William W. Johnstone (26 page)

No one had seen Harrison.

“He was in the drag, wasn’t he?” Sam demanded.

“Last time I saw him he was.”

“Don’t just stand there. Go check him out.”

Ralph came back, his face a bit pale. “He’s gone. His driver’s gone. Everything is gone.”

“What do you mean,
everything
is gone?” Hartline yelled. “Where’s his Jeep!”

“I’m tellin’ you, Sam. It’s gone!”

“That goddamned Ben Raines has done it to me again,” Sam bitched. “That sorry, no-good, low-life, sneaky son of a bitch has screwed me again!”

“Sam!” the excited yell came from the middle of the long column. “Sam!”

But when Sam turned around and yelled, “What?” no one answered.

Angry, Sam ran back to the center of the well-spaced main column. He had split the column up into three parts. With a mile between each column.

Sam jogged up to a mercenary. “All right, asshole! What do you want? What’d you yell for?”

The merc looked at him. “Huh?”

“I said, what did you yell for?”

“I ain’t yelled jack-shit, Sam!” the merc protested.

Sam looked around him a bit nervously. He began edging his way back to his APC. There, he crouched down, his back to the steel place. “Raines is playing with us,” he said.

“Ben Raines is
dead.”
one of his senior commanders said, exasperation in his voice. “Goddammit, Sam, you’re paranoid about Ben Raines.”

“Yeah, a ghost can’t hurt you,” another merc said.

From deep in the timber, there came a hollow-sounding laugh.

One of the younger mercs looked around him, his eyes wide, his face pale.

“Get the column outta here!” Sam yelled.

No sooner had the words left his mouth when an explosion to the north of them rocked the land.

Sam jerked up his mike. “What the hell was that? Rear column, answer me!”

“Bridge is blown,” came the weary reply. “Next road leadin’ anywhere is 97 to the north. And scouts reports that road is closed. Next highway is 89. And that ain’t gonna do us a damn bit of good.”

“If I want a goddamned scenic route mapped out, Ira, I’ll ask you for it!” Sam snapped.

He tossed the mike to the seat. He rubbed his face, deep in thought. He frowned as laughter once more came from the dark timber.

Sam frowned and once more picked up the mike. “Ira?”

“Right here, Sam.”

“Are you cut off from Battalions One and Two?”

“All by my lonesome, Sam.”

“Dig in and hold what you’ve got, Ira.”

“Do I have a choice, Sam?”

Hartline chose not to reply. He picked up a map. “Chances are, Raines sent the sambo north with one battalion. Ira can keep him busy. We’ve still got Battalion Five east of us and Battalion Four to the west. We’ve got Raines outgunned and outmanned. Smart-assed bastard may have planned this too carefully. He may have cut it too fine for his own good this time.”

Once more, from the dark timber, came that taunting laughter.

“I know what that is now,” Sam said, visibly relaxing. “The underground people. They don’t use guns. They have bows and arrows and spears and shit like that. Long as we don’t get in the deep timber, we’re all right.”

“Sam? We’re sittin’ ducks out here in the middle of the damn road.”

“Yeah, I know. Tell Battalions Four and Five to hold what they’ve got. Advance only at my orders. What’s in the next town?”

“Nothing. It’s deserted.”

“You hope,” Sam said sourly.

Ike and his personal team had entered South Carolina just north of Mount Carmel, where the Georgia-flowing Broad River merged with the Savannah River. In typical Navy SEAL fashion, Ike and his people entered enemy territory at night, by water.

“Damn alligators probably in here,” one team member bitched.

“Beats the hell outta ‘Nam,” Ike put an end to it. “Let’s go.”

Dawn found Ike and his team hiding in a deserted house near what had once been the small town of Bradley. They would spend the hot daylight hours resting, then move out again at night.

The Rebels’ main problem—other than staying alive—was that they were not sure exactly where Nina was being held.

But Ike knew how to find out.

“We grab some IPA dude and get the information out of him,” he said.

“That could get bloody,” a Rebel said.

Ike’s smile was as savage as the IPA. “I’m sure it will,” he said.

Nina listened to Colonel Khamsin’s talk, her face impassive. She hurt, but not as badly as a couple of days ago. She could hobble about, with the aid of canes. She could not wear shoes or sandals, because of her swollen feet—where her toenails had been removed with wire-pliers.

