and gobs.”

“Good. Well… I thought it was best if I stayed away for a time. Dad, I have something to tell you.”

Ben knew what it was. And he thought Tina probably knew he did. Very little escaped Ben’s attention in Tri-States.

“Oh?”

“I met this real nice fellow.”

“He better be a nice fellow,” Ben said jokingly. He knew the young man was. He knew all about the young man.

“His name is Robert Graham. Bob. We’re farming down in Louisiana.” “We’re farming?”

“Yes. I… Dad, I live with him.”

Ben had never objected to that. With the world having taken such a beating, marriage was getting rare. Sometimes a few words were spoken, but oftentimes not, they were spoken by a friend of the couple, and not a minister.

Varying religions were now almost non-existent, especially in Tri-States. Baptist, Christian, Methodist, Catholic, Lutheran, Jew, all the others, now were, at least in Tri-States, combined. No longer was there the arrogance of one church maintaining that if one did not belong to

that particular church, one was doomed to suffer the fires of the pits of hell.

It had taken a worldwide nuclear and germ holocaust to bring the factions together.

Ben smiled. “Thinking about getting married, maybe?”

“Could be. Just as soon as this mission is concluded.”

Ben stiffened beside her. He had lost his wife, Salina, and their son, Jack, back in the battle for the old Tri-States. He did not want to lose Tina. For a few seconds, he was flung back in time.

Just seconds after Salina had kissed him and told him goodbye, she had been bayoneted in the stomach by a paratrooper. Ben had killed the young soldier and then knelt down beside Salina’s side. She had smiled up at him, then died.

Moments later, Jack had been killed by a machine gun burst. Tina had lobbed a hand grenade into the machine gun emplacement, killing the gunners.

“What are you thinking, Dad?” Tina brought him

back to the moment. “Salina. Your brother, Jack.” “That’s what I thought. Did you love her, Dad?” “No. No, I didn’t. But I cared a great deal for her and

was always faithful to her.” “Have you ever truly been in love, Dad?” “I don’t believe I have, honey. Maybe someday.” He

did not feel any guilt about having said that, for Gale

knew that thought there was a closeness between them,

physical as well as emotional, Ben did not love her.

She touched his hand, this man she loved as her own father.

“Anyway,” Ben said, “who said you were going on the mission?”

She squeezed his hand. “I’m a Rebel, Dad. You taught me to be a soldier. You taught me to love liberty and freedom, to know the difference between right and wrong without having courts to tell you the difference. Everything I value, I learned from you. This is as much my fight as it is yours. Now you want to make something out of that?”

Ben laughed at her stubbornness. “Don’t get uppity with the old man, kid,” he said jokingly.

“The way you were stalking about a few minutes ago, you looked like you had your back up about something. Want to talk about it?”

Ben shrugged. “I’ll never understand women.”

“What a sexist remark.”

Ben’s smile was wry. “You and Gale will get along fine, I’m thinking. And that spelling is G-A-L-E.”

Tina laughed aloud. “Does she live up to it?”

“Damn well better believe it.”

“I’d very much like to meet her.”

“Well, so what are you waiting for? Welcome home, honey.”

“Well split up into three columns,” Ben told his senior officers. “Ike, your brigade will take Highway 79 out of here to Memphis, then get on Interstate 55 and head north. Angle slightly west and stop at Warrenton. We’ll be in radio contact at all times-everything on scramble.

“Colonel Ramos, you’ll move up Highway 65 all the way to Interstate 70. Wait there for me. I’m going to connect with Highway 63 in North Arkansas and stay with it all the way to Columbia. Well bivouac and wait until Al and Juan get their people in position, then well hit the IPF with everything we’ve got. I don’t like to think about slugging it out nose to nose, but we don’t have a choice this time around, boys. All right, we move out at dawn.”

The scene resembled a miniature replay of the staging areas of D-day, back in 1944. Hundreds of vehicles of all types: Jeeps, trucks, APC’S, cargo carriers. Just over three thousand men and women, a thousand to a brigade, milling about, creating what would look to the untrained eyes to be mass total confusion. It was anything but. The men and women of Ben Raines’s Rebels had been trained well; each person knew his job and would give it one hundred percent. But any staging area sounds chaotic.

Whistles and shouted commands and the sounds of hundreds of boots on gravel and concrete filled the early morning air. Quiet conversations between husbands and wives and kids softened the din as men and women told each other goodbye-perhaps for the last time. One more stolen kiss, a touch, a caress, an embrace.

“Keep your head down, Sid, and we’ll be thinking of you.”

““You remember to pack extra socks?”

“This one will be the last one, Mary. Well kick the ass off the Russians and then we can all settle down to live out our lives in peace.”

“I’ll be back in plenty of time for the harvest. Crops are sure lookin” good.”

And then it was time.

“Second platoon, Able Company, first battalion-over here! Group around me.”

“Goddamnit, Lewis, if you can’t keep that steel pot on your pinhead, tie the son of a bitch to your pack.”

“Fuck you, Sergeant.”

“Where in the hell is Sergeant Ward?”

“Right here.”

“Your wife just called. You forgot to take your allergy pills.”

“Shit!”

“Harrison, what in the hell are you doing with that goddamn chicken?”

“It’s our mascot, Captain.” “A chicken?”

“First platoon, Dog Company, third battalion-get over here, damnit!”

Since many of the roads throughout the nation were in sad condition-with many of them having had no maintenance in almost fifteen years-the battle tanks would not be transported on trucks. The heavy tanks would have to be driven as is, overland. The harsh rumble of the big engines firing into life added to the din. Ben was throwing everything under his command at the IPF, and he knew if he failed (and that was a distinct possibility) General Striganov and his forces would then have much more than just a toe hold in America.

81mm mortar carriers were made ready to roll. 155mm howitzers, M60A2 tanks, M48A3 main battle tanks, and M60A1 main battle tanks, each weighing between fifty-two and fifty-seven tons were cranked up, the huge V-12 diesel engines rumbling and snorting to

life in the cool predawn darkness.

Tactical and support vehicles, Jeeps and deuce-and-a-halves, pickup trucks and APC’S roared into life. M548 cargo carriers wheeled on their tracks, pointing their stubby bulldog noses to the north, preparing to move out at Ben’s signal.

On the tarmac of the airport, Jim Slater and Paul Green and a dozen other pilots checked out their planes one final time, once more went over flight plans and looked over their personal arms and equipment. They knew this was not to be an air war. Although their prop-driven planes were armed, they were not fighter planes. They were cargo and spotter planes.

Ben did have three old PU!‘S, of the Vietnam era, each plane filled with electronically fired modern-day Gatlin guns. Each PUFF was capable of killing anything and everything in an area the size of a football field. But they were slow planes, and very susceptible to attack from ground-to-air missiles. One infantryman, armed with a Dragon, an XMBLEDG guided missile, could bring down a PUFF.

Suddenly, as if on silent cue, the area quieted down. Engines idled quietly, conversation ceased as dawn began gently touching the east, gray fingers slowly opening from a dark fist to cast silver pockets of new light over the land, bringing another day to this part of the ravaged world.

Ben spoke into a walkie-talkie. “Spotter planes up. Go, boys.”

Moments later, the planes were airborne, their running lights blinking in the silver gray of early dawn.

“Dan?” Ben spoke into the walkie-talkie.

“Here, sir,” Colonel Gray called in from miles up the road.

“Scouts out,” Ben said quietly.

Miles north, with Col. Dan Gray in the lead Jeep, the scouts moved out.

“Are we in contact with the teams of LETTERRP’S?” Ben asked.

“Yes, sir,” a young woman replied. “They are on the south side of Interstate 70, in place, waiting for your order to cross.”

“Send them across,” Ben ordered. “Have them link up with Gray’s scouts already in the area.”

“Yes, sir.” She spoke to a radio operator and a state and a half straight north, teams of Long Range Recon Patrol moved out on their lonely, dangerous and dirty job. They would be the eyes and the ears of Gen. Ben Raines.

Ben was handed a steaming mug of coffee. He sipped the hot, strong brew, mostly chicory, and walked the long lines of men and women and machines of war. He knew them all, faces if not names.

“How you doing this morning, Hector?” he asked Colonel Ramos, the CO. of the third brigade of Raines’s Rebels.

“Ready, sir,” came the reply from the swarthy Hector.

“Viv raise much hell about being left behind?” “A “sangrey fuego.”

“And that means?”

“Fire and sword, Ben.”

“But wasn’t making up fun?” Ben grinned.

The Spaniard rolled his dark eyes and said, “Si-por cierto!”

Ben laughed and punched his friend lightly on the shoulder.

Ben walked on up the line. He came to a stunned and silent halt at a familiar figure.

The two men stood for a full minute, glaring at each other.

Ben shook his head and said, “Lamar, you are just too damned old for this trip.”

Lamar Chase, ex-navy doctor, was in his seventy-first year. Ben stood for a moment, looking at his friend, remembering the first time he laid eyes on the man.

He had been traveling alone, seeing what remained of the nation, talking to the survivors-those that would talk to him. Many ran in fear upon sighting him. He had driven into Colorado, the malamute, Juno, by his side in the cab of the pickup. Ben looked at the ruins of Denver, the sight of the once-beautiful city almost making him sick.

“Damn shame, isn’t it?” came a voice from behind Ben.

Ben spun, the 9mm pistol in his hand. Juno had been off taking a pee.

“Whoa!” The man had held out empty hands. “I’m friendly, boy.”

The man wore a pistol on his hip, but it was covered with the leather of a military-type holster. USN on the side of the flap.

Ben holstered his 9mm. “Navy?”

“For twenty-four years. Captain when the war broke out. Chase is my name, Lamar Chase.”

The men shook hands. “Ben Raines. What happened here in Denver?”

“Enemy saboteurs hit the base and hit it hard. For

some reason, spite probably, they also placed firebombs in the city, in very strategic locations. Gas mains blew. The winds were just right. And Denver is no more. I was home on leave at that time. Took my wife up the mountains and sat it out.”

“I used to have a lot of fun in Denver. I was… I took some training up at Camp Hale.”

Chase smiled. “Ex-Hell-Hound, Ben?”

“That unit never existed, Captain-you know that.”

“Shit!”

Both men laughed. Ben took a closer look at the flap on Chase’s holster. USNMC. “You a doctor?”

“Yes. You look like the survivor type, Ben. Let’s sit and talk.”

The men talked for several hours.

“What do you think about our president, Ben?”

“I used to fuck his wife.”

Doctor Chase laughed so hard tears rolled from his eyes. “Beautiful,” he finally said. “I needed a good laugh. Come on home with me, Ben Raines-meet my wife and eat a home-cooked meal. I’ve got something to discuss with you, if you’re the Ben Raines I think you are.”

He was, and the doctor’s ideas were very nearly the same as Ben’s.

The men had agreed that the concept of Tri-States could work. And it did work for more than a decade.

“I’d like to see you try to stop me from running my combat hospital, Raines.” The old doctor stuck out his chin.

“Look, Lamar, be reasonable. Can’t I at least appeal to your common sense?”

“If I had any common sense, you crazy gun-soldier, would I be a part of anything you planned? Huh? Got you there, Raines.”

“Old goat!”

The troops stood back and listened in silence. They had heard it all many times from the general and the doctor.

“You should talk, President-General,” he said sarcastically. “I’m beginning to think you plan on repopulating the world single-handedly. Why don’t you try keeping it in your pants every now and then? Now go tend to your business while I give my doctors and corpsmen some last-minute instructions on how to patch up people.”

“Damned hard-headed old crustacean,” Ben fired back at him.

“Oh, butt out, Raines.”

“That should be corpspersons,” Gale spoke from the silvery background.

“Ye gods!” Chase roared. “Is she coming along? Raines, can’t you control that woman?”

“You’re a male chauvinist pig, Lamar Chase,” Gale said with a smile.

“Damn right I am, sweetie. And proud of it.” Lamar stalked off, roaring and bellowing for his doctors and corpsmen to get off the dime and get their asses to their assigned places in this goddamned circus parade.

Ben took Gale’s hand and together they walked on up the line.

Ben spoke to his Rebels: a word, a greeting, a sentence, a smile. He was very much aware of the fact that every man and woman present would follow him into hell, and he loved them all for that.

