BLOOD BATTLE
  Even Ben Raines was later forced to admit that
most of the Rebel's attention had been focused on
traversing the terrible highway. That changed in a
hurry when lead started flying and whining off the
vehicles.
  "Get those tanks off the trailer!" Ben yelled
into his mike.
  The Dusters were the first to unleash their 40mm
cannon fire at the muzzle flashes coming from the
edge of the small town. The main battle tanks
lowered their deadly snouts and blew everything in their
path to hell with 105 HE rounds. Fifty
caliber and 7.62 machine gun fire began raking
the area. Ben let them rock and roll for several
minutes and then picked up his mike.
  "Cease fire! Tanks up and check it out.
Rebels behind the tanks. Let's go in and do a little
night hunting!"
THE ASHES SERIES by William W.
Johnstone
NUMBER TITLE
1. OUT OF THE ASHES 2. FIRE IN
THE ASHES 3. ANARCHY IN THE ASHES
4. BLOOD IN THE ASHES 5. ALONE
IN THE ASHES 6. WIND IN THE ASHES
7. SMOKE FROM THE ASHES 8. DANGER
IN THE ASHES 9. VALOR IN THE
ASHES 10. TRAPPED IN THE ASHES
11. DEATH IN THE ASHES 12.
SURVIVAL IN THE ASHES 13. FURY
IN THE ASHES 14. COURAGE IN THE
ASHES 15. TERROR IN THE ASHES
16. VENGEANCE IN THE ASHES 17.
BATTLE IN THE ASHES 18. FLAMES
FROM THE ASHES 19. TREASON IN THE
ASHES 20. D-Day IN THE ASHES
21. BETRAYAL IN THE ASHES 22.
CHAOS IN THE ASHES 23. SLAUGHTER
IN THE ASHES 24. JUDGMENT IN THE
ASHES 25. AMBUSH IN THE ASHES
26. TRIUMPH IN THE ASHES (10/98)
Note:
From the Ashes: America Reborn
- including maps and synopses of all books in the
ASHES series and the Tri-States Manifesto
(pub 4/98)-a must-have for all John-stone fans!
DEATH IN THE ASHES
William W. Johnstone
Pinnacle Books Kensington Publishing Corp.
httpccpinnaclebooks.com
PINNACLE BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp. 850 Third
Avenue New York, NY 10022
Copyright [*copy] 1990 by William W.
Johnstone
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reproduced in any form or by any means without the
prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting
brief quotes used in reviews.
If you purchased this book without a cover you should be
aware that this book is stolen property. It was
reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the Publisher
and neither the Author nor the Publisher has received
any payment for this "stripped book."
Pinnacle and the P logo Reg. U.s.
Pat. and TM Off.
First Zebra Printing: 1990
First Pinnacle Printing: December, 1998
10 9 8 7 6 5 4
Printed in the United States of America
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
places, and incidents are either the product of the
author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and
any resemblance to actual persons, living or
dead, events, or locales is entirely
coincidental.
Dedicated to Linda Howington. If Ben Raines
makes a mistake, she'll let me know about it.
  I slept and dreamed that life was beauty. I
woke-and found that life was duty.
  -Ellen Sturgis Hooper
Ben turned his head to gaze at the silence that was
once Monroe, Louisiana. Buddy had cleared
the small city of Night People some months back.
Ben could only wonder if any of the cannibalistic
people had returned. Probably so, he concluded. But
that was now the problem of Ike @.nd Cecil.
  The long column rolled on westward and put the
city in their rearview mirrors.
  There was no conversation in the Blazer; that would
come later on. For now, Ben and his personal team were
silent with their own thoughts.
  The Blazer hit a rough stretch of interstate and
Ben grimaced. That was something else that the Rebels
would have to start on, and do it pretty damned quick. The
nation's highways were deteriorating rapidly; if
something wasn't done to correct it, ground
transportation would be slowed to no more than a crawl.
  But Jesus God! Ben thought. There were thousands of
miles of just interstate alone, and the Rebels were
so few. He twisted in the seat and looked at
Beth.
  "Make a note, Beth. When I call Base
Camp One this evening, remind me to tell Ike
to put together a combat engineer crew and start working on
the interstate system."
  "Yes, sir."
  "The Mississippi River bridge at
Vicksburg is to be guarded at all times."
  "Yes, sir."
  "Ruston up ahead," Cooper said. "You want
to stop, General?"
  "No. All this sector is Ike's baby now.
We'll start our inspection tours when we clear the
Louisiana line." Ben lifted the mike from
its hook and keyed it. "Eagle to Scout."
  "Go, Eagle," Tina's voice came through the
speaker.
  "Give me your twenty."
  "Coming up on Minden."
  "Roll on through. Stop at Bossier City and
wait for us."
  "Ten-four, Eagle. It'll be slow going from our
position on. The roads are not in good shape."
  "Ten-four. Any detours to watch for?"
  "Not yet. And no signs of life either."
  "I was afraid of that. Eagle out." Ben opened
a map case and studied the clear plastic enclosed
map. Maps had become very precious articles;
they were taken whenever they were found. And they were constantly
being updated by a small section of Rebels working
at Base Camp One. Whenever the forever wandering
teams of Scouts found a bridge out, they would
radio back to Base Camp One and alert the
map section. The map crews would then change the
maps and radio that information out to all field units.
  And it was a job that seemed never to end as the nation's
highway system continued to fall slowly but steadily
into disrepair.
  The long convoy was slowed to a crawl after
passing the Minden exit.
  "We'll be lucky to make it out of Louisiana
by nightfall," Ben said. "And this used to be an
easy three-hour run." He smiled. "Driving
only slightly over the posted speed limit, that
is."
  "General Raines breaking the law," Jersey said
sarcastically. "I just can't believe that."
  Ben took the ribbing with a smile.
  "I remember order and laws and policemen and
TV and all that," Corrie spoke from the back
seat. "But I didn't appreciate the safety of
it, of course. Not until the whole world fell
apart."
  "That's the way it always is, Corrie," Ben
said. "Now it's up to us to try to rebuild it back
to some semblance of what it used to be."
  "It seems an impossible task for so few of
us," she countered.
backslash
  "Castro started a revolution with only three or
four people-and won."
  "Who's Castro?" Jersey asked.
  Ben halted the column at Bossier City, a
couple of hours before dark. They needed that much
time to seek safe shelter and set up guard posts
and for the meals to be distributed.
Ben set up his CP in the Hilton Inn in
Bossier, just off 1-20. A team of Rebels
began scouting out the hotel and reported back that they
had found nothing, except a lot of litter. They
declared the interior of the building secure.
  Ben radioed back to Base Camp One and
reported in. He instructed Ike to form an
engineer team and get to work on the roads and
bridges.
  "None of us will ever live to see the highway
system completely repaired," Ike told him.
  "I know it. But it's a start. We can only
hope that those who come after us will continue our work. Have you
heard anything from Striganov?"
  "Nothin' since you pulled out. I expect he's
busy outfitting his people and then will move over to the
Canadian line, to wait for you."
   "Ten-four. Talk to you tomorrow. Eagle out."
  Ben ate an early dinner and walked outside,
joining Dan and Buddy and Tina in the parking lot.
  "We'll stay on Interstate 20 to Dallas,"
he told them. "We'll spend a few days there
checking the place out. From Dallas, we'll
hook up with 287 to Wichita Falls. I want
an outpost established in that area, so Dan, you start
talking to the settlers with us. We'll spend a few
days with them, helping them get settled in."
  "Yes, sir."
  "After that?" Tina asked.
  "We'll play it by ear," Ben told his
daughter.
  Ben had heard the sounds of something alien to the night
reach his ears. He let the others talk while he
listened. He stepped back away from the others; they
were deep in conversation and did not notice. He
cradled his Ml4 and walked toward the hotel
building, his eyes moving, searching the darkness. There
it was! Something. . . no, several somethings were
crouched in the darkness next to a line of rusting and
long-abandoned vehicles. Ben could not make out what
they were; he assumed they were humans, for the light
breeze was coming from their direction and he could not
detect the hideous scent of Night People, which he
considered a subhuman species.
  Ben stepped close to the building, putting himself out
of sight of the hostiles, and he had to assume they were
hostiles until they proved otherwise. He began
working his way along the side of the building.
Dan picked that time to glance at Ben. Ben pointed
to the line of cars.
  One second Dan and Tina and Buddy were standing
up talking, the next instant they had vanished.
Tina stayed where she was, flat on the parking lot,
weapon ready, while Buddy and Dan circled the
row of cars.
  A figure darted from the darkness of the abandoned
cars, a short-barreled Uzi in his hand. Ben knew
it was a he because of the shaved head clearly visible in the
darkness, and the way his jeans fit.
  "Looking for me, punk!" Ben called.
  The young man spun around, bringing up the Uzi and
letting loose a stream of lead in Ben's
direction.
  But Ben had moved, shifting positions as soon as
the words had left his mouth. The slugs hit concrete
and glass and nothing else. Ben leveled the old
Thunder Lizard, set on full rock and roll, and
gave the skinhead a burst of .308's. Ben was
using a twenty-round magazine; the thirty-round
mags
were too heavy and clumsy when the Ml4 was fired from
the shoulder. Ben used them when the Ml4 was bipoded.
The .308's lifted the skinhead off his
boots and dropped him to the parking lot.
  Dan and Buddy were firing from Ben's left, so
Ben did the only sensible thing under the circumstances:
he went belly-down on the concrete until the
firing had ceased.
  "General!" Dan called.
  "I'm all right. What'd you have over there?"
  "A pile of dead bodies. No. Here's one
left alive."
  The area had filled with Rebels.
  "Secure it," Ben told them, then walked over
to stand with Dan and Buddy.
  "They're all bald," Buddy said. "What
happened to their hair?"
  "They shaved it off," Dan told him, kneeling
down beside the badly wounded young man.
  "Yeah, man," the badly wounded skinhead said.
"Just like our daddies done. It's groovy. So if
you don't like it, screw you!" He groaned, both
hands holding his bullet-torn belly.
  One of Ling's medics appeared, medical kit in
hand. He looked at the young man, then looked up
at Ben and shook his head.
  Ben knelt down. "You have anything you'd like to say,
boy. You're hard hit."
  "Yeah," he gasped. "Death to all niggers and
wops and spies and slopes and Jews and ..."
  Ben tuned him out. He'd heard it all before . .
. many times. He looked at Dan. The
Englishman arched one eyebrow.
  When the young man paused, gasping for breath, and
sweating from the pain, Dan said, "Now that
you have most profanely stated your opinion of what
at one time comprised about ninety percent of the earth's
population, perhaps you would be so kind as to enlighten us as
to what you and your . . . cohorts were doing skulking
about in the shadows?"
  "Haw?"
  Dan sighed. "What the hell were you doing here?"
  "We come to kill Ben Raines."
  Ben did not change expression. At least half
the population left on earth-at least in North
America comwanted to kill him. All that had started
years back, when civilization-for wont of a better
word-was still flourishing, and Ben had been a popular
writer of fiction. Ben had called it like he saw
it, on a great many subjects, until finally he was
receiving several hundred hate letters a year. His
home had been shot into and he had been shot at
several times.
  His position was that anyone who kills another
person while drinking and driving should be put to death.
Honky-tonks should be burned to the ground. Poachers
should be imprisoned . . . for a long time.
Domesticated animals have rights. Anyone who would
poison a dog should be forced to eat the same
poison. Most judges had shit for brains. You
couldn't be a lawyer and be honest. And so on and so
forth.
  To say that Ben was opinioned was like saying an
elephant was heavy; no need to dwell on the
obvious.
  "So what else is new?" Ben asked. "You're
too young to have read any of my books-that can't be it.
Besides, you're probably illiterate. . ." Ben
looked down at the young man. He was wasting his
breath. The man was dead.
  Buddy was going through the pockets of the dead men.
"Find anything, son?" Ben asked.
  Buddy put his flashlight beam on a piece of
paper. The paper had been encased in plastic. He
quickly scanned the typewritten words, holding it in
a gloved hand. "They belong to some sort of
survivalist group, Father. This was written by someone
of very limited intelligence." He handed the
paper to Ben.
  Ben stood up. "Glove up and inspect these
bodies," he ordered. "Then burn them." He
walked back into the hotel and sat down, adjusting the
light of the battery-powered lamp to better read.
  It was a declaration of war from some group with the name of
Help Americans Live, Fight, And Stay
Strong.
  Ben had to chuckle at first, then he burst out
laughing when he shortened the title to the first letter of
each word.
  HALF ASS
  Tina and Dan looked at him, curious
expressions on their faces.
  The short document declared war on everybody not of the
Aryan persuasion, and it did so profanely comwitha
number of misspelled words. But whoever had written
it certainly managed to get their point across. Since
the Rebels had people of all races and colors within
its ranks, Ben Raines's Rebels were number
one on the target list to be killed. Especially
Ben Raines.
  And Emil Hite and Thermopolis were also on the
list.
  "Tina?" Ben called. "Get on the
horn and advise Base Camp to inform Emil that
he and his followers are on a hit list from this bunch
of nuts." He waved
the paper. "And radio our people with Thermopolis that
Therm and his bunch are also on the list. Advise them
all to go to middle alert and stay there."
  "What's the name of this bunch, Dad?" Tina
asked.
  Ben told her.
  Tina looked startled. Dan said, "I beg your
pardon, sir?"
  Ben repeated it.
  Dan walked away, muttering and shaking his head.
Tina went to the communications truck to alert those on
the hit list.
  Buddy entered the lobby and walked to his father,
sitting down. "They're well armed, Father. Uzis,
and the weapons are in good shape. They might be a
bunch of nuts, but they take good care of their arms."
  "You find out anything else about them?"
  "A Rebel patrol found their motorcycles."
He paused. "And the women who came with them."
  "Alive or dead?"
  "Very much alive."
  "Wonderful." Ben's reply was very
drily offered. "Were they with the crash truck?"
  "I beg your pardon, sir?"
  Dan had returned, to stand by Ben's chair.
  "I did a book on motorcycle gangs
years back. The crash truck is a van or
truck or sometimes a converted school bus that
travels about a mile or so behind the main bunch of
bikers. It's used to pick up broken-down
bikes. It's also used to carry the weapons, ammo,
supplies, and drugs. It's almost always driven
by females. Send out patrols to locate it.
It'll be around. Bet on it."
"Yes, sir. Sir?"
  "Yes?"
  "We found identical tattoos on the men."
  "A 1% symbol?"
  "Yes, sir. How did you know that?"
  "That's an old symbol. Years back, the
American Motorcycle Association stated that
ninety-nine percent of the nation's motorcyclists
belonged to the AMA and were law-abiding. The 1%
symbol became the mark of the outlaw bikers. If
these are the people who took out our patrols in the
Northwest, they're well organized, strong in
number, and dangerous as hell."
  "There is one woman with them who says she is not
a part of this group. The other females
corroborate her statements. They say she is
something called a Cutie-whatever that means."
  "That means, son, that she was kidnapped, taken
against her will, and probably raped and beaten
into submission."
  Buddy thought about that for a moment. "Why, Father,
back when law and order was supposed to have
prevailed, didn't society do something about these
gangs?"
  "What would you have done, son?"
  "I would have eliminated them, Father."
  Ben smiled. "Yes. I also advocated that,
too, Buddy. Which is another reason why I'm still
on somebody's hit list."
  "You goddamn right you are, you son of a bitch!" the
female voice shouted at Ben from the doorway.
  "Motorcycle Mamas," Ben said. "My,
what an interesting trip this is going to be."
The Mamas were not unattractive, in a rough sort
of way. However, it appeared that none of them had
taken time to bathe in what Ben guessed to be about a
year and a half, approximately.
  Without getting up from his chair, Ben said,
"Take these . . . people to the shower tent and give them
soap. After they have bathed, or you have been forced to bathe
them, and if the latter is the case, find steel
horse brushes to use on them, disinfect them, and
bring them back to me. Burn their clothing."
  The women were taken fnj greater-than more the hotel,
kicking and cussing and biting and

behaving in a most unladylike fashion.
  "Where is the, ah, Cutie?" Ben asked.
  "She's being looked at by the medics. Doctor
Ling is having her tested for diseases. She says she
was kidnapped several days ago. She and her boyfriend
were driving to join us at Base Camp One. The
boyfriend was tortured and then killed."
  "Name?"
"Meg Callahan."
  Ben grinned. "I bet she's redheaded and has a
temper."
  "She most certainly does have a temper," Dan
said. "She gave me a proper cursing, then
apologized when she found I was part of the Rebels.
And her hair is auburn. However, it is in her
favor that her ancestors came from Southern
Ireland. She did not spring from that damnable
bunch in Northern Ireland."
  The ex-British SAS officer had little good
to say about Northern Ireland, having served several
tours of duty there, fighting the IRA.
  "Now, now, Dan," Ben kidded him, looking up
as Tina once more entered the hotel lobby.
  "All parties notified, Dad," she told
him. "What's all that screaming about over at number
three shower tent?"
  "Some, ah, ladies are being forced to bathe."
  "Ladies! If those broads are ladies,"
Tina declared, "I'm the Jolly Green Giant."
  Ben laughed and rose from his chair, walking to the
ever-present coffee pot and pouring himself a cup.
He turned to face his daughter.
"HadThermo-polis ever heard of this bunch of
bikers?"
  "No. It was news to him. And Base has
absolutely no intel on the group."
  "Well, I guess it's up to us to provide
it." Ben walked back to his chair. "When the,
ah, ladies return from their bath, have Ling let his
interrogation people work on them. And I want to see
Meg Callahan as soon as the medics are through with
her."
Dr. Ling entered the hotel lobby and walked up
to Ben, taking a seat. "I think," the doctor said,
"Miss Callahan was a very fortunate young lady.
The group that kidnapped her was in a hurry to get
to us, you specifically, General. She was not raped.
That was to come later; after you were killed-sort of a
victory celebration, one might say."
  Ben grunted. He lifted his eyes as Meg was
escorted into the hotel lobby. Auburn hair,
green eyes, a very lovely Irish lass. Ben
guessed her at about five-five. Very shapely.
  He stood up. "Miss Callahan. Won't
you take a seat?"
  Tina rolled her eyes at this unexpected
gallantry from her father. That usually meant that he had
something up his sleeve or was romantically interested
in the woman-or both.
  But in a way she was glad tQuite see it. It
meant that her dad had finally decided to puj; Jerre
out of his mind forever. Or at least try. She cut
her eyes to Buddy. He was smiling.
  Meg put her green eyes on Ben and stared at
him for a long moment. Six feet one or two, she
guessed. Dark hair peppered with gray. Strange
blue eyes. She guessed him to be around
fifty. Maybe one hundred ninety pounds.
Looked to be in excellent physical shape. Not
a handsome man in the pretty boy vein, but. . .
interesting-looking. Very interesting-looking.
  "Thank you, General Raines."
  "Somebody bring Miss Callahan a cup of
what now passes for coffee." They had found a
warehouse full of coffee in New York City,
but that was carefully hoarded, and not for everyday use.
Coffee in hand, Meg sipped and sighed
gratefully.
  "Tell me what you can, if anything, about this bunch
of bikers who, whether they knew it or not, have named
themselves HALFASS."
  The woman looked startled for a moment, and then
burst out laughing. "HALFASS?" she finally
managed to ask.
  "Yes. Help Americans Live, Fight,
And Stay Strong."
  "I never put it together," she admitted.
"Well, I probably know more about them than I ever
cared to know. Where to start?"
  "From the beginning, Miss Callahan."
  "Call me Meg."
  "Very well, Meg. Where was your home?"
  "Originally?"
  "Yes."
  "Southern California. Los Angeles. My
mother was an actress-mostly bit parts, but steady work
nonetheless. My father was a writer. Paperbacks."
  "Matt Callahan?"
  She nodded.
  "Hell, I knew him well. We met at a
WWA convention three-four years before the balloon
went up. Both of us had books up for Best
Western that year."
  "I know. You won. Dad said you deserved it."
  "That would be just like him. Go on, please."
  "I was visiting my mother on location the summer the
bombs came. In Arizona. We became
separated in all the confusion. I've never seen her
since. Eventually I drifted up into Wyoming-that was
after five or six years of drifting around-and found
myself a little
cabin, and stayed. Raised a garden in the summer and
hunted for meat during the winter ..."
  Ben thought it odd that she had mentioned nothing about her
father.
  "About three years ago, Satan showed up."
  "Who!"
  "The biker who calls himself Satan."
  "He's the head of this HALFASS business?"
  "In a manner of speaking, yes. Anyway, he
tried to come on to me. I told him to get the hell
off my land. He left, but came back later that
night. I shot him. Thought I'd killed him, but
later found out he was only slightly wounded. It
got really wearisome there for a time. I had to watch my
back at all times."
  "No man in your life?"
  "There have been very few men in my life, General.
I generally find I can get along without them very
well."
  Ben smiled. "Oh?"
  "Yes. And no, I don't like girls-not in the
way you were probably thinking."
  "I wasn't thinking that at all, Meg."
  She studied him for a moment. "Yes, you
probably weren't thinking that. From all that I've
been able to find out about you, you're ari honorable
man."
  "I don't know about honorable, Meg. I
swore off women about a year ago, that's all."
  She arched one eyebrow.
  "And no, I don't like boys, either!"
  They shared a laugh, Meg saying, "Anyway,
I pulled out. I hated to because I'd been there for a
long time. I loved that little place. Satan found
me. I moved again. He found me again. Then
suddenly the
harassment stopped. For a year I lived alone, and
without being bothered. I couldn't figure it out. Then
one day this young man showed up; he was five or six
years younger than me. He'd been tortured
by Satan and his group. Managed to escape. I
hid him for the rest of that year."
  She paused and Ben took it up. "How many people
does Satan have?"
  "Men and women?"
  "Yes."
  "Thirty-five hundred, I'd guess. Their
headquarters is Sheridan. It was a ... brutal
takeover. The bikers are not nice people."
  "The women play the same role as the men in
Satan's army. By that, I mean . . ."
  "I know what you mean." She frowned. "Not all
of them are fighters. Although all can fight, if you know
what I mean."
  Ben nodded.
  "I would guess that the Rattlesnake
Kid . . ."
  "The
who?"
Ben blurted.
  Her smile was a mixture of humor and sadness.
"The Rattlesnake Kid. He calls himself
Snake. Anyway, I would guess that Snake
has probably a thousand men; maybe fifteen
hundred. So that means a force of over, oh, three
thousand, combined. But that's just in Wyoming. He has
other colonies-as he calls them-in Washington,
Idaho, and Montana. He shares power with some
survivalist up in Montana. They, well,
don't really get along too well."
  "Who in the hell is the Rattlesnake Kid,
Meg?"
  "The real brains behind Satan and his bikers."
  "Nobody with any brains wrote this." Ben
held up
the plastic-encased paper he'd taken from the dead
skinhead.
  Again, Meg laughed. "Oh, no. One of the
outlaw bikers wrote that. I'm sure that Snake
found it to be hysterically amusing."
  "Have you ever met this Snake person?"
  "One time, recently, that is," she said
mysteriously, "and then only by chance, and for a very brief
moment."
  "I'm surprised he let you go free."
  "Oh, Snake wouldn't hurt me!" Meg's
green eyes widened. "You see, the Rattlesnake
Kid is my father."
  Ben learned that Matt Callahan had
apparently gone over the edge after the Great War.
Gone so far over he had joined some racist group and
rapidly became the head of the fool thing.
"less-than
  Then he tipped way over, and became, as Ben
recalled, one of the characters Matt had created in a
Western written years back: the Rattlesnake
Kid.
  Meg said that her father now dressed in Western
garb, wore two six-shooters, and rode around on
a black horse. Ben guessed that he and
Matt-or Snake-were about the same age.
  Meg had told him that her father had pulled together
all the extreme right-wing groups left and set them
up in a three-state area-at least three states,
she guessed. Probably more.
  Snake used the bikers as enforcers, and was
the brains behind the entire operation. She wasn't
sure where her father lived.
  Meg was heading west to link up with Ben and his
Rebels, and to warn him of the powerful force that now
controlled much of the northwest.
  The bikers sent to ambush Ben had probably
monitored Rebel radio transmissions and
waited in Bossier. They had taken Meg and
killed the young man with her several days before arriving in
Bossier.
  Dr. Ling approached Ben as he stood in the
darkness outside the hotel. "We have broken those
foul-mouthed female bikers. Their stories seem
to corroborate what Miss Callahan told us.
She does not know that we were monitoring her conversations
and answers to our questions with a PSE machine. We
believe she was truthful in all her statements."
  "The biker women?"
  "One died. The problem is, what do we do with those
remaining?"
  Ben sighed. "We can't turn them loose, that's
for sure." He motioned for Corrie to join them.
"Bump Cecil, Corrie. Tell him to send a
detail over here to get these. . . ladies. Get
them started right now. They should be here
by daylight. We'll pull out as soon as we turn
over the prisoners to them."
  "Yes, sir."
  "Get some sleep, Doctor. I'll see you in
the morning."
  Ben walked the perimeter of the hotel, chatting
briefly with each sentry. Then he turned in. His
last thought before sleep took him was that this journey was
certainly not going to be uneventful.
  The column pulled out at midmorning, having
transferred the female bikers to the detail
Cecil sent out. The biker mamas were less than
happy about it,
and voiced their dissatisfaction loudly and
profanely, heaping dire threats upon Ben's head.
  "What a lovely bunch of girls," Corrie
said as the detail of Rebels pulled out, heading
back to Base Camp One.
  "Just darling," Beth said. "But at least they're
clean. Probably for the first time in months."
  "Drive, Cooper," Ben said.
  Meg had declined Ben's offer to return
to Base Camp One, instead, asking for and receiving
permission to accompany the column westward. She was
outfitted and assigned to the office staff
until she could prove herself in a combat situation.
  The Rebels rolled through Shreveport and then
crossed over into Texas. The Interstate system was
only slightly better in the Friendship State.
  "Eagle to Scout," Ben radioed.