The savages of the IPA had broken parts of her body, but not her spirit. Nina did not think they could do that. She really did not know why there were torturing her. For she knew very little about the Rebel movement. She knew there were Rebel outposts scattered throughout the Southeast, but did not know exactly where they were.

And she had told her interrogators as much.

That alone did not cause the pain to stop. Rather, it increased, for they felt she was lying.

And, of course, they had raped her. Nina had endured it silently. She had been raped before. Before she met Ike, and had fallen in love with the man.

Ike! she thought, staring at Khamsin’s dark, evil face. Where are you, Ike?

“… So you see, Miss,” Khamsin was saying. “The men and women of the IPA are not that different from your Ben Raines and his Rebels. We both strive for the same things. Peace, productivity, law and order. Don’t you see?”

“BLIVET!” Nina said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“BLIVET. It’s something Ike taught me. It’s an old military expression.”

“I’m not familiar with it. It means? …”

“Ten pounds of shit in a five-pound bag!”

Khamsin’s eyes turned even more dark and evil. He rose from behind his desk and calmly walked around to Nina’s side. He slapped her out of her chair.

Khamsin reached down and grabbed Nina’s bandaged feet. He squeezed her toes, laughing as she screamed from the pain.

“Scream, little bird,” Khamsin said, his voice taunting. “Perhaps your Ike McGowen will hear you and come to your rescue.”

“Wrong,” she whispered. “Rebels are expendable. No matter how much Ike cares for me, he won’t risk people coming after me.” Nina knew that was not true, but maybe she could give Ike a fighting chance to get through to her.

She felt he was on the way. Perhaps very near. But she would never tell that to this camel-humper.

Khamsin stepped back, regained his composure, and gestured for her to get back into the chair. She did, slowly and painfully, almost falling as she fought the pain in her tortured feet.

She sat and stared up at him, defiance in her eyes.

Khamsin watched the woman. He knew, from years of active terrorism, that anyone and everyone could be broken. But sometimes, one had to weigh carefully what would be gained by it.

Khamsin believed the woman knew very little about the Rebel movement. So therefore there was little use in continuing her physical discomfort.

Khamsin felt a stirring in his groin as he stared at the fair-skinned woman. He felt himself begin to thicken as passion took him.

He walked to her and picked her up effortlessly, placing her on a bunk. “I will not hurt your feet, little bird.”

I won’t die from rape, she thought. Come on, Ike—hurry!

Ike wiped the blood from his knife, sheathed it, and tossed a ragged blanket over what just vaguely resembled a human body lying on the dirty, rat-droppings-littered floor of the house.

He look at the two remaining IPA members. They stared at him with something very close to horror in their dark eyes.

And something else, Ike picked it up. Fear.

“What are you thinkin', partner?” Ike asked the younger of the captives.

“That you are a savage!”

Ike laughed at him. “Me, a savage? You simple son of a bitch! Bastards like you have been waging a war of terrorism since before you were born, boy. You’ve killed innocent people, men, women, kids, all over this world. You’ve raped, kidnapped, tortured, maimed, and killed; and like some of those nuts that used to wage war in Ireland, you don’t even know what you’re fightin’ for.”

“Our homeland,” the young IPA man said.

One Rebel laughed. Like Ike, he was old enough to remember the terrorism of the 1980s. “Why in the fuck don’t you go back to your homeland, then, and leave us the hell alone?”

“We are claiming this land in the name of Allah.”

Ike knelt down in front of the young man, his knife in his hand. “You wanna meet Allah, boy? Okay. But I guaran-damn-tee you, boy, the journey’s gonna be a long and painful one.”

The IPA man spat in Ike’s face.

“Gag ‘im,” Ike ordered.

“This is as far as we go,” Hartline radioed. “We form battlelines here. And here we stand and slug it out. Dismount and dig your holes. Tanks and artillery, station up.”

And that decision was to be Hartline’s last and fatal one. The mercenary had the Rebels outnumbered three to one. He could have rammed through almost any point in Ben’s thin lines. And by doing that, could have had the Rebels in a box, closing it with flanking movements.

But his caution overrode his solid military background.