He wondered again-as he had many times since he had made up his mind to commit his people-how many would die because ofandfor him?

He pushed that from his mind. As far away as he could.

“Ike,” Ben stopped and spoke to his longtime friend and buddy.

“Ben.”

Ben looked over Ike’s brigade. He spotted Jerre and her husband, Matt. He smiled and nodded at them and they returned the silent greeting. Ben always wondered what went on in Matt’s head, the young man knowing the children he was raising had been fathered by Ben.

He swung his gaze and spotted his daughter, Tina. A tall young man stood beside her. He smiled at them.

He looked again at Ike and noticed the gray in his friend’s close-cropped hair.

And the thought came to him: We are not young. Do we have the years left us to see this war-torn nation rise from the ashes?

I hope so.

“Kick-ass time, Ben?” Ike asked with a gin.

The Medal of Honor winner was spoiling for a fight.

“You ready, sailor?” Ben returned the grin.

“Cast off, mate.”

“Then get them mounted up and moved out, Ike,” Ben spoke the words that would again shake the nation into warfare. “I’ll see you in a few days.”

“Let’s go!” Ike shouted. “Go-go-go!”

Juan’s Solis’s troops had rolled out of Arizona thirty-six hours before Ben’s column headed north. Al Maiden

and Mark Terry moved their people in conjunction with Solis. Almost seven thousand fighting men and women were rolling slowly but steadily toward the most hideous threat to humankind since Hitler’s nightmarish dreams of a master race.

And all knew that madman’s ravings could not, must not, be allowed to again rear its ugly head.

Juan knew it. Al and Mark knew it. Ben knew it. All the troops knew it. Troops of every race and nationality: blacks, whites, Hispanics, Jews, Orientals, Indians, both East and West Indians. If this nation was ever to climb out of the ashes of war and destruction and disease and hunger and lack of faith and hope, it would have to be done without bigotry adding to the seemingly insurmountable task facing those who believe in democracy over slavery, justice over lynch mobs, fairness over prejudice.

This violent confrontation just had to be. The participants had no choice in the matter.

This might very well be their only chance.

The world’s last chance.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The convoys had to move slowly, for the big tanks had a top speed of only thirty mph, and it was essential that the tanks be a part of any assault, for the M60A2 tank not only had a 152mm gun launcher, but also carried thirteen Shillelagh missiles, a .50-caliber commander’s machine gun, and coaxially mounted 7.62-caliber machine guns. It was fifty-seven tons of awesomeness, twelve feet wide, almost eleven feet high, and twenty-four feet long. Ben had thirty M60A2 tanks. Ten in each brigade.

The M60A1 battle tank was just slightly lighter, weighing fifty-two-and-a-half tons, carrying a 105mm cannon, plus .50-caliber and 7.62-caliber machine guns. Ben had thirty of them. Ten per brigade.

The M48A3 main battle tank carried the same type of machine guns, but with a 90mm cannon. It was a half ton lighter than the M60A1, but could fire ten rounds a minute from its cannon, and was more maneuverable. Ben also had thirty of them. Ten in each column.

The scant intelligence reports Ben had received had indicated the IPF had no tanks, but did have rolling howitzers and mortars.

Ben smiled a secret smile as he drove in his pickup, Gale sitting by his side. Occasionally she would rest her hand on his thigh. He knew he had the IPF outgunned with his M109A1 155mm self-propelled howitzers. The big bastards, with a crew of six, could sit back and lob shells a distance of eighteen thousand meters, which was close to eight miles. Nothing the IPF had could get close to them. Ben had twelve of them. Four per brigade.

Ninety tanks, twelve self-propelled howitzers. Ben had 320 people tied up in armor alone. He had 250 people as drivers and relief drivers. That left him with just over 2500 ground combat troops.

Gale glanced at him, taking note of the secret smile on his lips. She matched it until curiosity got the best of her.

“What are you smiling about, Ben?”

He shook his head. “I shouldn’t be smiling. I was thinking that we have the IPF outgunned. But they have us outnumbered.”

“Are we going to win, Ben?”

“No way for me to answer that, Gale.”

“Humor me.”

“The odds are not good,” Ben told it like it was. “I won’t lie to you about that.”

“Where is that famous Raines confidence?” she asked. “That chutzpa that carried you all the way from trashy book writer to president?”

Ben fixed her with a jaundiced look. “Trashy book writer?”

“Well?”

“Oh, I still have confidence, Gale. And I won’t harp on this subject, but I do wish you had stayed at home.”

“I have a personal stake in this, Ben.”

“Oh?” Ben glanced at her from out of the corner of his eye.

“Yeah. I’m a Jew.”

“Really? I hadn’t noticed.”

She called him a perfectly filthy name.

If they could make 175 miles per day, they were doing well, even though the tank commanders were pushing the behemoth machines at max speed. Ben’s column spent the first night on the road at the junction of Highways 67 and 63, in a small town in Arkansas called Hoxie. It was yet another lifeless town, the bones of the dead scattered by wind and animals, bleached ghostly white by the past summer’s sun. No one among the Rebels paid much attention to the bones. It was a sight they had long grown accustomed to seeing.

But the smaller skeletons still bothered most of the men and women. They would not speak of that emotion, but they would avert their eyes and swallow hard, perhaps thinking of their own lost children, or of their brothers or sisters.

That first night, when the troops had been fed and bedded down, the guards posted, Ben rolled a cigarette-one of the few he allowed himself daily-then slipped into the blankets beside Gale. She turned, coming into his arms.

“Hey, Ben?” she softly whispered.

They were sleeping outside, under a sky that seemed alive with dead worlds, millions of miles away, a black velvet background softening the luster, making the diamond glow seem much more intimate, making the two seem much more alone.

“Yes, Ms. Roth?”

“I’m glad it was you that came along, Ben-up in Missouri, I mean.”

“Aren’t you afraid people will snicker and point at us?” he kidded her. It was a game they sometimes played. “Maybe they’ll think you’re my daughter. Or maybe they’ll think you’re a wanton woman. Or maybe that I’m a dirty old man.”

“The latter I’ll agree with. Come on, Ben. Don’t joke-I’m serious.”

“OK. No more jokes.”

“I’ve been thinking about what you said today. We’re in trouble, aren’t we? I mean … what is left of the country?”

“Yes.”

“About those odds you mentioned.”

“They aren’t good, Gale. But I can’t be certain of that because I can’t get accurate intelligence readings out of the areas the IPF control. Maybe the LETTERRP’S will report back some good news.”

“Yeah, maybe. I hate to be a harbinger of doom, but have you thought about what might happen if you-we-can’t whip these people?”

“Plenty of thought. North Georgia, for one. That area looks good.”

“North Georgia? You got a thing about the South, don’t you? Is the Klan strong there?” There was open skepticism in her voice.

Ben chuckled. “You remind me of a girl I knew years ago. She-was

“Was she Jewish?” Gale interrupted.

“Yes.”

“I don’t want to hear about her.”

“We were friends, Gale, not lovers.”

“You believe if you painted wings on a pig it would fly?”

“What kind of a stupid question is that?”

“About as stupid as you telling me you were friends with a woman. Raines, you have never been just friends with any woman you thought you could screw.”

“I think I’ll go to sleep on that.”

She rudely poked him in the ribs with a finger. “So tell me about her.”

“I thought you didn’t want to hear.”

“I changed my mind already.”

“She wouldn’t visit the South because she thought she would find blazing crosses in every soybean and cotton field.”

Gale waited. “Is that it? Is that all? You got me all worked up for that?”

“I thought it amusing.”

“You would. Did she?”

“Did she what?”

“Visit the damn South?”

“How the hell do I know? I haven’t seen her in years.”

Gale was silent for a moment. “Was she pretty?”

“Positively the most beautiful woman I have ever met.”

“Raines…”

“You were asking, I believe, about north Georgia.”

“So proceed.” Definitely a touch of irritation.

“I thought we might settle there, win or lose. Right under the Chattahoochee National Forest. I’ve checked it out. It would be very difficult for anyone to dislodge a sizable force from that area. I’ve sent a team into that country; they’re in there now, nosing around.”

She stirred in his arms. “I’ll forgive you for making out with that girl.” “1 never made-his

“Then you don’t think we have much chance of beating these … the IPF?”

Ben sighed. “If all the troops we are committing, Gale-if they all were my people, trained by me, yes, we would have a chance.”

“Would you please explain that?”

“I’m not putting down Juan’s people, or Al’s people-I don’t want you to think that at all. They are all good people, I’m sure of that. But they aren’t professional fighters. A great many of the people in my command are combat veterans, Gale Every person in my command is highly trained and disciplined. They are probably the best trained people now under one command-anywhere in the world. With the possible exception of Striganov’s IPF.

“But the problem, Gale, is not with the courage or the loyalty of the troops under Juan or Al. That isn’t it at all. They just aren’t trained. And if something totally unexpected or unpredictable is thrown at them, I don’t know how they’re going to react. Neither Al nor Mark nor Juan ever pulled any military time. They are going to throw their people into this without any of

them having any experience in tactics or logistics.” Ben sighed heavily. “Maybe we can pull it off, Gale. I just don’t know.”

She snuggled closer to him. “Please hold me, Ben,” she whispered.

“My pleasure.”

Long moments passed before Gale asked, “What was her name, Ben?”

Ben pretended to be asleep. But seeking fingers soon found a part of him that proved sleep to be impossible.

It began to rain the morning of the second day out, a slow, leaden dropping from the clouds, with thick pockets of fog lying heavy over the land. It only added to the desolation of the ravaged countryside. The rain and fog slowed the column down to no more than a crawl.

The Rebels saw no people. Not one living soul. And no animals. But they did find several carcasses of cows and pigs. Something had been eating on them, something with super strength and a fanged mouth.

“I didn’t know they had gorillas in this part of the country,” Gale said, shuddering at the sight of the mutilated animals.

“They don’t,” Ben said grimly. “Just mutants.”

“Thanks,” she replied. “I really needed that just after breakfast. If you want to call that slop we had breakfast.”

“Crations.”

“What’s the C stand for: crap?”

“Get in the truck, Gale.”

“Whatever the master wishes.”

The column stopped at Thayer, in Missouri. The town was deserted. They slowly made their way to West Plains-also deserted. Willow Springs looked as though it had been torn apart by angry, petulant teenagers. With the scouts reporting back to them they felt as if eyes were on them.

“Don’t dismount!” Ben quickly radioed back. “Keep on rolling through the town. Get on through and wait for us a few miles northwest of there.”

Ben halted the convoy in Willow Springs. When he spoke to Gale, something in his voice told her not to argue with him.

“Stay here,” he told her. “And do not leave the truck unless and until I tell you to.”

She nodded.

Ben looked at her to see if she was feeling well.

Ben motioned for a team to begin moving up both sides of the street, weapons at combat ready. A thick, almost tangible odor hung over the small town. It resembled a scene from a grade B war movie: the sweaty faces of the troops; the hands clutching M-16’s, AK-47’S, CAR-15’S and numerous other weapons of violence and death.

The thirty tanks in Ben’s column rumbled quietly on both ends of the town, their noise adding to the idling sounds of the APC’S and self-propelled howitzers and heavy trucks.

“Shut them down!” Ben yelled. The order was relayed up and down the street.

The dead town suddenly grew silent, the ticking of cooling metal like out-of-sync clocks.

Ben walked the littered streets, his old Thompson at the ready, on full auto.

“Sinister,” Ben heard one young Rebel mutter, his voice rising above the heavy silence. “And eerie, to boot.”

“Possibly,” Ben replied, not turning his head toward the source of the words. “Steady now,” he called softly. “That smell is of mutants-and a lot of them. Fire only if fired upon. Let them make the hostile move. Pass the word.”

“There’s fresh crap here on the floor, General,” a sergeant called. “Not more than an hour old-if that old.”

“They’re here,” Ben said. “I can sense them. But they’re not running away, and they usually run at the sight of this many humans. Them not doing that bothers me.”

“They want me,” the small voice came from the top of what had once been a hardware store.

All heads looked up at the small figure, looking down at them. Even at that distance, she looked worn out.

“Who are you?” Ben called.

