Ashes - Battle In The Ashes Part 8

people. There are a lot of things that I didn't and don't understand.

Probably never will. Where was the latest attack, Corrie?"

"About a hundred miles northeast of here. A Rebel patrol found what was left of the elderly couples. Four couples. Patrols had tried to evac them but they said they'd lived in that area all their lives and weren't about to move now. They were all tortured to death."

"Let's take a ride," Ben said.

The four couples, all in their late seventies or early eighties, had lived in a large rambling one story home. They had worked a largegarden, had chickens and hogs, and kept the place neat and had obviously been living a quiet and contented life. Ben stood in the large living room and looked at the words written in blood on the walls.

"Mideast fanaticism s.h.i.+t," he said, disgust in his voice. "Praise Allah and all that c.r.a.p. Die in battle and go straight to paradise. Real brave bunch, this group is. Killing a small band of nearly helpless elderly men and women really strikes a blow for their cause. Providing they even know what that cause is, which I doubt."

His team remained silent, for they knew that the harming of helpless children and elderly or innocent animals could push Ben's danger meter over into the red. Cooper, watching Ben's face, had him a hunch that when they caught up with this bunch-and they would, he had no doubts about that-the outcome for this terrorist group would be about as pleasant as a crucifixion.

"Buddy's here," Jersey said, looking out a blood-splattered window.

"He's got a prisoner."

Ben stepped outside to face the dark eyed, olive- 107.

skinned man with his hands tied behind his back. Father looked at son.

"Where'd you find this piece of s.h.i.+t?"

The prisoner hissed and spat at Ben, the spittle staining Ben's s.h.i.+rt.

"About fifteen miles from here. We think he got separated from the main group. The only thing he will say is how much he hates America and Americans."

"Jew-lover!" the man spat out the words, his hard bright eyes staring at Ben.

"And that," Buddy added. "He has a terrible complex when it comes to Judaism."

"Torture me!" the man shouted. "I will tell you nothing. I will soar on the wings of pain to Paradise."

"Oh, you're going to soar, all right," Ben told the man. "But not on the wings of pain." Ben looked at the man and woman from the Reads'

intelligence section. "He's all yours."

The two-person team picked up their briefcases of chemicals and walked toward a small shed. "Come on, Ali," the woman said without looking back. "You're going to sail as high as an eagle can fly."

"I will tell you nothing!" the man shouted.

"Wanna bet?" Ben asked, his smile as hard as flint.

"I think we might have overdone it," the woman said. "We turned him into a babbling idiot."

"I'm very nearly overcome with grief," Ben said, pouring a cup of coffee from the pot on the grate over the small fire in the yard. "I might start flailing myself with ropes and chains at any moment. What'd youlearn?"

"His team is working close," the man said, as the 108.

woman poured herself a cup of coffee. "Hoffman sent out several hundred teams to terrorize and demoralize the citizens, all over the United States. Every d.a.m.n lunatic group that ever existed has linked up with Hoffman. And since you used to work for the CIA, you're a main target, General."

"What else is new?" Ben muttered. "Back when the world was more or less functioning I used to get a half dozen death threats a year ... at least."

"Didn't the Agency protect you?" the woman asked, looking up from the fire.

"You have to be joking!" Ben said with a smile. "Someone filed some lousy reports on me. They shoved me out in the cold and left me dangling. Said I'd been a bad boy. I told them if I hadn't of been a bad boy, I wouldn't have spent years in Operations. They failed to see the humor in that." He laughed. "It could have been worse. They could have kept me on and a.s.signed me to the Mideast desk."

"What do you want us to do with the sheik of Araby in there?"

"Drag him outside, pump him with enough joy-juice to float him to paradise and leave him for the buzzards."

"And then?" Buddy asked.

"We go terrorize some terrorists. They won't be hard to find. We'll just follow the trail of blood and bodies they leave behind. That's all the h.e.l.l they've ever known how to do. And they do it well."

Ben split his teams and told them to work every road. Visit every house in every hamlet. Get any people left started north across the parallel-if they chose to go- and kill terrorists. Continue burning anything that 109.

would torch. Leave nothing behind for Hoffman's Blacks.h.i.+rts.

Ben's team drew first blood. A forward FAV, ranging miles ahead, radioed back that they had spotted what appeared to be very furtive movement in a tiny hamlet that had been reported totally void of life only a few days back.

