William W. Johnstone (24 page)

“I’m sure,” the ragged little boy said. “I’ve been in there four, five times begging for food. I seen her twice.”

“And the last time was? …” Judy asked.

“Yesterday. I flashed her a signal and she winked at me. She was walkin’ kinda funny, though.”

The girls exchanged knowing glances, shaking their heads in disgust.

The small boy picked up on the exchange. “You all don’t have to talk around me. I been where she is. I know why she’s walkin’ that way.”

Sandra put an arm around the boy’s shoulders. So thin. “What’s your name, Scooter?” she asked. “I mean, besides Scooter.”

“I don’t know no other name. I been called Scooter all my life.”

“How many years do you have?”

“Nine or ten, I think. But I really don’t know. I been travelin ever since I can remember.”

“No blood kin?” Judy asked.

“Not that I know of,” the ragged boy replied.

“Can you shoot that pistol you’re carryin’ ?” Kim asked, looking at the.22 caliber revolver belted around Scooter’s waist.

“I sure can. Some grownups tried to bugger me last month. I kilt two of ‘em ‘fore the others run off.”

“You wanna stay with us?” Sandra asked.

“That’d be nice,” Scooter said, looking up at the taller person. “We gonna get your friend away from Hartline?”

“Yes. And it’s gonna be dangerous doing it.”

The boy shrugged. “Livin’ day to day is dangerous. That ain’t nothin’ new. Do I get to meet Ben Raines?”

“Probably. Soon as we get Lisa outta there.” Kim looked at the compound below the heavily timbered knoll where they were hidden.

“I gotta tell you all something,” Scooter said. “Hartline is ten times worse than the Russian. The Russian was bad enough. But Hartline will grab you and torture you just for fun. I heard some of his men talkin’ one time. They said Sam Hartline is crazy. I believe it. I seen what he done to a friend of mine a few months back. Right before Ben Raines shot him up.”

“A girl?” Judy asked softly.

“You know it,” Scooter replied. “When he got done with her, he just throwed her out in the road.” He pointed. “Right down there. Come dark, I dragged her back in the timber and tried to care for her. Me and the underground people. We couldn’t do nothin’ for her. She bled to death. She was about my age, but real little. Pretty. Hartline split her open. You know what I mean?”

The girls knew.

“If you want your friend to live,” Scooter continued, “we gotta get her out of there. Hartline will do it to her ever’ way he can, then he’ll give her to his men. I know some girls, and one boy, who went crazy after some time down there. You know what them men done to them after that?” The girls waited.

“They used ‘em for target practice. It was awful.”

Judy was drawing the compound area on a dirty piece of paper. It was an amazingly accurate drawing, right down to the last detail.

“You got it?” Sandra asked.

“I got it.”

“Let’s get back to the others. We gotta plan this out real good.”

Sam Hartline looked at the sobbing girl on the bed, the rumpled sheets stained with sweat and blood. He had beaten her practically unconscious but still she would not voluntarily submit to him.

He had to fight her every step of the way. Not that that was very difficult—it wasn’t. It was just becoming annoying.

Sam Hartline could never—even back when the world was whole, understand why women thought so much of their pussy. Hell, it was there for screwing; what was the big deal?

He looked at the sobbing girl. “I’ve about had you, bitch,” he snarled at Lisa. “Couple more days, if you don’t shape up, I’m gonna toss you out that goddamn door and let my boys have you. Can’t you understand that I
like
you?”

Lisa lifted her tear-stained face.
“Like
me? If you liked me, you wouldn’t hurt me. Can’t you be tender sometimes?”

Hartline’s great booming laughter filled the room.

“You
hurt
me!”

“What the hell’s that got to do with the price of eggs, baby?” He stood naked before her. “Hell, if I hadn’t liked fighting so much, I could have been a porn star. Made millions.”

“What’s a porn star?” she asked.

Hartline looked at her in disgust. “Aw, shit!” He turned and dressed, then slammed the door on his way out.

Lisa painfully rose from the bed and walked to the bathroom, running a tub of hot water. Easing her way into the soothing and calming liquid, she heard the door open and close. That would be Rich. He would sit on the commode seat and smirk at her.

But she could put up with Rich. She didn’t hate him; she just felt sorry for him.