“Nancy Brinkerhoff. Sam Hartline tortured me, then ordered me taken to where the mutants gather. They stripped me naked and tied me to a tree, but I managed to get free. I’ve been running and hiding ever since. The mutants cornered me in this town. They’re all around here, hiding, watching, waiting.” There was a note of hysteria in her voice.

“Just calm down, miss,” Ben called. “You’re all right, now. You’re among friends. Let us handle the mutants. Come on down.”

“Who are you?” she called.

“Ben Raines.”

She began weeping and pointing.

The mutants erupted from the empty stores, screaming and howling in rage and hate. Many of them wielded sticks and clubs and crude spears, sharpened on one end. The stench of them was hideous, almost as much as their grotesque appearance was appalling to the stunned Rebels.

Ben was the first to react.

Leveling his Thompson, he pulled the trigger, holding it back. The stream of heavy .45-caliber slugs knocked the front line of mutants sprawling, blood and hair and bits of bone and guts and brain splattered against the brick of the buildings.

The Rebels reacted just a split-second after Ben fired. The fire-fight was very short, with only one Rebel wounded. He took a spear in his leg. Dead and dying mutants littered the sidewalk and street. Blood pumped from their deformed bodies and leaked into the gutters, clogged from years of leaves and rags.

“Let them rot,” Ben ordered the Rebels, his voice strong in the shocked silence that always follows heavy gunfire. “Get Miss Brinkerhoff and let’s get the hell out of here.”

The brigade was stopped for the night in Cabool, Missouri, some sixteen miles northwest of Willow Springs. Nancy had been bathed and fed and dressed in clean clothing; Doctor Chase had examined her and cleaned and bandaged her cuts. She told her story.

She spoke of what Sam Hartline and his men had done to her. She was blunt, leaving nothing out.

“Those people are perverted beyond imagination,” she said. “I suppose I’m-was-very naive. But I can assure you-all of you-that was tortured out of me.”

“Where are you from?” Ben asked.

“Chicago, originally,” Nancy said. The marks of torture were still very evident on her face and arms. “But my family pulled out of there just after the bombings of 1988.” She looked square at Ben. “You know why, General?”

“Yes,” Ben said, “I know only too well. My brother was a part of that… madness.”

“You later killed your brother, did you not, General?” she asked.

“Yes,” Ben said softly, “I did. Back in Tri-States.”

How hated Ben’s system of government was did not come home to the people of the three states until late fall of the first year. Ben had stepped outside of his home for a breath of the cold, clean air of night. Juno went with him, and together they walked from the house around to the front yard. When Juno growled low in his throat, Ben went into a crouch, and that saved his life. Automatic-weapon fire spider-webbed the windshield of his pickup, the slugs hitting and ricocheting off the metal, sparking the night. Ben jerked open the door of the truck, punched open the glove box, and grabbed a pistol. He fired at a dark figure running across the yard, then at another. Both went down, screaming in pain.

A man stepped from the shadows of the house and opened fire just as Ben hit the ground. Lights were popping on up and down the street, men with rifles in

their hands appearing on the lawns.

Ben rose to one knee and felt a slug slam into his hip, knocking him to one side, spinning him around, the lead traveling down his leg, exiting just above his knee. He pulled himself up and leveled the 9mm, pumping three rounds into the dark shape by the side of the house. The man went down, the rifle dropping from his hands.

Ben pulled himself up, his leg and hip throbbing from the shock of the wounds. He leaned against the truck just as help reached him.

“Call the medics!” a neighbor shouted. “Governor’s been hit.”

“Help me over to that man,” Ben said. “He looks familiar.”

Standing over the fallen man, Ben could see where his shots had gone: two in the stomach, one in the chest. The man was blood-splattered and dying. He coughed and spat at Ben.

“Goddamned nigger-lovin” scum,” the dying man said. He closed his eyes, shivering in the convulsions of pain; then he died.

“God, Governor!” a man asked, “who is he?”

Salina came to Ben, putting her arms around him as the wailing of ambulances grew louder. “Do you know him, Ben?” she asked.

“I used to,” Ben’s reply was sad. “He was my brother.”

“That’s horrible, Ben,” Gale said. “Your own brother hated you enough to want to kill you?” “He was part of Jeb Fargo’s Nazi establishment outside

of Chicago,” Ben explained. “To this day, I don’t know why or how he changed so radically in his thinking.” He looked at Nancy. “You want to continue?”

“Yes,” she said. “My father took us-my mother, my sister, my brother-and went west, into Iowa. We settled in Waterloo. We survived,” she said it flatly. “But it sure wasn’t any fun doing so. Never enough to eat, cold and tired most of the time that first year or so. But it gradually got better as things began to settle down. My mother died in ‘93, my father died a year later. My older sister raised my brother and me. We lived through Logan’s … reign in office. My older sister always talked about heading out to Tri-States, but somehow we never did get around to doing that. Then Tri-States fell and after that the country seemed to fall apart. I was seventeen when … the troops invaded Tri-States.

“We got through the horror of Al Cody and VP Lowry and all that… awfulness, all the hate and the discontent. Somehow.

“One day my sister and my brother went out to look for food. I was sick and they didn’t want me to go “cause the weather was bad and I was just beginning to get better. I had pneumonia.” She sighed. “That was last year. They never came back. Then one day the rats came. I never saw anything-up to that point-so … so horrible in all my life. And I thought after having lived through the bombings and the roaming gangs of thugs and all that, I could handle anything. I must have a mental block about the rats, because I really can’t recall much about them. I know I panicked. I ran. I ran blindly. I don’t know how I survived, but I did. In a manner of speaking.”

Tears ran down the young woman’s face and Gale reached out to take her hand and hold it.

“I can’t ever have children. The IPF doctors … gave me a shot. Me, and hundreds-maybe thousands-of other women, and men, too. Orientals, Hispanics, blacks, Jews, Indians.” She wiped her eyes and shook her head. “There is some sort of armed resistance movement north of Interstate 70, General. That was why they were torturing me. Or so they said. I think those people just like to torture people. I know they do. I heard some of them say so. I saw … I saw several of the men masturbating while they watched me being tortured. They … they would stand in front of me, where I was strapped down, and … ejaculate in my face.”

When Gale looked at Ben, the rage of five thousand years was printed invisibly across her face. It seemed to say: Five thousand years of persecution is enough. This time, stop it forever.

“All right,” Ben said.

The other men and women gathered around looked at each other in confusion, not understanding what had just silently transpired between the man and woman.

Ben swung his eyes from Gale, returning them to Nancy as he saw her rub her arm. His arm picked up the numbers tattooed on her forearm. J-1107.

“The J stands for Jew?” Gale asked, a husky quality to her voice.

“Yes,” Nancy replied. “B for black. O for Oriental. H for Hispanic. I for Indian. M for mental defective. I’ve seen other letters but I don’t know what they represent.”

Ben felt sick to his stomach.

Gale was silently weeping.

Ben looked around at the silent circle, more than one man had tears in his eyes.

Nancy resumed her horror story. “Sam Hartline and his men took me, tried to make me tell what I knew about the resistance movement. But I didn’t-still don’t-know anything about it, other than that it exists. They … really had a good time with me,” she said, keeping her eyes downcast. “I … don’t know how many times they raped me or how many men. And women. The women would strap… would strap huge penises on and … rape me. There is something terribly perverted about many of those people-maybe all of them. I was raped in every way possible. Over and over. It got so I could sometimes block it out.

“They beat me, shocked me. They attached wires to my breasts and my … my genital area. The voltage was never strong enough to knock me out. It just hurt so bad. They forced objects up my … you know. I know they are doing some kind of experimental medical work up there in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Like the Nazis used to do way back then. But I don’t know what kind of experiments. Something to do with the mutants, I think. Mutants and humans.

“They kept questioning me, but I think they knew I was telling the truth. They just wanted to see how much I could take. I guess I’m stronger than I thought. What could I tell them? I didn’t know anything. I think I would have told them anything. Anything to stop the pain and the humiliation. The pain.” She

shook her head.

Nancy held up her left hand. All her fingernails were gone.

“I’m not a coward, but a human being has limits,” she said. “They finally stopped. Just quit. I thought I was dreaming. Maybe dead. I didn’t know a person could hurt so much in so many places. I don’t even remember the ride down to Missouri. When I woke up tied to that tree, I was naked and cold and hungry and sick. They left me with a little reminder of them. The men, I mean. They had attached a dog collar around my neck and defecated on me.”

Ben was then conscious of a pain in his right hand. He had clenched his fingers into a tight fist.

“I managed to get loose from the tree and found an old farmhouse and cleaned up. I wrapped up in an old quilt and walked down the road until I came to another house. I found some old clothes there. I found a gun and some bullets on a dead man and taught myself how to shoot the thing. I’m not very good at it, but I sure scared the shit out of some mutants, I know that. I hit a couple of them. Then they began tracking me.”

She lifted her eyes, looking at Ben. “They-the mutants-have some kind of intelligence, and some sort of communications system. They have to have that, because they were always one jump ahead of me.”

“Interesting,” Doctor Chase said. “That confirms what I thought all along.”

“And that is?” Ben glanced at him.

“The mutants have leaders, pack leaders, den leaders, if you will, who possess more intelligence than the others. And they have organized them; they have their own form of pecking order.”

“And the males like human women,” Gale added.

“How ghastly,” Colonel Gray remarked. “I believe I could have gotten on quite well without that knowledge.”

“And me,” Gale said. “Gross!”

“Best to know the type of enemy we are facing,” the doctor said. “And it appears we have more than one enemy.”

Chase did not look or act his age. His wife, a woman forty years his junior, could well attest to that. She had just borne him a child.

“What can you tell us about the IPF, Nancy?” Ben asked.

“Not a whole lot,” she admitted. “But I did hear the men talking some when they weren’t torturing me. Something about some new people coming in from Iceland. I kept fading in and out, but I think-no, I’m sure-they said several battalions.” She looked at Ben. “Does that help any?”

His smile held no humor. “Well, yes and no, Nancy. I don’t know the size of their battalions, but we’ll call it twenty-five hundred personnel per battalion. Let’s call several three. That would mean we now have approximately seventy-five hundred more troops to contend with.”

“My Lord,” Colonel Gray said after a soft whistle of alarm.

“Yeah,” Ben said. “I hope He is on our side in this upcoming fight.”

“We’ve been thinking that for five thousand or more years,” Gale said. “Believe me, sometimes I have serious reservations.”

“Let’s not tempt fate by becoming sacrilegious at

this stage of the game,” Ben said.

“For the first time in a long time,” Nancy said, “I feel a little bit of hope for the future. I feel like I’ve found a home.”

“Right.” Gale once more took her hand. “Believe me, I need all the help I can get with this bunch of schlubs.”

“Ben,” Doctor Chase said, “have you ever considered taking a hickory stick to her tush?” He jerked a thumb toward Gale.

Gale glared at him. “I didn’t know you had turned to wife-beating, Lamar.”

“Only when she needs it, baby.” Chase grinned at her.

Nancy laughed at this exchange, her first laugh in weeks.

Ben patted her gently on the shoulder. “You’re safe, now, Nancy.”

“Yes,” the young woman said. “But I keep thinking about all those poor people north of here who are anything but safe.”

“We’re going to do our best to stop the Russians,” Ben told her.

“I really hope God is on our side,” Nancy spoke to no one in particular. “I really, really do.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

The column covered only seventy-five miles the next day due to numerous equipment breakdowns and the worsening condition of the roads. The terrible roads contributed to the mechanical problems. The mechanics stayed busy, cussing as they worked frantically, for they realized they had no time to waste. Each hour meant someone in the IPF’-CONTROLLED areas was being tortured and killed.

Before limping into Rolla, Ben told Colonel Gray, “Take a full platoon in there, Dan. If you find any of the IPF or any civilian who has tossed in with them-kill them.”

The Englishman smiled coldly and knowingly, saluted and pulled out. The ex-British SAS officer was one of the most savage fighters in Ben’s command.

The first thing Colonel Gray observed just outside of Rolla was the body of a black man. He had been hanged by the neck and his features were horribly disfigured. A crudely lettered cardboard sign was hanging about his neck: “NIGGERS-STAY IN

YOUR PLACE.”