  "Go, Eagle."
  "Tina, check out Marshall and get back to me."
  "Ten-four. I'm on the outskirts now."
  Ben halted the convoy just before the exit sign leading
off to Marshall and waited for Tina's report. He
had checked his map-an old one-and found the town had
once had a population of twenty-five thousand. There
would be some survivors, but how many and in what kind of
shape was unknown.
  "Got some people here, Dad," Tina reported.
"About five hundred, I'd guess ..."
  That was just about right. Ben had found during his wanderings
that approximately one in fifty had survived the
Great War. That computed to a population of about five
million now living in what was once the United
States. Give or take a couple of hundred
thousand.
But they were a damned elusive bunch, spread out
all over slightly more than three and a half
million square miles of territory. And
there was no way of determining how many had fled the
U.s. borders for Canada or Mexico.
  "If I could get them together," Ben murmured,
"we could rebuild this country. And make it work."
  "Beg pardon, sir?" Jersey asked from the
back seat.
  "Talking to myself, Jersey." He keyed his
mike. "Their condition, Scout?"
  "They're in good shape. But they want no part of
us."
  And had happened before, that made Ben hot. And as
usual, he calmed himself quickly. He had no right
to impose his own views on someone who did not wish
it; not as long as they were living in peace with others and more
or less abiding by some rules of law that were
acceptable to the majority in the community.
  "Would I be wasting my time coming in and talking with
them?" Bed radioed.
  "Probably," his daughter told him. "I have
encountered friendlier folks."
  "Hell with them," Ben replied. "Move out and
check the next town." He glanced at Cooper.
"Roll, Coop." He glanced back at Beth.
"Make sure Cecil gets the message that this
town is to receive no help from us, in any
way, shape, or fashion, at any time. They
want to stand alone, they can sink alone."
  "Yes, sir."
  Hard words from a hard man. But Ben had learned
throughout the years that progressive, forward-thinking people were
almost always eager for the Rebels to move in.
To eagerly receive the help that
only the Rebels could provide. Those who wished
to remain stagnant usually didn't last too long.
  He had a hunch that the next town down the
seemingly never-ending highway would be filled with people-a
lot of them from towns nearby-who had banded together
to reopen schools and clinics and were looking toward the
future, living under laws and rules and regulations.
  The miles rolled by. Tina called in.
  "Go, Tina."
  "Longview is deserted, Dad. Except for a
few people that look as though time forgot them. They're a
pretty sorry bunch. They say that those who
reoccupied Tylor ran them out. This bunch is a
complaining and whining lot."
  "Pull out and head for Tyler. That seems like a
good spot for an outpost, if the people want it."
  They did. Ben found a clean town, with a
population of about fifteen hundred, all
working together toward a better and safer future. They
welcomed the Rebels.
  The elected officials of the town readily agreed
to a meeting with Ben. They listened to Ben's ideas and
agreed to become part of the network of outposts Ben was
setting up around the country.
  One more step toward pulling the land out of the ashes of
destruction.
  Ben radioed back to Cecil and informed him of the
new outpost. Cecil would dispatch equipment and a
small team of Rebels immediately, and yet another
rung was climbed on the tall, tall ladder toward
rebuilding a shattered nation.
  The Rebels stayed one night in Tyler and
pulled
out at dawn the following morning.
  The spokesperson at Tyler had told Ben that
between Tyler and Dallas, there was nothing. And no, they
did not know where the people had gone. Just that they were gone;
north or south or west of there. But just gone.
  And Dallas was a haven for thugs and punks and
hoodlums and outlaws and the like. Nobody, but
nobody
ever went into Dallas.
  Ben had smiled.
  The spokesperson asked why he was smiling.
  "Sounds like a lovely place to visit," Ben
told her.
  "Roads are a mess," Tina radioed back.
"And getting worse. Some of the cars abandoned have
bullet holes in them."
  Ben glanced at his watch. One o'clock in the afternoon.
"What's your twenty, Tina?"
  "About thirty-five miles east of Dallas."
  "Hold what you've got."
  "It must be slow going up where she is," Cooper
said. "We're just a few miles behind her."
  Ben glanced out the window at the brush and weeds
along the interstate. "Dandy place for an ambush,"
he muttered.
  A second later a bullet whanged off the
side of the armor-plated Blazer.
  "We're under attack!" his radio blared
Tina's voice.
  Ben jerked up the mike. "So are we, kid. Just
hang on."
Either their attackers were awfully stupid, or they just
did not realize who they were attacking.
  Every truck had a Big Thumper. The
high-firepower 40mm machine gun
launched grenades at rapid-fire, with a one
hundred percent kill-radius of ten yards per
grenade. And could launch four different types of
rounds.
  Each platoon had at least one .50 caliber
machine gun and at least one 5.56 Minimi machine
gun, which was capable of spitting out 750 rounds a
minute. be
  The attackers which swarmed out of the brush and tall
grass died almost instantly after revealing themselves.
  "Two tanks up to Tina's position," Ben
radioed. "Dan, take a team and go."
  "On my way, General."
  Ben stepped out of the truck and a frightened little dog
ran up to him, shivering with fear as it sat between Ben's
boots. Ben knelt down and picked up
the animal, knowing damn well he was going to have fleas
all over him. He held the dog close to his
chest and it calmed quickly.
  "What'd you got there, General?" Tony asked.
The young captain was the CO of D Company.
  Ben held the dog out while his Rebels were going
through the carnage they had just wreaked. The wounded were being
looked after ... in a manner of speaking.
  "Pure mutt," Ben announced. "With a
bad back leg. How about a mascot, gang?"
  Those around him agreed to that and Tony named the mutt
Chester. Ben handed Chester to a Rebel and got on
the horn to Tina.
  "How's it looking up there, kid?"
  "Oh, just wonderful, Pops! Thank God I
can hear the tanks coming. You?"
  "I just found a little dog. Or rather, he found me.
We named him Chester."
  There was a long pause. "Well, I think that's
just marvelous, Dad. You need a companion.
God-damnit!" she yelled. "Are you sending help
up here?"
  Ben chuckled and looked down at his hand. It was
covered with fleas. "Somebody bathe that mutt," he
yelled, keying the mike. "Dan's on the way.
Are you being overrun by a pack of punks,
daughter?"
  "No! We just beat them back. You all right?"
  "I have fleas." Ben scratched his chest.
  "Say again."
  "Never mind. Pull back and join us. It's
too dangerous a run from here on in."
  "Ten-four, Dad."
Ben began walking among the dead
attackers, piled up like tornado-tossed
debris. He scratched as he strolled amid the
torn bodies. Chester was a four-footed walking
flea factory. Cute little fellow though. Ben
stopped and knelt down beside one man, who appeared
to still be breathing. Carefully, Ben tossed the man's
weapons out of reach and then placed the muzzle of his
M14 against the man's cheek.
  "If you're thinking of going for a hideout gun or
a knife, partner, I'd think again."
  The man opened his eyes. Hate shone like burning
coals at Ben." "Raines! We pulled the
wrong cards this time, didn't we?"
  "I would certainly say so." Ben glanced at the
man's bullet-shattered belly. "If you have
anything to say, you'd better say it quick."
  "You a hard bastard, ain't you, Raines?"
  "Yep." be
  "You don't remember me, db you?"
  "Fortunately, no."
  "I was with Hartline back when you was named
President. Right before them rats come with the disease."
  "Hartline is dead." ,
  "Yeah, I heard you kilt him; I'm
a-gettin" cold."
  "You want me to set you on fire?"
  The man cursed Ben. "I never met a human
being as hard as you, Raines," he gasped. "I seen
you with that stupid-lookin' dog over yonder. You act
like you cared what happened to him, but it don't bother you
none to squat there and watch me die." He moaned
in pain, hands clutching at his bloody belly.
  "The dog can't help being what he is, mister.
That's the difference."
  "What's the difference."
  "You had a choice."
  The man died cursing Ben.
  Ben stood up and walked around, finding no more
wounded. He paused and watched as Tina and Dan
returned. They walked over to him. "Who are they,
General?" Dan asked.
  "Trash. Probably trash before the Great War."
  "We got the fleas off Chester," Cooper's
voice drifted to them. "Now who's gonna get the
fleas off me?"
  Ben scratched his arm.
  "You have a rash, General?" Dan asked, his
eyes following the scratching.
  "I have fleas."
  Dan immediately started scratching.
  "Let's roll on," Ben said. "We'll stop
at the next town we come to and decide what we're
going to do about Dallas."
  "What about the bodies?" Corrie asked.
  "Leave them for the carrion birds and the coyotes
and the other animals. They have to eat too."
  Hard words from a hard man. But nations aren't
rebuilt by any other type of person.
  "My people have worked in close enough to the city to see
lots of torchlights," Dan told Ben.
  "Estimates, Dan?"
  "Hundred, at least. Perhaps as many as several
thousand. My Scouts have only approached from the east
side."
"Tell them to back off, Dan. No point in
risking their lives needlessly. We need to know if
those in the city are holding hostages . . . and they
probably are. We're just going to have to play it by ear
in the morning."
  Ben stood on an overpass and looked at the
sprawling city. For a time, he had believed the Twin
Cities to be destroyed; that was the rumor. And like so
many rumors, it had been disproven.
  Ben shifted his Ml4 into a more comfortable position.
He had stopped carrying his Thompson because a
great many people-including some in his own command-were beginning
to think the old Chicago Piano had some magical
power, and that Ben was some sort of God.
  Ben had done his best to dispell those rumors.
  Meg Callahan walked up with Jersey and
Cooper to stand by Ben's side in the middle of the
westbound lanes.
  "I certainly remember the TV program,"
she said.
  "Old J.r.," Ben said with a smile. "He
wouldn't like Dallas much now."
  "Are we going in?" Meg asked.
  Ben nodded. "We'll approach the city-or what
is left of it," he added, looking at the smoke that
hung low over Dallas. The city appeared
ravaged, and probably a lot of it had been. With
no way, or will, to fight fires, he was certain a
lot of buildings had been destroyed, mainly because of
neglect and carelessness.
  "Dan?" Ben called, and the Englishman walked
over to him. "Take your Scouts to here." He
pointed
to the map. "I'm sending a tank in with you. Check the
area out carefully but don't advance unless you receive
orders from me."
  "Right, sir." Dan walked off, yelling for his
Scouts. They began pulling out almost immediately, the
main battle tank leading the way, its 105mm
lowered and ready for a fight. In addition to the 105, the
tank had one .50 caliber machine gun and had
been modified for two 7.62 machine guns. The
big V-12 engine could move it along at 40
mph.
  The tank clanked to a halt a block east of
Buckner Blvd. Dan and his people, in APC'S,
waited behind it. Rifle fire came from a building
north of the tank, the bullets whining off the heavily
armored tank. The commander shifted the 105 and the early
morning was shattered as a HEP'-HIGH-EXPLOSIVE
plastic round-knocked a huge smoking hole in the
building.
  Men could be seen running from the smoking structure.
The .50 caliber started yammering. The men were
hurled spinning and sprawling as the heavy slugs
impacted with flesh.
  The area became very quiet except for the moaning
of the wounded men to the north of the tank and Dan's
Scouts.
  The tank commander swung the big 105 and gave the
closest building to the south a round of
HEP. The impacting round knocked a man
screaming from the top floor. He hit the ground and
lay still, his rifle beside him. The TC put a round
of Willie Peter into the building.
  Lifting 7x50 binoculars, Ben could see men
running out the back of the smoking structure. Ben
turned to Corrie. "Tell Dan to check it out."
  The orders were relayed.
  It did not take Dan long to determine that the
immediate area around his position had been deserted.
  "Another tank up," Ben ordered. "Tell
Dan to split his people when the support tank
arrives. Clear north and south for two blocks."
  Another main battle tank rumbled past Ben and
moved into position. Scouts scrambled from APC'S
to walk along the safe side of the tank as the tanks
moved north and south.
  Ben looked at Meg. "Meg, find Dr. Ling
and ask him if he has any rabies innoculations
with him."
  "Sir?" she appeared startled.
  "For Chester," Ben explained with a smile.
  "Right." She walked away, thinking that the man's
mind sure worked in curious angles.
  "You want to interrogate any of the wounded,
General?" Corrie asked. "Colonel Gray
is on the horn."
  "Yes. Bring them to me."
  Ben hand-rolled a cigarette while he waited.
He looked up as Meg approached.
  "Dr. Ling says he wasn't aware that he was
running a school of veterinary medicine, General
Raines. But he would certainly radio back
to base and have some vaccine dropped by air."
  "We're going to be here all day, Meg. Tell
Ling to have that done. It's j ust a short hop from
base to here. Let's get Chester all fixed up.
No need to take any chances."
  "Right, sir."
Several of the less severely wounded men were brought
to Ben. They smelled as though they had forgotten that
water was used for things other than drinking. They
appeared defiant, but fear was clear in their eyes.
  "You know who I am?" Ben asked.
  They knew.
  "We can do this easy or hard," Ben told them.
"It's up to you. You can answer my questions now, or I
can turn you over to an interrogation team. They'll
pump you full of drugs and learn the truth that way.
You have about a sixty-forty chance of surviving
it. It's up to you."
  "And if we tell you what you want to know right
now?" a burly lout asked. "What then?"
  "You walk free. But not back to the city; at
least not so I can see you do it."
  "What do you want to know?"
  "How many men in the city?"
  "I ain't got no way of tellin' that, General
Raines. The city's all cut up into zones.
They's probably fifty or sixty different
warlords controllin' different parts of Dallas and
Fort Worth. You go a half a dozen blocks in
any direction, they's someone else in charge."
  "And it's always changin'," another added.
"Mac-Nally's got this area today. Lopez and his
bunch might have it next week. Next month,
Pete Jones might control it."
  "What's left in the city?"
  The man shrugged. "To be honest, nothin'. It's
been looted so many times . . . it's just a shell."
  Ben could believe that. He'd seen it many times
before, in other cities and towns. "How many
prisoners-slaves, if you will-are being held inside
the city?"
  "Bunches," the first man said. "There
agin, I ain't got no way of knowin'."
  "How many are you holding and where are they?"
  "I ain't holdin' none personal. But
Macationally's got about . . . thirty, I
reckon. He lives over yonder about four
blocks from Buckner." He pointed the way.
"It's a warehouse."
  "Heavily guarded?"
  "Oh, yes, sir. Plenty of men around it all
the time."
  "This Lopez and Jones . . . what can you tell
me about them?"
  "They bad. But I don't now where they're
livin'. Everything changes all the time. One gang
will move out to go on a raid, another gang will move
into their territory and then they'll be a big fight when
the first gang comes back. That's the way it's been for
years."
  The other prisoners agreed.
  Ben told the Rebels who'd brought the men to him
to take them to Ling's aid station. He looked at the
men. "If I ever see any of you again, and you're
armed, I'll kill you where you stand. Get out of here."
  They got out quickly, prodded by the muzzle of an
Ml6. Dan returned, to tell him it was
clear for Ben to enter.
  "We going to clear the city, General?"
  Ben was thoughtful for a moment, then turned to face the
hazy city. "We'll spend a few days here," he
finally said with a sigh, putting his back to the haze of the
Twin Cities. "But God knows I don't want
to." He lifted a map. "We're close enough
to Base Camp One to be reinforced within a few
hours' time-by
air. Dan, have Captain Tony's company swing
wide around the city. I wouldn't even suggest using
635. I'd backtrack, to avoid unnecessary
confrontations, up through Garland, Richardson,
Carroll ton, and Coppell, then drop down into the
Dallas-Fort Worth Airport. Start clearing
it. Tell him to take two tanks with him."
  "Yes, sir."
  "How have these crud managed to keep the creepies
out? I should have asked those scumbags."
  "There hasn't been a sign or smell of them,
General. Not as far in as we pushed."
  "Well, the creepies do seem to like airports.
Advise Tony to be very careful. Tell him to push
off as soon as possible. And have your people past
Buckner hold what they've got."
  "Right, sir."
  "Corrie, advise Base Camp One that I
am preparing to clean out Dallas-Fort Worth-or
at least sections of it-and to be ready to airlift
supplies to me starting yesterday."
  "Yes, sir," she said with a smile.
  He turned to Meg. "You ready for a little taste of
combat, Meg? The Rebel way?"
  "I'm with you, General Raines."
  She had been armed with the weapon of her preference,
and that happened to be an AR15; said she'd owned a
Colt AR15 for years, had used it against
outlaws and trash several times, and certainly knew
the nomenclature of the weapon.
  The Rebel philosophy was: whatever you're
comfortable with. It kept the armorers and the reloading
factory busy, and the Rebels happy.
"All right, Meg. You'll stay with the support people
for the time being. Don't worry. Before this is over,
you'll get to see more combat than you ever dreamt of
seeing. And that's just in this area."
  Ben waved his people to the Blazer. "Let's go,
Cooper."
  "To Buckner, General?"
  "Right up to the lines, Coop. I want
to personally see what these yahoos are made of."
  "Here we go again," Jersey said.
  "General, you reckon these people are in cahoots with the
creepies?" Cooper asked.
  He shook his head. "I don't think so,
Coop. And that puzzles me. One thought I have is
that the outlaws were strong enough to drive them back, or
out. The next batch of prisoners we take, we
might get some answers."
  A tank pulled across the intersection, preventing
the Blazer from going any farther. "Nothing clear from this
point on, General," the voice came out of the
speaker.
  Ben opened the door and got out. "Let's go,
gang. Looks like we hoof it for a time."
The tank commander was frantically radioing Dan
Gray, telling him of Ben's going into bogie
country with only a small team.
  Ben had crossed over into no-man's land and
approached a warehouse, waving his people down and spread
apart. He had caught motion from behind a very dirty
window. The window suddenly shattered and a gun barrel
was shoved out, spitting lead in the Rebels' general
direction.
  Ben lobbed a grenade toward the window, and
luck was with him: it sailed through the broken glass.
A few seconds later, it blew, and all was
silent.
  "Good toss," Beth said.
  "Pure luck," Ben replied as the sounds of
running boots from behind them reached Ben's ears.
  "Goddamnit, General!" Dan was shouting and
swearing as he ran toward the warehouse.
  With a laugh, Ben ran the short distance to the
warehouse, hit the door with his shoulder, and rolled
in. Lead started zinging and whining all around him
as he rolled toward the dubious protection of
packing crates; he hoped they were full of something that
might stop a slug.
  Ben tossed another Fire-Frag toward the
direction of the unfriendly fire and hit the door as it
blew.
  Screaming filled the close air of the warehouse.
"We yield, we yield!" a man yelled, just as
windows were knocked out with Rebel gun butts and
muzzles of weapons set on full auto were poked
through the holes.
  Ben stood up and looked at a red-faced and very
angry Dan Gray. Ben beat him to conversation before
the Englishman could rebuke him for taking
unnecessary risks . . . which Ben knew Dan was just about
to do.
  "Get the prisoners outside, Dan. And
secure this area. I want to talk to these so-called
outlaws and warlords." Ben reached up and plucked a
grenade off Dan's battle harness. "I only
brought two with me," he said with a smile. "I used
them."
  The newest batch of prisoners were just as
scummy-looking as the last bunch Ben had spoken
with. Sullen and shifty-eyed as they stood before Ben in
the lobby of an office building just cleared moments
before.
  "One of you Macationally?" Ben asked.
  "Haw!" a man snorted. "You come up agin
Macationally and he'll skin you alive and hang your
hide up to dry."
  Ben's smile was not pleasant. "Lots of people have
tried that over the years, trash. I'm still here and
they're rotting in the grave. If I took the time
to bury them," he added.
"You sayl" the man sneered.
  "Yeah, he says," another outlaw spoke up.
"And he done it, too. Don't get too damn
lippy, Hal."
  "I'll get as lippy as I want to with this tin
soldier boy," Hal replied. "He ain't
nothin' to me."
  "Dan!" Ben called. "Take Hal outside
and shoot him."
  Dan stepped forward and Hal paled under the dirt
on his face. "Now, wait a minute! Lookie
here . . ."
  "Shut up!" Ben yelled. "I'm losing
patience with the lot of you. Just answer my questions and
I'll cut you loose. Get smart-assed with me just
one more time and I'll have the lot of you shot! Is that
understood?"
  It was amply understood. One outlaw almost broke
his neck shaking his head in the affirmative, his
Adam's apple bobbing up and down with
fear-swallows.
  "Fine. I am so pleased that we now understand each
other. Where is this Macationally person?"
  Hal was very eager to talk and please the General.
"He's done gone into hidin', I reckon, Ben
Raines. He tooken his army and is hidin' out."
  "You'll show me where his home was after we talk."
It was not a question.
  "Oh, yes, sir. Be right proud to do that,
Ben Raines."
  "Dallas seems to be free of what we call
Night P. Why is that?"
  "They tried to come in here, General," another man
spoke. "They tried bunches of times. The warlords
finally struck a deal with them. We give them women
and kids after we's done havin' our way
with them. That way everybody is happy."
  "Good God in Heaven!" Dan exclaimed.
  The man shrugged. "I figure we're all
gonna be shot anyways. Might as well level
with you people."
  "You don't seem afraid of dying," Ben
remarked.
  "I got the cancer."
  "All right." Ben stood up. "Let's go see
where this Macationally lived."
Squalor
was the single word that sprang into Ben's mind as he
stood in the building where the warlord, Macationally,
lived. The place was a filthy, rat-infested,
cavelike dwelling. A dozen men, women, and children
were chained like wild animals to a wall. They were
naked and cowering at Ben's approach.
  "I reckon Macationally was done with them
folks," Hal told Ben in a matter-of-fact
tone. "Probably going to give them to the Night People
next time they showed up."
  "And when was that going to be?" Ben asked, watching as
his Rebels, using bolt cutters, freed the frightened
people from their chains. They were led outside, to be
transported to Rebel aid stations.
  "Sometime this week was all I know," Hal said.
  "Where does the exchange take place?"
  "South of the city. On the old county line
"tween Dallas and Ellis County. I can show
you, Ben Raines."
  "Thank you. I'll take you up on that offer."
Ben looked at the outlaws. "You men will be our. .
. guests for a time. You will not be mistreated, but you will
be confined." He motioned for the men to be taken away.
When they had gone, he turned to Dan.
  "Order all advancing parties to hunt a hiding
spot
and keep their heads down. Pull all vehicles and
tanks into cover. I want the creepies-if they have
scouts out-to find the city they are accustomed
to seeing. We make no contact with the warlords, and
fire only if fired upon. Let's see if we can
pull this thing off."
  "We get rid of a lot of creepies and then
sweep the city," Dan stated.
  "That's it."
  "Dad," Tina said. "The thought has come to me that
we may just have to destroy every city and town we come to.
The only towns remaining will be the ones our people
occupy. That way we can force the creepies out into the
countryside where we can deal with them."
  Ben sighed heavily. "I'm afraid you may be
right, Tina. Rebels everywhere may have to go on
search-and-destroy missions-nationwide.""
  Ben, traveling with only a small team of
handpicked Rebels, personally viewed the area where
the warlords handed over prisoners to the creepies.
X. was located between two small towns on the county
line. Ben took the exact coordinates of
to 
the area and radioed back to Cecil, briefing the
man.
  Talking to him on the scramble frequency, and using
translators, Ben said, "Our prisoners say the
creepies always come up from the south, Cec. And always
on Interstate 35. So I'm betting they've
occupied Waco. The exchange takes place at
midnight. Always at midnight, always on a
Friday. They've been doing it that way for several
years. No
reason why they should change it now. We're
constantly monitoring frequencies, and have picked
up nothing that would indicate Macationally has alerted
the creepies to our presence. I don't think these
outlaws even have long-range radio hookups.
Most of what I've seen is CB equipment, and
it's in bad shape. So here is what I want..."
  For several days the Rebels maintained a very low
profile, with not one shot being fired from either side.
Many of the warlords felt the Rebels had left the
area, moving on to wherever they were originally headed.
Captain Tony had reached the airport and found it
deserted. He dug his people in tight and stayed out of
sight.
  Ben quietly moved a handpicked team of
Rebels close to the exchange point; he
personally led that team.
  Back at Base Camp One, Cecil and
Ike had readied the equipment Ben had requested and
were standing by.
  "Want to see a show tonight, Meg?" Ben asked the
woman.
  "You mean like a movie?"
  Ben smiled. "Better. This won't be
play-acting."
  "Sure."
  "Be ready to go in an hour."
  Quietly, without attracting any attention-he
hoped-Ben moved his teams into position near the
exchange point. He climbed to the top floor of a
building where nightvision equipment was set up. He
glanced at his watch. Nine o'clock.
"What's all that stuff?" Meg asked.
  "So we can see this evening. Ever seen a
creepie, Meg?"
  "No, but I've heard of the disgusting things they do.
Even Satan is scared of those people.
  At Base Camp One, several PU!'S were
taking off. The PU!'S were flying instruments of
death. Each PUFF carried four 20mm
Vulcan cannons, six-barreled Gatlin guns,
four pairs of 7.62 machines and Bofors cannon,
all side and bottom-mounted. When the PU!'S
got into position, flying in a slow circle, they were
the most destructive flying machines ever built.
  "How many creepies did the prisoners say
usually met the outlaws?" Tina asked.
  "They weren't sure. Only that it was quite a
bunch. Macationally and the others usually handed over
hundreds of captives." bar
  "For the slaughter," Meg sjaid softly.
  "That is correct-literally for the slaughter."
  At eleven-thirty, Rebels drove hastily
repaired old bob trucks they had found outside
the city up to the exchange point. The drivers
quietly and very quickly got the hell out of that area.
  "Won't be long now," Ben muttered.
  "What won't be long?" Meg asked.
  "A show like none you have ever seen before," Ben told
her. "I can promise you that."
  The minutes ticked by in silence. Once again,
Ben glanced at his watch. "Corrie, contact the
PU!'S."
  "They're in position, General," she told him.
"Flying without lights as ordered."
  "Here they come, General!" a Rebel said, peering
through the night scope. "Must be fifty or sixty
trucks. And they're running without lights."
