Ambush in the Ashes (17 page)

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action made him feel better. He ejected the empty and fitted a full magazine into place. He waited.

“Nick’s 18 Batt coming under what appears to be a suicide charge,” Corrie said. “They’re holding.”

A couple of minutes later, the sounds of battle faded, leaving only the drum of rain. “Maintain positions,” Ben ordered. “No pursuit. Scouts out.”

Five minutes ticked past without a shot being heard. Corrie said, “Scouts report the enemy has withdrawn. They left their wounded behind.”

“Ask the Scouts how the dead and wounded are fixed for ammo.”

“Scouts report all weapons and ammo were taken by the enemy.”

“They’re low on ammo as well as food,” Ben said, crawling out from under the truck. “Bet on it. This was a desperation attack.”

Ben began walking toward the front of the column, his team slogging along with him on the muddy road, the mud clinging to their boots in great globs, making their feet appear to weigh fifty pounds each.

“The enemy,” Ben said, “at least this bunch, don’t have rockets. We didn’t sustain a single rocket hit. Corrie, ask Nick if they received any grenades.”

“Not a one,” she quickly reported.

“Whoever they are, they’re out of nearly everything. Okay. Let’s get this show on the road. There’s a village or town just up ahead. We’ll patch up the prisoners and leave them there. The Scouts should be near the town now.”

“They’re stuck in the road just outside of the village,” Corrie reported. “Both vehicles mired up to the axles.”

“Wonderful,” Ben said wearily. “All right. Tell them we’ll be along as quickly as possible. How about our wounded?”

“Two dead. Five wounded.”

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“Let’s get moving.” Ben stamped his feet, trying to dislodge the clinging mud. “If at all possible.”

It wasn’t much of a town, but most of the buildings were still standing and the doctors quickly set up shop and began working on the wounded … Rebel wounded first, then the enemy. That was a Rebel rule, adhered to hard and fast, without exception.

The Rebels played by no rules other than their own. They were bound by no convention or treaty. Just another reason why so many around the world, who had studied the Rebels, did not want to tangle with them.

Ben stuck his head inside a small house and almost burst out laughing. Marilyn Dickson and Paula Preston were sitting on the bare floor in a side room, out of sight of the male reporters, who were behind the house, naked, soaping as they stood in the rain. Both of the women were covered head to feet with mud.

“Enjoying the trip, ladies?” Ben asked.

Marilyn solemnly lifted her right hand and gave him die finger.

Ben laughed at her and walked on.

“Hoity-toity bitch is human after all,” Jersey remarked.

“I think she is, Jersey.”

Ben turned into the building Lamar Chase had set up for a hospital. Lamar looked up from his inspection of a case of some sort of medicines, carefully packed against breakage. “We lost one of our people, Ben. The other four will make it. But we’re going to have to hole up here for a couple of days.”

“Suits me, Lamar. How about the prisoners?”

“A couple of them will make it. The others died.”

“Other than their wounds, what about their physical condition?”

“They’re very malnourished. I don’t know what they’ve been living on, but it hasn’t been very nutritious.”

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Finally out of the rain, Ben rolled a cigarette.

“Don’t smoke in my hospital, Raines,” Lamar warned.

Ben ignored him and lit up.

“Asshole,” Lamar said.

“You smoked for forty goddamn years, Lamar, and smoked more cigarettes in a day than I do in a month. So shut up about it.”

“The older you get the more difficult you are to get along with, Raines. You’re becoming an insufferable prick.”

“So sue me.”

Lamar gave him the middle finger and walked off to see to the patients.

“Two rigid-digits in one day,” Ben muttered. “Must be something in the air.”

“Some raggedy-assed people in what’s left of field clothes approaching the town, boss,” Corrie said. “They’re under a white flag and do not appear to be armed.”

“Probably part of the bunch who attacked us. All right, let’s go see them.”

Raggedy-assed is right, Ben thought, as he approached the group, standing under the awning of a building at the edge of the small town. Their clothing was tattered and torn, and most wore some sort of sandals made from old tires.