Sgt. Mac Cummings, a young black, swallowed audibly. “My momma used to tell me they’d be days like this, but she didn’t tell me they was goin” to come in bunches.”

Colonel Gray said, “When-or if-we find those responsible for this, Mac, you may lead the firing squad.”

“My pleasure, sir.”

A team lowered the body and a medic inspected the stiffened corpse. “Colonel,” he called, “this man’s been tortured and castrated.”

Sergeant Cummings made a low sound of anger and spat on the ground.

“Scouts out,” Colonel Gray ordered. “Heads up and steady on, now, lads.”

“And lassies,” Cpl. Anne Lewis reminded him with a smile.

“I could never forget the lassies.” Dan grinned.

“What do you want us to do with the body?” a medic asked.

“Leave it,” Dan said tersely. “It will be a pile of rotting bones in a month.”

Sergeant Cummings’s face registered no emotion. He knew they didn’t have the time to bury the body; and what the hell difference did one more rotting body make at this stage of the game? But he had never gotten accustomed to the necessary callousness.

One mile up the pitted and weed-grown highway they were stopped by a barricade stretching from shoulder to shoulder across the highway. A sign on the blockade read: “NIGGERS SPICS JEWS and ALL OTHER NON-WHITES STAY OU.”

“I have just about taken all this crap I am going to tolerate,” a young Jewish Rebel said. His words were laced with venom.

“Calm yourself,” Dan told him. “Les, get General Raines on the horn and inform him of this development and ask what he wants us to do about it.”

The radio operator was back in a moment. “General Raines says to assess the situation, sir. If you think we can handle it, proceed.”

“Thank you, son. Sergeant Cummings? Inspect that barricade for explosives. If it is not touchy, please remove it.”

“You put your black hands on that blockade, nigger, and you’ll die!” A hard voice shouted the warning from the woods alongside the highway.

A shot cracked in the morning calm. The sounds of a body hitting the forest floor drifted out. One of Colonel Gray’s scouts stepped from the timber, a smoking pistol in his hand.

“I found another one back in the woods always,” the young man said. “I cut his throat.”

“Thank you, Jimmy,” Dan replied, as if thanking a waiter for a fresh cup of tea. “Well done. I take it the timber is secure?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good.”

Dan’s walkie-talkie barked. He listened as the message spewed forth. “We got a fight on our hands, Colonel,” the forward scout reported. “The citizens are armed and hostile and waiting for us. The man who appears to be in charge says this is as far as we go. No nigger-lovers welcome in here. Told me to tell you to turn around and get the hell out.”

“How perfectly inhospitable of him,” Dan muttered. “One would think they were void of manners. How many people involved?” Dan asked the scout.

“Couple hundred, sir.”

“Pull back,” Dan ordered the LETTERRP’S. “Take coordinates for the mortar teams.”

“Roger, sir.”

“Tell me to get the hell out!” Dan muttered. “Halfwits probably never even heard of Lord Byron.”

Col. Dan Gray had come to Ben after serving first with the British Special Air Service and then, after the bombings of 1988, with the American Special Forces. His small company of Rebels were known as Gray’s Scouts. They could aptly be compared to a cross between Tasmanian devils and French foreign legionnaires, with a little bit of spitting cobra tossed in. They were experts at behind-the-lines, guerrilla-type action, experts with the knife, piano wire, brass knuckles and just plain ol’ dirty fighting.

Tina Raines had trained and seen combat with Gray’s Scouts. And Col. Dan Gray had given her the highest compliment one soldier could give another: “That lady,” said Colonel Gray, “is no lady.”

Ben was at the site in half an hour. The barricade had been torn down. Dan quietly and succinctly brought the general up to date.

Ben listened, the anger in him growing as Dan spoke. “Thank you, Dan.” He turned to the young man who had headed up the LETTERRP’S into Rolla. “Are

the people united in there?” he asked, jerking a thumb toward the distant town.

“Yes, sir-all the way. They told us they wanted a pure race of people, free of color. There is a Jewish girl hanging by the neck just down the road. We asked them about it; they admitted doing it. Said she got uppity with some of their women. We asked them what they meant by “uppity.” Said the Jewish girl was unhappy about being a servant. So they hanged her. Real nice people, General.”

“Yes. Just lovely,” Ben said. “How about the minorities that used to live around here?”

“They were either handed over to the IPF, run out or killed.”

“I see.”

“General,” the young LETTERRP said. “They, ah, the men in there-they took turns raping the girl before they hanged her.”

“They told you that?”

“Yes, sir. Seemed proud of it. Said she had real good pussy.”

Ben was profoundly glad that Gale was not present during this conversation. He turned to his artillery officer. “Shell it,” he told the man. “Shell and burn it. Blow the goddamned town off the map.”

“Yes, sir,” the officer said. He began speaking into his headset.

Down the highway, the rumble of tanks and mortar carriers getting into position reached the men by the once-barricaded highway. First to whistle and part the air overhead were the 152mm and 155mm cannon shells. 81mm mortars joined the barrage, the projectiles humming overhead. Ben’s big self-propelled howitzers

began pounding the small city with HE and incendiary rounds. The earth began to shake as the explosions ripped the town. Unit commanders began synchronizing the attack; there was not one full second free of the blasts of artillery, not one full second when an explosion was not rocking and pounding and burning and destroying the coordinated areas.

The limited skyline of the small city was now reduced to burning skeletons of buildings. After five minutes, Ben shouted the order to cease firing.

“Tanks in,” he ordered, his voice quiet in the shocked hush after the rolling thunder. “Infantry behind. Roll it.”

Gale and Nancy stood beside Ben’s pickup truck. Neither of them had ever heard anything to match what they had just experienced. War movies were OK, but this had been the real thing. Both their hearts were pounding furiously. Their mouths were dry. Nancy was the first to speak.

“He doesn’t believe very much in diplomacy, does he?”

“Only the final kind,” Gale replied, removing her fingers from her ears.

“I’m certain there were probably young children in that town.”

“Probably so.”

“That doesn’t bother you?”

“Sam Hartline was once a child.”

Nancy closed her mouth.

Heavy tanks rumbling past them stopped any further conversation for a time. Soon the rattle of automatic weapons drifted through the still air as the mopping up began.

Gale took this time to observe Ben, something she did often, and enjoyed doing. The man was as calm as a professional gambler with a royal flush in a high-stakes poker game. Nothing ever seemed to rattle him. Ben sipped at a cup of coffee-or what now passed for coffee-and munched on a biscuit. He seemed so relaxed he could be watching a croquet match on the greens in England.

Black, ugly smoke from the fires set by the incendiary rounds began pouring into the sky, the flames licking close behind the clouds. With no fire department, the town would soon burn itself out, destroying the ugliness the IPF had spawned.

After an hour, the gunfire had ceased, the tanks had rumbled back to position within the convoy. Far up the highway, Rebels were walking prisoners back to face Ben Raines.

The prisoners did not look overjoyed at that prospect.

They were a beaten and sullen bunch, with no fight left in them. They faced Ben-twenty of them-with downcast eyes. Their hands were behind their necks, fingers interlaced. There was one woman with them, a rather attractive woman. She looked at Ben with frank eyes.

“I give great head, General,” she said. “Let me live and I’ll do anything you want. I like it up the ass, too.”

“Shut your fucking mouth,” Ben told her.

“You dirty whore!” snarled the man beside her. “This is one time your pussy won’t get you out of trouble.”

She laughed and spat in the man’s face.

“I ought to hang every one of you,” Ben told the

group. “Slowly. If torture was my forte, that is what you deserve-then I should hang what is left of you.”

A man lifted very frightened eyes. “General…”

“Shut up!” Ben roared at him. He turned to a lieutenant. “How many children were found?”

“Twenty-two, sir. The rest of the kids are up at some sort of special school, run by the IPF.”

“They are being brainwashed,” Katrina spoke. “Depending on the time they have spent there, it is very probably too late to save them.” She looked at one man who appeared better fed and in better condition than the others. “How long have the children been at the school?”

“Long enough,” the man said with a smirk on his thick, wet lips. “I know you-was he stared at her-“you was here some months ago.”

“That is correct,” Katrina replied.

“Yeah,” the man said. “I heard about you. You’re the turncoat. Sorry goddamn traitor to your people.”

Katrina lifted her AK-47 and pulled the trigger once. The single shot took the man in the center of the chest. He flopped on the ground and died.

“He was a pig,” Katrina said. “He made some very filthy comments to me one day. Exposed himself to me and asked me to lick his … asked me to lick it.” She looked at Ben. “Am I to be punished for shooting him?”

“Hell, no,” Ben said.

“Katrina,” Colonel Gray said. “Would you be interested in joining my little group of men and women?”

“The scouts and LETTERRP’S?”

“Indeed.”

“I would be honored.”

Dan smiled. “The little bird has sharp claws, General.”

“Quite,” Ben agreed. “How old are the children you found?” he asked the scout.

“Very young. Infants, mostly.”

“Take them back to the convoy. We’ll raise them. I won’t have these bigots preaching hate to young children.”

“You ain’t got no right to take our kids.” A man stepped toward Ben.

Ben butt-stroked the man under the chin with his Thompson. Teeth and jaw cracked and popped under the impact. Blood flew from the man’s shattered mouth. He dropped to the ground like a stone and was still.

Ben looked at Colonel Gray. “I don’t care what you do with them, Dan. I do not wish to ever see any of them again.”

“Yes, sir.” He looked around him. “Sergeant Cummings?”

“Sir?”

“Take care of this little matter, won’t you?”

“Yes, sir,” the black sergeant said. “I will give it my immediate and personal attention.”

“I rather thought you would,” Dan said.

The Jewish Rebel stepped forward. “Like a little help, Mac?”

“Join the party,” Mac replied.

“Dan,” Ben said. “Roll the convoy on through. We’ll stop up the road at Vienna.” He looked at Sergeant Cummings. “We’ll see you and your squad in about an hour, Mac.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I wonder what is going to happen to those people?” Nancy whispered to Gale. “Don’t even think about it,” she was told.

“Hello, sweetmeat,” Hartline said to Peggy.

She whirled around, her eyes wide with fear as she gazed up the basement steps to the open door. Hartline’s bulk filled the doorway. She looked around for a weapon-anything. But there was nothing. Her heart was pounding so heavily she thought she might faint.

“I told you I’d find you, baby,” Hartline said, a cruel smile on his lips.

“How?” Peggy managed to gasp out the one-word question.

“How?” Hartline smiled the question. “How was easy, sweet pussy. This is how.” He stepped down into the basement and waved his hand. A human form tumbled down the steps, bouncing sickeningly on the steps. Lois Peters. Or what was left of her.

The woman was naked. Her toenails and fingernails had been ripped from her. Her fingers had been broken. Her feet had been burned black-lumps of seared meat. Her teeth had been savagely pulled out. Her breasts had been mutilated. Peggy looked at the woman’s pubic area and was sick at the sight. Lois looked as though she had been raped by some sort of huge monster. Blood streaked her thighs.

She was dead.

Hartline’s eyes were cold and savage-looking. The smile hadn’t left his lips. “Before I’m through with you, sweetmeat, you’ll be begging me to go ahead and kill you.”

Peggy rose to her full height. She spat in Hartline’s face. “I’ll never beg to you, you son of a bitch.”

“Oh, I think you will, pretty thing. I really think you will.”

Two years before, Sam Hartline and his men, backed by FBI agents with warrants charging several newspeople with treason for refusing to cooperate with the congressional mandate to submit all news copy for review and censorship before airing, entered the Richmond offices of NBC. This was to be the test network.

Hartline, carrying an M-10 SMG, shoved the elderly security guard away from the doors, knocking the man sprawling, and marched into the executive offices. Hartline jerked one startled VP of programming to his feet and hit him in the mouth with a leather-gloved right fist. The man slammed against a chair and fell stunned to the floor.

A news commentator rushed into the room. “Here now,” he shouted, ““feu can’t do that.”

One of Hartline’s men socked the man with the butt of his AK. The man’s jaw popped like a firecracker. He was unconscious before he hit the carpet, blood pouring from the sudden gaps in his teeth.

