William W. Johnstone (20 page)

“Thank you, sir. I believe I shall.”

The two Englishmen sat on the ground and sipped their tea.

Dan’s team was located between Big Bar and Helena, waiting for the time to plunge deep into the Trinity wilderness.

The former SAS man stretched out on the cool ground and closed his eyes. “Awaken me in thirty minutes, would you, Carl?”

“Certainly, sir.”

The slug from the XO’s gun caught Jane in the center of the forehead, busting out the back, splattering brains all over the wall. The girl hit the carpet, trembled once, then lay still.

“Oh, my God!” the XO shouted. “I didn’t mean-”

He never got a chance to finish it. Striganov leveled his own pistol and shot the man dead.

The room filled with men and women.

“He went insane,” Striganov said, holstering his weapon. “After all the years we spent together, he turned on me, tried to kill me. Poor Jane.” He shook his head.

The bodies were removed from the room. Striganov repeated his original orders. “Full scale,” he told the officers. “We stand and slug it out with Ben Raines. As men of honor should do. Professionals. Move out.”

“Sir!” Carl’s voice brought Dan wide awake.

Dan glanced at his watch. “Carl, I’ve just closed my eyes.”

“The entire northern line of IPF troops are moving forward, sir.”

“Are you serious, Carl?”

Carl handed Dan his binoculars. “Look, sir.”

Dan looked, then paled slightly as the lenses picked up the northern movement of a couple of thousand men in combat gear, half-tracks and tanks and motorized artillery moving behind them.

“Lady Di’s bustle,” Dan muttered. “Would you take a look at that.”

Carl frowned at this disrespect toward royalty.

Dan waved his second-in-command over to his side. “Order all the lads and lassies to hunt a hole and to keep their heads down. Pick areas where the foot troops and the vehicles are not likely to go. Move!”

Dan smiled at Carl. “Come on, Carl. We’ve got to get to a radio.”

Momentarily safe in timber on a small rise, Dan raised Ben’s radio operator. “Get General Raines right now!” he said.

Ben listened, disbelief clouding his features. But he knew Dan too well. If the Englishman said IPF troops were advancing en masse, they were. “How many, Dan?”

“At least three battalions, sir. With tanks and artillery with them.”

Ben could hear the rumble of tanks and motorized artillery over the air, through the miles that separated them. “Jesus, Dan! They must be right on top of you.”

“Close enough to permit me the indignity of smelling them,” Dan said.

Ben grinned at the Englishman’s calmness. “I don’t know why Striganov is doing this, but the odds have suddenly swung in our favor. Dan, I’ve ordered the battalion north of you down. You swing in behind the IPF troops. Hit them hard, Dan.”

“Yes, sir.” Dan clicked off.

Ben radioed Ike, bringing him up to date. Ike laughed. “And a good time is gonna be had by all. Good luck, Ben.”

“Same to you, buddy. Look at your watch, Ike.”

“Twelve straight up, Ben.”

“Go!”

Ike turned to his XO. “Drop the little birdies down the tubes.”

Ben punched the talk button on his walkie-talkie. “Hit ‘em hard!”

The rockets
thunked
out of the tubes.

Two hundred miles to the north, firefrag grenades were tossed onto the roof.

The attack was on.

“We are meeting no resistance,” the commander of the IPF’s northernmost troops radioed back to General Striganov. “We have not even
seen
the enemy.”

“Fool!” Striganov screamed into the mike. “Of course the Rebels are there. Where else
could
they be?”

All in your crazied mind, the grizzled major thought, but did not vocalize. He had heard the XO had been killed by Georgi. That something terrible had happened. That the young girl, Jane, was dead. That the XO went insane and tried to kill Georgi. That Georgi had, all that morning, ranted and raved like a …

Like a …

Madman!

From his APC, the major made up his mind. “Halt advance!” he ordered through his headset.

The thinly spread column ground to a halt.

The foot soldiers dropped to the ground, thankful for the respite, however brief.

Less than a thousand yards away, a mortar team from Dan’s command had leveled the bubble on the tube. His team had panted and sweated and cussed the 115-pound 81mm mortar through and over terrain that would have made a moose stagger.

Now the cammie-painted faces, streaked with dusty sweat, grinned. Now it would be worth it all.

