William W. Johnstone (11 page)

And it almost broke Ben’s heart.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Thank you, but
no!”
he said flatly.

Ben and Ike managed to contain their laughter, both of them knowing what Dan was thinking. Dan had lost his cool. Ben’s eyes found a little girl, standing by herself, apart from the other children. Her carbine was almost as tall as she was. But he had absolutely no doubt that she could, and had, used it. And used it expertly, too.

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

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

But he knew.

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

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

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

“Call me Ben.”

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

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

She shook her head, not replying.

“What is your name, girl?”

“Lora.”

“All right, Lora. How old are you?” “I … think I have eleven years.” Jesus God! Ben thought. Eleven years old and a warrior. “Your parents?” She shook her head. “Brothers, sisters?”

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

“Lora, how would you like a job?”

“A job? But I have a job.”

“What?”

“Fighting for you.”

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

“I don’t know what that means.”

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

“Yes, General.”

“Call me Ben.”

She shook her head.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You might,” Lora said.

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

“You still got that candy bar?” Lora asked. “No,” Dan said, ice in his voice. “I ate it.” “Good,” the girl replied. “Bad for your teeth anyway.”

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

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

Dan walked away, muttering.

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

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

“My new aide. Lora, this is Sylvia.”

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

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

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

Lora had no idea what she was talking about.

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

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

Cecil walked up, catching the last part of it.

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

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

Sylvia walked away, shaking her head, leading Lora off to a bath and a change of clothing. “Men!” she said. “They are the strangest things.”

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

But then, what do gods look like?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Have you heard any of them?”

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

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

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

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

“How interesting,” Hartline said, totally uninterested.

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

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

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

“Jesus God! Raines has maybe, at the most, five thousand Rebels, and that’s stretching it. And he’s been kicking our ass every time we meet.”

“Don’t remind me. Besides, all that is about to change. I think Raines is rapidly becoming a secondary matter. I want joint teams of IPF recon and men from your command sent east. As soon as possible. I want this Colonel Khamsin checked out. They will have to go in by vehicle. Since Raines seems to have effectively grounded what remains of our air force.”

“You’ve reached that conclusion, too?”

“Yes. I tried this morning to reach our people at Redding and Red Bluff. More unintelligible garble.” He sighed. “Well, we fell for it for a time. And now we’re paying for our folly. Dearly. I don’t know how many people we’ve lost. But it will not happen again. We move against the Big Lake Rebels in two days, Sam. Get your people ready and in place.”

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

Therefore, it must not fail.

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

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

“Here’s your newest aide, General.”

Ben smiled at the woman and the girl. “Good afternoon, ladies.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh?”

“Yes, sir. I killed him.”

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

“Tryin’ to rape me.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She shuddered as she recalled that particular horror. “Only too well.” “Well, on that happy note, let’s have some lunch.”

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

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

There had been pockets of resistance, but those were few and very ineffective against the overwhelming numbers of the IPA. Only a few Americans had escaped, and those headed straight for Ben Raines’s Base Camp One in north Georgia, bringing with them whatever they could hurriedly grab and carry on the run. And they brought horror stories. Stories of rape and torture and murder.

Terrorism in the twenty-first century.

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

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

“Everybody ready?” Ben radioed to his commanders.

Everyone was in position and ready to go.

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

They waited.

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

They found nothing.

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

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

Advance cautiously, came the order.

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

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