Ambush in the Ashes (24 page)

vilians, men, women, and children, lying in a depression in the earth. They had been lined up and shot.

“Centuries-old tribal hatreds,” Ben muttered. “Ethnic cleansing. No wonder I haven’t seen any people.”

He walked on, even though he was very tired. He wanted to put a couple of miles between himself and the stench of rotting human flesh before sitting down to rest and eat a bite.

When he could no longer smell decaying human flesh, Ben struggled out of his pack and sat down just off the road. He ate a high-energy bar and sipped some water, taking another antibiotic pill after eating, then he picked up his pack and moved back into the brush. The rains were due to begin at any time, and Ben just did not feel like slogging through the mud and pouring rain.

He found a place that was nearly surrounded by thick head-high brush and strung up his lean-to under the low branches of a tree. He laid out his ground sheet, covered his blanket with another piece of a ground sheet, and crawled under the cover and promptly went to sleep.

The heavy rains awakened him once, but after looking around him and seeing and sensing nothing, he went back to sleep. He woke up with about an hour of daylight left, heated up water, then dumped in the contents of a soup packet. While he ate his soup and lunched on crackers, he heated up a cup of coffee and enjoyed that with a cigarette. Then he took his malaria tablets and crawled back into his blankets. He was asleep in a few moments.

The sound of voices woke him.

He couldn’t understand the language, but instantly guessed they were not friendly. He looked at the luminous hands of his watch. 0430. He had slept the night through and felt good. Ben knew he was well on the

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way to full recovery. He wasn’t there yet, but he was getting closer each day.

Then he heard the sound of a vehicle and was out of his blankets faster than a snake, speed-lacing his boots. He picked up his CAR and moved silently through the brush to within a few yards of the road. The vehicle was a HumVee-a Rebel HumVee. But it had come from the north, not the south. He knew that really proved nothing, but he had a suspicion that Nick’s battalion had come under heavy attack. He hated to think that Nick and his 18 Batt might have suffered the same fate as Ben’s 1 Batt, but it was something that had to be considered.

Ben wanted that HumVee. For one thing, he was tired of hoofing it, and for another the HumVee might be radio equipped with the gear necessary to up-link with a satellite and talk to everyone. The walkie-talkie Ben had was an old squad type with a very limited range.

“What the hell is the matter?” a very authoritative and demanding voice yelled. “And speak English, damnit. Stop all that gibber-jabber.”

“We lost his trail, Captain,” one of the men spoke out of the darkness. “About two miles back. But we know he’s a Rebel by his boots.”

“It just might be that bastard Raines,” the obviously white voice said, softening in tone. “He was not identified with the other dead. The son of a bitch has more lives than a room full of cats.”

“Many got away, Captain,” he was reminded. “They vanished into the brush and can move like ghosts. Those who pursued them never returned.”

“I know all that,” the captain snapped. “All right. Get in. We’ll backtrack to where you lost his trail and pick it up again at first light.”

Now or never, Ben thought, raising the CAR.

He took the two enlisted men first, then shifted the

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muzzle and shot the officer, one of his rounds taking the man in the side of the head. Ben slipped out of the brush and inspected his morning’s work. The two enlisted men were still alive, but not for long: the rounds had taken them in the chest and throat. Ben picked up their weapons and laid them on the hood of the Hummer, out of their reach. He moved over to the officer and knelt down. The man was dead. Ben removed the man’s web belt, which had a pistol attached to it, and laid it beside the weapons he’d taken from the enlisted men. One of the enlisted men was dead and the other had lost consciousness.

Ben dragged the bodies, one at a time, off the side of the road and into the brush. Then he quickly broke his own camp and stowed his gear into the Hummer. He was delighted to see a case of field rations behind the front seat and other gear piled in the back. There were four full five-gallon fuel cans in the cargo space in the rear.

Ben got behind the wheel, cranked the engine, and sighed with satisfaction. The fuel tank was full. He dropped the Hummer into gear and moved out. He was back in business.