And as he dug in, Sam Hartline wondered what had happened to those remaining loud-mouthed warlords.

Sonny Boy, Grizzly, Skinhead, Popeye, Plano, and the others were camped far from the battlelines. At this juncture, they wanted no more of Ben Raines. They all knew they would rebuild their ranks; the battered nation was full of sorry people who wanted something for nothing, and who would be more than willing to join the outlaws.

They had never gotten around to voting on a top general. Running for their lives from the Rebels, that had slipped their minds.

For now, the warlords and outlaws would simply wait. And stay far away from Ben Raines and his Rebels.

“Ben?” Cecil radioed. “Looks like you were right—again. We’re going to stand and slug it out with Hartline.”

“Not yet, Cec.” Ben radioed his reply. “What we’re going to do is annoy the hell out of Hartline. We’ve got the time; it’s on our side in this operation. So we’re going to pick and prod at Hartline and his men. We’re going to put the needle to them. All day, and all night. A war of nerves. They’re not going to get much sleep, Cec. And some of our people will be so close to them, that when they relax their guard, they get their throats cut.”

Cecil’s chuckle was grim. “Ben, you are a real bastard, you know that?”

“Yep.”

“Doesn’t bother you at all, does it?”

“Nope.” Cecil laughed and signed off.

Hartline’s people dug in, deep and solid. They waited.

And waited.

The long hot days began to melt into each other. Every fifteen minutes, on the dot, a round from mortar or tank or artillery would crash into or very near some position manned by Hartline’s men.

And with every hour that passed, Ben’s Rebels became more secure and dug-in; moving several yards closer, tightening the deadly ring around the mercenary’s bunkers.

Hartline’s men could only move about at night, for Rebel snipers had the range, and they were dead-accurate.

Some people might have questioned Ben’s tactics, wondering why, if he had Hartline boxed, didn’t he just starve the mercs out?

In terrain such as both sides were holding, that’s only done in the movies. Hartline and his men could have slipped out during the night, with many of them making it. But they would have been forced to leave their artillery, their vehicles, their heavier machine guns and larger mortars.

Hartline had dug himself into a safe hole, but not a very enviable one.

And the waiting game was beginning to tell on Hartline’s men.

“What the hell are they waiting on?” one mercenary CO asked Hartline.

“For us to screw up,” Sam replied calmly. “Once we show the first signs of cracking, Ben’s people will be all over us like ants to honey.”

“Well … why don’t we pull something like Raines done? Fake it?”

“Because Ben wouldn’t fall for it,” Sam grudgingly conceded. “He’s too goddamned smart for that.”

A sniper round blasted into the log-enforced bunker of Sam Hartline. The CO winced; Sam stood impassive, his eyes staring at nothing.

“Jesus!” the CO whined. “Them people are tough with them rifles.”

“Yeah. XM-21s.”

The young CO looked at him, waiting for explanation.

“Accurized M-14s, using an ART scope. Back in ‘Nam, 800, 900-yard first-round kills were common with that weapon. They’re good.”

Dusk was spreading her dark skirts over the land. Sam called for as many section leaders as could make the run to his bunker to come on over.

“Boys,” the mercenary admitted, “I screwed up. Staying in this place is like fucking for virginity. I hate to say it, but we’re gonna have to bust out. Raines is not going to stand and slug it out with us.”

Even though the risks were awful, the mercenary section leaders knew what Sam was saying was the only way any of them were going to survive.

“Where’s the bust-out point, Sam?”

Sam pointed south. “Straight ahead. As near as I can figure it, Raines’s people are spread pretty thin all around us. The nigger’s up north with Third Battalion. They can keep the nigger busy. I’ll take First Battalion and cut west, link up with Fourth Battalion. You take Second Battalion and cut east, link up with Fifth Battalion. As soon as that’s done, we’ll start inching back toward the border. With any kind of luck, we can hook up with Ira’s boys.”

“When do we bug out?”

“Midnight.”

“Something wrong, Dad?” Tina Raines asked, walking up to Ben’s side.

Ben shook his head. “Nothing tangible, Daughter. It’s just that I think we’ve held Hartline in a box just about as long as we’re going to. He’s an arrogant prick, but a good soldier. He’ll admit he made a mistake in digging in.”

“And then? …”