“We need food,” one of the men said, speaking in near-perfect English, only slighdy accented. “We are hungry.”

“And what will you do after I’ve given you food?” Ben replied. “Go back to making war on your own people?”

“What we do is none of your business,” the man said, his tone a bit more harder and demanding. “This is our country, not yours. You were not invited here.”

“That’s right. And we’re only passing through. We

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help whenever we find sick civilians. But we won’t help either side of warring factions.”

“We can take all the food and all your guns, if we want to.” The man’s eyes had turned hard and mean.

“You can try,” Ben said softly.

The man pointed a ringer at Ben. “This is the only warning you will get. Share with us or die while you sleep!”

“Hit the trail,” Ben told him. “If you don’t understand that, it means carry your ass on away from here.”

The man’s face suddenly became a mask of rage, and for one quick moment, Ben thought the guy was actually going to try to jump him. The man fought his temper under control and managed a smile. “Soon we will be the best-equipped and best-fed army in the country. Then we will march on the capital and seize power. And you will all be dead, your flesh eaten by animals and your bones scattered.”

“Fuck you!” Ben told him, using the words that are almost universally understood.

“You have made the greatest mistake of your life,” the guerrilla told Ben. “But you will not have long to regret it.”

Ben yawned in his face.

The guerrillas wheeled around and marched off through the rain into the tangle of brush and jungle.

“They’ll be coming at us soon,” Ben said. “So let’s get ready to meet them.”

“Ah … look, boss,” Jersey said, cutting her eyes.

Ben looked. The guerrilla leader was standing at the edge of the forest, giving him the middle finger.

“Must be my day for it,” Ben muttered.

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“If they do attack us,” Nick said to Ben later on that afternoon. “They have got to be just about the dumbest bunch in Africa.”

“Dumb and desperate, Nick. Little men with big ideas.”

Tanks now encircled the town. Two battalions of Rebels were dug in, waiting to throw their considerable firepower at the enemy.

“What’s the latest from the other battalions?” Nick asked, after unwrapping a stick of gum and chewing for a moment to soften it up.

“Just like us. They’re all reporting more and more hostile encounters with guerrilla groups the further south we go. I’m betting the going will get slower and slower from this point on.”

“You think Bruno Bottger is behind this bunch making noises at us?”

Ben shook his head. “No. I think this bunch is a holdover from the early days of the civil war in this country. They’ve been having at each other since before the Great War.”

Nick looked at him. “You think they even know there has been a worldwide war and collapse?”

Ben chuckled at the thought. “Hell, Nick. The pos-

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sibility is remote, but they might not know. I hadn’t thought about that.”

Lamar Chase strolled up and stepped out of the rain to stand under the awning with the two men. “Our people are going to make it. Only one of the prisoners is still alive and I don’t hold out much hope for him.”

Ben glanced at the chief of medicine, surprise in his eyes. “One of the medics told me his wounds were not that severe.”

“The medic was right. It isn’t his wounds alone that are killing. His entire system is shot-to use a non-medical explanation. He doesn’t have the strength to fight off this latest attack on his body. But don’t waste your time feeling a bit sorry for him; I sure as hell don’t. All the man does is lie there and cuss us all.”

Nick stopped chewing his gum. “Why, Dr. Chase?”

“We’re capitalists, he’s an avowed Marxist-this entire bunch attacking us, or threatening to attack us is. One of those goddamn People’s Liberation Army groups, or some such shit as that.”

Ben grunted his disgust. He knew from long experience that anytime some group used the “Peoples”-whatever in their name, they were more than likely communist.

Chase looked out at the pouring rain. “They’ll hit us tonight, won’t they, Ben?”

“In all likelihood, yes. I don’t believe they have the strength or the firepower to launch another daylight attack. Today was a desperation move on their part; hoping to take us by surprise.”

“The prisoner told me we can expect a lot more of this as we move across this nation.”