  "It worked," Ben whispered. "Come on, you
creepie bastards. I have a present for you."
  "Closer," the Rebel watching the convoy
announced.
  "PU!'S in," Ben ordered.
  Within seconds, the howl of props reached the
Rebels.
  "Creepie convoy stopping within coordinated
area," Ben was informed.
  "PU!'S in position and circle completed,"
another Rebel announced.
  "Commence firing," Ben ordered.
  The night sky was shattered as the crew chiefs and
gun mechanics opened fire. The PU!'S
trembled and shook as they released their lethal
loads. An area the size of several football
fields was instantly turned into a deathtrap. Gas
tanks on the creepie trucks exploded as hot
lead tore into them.
  There was no place for the creeps to run;
practically every square foot was being mauled from the
air. Sixteen thousand rounds of death was hurled into the
coordinated area in only a few minutes. The
fires set by the impacting incendiary rounds lit up
the sky so all could see the carnage.
  "Cease firing," Ben ordered.
  The night became still except for the crackling of
flames.
  "Return to base," Ben said. "Good job, people."
  Meg was standing by the window, her mouth hanging
open, still in a mild form of shock at what she had just
witnessed.
She finally shook her head and said, "Are you going
to use these against Satan?"
  "I don't know. A lot depends on the terrain
and whether innocents might be harmed. Then there is your
father to think of."
  "My father is nuts," Meg said flatly.
"He'd be better off dead. There is no telling
how much human suffering and degradation he has
caused. . . indirectly and directly. I
resigned myself to my father's fate months ago.
I'll keep the good memories of him; back when
conditions were normal. More or less," she added.
  Ben nodded. "All right, gang. Let's get
back and get some sleep. Tomorrow we start destroying
a city."
  Ben was up long before dawn, as usual. He
dressed, pulling on body armor and slipping
into his battle harness. He picked up his M14
and stepped outside his quarters to stand beside the sentry.
  "Everything's been quiet, General," he was
informed. "Last night's show probably gave the
outlaws some second thoughts."
  "It might have," Ben replied. "But
they've got nowhere else to go. They'll fight,
I'm thinking. Unless they have some other tricks up
their sleeves. We'll know just after dawn."
  After breakfast-S.o.s., nothing ever changes
in any army, but at least it was hot and filling-Ben
was enjoying an early morning smoke when Dan
walked up, a city map in his hand.
  "The outlaws have pulled back, General. To this
point." He held up the map. "And they are flying
a white flag. They don't look like they're
surrendering, so I can but assume they wish to talk."
  "You're probably right. Has Captain Tony
radioed in?"
  "Affirmative. He said they'll start clearing a
runway for the birds at first light. No
creepies."
  "All right, Dan. Find out what the scum have on
their minds."
  "A deal," Dan reported back in a few
minutes.
  Ben leaned back, smiling. "Let me guess:
they would be willing to trade whatever prisoners they
hold in return for their safety?"
  "My, my, General," Dan said with a smile.
"What an astute fellow you are."
  "Why, of course, we'll make a deal with them!"
  Meg had walked up with Corrie. "You'd deal
with outlaws?" Meg asked. "I always heard that Ben
Raines didn't make deals with anybody."
  Ben put a hand over his heart and hung his head.
"How in the world do you suppose such a terrible rumor
ever got started? What a horrible thing to have said about a
man like me. A heart as big as all outdoors."
  Then he and Dan burst out laughing.
  Meg and Corrie looked at one another and
shook their heads. Tina and Buddy had walked up
to catch part of what was taking place.
  "Pay absoutely no attention to either of them,"
Tina told the women. "My father wouldn't deal with
scum like those in the city if that was Buddy and me being
held."
  Now Meg looked more confused than ever.
"I... don't understand."
  Buddy explained. "General Raines is going
to get the prisoners freed, and then he will declare war
on the outlaws and probably kill them all... or
as many as don't run away."
  "Can you believe this, Dan?" Ben tried his best
to look terribly hurt. "My own children speaking about
me in such a manner. Oh, the shame of it
all. What did I do wrong?"
  "Our father," Tina said, "also has a lot of
B.s. in him. You'll get used to him ... in
time."
  Ben stood up from the steps where he'd been
relaxing and thinking, enjoying the spring weather. "Dan,
get the main battle tanks in position, also the
Dusters and the 81mm mortar crews. We don't
have enough people to box them in, so this is going to be a
frontal assault."
  "Right, sir."
  Ben smiled thinly. "Now we'll see if
Macationally and those others of his odious ilk have a
sense of humor about them."
  "In other words, Father," Buddy said, "we are
going to see if they can die well."
  "Precisely."
"I ain't buyin" this atall," Macationally said.
"Ben Raines don't give up this easy. He's
a-pullin' something. Bet on it."
  "Scared, Mac?" Pete Jones sneered at
him. The huge black man hated Macationally and had
never made any attempt to hide that hatred.
  "Yeah, and so are you, you ugly coon. But I
got sense enough to admit it. You're just
stupid!"
  Pete faced his white outlaw counterpart. "I
think, Macationally, when this .. . situation has been
resolved, I shall kill you!"
  "I doubt it. Now git your ugly face outta
mine."
  "Knock it off!" Lopez told them. "We have
enough to worry about without fighting among ourselves. Now are
we going to take General Raines's offer, or not?"
  Pete was the first to speak. "I don't see that we
have a choice. But we're no match for Raines and his
Rebels. Not with this rabble around us."
  "Nigger, you shore talk funny," Mac told
him.
"You know "at?"
  Pete sighed with his race's centuries-old,
built-in patience when dealing with white trash and
rednecks. He had educated himself during his second
hitch in prison. For rape and murder. He'd
killed a dozen men and women before finally getting
caught and sentenced. Pete was very literate, but still just
as much trash and just as worthless as those around him.
  "Then what do you have in mind, Pete?" the
Mexican asked.
  He looked first at Lopez, then at
Mac. "I really don't like you, Mac, but you can
fight and you've got some good men with you-even though they
are a motley crew of white trash ..."
  "Git to the point, coon," Mac told him.
"You just bumpin" your gums to hear your head
rattle."
  Pete grunted in disgust. "Mac, you and Lopez
and your people. Me and mine. Young, Morgan, Bass,
Hardy, and maybe a few more. Yeah. Pipes and
Howard. We cut our prisoners loose like all the
rest and then get the hell out of this city. I think
Raines is going to throw some heavy artillery in on
us as soon as the prisoners are clear."
  "Why not take the prisoners with us?" Lopez
asked. "For trade down the line."
  "Because we're going to have to be traveling fast,"
Pete explained. "And the prisoners are a drag."
  Lopez nodded. "Makes sense to me. OK.
I'm in." He looked at Macationally. "You?"
  Mac shrugged. "Why not?"
  "Let's get busy."
"Where is the exchange point to be?" Ben asked.
  "This bridge right here on 175," Dan said,
pointing it out. "Noon."
  "Everybody in position?"
  "Setting on ready."
  "Corrie, bump the base and alert Cecil that
we're going to need lots of trucks and some medical
people over here. We can fly the seriously injured out.
And we're going to need to be resupplied."
  "Yes, sir."
  "It never ends," Beth said. "It just never ends.
There is no light at the end of the tunnel.
  Ben knew how she felt. He'd been fighting
for a decade, ever since the world was torn apart
by nuclear and germ warfare.
  "It's there, Beth. It's a very faint light. But
it's there. We have to keep believing that. If we, of
all people, can't have that faith, then civilization is
doomed."
  "I know," she said. "I just get so discouraged at
times."
  "So do I," Ben told her.
  "What do you do to shake the mood?" Beth asked.
  "Why," Ben said with a straight face, "I just
sit right down and have myself a good cry!"
  The laughter at the thought of General Raines
sitting down on the curb and bawling broke the
somber mood.
  "Let's go get in place, gang,"
Ben told them, walking toward the Blazer. He
looked around. "Where the hell is Cooper?"
  "Probably trying to put the make on some
unsuspecting female," Jersey said.
  "Around him," Beth said, "there are no unsus-
pecting females. I cringe every time he crosses his
legs for fear he'll damage his brain."
  Ben watched the activity on the other side of
White Rock Creek through binoculars from the top
floor of a building just off Hawn Freeway. It
was getting close to the exchange time and the outlaws were
working feverishly to get their prisoners to the bridge.
  "How will we know we won't be dropping rounds in
on innocents the outlaws have held back?" Meg
asked, standing beside Ben.
  "We can't be one hundred percent sure. But we
won't fire until we've spoken with some of the
exchange prisoners. If we can get the majority
out... I have to think it'll be worth it."
  "Hal and the other men we're holding are getting a
little bit edgy as to their fate," Buddy told his father.
  "I intend to cut them loose," Ben replied.
"They've cooperated with us right down the line. I
told them their best bet would be to go far away from what
we leave of Dallas-Fort Worth, and
take up gardening. I think they got the message."
  Meg was sure they did. She was learning that Ben
Raines could be a compassionate man on one hand, and
totally ruthless on the other. To say Ben was a
complex man would be understating him.
  "Captain Tony said they have a runway cleared,
General," Corrie told him. "They'll mark it
with flare pots."
  "Inform Base Camp One of that news,
please." He glanced at her, smiling. "And how
is Chester doing
these days?"
  "Vaccinated and clean and getting fat. Colonel
Gray is his biggest fan. Chester sleeps on the
front seat of the Colonel's Jeep. The two are
practically inseparable."
  Corrie spoke to communications back at the
base camp, smiled, and said, "General? Dr.
Chase has a message for you."
  "I just bet he does. What is it?"
  "He says the next time you capture biker
women, don't send them to him. Just shoot them."
  "Ask the old goat where is all that compassion
he's supposed to possess?"
  After a brief exchange, Corrie said,
"Dr. Chase said something in French, General. I
don't speak French."
  "It's just as well, Corrie. I have a pretty
good idea what he said. Did it sound like
mon cul?"
  "Yes, sir."
  "He just told me to kiss his ass."
  "Yes, sir. And the trucks to take the
prisoners back left Base Camp One several
hours ago, sir."
  "Good." Ben lifted his binoculars. "Heads
up, people. Here they come." Ben lowered the field
glasses and handed them to Corrie. "And the prisoners
are in pitiful shap.. I'm going to enjoy destroying
those bastards," Ben said grimly.
  "Those children look . . . defeated," Corrie
said.
  "We've found that a percentage of those we've
rescued will never come all the way back, Corrie.
They've been too badly abused and used. But most
of them make it after a time."
  "How about the ones who don't respond?"
  "They're placed with loving, caring families.
We
do the best with what we have."
  They stood, mostly in silence, as the bands of
prisoners were handed over to the Rebels. As soon as
they were across the bridge, as many as possible were quickly
questioned.
  Corrie listened to her headset. "Colonel
Gray says he believes all the prisoners were
handed over, General. He also says that advance
Scouts on the sou this end of the airport report a
large number of men leaving the city on Interstate
30. Heading west. Looks to be several
hundred."
  "The smart ones are bugging out. I expected some
to do that. Tell Dan as soon as the last prisoners
are across . . . open fire."
  "With pleasure, sir," Corrie said.
  There were many outlaws who took Ben at his word.
They stood on the bridge and just directly across from
the exchange point, grinning foolishly, totally
unaware they were looking down the barrels of hundreds
of weapons.
  The first volley of rifle fire took the
gawking, grinning, arrogant outlaws by surprise,
knocking them screaming and spinning and sprawling. Then
the tanks started lobbing in 105 rounds, HEP,
Willie Peter, Incendiary, in that order.
With a range of 3300 meters, the main battle
tanks started dealing out misery.
  The 81mm mortars opened up, tossing in one
round every twenty seconds. Ben had beefed up his
initial request for the self-propelled 81's.
Each company had three of the mortar carriers, andwitha
range of nearly 3700 meters, the 81's could
reach out and touch someone two and a half miles away.
Forty-millimeter Big Thumpers began yowling out
their lethal loads in rapid-fire. On the west
side of the bridge, chaos became king as the outlaws
found themselves with no place to run.
  "That son of a bitch!" Pete Jones cursed
Ben Raines. "You just can't trust anybody
nowadays."
  He was tooling his Cadillac through the rubble and
waste of Fort Worth.
  Pete's main man, Sam, sat in the front
seat and, like his boss, cussed Ben Raines. When
he wound down, he asked, "Where we headin',
Pete?"
  Pete shook his head. "I haven't make up
my mind, Sam. I don't know where Ben Raines
is heading, for one thing."
  "What difference does that make?"
  A pained look passed Pete's face. "Because,
Sam, I would really rather avoid the good General and his
Rebel army, if at all possible."
  Sam thought about that for a moment. "Oh! Right,
Pete. Sure."
  Ben and his Rebels rolled on through the bloody and
destructive afternoon. By midafternoon they had hammered their
way to the convention center, leaving behind them streets
filled with dead and dying outlaws.
  Ben called a halt to the advance. "Scouts out,"
he ordered. "Let's see what's out there."
  The reports began coming back in sooner than
even Ben had expected. "They've bugged out,
General. We can't find a sign of life
anywhere."
  Other Scout teams who had fanned out in all
directions reported the same thing.
  "Stand down," Ben ordered his people. "Maintain
middle alert. Tomorrow is going to be a very long day."
  "What's on the agenda for tomorrow, Father?" Buddy
asked.
  Ben looked at his son. "We destroy the
city."
  When Ben finished speaking with Base Camp One,
he leaned back in the chair and accepted a
cup of coffee with thanks. He was tired. Not so much
physically, but emotionally. He had taken the first
step toward doing something that he had known for years must
be done.
  He was about to destroy the remains of a society,
in order to rebuild what he hoped would be a better
one.
  "Cecil is sending in enough explosives to blow up
the world-his words. The first planes will be landing in the
morning. Dan, start scouting around and find some
Lo-Boy trailers. Then set our mechanics
to working on bulldozers. Find out where the county kept
their equipment." He smiled. "If we didn't
steal it ten years ago and take it up to the
Tri-States, there'll probably be plenty of
equipment still around."
  "Right, sir. We have found several huge underground
gasoline storage tanks. The gas tested out to be
free of water. I've ordered all available
tanker trucks to start sucking it up."
  "Good move. What we can't haul with us, we'll
send back to Cecil and Ike. Corrie, might as
well get Cecil back on the horn and tell him
to get some tanker rigs on the way over here." He
looked at his watch. Almost midnight. He
stood up and stretched.
"Are we certain that all innocents are clear of the
city?"
"I
believe so, Dad," Tina told him. "Are we
going to fire the city by sections?"
  "Yes. It's not the suburbs that attract the
scum and the creepies, it's the cities themselves. An
attraction that I have yet to understand. So the cities
and the larger towns go down under the torch, so to speak."
  "The scorched earth policy of the colonies'
civil war," Dan said with a slight smile.
  "Yes. And I didn't agree with it after I
studied about it in school," Ben said. "And I'm not
happy with myself for ordering it done now. But the
cities and probably seventy-five percent of the
smaller communities are not reinhabitable, nor is
it feasible to think about doing so. It will be a century,
or longer, before cities once more become the
vogue-if they ever do. I'm sure that future
generations will curse me for destroying them, and then after
they do that, they can settle down and rebuild. But for
now, the cities are containers of the scum. So they have
to go."
  "Over how many campfires have we
discussed this down through the years, General?" Dan
asked.
  "Too many for me to count, Dan. I probably
should have started with this policy right after the plague hit
us. I've toyed with the idea for several years." He
drained his coffee cup. "Well, to bed. We'll have
the taste of ashes in our mouths for days to come."
Ben was at the airport when the birds started arriving
at first light. The twin-engine cargo planes were
packed with C4 and C5 explosives and timers and
detonators. When the explosives were off-loaded,
some of the more seriously injured-both body and mind-of
those freed prisoners were placed on board for the
flight back to the base camp.
  Corrie had looked at the sprawling airport
with wonder in her eyes. "The highway runs right through
the airport!" she exclaimed. "I never saw such
a thing!"
  "Yes," Ben said drily, remembering his mixed
feelings about DFW. Especially when he landed at
gate 3 and had twelve minutes to get to gate
62. Same airline. "It was a ... wonder,
to be sure."
  "You flew the big jets out of here, General?"
Jersey asked.
  "Many times, Jersey. From where I lived, if you
flew east, you changed at Atlanta. If you
flew west, you changed at Dallas. With very few
exceptions."
"That must have been exciting," Jersey said.
  Ben looked at her and smiled. Jersey had been
in hundreds of fire-fights during her tenure with the
Rebels. And she was excited about a plane ride.
It was true that even war became blase after a time.
  "Let's go to work," Ben said.
  The Rebels began blowing up and burning the city
block by block. And the rats came out by the hundreds
of thousands, in brown filthy racing hordes. Dr.
Ling put in an urgent request for rabies vaccine
and anyone who was bitten, and there were several Rebels
who were bitten, were immediately innoculated against the dread
disease.
  "There was a study done some years ago," Ben
mentioned casually, "by some university, back when those
things were done, that concluded that someday we would all be
dining on rat meat. It's supposed to be full of
protein. Good for you." He spooned some lunch
into his mouth.
  Meg looked at the goop on her plate and
suddenly lost her appetite. "Rat meat!
Are you serious?"
  "That's what I read. What's the matter,
Meg, lose your appetite?"
  "Have you ever eaten a rat, General?"
  "Can't say as I have. One of the guys involved in
the Watergate mess did, though. Said he did."
  "What's a Watergate?" Corrie asked.
  Ben sighed as he felt the years press just a little
bit harder on him. "Pass the hot sauce,
please."
Nothing was spared in the Rebel's plan of
destruction. At first Ben tried to inspect each
building before bringing it down. But after a few forays,
he discovered that anything of value had long been
looted. After that, he gave his people carte blanche and the
work went swiftly.
  The Rebels became accustomed to the smoke
smell that settled in their nostrils and seemed
to permeate their clothing.
  Where once a great city stood, now there was nothing
but smoke and rubble.
  The Rebels left the destruction behind them and
moved the few miles westward to Fort Worth. They
found a dead and deserted city. As the first really
warming days of full spring settled over the
nation, the Rebels began destroying Fort Worth.
As had happened in Dallas, many of the fires
spread into the suburbs. The Rebels made no
attempt to check the flames. They used
bulldozers and explosives to cut fire lines at
the outer edges of the suburbs, and that was all they did
to contain the often-times out-of-control and wind-whipped
inferno that raged from county line to county line.
  Ben had sent teams up to Wichita Falls even
before the destruction of Dallas began, and with those teams
went more than fifty settler families-pioneers,
they were called. A few more families willing
to face the unknown in an attempt to rebuild a
shattered nation.
  Ben and his Rebels left the smoking ruins of the
Twin Cities behind them and pulled out, taking
Highway 287 up to Wichita Falls. There, the
Rebels found a neat little city, governed by a
forward-looking group of people, who had reopened schools
and had a staffed and adequately equipped
hospital.
  At Ben's request, a platoon of Rebels
was flown in from the base camp to settle in Wichita
Falls. Another outpost was firmly a fixture
in the offices of central planning at
Base Camp One.
  One more step.
  The Rebels relaxed for a time, resting, eating
something other than field rations, and going over
equipment, and they finally got a chance to wash the stink
of smoke and destruction from their BDU'S.
  As soon as Ben saw the first signs of restlessness
among the men and women of the Rebels, he ordered a
pullout. They stayed on 287, heading for
Amarillo, and driving straight into the unknown. The
elected officials of Wichita Falls had
advised Ben to disregard any rumors he might have
heard about Amarillo being a dead and destroyed city.
It was very much alive and crawling with outlaw scum,
including a group of Night People, who had worked out a
peace treaty with the outlaws.
  "The outlaws raid outside Amarillo, take
prisoners, and give the creepies human beings in
return for their safety," Ben stated flatly.
  "Yes, sir."
  "Here we go," Jersey summed it up.
  The Rebels drove the hundred-odd miles
to Childress without seeing even one sign of human
habitation. It was as if they had landed on a deserted
planet.
  In the main communications truck, specially
built and bullet-proofed, the operators were
constantly scanning the frequencies, picking up
only static.
Ben halted the convoy just outside of Childress.
"This place used to have about six thousand people in it," he
said, glancing at a map. "Now it appears to be a
ghost town."
  "Scouts going in," Corrie informed him.
  "I can just about tell you what they'll find," Ben
said.
  "Nothing," Dan said, walking back to the
Blazer. "There is no one in the town."
  "Let's look it over, Cooper."
  Ben walked through a looted hardware store, then a
department store filled with dust and very little else. The
dead giveaway came when he inspected a
drugstore. Drugs to make a person high or
low, depending on the individual's choice, had
been looted. Valuable antibiotics, now mostly
out of date, had been left behind.
  "Scum and trash hit the town," Ben said.
"Pleasure seekers with not a thought in their heads
concerning the future, living only for now. All right,
Dan. Middle alert for tonight. Let's get
settled in for a very brief stay."
  Ben cut his eyes to Meg. She had picked up
a small bottle of perfume. She met his gaze.
"My mother used to wear this fragrance. I haven't
seen it in a long time. It just. . . surprised me
to find it here. It used to be very expensive."
  Ben watched her carefully dust off the bottle and
place it on the counter. "You're not going to keep
it?"
  Meg shook her head. "Too many memories
attached." She smiled. "What was your favorite
fragrance on ladies?"
  "Shalimar."
  "I'll wear some for you ... if I ever find a
bottle, that is."
  "That would be nice." He stepped to her and took
her arm. "Let's get out of here before memories
overwhelm us."
  As dawn lightened the area, the Rebels were
pulling out. Dan had sent a team of Scouts toward
Amarillo hours before. They had reported back that
the inhabitants of the small city seemed braced for a
fight.
  "All right," Ben said, climbing into the Blazer.
"We'll damn sure give them one."
  The little Texas towns faded into their rearview
mirrors as the column made its way toward yet
another showdown. They were mere shells of what they had
once been. Empty shells, looted and left
to crumble as time relentlessly passed.
  "Scout to Eagle One." Ben's speaker
rattled the words.
  "Go, Scout."
  "They're bugging out of Amarillo. Heading north,
south, and west."
  "Ten-four, Scout. Hold what you have. We're
about an hour away. Do not enter the city."
  "Ten-four, Eagle."
  "What do you make of it, General?" Dan
radioed from his Jeep.
  "No stomach for a fight. I'm thinking some of those
outlaws and warlords who skipped out of Dallas
early headed for Amarillo. They've warned their
buddies off."
"Do we destroy it?"
  "Right down to the ground."
  Ben inspected the college first. It had been
looted and vandalized and very nearly destroyed by packs
of punks and other crud who were scared to death of
education. But they had enough sense to know that with
education came civilization. And that was the last thing they
wanted.
  Next to the college was the airport. "Clear a
runway," Ben ordered. "We might have to be
resupplied. Come on, gang. Let's go see
what's left of the town."
  Filth littered the streets and the stench of Night
People hung like a stinking shroud over the city.
  The Rebels searched for prisoners and found more
than two hundred men, women, and children.
  "The outlaws and creepies assumed that we'd be
too busy dealing with the prisoners to pursue them,"
Dan observed.
  "They assumed right," Ben said. "Corrie,
give the base camp a bump and tell them to start
getting the birds in here. Medical teams pn
board. Advise base that we'll need to be
resupplie caret with explosives. Let's give
the city another search to see if we missed
anybody. Then we start bringing it down."
  The crash and thunder of demolition began that afternoon as
yet another haven for the lawless was destroyed. The
planes landed the next day and began taking the newly
freed prisoners back to safety and, hopefully,
some sort of rehabilitation to piece their
shattered lives back together.
The Rebels were becoming experts in demolition, and the
work was going faster with each city they entered. Block
by block, the city of Amarillo was coming down, to lie
in piles of sometimes smoking but always useless rubble.
They set fires and let them burn.
  "The dirty bastards!" Macationally cussed the
Rebels from his safe spot in a small town some
thirty miles south of Amarillo.
  Pete Jones didn't curse Ben Raines.
Not because he didn't feel like it, but simply because it
wouldn't accomplish anything. He sat outside a
long-abandoned service station and watched the black and
gray and greasy smoke pouring into the sky, coming from
what had once been Amarillo.
  "He's smart," Pete finally said.
  "Who?" Lopez asked.
  "Ben Raines."
  "Ben Raines is a no-good, sorry, bully,
son of a bitch who won't mind his own business!" the
warlord Bass loudly proclaimed.
  Pete chuckled at the man. "I never heard
Ben referred to as a bully before now. Interesting word
coming from you, Bass."
  "Ain't he bullying his way all over the
friggin' country?" Bass demanded.
  "That's one way of lookin' at it, I
suppose."
  "Just another damn cop!" Young summed it up.
"With a funny hat."
  The Rebels all wore berets.
  "But Ben Raines is honest, you have to give him that
much. Unlike many of the cops we knew."
  "I guess," Young reluctantly agreed. "But
how
come you say he's so smart?"
  "The cities have always been our sanctuaries.
Ever since the Great War, and we've always controlled
them. All that is about to change, I'm thinking."
  "You mean"-the outlaw Pipes looked at him-
"that that dirty no-count Ben Raines is goin'
to blow up and burn ever' damn city he comes to?"
  "Probably."
  "Hell, that don't matter all that much," another
outlaw said. "We still got thousands of small towns
to hide out in."
  "That can be destroyed by long-range artillery or
bombed by the planes that Raines has."
  "But first Raines would have to find us, right?" Mac
asked.
  "He'd find us. Raines is merciless, ruthless,
when it comes to people like us. One of his ambitions is
to wipe us from the face of the earth. I studied the man
through his books, while I was in prison. Wrote a
thesis on him ..."
  "Wrote a what?" Mac asked.
  "A paper, if you will. Raines basically is a
savage. A man much similar to those witch burners
back several centuries ago in Salem."
  "Jones," Mac said with a sigh, "I think you are
as full of shit as that Christmas goose! You
rattle on about the damndest things I ever heard of.
