Ambush in the Ashes (22 page)

“Refugees coming out of the brush by the droves now,” Cooper called from the flap of the tent. “Several hundred of them.”

Ben again walked to the open flap of the squad tent and looked out into the rainy afternoon. Cooper was sure right about the numbers of people: hundreds of them, probably about a third of them children.

Ben turned away from the open flap, then hesitated for a couple of heartbeats before looking back. Something had caught his eyes, something that aroused suspicion in his mind. But what? Ben looked more closely. He could see nothing in the knot of ragged people that would present a danger.

The knot of ragged people.

The knot of ragged people … that thought nagged at him. Yes, that was it. Why were they all so bunched up? He’d never seen starving, sick people so tightly bunched.

“Something is wrong here, Coop,” Ben said. “I don’t

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really know what it is, but something is very wrong about that crowd of people.”

“They sure are bunched up tight, boss,” Beth said, peering around Ben from inside the tent.

Corrie had heard the exchange and was alerting the company.

To the untrained eye, it would appear that nothing was happening within the compound. But plenty was happening. Tanks were slowly swinging their turrets and gunners were taking their places, manning .50 and 7.62 machine guns, inside and out of the massive MBTs. Rebels were quietly pulling back bolts on their weapons, chambering rounds. Cooks were laying aside large spoons and ladles, removing huge pots from the fire, and moving closer to their weapons.

“If my bread burns, I’m gonna be pissed,” one cook mumbled irritably.

“Give that stew another stir or two,” another cook called from across the mess tent. “I don’t want it sticking.”

Ben had cleaned his M-14 and put it away, back into its hard-shell case. Anna had seen what was going on and slipped in the back flap of the tent. She handed her adopted father his CAR and a canvas magazine pouch.

“This tent is likely to be shot all to pieces,” Ben said. “Everybody back out of here and head for good cover. I’m pretty sure the center of that knot of refugees is filled with guerrillas.”

“Gonna be a lot of dead civilians,” Cooper muttered.

“I hate people who use innocents for cover,” Anna mumbled darkly. “They are sorry excuses for human beings.”

“I agree, baby,” Ben said. “Now get your butt out the back of this tent. Move!”

Ben and team exited out the back and circled around,

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William W. Johnstone

away from the border crossing. They took cover in a ditch that was half filled with water.

“Shit!” Jersey said, bellying down in the muck and the water.

“You could always come live with me, my pretty little horned toad,” Cooper said. “And we could retire from the army and raise little Indians.”

“Horned toad!” Jersey exclaimed. “I can’t believe you called me a horned toad. \bu have sunk to a new low. Cooper, have you ever seen a horned toad?”

“Can’t say that I have.”

“Come to think of it, you remind me of one.”

“Handsome devils, aren’t they?”

Jersey made a gagging sound and dropped the subject. Cooper just could not be insulted.

The refugees had crossed the border and were still all bunched up. The Rebels at the crossing were herding them toward the MASH tents. But the MASH tents had been evaced of all medical personnel and those civilians who had been lined up had been pushed aside, the Rebels getting them out of harm’s way as best they could.

“Combat boots,” Anna remarked from her position next to Ben. “I can see some of those in the center of the refugees are wearing combat boots.”

“We can’t do a damn thing until they break from the civilians and open the fight,” Beth bitched.

“Steady,” Ben cautioned in a low voice. “They’ve got about fifty or so yards to go before they can do anything. If they broke free now, the damage they could do to us would be minimal.”

“It’s gotta be a suicide team,” Cooper said. “Nothing else makes any sense.”

“I have to agree with Cooper,” Jersey said. “Will wonders never cease.”

“They’re all clear of the old checkpoint now,” Corrie

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said. “They’ll be near the center of the compound in a few seconds.”

Ben could see those fifty or so guerrillas-perhaps more than that-in the center of the frightened refugees, now pushing them into a faster pace. One woman carrying an obviously starving child fell and those behind her moved to one side to keep from stepping on the woman.