"Hold it there," Ben said. "Don't give away your position. We're on the way."

It was dry rolling hills country. Ben and team parked, hiding their vehicles carefully and walked to the Scouts' position on a rise that overlooked the dusty little hamlet.

"We've counted eighteen so far," the Scout leader said. "We think there's maybe double that. It appears to be a meeting of some sort. Two groups have joined the ones already here. They work in six person teams.""All right," Ben said. "We'll wait and see if more join them. We'll send as many as possible of these cowardly b.a.s.t.a.r.ds to h.e.l.l. Spread out. Work low and slow."

"General," Corrie said. "Buddy is in a firefight with some sort of hostile group about thirty miles west of here. He says they'll be able to contain the situation, but won't be able to lend us a hand for several hours, at least."

"I don't recall asking for his help. My G.o.d, but he's getting to be as worrisome as Ike. Tell him to mind his own business."

Come turned her head and b.u.mped Buddy. But she softened Ben's reply, as Ben knew she would.

The Rebels crept into position and waited. The terrorists below them were fruitcakes and screwb.a.l.l.s, but they were also professionals who, judging by their movements, had received extensive amounts of training in 110.

their deadly art. The Rebels soon pinpointed the location of the guards and as the day wore on, knew to the minute when they would be changed.

Four more six-person teams drifted in, all coming in from the north and the east. That made at least forty two terrorists in the small village and possibly as many as sixty, or more.

Ben smiled at the number. He had twenty-four people with him, having eluded the others that Ike had saddled him with. It should be a real interesting fight.

"We have to a.s.sume there are no civilians down there," Ben said. "And if there are, they're there willingly. We have heard no screams of pain or shouts of protest." He looked at his watch. Two hours had pa.s.sed since the last team had checked in. "Those people made one big mistake, gang.

There is but one road leading in and out of that village. And we have it covered. Tell the mortar crews to start sh.e.l.ling, Come."

The town must have been where the terrorists were storing supplies.

Perhaps they had returned there to re-supply. The Rebels would never know. The third mortar round landed in the center of an old service station garage and when it blew it took nearly all of that side of the block with it. Bodies and body parts were flung in all directions and the blast was so heavy the concussion from it flattened two frame structures located directly across from the garage, on the other side of the street.

Wounded and dazed and confused terrorists staggered out of the remaining buildings and the Rebels shot them down where they stood. The memory of those tortured and butchered elderly people was vividly fresh in their minds.

Ben and his people left their positions and walked down to the tiny town, now devastated, the streets slick 111.

with blood spots. Ben stood over a woman with more than a tad of Oriental blood in her ... and all around her. Ben guessed her age at about thirty five. It was hard to tell. Her eyes shone hate up at him.She spat at him, the b.l.o.o.d.y spittle landing near Ben's lace-up work boots.

"What nitwit group did you belong to?" Ben asked her.

She cursed him in very fluent English.

Ben picked up her Uzi, handed it to a Rebel, and walked away, leaving her to die with a curse on her lips and hate for America in her heart.

"Be sure and strip the ammo belt from her," Ben called over his shoulder.

"Sure is a mixed bag," Jersey remarked, walking beside Ben. "Oriental, Black, Hispanic, and Arabic." She looked around at the dead and dying and the ripped and shattered bodies. "They must have had a ton of explosives in that garage."

Ben squatted down and rolled a cigarette. He watched as his two medics went from terrorist to terrorist, checking them. He offered them no pain killers, no medicines, no patch jobs. They had dedicated their lives to inflicting pain on innocents; they could die the same way.

There was an occasional shot as some of the less seriously wounded terrorists tried to make a fight of it. It was not much of a fight.

"Buddy just a mile out of town," Come said.

Ben ground the b.u.t.t of his cigarette out under his heel. He didn't feel like putting up with another antismoking lecture from his son.

"Father, where is the rest of your detachment?" Buddy asked, walking up.

He sniffed the air 112.

suspiciously and looked accusingly at his dad. But he sensed Ben was in no mood for a lecture and left it at that.

"I sent them to another suspected terrorist site. It's rather difficult to move about un.o.btrusively with a G.o.dd.a.m.n platoon following me."

Buddy looked around him at the devastation. "What did you drop on this town, a mini atomic bomb?"

"Three mortar rounds, kid. The third round landed in a storage area filled with some sort of explosives and drums of gasoline. It was a rather large boom."