“He’s probably right, Lamar. But we’ll be two battalions strong as we roll-or slip and slide, as the case may be-across what’s left of this country and into Cote d’lvoire. According to intel there isn’t a guerrilla group

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in the country strong enough now to do us much damage. But they’ll sure try.”

Cooper came running through the rain, sliding to a halt under the awning. “We found another mass grave, boss, about a thousand meters behind the town. The rain washed away the thin covering of dirt over the bones.”

“Men, women, and children?” Nick asked.

“Yes, sir,” Cooper said.

Lamar shook his head in disgust. “Centuries-old tribal hatreds. It’s pathetic.”

“Maybe something good will come out of it, Lamar,” Ben opined.

“I’d like to know what,” the doctor demanded.

“The animals are making a comeback. That’s something.”

Lamar stared at Ben for a moment to see if he was serious. He was. The doctor walked off into the rain, back to his makeshift hospital, muttering under his breath.

Ben smiled as he watched his old friend walk away, a heavy security guard around him.

“Boss, we’ve got everything at our disposal trained to bang,” Cooper said. “You really think this ragtag bunch will attack us tonight?”

“I do, and they will. Bet on it. They’ve got to have our supplies or they’ll die. They have no choice in the matter. It’s going to be short and savage and bloody. They’ll be fighting to the last round they have. When it comes, don’t let up.”

“It’ll be this way all across this screwed-up country, won’t it?” Cooper asked.

“I’m afraid so, Coop. And as I have warned, worse the further south we go.”

“You want to go view that mass grave?” Cooper asked.

Ben shook his head. “No. I don’t. I imagine we’ll be

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seeing a lot of mass graves before we butt heads with Bruno. And then when we’ve kicked that bastard’s ass, we’ll be uncovering mass grave sites all over the country he’s occupied. And you can tattoo that on your arm.” Ben looked up as the rain diminished somewhat. “Come on, gang. Let’s walk the town.”

With two battalions ringing the town, any attack the guerrillas made-without benefit of mortars, heavy artillery, or rockets-would be nothing more than a suicide charge on their part.

But he knew the guerrillas would try. And he also knew diey would fail; probably the Rebels would wipe them out right down to the last man.

Ben walked the lines of defense, stopping to speak to Rebels often, even if it was nothing more than to say hello. It was a great morale booster for the troops, and besides, Ben enjoyed doing it. But every time he did it, he always felt a litde sad afterward. He used to know every man and woman in his command; could call them by name. Now he didn’t even know everyone in his own battalion.

It always flung him back in time a few years, back to when the government thought they’d wiped out all diose who believed in die Tri-States philosophy of government; back to when Ben and a handful of others took to the hills and die mountains and die swamps and the plains of America and challenged die might of big government.

And they had won. By sheer determination and cussedness and the belief they were right, diey had defeated die forces of what had become a left-wing government

Now look at the Rebels, Ben diought, as he strolled along in the light rain. The most feared fighting force on the face of die eardi. And the SUSA the most pro-

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ductive and stable government anywhere in the world. And the most hated.

The tour of defenses completed, Ben walked back to the small building he was using as a CP and sat down. He cleaned his CAR and his sidearm, and busied himself for a time filling spare magazines. Darkness would come soon, and with it, a suicide attack.

“Scouts report movement in the brush,” Corrie called. “Enemy appears to be getting into position for an attack.”

“How many of them?”

“At least several hundred.”

“No surprises?”

Corrie knew what he meant. “Nothing but light arms.”

“Claymores in place?”

“Affirmative.”

Ben glanced at the open door; or rather, where the door used to be. About an hour until dark. “Pull the Scouts in.”

“Scouts returning. No dead, no wounded.”

Ben nodded. Any hits would have been rare among the Scouts, for Rebel Scouts were among the most highly trained of all Rebels. They could move through any type of terrain with the silence and stealth of ghosts, usually leaving behind them a trail of dead enemy troops, throats cut in silent kills. The Scouts were not a large force, but they were highly effective, and among the most feared of all Rebels.

Both of Ben’s grown kids, Buddy and Tina, had been Scouts, working their way up through the ranks, before taking command of a battalion.