Now you tell me this: if you so damn smart, what the
hell are we gonna do about Ben Raines and them
Rebels of hisn."
  "We're going to defeat him," Pete said
simply.
  "Oh, we is, is we?" Mac sneered at him.
"Now just how in the hell do you think we gonna do
that?"
"By gathering an army that is bigger than the Rebels
and outthinking and outfighting him. That's how."
  "And where do we find an army that size?"
Morgan asked.
  "Up north. In Wyoming and Montana
and other parts of the northwest. There is an army up
there headed by someone called the Rattlesnake Kid.
He has an army of bikers for his enforcers."
  Mac grinned. "But that bunch don't like niggers,
Jones. And all you got in your bunch is coons.
Have you forgotten that?"
  "War makes for strange allies, Mac. I
should know. I'm sitting here attempting to converse with
an ignorant redneck like you."
  "I swear I'm a-gonna kill you someday,
Jones!"
  Pete laughed at him. "Wait until we've
defeated Ben Raines, Mac. We need each other
until that time."
  "It can't come too soon for me."
  "Defeating Raines or killing me?" Pete
asked.
  "Either one!"
  "I've got to get word to this Rattlesnake
Kid person." Pete stood up. "And I guess
the best way to do that is just to drive up there and see
him."
  "You best get some hair straightener and some skin
lightener "fore you do," Mac needled him.
  "You have no faith in my powers of
persuasion, do you, Mac?"
  "I have faith in my four-wheel drive and my
gun," Mac told him.
  "Mac, you are the epitome of redneckism."
  "Still makes you a coon."
Taking only a few of his men, Pete drove west
for a time, until he was clear of Amarillo and Ben
Raines, and then headed straight north. He
didn't know exactly where this Rattlesnake
person and his army of racists were headquartered, but in
the end, he figured, that lack of knowledge wouldn't make
much difference. Since Pete was black as the ace of
spades with a shaved head, and tooling along in a
Cadillac limo, he felt reasonably sure
they
would find
him.
  Only problem was he didn't want to get shot
right off the bat.
  "Ever been to a KKK meeting, Sam?" Pete
asked.
  "Hell, no!"
  "Me neither. But I think we're all going
to attend our first one in a few days."
  "Whatever you say, Pete," Sam
replied glumly.
  Pete laughed and patted his main man and
bodyguard on the shoulder "Be of good cheer, Sam.
One can only die once. I should know. I've
killed a hundred or more people and I've never seen one
return from the grave yet."
  Ben and his Rebels put the rubble and ruin and
smoke of Amarillo in their rearview mirrors and
headed into New Mexico on Interstate 40. They
abruptly ended their journey when Scouts radioed
back to the main column that a series of bridges
had been blown on the Interstate. The way
to Albuquerque was blocked.
  "What now, Dad?" Tina asked.
  "Well, this 129 looks like it was a lousy road
when this map was printed. We won't chance it.
We'll backtrack to Tucumcari and take this
Highway 104 up to Interstate 25. We'll
wait there for the Scouts to return and then take off.
New country to see, gang. Hell, that's what this
trip is all about."
  As the column drove the old secondary
roads, the Rebels began spotting signs of
life. Smoke came from the chimneys of homes
set far back from the highway; homes that were
surrounded by high stone fences. The gates to the roads
leading to the homes were padlocked. Ben halted the
column and walked back to Ramos, CO of A
Company of the Rebels.
  "What'd you think?" Ben asked him.
  The Mexican-American shook his head. "I
don't know, General. I get the feeling there are a
lot of guns pointed at us right now."
  "Hostile guns?"
  "Not unless we try to interfere with them. Some of my
family, distant relatives, left Texas after
the Great War and settled along the Canadian
River. Somewhere in this area, I believe. They were
separatists;
but not racists. If you know what I mean."
  "I do. You want to take a bullhorn and try
to communicate with these people-in their language?" "It
wouldn't hurt."
  Ramos took the bullhorn and spoke in
rapid-fire Spanish for a moment, identifying himself
and telling anyone who might be interested who they were and
what they were doing. Ben leaned against the fender of a
vehicle, rolled a smoke, and waited.
  Before he had finished his cigarette, a dozen men,
on horseback and all heavily armed,
rode out from behind the walls of the ranch compound and up to the
fence. Their expressions were not unfriendly, but neither could
they be mistaken for Welcome Wagon
ladies.
  Ramos spoke to them and they returned the
greetings. Ben could speak some Spanish, but not enough
to follow what was being said.
  Ben walked to Ramos's side during a slight
lull in the conversation. In English, he said, "I
apologize for not being fluent in your language."
And being Ben Raines, he concluded by saying, "But
I will not apologize for being one of those who believed
in English being the official language of the United
States."
  An older man smiled. "Do you come here to force
your beliefs upon us, Ben Raines?"
  "No. Not unless you want them."
  "Suppose we do not want them but someday might
need your help?"
  "You won't get it."
  Some of the younger men stirred at that flatly given
statement. The older man, obviously a leader of
some
sort, lifted a hand and gave them a dark look.
The young men settled down. He swung his
eyes to Ben. "Those are hard words, General
Raines."
  "But necessary, times being what they are."
  The older man did not blink nor change
expression. "There are several thousand of us along the
Canadian, the Mora, and the Conchas. We have been
attacked many times over the years. We are still here,
General."
  "Then you don't need our help."
  The man sighed. "That is not necessarily true,
General. We are being overwhelmed by our own
productivity. We need markets for our cattle
and our vegetables and the clothing we produce. And
..." He hesitated. "Some technical
assistance, as well."
  Ben had studied the maps of this area before they cut
off the Interstate. He took a wild guess.
"The Conchas Dam?"
  The younger men stirred at his words, not understanding how
Ben could have known that. Ben said, "That was a guess,
people. I'm not possessed with supernatural powers."
  "My name is de Vaca, General," the older
man said. "You and your Rebels are welcome here.
I think it is time to open our homes to those who are
friendly to us. Come, we'll have a celebration."
  The Rebels spent three days in the Spanish
communities along the Canadian. Ben found some
resentment among a few of the younger men, but not enough for
any concern. He complimented de Vaca on his
organization and the way he had brought
order and productivity out of chaos.
  "It was not easy," de Vaca said. "After the
Great War, many among my people wanted to break away
and form a separate state, like you did in the
Tri-States. You know that many of those who used
to live here went to aid you in your fight?"
  Ben nodded. "I know."
  The men were relaxing in the spacious and cool den
of the hacienda, drinking a slightly sweet,
nonalcoholic drink out of tall glasses. Ben
had no idea what it was.
  "The problem lies in what do we do for money?"
de Vaca said. "The barter system is fine for some
things, but if this country is ever to be restored, there
must be some form of hard currency."
  "And something with which to back that currency," Ben
added.
  "Precisely." The man smiled. "And you have
probably seventy-five percent, or more, of all
the gold and silver."
  Ben returned the smile. "That I do, sir. And
I'd be glad to release it for backing."
  "We must not fall into the trap that the U.s.
government did before the Great War."
  "I agree, and have no intention of doing that.
We're not going to print more money than we can
solidly back with gold or silver. And"-Ben
held up a warning finger-"if we agree to do this,
gold and silver cannot be allowed in private hands."
  "I agree."
  De Vaca stuck out his hand and Ben shook it with a
smile on his lips. "Congratulations, sir."
  "For what?" de Vaca asked.
"You've just been appointed Governor of New
Mexico."
  It probably was a good thing that Ben did not have much
Spanish, for de Vaca proceeded to turn the air
blue with oaths.
  After much arguing and debating, de Vaca agreed
to accept the appointment. Armed with the knowledge that he had the
full backing of Ben Raines and the Rebels, the
rancher thought he could bring the majority of the state's
residents back into the folds of democracy. But,
he pointed out, it would not be an easy task.
  De Vaca pointed out that there were many
outlaw gangs operating in New Mexico, and it
would take years to flush them all out. In other words,
the rancher said, this was tantamount to a return to the
old Wild West.
  However, he said with a smile, he had a militia
that was ready to go, and they were willing to fight to the death.
  Ben left with a good feeling in his guts. Matters
were beginning to come together in a solid jell.
  Colorado, however, was quite a different matter.
That part of the country had been carved up into sections,
with various outlaw groups claiming territory. De
Vaca had warned Ben that he faced serious problems
when he entered Colorado.
  "Was there no one trying to bring order?" Ben
asked.
  "Bob Lucas, up in Trinidad. I have
radioed him, telling him that you are on the way."
The Rebel convoy picked up Interstate 25 just
north of Las Vegas, and slowly made their way
north. The news had spread quickly, and many
survivors were now flying American flags in their
front yards. Had not de Vaca passed the word,
many of these same people would have remained hidden while the
Rebel convoy passed.
  "We're gonna make it, General,"
Jersey said. "I feel it."
  "There is definitely something positive in the
air," Ben agreed. "I felt it back there
talking with de Vaca. I don't think we're going
to have to worry much about New Mexico. De Vaca
will get it done. Now if we can just get this Bob
Lucas on our team, we'll have really taken one
giant step."
  "You've had something worrying your mind for a couple
of weeks, General," Jersey said. "What's
up?"
  Ben smiled. Whenever four or five people worked and
lived as closely as his personal team, all
became aware of the slightest mental shift in the
other. "Across the waters, Jersey."
  "Across the waters?"
  "I want to know what's going on overseas."
  "Oh, shit!" Beth blurted.
  Ben laughed outloud. "Relax, Beth. We're
not leaving tomorrow."
  "But we are going?"
  "I don't know; maybe sometime in the future.
I haven't discussed this with anyone because it would be such
a massive undertaking. And what I know about
boats-ships-is nothing. We'd have to find
someone who knows the oceans, currents, navigation;
all sorts of things that I am totally ignorant
of."
"General Ike?"
  "Ike would definitely be part of any
expedition."
  Cooper spoke up. "Thermopolis knows a lot
about ships and stuff like that."
  Ben glanced at the driver. "He does?"
  "That's what one of the guys with him told me. He
spent years working in a shipyard somewhere. He sailed
all over the place."
  "Umram," Ben replied. "Captain Therm.
Not exactly Nemo, but it has a nice ring to it."
  "I thought Europe was destroyed by nuclear
bombs," Corrie said.
  "Yes. Just like we thought New York City and the
entire Eastern area was destroyed. One great big
hoax. Somebody played a very cruel joke. And the
why of it will probably never be known."
  "How far is it to Europe?" Beth asked.
  "From the upper East Coast to England is about
three thousand miles, I think."
  "That's an awful lot of water," Bedi said
dubiously.
  "And a whole bunch of sharks," Cooper said with a
grin.
  "Shut up, Cooper!" Jersey ended it.
  "Roadblocks at Raton," Tina's voice
came through the loudspeaker.
  "Any shots fired?"
  "Negative, Eagle."
  "Hold what you have, Tina. Lucas may have
extended his territory; de Vaca said he was
planning that. We're only a few miles behind you.
See if you can make radio contact with them."
"Ten-four."
  Ben had traveled only a few miles when
Tina bumped back. "Go to scramble, Eagle.
It's Lucas's people, Dad. They're preparing for
an attack by some outlaw bunch. Says it's due
to come in about four hours. Their recon people have been
tracking the outlaws. They're coming from the southwest, out
of the Sangre de Cristo Range; that's where
they're headquartered.""
  "Tell Lucas to open the roadblocks.
We're coming in and will lend a hand in this fight."
  "Ten-four, Eagle. Says he's looking
forward to meeting you."
  Ben shook hands with the man and sized him
up, liking him almost immediately. Bob Lucas came
across as a tough, hard, no-nonsense, law-and-order
type of man.
  "I was a businessman," Lucas explained as
Ben's people rolled past the open roadblocks. "Just
getting started when the bombs came. For the first
two-three years after that, I was fighting that fool
President Hilton Logan. Then the bastard
put me in federal prison and kept me there for
three years. I busted out and formed this little army you
see now. We've been fighting to restore law and
order in this part of Colorado ever since."
  "How far does your control extend, Bob?"
  "From Trinidad up to Pueblo and east
to Lajunta,
  then down to Springfield and south to the line. The
  outlaws and so-called warlords have pretty much
left
  us alone for the past year. We hang them whenever
we find them," he added grimly. "But now there's
some nut up in Wyoming who is pulling all the
gangs together, under one leader ..."
  "The Rattlesnake Kid," Ben said.
  "Yeah! How'd you know that, General?"
  "That's one of the reasons we're here,
Bob. I intend to tear the head off the
Rattlesnake Kid."
  "Good! That's the best news I've heard in a
while. Just who is the Rattlesnake Kid?"
  "A man named Matt Callahan. I knew
him way back. His daughter is part of our group.
Meg. She can tell you all about him-none of it good.
But right now, let's deal with what's facing us. How
many men are coming at us?"
  "Maybe a thousand." He opened a map. "But
terrain is to our advantage. They've got to come
up this highway." He pointed it out. "Highway
64. At least to this point where the secondary road
cuts off and links up with the Interstate. They'll
probably come up that way, too. Lots of bikers
in this group."
  "A two-pronged attack, at least. No way
they could be coming from the north or east?"
  "Not a chance. We're spread pretty thin in those
areas, but we have the roads covered as best we can and
we're linked by shortwave. This Barnes fellow-
he's the leader of this particular bunch of no-goods-
has got a lot of men with him, but he's stupid and
arrogant. He thinks he can roll right over us just
because he outnumbers us."
  Ben nodded and looked at Dan. "Get the
tanks under cover, Dan. We'll not use
long-range artillery. Have the tank commanders lower the
muzzles. I want this Barnes and his men to be
looking us in the eyes
before we open the dance." Ben pointed across the
Interstate and beyond, to a wide field. "Let them
get in there before we fire. Let's take a few
prisoners for interrogation. It looks like
Callahan is widening his base of operations. I
want to know how much before we go blundering up into his
territory."
  "Right, sir. How far out do you want recon
teams to go?"
  "Couple of miles. No farther than that."
  "And as soon as they have this outlaw bunch in sight,
report in and get back here."
  "Yes. Get the troops down and tell them
to stay down. Let's give Mr. Barnes a very
unpleasant surprise. His last surprise.
Until he meets his Maker, that is."
  Ben pulled his troops down and low, allowing
Lucas to keep his people in the positions they occupied
before the Rebels" arrival. He didn't want
to spook this Barnes person; wanted the
outlaw to commit his people full-force and head-on @lness
he had boasted he'd do.
  The Rebel tanks had been pulled back
into heavy brush and timber along the Interstate. The
81mm mortar crews had done the same. The
Dusters were parked behind bob trucks, ready to wheel
about and unleash their twin-mounted 40mm cannon. The
Big Thumper crews were ready.
  Ben leaned against the fender of a bob truck and
waited.
  Bob Lucas studied the man, noting that Ben was
calm to the point of being about half asleep. Nothing
spectacular about the man; except that aura that
seemed to linger about him. There was something that seemed
to inspire courage, to make a person want
to follow him.
Ben pulled out a sack of tobacco and began rolling
a cigarette just as Corrie said, "Bogies in
sight, General."
  "Good." Ben licked the paper closed.
  "Forward teams report they have machine guns
mounted on flat-bed trucks."
  "Any artillery reported?"
  "Negative, sir."
  "Estimate of strength?"
  "Probably a thousand men. They're coming hard and
fast. They've split their force, half the advancing
forces now heading for the Interstate to come up below us."
  "Tell the forward teams to bug out now and tell
Dan to shift his command to the south of us."
  Bob Lucas watched as the Rebels moved with
clockwork precision; no wasted motion. And although they
did not appear to react hurriedly, it was all
accomplished with split-second timing. He commented
on that.
  "We're always outnumbered, Bob," Ben told
him. "Speed and precision and instant following of
orders help keep us alive."
  The forward teams drove the twisting roads as fast
as conditions would allow and were back at the main body
of Rebels a few moments before Barnes's people were
due to arrive.
  "A woman was in charge of your recon people?"
Lucas asked, watching as a very pretty young lady
dismounted from a Hummer.
  "Yes," Ben said with a smile. "A very capable
woman. Her tame is Tina. She's my
daughter."
  Bob decided he'd better keep his eyes open
and his
mouth shut until he sorted a lot of things out
concerning the Rebel army.
  "Approximately two miles and closing,"
Corrie announced.
  "Stand at ready," Ben said quietly.
  Corrie passed the orders.
  "Western line of bogies slowing, sir."
  "They're giving those coming up from the south time to get
into position for a simultaneous strike. Have we
locked on to their radio frequency, Corrie?"
  "That's ten-four, sir. Communications is
monitoring all bogie transmissions." She
paused. "A lot of profanity and boasts about what
they're going to do with the women they capture."
  "Pure slime," Ben muttered.
  "All bogie columns moving at top speed,
sir."
  "Hold fire."
  Bob was getting just a tad nervous.
  "Fifteen hundred meters, sir."
  The sounds of roaring trucks and howling exhausts from
motorcycles were clearly audible. Men on foot
and in various stages of dress were storming across the
flats to the west of Ben's position and closing fast,
screaming and cursing.
  "One thousand meters, sir."
  "Fire!"
  The ground trembled as the tanks opened fire, the
muzzles of the 105's lowered almost to the optimum.
They were firing incendiary and Willie Peter, and
Bob watched as the flats erupted into a wall of
flames and phosphoric arches. The 81mm
mortars were lobbing in HE rounds on top of the tank
fire, turning the flats into a death trap.
Bodies of outlaws were
flung into the air, the clothing blazing. Fifty
caliber machine guns were yammering, the muzzles
spitting out death in two directions. The Dusters and
Big Thumpers began singing their war songs. Rebel
snipers were having a field day, calmly and
coolly picking their targets and dropping them.
Bodies were piling up on the Interstate as Dan's
people took their toll.
  "Tanks and mortars cease firing," Ben
ordered.
  The heavy crashing abated and the smoke from the
battlefield began to drift away.
  "Jesus Christ!"" Bob muttered, looking
out over the flats.
  Twisted and mangled bodies littered the
smoky battlefield. To the south, bodies were
piled on top of bodies on the Interstate and the
median and in the overgrown ditches.
  "Cease all firing," Ben ordered.
  The guns fell silent.
  The faint and fading sounds of trucks and
motorcycles reached the ears of the defenders. Those of
Barnes's command who were not cut down by the almost solid
wall of lead were retreating in a rout.
  "Corrie, advise Dr. Ling to be ready
to receive wounded; Rebel and friendly wounded first. Have
interrogation teams ready. Rebels out." He
looked at Lucas. "Let's go tour the
battlefield, Bob."
  On the flats, Ben knelt down beside a man whose
legs had been blown off. He was alive, but just
barely. His eyes glared hate at Ben.
  "Got anything to say to me?" Ben asked.
  "Snake'll git you!" the man gasped. "He's
waitin' on you, Raines."
"I would give you a message to take back, but you
just had your ticket punched for a one-way ride
to Hell," Ben told him.
  Standing back, listening to the brutally blunt
exchange, Bob Lucas knew then why
Ben Raines was slowly but surely winning the
battle to reclaim America. Ben Raines was a
hard-ass from the word
  go-
  The dying outlaw cursed Ben.
  "I've heard it all before. Please excuse
me. Do have a nice day." Ben stood up and walked
to another moaning outlaw. Lucas followed.
  This outlaw was no more than a boy, and his shoulder
wound was painful, but did not appear to be serious.
Ben waved a medic over. "Patch him up. There
may be hope for this one."
  As the medic went to work, Ben said, "Boy, you
want to get straight and try to make something out your
life?"
  "What you mean?" the teenager gasped.
  "Stop outlawing."
  "And do what?" The teenager gritted his teeth as
the medic cleaned out the wound.
  "How about work for a change?"
  "And if I don't?"
  Ben placed the muzzle of his M14 against the
boy's head. "I blow your goddamned brains
out-right now!"
  The boy's eyes widened and his face
paled. Bob Lucas did not think it was due to the
wound in his shoulder.
  "I reckon I might give that work a try,
sir," the boy finally said.
"I sort of reckoned you would, son." Ben lifted
the muzzle of the M14 and stood up, walking away.
Bob followed.
  "Would you have shot that boy, General?"
  "No. But he didn't know that. He was born
into this mess, Bob; or at best only a baby when
the bombs came. Chaos and crime are all he's
ever known. He's never known discipline or been
exposed to law and order and rules and regulation.
When anarchy reigns, I can accept that excuse and
give a young person a break."
  "And the older men?"
  "With few exceptions, we don't take
prisoners of the hardcases."
  "And what happens to the boy?"
  "That's your problem, now. This is your area of
control. I'll only interfere if and when you ask
me to do so."
  "Thanks a lot." Bob said it with a smile.
"I get the feeling that like de Vaca, I've just
been appointed something or the other."
  "Only if you want it."
  Bob stuck out his hand and Ben took it, standing in the
midst of death and pain on the shattered and still-smoking
flats.
  "Glad to have you with us, Bob."
  "Glad to be with you, Ben."
  The badly wounded who, in Dr. Ling's opinion,
had absolutely no chance of surviving, were eased out
of their pain and out of the ranks of the living with lethal
injections. The less-severely wounded were
patched up and split up for the interrogation teams to work
on. And in many cases, that would prove to be rougher
than their battle wounds.
  "Sit down!" Ben told one man who looked as
if he had just stepped out of central casting for a
grade B motorcycle movie.
  His head was shaved clean and he was dressed all in
animal skins, except for his massive arms, and
they were bare and covered with tattoos. Ben thought he was
the ugliest son of a bitch he'd ever seen. And
since Ben knew something of outlaw biker jargon and
what various tattoos meant, this guy was the
epitome of slime.
  This one had most of the wings tattooed on him.
Brown wings, a sign that the wearer had
performed oral sex with a woman's anus. Green
wings, denoting that he had performed oral sex on a
venerally diseased woman. Purple wings, showing
proudly that he had performed oral sex with a dead
woman.
  P.p.d.s.p.e.m.f.o.b.b.t.
Which translated to read: Pill Popping Dope
Smoking Pussy Eating Mother Fucken Outlaw
Brothers Biken Together.
  F.t.w. Fuck The World.
  The ugly bastard also had two crosses
tattooed on his arms. The white cross was earned
when a person digs open a grave, removes an
article from the deceased with witnesses present, and then
wears the article on his clothing. The red cross was
earned by committing homosexual fellatio with
witnesses present.
  There were other tattoos; but Ben had seen and
translated enough to know that he was dealing with
pure shit.
  "What's your name?" Ben asked.
  The biker cursed him.
  "You're a real tough boy, aren't you?"
  "Goddamn right!"
  "And nobody is ever going to break you or
any of your buddies, right?"
  "Bet your ass on that!"
  Several of his biker brothers sitting across the
room laughed in agreement.
  "You ever raped a child?" Ben asked.
  "Bunches of times."
  "Female or male?"
  "Both."
  "You proud of that?"
  "Goddamn right!"
  "You're wearing 666 tattooed on your arm. You
worship the devil?"
  "Goddamn right."
  "You take orders from a biker named Satan?"
  "Goddamn right."
  "No hope for you at all, is there, tough boy?"
  "Goddamn right."
  Ben picked up his .45 from the desk top and shot
the biker between the eyes. He slammed out of the chair and
lay still, his blood leaking out of the back of his head where
the hollow-nosed slug had exited.
  "Drag that dead obscenity out of here and sit
another tough boy in the chair," Ben ordered. "I
want to see if he's as tough as his brother on the
floor."
  He wasn't.
Bob Lucas was a tough man, and all who knew
him would agree, but even he had been startled
by Ben's shooting the biker in the head. He knew they
why the old Tri-States that Ben had formed had been
99.99 percent free of crime.
  Ben Raines just wouldn't tolerate it-then or now.
  "All right," Ben said. "Here's what we have.
Matt Callahan and this biker called Satan have
quite an operation going, controlling, to one extent or the
other, most outlaw gangs in a half a dozen or
more states. Might as well say the entire
northwest, and I'll include Utah and
Colorado and the north half of California in that.
  "Now that doesn't mean that there aren't plenty of
communities in those states that are law-abiding and
forward-looking. I know there are many of them. We've
had radio contact with them. But this outlaw biker
business is bigger than I first thought, and I intend
to crush it."
  "You want me and my bunch to go with you, Ben?"
Lucas asked.
  "No. I want you people to stay right where you are and
continue to stabilize this part of Colorado. You've
done a fine job and I congratulate you."
  "I have radioed Base Camp One and requested
that Dr. Chase have medical teams flown in with
plenty of supplies for Mr. Lucas," Dr.
Ling said.
  "Good!" Bob said. "We have doctors in the
area, but damn few supplies."
  "We'll get you set up, don't worry about
that," Ben assured him.
  Gunshots split the night air. Dan Gray
was overseeing the disposition of many of the older,
hardcore outlaws. Rebel justice came down
very, very
swiftly, and very, very final.
  The warlord, Barnes, had not been among the dead
or wounded.
  "I have to tell you this, General," Bob said.
"There is a group of people who settled up in
Walsenburg who ride motorcycles when the weather
permits."
  "Just because someone is a biker doesn't make them
bad," Ben said. "I've never been the type of
person who thought that." He smiled. "But I would
tell them, if I were you, that this is not a real dandy
time to be tooling about on two wheels."
  Bob laughed. "Yeah, I agree.
I'll give them a bump and so advise."
  "Anybody got anything else they'd like to say?"
Ben asked.
  "Only that when you leave our area of control,"
Bob said, "you're in real bogie country. You're
going to have to fight your way through Colorado. There is
not much left of Colorado Springs, and nothing
left of Denver. You're going to have to leave the
Interstate and skirt those places, using secondary
roads. From Pueblo on, General, you're in
enemy territory."
  "Believe me when I say, Bob, we're used
to that."
"You either got a lot of nerve, or else you're just
plumb
crazy,
boy!" the guard at the roadblock told Pete
Jones.
  "I will admit to possessing more than my share of
courage," Pete told him. "However, there are some
who might question my sanity."