“At the max we’re gonna have time for three rounds before that Russian can react and move,” the Rebel said. His team was the best in the Rebel army, able to get off one round every 3.05 seconds. “HE,” he ordered, “followed by WP, then a frag round, then a WP. Do it.”

It was luck, with more than a tad of skill. The first round landed ten feet from the APC. It lifted the armored personnel carrier off the ground and dumped it wrong side up. The second round landed on top of the APC, sending bits and pieces of seared and smoking metal and fried flesh all over the silence-shattered landscape.

There were three battalions of IPF troops spread over a ninety-mile stretch. Two full platoons of IPF infantry were close to the APC when the attack started. The IPF troops had no way of knowing how large a force was attacking them. Or how small a force.

Had they known that only a handful of Rebels stood between them and victory, they would have taken the initiative and easily overrun the Rebel’s position.

Instead they panicked and ran.

The leading edge of the battalion of Raines’s Rebels, moving swiftly from the north, had barreled down existing highways, the battalion split, one section coming down Highway 96, the other column rolling south on Highway 3. That column turned west at Weaverville and smashed through to Junction City, catching the IPF forces by surprise in a flanking movement.

They left the landscape littered with dead and dying members of the IPF.

The westernmost column of Rebels split up at Hoopa, taking a secondary highway and meeting the IPF troops just north of Highway 299.

Using sappers, they blew the bridge over the Redwood River and blocked Highway 299, trapping several platoons of IPF troops. The IPF troops could do nothing except retreat back to the south.

Leaving only a small force of heavily armed and well-dug-in Rebels north of the Redwood, the remainder of the motorized column headed east on 299.

With tanks spearheading, the Rebels blasted and smashed through the thin lines of already confused and demoralized IPF troops; those IPF troops now leaderless and in a panic.

The IPF troops, neither trained nor skilled in guerrilla warfare, found that whatever direction they turned, they faced some new hideousness from the Rebels.

Those bastards and bitches that made up Ben Raines’s Rebel army just simply did not play the game of warfare fairly.

And what in God’s name—God’s name?—were children doing in war?

God’s name?

That thought seared through the minds of many IPF troops as they ran in panic, searching for someone to tell them what to do.

But there was no one.

So the IPF ran and sweated and died.

Ike’s team knocked out the small force of IPF personnel and stormed across the battle lines. All up and down Highway 20, from Fort Bragg on the coast to Nice, the Rebels surged across the line and into IPF territory.

Ike stepped around a corner and came face to face with a young Russian. Lifting his submachine gun, Ike sent the Russian into the arms of that shrouded bony gentlemen.

Swinging his weapon, on full auto, Ike cleared the street of all living things and waved his team forward, ejecting the empty clip and slapping home a full, fresh one.

He grabbed his radio operator and told him to get Ben on the horn.

“Ben! I’m going to skirt the heavy timber and ram up the coast on 101. Can you pull Cecil’s bunch in?”

“Affirmative,” Ben radioed back, the sounds of gunfire and explosives loud in Ike’s ears through the headset. “Pull all your civilian fighters up from the valley and spread them along Highway 20. That’ll close off the south end of the box. I’ll have Cecil’s gang spread along the edge of the wilderness, closing off the eastern escape hole. I’ll put Dan in charge of everything up north and we’ll start the squeeze. You copy this?”

“Ten-four, Ben. Out.”

“I copy your transmission, General,” Dan radioed in. “Carrying out orders.”

“Ten-four, Dan.”

“I’m moving now, Ben,” Cecil radioed. “We’ll plug it up from this end.”

“Go!” Ben spoke into the mike. “Go, Go, Go!”

“Now I see why you wanted out,” a mercenary said to Sam Hartline.

The men sat monitoring a radio. They could not understand any of the Rebel transmissions—they were all scrambled—but they could understand the frantic radio messages from IPF.

“Yeah,” Sam said. “Striganov flipped out. I’ve been watching him over the months; especially the last few months. I could see it coming. Striganov is finished. Raines waited him out and he’s going to win.” He reached over and flipped off the radio. “Fuck him!” Sam said. “Khamsin may be a goddamned wog, but at least he’s stable.”

“But can he be trusted?”

“No,” Sam said, then smiled. “But then, neither can I.”