“Where is the bureau chief?” Hartline said. “Or whatever you call the boss. Get him in here, pronto.”

A badly shaken young secretary stammered, “It isn’t a him-it’s a her. Ms. Olivier.”

“Well, now.” Hartline smiled. “That’s even better. Get her for me, will you, darling?”

Before the secretary could turn, a voice, calm and controlled, spoke from the hall. “What is the meaning of this?”

Hartline lifted his eyes, meeting the furious gaze of Sabra Olivier. He let his eyes drift over her, from her eyes to her ankles and back up again. She felt as if she had been violated. “You’re kind of a young cunt to be in charge of all this, aren’t you, honey?” he asked.

“Get out!” Sabra ordered.

The words had just left her mouth when Hartline’s open palm popped against her jaw, staggering her. She stumbled against the door frame, grabbing at the doorknob for support.

“Dear,” Hartline said, “you do not order me about. I will tell you what I want, then you will see to it that my orders are carried out. Is that clear?”

“You’re Sam Hartline,” Sabra said, straightening up, meeting him squarely, no backup in her. “Vice President Lowry’s pet dog.”

Hartline never lost his cold smile. He faced the woman, again taking in her physical charms: black hair, carefully streaked with gray; dark olive complexion; black eyes, now shimmering with anger; nice figure; long legs.

Sabra turned to a man. “Call the police,” she told him.

Hartline laughed at her. “Honey, we are the police.”

Sabra paled slightly.

The man on the floor groaned, trying to sit up, one hand holding his broken and swelling jaw.

“Get him out of here,” Hartline ordered. “Toss him in the lobby and have that old goat down there call for an ambulance to come get him.” He looked at Sabra.

“We can do this easy or hard, lady, it’s all up to you.”

“What do you want?”

“For you to cooperate with the government censorship order. And no more taking the Rebels’ side in this insurrection.”

“No way I’ll submit to censorship,” Sabra said.

“Then you want it hard,” Hartline said, the double meaning not lost on the woman, as he knew it would not be.

Her dark eyes murdered the mercenary a dozen times in a split-second. Her smile was as cold as his. “I never heard of anyone dying from it, Hartline.”

“Oh, I have, Sabra baby. I have.”

Hours later, Sabra Olivier’s spirit shattered. “All right,” she said to Hartline. “Stop it-stop your men. I’ll cooperate.”

The moaning and the screaming of her female employees had finally broken her reserve. As Hartline had known it would. And he had not touched Ms. Olivier-yet.

The students at the University of Virginia, after hearing of the takeover of the NBC offices and studios in Richmond, had marched in protest. But this was not the 1960’s and 70’s, with constitutional guarantees protecting civil disobedience. Now all police were federalized, and the FBI was nothing like that old and solid organization of the past.

The students were met with live ammunition and snarling dogs. Many were killed. Hundreds more were arrested, and in the process, beaten bloody. VP Lowry ordered the university closed.

Hartline smiled and nodded to a man standing by the door to the office. Within seconds, the screaming and sobbing ceased.

“You see.” Hartline smiled at her. “That wasn’t so difficult, was it?”

If looks could kill.

Sabra watched, a curious look in her eyes, as a mini-cam was brought into her office, carried by an agent. She did not understand the smile on Hartline’s lips.

Hartline pointed to a TV set behind her desk. “Turn it on,” he told her.

A naked man appeared on the screen. One of her anchormen. She knew with a sudden start this was live action, not taped. “What is the meaning of this?” she demanded. “I told you I’d cooperate.”

“Insurance, Sabra baby,” Hartline replied. He picked up a phone from her desk and punched a button. “Do it,” he ordered. He looked at Sabra. “Watch, darling.”

She swung reluctant eyes toward the screen. A cattle prod touched the man’s naked buttocks. His scream chilled her. The prod touched his thigh, then his genitals.

“Stop it!” Sabra shouted.

The man screamed and ground his teeth in pain. Several teeth broke off, bloodying his mouth.

“Goddamn you, Hartline!” Sabra yelled. “Stop it.”

“You’ll cooperate with us?”

“I said I would, Hartline.”

“Anything I say?” “Yes!”

“I have your son ready to perform for us. Would you like to see that?” “Goddamn you!”

Hartline laughed. He spoke to the mini-cam operator. “Start rolling it.” He unzipped his pants. His flaccid penis hung out. “Come here, Sabra baby. This one is for VP Lowry. And if you ever fail to obey an order, if you ever let any copy air without government approval, this tape gets played-in its entirety-on the six o’clock news.”

“You goddamn low-life, miserable son of a bitch!” Sabra cursed him.

“Strip, baby. Take it all off while facing the camera. Let’s give Lowry a really good show. That’s it. Play with your puss a little bit. Good, good, now you’re getting into the spirit of things.”

Naked and embarrassed and trembling with anger, Sabra faced the mercenary.

He hefted his penis. “In case you have it in mind to take a bite of me, Sabra baby, bear in mind your son is now bent over a table just down the hall. You get kinky with me, he gets gang-shagged. Understand?”

She nodded.

“Kneel down here, baby. On your pretty dimpled knees. You know what to do. You probably sucked cocks getting to where you are in the network anyway.”

She took him as the camera recorded it all.

Just as Hartline climaxed, the semen splattering the woman’s face, Hartline laughed. “It’s just so fucking easy when you know how. Just so fucking easy.”

The tiny hamlet of Vienna was deserted, completely void of any type of life, human or animal. “Strange,” Ben muttered, conscious of Gale’s eyes

on his face. “I don’t recall ever seeing anything like this.” He ordered scouts out to give the place a quick once-over.

Gale put her hand on Ben’s thigh. “This place scares me,” she admitted.

Ben, as usual, kept his emotions in close check. At least outwardly. Inside, he felt a little shaky. This place was, he concluded, a place of death-but somehow much different from all the other towns he had seen.

A Rebel jogged toward the pickup, his words breaking into Ben’s deep thoughts. “You gotta see this, General. It’s unreal.”

Ben, with Gale in tow, followed the Rebel on foot to a weather-beaten old frame church. The church had once been painted white. Now the paint was almost gone, the wood rotting from years of abuse from the harsh elements of sun and wind and cold.

“The door is locked, sir. From the inside. I looked through the window around here at the side. But you both better brace yourselves for what you’re about to see. It’s tough, sir.”

The scene grabbed at Ben’s guts. Fifty or so people-or the skeletons of what had once been people-filled the pews. Many of the ladies still had rags of what had been their Sunday hats perched on their white, bony skulls. About half of the worshippers still sat upright, grinning grotesquely and staring through sightless eyeholes at the bones of a man who sat in a chair directly behind the rotting pulpit. He would wait forever to deliver his Sunday sermon.

“Look at the watch on that guy’s … wrist,” the Rebel said, pointing to a nearby skeleton.

Ben rubbed at the dirty windowpane and stared.

The watch was a LCD type and was still silently exhibiting the time in the House of the Lord, to pews full of bones.

“What happened, Ben?” Gale asked in no more than a whisper, almost breathlessly. “I mean, how could this be?”

“I can’t answer that, honey,” Ben said, his eyes still fixed on the scene before him.

“I can,” Lamar Chase said.

“Jesus Christ!” the young Rebel blurted, jumping about a foot off the ground.

“Naturally, he can,” Ben said dryly, but with a grin.

Lamar glanced at the badly shaken young Rebel. “I warned you about keeping late hours, son. Bad on the nerves.”

“Yes, sir,” the young man said, grinning, red-faced with embarrassment.

“It was airborne,” Lamar said. “At least some strains of it.”

“Airborne, Lamar?” Ben said. “The plague?”

“What the hell do you think I’m talking about?” the doctor said. “Gonorrhea? Yes, the plague. The only answer I can give is there must have been several strains of it. Very short-lived. What are you going to do with these … remains?”

“Leave them right where they are,” Ben told him. “I can’t think of a better resting place than this, can you?”

“Yes,” Doctor Chase said with a sour grin. “Don’t die.”

“Little sweetmeat,” Hartline said, stroking the unwilling

flesh of Peggy. His touch made her skin crawl as if covered with thousands of lice. Somewhere in the old warehouse-turned-interrogation-center for the IPF, a human being was wailing in agony. Gender was not identifiable by the hoarse yowlings.

Hartline raised his head at the sounds, a smile on his handsome face.

“That would be Mr. Linderfelt, I should think,” he said. “Would you be at all interested in knowing what is being done to him, sweetmeat?”

“No. I’m sure it’s horrible and perverted. What are you going to do with me, Hartline?”

“Oh my, sweetmeat, that does present a dilemma. Yes, it does. Quite a dilemma. You see, I just haven’t made up my mind as yet. How about you calling the tune, dear.”

“Your humor is sick, Hartline. Just as sick as the rest of you.” She struggled against the leather straps that held her to the operating table. She was naked, her legs spread wide.

Hartline’s right hand was busy between her legs, his middle finger working in and out.

He laughed at her struggles.

“Let me tell you what is being done with Mr. Linderfelt, dear.”

She screamed and fought against the straps. She struggled until her slender body was bathed in sweat, light bronze shining under the harsh lights that hung above her. Hartline stood and watched her, a smile on his lips. She finally ceased her futile writhings and glared up at the mercenary.

“You see, my dear Miss Jones,” he said, returning his hand to its busy work between her legs, “it was I

who finally convinced General Striganov he was making a terrible mistake by sterilizing all the minorities, inferiors that you are. I said to Georgi, “Georgi, just think what we can do for the generations of scientists yet to come. What a contribution we could make in the field of genetics.””

A woman began screaming down the long hall in the sectioned-off warehouse. The woman was howling in pain and fright, begging to someone not to do this to her. To kill her. To please have mercy on her. That this was inhuman. She just could not…

Her scream changed in timbre, ending in a series of heavy, painful grunting sounds.

“Hartline…”

“Be quiet, dear. What is happening to … whatever is that woman’s name? It escapes me at the moment. No matter, as I was saying, it won’t happen to you. You have already been-how to subtly say this-spayed like the dog-bitch you are.”

He threw back his head and howled out his laughter.

Something in the warehouse growled.

Peggy had heard that sound before. The realization of what was taking place in the experiment rooms struck her with all its savagery. “Hartline … you didn’t! I mean, you can’t be serious?”

“Oh, but we are serious, sweetmeat. Really. Look at it this way: We are making real contributions in the field of genetics. It is as I told Georgi: Take the inferior races and start a program of breeding them to the beasts. Male mutant to female human inferior. Female to male human inferior.”

“That is what is currently happening to our Mr. Linderfelt and to Miss, ah, yes, Llado. That is that

greaser’s name. We have to give the human males large injections of aphrodisiac in order for them to cooperate-large doses of Valium work wonders in many cases-and it is really working out well, I believe. Our doctors don’t, as yet, know the gestation period for the female mutants, but it is very fast, we believe. It should produce some interesting offspring, don’t you think, my dear Miss Jones?”

“You’re savages!” Peggy whispered. “Nothing but dirty, filthy monsters.”

Hartline looked hurt. “Oh, not true, not true. If everything works out as planned, we shall have a race of beings with some degree of intelligence, able to perform menial jobs, thus freeing the more intelligent for other work. It’s science, my dear, that’s all.”

He freed her from her bonds and forced her to a low table, strapping her on her belly, legs spread wide, her bare feet on the cold floor, her buttocks elevated. She knew what was in store for her.

“I believe, my dear,” Hartline said, removing his trousers, carefully folding them and hanging them on the back of a chair, “we were in the process of doing something when you turned savage on me. were we not?”

He was naked from the waist down, his penis already swelling in anticipation of the assault.

Peggy did not reply.

She felt grease or oil being spread between the cheeks of her buttocks.

“Yes, we were,” Hartline said, positioning himself.

Peggy began screaming.

By maintaining daily radio contact, Ben learned that Ike’s and Hector’s columns were having as much equipment trouble as his own. Ike had been forced to halt at St. Genevieve in Missouri for major repairs. He reported to Ben that the city contained survivors, but they had, so far, shown no interest or inclination in fighting General Striganov. They would take whatever form of government happened along.

Ben resisted an impulse to tell Ike to shoot them.