  "Talks funny, too," another guard said.
  "What'd you want, boy?"
  "To see a person named the Rattlesnake
Kid. If not him, then Satan will
suffice."
  A huge biker who looked, if hje strained very
hard, as if he might be able to count to ten, walked
up and looked at Pete. He squinted, then
smiled. "Hiya, Pete!"
  "Hello, Bruiser. How have you been?"
  "I been doin' great, man."
  "You know this nigger, Bruiser?"
  "Hey!" Bruiser gave the man a sharp look.
"Pete ain't no nigger. He's ... ah ... just
dark, that's all. He's all right."
"Whatever you say, Bruiser. How do you know this n
. .. ah, guy?"
  "We was in the slam together down in Texas. Me
and Pete busted out together. We was tight in the
joint."
  "He wants to see Snake."
  Bruiser looked at Pete and shook his head.
"That ain't cool, Pete. Snake don't like
nobody that ain't white."
  "He doesn't have to like me, Bruiser. Just listen
to what I have to say. Ben Raines and his army aren't
that many days away. He's coming up to destroy you."
  "Snake might like to hear that, awright. OK. You
follow me in. Just you." He jerked a
thumb at Sam. "Him and the rest of your people stay
back here. Come on."
  One side of the biker's face had been torn off
in an accident years back, leaving that side
horribly scarred. He could not completely close
his mouth nor completely open one eye. One ear was
missing. He stood six feet, six inches
tall-without his boots- and weighed about three hundred
pounds, very little of it fat. He stared at Pete for a
long time, hoping to intimidate the man. But Pete
was not the intimidating type. Satan finally gave
up.
  "Snake don't see no one. You talk to me,
then if I decide it's important, I'll get
word to Snake."
  "Very well. Here is my news and my plan
..."
"You're passing out of our area of control,"
Lucas's people at Pueblo radioed Ben. "Bear
west up ahead, Highway 50. Take that to 285.
It's right at a hundred miles to the junction. Then
you're in the mountains and in bogie country. Good
luck, General."
  At Pueblo, Ben halted the column,
off-loaded the bulldozers, and put the
tanks on the flatbeds. He had told Lucas
they may or may not be back to get the earth-moving
equipment. Then he spread a map out on the hood
of his Blazer and once more studied it.
  "Right through the heart of the Rockies," Ben said.
"One hell of a pull."
  "What are our options, Dad?" Tina asked.
  "Go all the way over to Grand Junction and take
secondary roads north. And I don't like that either.
Once we leave Grand Junction, we'd have
to travel through about two hundred miles of
absolutely nothing."
to 
  "On our way to HALFASS,? Dan said, trying
to hide his smile.
  "Yes." Ben made no attempt to disguise his
grin. "I know they're dangerous and savage, but that
name gets to me."
  "I think we can make the pull through the mountains with
no trouble, General," Ramos said. "All our
engines have been recently rebuilt, as have the
transmissions."
  "It's not mechanical problems that concern me.
That's ambush country. And we're probably going
to have to clear a dozen or more rockslides."
He sighed and folded the map. "Well, let's
head north, gang. The Rockies are a sight
to see."
  They hit their first firefight about twenty-five
miles west of Pueblo. But the outlaws quickly
realized they were up against a vastly superior force and
withdrew after only a few minutes. The Rebels
crashed through the roadblocks and continued westward.
They used the loop to bypass Canon City.
Lucas had told them the town was a haven for thugs
and outlaws. Lucas would deal with them later.
  Ben pulled the convoy over early in the afternoon at
Salida, a town that had once contained about five
thousand souls back before the Great War.
  Now it was a looted, ravaged shell of a town.
  "We'll set up camp and then inspect the
residential area," Ben said. "But I've a
hunch any decent citizens were either driven out or
killed or captured long ago. It has that feel
about it."
  They found what the various animals and carrion
birds had left of what had once been dozens of
human beings. Every scrap of flesh had been picked
off the bones. Only a few rotting pieces of
clothing remained.
  Dr. Ling began his inspection of the bones and it
did not take him long. "There is no evidence of
any broken bones. Not one sign of
bullet-shattered ribs. The skulls are intact.
I'd say the Night People stayed here for a while and
feasted before moving on. This is not their kind of
country."
  Ben agreed. He hoped he would not have to come face
to face with any creepies on this trip. The
memories of New York City still haunted him,
and he felt sure, most of the other Rebels. The
winter spent in the Big Apple had been an
exhausting one, both mentally and physically.
  They stood in silence for a few moments, looking
at the piles of bones. Finally one Rebel said,
"I'll get some shovels. That's the very least we can
do."
  No one slept easy that night outside the
deserted town. Even though he knew it was an
unnecessary move, Ben doubled the guard and shortened the
watch hours so no one would get in a mental strain
during the seemingly endless hours of the night.
  The Rebels pulled out just after dawn, turning
north on 285.
  "Now it gets hairy," Ben said.
  Cooper smiled lecherously and waggled his
eyebrows.
  "Keep your mouth shut, Cooper!" Jersey
warned him.
  "I can always dream," he replied with a smile.
  Ben looked at the dark forests that lay on both
sides of the highway. Battalions, divisions of
troops could hide in there.
  But Tina and her Scouts, on forward recon,
reported seeing nothing. And Ben could take some
consolation in the fact that he was not up against highly
disciplined troops; he doubted that very many of the bikers
and outlaws wert even very good or at home in deep
timber.
  "Jesus!" Jersey breathed, gazing out at the
outline of Mt. Antero, its summit pushing over
fourteen thousand feet into the air.
  "I wonder how the outlaws keep this road open
during the winter," Cooper mused aloud.
  "I'd wager they don't," Ben said. "I'd
say that in the winter, everything grinds to a halt."
"Far-out Scout to Eagle," Tina's voice came
through the speaker.
  "Go, Scout."
  "Roadblocks at what used to be a
little town called Nathrop."
  "Hold what you have. We're on the way. You
catch that, Dan?"
  "Ten-four, General. I'm gone."
  "Get around those trucks, Cooper."
  The few trucks and Jeeps and Hummers that
rolled ahead of Ben got over to let him pass.
  Jersey looked down at the valley below.
"Please stay on the road, Cooper."
  "You ain't seen nothing yet, Jersey," Ben
told her with a smile. "Believe me when I say
the best, or the worst, depending on your point of
view, is still ahead of us."
  "I can hardly wait."
  The roadblock was a chain of human bodies,
roped together and rotting all across the road.
  Ben got out and walked up to the stinking
roadblock. The stench was awful. Tina and her bunch
were already wearing gasmasks; the filters knocking out
much of the stink, but not all.
  Ben slipped his mask on and said, "Any sign
of booby trapping?"
  "Not that I can see," Dan told him. "The
manner of men we face just seems to get worse and
worse as time marches on."
  "Dregs of society, Dan. All right,
inspect the bodies carefully for explosives and
then cut them down and bury them. Tina, take your
team in and look over the little town. Head's up,
now."
Ben didn't like the position they were in and he could
tell Dan wasn't too thrilled about it either. But
they had been stopped for several minutes, and if an
ambush was coming, it should have already started.
  The line of rotting bodies removed, Ben
walked on past, waving for Cooper and the Blazer
to come on.
  "Why the roadblock?" Dan questioned. "And why that
type of blockade?"
  "I don't know. A warning, to be sure."
  "Perhaps to other outlaw gangs?"
  "Could be. If that's the case, then all the
gangs are not uniting under the leadership of Matt
Callahan."
  "And that could be both good and bad. For us, I
mean."
  "Yes."
  The Blazer pulled up alongside the walking
men. Corrie said, "Tina reports the town is
deserted. But it's been recently
occupied." i
  "Go on in," Ben told Cooper. "I'll
ride in with Dan."
  The Rebels spent only a few minutes in the
deserted and ravaged little town. Just enough time to silently
tell them that the town was ruined and would probably never
again be occupied by humans.
  "They're waiting for us at Buena Vista,"
Buddy called in. "A hundred or so bikers."
  Buena Vista was only a few miles up the
road.
  Ben acknowledged the report and told his son
to stay put. "Off-load the Dusters," he ordered.
"They'll take the point. Bust through, we'll be right
behind you," he told the tank commanders.
  The Dusters were unchained from the trailers and roared
and rumbled into life.
"Go!" Ben waved them forward, then got into the
Blazer, telling Cooper, "Stay with them."
  Outfitted with twin 40mm cannon and
twin-mounted M60 machine guns, the Dusters roared
toward the bikers crouched behind a hastily erected
roadblock on the edge of the town. The outlaws must
have thought the devil had unleashed his fury at them as the
five Dusters came barreling up the
road, abreast, all guns snarling and spitting.
  The Duster could spit out two hundred forty
40mm rounds per minute with both barrels going.
In one minute, twelve hundred 40mm rounds and
twice that many 7.62 machine gun rounds tore into the
blockade and the immediate area around it.
  They turned the blockade into an inferno, the gas
tanks of the vehicles and motorcycles exploding,
hurling torn and bloody and blazing bodies in all
directions.
  The Dusters rammed through, with APC'S right behind
them, and raced toward the center of the small town.
  The battle turned into a total rout as the
superior troops of Ben Raines locked horns
with the bikers. Very little mercy was given to the outlaws.
Ben wanted only a few prisoners for
interrogation.
  The battle was over in less than fifteen
minutes and the town was declared secure.
  Ben walked to where a small group of
sullen-looking bikers were being held under guard
by Rebels. He pointed to a store. "Is that
building secure?"
  "Yes, sir."
  "Take these"-Ben looked at the outlaw
bikers,
disgust evident in his eyes-"people in there and hold them.
I'll question them in a moment."
  Before the bikers could be taken inside, Buddy and a
team of Rebels walked up, escorting a very
frightened and apparently badly used group of women and
girls.
  "Found them chained in a house, Father. They were
taken from a small settlement just east of here."
  "Just females?"
  "The boys were traded to a group of outlaws whose
sexual preferences are a bit twisted."
  Ben cussed as he turned to the biker prisoners.
"Where is this other group of scum?"
  "Fuck you, man!" was the reply.
  Ben hit him with the butt of his Ml4 and his jaw
popped as green and rotten teeth flew from his mouth.
The outlaw lay on the littered sidewalk and
moaned in pain. Ben shifted his hard eyes to another
biker. "I'll ask you the same question. And if you
wise-ass off to me, I'll shoot you."
  "You gonna shoot us anyways, so why the hell
should I tell you a goddam thing?"
  Ben obliged the biker with one round to the head. The
outlaw dropped to the sidewalk.
  "Hey, man!" one of the remaining outlaws
yelled. "We got rights, man. You can't do this.
It's . . . it's unconstitutional!"
  Ben's smile was extremely unpleasant as he
shifted the still-smoking muzzle of the old Thunder
Lizard toward the mouthy biker. He slowly lifted
the muzzle and placed it against the man's jaw. "Where
are the young boys being held, scumbag?"
  "Up the road at Leadville!" the biker
screamed.
"Jesus God, man! Who the hell are you?"
"Ben Raines." The outlaw fainted.
  Ben did not shoot the remaining outlaws. He
hanged them.
  The column rolled out and traveled up to a
small town about fifteen miles south of
Leadville. The going was very slow through the mountains and
Ben wanted some intelligence about Leadville before
he struck it. He bivouacked his Rebels in the
small town of Granite and sent out recon teams.
  "About the time I think we're making some
progress, we meet scum like those today," he said
to Meg.
  "Satan and my father are just as bad." She spoke
the words with a bitter tinge. "Or worse."
  "I can't imagine what pushed Matt over the
edge. He always seemed so steady."
  "He had his dark side, I can tell you that for
sure," Matt's daughter replied. "Looking
back, searching my memory, I can remember some
pretty ugly scenes with my father, and some
suspicious moments when I'd come home
unexpectedly and catch Dad with . . . neighbor
boys, or young girls. I guess I just forced them
out of my mind."
  Ben did not press her on the memories. He
felt he had a pretty clear idea of what she
had seen and probably personally experienced at the
hands of her father.
  He watched her walk away, and for the first time in
months, enjoyed the view. Jerre would never be
totally out of his mind, but he felt he could push her
far enough back into the dark reaches where she would not be
constantly bugging him.
  He turned as Dan approached.
  "Recon reporting a fairly heavy force of
outlaws are occupying Leadville, General. No
way of determining whether they are part of
Callahan's bunch or are an independent
group."
  "Weapons?"
  "Nothing to match ours in sight. Handguns and
rifles for the most part. No way of knowing where the
prisoners are being held. If they're still alive,"
he added.
  "The kids would probably be better off if they
were dead," Ben said, disgust on his face. Aberrent
sexual behavior between consenting adults was bad
enough, but when children became a part of it... no
punishment was too great for those adults involved.
  Ben waved Buddy over to him.
  "Yes, Father?"
  "You think you can take a team into Leadville,
find those kids, and get them out, all without getting
yourself killed or captured?"
  "Certainly!" Buddy acted as though Ben had
insulted him by even asking.
  "Well . . . what the hell are you waiting
on?" Ben said with a smile.
  Buddy's team, as Dan was fond of pointing out,
was the creme de la creme of his Scouts. They
were, to use the words of Jean Larte Guy: young
enthusiasts in camouflage uniforms, who would not be
put on display, but from whom impossible efforts would
be demanded and to whom all sorts of tricks
would be taught.
  "Stupid thugs," Buddy whispered to a team
member. They stood over the bodies of two
outlaws who had come blundering out of an alley and almost
ran into the Scouts. The Scouts had used their
knives, starry pinpoints of light reflecting off
the long, sharp blades as they cut and slashed.
  Wild drunken laughter came from a building
across the street. Buddy and his team darted across the
dark street and pressed in close to the side of the
building, Buddy peeking inside through a filthy
window. No kids were in sight, but the building was
filled with outlaws, most of them well on their way
to getting drunk on what appeared to be some sort of
homebrew. It was an equal mix of bikers and their
women, one just as bad as the other.
  "The ones who prefer young boys must be in another
part of town," Buddy said. "Put a charge on this
building."
  Grinning, a young Scout slipped out of a heavy
pack and began planting enough C4 to guarantee there
would not be enough left of the building or its occupants
to worry about. The charge would be detonated by radio
signal.
  "Let's find the kids," Buddy said.
  They found them, and they were in a pitiful shape.
One of them was being used by an outlaw, gags stuffed in
the boy's mouth to stifle his screaming. Buddy lifted
a silenced .22 autoloader and shot the biker through
the head. The team rushed in, slashed at the ropes
binding the children, slung them over their shoulders, and ran
from the house of horrors.
  At the edge of town, Buddy halted the team and
looked at the young Rebel who had planted the
charges. "Do it."
  Seventy-five pounds of C4 blew, the shock
of the explosion rocking the ground for blocks around. The
walls of the building collapsed, bringing the roof down
on the outlaw bikers and their women. Lanterns and
candles caught debris on fire and within minutes the
night sky was lit with dancing flames.
  Buddy held one scared, trembling, and hurt young
boy, no more than five or six, in his strong arms.
"You're all right now," he assured the boy. "The
horror is over. It will not happen again. Not as long
as you stay with the Rebels."
  "That was one strange dude, Sam," Pete
Jones told his friend, as the Cadillac rolled south
toward the preset rendezvous point with Lopez,
Macationally, and the others. "I don't think
I've ever seen anything like him."
  "Tell me about him again, Pete," Sam urged.
"I wanna laugh some more."
  "Dressed all in black, Sam. Cowboy
boots shined to where you could see your face in them-had
shiny spurs that jingled. Big black hat with a
rattlesnake skin for a hatband. Big belt all
studded up with silver dollars. Had twin
six-shooters, nickel-plated, pearl handles,
tied down low. He used all sorts of cowboy
terms, like partner, rattle your hocks, belly up
to the bar, fork your cayuse . . . stuff like that."
  "What's a cayuse, Pete?"
  Pete shook his head. "Damned if I know,
Sam. Must be something you eat with a fork, though.
Anyway, Snake liked my plan. So we'll be
linking up with Lopez and the others and traveling back
north."
  "Sounds good to me. Pe bar te? I've eat
lots of hamhocks in my time. But darjnned if I
ever saw one that would rattle!"
  "Take the town," Ben ordered, just as day was
pushing night aside. "No prisoners."
  He turned to Corrie. "According to this map, there
is-or was-some sort of airport in
Leadville; or close to it. It's probably not
going to be large enough to handle our bigger birds, so
Cecil will have to send some of those smaller commuter
planes we have. Tell him to stand by, please,
Corrie."
  Ben had spoken to the kids. They were the only
prisoners being held by the outlaws. There had been
others, but they had been traded to another gang a
few days back.
  The 81mm mortar crews began lobbing HE and
incendiary rounds into the town as gunners behind .50
caliber machine guns raked their fire areas.
Several blocks of the town had burned the night before;
as the incendiary rounds began slamming in, it was
only a matter of minutes before the entire downtown
area was blazing.
  "Cease firing," Ben ordered. "Mop it up."
  Rebels moved in behind the Dusters, as the 40mm
cannon rounds from the Dusters created more flames and
confusion and destruction.
  Ben looked down at what had once been a
thriving little town nestled in the Rocky Mountains.
He had read somewhere-long ago-that it had once snowed
in Leadville on the Fourth of July.
  Now there was very little left of Leadville,
and as the fires swirled relentlessly on, soon there
would be nothing.
  Only sporadic gunshots were coming from the burning
town as the Rebels mopped up.
  Cooper said, "I told General Jefferys about
the condition of the kids and he's starting the smaller
birds out immediately. He says to tell you that a
hostile force was spotted by our patrols in
Minnesota.
They were pretty sure it was Ashley and his bunch."
  "I'm beginning to get very weary of Mr. Ashley.
That bastard is determined to see me dead."
  Dan walked up. "Snake and Satan to the
north, Ashley and probably Sister Voleta to the
east." He shook his head. "And God only knows
what's being plotted by those south of us."
  "That same thought just crossed my mind," Ben
admitted. He shrugged his shoulders. "Let's go
see the airport."
  There wasn't much left of it. The buildings had
all been looted, and the few planes left in the
hangers destroyed.
  Dan, who was a pilot himself, viewed the
wreckage and cursed. "We'll be able to salvage
parts, but that's about all."
  "Why do they do it?" Corrie asked.
  "Because they're looters," Ben told her. "And
looters are greedy, selfish, stupid people. Whatever
they don't understand, they destroy. Let's get the
runway cleared off. We'll bivouac out here; let
the town burn itself out."
  "Buddy reporting they have prisoners," Corrie
said, after listening to her earphones.
  Ben gave Dan a quick look. The Englishman
nodded his head and walked toward his Jeep. Ben
slung his M14 and began to roll a cigarette as
teams of Rebels began the task of clearing the
runway. Others began pitching tents and cleaning out
a hanger to use as a mess hall.
  "It's just all in a day's work, isn't it,
General?" Meg asked. "I mean, nobody has
to be told what to do ... it just gets done. It could
be said that you have
a cult following here."
  "It has been said, Meg. Many times. And there
may be a modicum of truth to it. But a cult has
to have something they worship. For a time that "thing" was me.
But I put a stop to that. For the most part."
  "I've seen shrines built in your honor,
General."
  "I know. The Woods Children and the Underground People have
done that. Used to do that. I hope all that is over and
done with. A cult? No, we're all fighting and
working and sweating toward the same goal, Meg.
To rebuild this nation."
  "And you're determined to get it done."
  "Not in my lifetime. Buddy and Tina will have
to carry on after I'm gone."
  "Can they do it?"
  "Oh, yes." He smiled and his eyes twinkled.
"But I don't intend to go for a very long time."
  The following morning, Ben outlined the route he
wanted to take and a team of scouts pulled out. They
would go only as far as Interstate 70, about
twenty-five miles from Leadville up Highway
91, reporting back any roadblocks or
sightings of hostiles. At the Interstate, they would
camp and wait until the Rebels jumped off from
Leadville. At that time the Scouts would advance up
to the j unction of Highway 40 north, repeating the
process.
  Buddy was leading this team of Scouts.
  Late that afternoon, the light planes from Base
Camp One began setting down. Ben was not
surprised to see Dr. Lamar Chase
step out of the first plane down.
The men shook hands. "You old goat," Ben needled
his old friend. "Who invited you?"
  "I don't need a damned invitation!""
Chase popped back. "Besides, you're forgetting this
is my country. I used to take leave in this area,
hiking and camping. I wanted to see it one more time."
  "And, of course, you brought along more of that
abysmal goop you concocted that is laughably
called field rations."
  "Of course. Knowing how you all love it so much.
I couldn't bear the thought of you running out."
  "You're all heart, Lamar."
  "Don't I know it. Where are the children?"
  Ben pointed. "Over there. And they're in rough
shape."
  "The scum who did this to them?"
  "They're dead. Dan hanged them yesterday
afternoon."
  "Good." Chase waved at the medical team who
had accompanied him from the base camp and walked
toward the building where the abused kids were being kept.
  Past seventy, Lamar Chase was still as spry as
a man thirty years younger.
  The planes began landing (en minutes
apart, offloading supplies to keep Ben land his
battalion fully equipped, and gassing up for the
return trip the next morning. Ben waved several
of the pilots over and outlined the proposed route the
Rebels would be taking.
  "Fort Collins will probably be our next
resupply point. Of course, all that is
subject to change, depending on how much we
exhaust between here
and there."
  "Hell, General, we can always come in on some of
these little strips all along here," a pilot said,
tracing the route with a finger. "We've landed in worse
places, believe me. Anytime you want us, just
holler. We'll sit them down anywhere you carve out
for us."
  Ben watched the birds fly out the next morning
then mounted up his people and started the pull north to the
Interstate. Buddy had reported back that the
outlaws in the mountains had pulled out, giving the
Rebels a wide berth.
  "I would much prefer they stood and fought it out,"
Ben said to those in the Blazer. "We're just going to have
to come back and do it all over again." Then he
laughed.
  "What's so funny, General?" Beth asked.
  "I was just remembering a line from Brother Dave.
He said you can't ever do anything again. Once it's
done, it's done. You can only do something similar."
  Andwitha smile on his lips, Ben let them all
chew on Brother Dave's words for a time.
  The convoy made the way to Buddy's location
by midmorning. It had been very slow going through the
mountains. Highway 91 was deteriorating
rapidly, with many washed-out spots, where huge areas
of concrete were missing or broken.
  Ben couldn't imagine anyone in their right mind
wanting to ride a motorcycle through this mess.
  They had passed through the small town of Climax,
where a few hundred souls had once resided. The
town had obviously been used by outlaws-and
recently-for the place was a mess. Human feces
was evident in every building, usually confined to a corner
in one room.
  "Filthy buggers!" Dan said. "How couldahuman
being live like this?"
  "They're not human beings," Ben had told him.
"That's precisely why I am not treating them as
such."
  When they reached Buddy's position on
Interstate 70, Buddy and his team pulled out for
Dillon, another tiny town on the route.
  "If the outlaws have damaged Eisenhower
Tunnel, or just blown it closed, we'll have
to backtrack and take this old secondary road up
to Kremmling. And then pray that Highway 34, which
goes through the Rocky Mountain State Park, is still
open. Hell with it," Ben said, lifting his mike.
"Eagle One to Rat." Buddy's team had been
code-named the Rat Team while inspecting the
tunnels in New York City.
  "Go, Eagle."
  "Check out Eisenhower Tunnel-you should be within a
few miles of it-and report back to me. We'll
stay put until you do so."
  "Ten-four, Eagle. Rolling."
  Ben leaned against the Blazer and waited for his
son's report. It was not long in coming.
  "Rat to Eagle."
  "Go, boy."
  "The tunnel is blocked, Eagle. Filled with
old cars and trucks; a path just wide enough for
motorcycles to use is all there is."
  "Estimate on time to clear it?"
"Several days at least."
  "All right, Rat. Return to our location."
  "Ten-four, Eagle."
  Ben turned his face north, to gaze at the old
highway that would, he hoped, lead them to Kremmling.
"It's going to be a rough pull, gang."
  That was putting it mildly.
  The highway was in such terrible shape the convoy was
slowed to no more than a crawl in many areas. It
turned out to be thirty-eight of the roughest miles
Ben had traveled in a long time.
  It was almost dark when they reached the outskirts of
Kremmling.
  And came very nearly driving smack into an
ambush.
  Even Ben was later forced to admit that most of the
Rebels' attention had been focused on just
tras-versing the terrible highway. That changed in a
hurry when the lead started flying and whining off the
vehicles.
  Rebels poured out of the vehicles and took up
defensive positions wherever they could find them.
  "Get those tanks off the trailers!" Ben
spoke into his mike as he crouched by the side of the
Blazer. "Somebody give me a report."
  "Our ass is coming under fire," Buddy
radioed from his forward position.
  "Very funny, Rat. Can you be just a bit more
informative?"
  The Rebels had the Colorado River to their
backs and hostile fire in front of them.
"Somebody doesn't like us very much, Dad," Tina
added.
  "Clowns," Ben muttered, very conscious of
Corrie pressing close to him. It was not at all
an unpleasant sensation.
  The Dusters were the first to wheel about and unleash their
40mm cannon fire at the muzzle flashes coming
from the edge of the small town.
  The main battle tanks were unchained and roaring
into life. They lowered their deadly snouts and blew
everything in their path to hell with 105 HE rounds.
  Fifty caliber and 7.62 machine gun fire
began raking the area. Ben let them all rock and
roll for several minutes before he called a
cease-fire.
  He lifted his mike. "If your ass is still
intact, Rat, carry it up a few hundred
meters and give me a report."
  "I don't have to carry it anywhere, Eagle. We
were practically looking down the muzzles.
They're bugging out on motorcycles."
  "Ten-four, Rat. Hold what you've got.
Tanks up and check it out. Rebels behind the
tanks. Let's go in and do a little night hunting."
  But the outlaws were gone. As had been the case so
often since Ben and his Rebels entered Colorado,
the outlaws struck, and then pulled back.