Suddenly there was a burst of shouting from the center of the refugees and about seventy-five men leaped from the now disorganized groups and began running in all directions, frantically pulling weapons and grenades from under their ragged coats and shirts.

The men and women and children who made up the refugees began screaming in fear and shouting in their own tongues and running in all directions, preventing the Rebels from opening up with any type of effective fire.

“Select fire and pick your targets carefully!” Ben shouted, pulling himself up onto one knee in the muddy ditch. “Watch for human bombs. This is a suicide run.”

Anna reached up and grabbed hold of Ben’s web belt and pulled him back down into the cover of the ditch. “That wasn’t too smart, General Ben,” she chided him. “You trying to get shot up so you can go back home?”

Ben glanced at the young woman and smiled. “Thank you, Anna. I have been properly chastised.”

“Look out!” Corrieyelled, just a second before a half-dozen guerrillas jumped into the ditch.

One landed beside Ben and Ben clubbed him with his CAR. The clubbing seemed to have no effect on the man. The guerrilla’s eyes were wild-looking. Ben jammed the muzzle of the CAR into the man’s open mouth and pulled the trigger, blowing out the back of the man’s head and splattering Jersey and Cooper with blood and brain and bits of bone.

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Another guerrilla had wrestled Anna down into the ditch and was trying to drown her in the foot or so of water. The man suddenly screamed and lost his grip on her throat, both hands going to his belly. He arched backward and Ben could see the upward rip in his belly where Anna had used her razor-sharp knife to get the man off her.

In the split second Ben observed all this, Anna came sputtering to her knees in the muddy water, the obscenities flying from her mouth. “I lost my fucking weapon!” she shouted, and began groping in the water for her CAR.

Ben did not have time to see if she located the weapon. Another guerrilla jumped on his back and rode him down. Ben could not understand why the men were not using their weapons, but didn’t have time to contemplate that question. He reached up and grabbed the man’s neck and twisted and jerked, throwing the infiltrator off him.

Corrie turned at just that second and shot the guerrilla fighter in the head with her 9mm. Things had gotten so close-in pistols were more practical than rifles.

Somewhere in the circle that made up the Rebel compound there was a terrific ground-rattling explosion and seconds later a bloody part of a man’s shin and ankle and booted foot landed near the edge of the ditch. One of the guerrillas, rigged as a human bomb, had set himself off. Parts of the man had dropped all over the compound. Ben did not have time to assess the damage done, if any, but judging from the sound of the explosion, the man must have had a massive amount of explosive wired to his body.

Ben had pulled his 9mm from leather and holding his CAR in his left hand, not wanting to lose it in the muddy waters of the ditch, was picking close-in targets and pouring the lead to them. He did not have to look far for the

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enemy, for they were all around him, with more guerrillas pouring out of the brush all around the compound.

Those who had been hidden in the brush, probably in tunnels, didn’t get very far, for they were running smack into claymore kill zones, the deadly anti-personnel mines set up all around the compound. Those lucky enough to escape the claymores were running into machine-gun fire from Rebel posts set along the outer defense perimeter. But enough guerrillas were making it through.

“It’s gonna get nasty,” Ben panted the words.

“It’s done got nasty, boss!” Cooper yelled, pulling himself off a dead guerrilla he had killed with a knife.

“Enemy troops approaching from the road!” Corrie yelled. Her headset was still working, although it was twisted and the microphone dangling. “I can hear but can’t communicate,” she added.

There was no time for Ben to worry about who might be coming up or down the road, for half a dozen guerrillas were making a suicide run toward the ditch, one of them very bulky around the chest and waist. Ben suspected the man had wrapped explosives around himself. Even at a distance of many yards, Ben could tell the man was hopped up on something: a powerful local brew or some sort of dope to give him courage. Didn’t matter which, he was running straight for Ben and his team.

Ben leveled the 9mm and started putting rounds into the running man. Ben put round after round into the bomber, but the slugs didn’t seem to faze him. Finally one of the slugs must have hit the detonator, for the last thing Ben would remember for a long time was a tremendous flash of light.

Then …

Nothing.