Hector’s column was bogged down in Warsaw, Missouri while his mechanics worked frantically on the engines and transmissions.

The troops from North and South Carolina had been halted in Illinois.

Juan was the only one to have reached his objective and was digging in for the fight.

But the IPF was having no problems.

The rumble of Jeeps and heavy trucks grew louder to the small team of LETTERRP’S hidden by the side of the road in central Iowa. The column of IPF forces stretched for miles.

“Must be four or five battalions,” a LETTERRP said to his buddy.

“At least that. And they’ve got more heavy guns than we first thought. We got them outgunned, all right, but they’ve got us out-manned.” The LETTERRP picked up his mic and called in, speaking softly.

“At least five battalions of infantry heading south in trucks. We counted forty of the six-bys pulling cannon. 105’s.”

“Tanks?”

“Negative on tanks. Here comes another convoy. Hang on.”

The LETTERRP’S counted the heavily loaded trucks-those loaded with men and those loaded with equipment. They radioed back to Ben’s HQ.

“Three more battalions rolling south.”

“Acknowledged. Maintain your positions and stay low.”

“If I got any lower my buttons would be in the way.”

The radio operator took the bad news to Ben.

“Seven or eight battalions,” Ben read aloud the hastily scrawled message. “Damn! General Striganov knows he’s got to defeat us; once that is done, he’s home free. Get me Ike.”

Colonel McGowen on the horn, Ben said, “Ike-we’ve got six thousand troops coming at us, buddy. They’re in central Iowa now. Whatever you have that will roll, get the wheels turning north and assume your positions. Get ready for hell, partner. We’ve got to have time to dig in, so move them out now! The clock is ticking. Interstate 70 is the stopping point for the Russians. We’ve got to hold them. The personnel you leave behind can catch up ASAP. I’ll be talking with Hector in a moment. Roll it, Ike… and God go with you.”

“Ten-four, Ben. Luck to you, ol” buddy.”

Ben spoke briefly with Colonel Ramos, telling him to move out and dig in. No sooner had he released the talk button than Mark Terry was on the horn.

“We are engaging the IPF in central Illinois, Ben. And we are meeting heavy resistance. We are holding.”

“Dig in and slug it out, Mark. Don’t let those people break through and come up behind me. I can’t spread

my people out any thinner. General Striganov is throwing some six thousand troops in my direction.”

“Jesus,” Mark said. When he again spoke, his voice was calm, the sounds of gunfire heavy in the background. “I have instructed my people not to surrender, Ben. I can only hope they will obey to the last man. Good luck to you.”

“The same to you, Mark.”

The connection was broken.

Ben turned to tell the radio operator to get him Juan Solis on the horn when the Mexican’s voice came through the speaker.

“We are looking at some two to three thousand troops, Ben. We have the Missouri River to our backs and we are not going to surrender. It’s up to you, Ben. Good luck.”

His company commanders, platoon leaders and squad leaders had gathered around the communications van. They looked at Ben in silence.

Why is it always up to me? Ben thought. Why me? All I ever wanted was to be left alone and to live out my remaining years in peace.

Why me?

“Move out,” Ben told his people. “We’ve got to stop the advance of the IPF. Good luck.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Lord God of Hosts, be we us yet, Lest we forget-lest we forget.

-Kipling

The bridges crossing the river at St. Louis were long gone, and Ike had left personnel at Memphis, Caruthersville, Cairo, Cape Girardeau and Chester, with orders to blow the bridges if any IPF forces attempted to cross and come up from behind. Ike began spreading troops from St. Peters, Missouri west to Warrenton. Ben would spread his personnel from Warrenton to Columbia, and Hector would cover the area from Sweet Springs east to Ben.

They were all spread thin, with very few troops left in reserve. It would be a tiring campaign, with little time for the troops to rest. And they would be outnumbered almost three to one.

But Ben’s Rebels had something going for them the IPF personnel had never known in all their lives: a belief in God Almighty and freedom.

When Ben’s column reached the outskirts of Columbia, he met with Colonel Gray. After the two men shook hands, Dan brought Ben up to date on the latest developments his scouts and LETTERRP’S had radioed in. Ben said, “I want to meet with General Striganov one more time, Dan, even though it will probably do no more than buy us time. When I am doing that, you take your scouts and LETTERRP’S and circle behind the IPF people; begin a guerrilla campaign against them. No holds barred, Dan, I want as much blood and terror and demoralization as possible. I don’t have to tell you how to play dirty.”

The Englishman’s grin was decidedly nasty. Now the game was getting to his liking. The men once more shook hands. “Good luck to you, General, and Godspeed.”

“To us both, Dan,” Ben said.

Ben turned to his commanders. His message was brief.

“Dig in.”

The thin line of defense of democracy stretched some 140 miles-and it was stretched thin. Much too thin, Ben knew. But Striganov knew, too, that to punch one hole in the line of defenders would accomplish very little, for Ben would simply order his people to tighten up, swing ends around, and then trap the

Russian’s spearheaders in a box.

No, the Russian would be careful, very careful, for he had read every book Ben Raines had ever written-read them many times-and had teams of psychiatrists study the writings and give personality profiles on the man. Georgi had reached the conclusion that Ben Raines was a madman. A man who would fight to the death for a mere principle. That, to the Russian’s way of thinking, certainly and irrevocably constituted insanity.

And Ben Raines did not like to lose. Ever. He was-if his major characters were any indication of the author’s true personality, and Striganov knew that to be true in most cases-the type of man who would resort to any tactics to win, if it took him a lifetime to do so.

So Striganov concluded this battle was to be of the classic style, the classic-fought duel between armies, the two forces slugging it out, wearing the other down, with Interstate 70 the no man’s land.

But the Russian knew, too, that it was only a matter of time for the Rebels. He felt sure and confident in that, for he had Ben Raines’s Rebels out-manned. Yes, he knew the mission would be costly in human life and limb. But his perfect people were not being thrown into this battle; they were safely tucked away back in Minnesota, back at the warm and comfortable breeding farm.

Striganov smiled as he sat in the cushioned back seat in his armor-plated and bullet-proofed car in the center of the convoy heading south to Interstate 70 and Gen. Ben Raines and his foolish, idealistic Rebels. He was proud of what he and his people had accomplished in so short a time. They had sterilized several

thousand inferiors, had disposed of several hundred mental defectives, and were coming along splendidly with their breeding programs. But just look what he had to work with: those lovely people of his command, the cream of perfection. The women were so fair and blond and beautiful and intelligent; the men so tall and fair and blond and handsome and intelligent-both genders pale-eyed, of course.

All families of the perfect people had been researched carefully for flaws. And so far, the children born to the IPF over the past decade … perfect. Not one defective. All beautiful. Selective breeding would work, even that idiot Hitler had known that.

Striganov stirred restlessly in the back seat. He poured a glass of wine and dipped a cracker into black caviar, chewing slowly, savoring each bite.

But that fool Hitler had almost destroyed any hope of the revival of a Mactep Paca, a Meister Rasse. It was one thing to let a race die out naturally-more or less-but to destroy them with ovens and gas and starvation …

That was unthinkable. Barbaric. Savage. It served no useful medical purpose. For even defectives could be used in experiments. True, Hitler did once have a few experiments going, but his were not on the grand scale of the IPF.

Striganov really never thought that what he was doing was just as terrible and barbaric and horrible-perhaps even more so. The Russian actually believed-had convinced himself-he was doing humankind a service, not a disservice. What he was now putting into effect had been his lifelong dream, ever since as a child he had read and absorbed the rantings and

ravings of that only-sometimes-lucid little paper hanger.

Yes, the little man had had-at times-some good ideas and thoughts. But Striganov was so very glad the man had not succeeded. For his own theories and ideas were so very much better.

A master race, a fully workable caste system-that was the ultimate achievement. A world whose leaders and thinkers and breeders at the top level would all be fair-skinned and blue-eyed and handsome and intelligent.

How could anyone wish for more than that?

But suddenly a frown crossed the handsome features of the Russian. For there was only one flaw in an otherwise perfect master plan.

Ben Raines.

“Ben, do we send troops in to help Juan and Mark?” Lieutenant Macklin posed the question at a briefing before the battle. “They won’t have a prayer without some support from trained combat troops.”

“No.” Ben stood firm in one of the most agonized-over decisions he had ever had to make. “That is what Striganov is hoping I’ll do. Hoping I’ll further weaken this thin line we’re maintaining.”

“Do they know this, Ben?” Hector asked.

“Yes. The leaders do. And I’m sure most of the line troops sense it as well.”

“It could backfire, ol’ buddy,” Ike reminded Ben.

“I know it-only too well,” Ben admitted the weakness in the plan. “Unless we can defeat the IPF here, those on the west side might punch through and come

in under us with so much force we couldn’t close the pincers on them. I know that. It’s going to be a slugging match, people. We’ll be taking and losing and retaking the same ground-on both sides of the line-twenty times before we’re through. I think Striganov knows-just as I know-this is going to be the stand-up-and-slug-it-out type of battle. And he knows, as I know, we are going to both inflict and take heavy losses.”

But Ben was worried as he glanced at Ike, and Ike knew it. Knew what Ben was thinking: neither ex-Seal nor ex-Hell-Hound was an expert in this type of fighting. Both of them were trained-and highly so-in the art of guerrilla warfare: that dirty cut-slash-run type of unconventional warfare. The men had defended the original Tri-States in the West, and done it well but they had been forced out. Not because of lack of courage, simply because of superior manpower thrown at them by forces of the United States government, when Hilton Logan was president and his hate for Ben Raines had finally erupted into bloody warfare.*

And it was superior manpower they were again about to face.

Ben rose, signaling the meeting was over. He shook Ike’s hand, then Hector’s. “Showdown time, gang. Let’s win it and get the hell back home. We got crops to harvest in a few weeks.”

Ike and Hector and Mary smiled, nodded and walked away. Mary was part of Ben’s HQ’S company. “See Out Of The Ashes.

Ike went to the east, Hector to the west.

To war.

But only one of the two men would return from the final battle.

PART TWO

CHAPTER ONE

Gen. Georgi Striganov, in full battle dress, stood on the north side of Interstate 70. Ben Raines, in full battle gear, stood facing the Russian from the south side of the concrete strip. As if on silent command, the men walked across their two lanes of concrete to face each other, median strip separating them. Each man had requested this one final meeting before they began man’s most awesome means of settling disputes: war.

“You’re looking disgustingly fit and well, General Raines,” Striganov said. “It pays for men our age to keep in shape, da?”

“I will agree with that, General.”

“Nice to know we can agree on something, General Raines.” His eyes drifted to Ben’s old Thompson SMG. “My word, General. Where did you ever find that antiquated weapon?”

“I’ve had it a long time, General,” Ben replied. “It’s an old friend.”

“Friends can sometimes disappoint a person, General-let one down, so to speak. If one depends

upon them too much.”

“It hasn’t yet.”

“Pray that it doesn’t.” Striganov smiled. “My people are, to use one of your quaint Western expressions, kicking ass to the west and the east. I think you sacrificed those people, General Raines, and I think you know you did.”

“Perhaps. But in war, no one is indispensable. Not you, not me.”

“You don’t believe the latter any more than you believe a mule can fly, General. General? This does not have to be. Join me and let us work together.”

“Toward a master race?”

“But of course, General Raines. Why not?”

“Because I believe what you are doing is more than evil, it’s monstrous.”

The Russian shrugged that off. “Yes, I keep forgetting you were once married to a half-black wench, weren’t you?”

Ben said nothing.

“And now a Jewess shares your bed.”

Ben remained silent, thinking: He’s got people in Tri-States, and he just gave that fact away. I wonder why? Slip of the tongue? “That is correct, General. But I don’t think of people in race categories. They are just human beings.”

The Russian spat contemptuously on the ground. “What a noble thought,” he said, his voice full of open scorn. “Fortunately for me, I do not share your misguided philosophical meanderings. I saw some time back that the pure white race is the master race, the most intelligent of all the races-by far. And General, you are, I believe, too intelligent a man not to see that.

You are just idealistic at a time when that is a luxury that you cannot afford.”

“I will admit to being somewhat of an idealist,” Ben said. “Personally, I think it is an admirable trait to possess-if one keeps it in perspective.”