  "Do you get the impression that we're being
baited?" Dan asked.
  "Yes." Ben poured himself a cup of coffee and
sat down in a canvas camp chair. "I'm
beginning to feel that we are. And if that's the case, and
it's Matt doing it, he's got tricks up his
sleeve. Or troops would be more like it."
  "The outlaws that bugged out of Dallas?"
  "Probably. They were the jnore intelligent
ones. Or street-smart might be a better way of
putting it."
  "There were several hundred who pulled out," Dan
said, "And that's being conservative."
  "Let's use five hundred for a ball park
figure. Five hundred behind us. Say . . .
two thousand north of us; with another two thousand that
Matt could pull in ... maybe more than that. Four
to five hundred under Ashley's command coming
at us from the east.
It's shaping up to be a very interesting scrap,
Dan."
  "You going to alert Ike and Cecil?"
  "I don't think so. Ike can have troops up here
in ten or twelve hours. He's got a combat
team ready to go that can drop in anywhere we lay out a
DZ. I think we'll just play it by ear for the time
being. We'll get some rest tonight and inspect the town
in the morning."
  It was a mess.
  "These people have just got to be the trashiest people I have ever
encountered," Tina remarked.
  Filth was everywhere. It appeared to the Rebels that
their enemy did not believe in bathing more than once
or twice a year. The lice and fleas left behind in
their discarded clothing prompted Dr. Ling to issue a
disinfect order once they were free of the small town.
  The Rebels got the hell gone from the town.
  "For a little bit I'd change the planned route,"
Ben said. "But I want to resupply at Fort
Collins and get back on the Interstate system.
As bad as it is, it's a dream compared to the roads
we've been traveling."
  The Rebels headed east on Highway
40, stopping along the way to bathe in the Colorado
River and let the medics spray them with
disinfectant. They had all been scratching since the
discovery of the lice and fleas.
  The town of Granby no longer existed. It had
been destroyed by fire. Whether deliberate or
by nature was anyone's guess.
  They moved on, swinging north on Highway 34.
They traveled just eighty miles that day, calling it
quits at midaf ternoon at an old Ranger
station in the Rocky Mountain National Park.
"So beautiful and so peaceful," Meg observed,
taking in all the splendors of the wilderness. Deer were
grazing nearby.
  And they could graze without fear of the Rebels. The
Rebels did hunt, but only when their food
supply was low. The Rebels did not hunt for
sport. That was not to say that they all agreed with
Ben's philosophy about wildlife, for many
certainly did not; the ranks of the Rebels were
diverse. It was just that they all knew how Ben felt
about so-called sport hunting, when it was not necessary for
one's own survival, and they would just rather not bring the
wrath of the General down on their heads.
  "The way God planned it," Ben
replied. "And the way I intend to keep it... if
possible."
  "I remember my father used to disagree with you about
hunting," Meg said.
  "Then he read me wrong-like a lot of other people.
I was never antihuntitig. Hell, I belonged
to the NRA right up the end. I hunted as a kid.
And the one thing that people could never rightly accuse me of was
being a hypocrite. I was, quite simply,
adamantly opposed to animal cruelty. And I
despised poachers."
  "General," Meg began, shifting the topic,
"where does all this end? I mean, surely you
can't
possibly believe that you and a small force of men and
women can restore America. "That's an...
impossible dream."
  "We don't think so, Meg. I think that if you
stay with us, you'll change your mind. And I have no
intention of restoring America to what it was. Far from
it."
"Then . . . ?" She looked up at the visionary,
questions in her eyes.
  "I intend to make it better."
  The Rebels reached Interstate 25 in
the early afternoon of the next day. They had put the
majestic Rocky Mountains behind them-at least for the
time being.
  They found a small band of survivors in
Loveland, once a city of more than thirty thousand.
Five hundred determined men and woman had turned
the place into a fortress against the roaming bands of
outlaws. Many of them, men and women, openly cried
when Ben and the Rebels rolled up to their
blockades.
  It was here that Ben left the last of his settlers.
  Ben spoke with Cecil. "Get a team of
Rebels up to Loveland, Cec. I'm going
to clean out Greely first, then move up to Fort
Collins. The spokespeople at Loveland say
both towns are infested with outlaws and crud and the like.
Bring in the team with the supplies. I'll bump you as
to when. Just have them ready and standing by."
  "Ten-four, Ben. Recon reports a large
force heading straight toward you from the east."
  "Ashley and his bunch?"
  "That's affirmative. And he's picking up
human crud as he goes. And there is a second
force moving up behind you. Not quite as large, but big enough
to cause you trouble."
  "That's the bunch that bugged out of Dallas.
We're aware of it, Cec. We're going to sit
right here in
Colorado for a few days-maybe longer. Let's
see what they do about that."
  "Ten-four, Eagle. Hawk out."
  "Let's go have a look at Greely, gang."
  Ben set up a temporary CP in a small
town just east of Interstate 25, on the road leading
to Greely. He could not shell the small city because
he did not know how many, if any, prisoners were being
held in the city.
  "It's going to have to be go in eyeball
to eyeball," he told his people. "Now this bunch has
automatic weapons. M16's, Uzis,
AKBLEDG'S. They have no artillery. Like most
outlaw gangs we've faced in the past, this bunch
has always relied on brute force to overwhelm people.
So we'll play their game. Main battle tanks
as spearheaders, followed by Dusters, followed by us.
Let's go."
  The rumbling of fifty-ton tanks reached the ears
of the outlaws and did nothing to calm the already jittery
nerves of the men behind the blockades; blockades that
they now realized were very flimsy when held
up against the main battle tanks rolling and clanking
in their direction.
  The battle tanks lowered the muzzles of their
105's and turned the roadblocks into smoking
piles of bloody rubble. Then the Dusters opened
up with 40mm cannon fire and the road was opened.
  The Dusters and main battle tanks veered off,
splitting up and rumbling up the streets on the edge
of town, machine guns snarling and spitting.
  "Rebels, out!" Ben toldCorrie, and she
relayed the message.
  This time, before anyone could stop him, Ben
overran his own lines and led the charge, with Beth,
Corrie, Jersey, and Cooper right behind him.
  "Bogies in there!" Ben shouted, pointing to an
old service station as he ran past it.
  Cooper tossed a Fire-Frag grenade through the
busted window and ran after Ben. When the
Fire-Frag blew, and it was perhaps the most powerful
and lethal grenade ever manufactured, the explosion
and the hundreds of tiny fragments it released
splattered the walls with what remained of the outlaws
who had taken refuge in the building.
  A half-dozen other Rebels, driven toward
Ben's position by the roaring of Dan
Gray, reached Ben's team. He waved them all
down into a ditch. Ben clamped the bipod onto the
gas cylinder and cylinder lock of his M14 and
slipped a thirty-round clip into the belly of the old
Thunder Lizard.
  "A group of crud ran into that house right there,"
Ben said, nodding his head toward a frame home about
a hundred meters away. Then he cut loose with
half a clip of 7.62 rounds, stitching the wood and
bringing screams of pain from those inside. He smiled.
"I believe we've found us some bogies, gang."
  But not for long. The dozen Rebels cut loose
with Ml6's and M60's, soon turning the frame
house into a death house.
  "Check it out," Ben told the Rebels who had
joined him.
  Less than ninety seconds later, the
Rebels waved the others on.
  Hard-fighting Rebels, offering no quarter and
taking no prisoners, cleared a dozen blocks in
any
direction within the hour, putting the so-called tough
outlaw bikers into a rout.
  "Chase them down and dispose of them," Ben
ordered.
  Hummers and Jeeps leaped forward, each one
equipped with either a .50 caliber or 7.62
M60 machine gun. Many of the fleeing outlaws were
chased and gunned down.
  "House to house," Ben ordered, and then with his
team, he personally took one side of the block where
he was standing. When he had swept his perimeter, he
told Corrie, "Tell those back in Loveland
to enter this city. Start taking whatever they think they can
use, either now or in the future. They have four days,
dawn to dusk, to do it. Then we destroy this city."
  The Rebels were still mopping up on the east side
of the city when the settlers entered the west end and began
taking materials they felt they might need.
  "Five Rebels wounded, General," Dan
reported. "Three will need to be sent back
to Base Camp One with the returning birds. No
dead on us."
  "Corrie, tell base camp to send
replacements up with the planes. We want to stay
full strength. Dan, an estimate on outlaw
dead?"
  "Rough guess. I'd say a hundred and
fifty, give or take twenty-five. About a
hundred got away."
  "Prisoners?"
  "Fifty or so. Badly used and very frightened.
Dr. Ling had them transported back to Loveland.
And we have some prisoners . . . reluctantly on
our part. They were groveling and snuffling about at our
feet. One of them even wanted a lawyer."
  "Wonderful. Of course you told him we'd have
one
sent in immediately?"
  "Oh, but of course!"
  "Have them transported back to my CP. I
want to talk to them."
  They were just as scummy and stinking and sorry a lot
as the others of their ilk Ben had encountered on this
run.
  "You ain't got nary rat to do this, soldier
boy," one told Ben.
  "What did he say?" Dan leaned forward.
"What in heaven's name is a naryrat?"
  "Did somebody call me?" Buddy stuck his
head in the building, responding to his nickname.
  "I think he did." Dan pointed at the
outlaw.
  "I ain't neber done no sich of a thang!" the
biker said.
  "What did he say?" Buddy asked.
  "Enough!" Ben held up his hand. "Now I'm
getting confused." He looked at the outlaw.
"I'll be up front with you. You're going to die.
That's a one hundred percent guaranteed fact.
How you die is up to you. I can hang you or have a
medic give you a lethal injection, which, so I'm
told, is a much more humane method of execution.
Not that you deserve it, for I find you and your kind to be
among the least-humane people I have ever encountered."
  The outlaw stared at Ben.
  "I don't believe the cretin understands
English," Dan said.
  "I ain't got a fuckin' thang to say to you,
soldier boy." The biker spat out the words, filling
the immediate area with bad breath.
  "Your choice." Ben nodded to Dan, who prodded
the biker to his boots with the muzzle of his weapon.
"Bring the next one in, Buddy."
  "Can I smoke?" the outlaw said after Buddy had
pushed him into a chair.
  "You might as well. It'll probably be your
last one."
  The biker's hands were shaking as he finally managed
to roll a cigarette. "You're a real
hard-ass, ain't you, Ben Raines?"
  "Yes. How do you know my name?"
  "I seen your pitcher years back, when you was
writin' them books. You ain't got no purtier."
  Ben had to smile. The biker was just as hard as he
was. He knew he was going to die, but he was going
to die well. "You're not exactly the last rose of
summer yourself. You part of Satan's organization?"
  "Yep."
  "You kidnap people to trade to the Night People?"
  "Naw. We just use "em as slaves and fuck
'em and so forth. Then swap 'em off to other gangs."
  "How about Snake and Satan?"
  "What about 'em?"
  "They deal with the Night People?"
  The biker paused. "I heard they did. But I
ain't never seen it personal."
  "How many men does Snake have in his
organization?"
  The biker smiled, then told Ben where to go, how
to get there, and where to stick what on the way.
  Ben glanced at Buddy. "Put him down
by injection."
  Buddy looked puzzled. "Why, Father?"
  Ben shrugged. "He may be trash, but
he's got
balls." He cut his eyes to the biker. "Too
bad you picked the wrong side."
  "Nobody forced me, Raines. So don't go
sheddin" no tears for me." He pointed a finger at
Ben. A very dirty finger. "I'm gonna tell you
something, Raines. I didn't pick the wrong
side. I couldn't live under your rules, that's
all. I could have cleaned up my act and joined your
Rebels. And I probably would have been a good
soldier. You believe that?"
  "Yes, as a matter of fact, I do," Ben
surprised him by saying. "But now are you going to sing
me some sad songs about how you were abused as a child, or
you are what you are because of society, or some such
crap as that?"
  The outlaw laughed. "Hello, no! That's
garbage and you know it as good as I do. I am what
I am because it's what I wanted to be. It's as
simple as that. You been right all these years."
  "What's your name?"
  "Larry. Last names don't matter much no more."
  "You want to live, Larry?"
  "Everybody wants to live, Raines. But if
you're askin' me to suck up to you and be a
snitch or whatever, forget it. Just bring the needle out
and put me down."
  "Why?"
  was "Cause eventually, you're goin" to win this
fight. It's gonna take you a long time-years-but
you'll do it. And just the thought of livin' under your rules
makes me wanna puke!"
  "Is there not one shred of decency in you, man?"
  Larry thought about that for several moments. Then he
shook his head and frowned. "Your idea of
the word, Raines?"
  "If that's the way you want to put it, yes. But
decency is decency, Larry. You know that. Stop
playing games. We-all of us-have to have a moral
foundation to live by. We'll revert back to anarchy
without it. Hell, you're living proof of that!"
  The biker grinned. "That's true, for a fact.
That's a pretty speech, Raines. Why don't you
put that on my tombstone?"
  "You didn't answer my question, Larry."
  "I ain't gonna answer it, Raines. I'm
gonna leave you wonderin' about that."
  "I won't wonder about it for very long, Larry .
. . if that is your name. My back trail is lined
with dead men."
  "My name is Charles Lawrence Matthews.
Put that on my marker, punk." He looked up
at Buddy as his right hand dropped out of sight.
  Ben put his hand on the .45 lying on the table,
cocked and locked.
  "Why me?" Buddy asked.
  ""Cause Raines is dead!" he shouted, and
leaped forward, a boot knife in his hand.
  Ben shot him twice in the chest, the slugs
driving him back. The biker staggered out the open
door and fell to the ground, dead.
  Ben leaned back in his chair. "Buddy, find the
Rebel who searched this man. And give him a
shovel. Tell him to start to work. He's got a
lot of graves to dig."
  With Greely under firm control of the Rebels, and
only hours away from being destroyed, Ben and his
troops moved up the Interstate to Fort Collins and
watched as the planes carrying supplies from the base
camp began arriving.
  The newly arrived replacements were assigned and the
badly wounded Rebels, along with the freed
prisoners, were flown back to Base Camp One.
  Ben drove back to Greely just as the
survivors were leaving, the trucks loaded
with lumber, bricks, and other articles that might be
useful in the future.
  "Bring it down," Ben ordered.
  A light rain was falling as the small city went
under the Rebel torch. As he stood back and
watched the city burn, Ben then ordered every town within
a twenty-mile radius of Loveland to be picked
clean, the materials inventoried and warehoused, and
then to be destroyed.
  Ben and his Rebels pulled out for Cheyenne,
Wyoming, at dawn, prepared to fight their way
through. They did not see one sign of human life
during their run of fifty-odd miles. The old
Interstate stretched out before them, barren. Buddy and his
rat team ranged twenty miles ahead of the main
column, reporting back by radio every fifteen
minutes. They had nothing to report over the two
hours it took the convoy to reach the outskirts of
Cheyenne.
  It appeared to be a dead city.
  But Ben wasn't buying that. A little warning bell
kept going off in his head. He waved Buddy to his
side.
  "Take your team and skirt the city. There was a
SAC base here before the war. See what's
left of it." He waved Tina to him. "Take this
old highway here, Tina, and check out Laramie
County Community College. Take some trucks
with you. We'll try to salvage all the books we
can and fly them back with the other books we've found
during our next resupply."
  The Rebels saved knowledge much like a squirrel
stores away nuts. The book repositories at
Base Camp One were very likely the largest in the
world. Ben had people who did nothing but oversee the
preservation and restoration of books.
  Dan walked up to Ben. "I don't like it," the
Englishman said bluntly.
  "Nor do I, Dan. I'm getting some funky
vibes from this city."
  "Funky?" Dan said with smile. "That word
dates us both, General."
  Ben laughed. "Hell, Dan, I still remember
cool
and
hip."
  The men squatted down on the Interstate and
waited.
"Tina reporting the college has been looted and
trashed," Corrie informed the men. "But many
of the books are salvageable."
  "Load them up and bring them back. Any signs
of recent habitation?"
  "Ten-four, sir. The unmistakable odor of
creep-ies."
  Ben and Dan both cursed the Night P. Ben
said, "Send an additional platoon of Rebels
to both Scout teams, Corrie. Advise Rat and
Tina they are on the way."
  "Ten-four, sir."
  "You think they're in hiding, General?" Dan
asked.
  "Yes. Hoping that we'll not detect them and just
bypass the city."
  "However .. . ?"
  "They're in for a very rude shock."
  "Reinforcements on the way," Corrie said.
  Ben nodded, his eyes on the hazy outline of the
city. "Contact Rat and Tina on scramble and
tell them to start digging in. As soon as the
additional troops arrive and their positions are
secure, I'll start the push from the south."
  He waited until Corrie had relayed that, as
he studied a map of Cheyenne, and said, "Main
battle tanks prepare to spearhead at
my orders, followed by the Dusters. Ramos and
Brad will cut off at 80 under the command of Dan,
half the tanks with them. I'll take command of
Companies C and D and the remainder of the tanks and
drive toward the center of the city. I'm going to push
straight through to the middle of town and assess the
situation."
  "Ten-four, sir."
"Get in position, Dan."
  "See you at the airport, General."
  "Keep an eye out for prisoners, Dan."
  "Right."
  Ben stood up and waved Corrie into the Blazer,
climbing in behind her as soon as she was settled in the
specially built rear compartment, so three could still sit
comfortably despite all the equipment.
  "Let's go, Coop. Swing in behind the tanks."
  As soon as Dan veered off onto Interstate
80 toward Holiday Park and Ben's command roared
toward the heart of the city, Ben's radio blared the
news.
  "Under heavy attack," Buddy radioed.
  "They're coming out of the woodwork, Dad," Tina
radioed.
  "If you don't think you can hold, fall
back," Ben told them.
  "We'll hold," they both assured him.
  Ben halted his contingent on Sixteenth Street and
spread them out, while the tanks started to work on the
lower floors of the ravaged-appearing buildings.
  The old Atlas Theatre, long a national
historic site, had been gutted by fire, as had
several buildings close to it.
  Dark, hooded shapes flitted about the charred
interior of the old theatre. Ben lifted his M14 and
knocked several of them sprawling. A tank commander
shifted the muzzle of his 105 and finished whatever
else might have been alive in the ruins.
  "Lob a couple of grenades into the basement of that
building," Ben told Cooper, pointing to the
building right behind them. "Let's see what
happens."
Cooper tossed two Fire-Frags through a broken
window and they all went belly-down on the
sidewalk. The exploding Frags brought howls and
wild shriekings of pain. Beth crawled over to a
smoking basement window and shoved the muzzle of her
M16 through the hole, giving the creepies a full
clip. The shrieking stopped.
  "Colonel Gray says he's found the
prisoners, General," Corrie told him. "In
a warehouse."
  "Tell him to ask the prisoners if any others
are being held elsewhere in the city."
  "Negative to any further prisoners in the
city. That's firm."
  Ben took the mike. "Raines to all tank
commanders and self-propelled mortar crew chiefs.
My command is driving toward the airport. At my
signal, start using Willie Peter and incendiary
rounds. Dan, you hold what you've got; we're
going to box the city as best we can and bring it down."
  " "Affirmative, General.""
  "You read me, Rat, Tina?"
  "Ten-four, Eagle."
  "Let's go, Cooper."
  The self-propelled mortar carriers left the
original position on the outskirts of town and
began circling and getting into position. With the tanks
leading the way, Ben's unit began barreling toward
the airport, with every gun they could use hammering out
lead.
  The creeps had automatic weapons, but nothing
that could punch through the armor plate on the tanks and
trucks and Ben's Blazer. Cooper
swerved to avoid a thrown grenade and the concussion as
they passed nearly lifted the Blazer off the
right-side tires.
"Miserable cannibalistic bastards!" Ben
muttered.
  "Take 85 right up ahead, tanks," Cooper
radioed, after glancing at an old street map of the
city. "That'll take us right to the airport. Did you
hear that, Cooper?"
  "I heard, I heard!"
  "Just past the airport, cut right. That'll be
Prairie Avenue."
  "Yes, Mother," Cooper muttered, just as a hard
burst of lead whined off the armor plate of the
Blazer, causing everyone inside to wince.
  Then a burst of fire knocked out a rear tire.
Cooper fought the wheel as he struggled to maintain the
same speed. The ride turned very bumpy.
  "We're almost there, Coop," Ben told him.
  "You all right, General?" Ben's speaker talked
to him.
  "Ten-four. Getting our innards shook up some,
that's all. Cut over, tanks. Start lining up
over there next to those mortar crews on the north
side of this street."
  Ben bailed out of the Blazer as it lurched to a
stop, and he grabbed his mike while the others
scrambled out. "All units report in if clear
of the city."
  They were clear. Buddy and Tina were still hard-fighting
it, but holding.
  Ben turned to Corrie, standing by his side.
"Are the units in place around the outskirts?"
  She nodded her head.
  "Bring the city down," he ordered.
  From both the north and south limits of the city, the
81mm mortars and the 105's began blasting,
dropping in Willie Peter and incendiary.
"Creepies bugging out." Buddy's report came
right on the heels of Tina's radioing in.
  Smoke began pouring into the sky as what was once
the capital of Wyoming began burning.
  As the creepies raced from the burning city, many were
chopped down from the units of Rebels scattered
around the outskirts. The light rain had long since
stopped and a bright sun was warming the land as the city
burned and the creepies died.
  Ben pounded the city for an hour before calling for a
cease-fire. He glanced at his watch. Not yet
noon. A lot of history had died in
only a few hours, and that wasn't to Ben's liking.
But this way was the safest for his people, and the quickest.
  "Mount up," he ordered. "Scouts out on
Interstate 80, westbound. We're heading for
Laramie."
  "We wondered what was going on, General," the
man said as he shook Ben's hand. "We could sure
see the smoke rising."
  Buddy had found several hundred survivors
living in Laramie.
  "There used to be more of us," the spokesperson
explained. "But the outlaws and bikers and the warlords
are striking us nearly every week. They've taken their
toll," he added grimly.
  "You're sure this is where you want to settle?"
Ben asked.
  "We're sure, General."
  Ben nodded. "Corrie, get the base on the
horn. Tell them to get a team of Rebels up
here and to resupply us and prepare to take back those
we liberated. And
send the books back, too. We're getting
top-heavy."
  "You've really cleared Colorado?" another
settler asked.
  "No," Ben quickly corrected that. "We've
cleaned out a few towns and cities, and managed
to dispose of several hundred outlaws. But cleaning out
just one state is going to be a massive undertaking.
It's important we get as many outposts set up
as possible. Once we're linked in that manner, able
to resupply units in the field quickly, the job will
become much easier."
  The Rebels stayed in Laramie for several days,
resting, loafing, working, and seeing to equipment needs.
Ben sent out patrols, north and west, and soon
became acutely aware of just what he and his
Rebels faced.
  There were bands of outlaws and bikers and warlords all
over the state. Some of them numbered no more than ten
or twelve; some numbered several hundred.
  And the city of Casper was filled with Night P.
Rawlins was a haven for a huge outlaw gang that
terrorized the southern part of the state.
  "We take Rawlins first," Ben said.
  "Destroy it?" Dan said.
  "No. I'd rather not. I'd like to set up an
outpost there if at all possible. It's about a
hundred miles from Laramie, and that's an ideal
distance between outposts. We'll take the town
building by building."
  "There are many families along the way," Ben was
told. "Good decent people. But they're forced to live in
forts because of the outlaws. We're in radio contact with
most of them. I'll advise that you're on the way
and for them to get ready to resettle-if they want to.
And I think they will."
  First reports back from the besieged families
along the way indicated they would be more than happy
to relocate.
  "Fine," Ben said. "We'll put out in the
morning."
  Ben soon found out that these people were not about to be driven
off by outlaws. Their will was strong, but they were going about
the task of surviving the wrong way-at least under
present conditions. They wanted wide-open spaces
between them, and that just wasn't feasible. Not yet. They were
too vulnerable to attack.
  "We'll clear out everything from Fort Steele
to Rawlins," Ben said after carefully studying a map
of the area. "Or to make it easier, from the Continental
Divide back to Fort Steele. Everything in a
twenty-mile radius, north, south, and back
east. At least for a start. More as time goes on."
  "And from Rawlins?" Corrie asked,
to stay on top of things.
  "We'll take Highway 287 to Muddy Gap,
then 220 up to Casper. We won't destroy that
city either. We'll set up an outpost there. Once
that's done, the settlers can start cleaning out from the
points of the rough triangle inward. We can have
hundreds and hundreds of square miles of clean
territory."
  "And we're going to do this in every state?" Beth
asked.
  "Yes. Europe will have to wait. We've got
to clean up our own act first."
"Folks just outside of Arlington want to talk
to you, Dad," Tina informed him.
  "That's ten-four." Ben glanced at his watch.
"We'll be there within the hour."
  "I'll tell you flat out, General," the rancher
told Ben. "I don't like some of your rules. But
you and your bunch is carryin" the load in this war, so
I'll be willing to live under them and not bitch about
it... much," he added with a smile.
  Ben laughed. "I'd be very wary of any type of
government that claimed to be perfect, my friend. And
we're far from perfect. Good to have you with us." Ben
stuck out his hand and the man took it.
  They spent an hour discussing Ben's plans, with
Ben agreeing to some of the rancher's own plans and
ideas. The Rebels pulled out with Ben once more
having that good feeling that the light at the end of that
long, long tunnel toward restoration of the nation was
shining just a little bit brighter.
  The Rebels spent the night near Fort Steele.
As yet they had seen no sign of outlaws, and neither
had any of the settlers they had spoken with.
  Buddy's Rat Team had advanced to within a mile
of Rawlins, with not a shot being fired from either side.
  "They're in there," Buddy radioed back. "We
can see cook fires all over the place."
  "Estimates?" Ben asked.
  "Several hundred, at least. I'd suspect more
than that. I think the outlaws have massed in the town;
that would probably account for us not having encountered any
of them on this run."
  "I agree with him," Dan said. "Since we
don't
know how many, if any, prisoners are being held,
it's going to be a tough fight. Are you planning an
end-around?"