They all got a good laugh over that.

“How about the kid your patrol just captured? What’s his name?”

“Rich is all I know. I think he’s a fag.”

“The girls got away?”

“Every one of them. One of my boys said one young chick had an ass and a set of tits you wouldn’t believe. But looked to be just a kid.”

“Shame,” Hartline said. “Good-looking, young, tight pussy is getting hard to find. Bring the kid in.”

Hartline watched as Rich was shoved into the room. He could go either way, Hartline thought. Just a little push and he’s queer all the way.

“Has he been searched?”

“All the way, Sam.”

“He’s clean?”

“Right.”

“You guys leave us alone. I wanna talk to Rich.”

Sam and the boy were alone. Rich refused to meet Sam’s knowing eyes.”

“Get naked, boy,” Sam told him.

Rich stripped and stood before Sam. He had a slight erection.

“I thought so,” Sam said. He unzipped his trousers and exposed himself. “You ever seen a cock this big?”

Rich shook his head.

“Come here, boy. You give me some good head.

And then you and me are goin’ to have a little chat. Aren’t we, Rich?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Come here, boy. Let’s get to know each other.”

Ben called a halt to it at five o’clock. His Rebels had the IPF on the run, and it was a near rout.

Ike and his people had advanced more than sixty miles up Highway 101. With the IPF on the run, Ben’s forces had driven all the way through the wilderness area and linked up with Ike’s troops at what remained of a town called Cummings, about thirty miles from the coast. Cecil and his troops had begun the dangerous job of mopping up behind Ben. Dan Gray and his troops had driven down and retaken towns all the way down to Highway 36. His people had taken two of Striganov’s research centers.

“How do they look?” Ben had radioed.

“Disgusting. Sickening,” he was told. “What do you want done with the IPF medical people we captured?”

Ben’s first thought was to shoot them. Then he realized that they might best be kept alive. They were the ones who had done this to the humans they’d captured. He wanted to talk with them; see what kind of people would do—whatever it was they had done—to another human being.

“Keep them alive,” he ordered. “I want to talk to them.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What do the … those experimented upon look like?”

“It’s … they’re babies, sir. The doctors told us they were perfecting a worker race. They aren’t human, but they aren’t animal, either. Sir, what are we going to do with them?”

“I don’t know, son. I just don’t know.”

“Sir?” Dan’s voice broke out of the speaker.

“Go ahead, Dan.”

“The woods-children tell me the underground people will take the … ah, babies. Care for them. Raise them.”

Ike sat looking at Ben and listening, sucking on a pipestem. When Ben looked at him, Ike lifted his shoulders in a “don’t ask
me”
gesture.

“You’re a lot of help,” Ben good-naturedly bitched at him.

“Beg pardon, sir?” Dan spoke.

“Not you, Dan. Ike.”

“Oh, yes, quite. Fatso.”

Ike almost swallowed the pipestem.

Ben signed off quickly.

Vasily Lvov had ordered the loading of those patients—so-called—and the babies from the two medical centers close to Striganov’s command post.

Then he went to see the general.

“It’s over now, Georgi,” the scientist said softly but bluntly.

“No,” Striganov said. “I shall defeat Ben Raines.”

“Sometime in the future, I am certain of that,” Lvov said. “But not now. Georgi, we only have two full battalions left us.”

Striganov looked at the doctor, inner pain visible in his pale eyes. “Two?”

“Two.”

“But I had eight full battalions, Vasily. And two in reserve.”

“Yes, I know. And it’s very doubtful Raines’s Rebels destroyed them all. But they are in a panic; a rout. When we get settled, they’ll join us. Just like before. Remember, Georgi?”

Striganov sighed. Yes, he thought. Just like before, when Ben Raines and his Rebels slapped us down to our knees.

Goddamn
the man!

God?

Then it came to General Georgi Striganov. My old friend was right. I am sick. Mentally sick. “Vasily?”

“Yes, General. I am here.”

“Where will we go?”

“Canada.”

“You’ve thought much on this.” It was not phrased as a question.

“Yes, General. I have that.”

“Vasily, is Ben Raines a god?”

“I … I don’t know, Georgi. I rather doubt it. But I can’t be sure. Do you believe in God, Georgi?”