Ben slipped out of his blankets and looked at the horizon. Just breaking dawn. For the first time, he allowed his thoughts to return to Sylvia.

Of all the things in this world—or what was left of this world, he amended that—he could not abide a traitor.

He could tolerate many things, but never that.

Ben’s radio people had heard from one recon team sent east to Khamsin’s borders. Sylvia’s betrayal had cost one team their lives.

One entire squad gone. Loyal lives snuffed out; people who were willing to lay down their lives for freedom.

Gone. Because of a traitor. He pushed the woman from his thoughts. He would not think of her again. He hoped.

James Riverson came to his side. “Recon reports finding a band of outlaws about ten miles from here, Ben.”

“Get the people up, James. Let’s go to work.”

The small band of outlaws knew what hit them, of course. There was little doubt in their minds about that. But they didn’t have much time to think about it.

Ben hit them with a fury he had not experienced in years. And he knew what had brought it on. He had finally reached the limit of his understanding. He was weary of people who wanted something for nothing. Tired of ignorance and people who wore that un-enlightenment as a badge of honor. He was fed up with those who demanded a life of terrorism and barbarism. Insisted upon it. Ben was reaching back to the days of the Tri-States; bringing it the forefront.

And he knew, now, the Tri-States’ philosophy would rise again. He realized that his days of wandering, alone, throughout the ashes of what had been, were over. Here was where he was needed, and so here was where he would have to stay.

Leading the fight as long as there was breath left in his body.

A dirty, unshaven, wild-eyed outlaw made the mistake of trying to escape by overrunning Ben’s position surrounding the camp.

Ben rose from his concealment and laid his Thompson on the ground. Ben felt the years leave him, a new youthfulness fill him. A man who for years had done hard exercise after he realized he could no longer take his body for granted, Ben smiled as the outlaw slid to a halt.

Ben smiled at the unarmed outlaw. He lifted his fists. He knew then how he was going to take out Sam Hartline.

With his bare hands.

“I’ll kill you!” the outlaw panted.

“So come on, then,” Ben challenged him.

The outlaw lunged at Ben, both fists swinging. Ben tripped him, sending the outlaw sprawling on the dirt. Ben kicked him in the side and the outlaw yelped in pain. Ben’s training would have had him kick the outlaw in the head, shattering the skull and ending it, but Ben wanted this fight to last a while longer.

Ben stepped back, his hands open in the martial arts fashion. “Is that the best you can do?”

The outlaw roared off the ground, attempting to butt Ben in the stomach with his head and grab him in a bear hug. Ben sidestepped and kicked the outlaw on the knee with his boot. The outlaw, dressed in leather and chains, screamed in pain and fell to the earth, both hands holding his knee.

Ben kicked him in the mouth. The outlaw’s head snapped back as he slumped to the ground, almost unconscious.

Ben walked to him and took out his canteen, emptying the contents on the outlaw’s head. “Get up, you bastard!”

The outlaw grabbed Ben’s leg and jerked, putting Ben on the ground. Ben rolled over and over, coming up some ten yards from the outlaw, who was still trying to get to his feet and shake the feathers out of his foggy, pain-racked brain.

Screaming his hate and rage, the outlaw charged Ben. Balling his hands into fists, Ben met him head-on and toe-to-toe. Ben staggered the heavyset man with a chopping right to the jaw then followed that with a short left hook—that glazed the outlaw’s eyes. Ben hit the man in the center of his face with a vicious right that flattened the outlaw’s nose and sent blood flying.

Ben laughed at the man.

Dimly Ben could hear James Riverson’s voice. “Let them alone,” the sergeant major ordered. “The general’s gotta do it his way.”

“Why?” a Rebel questioned.

“Because he’s Ben Raines, that’s why,” was James’s reply.

Ben hammered at the man’s stomach with hard fists, punishing the man. Blood from the outlaw’s mouth sprayed Ben.

“Gimme a break,” the thug panted.

“All right,” Ben said, then broke the outlaw’s neck with a hard karate chop.

The outlaw fell to the ground, dying. He looked up at Ben through confused eyes. He seemed to want to say something. But before he could, death took him. And that surprised Ben, for he had seen lots of people live a long time with a broken neck. Then he saw the pink froth leak from the outlaw’s mouth. Either he had ruptured the man’s stomach—which wasn’t unlikely—or he had shattered a rib and the rib had punctured a lung. Or nicked the heart.

