William W. Johnstone (21 page)

“I … I think I might, Vasily. Some … form of higher power, at least.”

“Truth time, Georgi?”

“Of course.”

“I always have.”

“I’m sick, Vasily.”

“I know. But you’re not very sick. You’ve been under tremendous pressure. But you’re going to get well. We need you, Georgi. And I mean that. Not as a scientist; you don’t know beans concerning that area. But as a leader, we need you.”

Georgi managed a smile. “I suppose I have been a very large pain in the ass, haven’t I, Vasily?”

The doctor returned the smile. “At times, Georgi. At times.”

The two men enjoyed a rare moment of humor.

Vasily said, “I’m going to give you a shot, General. You will not remember the flight to Canada. It’s very doubtful you will remember very much for several days. I’m going to keep you sedated. You’re going to rest, you’re going to eat, and you’re not going to worry about anything. Do I have your permission, old friend?”

“Yes.” He stood up and rolled up his sleeve. “I’m ready anytime you are.”

Ben had been asleep for several hours when James shook his shoulder, waking him.

“Ben. Lots of planes taking off and leaving from the IPF HQ near the coast.”

Ben quickly dressed and stepped outside, walking to the makeshift radio room in a deserted motel. He picked up the mic. Dan was on the other end.

“Where are they heading, Dan?”

“North-northeast, General. All of them taking and maintaining the same heading. My lads at the border report the course is true.”

“And lassies,” Ben said with a smile.

“Ah, yes, sir. Must’n forget the ladies. Your orders, sir?”

“Go back to bed and get some sleep. We’re not going to do anything this night. Continue mopping up and advancing at first light. I’ve got a hunch Striganov is bugging out for Canada. Alberta or Saskatchewan. We’ll find out soon enough, I’ll bet. Thanks, Dan. And good night.”

“Good night, General.”

Ben stopped on his way back to his bed. He looked toward the north. “I wonder what that goddamned Hartline is up to?”

“Hello, baby,” Sam spoke around his grin. “My, aren’t you a little thing. What’s your name?”

“Lisa.”

“Pretty name for a pretty girl. We’re going to have fun, baby. Just you and me.”

She cut her eyes to Rich. There was a smirk on his face. “You told.”

He shrugged.

“Oh, don’t blame him, pretty baby. Rich just found something he liked better than pussy.”

“The others got away,” Lisa told Rich. “Kim figured it was you who tattled. They’ll get you, Rich. They’ll get you.”

“You wanna watch this, Rich?” Sam asked the boy.

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Rich said.

“It isn’t Rich’s fault,” Ann said to the others. “He can’t stand any type of pain. And he is what he is because of his parents. I grew up with Rich. We were neighbors.”

“I’m not blaming him for what he is,” Kim said. “We have boys and girls like that among our group back in the safe territory. They fight right alongside the rest of us. Some of them have gone to their death silently. So could Rich. My hunch is he never had any pain put on him. He’s just weak all the way through. And I’ll tell you something else he is.”

The others waited.

Kim finished. “He’s dead!”

Colonel Khamsin had difficulty sleeping that night. Finally, in the hours just before dawn, he kicked off his thin covering and got up. His recon teams to the west had reported a large-scale battle yesterday. And now many planes had been taking off from the Russian’s location.

What did it mean? Was the Russian leaving? Had he been defeated? Or had Ben Raines been defeated?

It was so like Sam Hartline not to radio and inform him as to what was taking place.

When this was over and done, Khamsin felt the best thing he could do would be to kill Sam Hartline.

With that thought in mind, Colonel Khamsin returned to his bed and slept soundly.

Ben was not prepared for the sight that greeted him at the experiment station near Striganov’s offices.

He walked outside and vomited his lunch on the ground.

“Jesus God!” Ben said. “What kind of creatures are those in there?”

“A near-perfect worker breed,” one of the captured IPF doctors said.

Ben looked at him.

“And if you people had not come meddling along with your high and mighty—and ill-thought-out, I might add—ideals of races being equal, we would have succeeded in perfecting the breed.”

Ben resisted an impulse to shoot the bastard where he stood.