The Russian studied the American. He should have ordered snipers to accompany him and shoot Ben Raines. That would have solved a great many problems. But Striganov had always prided himself on being an honorable man, and he fully believed he was just that.

A great many people would have cheerfully called him anything but honorable.

Striganov shrugged his muscular shoulders. “Perhaps. I am sorry it has to be this way, President-General Ben Raines, for I think in many ways we are quite alike. But…” Again he shrugged.

Ben stood tall and silent, watching the Russian study him.

“I shall conduct myself and my troops as gentlemen during our upcoming confrontation, General Raines, carefully observing all the articles of war.”

“I won’t,” Ben bluntly informed him.

The Russian laughed heartily, with good humor. “Ah, I fully expected that of you, General. But you see, there is a method behind my plans.”

“You are hoping, if there is someone around to write it, that history will treat you much more kindly than it shall treat me.”

“I knew you were an intelligent man, Ben Raines. “Yes, of course that is it. Quite correct and very astute of you. You will have that despicable Englishman, Gray, and his people moving about behind my lines,

slitting throats and blowing things up and engaging in all sorts of subhuman guerrilla tactics. But I and my people shall be gentlemen at all times. So I believe history shall paint you as the savage, not I.”

Ben had to laugh at the Russian’s sincerity. “Do you really believe all that shit, General?”

Striganov looked amused that Ben should doubt it. “But of course! Not only for a gentlemen’s war, but in the fact I am purifying the white race. Surely you will be big enough to admit a great many people support what I am doing?”

“A much greater number find it appalling and disgusting,” Ben countered. “And kindly include me among them, and everyone who fights alongside me.”

“Then I must conclude they are short-sighted or misguided people,” the Russian said with a smile. “And since I really don’t believe you are short-sighted, President-General Raines, you must fall in the latter category.”

Ben laughed at him, the laughter bouncing off the Russian.

“I shall give you a few more hours to mull over your reluctance, General Raines. If you have not seen the error of your decision, 0600 tomorrow shall be the beginning of your Armageddon.”

Ben smiled. “A very interesting choice of characterization, General Striganov. Armageddon. Of course, you represent the evil?”

The Russian did not take offense. “If that is how you choose to view it, President-General. But I believe history will view me in a much gentler light.”

“If you win, General Striganov, history probably will view you in that manner-a lie, of course-since

there will be only your Herrenvolk to write it.”

Again, the Russian laughed. “But of course. You see, Ben Raines, I planned well, did I not?”

Ben had to grudgingly admit the Russian had indeed planned very well. But he’d be goddamned if he would compliment the bastard for doing so.

“When I take you as my prisoner-of-war, General Raines, I give you my word you will be treated with the respect due a man of your position.”

Ben’s reply was very much to the point. “When I take you as my prisoner of war, General Striganov, I’m personally going to shoot you.”

The Russian threw back his head and laughed loudly, uproariously. “Oh, I do like you, Ben Raines. It is such a pity that we cannot be good and close friends. There are so few truly intelligent men left to converse with on matters of importance. So, Ben Raines, do be sure and give your Jewess a great big kiss for me, da? Good morning, sir.”

He turned his back to Ben and walked across the two lanes of concrete and onto the shoulder of the interstate. He was soon down in the ditch and then lost from view as he entered the woods.

Ben returned to his troops. Gale breathed a huge sigh of relief upon sighting Ben. “I just don’t trust that bastard, Ben.”

“He said to give you a great big kiss from him.” Ben grinned.

Gale spat very unladylike on the ground. She fixed Ben with a dark, angry glare. “How would you like a fat lip, Raines?”

“I think I’ll pass,” Ben said with a laugh.

He sobered as he looked at his personal contingent

of Rebels. He knew them all from the hard days. Captain Seymour. Lamar Chase. Jane Dolbeau, the blond Canadian who everyone knew was in love with Ben-everyone that is but Ben. Steve Mailer and Judith Sparkman. James Riverson. Carla Allen. Lynne Hoffman. Judy Fowler. The survivors. Men and women who had followed Ben through it all, who believe in him.

He could not let them down.

He saw Roanna Hickman watching him as he walked away. She hurried to catch up with him.

“Just had to deal yourself a hand in this battle, eh, Roanna?” Ben said.

“I’m still a reporter, General. There may not be any networks left, or any big daily newspapers, but I’m still going to ply my craft-someday, somebody will read it.”

“I hope so, Miss Hickman. You were a very good reporter.”

She smiled. “Coming from you, General, that’s as good as receiving the Pulitzer.”

And for a moment, both of them were caught up briefly in the grips of memory.

Sabra Olivier had called Roanna into her office*, intercepting the reporter outside the door and leading her to the washroom. As she had seen in countless TV *See Fire in the Ashes.

shows and movies, Sabra turned on the water in the sink to cover any noises of conversation.

Knowing Sam Hartline as she did, Sabra would not put it past the man to bug the ladies’ room.

“Roanna, you know all about Hartline. I’ve never pulled any punches with any of you. But what do you really think of him?”

“I’d like to cut the bastard’s cock off and stuff it down his throat,” Roanna replied without a second’s hesitation.

Sabra was mildly shocked. She had never heard Roanna be so crude. “He got to you, Roanna?”

“Oh, yes.” The brunette’s smile was more of a grimace. “From behind. Said he’d been watching and listening to my stories for a long time, didn’t like what I’d done about mercenaries. Wanted to give me something to remember him by. He did. I walked funny for three days. The son of a bitch.”

“How many other women?”

“Sabra, it’s not just the women. Some of his men are twisted sexually-really bent all out of shape in the head. I don’t know what you’re planning, but be careful, you’re dealing with a maniac in Hartline. He’s a master of torture. He’s got most of the people in the networks frightened out of their wits; men and women-old, hard-line, tough reporters tremble at just the mention of his name. All of us wonder how it got this far out of line so quickly.”

“Yes, I was wondering the same thing a few moments ago. Roanna, look, I’ve got to get someone in Ben Raines’s camp, and I’ve got you in mind. I think I can convince Hartline it’s for the best. You do a story on Raines; I’ll do one on Hartline. I’ll make him look like

the coming of Christ. We’ll do little three-minute segments each week, but they’ll be coded with messages for Raines.”

“Sabra…”

“No! It’s something I believe we’ve got to do. I’ll accept some responsibility for what’s happening-what has happened to this nation; it’s partly our fault. Hartline … visits me twice a week. Lately I’ve been accepting his visits as something I have no control over. He thinks I’m enjoying them. He’s an egomaniac; I can play on that. Really build him up. It’s amazing what a man will say when he’s in bed with a woman. We’ll work out some sort of code to let Raines know what is going on, or what is about to happen. Are you game?”

“You know what will happen to both of us if Hartline discovers what we’re doing?”

“Yes. Very well.”

“All right,” Roanna said. “Let’s do it.”

“What kind of game are you playing, Miss Hickman?” Ben asked her.

They were seated outside, a cool but not unpleasant breeze fanning them. Roanna sat beside Dawn-the two women had known each other for years-the women facing Ben and Cecil and Ike.

“No game, General,” Roanna said firmly. “Game time is all over. We’re putting our lives on the line this go-round. For the women, our asses, literally.”

She brought them all up to date on what Hartline was doing and had done.

“If this is true,” Cecil said, “and for the moment, we shall accept it as fact, Ms. Olivier is playing a very dangerous game.”

“And you, as well,” Ike looked at Roanna.

“More than you know,” Roanna’s reply was filled with bitterness. “Sabra’s husband said if she saw Hartline again, he was leaving. She couldn’t explain what she was doing, for fear Hartline would torture the truth out of Ed-that’s her husband. Ed walked out the day before yesterday, took the little boy, left the daughter behind. I wish it had been reversed. Sabra’s told me Hartline is looking at Nancy … you know what I mean.”

“How old is the girl?” Ike asked.

“Fifteen. Takes after her mother. She’s beautiful.”

“Hartline is, ah, somewhat perverted, is he not?” Dawn asked.

Roanna snorted in disgust. “To put it quite bluntly, Dawn, he’s got a cock like a horse and doesn’t care which hole he sticks it in.”

“Jesus Christ, lady!” Even Ike was shocked, and to shock a Navy SEAL takes some doing.

Ben resisted a smile and said, after looking at the reporter for a moment, “You have any objections to taking a PSE test, Miss Hickman?”

“Not at all,” Roanna replied. Then she smiled, and her cynical reporter’s eyes changed. She was, Ben thought, really a very pretty lady. “What’s the matter, General, am I too liberal for your tastes?”

“Liberals are, taken as a whole, just too far out of touch with reality to suit me,” Ben said, softening that with a smile.

“I’d like to debate that with you someday, General. Yes,” she mused, “that might be the way to go with the interviews. Hard-line conservative against liberal views.”

“I’m not a total hard-line conservative, Miss Hickman,” Ben informed her. “Although many have branded me as that: unfeeling and all that other garbage. How could I have been a hard-line conservative and advocated women’s rights, abortion, the welfare of the elderly and children… and everything else we did in Tri-States?”

“Yes,” Roanna said. “There is all that to take into consideration. But you did shoot and hang people there.” She fired the reporter’s question at him.

“We sure did.” Ben’s reply was breezy, given with a smile of satisfaction. “And we proved that crime does not have to exist in a society.”

“But not to the satisfaction of everyone, General.”

“But to ours, Miss Hickman, and that was all that mattered.”

“Still miss the hustle and bustle of big-city living and reporting, Roanna?” Ben brought them both back to the present.

“Yes, and I’m looking forward to the day when it will return.”

“It will never return, Roanna.” Ben dashed her dreams with a splash of hard reality. “Civilization, as we have known it, is over.”

“I have running chills up and down my spine when you say that, General.”

“It’s truth time, Roanna-and I have spoken the hard truth.”

“But you can’t know that for certain, General. That must be a personal opinion, nothing more.”

“It’s over, Roanna. From this moment on, either learn to adapt or die.”

“I believe I shall continue to cling to my dreams, General.”

Ben’s smile was sad. “Your option, Roanna. But while you’re clinging to them, use the other hand to cling to a gun.”

“Goddamn jungle bunnies fight better than I thought they were capable of,” Sam Hartline remarked to one of his field commanders. “I just didn’t believe the niggers had it in them.”

The men stood on a bluff overlooking the scene of two days of very fierce fighting between Al and Mark’s troops and the IPF and Sam’s mercenaries. The IPF and Hartline’s mercenaries had been unable to punch through the black troops dug in on a far ridge, a small valley between the opposing forces.

“For a fact,” the young mercenary replied. “For a sure fact. The niggers got more guts in them than I figured.”

Hartline suddenly laughed, an idea shaping into solid form in his twisted mind. “I got an idea,” he said. “Oh hell, yes-a damn good one, too. Max!” he called. His X.o. walked over.

“Yeah, Sam?”

“Get on a plane and go back to Wisconsin, with a side trip to Minnesota. I want you to bring me fifty of the best-looking coon gals we got-including Peggy Jones. Then round up about fifty or seventy-five old niggers, the older the better.”

The executive officer looked at Hartline, a curious glint in his eyes. “What have you got cookin’ in that brain of yours, Sam?”

Hartline laughed. “Just a damn good idea, Max-a

sure-fire way to shorten this little action. I’m going to strip the nigger gals buck-assed naked and tie them on the front of the APC’S full of our troops. We’ll mix in the old niggers with our troops coming up withand behind the APC’S. I just don’t believe the coons on that ridge over there will shoot their own kind. I think we can drive right through them and put them all to rout. Yes, indeed. Be fun to see the expression on their monkey faces, too.” He turned to another mere. “Pat, I want you to go back with Max. Round up fifty or so good-lookin’ senoritas and about seventy-five or so old greasers. Take them all over to the west front to Colonel Fechnor; tell him what I’m planning but to wait for my signal, and don’t tell Striganov. He’d nix the plan. We’ll coordinate this. I think, by God, we can shorten this fight considerably.”

“I like it, Sam,” the X.o. said. “Oh yeah, I like the hell out of it.”