  "No. We'll go in from the east and take them on
nose to nose."
  "I'll make it clear to the lads and lassies that
they'd better be in body armor."
  "Yes. Order a full inspection for the morning.
Main battle tanks will spearhead again. Try
to keep the destruction down to a minimum; we want
to save as much of the town as possible."
  "Rat on the horn," Corrie told him.
  Ben took the mike. "Go, Rat."
  "They have mortars, Father. And plenty of them."
  Ben acknowledged that and turned to Dan. "They'll
cream us if we wait until dawn to strike. So
attack, Dan. Now!"
  The Rebels jumped into action, rolling within two
minutes, the tanks spearheading the column at
full speed. The outlaws worked frantically to get
the mortars set up and get the range, but the
column was moving too fast, and the main battle
tanks were too awesome and carried too much
firepower. They cut loose with everything they had and
crashed through the now-bloody roadblocks, the treads
of the fifty-ton tanks crushing the life out of any
who were unable to move out of the way.
  Dusters were right behind the bigger tanks, their 40mm
cannon and twin-mounted machine guns spitting out
rapid death as they roared toward the center of
town.
  The Rebels mauled and mangled the outlaws,
knocking them back half a dozen blocks before the
crud could recover and try to throw up some sort of
defense. At best, it was only a halfhearted
attempt now that they had been hammered so severely
and so swiftly with massively superior firepower
and troops.
Many ran for their motorcycles and cars and trucks
and hauled ass out of Rawlins, with most of them heading
west. Ben ordered no pursuit; first on his
priority list was cleaning out the town.
  "Circle the town," Ben ordered. "Fire
barrels on every street and keep them burning throughout the
night. Company A to the north, B to the south, C
to the west, D to the east. No one leaves their
perimeter because the passwords will be different in every
sector. Rat team and Tina's team will be with Dan
and me checking the town. Let's do it, people!"
  "General," Beth said, reading an old information
packet about the small city. "It says here that there
is an old prison located in town, in use from
1903 until 1982. A new prison was build
just south of the town then. I bet if there are any
prisoners, they're being held in one of those
two places."
  "Good bet, Corrie. Let's check out the old
prison first."
  "You ain't takin' none of us, Raines!" came
the defiant shout from behind the thick walls of the old
prison. "We got the prisoners as hostages."
  Ben got a bullhorn from the Blazer and laid it
on the line to the outlaws. "I don't negotiate
with crud. Ever. Release the prisoners."
  "Fuck you, Raines. We'll kill them all!"
  "There is nothing I can do about that at the moment. But
I tell you this: if those prisoners are harmed
anymore than they already are, I'll lock you all
down hard in the prison south of town and you will either
starve to death or die of thirst-whichever comes first, it
doesn't make a damn to me. And don't make the
mistake of thinking I'm bluffing."
"You ain't that hard, Raines!"
  "The hell he ain't," another outlaw said. "You
just don't know Ben Raines. That's the hardest-nosed
bastard that ever pulled on a pair of boots. I'm
givin' it up. I'm comin' out, Raines. The side
door. I got a half-dozen prisoners with me."
  "You yeller son of a bitch!" he was taunted and
cursed by a few of the others. And Ben
noticed it was only a few.
  "Dan," Ben said. "Get over to the side and
see to the prisoners."
  Dan and a few Rebels slipped into the darkness.
  Beth was looking through night lenses. "I can see
the man, General. He's got a gun to a
woman's head."
  "Keep his face in your mind, Beth. His, and
any with him."
  A single gunshot cut the night air.
  "He killed the woman, General." Beth's
words were filled with anger. "Just let her fall and then
spat on her."
  "I told you, Raines!" the outlaw shouted.
"Somebody bring me another cunt up here."
  Ben lifted the bullhorn. "Last chance, people,"
he warned them. be
  A half-dozen more men, wiith a dozen or more
women and kids, hurriedly left through the side
door of the old prison. Dan and his people grabbed them
and hustled them to safety.
  Another gunshot split the air.
  "Another piece of filth killed a little boy,"
Beth said.
  "Take the prison," Ben ordered.
It took less than five minutes to secure the
old prison. Ben looked at the seven outlaws
who had survived the storming.
  Then his eyes drifted to the dead woman and dead
young boy. He again looked at the outlaws.
  "You were warned. Buddy, chain them securely.
We'll take them south of town in the morning."
  "You ain't a-gonna do that, Raines. That ain't
nothin' no law-abidin' puke like you would do."
  "If you believe that, then that makes you a fool!"
  "Lock them down and weld the doors shut," Ben
ordered.
  Just past dawn, and one of the outlaws was shaking so
badly all present thought his legs might break.
He had pissed his filthy jeans as the fright turned
him into a glob of jelly.
  One by one, the outlaws were shoved into the narrow
cells and the doors welded closed. The outlaws were
now beginning to realize that Ben Raines had meant every
word he had spoken through the bullhorn.
  They cursed him and spat on him. Then they
begged. Two of them even tried prayer.
  The one outlaw who was frightened out of his wits was not
locked down.
  "Ride," Ben told him. "Get on
your goddamn motorcycle or in your pickup
truck or on your skateboard or whatever and get
the hell gone from here. Spread the word to your
scummy-assed friends that I'm on the way. Tell
your outlaw buddies and bikers and so-called warlords
to either straighten up
their act or get ready to die. And be sure and
tell them about this!" He pointed to the welded-in
prisoners. "Move, you sorry son of a bitch!"
  The outlaw didn't need a second invitation.
He was gone.
  Ben waved all the others out except for Dan,
Buddy, and Tina.
  "You dirty bastard!" a biker spat the words at
Ben. "You know how hard we'll die in here!" he
screamed. "This ain't right."
  "How many women and girls and boys have you raped and
sodomized and enslaved and tortured and murdered,
punk? How much grief have you brought to innocent people?"
  "But that ain't "pposed to make no difference!"
he shouted. "People like you 'pposed to show mercy to people like
me!"
  "No," Ben corrected him. "Not people like me. That
type of justice was tried for two hundred years,
and for two hundred years it didn't work.
This works."
  "How?" he squalled, slobber leaking out of his
mouth.
  "Whether or not it proves to be an object
lesson to others is debatable. Personally I think
it does. Be that as it may, we're rid of you in such
a way that allows you, to one degree or the other,
to suffer as you have caused others to suffer."
  The outlaw sat down on his steel bunk and glared
hate at Ben.
  Dan opened the outer door at a knock from the
other side.
  "I just cain't believe this," the outlaw said, over
the
crying and cursing of his buddies.
  He was looking at one of his former female
prisoners. She began relating a story of
degradation and evil, of pain and humiliation, of
needless death for pleasure ... at the hands of the
outlaws.
  Then she turned her back to the welded-in
outlaws and left the cellblock.
  Ben waved the others out behind her and stepped through the
door, closing it behind him.
  Rawlins was secure.
  With the settlers firmly in place in the liberated
town, Ben and his Rebels pulled out for Casper,
to once more face the hated Night P.
  The news of what he'd done with the outlaws in
Rawlins spread quickly throughout the West. For the
outlaws and the trash and scum who had terrorized the
West, up to this point, Ben and his Rebels were a
force to be reckoned with someday.
  Someday was now.
  Ben Raines and his Rebel army had for several
years been off fighting foreign forces who had invaded
U.s. soil. And the outlaws operating throughout the
ravaged land had ballooned in numbers with no
organized force to combat them. Now all that was
changing. Ben Raines was on the move, determined
to rid the land of human vermin.
  The army of the Libyan named Khamsin, the Hot
Wind, had been reduced to no more than a
demoralized few, at the hands of the Rebels. The
Russian, Striganov, and his forces were now on the
side of the Rebels, massing along the American-
Canadian border. Sam Hartline was dead. And
now Ben Raines was coming after the outlaws.
  Many borderline outlaws had a change of heart
after the news of what happened in Rawlins
spread. They shuddered at just the thought of being welded
into cells and left to die.
  This just was not the way it was back before the Great War.
Criminal justice, back then, had been on the
side of the punks and thugs and scum and to hell with the
victim's rights and the overwhelming vocal cries of the
majority of law-abiding citizens.
  Ben Raines had changed all that. It was like a
deadly virus: if you had it, you died; if you
didn't catch it, you lived. Very simple.
  Ben Raines's philosophy was just like that. Obey
the laws of the land and everything is smooth. Screw
up, and you're in bad trouble caret
  Those outlaws who did not possess the degree of
arrogance and the contempt for others that so many of their
counterparts had, left whatever gang they were working withand
pulled out. They left their outlaw ways behind them and
took up home-steading, raising themselves a garden and
becoming a part of whatever community they settled in.
It wasn't as much fun as robbing and raping and looting
and murdering, but with Ben Raines on the prowl, it was
a damn sight healthier.
  When Satan brought the news to Matt
Callahan, the outlaw leader took it calmly
enough. He knocked back a shotglass of
rye whiskey-neat-and carefully rolled himself a
smoke.
  "Well, partner," Snake said, "I reckon
there comes a time when everybody throws a saddle on a
cayuse he
can't ride."
  Even Satan sometimes had a hard time deciphering
Matt's cowboy lingo. "You mean, like we can't win
this fight, Snake?"
  "Oh, no, pard. Ol" Slim has done
pushed open the batwings and stepped off the boardwalk
to face a gunhand that's slicker than he is."
  "Ol' Slim?"
  "Ben Raines."
  "Oh."
  "And since our posse didn't come back from
Shreveport, and nothin's been heard from Meg, I
got to think she's done took her a runnin' iron
and changed brands. My own flesh and blood is
ridin' for the homesteaders."
  Satan understood that. Sort of.
  "Send a rider out a-foggin' to the other ranches,
Satan. Tell them hardcases to strap on their
six-shooters, fork them a hoss, and come on a
gallop. We got to get ready to drag
iron."
  Satan thought about that for a moment. "Ah . . . you
want me to get the other bikers in here for a fight with
Ben . . . ah, Slim and his boys?"
  Matt tilted back his black hat while the
smoke from the hand-rolled cigarette that dangled from
one corner of his mouth half closed one eye.
"That's what I said, partner," Matt drawled.
  "He's closing in fast, Snake."
  "He's got a week's hard ride ahead of him
"fore he hits our home range. We got time.
Tell some of the boys to throw up a line around
Buffalo. And to start blowing some bridges on the
Interstate all the way over to 59. That'll slow
Slim down even more; make
him take the country roads so's we can harass
him."
  "That's good thinking, Snake."
  "Naturally. But I don't want all the boys
in here. We got to keep us some hired guns in
reserve. Ol" Slim is tricky, Satan.
Don't never sell him short. He's tricky,
he's tough, and he's as mean as a tweaked-tail
cottonmouth. He'll punch his way through to here,
don't make no bets against that. But what
we got to do is keep snipin' at him, keep
knockin' out Rebels. Make him use up his
ammo and keep him on edge. When he gets up
here, we'll have more men than he's got and we can put
Slim and his Rebs down. That's my plan."
  "It's a good one, Snake."
  "Thanks kindly. Toss you a loop on a good
hoss, Satan. You got some hard ridin' to do."
  Satan left the ranchhouse and stood on the
porch for a moment, scratching his head. "The bastard's
crazy as a road lizard, but still manages to make
sense."
  He stepped off the porch and waved for some men to come
to him. "Get on the horn and tell Butch to start
blowing the bridges on Interstate 87 all the way
over to 59. Rest of you come with me. We got
to make some plans. Ben Raines is about to knock
on the door."
  The first town the Rebels came to on 287, about
thirty-five miles north of Rawlins, was a
burned-out shell. There were no survivors so they
did not linger there. About ten miles up the road, they
left 287 for 220, turning northeast toward
Casper. And like so many roads they had traveled, this
one was in very bad shape, slowing the column
down to no more than a crawl.
  They bivouacked along the Sweetwater River and
were up and rolling just as dawn split the dark sky with
rays of silver and gold.
  And they began finding evidence that the creepies were
near.
  The Rebels found where whole families had been
slaughtered. In many cases, only the best cuts of
human flesh had been taken-best depending upon the
taste buds of the individual creepie.
  Thirty miles outside of Casper, Ben made
his decision. There was too much evidence that the city was
filled to overflowing with creepies to try to save
it; it would be too costly in terms of Rebel
life.
  "We'll destroy it," Ben told his commanders.
"Then move on down to Douglas and salvage that
to complete the triangle. We want be in position
by dawn tomorrow. We want to avoid damaging the air
strip. So I want teams to go in and seize that under
artillery cover. We'll hold the freed
prisoners from Rawlins there, and any we manage
to save from Casper. With three-quarters of the
Laramie-Rawlins-Douglas triangle secure,
I don't believe any outlaws or
creepies will chance staying along the east boundaries
on Interstate 25. Any questions? All right. We
pull out at four in the morning."
  There was no way the tanks and trucks of Ben's
column could make a silent approach to Casper-so
he did not even try. They rolled up to the city and
got into position.
  Meg, being new with the Rebels, asked the question.
"What about survivors that might be in the city?"
  "We hope for the best, Meg. That's all we can
do. We're facing one hell of a fight just north of
us. I can't afford to lose people."
  "That's not all of it, is it, General?" She
asked it just as Dan walked up.
  "No," Ben said softly. "It isn't. If
any have been held any length of time, it's been
discovered that the majority of those . . . unfortunate
people never make it back to any useful"-he
sighed-"way of life, for want of a better term.
We're being overwhelmed by ex-prisoners of the Night
P. We just don't have
the personnel or the know-how to treat them. I've
got the best shrinks in the world back at Base
Camp One. They just can't break through to them. That's the
main reason Dr. Chase flew up
to Leadville. Even the ones we rescued a year
ago, two years ago, just don't respond to any
type of treatment we can give." He lifted his
hands in a gesture of helplessness.
  "So they're better off dead?" Meg asked.
  Ben nodded his head. "Considering our limited
ability to heal the mind, and the state of the world, that
seems to be the general consensus."
  "Or the General's consensus," she countered. Then
walked away.
  "She doesn't understand, Ben," Dan said in a
rare use of Ben's first name, even though Dan had
tried for years to have the Englishman stop calling him
General. "She just doesn't understand so very many things.
Namely that we are strained to capacity with various
types of... unfortunates. And that even though our
ranks are gaining in numbers each week, with each
outpost we set up, it's much like the child's game of
two steps forward and one step back. But that
doesn't make the final decision any easier. I
just wanted you to know that I understand."
  "Thank you, Dan. Tell the gunners to open
fire."
  Ben ordered the firing to commence at 0430. He
kept up the devastating pounding for two
hours, then waved his Rebels into the burning city.
Strong west winds had begun blowing about an hour
earlier, and they fanned the flames, hurrying the
scorching of the city.
The Rebels shot the creepies as they found them, and
brought out several dozen men and women the Night People
had held hostage ... for later dining. Several of
them were completely mindless, driven mad by a fear that
most would never know and few could comprehend.
  "Get on the horn, Corrie. Birds up
to Casper with supplies and medical teams. And
tell Ike to send another detail of Rebels this
time. We're going to settle Douglas and complete
the triangle before we tackle Matt Callahan
and his bunch."
  He looked up at Dan. "Reports on any
Rebel dead or wounded?"
  "Two wounded. Not seriously. There would have been a
dozen dead if not for the body armor."
  Ben nodded. "Tina, take a team and check out
Douglas. It's fifty-odd miles over there.
Give me a bump when you get close."
  "Ten-four, Dad."
  "Let's ease over to the airport, gang.
We'll bivouac there."
  Buddy and his people had stacked up the dead creepies
in a field away from the airport and were dousing their
stinking carcasses with gasoline for burning.
  "What is their fascination with airports?" Dan
mused aloud. "That has been gnawing at me for
months. I don't understand it."
  "Nor do I. But we never fail to find a large
number of them located around airports."
  "Maybe they use the runways for jogging?"
Cooper offered with a straight face.
  The groans of Jersey, Beth, and Corrie and the
laughter of Ben and Dan filled the air.
  Dan slapped Cooper on the back. "Thanks,
Coop. I need a good chuckle."
  Cooper grinned and stuck his tongue out at the
ladies.
  Jersey flipped him the finger.
  The Rebels cleared a runway and then rested and
waited for the birds to land while Casper burned itself
out. The planes began setting down on the afternoon of the
second day.
  Tina had reported that a nest of outlaws were
occupying Douglas and looked as though they were preparing
for a fight. Then, abruptly, they had begun pulling
out, heading straight north up Highway
59. to 
  "Matt's got something up his sleeve," Ben
commented. "Corrie, bump the outpost down at
Laramxe and bring them up to date. Tell them that those
families who wanted to resettle can come on up
to Douglas."
  He turned to Dan. "We need some people up here
to get the oil industry around Casper producing
once again. Give it some thought, Dan. See what
you come up with." be
  "That bunch that came in from Texas while we were in
New York City. Didn't Cecil say they
had oil field experience?"
  "Yeah, I think so. All right. That's our
crew. Corrie, get them moving up here."
  "It's coming together, Father," Buddy said, a big
grin on his face.
"Slowly but surely, son. We're getting there."
  Ben took a platoon of Rebels with him and
traveled the miles over to Douglas. He encountered
no unfriendlies along the way.
  Douglas was in good shape, considering the type of people
that had been inhabitating the place for several years.
Settlers from the southern part of the state were beginning
to arrive, staking out claims and setting up
shops. Ben left the detail of Rebels and their
families just arrived from Base Camp One and
headed back to the still smoking and destroyed city of
Casper.
  He found bad news waiting for him.
  "Scouts report bridges and overpasses
blown all the way up to Kaycee," Dan told
him. "And the pilots report that bridges have been
blown all along Route 59 north."
  "That's why the trash in Douglas pulled out when
they did. Damn!"
  "I've been consulting a map," Dan said. "It
looks rather dismal."
  "A lot of the older maps are," Ben said with a
straight face.
  Dan glanced at him and then chuckled. "The
choice of routes, General."
  Ben took the map and studied it for a moment.
"Yes, I see what you mean. So straight up on
the Interstate through Buffalo is out, as is 59. It
doesn't leave us much choice, Dan. The only
way open is 20/26 west, unless we want to chance
these county roads, and I don't."
  "Nor do I."
  "We pull out in the morning, then.
Buddy, take
your Rat Team and head out now. Don't get yourself
in a bind."
  The convoy was rolling before dawn. Buddy had
reported back no sighting of the enemy, but he had
seen many signs of survivors, usually smoke from
fires, most of whom were living far off any beaten
path, back in the hills and mountain ranges.
  "They're out there," Ben said, rolling along in the
Blazer. "By the thousands, living in small groups,
trusting very few outside their immediate little gatherings. Not
that anyone could blame them for doing so. The trick will
be to pull them into the protective circle of the
outposts."
  "And how do you propose to do that, General?" Beth
asked.
"I
don't know," Ben admitted. "By word of mouth, I
suppose. We sure as hell can't go into every group
in America, take them by the hand, and lead them out."
  They passed through Natrona, a dead town. Then
Powder River lay in their rearview mirrors; it
had been destroyed by fire. They passed by Hell's
Half Acre, actually about three hundred twenty
acres that back in 1833 were named "The
Burning Mountain" by Army Captain B. L. E.
Bonneville, because they were, at that time, spewing
sulfurous flumes from burning bitumonous
deposits. It was an area of white day, soft and
crumbling and dangerous for walking.
  Buddy was waiting for them in what was left of the tiny
town of Waltman.
  "Nothing, Father. And I mean absolutely no
firm sightings of human life. With the exception of the
smoke I told you about."
"Where's the rest of your team?"
  "Up the road about thirty miles. I've laid
out a bivouac area just west of Moneta. I don't
know what we're going to find in Shoshoni. According to the
maps, it had a population of about a thousand before the
Great War. A few miles further on is the
Wind River Indian Reservation."
  "They'll be damn little there," Ben said grimly.
"They joined us back in the mid-nineties when we were
defending the old Tri-States. President
Logan wiped them out, for the most part. There are
probably still many living there, but they'd be hard
to find."
  "Why did Americans hate the Indians so?"
the son questioned.
  "Complex question, son. Many white Americans
hated, or distrusted, or both, anyone who wasn't
exactly like them-or how they perceived themselves to be. The
term "Ugly American" fit the majority of us
to a T."
  "Even you, Father?"
  "To a degree, son. Until I embarked upon
a quest to improve my mind and open it up to some
light. And that was not an easy thing to do in a time of
instant so-called entertainment available to nearly
everyone simply by pushing a button on a
television set, sitting down in front of the
goddamn thing, and letting one's brain rot."
  Buddy wisely did not pursue that topic any
further, knowing all too well his father's venomous
views on the subject.
  "Lead the way, Rat," Ben said with a smile.
  The column rolled on through what appeared to
be a land totally void of human life. But far in
the distance, on both sides of the highway, Ben could
see faint fingers of smoke lifting up into the sky.
  And as he had done so often, he could not help
wondering how they were living. were they teaching their kids
to read and write? Teaching them values? Or were they
just existing, living day to day in a world gone
mad?
  The smoke faded from view and Ben occupied his time
studying maps of the state.
  At Shoshoni, Highway 26 veered southwest,
while 20 cut straight north. The next town
north on 20 was Thermopolis, and that brought a
smile to Ben's lips as he remembered the
discussions, debates, and sometimes downright arguments
he'd had with the hippie, Thermopolis, during the time
they'd spent together clearing out New York City of
creepies.
  The town of Thermopolis had once held a
population of almost four thousand, so it was a pretty
good bet that some survivors would be found there. Friendly
or hostile was up for grabs.
  On Highway 20, at the town of Worland, that
once held over six thousand souls, Ben planned
to cut over on Highway 16 and drive through
to Buffalo. It was there that he felt Matt, or
Snakej would have his first real line of defense. He
also felt that this close to Matt's home turf, the
defenders would be much better fighters than the scum
Ben's Rebels had thus far faced.
  So far, the fighting had been a cakewalk. All
that, Ben reckoned, was about to come to that
well-known screeching halt.
  The Rebels spent the night just outside the
deserted and ravaged town of Moneta. Ben doubled the
guard that night, not knowing what might be coming at them from
out of the darkness.
  They reached the town of Shoshoni a hour after dawn
the following morning. The Rebels could sense death
even before the town came into view.
  There was nothing left of the small town except for a
few skeletons, bones scattered by wild
animals. The buildings had been put to the torch,
probably after looting.
  "This is getting depressing," Ben muttered,
climbing back into the Blazer and ordering the convoy
straight north following the Big Horn River through
Wind River Canyon and toward the town of
Thermopolis.
  "Hold the column!" Buddy's voice came
through the speaker.
  "What's up, Rat?" Ben radioed.
  "Roadblock, Eagle. And it's a good one.
There are people behind it and they appear to be well armed.
I can see heavy machine guns and mortar pits
along either side of the road."
  "Tell them who we are."
  A few anxious moments passed for Ben as he
waited for his son's reply.
  "Rat to Eagle."
  "Go, boy."
  "I think they're all right, Eagle. Hear the
cheering?"
  Ben heard it and he smiled faintly. He
lifted his mike. "Column advance. Everybody
lock and load. Tanks, button down tight.
All troops on full alert. Buddy, do not
advance until we are on your tail.
Head's up, boy."
  "What's the matter, General?" Corrie
asked.
  "Just being cautious, Corrie. It never
hurts."
  They rolled past the now-open roadblocks; very
well constructed blockades, Ben noted.
  "Get behind the lead tank, Cooper, and stay with
him."
  As they rolled past the cheering crowds, Ben's
smile turned grim. Neat, he thought. Now I
know what happened to those Rebel patrols who
vanished some months back.
  "Notice how slick and well fed these
people are, gang?" Ben questioned. "You ever seen such a
healthy-looking bunch?"
  "You're right," Beth said, looking out the window.
"They sure haven't missed any meals."
  Corrie spoke up. "I still don't see
what's wrong. They just look like hundreds of cheering
people to me."
  "Oh, they're cheering, all right," Ben agreed.
"They're looking at the next six months'
supply of food. We're smack in the middle of
creepies, gang."
  Those in the Blazer sat stunned for only a few
seconds. Then Cooper slowly turned his head
to gaze at Ben. "Are you fucking serious,
General?"
  With a tight grin, Ben picked up his mike.
"Eagle to all Rebels. I think we're in the
middle of creepies, boys and girls. Those of you
in the trucks, as soon as the first shot is fired,
hit the decking." He opened the glove box and
took out a .45 autoloader and rolled down his
window as the crowd pressed closer to the Blazer.
"Put it in four-wheel drive, Coop, and get
ready."
  Ben studied a man who was staring at him.
The man's eyes were savage-looking. His lips were
slick with anticipatory saliva. "Hey,
asshole," Ben said. "You prefer an arm, a
leg, or a breast?"
  With a savage scream, the man tried to grab
Ben's arm. What he got was a .45 slug in the
face.
  "Go!" Corrie screamed into her mike.
  "Tell the tanks to crush as many as possible on
the way out of this snake pit," Ben said calmly as
the lead
began to whine and howl off the armor plate.
  The fifty-ton battle tanks and the smaller,
lighter Dusters began wheeling and turning and squashing
the life out of the creepies as the buttoned down
.50's and light machine guns turned the area
blood-splattered.
  Cooper had gunned the Blazer, driving right through
the crowds, knocking screaming and cursing men and women
in all directions, including one who crawled up
onto the hood of the Blazer. Cooper slammed on
the brakes, knocking the creepie off the hood; then
he promptly floorboarded the pedal and ran over
him.
  There were those who tried to climb up into the
canvas-covered beds of the deuce and a halves. They
were met with a hail of lead pouring through gunslits in the
armorplating on the sides.
  "Pull over right up here, Coop," Ben told
him, pointing.
  "Sir?"
  "We're the last ones out, Coop." He
smiled, adding, "Almost." He lifted his mike.
"This is Eagle. Main battle tank 112,
stay with me."
  "Ten-four, Eagle," the tank commander radioed.