Ben drove for ten miles, then at a crossroads, pulled off the road and parked behind what had once been a store and a residence. The sky was beginning to lighten and he wanted to inspect the gear in the Hummer.

He sat for a few minutes behind the wheel, knowing he was grinning like a schoolboy and couldn’t stop. Hell, he didn’t want to stop.

He unassed himself from the Hummer and did a careful inspection of the old store and adjoining building. Both were deserted and showed no signs of having been occupied for a long time. There was nothing left in either building; they had been looted many times.

Behind the store, sitting on the back step, Ben heated

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a cup of coffee and while that was heating, ate a full ration pack and could have eaten more. He was rapidly regaining his strength. Pulling the bodies off the road had not sapped him as he was afraid it would. He took his daily medicine, then drank his coffee and smoked a cigarette while he watched the sun break the horizon. Then he began his inspection of the interior of the Hummer.

One of his bullets had punched through the thick plastic of the rear side door and penetrated the radio. It wouldn’t even turn on.

“Well, so much for that,” Ben muttered. “I can’t have everydiing I wished for.”

Then he began rummaging through the other gear. A full case of field rations on the seat, another on the floorboards. Ben didn’t have to worry about anything to eat for a time. A five-gallon sealed can of drinking water, with the date it had been factory sealed stamped on the can.

“Issued for his white troops only, I’ll bet,” Ben muttered, but he was glad to see the full can of water. It would last him for a long time if he was careful, and he certainly intended to be careful.

Ben found blankets and a tent. A portable stove and several cans of fuel for it. A rucksack filled with grenades. Then he smiled when he found a Heckler & Koch HK11A1 machine gun, chambered for the 7.62 round. This weapon could also take the 5.56 round and the lighter old Russian 7.62 round by replacing the barrel, bolt, and feed mechanism. But there were no spare parts for the weapon so this machine gun would take only the heavier 7.62 round. Which suited Ben just fine. There were five full one-hundred round cans of belted ammo in the Hummer.

“Playtime is over, boys,” Ben said. “The Eagle is back in business.”

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Eagle had been Ben’s code designation for a long time.

Ben found the tool kit and removed the front panel from the radio. The bullet, or as it turned out, bullets, had made a mess of the radio. It was beyond useless. Ben removed it from its brackets and carefully hid it with some junk in the old store. Removing the radio would lighten the load in the Hummer by about fifty pounds.

Ben found some clean socks and some dirty underwear. He kept the socks. He found a pair of new boots that were several sizes too small for him but he kept them anyway. He just might run across a Rebel who needed some boots. He found a map case and inspected it. The maps were far more up to date than the ones the Rebels were using. He found roads he didn’t even know existed. More importantly, he found enemy troops’ positions and hidden food and fuel depots clearly marked.

“Thank you very much, Captain,” Ben said, carefully folding the maps and slipping them back into the waterproof case. “You’ve been a great help.”

Ben laid several grenades on the seat beside him and stowed the rest. He squatted down and drank some water, while planning his next move.

Which was easy enough. “Keep moving on,” he muttered. He was bound to run into some Rebels sooner or later.

He once more tried the frequencies on his walkie-talkie. Nothing. Which was what he expected.

Ben cranked the engine and pulled out onto the road. Might as well keep going, he thought. It isn’t as though I have a lot of choice in the matter.

With a full tank of fuel and the extra cans, Ben knew he could travel about five hundred or so miles, give or take seventy five. But now that he had the locations of hidden fuel depots clearly marked on the maps he had,

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as long as he could evade the enemy, he just might keep going for a long, long time.

Of course, he might round the next bend in the road and run smack into an enemy patrol.

“Pays your money and takes your chances,” he muttered, and drove off into the unknown.

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Ben stayed on roads that ran along the border with Togo, and ran through no towns that were on the map. He passed through tiny villages and saw perhaps a total of a hundred people, all of them looking as if they might fall over dead from starvation or disease any moment. Ben did not stop. There was no point. There was nothing he could do.