Ben took several deep breaths. “Report,” he said.

“The outlaw camp is wiped out. We suffered two wounded. No dead,” James reported. “How do you feel, General?”

Somewhere down the line, Ben had lost his black beret. He took out a cammie bandana and wiped the sweat from his face, then tied the bandana around his head, leaving the ends dangling. “Good,” Ben said.

James smiled. “Now you look like Rambo, Ben.”

“Who the hell is Rambo?” a Rebel asked.

Ben and his Rebels made a wide circle, at one point moving deep into Wyoming after the outlaws. The Rebels found a half-dozen outlaw camps, destroying them, killing perhaps, in their two-week pursuit, an additional three hundred outlaws, not counting the several hundred killed in the botched ambush on the interstate.

They hammered straight across the center of what had once been known as Nevada. When they reached the base camp in Redding, Ben was met by a grim-faced Ike.

Ike brought Ben up to date. Quickly. “This goddamned Khamsin’s grabbed Nina. Sent me a message, through Hartline. Hartline found it amusing.”

“I just bet he did,” Ben said. “Ike, can you push aside your emotions as the highly trained SEAL you are?”

Ike stiffened. “You know damn well I can, Ben.” “You’ll be doing what you were trained to do, years ago, Ike. Fighting a dirty little guerrilla war with the only supplies that you can carry with you.”

“I know, Ben.”

“And you know that Nina may be long dead?”

“I know.”

“How many personnel you want?”

“Two platoons,” Ike said quickly.

“You’ve thought this out carefully?”

“Many, many hours.”

“All right, Ike. Call Base Camp One and get as many planes out here as you think you’ll need to transport your people east. They’ll leave immediately. Either way it goes, Ike, stay out there. Start helping train resistance fighters and put the needle into Khamsin. We’ll never be strong enough to take him head to head, so we’re going to have to hit and run. Might as well get used to it.”

“Sam Hartline?”

“I’ll take care of Sam Hartline. And I know just how I’ll do it. I’ve given it much thought. I know how to pull the arrogant son of a bitch out of his fortress.”

Ike cocked his head to one side. “How, Ben?”

“We’re going to have a funeral, ol’ buddy. With lots of weeping and wailing and moaning and slow walking and sad singing.”

“A
funeral?
Whose?”

Ben smiled. “Mine.”

The transport planes roared in and settled down on the runways late the next day. The pilots slept for a few hours, then took off again in the dead of night, carrying Ike and his hand-picked teams.

Ben made himself comfortable inside his command post and stayed put. He ordered Dr. Chase and his people to start scurrying back and forth between the hospital and Ben’s command post.

Cryptic messages began filling the air between the base camp and the outposts now manned by Rebels. From Yreka to the rocky raging coast of California the message went out:
THE EAGLE IS DOWN.

In Oregon, Sam Hartline studied the messages as they came in. He was not sure what they meant; and until he was certain, he was going to stay put.

“It could mean only one thing,” one of his field commanders pointed out. “Ben Raines is down.”

“But from
what?”
Hartline questioned. “He and his people kicked the shit out of the outlaws. If he’d been wounded, we would have been informed, right?”

The commander shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. But Ben Raines is down, Sam. Bet on it.”

“You wanna bet your life on it?” Sam challenged.

The commander hesitated. “Yeah, Sam. I do. The boys is gettin’ restless. They got to have some action or they’re gonna go stale.”

Hartline expelled a long breath. “Yeah, I know. But you been with me a long time. You know how sneaky Raines can be. This could be a trap. We’ll wait a few more days. I want every intercepted message on my desk within minutes after decoding it, understood?”

“Right, Sam.”

Sam Hartline leaned back in his chair, his eyes on the ceiling.

If Ben Raines was down, hard hit, and Ike McGowen gone back east, all that commanded the Rebels was that nigger, Cecil Jefferys. And Sam had never seen a spook that was as smart as a white man.

He sat for a long time with his thoughts. None of them very pleasant for anybody, especially Ben Raines.

Sam punched a button on his desk. An aide stuck his head into the door. Sam never used women for anything in his army. Except to fuck. That’s all they were good for.