“Why were these few left behind?” Ben asked.

“They probably didn’t have room for them.”

“Where did Striganov go?”

“I do not know, General Raines. But if I may make an educated guess? … Thank you. I would suggest Canada.”

“Alberta, Saskatchewan?”

“Probably. It would be a fertile area where crops would grow. General Striganov has admitted on more than one occasion that this area was wrong; that he made a mistake coming here.”

“Listen to me, whatever your name is …”

“My name is—”

“Shut your mouth!”

The Russian’s mouth clamped shut. Tightly. He wasn’t accustomed to being spoken to in such a crude manner. He was a scientist, not some grunting soldier. But he decided he’d best kept those thoughts to himself.

This Ben Raines was a savage-looking man. Such mean eyes!

“How many women left here are pregnant with these … things?”

“I’ll have to examine them, sir.”

“Fine. Good. You do that. And then you will abort them. Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And goddamn you, they’d better all survive. Do you understand
that?”

“Sir! As a doctor and scientist, I cannot give any guarantees as to—”

Ben slapped him, first open-palmed, then a savage backhand. The man fell to the ground, moaning and holding his busted and bleeding mouth.

“Bear this in mind, then,
Doctor.
For the rest of your life, and that might be very short, you are going to look after these unfortunate men and women you slimy bastards and bitches used as guinea pigs. So don’t screw up, Doctor. You can’t afford it. Understood?”

“Yes, sir!”

“Move your ass!”

Hartline was oblivious to the girl’s pain-filled cries and the bleeding where he had ripped her with his savage attack.

He rose from the floor where he had taken her in a maddened lust, and looked down at her.

“You’ll see, baby,” he said. “It’ll get good to you after a time.”

He threw back his head and laughed. “Tell me, Lisa, baby. You still think Ben Raines is a god?”

“Yes,” she moaned.

Sam picked up his belt from the dresser and began beating her nakedness.

Seated in a chair, Rich watched in wet-lipped fascination. “Hit her again, Sam!” he yelled. “Hit her harder!”

Life is eternal; and love is immortal; and death is only a horizon; and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight.

—Rossiter W. Raymond

Ben stood firm with his initial orders: no prisoners from among any IPF troops.

The order was really not necessary, for no IPF troops offered to surrender. Now Ben’s Rebels had the unenviable task of mopping up after the swift victory.

And any combat vet can tell you that mopping up can be pure hell.

And nothing was heard from Sam Hartline. It was as if the mercenary did not really give a damn what happened south of the Oregon border.

But Ben wasn’t buying that. He knew—felt, rather—than Hartline was up to something. Trouble was, Ben didn’t know what.

Ben wasn’t about to knock heads with Hartline … yet. Hartline’s mercenary army was just about as large as Ben’s force of Rebels. And they were well-rested and just as well-equipped as the Rebels.

So what were they waiting for? Why didn’t they strike and strike hard?

Ben didn’t know.

As Ben stood by the stone fence on the bluffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean, his thoughts kept turning away from impending war to the sight of the raging ocean. Huge waves battered the coastline, smashing with a seemingly organized fury. Ben wondered what had caused such climatic changes in the Pacific; and where did all this fury originate?

Standing by the stone fence, it was impossible to carry on any type of normal conversation. So when Ike approached him, Ben stepped away from nature’s frenzy and walked with his friend to a spot where they could talk without having to scream at each other over the howling winds.

“That’s a hell of a sight back there, isn’t it, Ben?”

“Yes. And if it keeps up, that writer who predicted the fall of California is going to be correct. The coastline can’t take many more years of this.”

“The babies are gone, Ben,” Ike said quietly.

“When?”

“Early this morning. Wade and Ro each came to a center and asked that all personnel leave. When the personnel returned, the babies were gone. What do you reckon the underground people will
do
with them?”

“Raise them, I suppose, Ike.” And once again, the thought came to Ben that in a hundred years, the inhabitants of earth would surely be a sight to see. And he wondered if, at that time, it would be called the Ashes of Peace, or the Ashes of Silence?

He would like to view it.

“The areas clean, Ike?”