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Ben awakened with a terrible headache. Throbbing. Some little man was inside his noggin beating on a bass drum. Ben opened his eyes. He was lying on the ground, and the ground was wet. Come to think of it, Ben was wet all over. Took him awhile to understand it was raining. Ben tried to sit up and when he did, his head felt like it weighed a ton and would fall off his shoulders at any moment. He did not try to get up; just sat on the wet ground and let the rain pound on him for a few more minutes.

During that time he looked around him. He did not know where he was. And that was not all. He did not know who he was.

An,d that frightened him.

Then memory started returning to him in tiny fragments, snatches of sudden remembrance, bursts of recollection. The fight at the border. Infiltrators among the scared and sick and starving refugees.

Ben suddenly was very thirsty. He tilted his head back just a bit-he didn’t want it to fall off-and swallowed some of the rain, a few drops at a time. Tasted good.

Then he remembered he was wearing a canteen. He felt for his canteen. Gone. So was his web belt and with it, his pistol and knife. He reached up and felt of his head. His helmet was gone and there was a cut, a long

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gash really, running down the side of his head from the top to just above his left ear. Must have been a hell of a piece of shrapnel that hit him, traveling at about nine hundred or so miles per hour, give or take a few hundred mph.

He looked around him. No familiar landmarks. He was nowhere near the border and the compound.

The compound. It must have been overrun. But that would have taken one hell of a large force. So … knowing that because of the monsoonal rains and lack of bases for fuel and maintenance, Ben had no eyes in the sky to pick up on troop movement, Bruno moved his guerrilla forces up to the border, scattered them all around, probably in tunnels, and waited.

Ben looked down at his feet. At least he still had his boots. But what the hell happened to his web belt, his battle harness? He didn’t know; might never know. He looked at his watch. The date couldn’t be right. He blinked, looked at it again. Almost an entire day and night had passed. Impossible. But there it was. Almost to the hour.

He’d been out for twenty-four hours.

Ben was suddenly hungry. Ravenous.

He felt in his right-side cargo pocket, found a candy bar and ate several bites. Then he got immediately sick and puked it up.

Concussion, he thought. And a bad one. Or maybe his stomach just rejected the richness of the chocolate.

He struggled to his feet and swayed for a moment. He fought back the feeling and spread his feet. The swaying stopped. Ben’s sense of direction had always been superb and that much was still working … he was reasonably certain of that. He felt sure the border was … that way, he concluded, turning and facing the west. He started walking, very slowly, still slightly unsteady on his feet.

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A hundred yards on and he saw the first of what he knew in his heart would be many, many dead. It was a Rebel sergeant who had been with Ben for several years. Ben carefully knelt down and first removed the man’s dog tags, sticking them in his pocket. Then he took the sergeant’s web belt, which still had a holstered 9-mm pistol hooked to it and two full magazines for the pistol, two canteens, a small first-aid kit, and a sheath knife. He went through the man’s pockets and found two survival bars, a compass, and a small waterproof container of matches.

Ben stowed them in his cargo pockets and walked on. There was nothing he could do for the man.

After walking for about another three hundred yards, he rested for ten minutes, then forced himself to move for another several hundred yards. During his second rest stop, he noticed a body in a depression in the earth about fifty feet away. Animals had been eating on it. He wondered if there were hyenas around? He had no desire to tangle with a pack of hyenas. Ben walked over to the body. Another Rebel. Ben knelt down and forced himself to remove the battle harness from the man. He tried to keep from looking at what was left of the man’s face. Birds had pecked his eyes out and something had eaten out the softness of throat.

Ben didn’t know the man’s name, but he had been a medic and still had his first-aid kit with him, the strap looped over one shoulder. Ben took that and the man’s holstered pistol and spare magazines. The medic had two ration packs in a rucksack. Ben slung the rucksack and removed the man’s dog tags. Now he had two pistols, four canteens, a well-stocked first-aid kit, and something to eat. He pulled the man’s poncho from him and then moved away from the body and walked on for about a hundred yards until he found some thick brush. He took a stick and poked around under the brush,