By midmorning, the dirt road came to an end, intersecting with the main highway between Savalou and Djougou. Now it would get dicey.

Ben backed up and into the brush. He got out the map case taken from the officer he’d shot and rummaged through the papers, finally finding a map of Djougou. A population of thirty thousand before the Great War. No telling what it was now. It might be only a few hundred or a few hundred thousand. But there was a fuel depot there and he would need fuel.

Ben smiled. He felt an old familiar recklessness take him. He just might be able to bluff his way in and out. Hell, what did he have to lose?

He studied the map again. He was about a hundred kilometers from Djougou. The road appeared to be in fair condition, so he should reach the small city about 1500 hours, right in the middle of a driving monsoonal rain. That would work to his advantage … he hoped.

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“Okay, Raines,” he muttered. “Let’s have a go at it.”

Just before the compound was overrun, Ben had changed into regulation BDUs, and given his tiger stripe fatigues to the laundry crew to be washed. So he was wearing the same type of field clothing as Bruno’s officers. The collar insignia denoting rank was different in the two armies, so Ben was going to have to depend on his age and good deal of bluff to get through any checkpoints he might run into. Ben was very good at intimidation, so he wasn’t too worried about dealing with inexperienced enlisted men and junior officers. He just hoped he didn’t run into some field-sawy senior sergeant along the way. He didn’t feel there was much danger of that, since senior sergeants seldom manned checkpoints.

It was a needless worry. Ben did not run into a single checkpoint on the way to Djougou. About fifty kilometers from the city, the rains came thundering down and Ben drove on into the small city without a hitch.

Ben had memorized the way to the fuel depot, but naturally he got lost in the twisted street. He came up on a group of young soldiers, several whites and several blacks. Ben brazenly stopped and waved one over.

“Sir!” the young soldier said in perfect English, coming to full brace in the rain.

“The fuel depot,” Ben barked. “Where is it?”

The young soldier gave good instructions and added, “But you might have trouble getting someone to assist you, sir.”

Ben fixed the young man with a hard look. “Do you really think that I will have very much trouble?”

The young soldier took a deep breath. “Ah … no, sir. No, sir. I really think not.”

“Thank you,” Ben told him, returning the salute. “Carry on.”

“Sir, yes, sir!”

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Ben filled up at the depot, swiped four more full five-gallon cans of fuel, stowed them in the rear cargo space, and was gone from the small city, having done it all in just about twenty minutes.

“It just takes a little bit of nerve, that’s all,” Ben said, leaving Djougou behind him. “And a lot of blind luck,” he added.

About fifteen miles north of Djougou, Ben ran into his first checkpoint. It was manned by two tough-looking African soldiers, both of them wearing some sort of tribal marks cut and tattooed into their cheeks. They were both surly and arrogant-acting. Ben pulled his sidearm from leather and held it in his right hand, out of sight. The 9mm was on full cock and ready to bang. He unzipped the thick upper plastic of the door and peered out at the men.

“Yes?”

“Get out of the vehicle,” one ordered.

“I don’t think so,” Ben told him.

The man lifted his rifle and Ben shot him in the face, the man dying without a sound. The second guard whirled around and Ben put two 9mm rounds in the man’s chest. The guard sat down hard on the muddy ground and looked at Ben, a very surprised expression on his face. Then he toppled over face first in the mud.

Ben couldn’t leave the two where they were. Any enemy tracker with half a brain would know Ben was heading north. He scrambled out of the Hummer and laid both dead men across the wide hood of the Hummer. He looked up and down the highway. No vehicle in sight. Ben pulled back out on the road and headed north, feeling just a bit conspicuous with two dead men lying across the hood. About a mile up the highway, he came to a nearly overflowing and fast-running creek. He stopped on the bridge and dumped the bodies into the water. They disappeared from sight. Ben got back

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into the Hummer and continued on his way, knowing with a sick feeling in his stomach that if Bruno’s men were working openly here, Nick’s battalion had been overrun and scattered.

How many more of Ben’s battalions had suffered the same fate?