“Clean as a whistle. All the way from the Bay area to the Oregon line. If there are any pockets of IPF folks left, damned if we can find them.”

“Probably in the heavy timber. Hell with them,”

Ben said. “Any word from the girls I sent into Hartline’s territory?”

“The original three are okay. One of the kids they picked up got taken prisoner. By Hartline’s men.”

“A girl?”

“Yes. And a boy. The boy first. The girls think the boy betrayed them. They’re not leaving until they get the girl back and see the boy dead.”

Ben sighed. “How old was the girl taken?”

“Twelve, maybe thirteen. Cute kid, so Kim radioed back.”

“You can bet that Hartline has used her badly.”

“I’m sure.”

“Ben?”

Ben cut his eyes.

“Cecil just sent word that Sylvia is in cahoots with some IPA people. It’s firm.”

“I suspected as much. It’s the why of it that puzzles me.”

“Me, too. But I have no idea.”

“I’ll deal with her very shortly. Lora?”

“Learnin’ her ABC’s. Some of Doc Chase’s people took her in. Ben, you know she’s gonna go back with her own kind, don’t you?”

“Yes.” But the word came hard; Ben had grown terribly fond of the child.

“I damn near forgot what I came over here to tell you, Ben. The civilian leaders are here. You wanted to talk to them, remember?”

“Yes. Come on, walk with me. We’ll talk along the way.”

Walking along, Ben said, “We lucked out again, Ike.”

“I know. We’d have had a hell of a battle on our hands if the Russian hadn’t of flipped out. Or whatever happened to him.”

“We’re not going to be so lucky with Hartline. I feel that in my guts.”

“You ain’t alone. That plus all those bikers and warlords between us and Base Camp One.”

“We’re going to stay right here until we can figure out what Hartline has on his mind. I want our people rested and ready to go.” He smiled. “As soon as we can determine where we’re going, that is.”

Ben met with the civilian leaders in the warm open air of California summer. He was mildly surprised to see George Williams from Chico in attendance. The man looked fit, was dressed in decent clothing, and was standing a little taller than the last time Ben had seen him.

George shook hands with Ben, away from the others. “I guess you got to me, General Raines,” George admitted. “I don’t agree with all you say or stand for, but for a time, yours is the only way. I finally got that through my thick head.”

“Good to have you with us, George.”

Ben shook hands with the other George, from Red Bluff; Harris from Redding; Pete Ho from Ukiah; and John Dunning from Santa Rosa.

“We’ll be leaving this area in a short time,” Ben told the gathering. He watched their faces closely. No one seemed at all surprised by the announcement.

“By now you all know that General Striganov is gone. We have reason to believe he and what is left of his IPF went to Canada. It’s doubtful that he’ll return. But Sam Hartline is still very much around.

We’re going to deal with Sam in due time. But let me warn you all of a new danger. Colonel Khamsin and his Islamic Peoples Army have landed in South Carolina. And I mean his
army.
He has thousands of men and women. You may think because you’re all some three thousand miles away, you have nothing to fear.

“You’re wrong.”

Ben let that soak in.

“We have reason to believe Sam Hartline and his people have linked up with this Khamsin. My people will deal with Hartline. Most of you are not ready to join us as regulars. Not yet. But in time you’ll be called upon to assist us. I’m not going to fight all your battles for you.

“I’m going to leave a small force of Rebels behind. They will train you. And people, you’d better goddamn well get ready for some hard training. What you’ll be receiving is a combination of Ranger, SEAL, Marine Force Recon, and Green Beret training, with a touch of Special Air Service and French Foreign Legion training tossed in for good measure. When my people get through with you, you’ll all be able to fight a grizzly with a stick … or you’ll be dead. One or the other.”

Pete Ho raised his hand. Ben nodded at him. “General, some of my people might not want to take part in this. What happens then?”

“Are you referring to able-bodied men and women, Pete?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That won’t cut it, Pete. We don’t allow shirkers. One is either one hundred percent for the movement, or one hundred percent against it. It has to be that way. That answer your question?”

“And those who won’t fight?” Pete persisted.

“You run them out,” Ben said flatly.

“That’s pretty hard, General.”

“Hard times, Pete.”