“I seen me a spic gal last week,” Pat said. “Must have been about thirteen or fourteen. She looked prime. Little titties just bu.in’ out. Nipple just a-stickin’ out of the raggedy blouse. You mind if I get me a taste of that pussy “fore I send her west?”

“Hell, Pat, I don’t care. I imagine she’s been spayed, don’t you?”

“Probably so. She sure looked old enough to bleed to me.”

“Sure, go ahead. Make her suck your cock before you fuck her. Those little spic gals can suck a cock best I ever seen.”

Staying south of the interstate, using state and county roads, Ben made one final inspection of his

troops on the eve of the battle. They were stretched far too thin. But it was the best Ben could do. Two things his troops were not short on were ammunition and weapons. Stretched out all along the 140 mile battle front were .50-caliber machine guns mixed in with M-60 machine guns. Each squad had two of the big .50’s and all the ammo they could use.

Working around the clock, they had fortified their positions, digging bunkers and sandbagged foxholes; mine fields were carefully laid, using thousands of the deadly Claymores. Mortar pits were dug, sandbagged and camouflaged. Supplies were brought up and cached.

The Rebels had done all any of them knew to do. They were ready. Now came the hardest part: the waiting.

Cecil was commanding a battalion that was dug in Columbia. Ben knew there would be some wicked street fighting there, much of it hand to hand. Ben had tried to talk Cecil out of taking command, but the black man would not be deterred from the job.

“You’re too damned old for this job, Cecil,” Ben told him. “Let a younger man have it and back me up at HQ. I guarantee you, you’ll see all the combat you’ll want to see there.”

“I seem to recall I did a pretty damned good job at this in “Nam,” Cecil responded.

“Goddamn it, Cec, that was almost thirty years ago! Tell me about it, man-I was there too, you know?”

Cecil looked around him, his beret placed properly on his head, like the Green Beret Cecil had been. It was worn unlike Ben’s black beret, which he still wore in Ranger fashion: cocky.

“Ben, some of these kids weren’t even born when you and I did our thing in ‘nam. Damn, Ben. No, they’re going to need a calm head here.”

“A calm gray head,” Ben said sarcastically.

Cecil smiled. “I matured early for my age.”

Ben laughed, knowing he was not going to sway his old friend, and moved on down the line of Rebels.

He received the thumbs-up signal from each squad or platoon or company he passed. They were ready. These men and women nicknamed Raines’s Rebels by the press years back. They were ready for a good fight. They knew the odds were hard against them, knew casualties would be high and that many would die. They knew only too well the price of freedom came high-it never came cheaply.

They were ready to die for freedom. Theirs and anyone else’s that might be threatened.

Ready.

Back at HQ, Ben told Gale, “You will stay with Chase at the hospital. You’re a nurse, and that is where you’ll be needed. And I will not have any static from you about it. Is that clear?”

She smiled sweetly at him. Very sweetly. Too sweetly. “I have already made arrangements to do just that, General, sir. And I didn’t need you to tell me about it. Thanks just the same.”

That night, on the eve of the battle that would, although neither the Russian nor the American knew it, forever split the nation and plunge the ravaged country into a sickening slide toward barbarism, ignorance and tribal law, Ben and Gale engaged in the gentlest and most deeply satisfying love-making of their relationship. And Gale sensed with a woman’s insight on such

matters that she became pregnant.

And she knew she wanted this child more than anything else in the world.

When Ben was asleep (she could never understand how the man could quietly drop off when faced with such a monumental task as that which lay before him) she rose from their blankets to stand some distance away from Ben’s sleeping form, to stand looking up at the cloudless star-filled heavens. She spoke to and asked questions of her god, and seemed satisfied with the silent words that filled her head. As she turned to return to Ben’s side, she was startled to see a figure standing by a huge tree, gazing at her. She looked around her, curious to see if anyone else had noticed the man.

No one had, although the guards were plainly in sight all around the encampment-and that really piqued her curiosity.

Gale walked to the shadowy umbrella created by the huge limbs of the old tree and stood facing the man. She had, she concluded, never seen anything quite like him.

She studied him in silence, as he was silently studying her. “How did you get in this area without being shot?” she asked.

The old man smiled. His smile seemed to light the area around them. “You would not understand if I chose to tell you.”

“Oh yeah?” Gale looked more closely at the old man. He wore robes and sandals and carried a big stick. A staff, the word popped into her brain. His beard was long and very white. He looked older than God. “What do you want?”

The man looked at her more closely; his eyes seemed amused, then sad, or so it appeared to Gale. Finally, he said. “No, you are not the one. But you will help the man in his struggles. That will be seen to. You have my word.”

“What!” Gale reached the conclusion that this guy was not playing with a full deck of cards.

Ben and Ike and Cecil had told her about the many cults that were springing up around the torn nation. She had seen some with her own eyes during her wanderings prior to meeting Ben. This nutso had to be one of them-what else?

“I am known as the Prophet.”

“Swell,” she said dryly. “And I’m Mary. Man, you’d better be careful when you leave here. Someone could shoot you.”

His smile was gentle and knowing, and rather, Gale thought, condescending. “I have no fear of death, child.”

“That’s nice, ‘cause frankly, it scares the hell out of me.”

The old man chuckled, a deep sound from his massive chest. “You have a sense of humor. Good, you’ll need it.” The old man glanced up at the sky, as if he had suddenly received some silent message.

Gale looked up, feeling rather foolish as she did so.

“As wars go,” the old man said, “this one will be small in magnitude. But it will be enormous in its ramifications. What follows will be the beginning.”

“Beginning of what?”

“The beginning, child.”

Gale was now one hundred percent certain the old boy was at least three bricks shy of a load. Best humor him. “Right.”

“The strugglings you will all endure will be, of course, right and just and moral, but they will, I must tell you, appear futile.”

Gale shook her head. Maybe the guy had found some old acid and was tripping the light fantastic in his woolly head. “Hadn’t you best be getting on back to the ward?”

The old man smiled indulgently. “I must now tell you goodbye, child.”

On impulse, she put out her hand to touch his arm, but her hand seemed to freeze in midair. She fought to move her hand. It seemed stuck.

“No,” he said gently. “That is not permitted.”

“Are you the reincarnation of Houdini?”

“I am the reincarnation of no one, child. But I am, I can assure you of that.”

“Ah, eh, you’re what?”

But he was gone.

Gale’s arm fell to her side. She lifted it, looked at it. She shook her head. Looked around her. The old boy was nowhere to be seen.

“It was a dream,” she muttered. “Had to be, I’m dreaming, sleepwalking. Couldn’t be anything else.”

She returned to the warmth of the blankets and the soled and comforting shape of Ben. When the first shell from the IPF exploded at 0600 the next morning, Gale forgot all about the man who called himself the Prophet.

For a time.

CHAPTER TWO

It was an artillery duel for the first two days of the battle, with the combatants never catching sight of each other. For the most part, the infantry troops had little to do except stay alive and maintain their sanity under the almost-constant pounding of the big shells.

For those who had never experienced shelling, it was a frightening, numbing experience. The ground seemed to shake constantly, and it appeared that anyplace one sought in safety was the wrong place.

Both the Rebels and the IPF had to constantly shift the positions of their artillery, with the exception of Ben’s big self-propelled 155’s, which could sit back miles from the front and lob destruction and terror into the IPP’S positions with terrifying pinpoint accuracy. Ben was no gentleman at war; he used chemicals, anti-personnel, high explosive, incendiary, and beehive rounds.

Ben kept his tanks in reserve, carefully concealed and camouflaged, even though the crews and commanders were chafing to get into the fight. Ben

wanted something with which to fall back on when the situation began to deteriorate, as he knew it would. That, he knew, was only a matter of time.

The third, fourth and fifth days were ground troops days, with the infantry troops slugging it out, taking, losing, regaining and losing the same ground a dozen times.

On the sixth day, the IPF attempted to cross the interstate at six locations, sending huge numbers of troops across the concrete in what appeared to be a kamikaze-style rush of bodies.

Five sectors of the Rebels held, but the IPF broke through one line, allowing more troops to pour through and set up positions west, east and south, in the form of an open-ended box. Hector Ramos’s troops were cut off, battling lopsided odds, fighting for their lives.

In western Iowa and central Illinois, the dawning of the new day brought a fresh horror to the men and women of Juan Solis’s and Al Maiden’s troops.

A man’s scream brought Mark Terry on a flat run from his bunker, running hard up the hill to the first line of defense. A man squatted behind sandbags, his face mirroring his horror and revulsion. He seemed unable to speak. He could but point to the valley.

Hartline’s men had been unusually silent for several days, with no attempt to push past their battle lines. There had been only sporadic sniper fire from the west to keep the troops from New Africa alert-a lead reminder that Hartline’s mercs and the IPF had not forgotten them.

The sentry found his voice as he handed Mark binoculars and pointed to the valley. “Nobody could be that low,” he said, his voice choked with anger and frustration.

Mark felt his guts churn and his breakfast fight to lunge from his stomach as he lifted the long-range glasses to his eyes. Like the sentry, he was, for a moment, speechless. He felt the blood rush from his head, and for a moment, thought he would pass out from the sheer horror of the sight in the valley below.

“The dirty bastard!” he finally found his voice.

Al had joined him on the ridge, pulling field glasses to his eyes. “Oh, my God!” he blurted. “Oh, my God, no!”

The IPF and Hartline’s troops were on the march, moving up behind armored personnel carriers. On the front of each APC, strapped to the sloping front of the carrier, a naked woman was positioned, her legs spread wide, ankles and feet secured to the lugs near the base of the Ml13. Her arms were out-flung, wrists tied to the headlight brackets. The machine gun mounted to the front of the APC was only inches from each woman’s head, guaranteeing a savage muzzle-blast burn to the side of the woman’s head.

When the troops on the ridges saw what was coming up behind the APC’S, to a man, they openly, unashamedly wept.

A hundred or so old people were being herded in front of and mixed with the mercenaries and the troops from the IPF.

The elderly black men and women were crying from fear and humiliation as they stumbled along, prodded by the rifle barrels of the mercs and the IPF troops.

The elderly men and women had been stripped naked and were barefooted.

The IPF troops and Hartline’s men were moving ever closer, and so far no shots had been fired from the troops on the ridges. All eyes were fixed unbelievingly on the scene before them. Weapons had been forgotten, hanging loose in their hands.

“They have to be stopped.” Mark was the first to speak, his words hoarse-sounding, pushed from his tight throat. “We have to stop them; there is no one else to do the job.”

Up and down the thin and battle-weary line of defenders of liberty, the troops looked first at each other, and then to Al and Mark for orders. But for many, the decision had already been made in their minds.

From the lead APC, still much too far away to be heard by any of the resistance fighters, Peggy Jones was screaming.

“Fire!” she screamed. “Shoot your guns! For God’s sake-shoot!”

The IPF troops in the APC laughed at her words.

“I can’t fire on those people,” a man said, tears in his eyes. “I can’t shoot, I might hit some of the old people or the women. I can’t do it.”

“Fire!” Mark screamed the command. “Goddamnit, people, they have to be stopped regardless of the cost. Fire, goddamn you!”

The enemy moved closer.

Now the troops on the ridges could hear Peggy’s screaming, very faint, but audible.

“Shoot,” she screamed. “For God’s sake, shoot!”

The machine guns on the front of the APC’S began singing their lethal songs, spitting out lead. One woman’s

hair caught fire from the fierce heat of the muzzle; her screaming was hideous.

“Pick your targets,” Al yelled to a rifle squad. “Shoot around the old people.”

The snipers tried, but the troops in the APC’S were crouched low, and almost impossible to hit. Bullets struck one naked young woman in the stomach; she cried out in pain. Several old people were struck by the lead from the men on the ridges. They fell to the earth, screaming in pain and confusion. A Jeep ran over one; an APC crushed the legs of another. Yet another elderly man tried to grab the rear of a Jeep. He was dragged over the rocky ground for several hundred feet until life and strength left him.

Most of the guns on the high ground fell silent. They could not be blamed for that.

“Fall back!” Mark yelled, knowing his position was nearly hopeless. “First and second companies regroup. First company to the right flank, second company to the left, come in behind them.”

But it was too late; Hartline’s men and the IPF were too close. They had already begun executing an end-around sweep. The defenders on the ridges were cut off.