"So I see. That group we came in contact with mistakenly thought we were part of Hoffman's army. They did not like our surrender terms."

"And?"

"Well, after negotiations failed, we eventually stacked die bodies in several buildings and set them on fire. It was a dreadful smell."

"Before or during the burning?"

"Both."

The Rebels talked casually of the deaths of their enemies. Most would work feverishly to save the life of a hurt dog or cat. They would weepover the body of a fallen buddy. They would risk their lives a hundred and one times a day to save any innocent person. But their unofficial motto was an eye for an eye plus the head of an enemy. A Rebel would crawl through his own blood, holding his guts inside his shattered stomach with one hand, just to kill an enemy. Ben had told them once that was the unofficial motto of the old Israeli Mossad, and it fit the Rebels rather well. Which was why they had never been defeated and never would be defeated. They would lose battles, but not the war.

One final shot was heard at the far end of the mangled 113.

street. A Rebel walked over to investigate. "Another terrorist, General," he called. "She shot herself in the head rather than surrender to us."

"Gather up everything we can use and load it in the trucks Buddy has tagging along with him."

"Thank you very much, father," Buddy said sourly.

"You're quite welcome, son. What are you doing with those deuce and a halves, looting the countryside?"

Buddy walked off, muttering to himself.

Ben was not nearly as charitable as his son. He ordered the bodies left where they were. "Let the buzzards have them," he told his people.

"Mount up. We've got to hunt a hole and stay down for a time."

"Twenty eight teams have failed to check in," Field Marshal Hoffman was informed the next morning. "Including most of the Syrian teams."

"How overdue are they?" Hoffman asked, as his stomach abruptly turned sour. He belched and patted his lips; with a napkin. He looked down at his breakfast and suddenly lost his appet.i.te.

"A full twenty-four hours."

Hoffman sighed and pushed back from the table. "They're lost, then.

G.o.dd.a.m.n that Ben Raines. G.o.dd.a.m.n him, you hear?"

The Blacks.h.i.+rt heard, as did anyone else within a hundred yards of the lavishly appointed trailer, for Jesus Hoffman was shouting.

The word quickly spread and the commanders of the thousands of troops gathered in the huge miles-long encampment rushed to the trailer, to stand outside and listen to the Field Marshal rant and rave.

114.

"No more!" Hoffman shouted. "No G.o.dd.a.m.n more! I will not tolerate it."

The news of the Field Marshal's tantrum quickly spread and the entire encampment soon grew eerily silent. Mechanics put down their wrenches, cooks turned the fires low, infantry personnel stopped the cleaning of weapons.

"We did not march thousands of miles to be held at bay by a ragged bunchof malcontents led by an idealistic dreamer!" Hoffman thundered.

"No, sir," the messenger said. He wished he was facing a band of Rebels at this moment. He wished he could be anywhere except where he was.

Hoffman lost what was left of his composure. He picked up his freshly poured cup of coffee and hurled it against the wall of the trailer.

Hoffman whirled to face the young messenger. "Without Ben Raines, the Rebel movement would crumble. Chop the head from a snake and the snake dies." Hoffman looked at the messenger as if seeing him for the first time. "What do you want? Send someone in here immediately to clean up this mess. Get out of here!"

The messenger hit the air.

Jesus Dieguez Mendoza Hoffman clenched his fists, forced himself to take several deep breaths, and calmed his raging emotions. He stood for a moment, staring out of the window of the trailer. For the first time since his outburst he was aware of the hundreds of troops all gathered outside, quietly waiting. He looked at his commanders, standing close to his quarters. Hoffman walked to the door and slowly opened it. He waved to his senior commanders, motioning them to his quarters.

115.

His composure fully restored, Hoffman sat down at his desk and waited until his people had taken seats. "Gentlemen, we have been held at bay by a pack of barking dogs long enough. We have allowed ourselves to be frightened and cowed by this tiny band headed by Ben Raines. Effective this moment, that will cease. The greatest army on the face of the earth has been forced into a defensive position. Think of the absurdity of that. The ridiculousness of it. Impress that upon your troops. Show them how they have been humiliated by a tiny band of men and women in blue jeans and cowboy boots, racing about in little puny vehicles ... and on horseback," he spat the last. "Brandis.h.i.+ng six-shooters and waving the flag of Texas."