"Standing by."
  "And I'm on the other side of the street," Dan
radioed. "I've traded my Jeep for a seat in a
deuce and a half."
  "Ten-four, Dan. Eagle to Rat."
  "Go, Eagle."
  "What's your twenty?"
  "Clear of town, on the north end. Getting the
mortars in place."
"Ten-four. When everyone is clear, bump me.
Shouldn't be long now."
  "Ten-four, Eagle."
  "Here they come," the tank commander radioed. "Right
on the heels of Tina's bunch."
  "Lay down covering fire left and right of
Tina's vehicles."
  The old streets began to echo with the sounds of lead
whining off bricks. Tina's Scouts roared past the
last remaining Rebels and she told Ben that was it.
Everyone was clear.
  "Cream them," Ben ordered.
  The tank commander unleashed his 105, his 7.62 and
.50 caliber machine guns.
  "Let's go, Coop," Ben said. "Nice and
easy. Dan, you fall in behind me, 112 bring up
the rear."
  With his turret swiveled, thq tank took the
drag and continued to lay down a deadly rain.
  "Rat, have the artillery commence firing. Bring the
town down."
  His words were no sooner out of his mouth than the 105
rounds began whistling over his head, followed by the
slight fluttering sounds of the mortar rounds as they
began dropping in.
  Safely back with their own kind, Ben and the others
who had made up the last ones out of the town dismounted and
watched as the town was turned into an inferno by the
incendiary rounds.
  Whatever else the Night People might be,
they did not lack courage. Dozens came pouring out
of the flames, screaming and cursing Ben Raines as
they charged the Rebels' position armed only with
rifles.
  The Rebels cut them down in less than a
minute.
"Cease firing," Ben ordered.
  The earth ceased its trembling and the warm early
summer air fell silent.
  Dan walked over to Ben. "That was a chancy thing
back there, General."
  "No other choice, Dan. They had us. If
we'd tried to back out of there, it would have been a
confusing disaster for us. The only way was forward."
  "That's as close as we've come to being parboiled in
some time." Dan removed his beret and wiped his
forehead. He glanced up at the sun. "We have many
hours of daylight left, sir."
  Ben smiled. "Are you trying to tell me you'd like
for us to get the hell gone from this area, Dan?"
  "In a word, sir, yes!"
  The column traveled up to Worland, originally
hoping to find some survivors. But with the creepies this
close, it was not surprising to any of them when they
found a deserted town.
  "It was just recently deserted, Father," Buddy
said. "I'd guess no more than five or six
months ago. I'm just wondering how many of them ended
up in the stomachs of creepies."
  "I don't even want to think about it. Let's
make camp out near the airfield. We've got a
lot of scouting and planning to do over the next several
days."
  The Rebels did not have to be told they were only
a few days away from a major confrontation that might
last for weeks. But even though they were fully
aware of their being vastly outnumbered, the word
defeat
never entered their minds. Many of the older Rebels had
been fighting for more than a decade; this was as
natural to them as pulling on their boots.
  For two days the Rebels rested, checked
equipment, and studied what maps were available of the
area they were about to enter.
  "Any route we take is going to put us smack
in the middle of ambush country," Ben told his
unit commanders. "If we take the southern route,
we'll travel right through Ten Sleep Canyon and
then have to go over Powder River Pass to get
to Buffalo. If we take the northern
route, that's Highway 14, and that takes us north
of Buffalo into Sheridan, we'll really be in tough
country for about the same number of miles as the
southern route. Either way we go, the tanks have to be
chained down on trailers. And don't think Matt
didn't deliberately plan it this way. He may
have gone around the bend, but he's still a smart man.
  "Now then, as we move through this Cloud Peak
Wilderness Area, we've got to button everything
down tight and be constantly on the lookout for
snipers. Transfer as many people as possible
into APC'S and rig cover over the beds of the deuce
and a halves. Due to the country we'll be in, for
at least a day, and maybe longer, the snipers will be
able to fire down at us.
  "I'm not going to pull out of here until I am
one hundred percent certain we are one hundred
percent ready to go." He held up a finger.
"Another thing: I've got a hunch that many of
Matt's people will be much more mobile than we are. These
are outlaw
bikers, remember, and they've probably got
three-wheelers and four-wheelers that will enable them
to attack hard and fast out of terrain that would be
impossibly slow for us. We won't
follow them when they retreat. That's what they want
us to do. They've had time to booby-trap the areas they
know well.
  "They've got us outnumbered-hell, what else
is new?"
  That drew a hard laugh from everyone in attendance.
  "But we've got them outgunned. And more
importantly, we're right and they're wrong. And
since Matt, or Snake, wants this played like
an Old West gunfight, you just remember the words
of that Texas Ranger who said that you just can't stop a
man who knows he's right and just keeps on comin'."
  "Or woman," Tina reminded him sweetly.
  "What's that hombre waitin' on?" Matt
questioned, a small bit of impatience in his words.
  "I don't know," Satan admitted.
  "Ol' Slim just might be sorta cautious about
draggin' iron agin the Rattlesnake Kid,"
Matt mused.
  Matt was more and more slipping into his fictional
character's manner of speech, forgetting the English
usage that he once prided himself on.
  "You mind telling me where you come up with this
Rattlesnake Kid and Slim business?"
Satan asked.
  Something clouded Matt's eyes for a moment. They
cleared and he smiled. "The Rattlesnake Kid
was someone I dreamed up-character in a series of
Westerns. Slim Henry was Ben's character in another
series of Westerns. He beat me out of the Silver
Spur Award with his Western. But mine was better."
He said that with just a touch of a pout.
  Satan nodded his head. "I see-I think."
  "Oh, I accepted defeat gracefully. I
shook his hand and smiled and offered a few
congratulatory words after the banquet. After all,
I am a gentlemen of the West. It's the code, you
know?"
  Satan didn't know, but he nodded his head as if
he did. Codes always confused Satan. A lot
of things confused Satan, including Matt
Callahan.
  Matt slipped back into character. "But that there
hombre's books weren't no better than mine.
Not as good, as a matter of fact. How jcd they
be? I am a man of the West and he isn't. From
some dreary little town in Louisiana."
  Matt rose to walk to the window of his ranchhouse,
his spurs jingling as he moved across the floor. "I
want to face Slim. I want to meet
him in the street eyeball to eyeball and drag
iron agin him. I want to put hot lead in his
belly." He slapped the pearl handles of his
Colts. "That damned dirty lobo wolf!"
  Ben Raines may be a lobo jivolf, Satan
thought, but-recalling some of Matt'So Western
verbiage- you're just plumb loco! However, he
kept those thoughts to himself. Loco or not, Matt had
put together one hell of a fine organization and ran it
well-even during those moments when he drifted off
into never-never land, mentally loping across the prairies
on his pony, or cayuse, whatever.
  "dis . . we don't even know which route Slim is
gonna use," Matt was saying, bringing Satan out
of his mental meanderings.
  "I got both of them covered, Snake,"
Satan assured him. "The only problem is that when
Raines pulls out, I ain't gonna have the time
to shift men from one point to the other. Not usin' the
mountain trails."
  Matt shook his head. "That ain't the way I
got it figured nohow. As soon as Slim commits
hisself, say on the southern route-that's the way
I'm guessin' he'll take-you send those
hardcases up along Shell Canyon and
Granite Pass a-foggin' it down to Worland,
usin' the highways, and come in behind Raines and his
Rebs. We'll box him."
  "That's a good plan, Snake."
  "Sure it is. OK, Satan, you get
crackin', boy. Saddle up and ride!"
  "For sure we're under observation," Ben said.
"As soon as we commit to whatever route-and it's going
to be the southern route-Matt will know and start shifting
people around." He shook his head and frowned.
  "What's the matter, Dad?" Tina asked.
  "The area Matt chose to live in. He was
always, well, obsessed with Custer and his last stand in
the Rosebud Mountains. Matt always said that he'd
like to go out in such a manner . . . Matt was a nice
guy- back when I knew him-but sometimes a little
weird."
  "But that's not why you looked perplexed a moment
ago, is it?" Buddy questioned.
  "No, it isn't. Matt is insane, and you can't
tell what
a crazy person might decide to do. I just don't
want us to go riding into our own last stand." Ben
experienced a visionary mental flash that caused him
to smile, and then laugh outloud. "No,"
he chuckled, as the others gave him strange
looks. "No, I can't imagine even Matt
having that in mind." Still chuckling, he walked away.
  "What in the world?" Dan questioned.
  Ben stopped and turned around. "All right, people, we
pull out in the morning. First light. And we're going
to be driving hard. I don't want us caught in the
mountains after dark. Rat, take your Scouts out one
hour before the main column leaves. That will be about
six. Take plenty of explosives to clear any
slides or man-made road blocks. We'll
trailer the Jeeps; you take APC'S and button
them down tight. We're not stopping, people. Equipment
breaks down, we leave it and double up. Cold
rations and a minimum of liquids. We're not going
to be stopping for piss calls. Let's get it
done, gang."
  "Raines is on the move!" Satan informed
Matt, just moments after first light.
  Matt smiled and rose from the breakfast table.
"He's headin' for his last showdown, Satan. I'm
finally gonna get my revenge. Which route's he
takin'?"
  "Southern."
  "I knowed it!" His expression changed and
he viciously slapped a young girl. "Don't just
stand there, you stupid girl. Get Satan some
bacon and beans and coffee. Move, you lazy
bitch!"
  Holding the side of her face, the teenager ran
from the room.
  Satan sighed. They had plenty of chickens and
plenty of slaves to look after them and gather the eggs.
They had hogs and all kinds of other animals. But
Matt insisted upon bacon and beans for breakfast.
A real drover's breakfast, he said. Whatever in
the hell a drover was.
  Satan looked at the ass of the young girl as she
disappeared into the kitchen, doing her best not to cry.
Matt sure had him the pick of the slaves. Real
cream of the crop and she couldn't have been much over
fourteen or fifteen. Satan got himself a boner
just looking at her.
  "You got the boys shifted to come in behind Slim?"
Matt asked.
  "Right. And I don't want no breakfast. I
done eat."
  Matt's eyes narrowed. Anyone else refused
to have grub with him, he'd have killed him over the
slight. But he did give Satan a
few allowances.
  The girl served the coffee and left the room
quickly, before she did anything else to bring Matt
to slap or hit her. Matt liked to slap women
around. And abuse them in the most disgusting of sexual
ways-when he wasn't fooling around with young boys, that
is. And he always kept a couple of them chained in the
basement. He never kept the same ones very long,
and the reason for that was very simple: they usually died at
Matt's hands.
  And there was no hope for escape. The ranch was more
like a king's castle in terms of guards and stuff. And
she'd seen what happened to other girls who tried
to run away. She'd been sick for a couple of days
after seeing that.
  But she did have one hope.
  Ben Raines.
  "Ten Sleep is clear, Eagle," Buddy
radioed.
  "Ten-four, Rat. We're about twenty miles
behind you. Hold there for a few minutes then pull out."
  Buddy acknowledged the transmission.
"What a strange name for a town," Corrie said.
  "Lots of different stories about how it got its
name," Ben said. "The most popular one being
about two Indian bands that were camped ten sleeps
apart. The Indians used to measure distance in the
number of sleeps."
  "And in case you're getting all impressed with the
General's memory," Beth said, "he's reading from
an old tourist guide about Wyoming."
  Ben grinned and held up the guide.
  "What else is interesting in that thing?" Cooper
asked.
  "Six miles east of Ten Sleep, in the
Bighorn Mountains, there's a Girl Scout
camp. Or used to be."
  That perked Cooper up. "You reckon there might
still be some there? You know, like survivors, all grown
up now?"
  The women in the back groaned and Ben laughed.
"I really doubt it, Coop."
  "I'm picking up something, General," Corrie
said. "Everybody stop talking and let me listen."
She listened intently for a moment. "I guess it was
just a skip. They were talking about somebody called
Slim."
  "Who?" Ben twisted in the seat.
  "Slim."
  Ben looked puzzled for a moment, and then
shook his head. "Slim. Sure. I never would have
guessed that. Slim Henry."
  "Who is Slim Henry?" Jersey asked.
  "A character of mine in a Western series of books
that won me some awards one time. I beat out
Matt's
character, the Rattlesnake Kid. Obviously he
fooled both me and Meg with his taking it so calmly.
I never thought it bothered him that much."
  "So now you're Slim?" Beth asked.
  "I guess so. I sure hope Matt's not
counting on me standing up and shooting it out with him in some
sort of fast draw thing."
  Corrie smiled. "Now that would be a sight
to see."
  Ben grunted his reply.
  Ten Sleeps was remarkably intact for a town that
was totally deserted. Ben would have liked to stay and
browse around, but he had about seventy miles of hard
traveling before the column would be clear of the mountains.
  "Go, Buddy. We'll be only a few miles
behind you."
  Buddy and his Rat Team pulled out in APC'S.
  Ben rolled a cigarette and smoked it down, then
carefully ground it out under the heel of his
boot. "Let's go, gang."
  The long column began snaking its way toward
Ten Sleep Canyon. No sooner had the last
vehicle entered the canyon than snipers opened
up. But owing to the steepness of the canyon walls, it was
almost impossible for them to shoot out the tires. And after
fifty or so rounds had been expelled, the snipers
found, to their disgust, that all the vehicles had been
armor-plated.
  They radioed that information back to their base.
  "Then cool it with the sniper fire," Satan
told them. "Roll some rocks down on the
bastards."
  "All main battle tanks and Dusters swivel
your turrets and give those up in the hills something
to
remember us by," Ben ordered.
  The big tanks could not use their 105's for fear
of breaking the chains that lashed them onto the flatbed
trailers. But they could use all their heavy machine
guns and the Dusters could use their 40mm cannon.
  All along the snaky column, Rebels began
poking gun barrels out of the slits and opening fire.
No one among the Rebels knew for sure whether
they hit anything or not, but the awesome
display of firepower sure put a crimp into any
further plans those outlaws in the hills might have
had.
  They radioed the news of this new development
to Satan.
  "Well. . . piss on it!" Satan yelled.
"Git out of there and come up behind them Rebels as
soon as they pass. Them boys comin' up from
Worland will pick you up. Shit!" he yelled. There
wasn't nothin' workin' out.
  Then Satan had him an idea. He grabbed up
the mike. "All you boys in the hills. Don't do
nothin' to keep Raines and his Rebs from leaving the
mountains. We want them out. We'll put them in a
box in Buffalo and cream the hell out of them!"
  Back at his ranch, Matt Callahan listened
to the transmissions and shook his head. But he did
nothing to countermand Satan's orders. "It ain't
gonna work, partner. Ol' Slim's too slick for
you. He's got too much firepower for your boys
to box him in. But I might as well let you learn
a hard lesson about hard men."
  Matt propped his boots up on a hassock and
rolled him a smoke and waited.
  It really didn't make any difference
to him who
won this war. Just as long as he got him a chance
to put lead into Slim's belly and see Ol'
Slim Henry die in the dirt at his boots.
  Nope, it just didn't make a damn to the
Rattlesnake Kid.
  It'd serve him right. How in the hell could anyone
who lived in Louisiana write Westerns, for
Christ's sake!
  "That always bothered Matt," Ben said. "He was
one of those die-hard Western writers." The firing
had ceased from the ridges above the column and Ben
felt he knew why. "Matt figured a writer of
Westerns ought to have been born on a ranch or have a
stable of horses ... or at least live in one of the
Western states."
  "And you two were friends?" Beth asked.
  "I sure thought we were."
  "All firing has ceased," Buddy radioed
back.
  Ben took the mike. "Yeah. They want us
to clear the mountains so they can box us in at
Buffalo, I'm thinking. I'm betting Matt had
both routes covered, and just as soon as we took the
southern route, he shifted men down from the
northern route. They're lying behind us a couple of
miles."
  "You want me to set up an ambush, General?"
Dan asked.
  "Negative." All Rebel radios had been
set on scramble to avoid being intercepted.
"We'll do that just before reaching the edge of the Wilderness
Area. We'll teach them that it isn't polite
to tailgate people."
"Ten-four, sir!" Dan said with a laugh.
  "You hear that, Cooper?" Jersey stuck the
needle to him. "So don't tailgate."
  "Mind your own business, Short Stuff,"
Cooper told her, cutting his eyes to Ben. "Can you
just imagine being married to three or four women at
once? No wonder they made it illegal back in
the old days."
  "You mean back before the Great War, Coop?"
  "Right, sir. The old days."
  "Keep talking, Cooper," Jersey said with a
smile. "You're just about to stick your boot in your
mouth."
  Cooper got it then. He flushed and said, "No
disrespect meant, sir."
  "None taken!" Ben laughed. "To people of
your age, Coop, I guess they are the old
days."
  The miles passed slowly as the convoy wound its
way over and through the Bighorn Mountains.
  "What's your mileage, Eagle?" Buddy
radioed the question.
  Ben glanced at the odometer and called it out.
  "You're eight miles from the end of the wilderness
area, Eagle. It's about five or six miles from
there to Buffalo."
  "Ten-four, Rat. Hold what you've got.
Dan, check your odometer. Two miles inside
the exit point, set up an ambush."
  "Ten-four, Eagle."
  Ben knew that any ambush the ex-British
SAS officer set up would be extremely deadly
and one hundred percent effective. He would use his
team of Scouts, all of them multitrained and
especially
skilled in guerrilla tactics and the use of
explosives.
  Ben listened to Dan's radio traffic. "Fall
back and join me, Tina."
  "Ten-four, Colonel."
  "That's gonna be interesting," Jersey
commented.
  "At least that," Ben agreed.
  Dan hid his team's vehicles in the deep
timber and heavy brush some five hundred meters
east of where he was setting up the ambush site. His
Scouts began placing electronically detonated
Claymores along both sides of the road, being very
careful that THIS SIDE TOWARD ENEMY was
properly positioned. The Claymores were set up
along a two-hundred-meter stretch, on both
sides of the highway.
  The Rebels melted back into the brush, above the
Claymored stretch, and got into position. Any who
survived the murderous wrath of the Claymores would
not survive the equally murderous gunfire from the
Scouts.
  Ben joined Buddy at the end of the wilderness area
and halted the column. The town of Buffalo lay
only a few miles to the east of them.
  "A fair-sized little town," Buddy observed,
glancing at a map. "But no mention is made about
whether or not it has, or had, some sort of
airport."
  "I'm sure it had a strip large enough for our
birds to land on. If it didn't, we'll
carve one out, after we take the town."
  "Are we going to save the town?"
  "I would like to. I'd like to use both the towns as
outposts. But if Buffalo has to be destroyed,
then we'll just do it. With the bridges blown on
Interstate
87, those outposts in the south will have to rely on those
set up in Colorado. Sheridan will connect with those
we carve out in southern Montana." He took the
map from Buddy and studied it. "If all works out,
those will probably be Hardin and Miles City.
We'll just have to see."
  "There they are," Dan said into his
walkie-talkie. "Coming along like strutting cocks
of the walk. We'll be able to take out about half of the
vehicles. We'll use rocket launchers on the
rear half. Get ready."
  Those outlaws in the first fifteen cars and pickups
had only a few seconds of very painful knowledge that they
had driven into a death trap. The Claymores
blew and their hundreds of ball bearings literally
shredded the vehicles and the occupants. Machine
guns and rockets took out the rear half of the
column. Those outlaws who jumped from the burning
tangle of twisted hot metal, or who were
thrown out from the initial blast, were shot down
by automatic weapons' fire from the Scouts above the
road.
  One man did manage to get off one frantic
and short-lived message via his radio.
  Satan sat stunned in his headquarters in
Sheridan. Raines had taken out about a hundred men
in less than a minute. The outlaw biker sat with
his mouth hanging open, too shocked to utter a sound.
  Matt sat with his boots propped up, sipping
strong cowboy coffee. "I told you, Satan,"
he muttered, a grim note to the statement. "You just
don't jerk around with Ben Raines."
  Matt unzipped his fly and motioned to the young
girl he had summoned to his side. "You know what
I want. So get to it."
  Dan and his Scouts picked their way among the
burning vehicles. There was little left to salvage and
no prisoners to take.
  Using his .45, Dan made certain of that. And it
was not done with any type of wonderful humanitarian
motives in mind.
  The Rebels put out any small fires that were
burning along the roadway and cleared out fire
breaks that would, hopefully, stop any
blazes from spreading once they were gone.
  "Ambush concluded," Dan radioed to Ben. "Do
you want us to clear the roadway?"
  "Negative, Dan. Any type of retreat
is not in my plans. Toss the dead into the ditches
for the carrion birds and scavenger animals and link
up with me."
  "Ten-four, General."
  The Scouts began dragging and dumping the bodies
of the outlaws into the ditches.
  Ben had deliberately gone off scramble with his
last remarks, wanting them intercepted by the outlaws.
  "Goddamn!" Satan said. "That there ain't
nothin' no decent man would do."
  Matt just smiled as he approached climax, the
girl on her knees between his wide-spread legs.
The callousness of Ol' Slim did not surprise
him. He'd accurately pegged Ben as a hardcase
when he'd first met him, years back. The man had
the mark of the warrior all over him ... if you knew
what to look for.
Some of the outlaws in Buffalo shifted nervously and
looked at one another as Ben's calmly given
orders on how to dispose of the bodies came over the
speakers and earphones. And the thought came
to them all that if any of them had second thoughts about
this operation, now was the time to act on them.
  A few did. They walked to their cars or
trucks or motorcycles and cranked up, heading
out and away from Ben Raines and his Rebels. They
fully understood that they were all hard men in a hard
time, but those with any sense at all knew they
didn't want to become hard men in a hard bind
facing a much harder man.
  Ben Raines.
  Ben leaned against a fender of his Blazer and
alternately sipped a cup of coffee Jersey had
brought him and studied a map of Buffalo that the
Chamber of Commerce had issued years back, the
map taken off one of the dead outlaws miles back.
  He really wanted to save the town. He would have
liked to have both Sheridan and Buffalo as outposts.
He just didn't know, at this time, whether that was
feasible. Ben glanced up at the sky. The trek through
the mountains had taken far less time than he had
imagined. They still had hours of good light left them.
  Dan walked up to his side.
  Ben met the man's eyes. "We'll attack the
town, Dan." Ben's smile was hard. "But not in
any manner they might be expecting."
  Dan Gray's Scouts slipped close to the
town and its now very nervous defenders. The outlaws
all knew that somewhere south of their position, Pete
Jones and his gang were coming north hard; but no one
knew exactly where they were or when they were due
to arrive.
  What they did know was that Ben Raines was close
enough to practically stick the muzzle of a rifle up
their collective asses and pull the trigger while
the hard bastard laughed at their discomfort.
  One outlaw made the mistake of showing an
elbow. A slug from a .50 caliber sniper
rifle took off his lower arm. Another caught a
bullet right between his eyes when he peeked around the
side of an old warehouse on the edge of town. A
third outlaw tried to run from one house to the other and
was spun around and around like a lurching top as half a
dozen slugs from Rebel rifles struck him.
  "Man, we need some help down here!" a biker
yelled into his mike. "We got three or four
guys down
dead or dyin' and we ain't even seen no Rebs."
  "They's five hundred of you guys down there!"
Satan screamed into his mike. "You got machine
guns, mortars, and enough ammo to last a
fuckin' yearl Start droppin' some rounds in on them
Rebs!"
  "How the hell can we drop rounds in on people that we
cain't even see, you asshole!"
  And while they were arguing, Buddy and his Rat Team
were silently infiltrating the town. On this trip,
Buddy was armed with his crossbow for more silent killing.
Colonel Dan Gray was personally leading the rest
of his Scouts into the town.
  Had the outlaws been a bit more industrious about
keeping the brush and grass cut around the outskirts
of town, it would have made the infiltration much more
difficult.
  One team of Scouts had swung wide, coming up
on the south end of town and planting explosives
all along a thousand-meter stretch. At Dan's
orders, the explosives blew.
  "They're attackin' from the south end!" the leader
of the bikers in Buffalo yelled. "Gary, swing your
people around and beef up Leadfoot."
  But Leadfoot was cursing and kicking and trying
to get his butt up off the floor where he had been
knocked when the building next to him was demolished
by C4. The force of that explosion had caved in one
wall of the building he had occupied.
  One of his brother bikers had been running
to Leadfoot's assistance when he rounded the wrong
corner. His eyes widened and his mouth opened for just a
second as his unbelieving eyes watched as the heavy
machete blade impacted against the softness of
his throat. The blade very neatly took his head off.
  Leadfoot got to his feet just in time to feel
something squishy hit him the center of his back.
"Goddamnit!" he yelled, turning around.
  He stood seemingly rooted to the floor, his
eyes mirroring his horror as they stared down at
Shorty's head, the wide-open and forever unblinking
eyes staring back at him.
  It took only a few seconds for Leadfoot
to react. He hit the floor and began crawling
around looking for his Ml6. He found his weapon and his
walkie-talkie. He punched the side button and
whispered into the cup, "Leadfoot to Beerbelly."
  "I's "fraid you was dead, Leadfoot."
  "Shorty is. Somebody cut off his head and
chunked into the house. Hit me in the back with it.
Most Godawfuliest damn thing I ever seen in my
life. Where's the rest of the boys?"
  "Keepin" they asses down. Injun Sam and his
boys has done swung around to your
sector. You readin' this, Injun?"
  "Yeah. But I ain't swung nowheres. I got
Rebs all around me, man. The sneaky bastards
has done slipped into town and is all over the
place. I just seen Texas Jim; as a matter of
fact, I can still see him. He's on the end of a
rope danglin' from a tree. The bastards hung
him! Tumble thing to see."
  A hard burst of gunfire caused Injun Sam
to get a little closer to the floor. The only thing that
prevented him from getting any closer were the buttons
on his shirt.
  Injun Sam crawled under a table as a grenade
exploded right outside his position. He said a lot
of
very hard and uncomplimentary things about Ben Raines.
  But he said them under his breath, not wanting to give
away his location. Damn Reb might be listening right
outside the window. Sneaky bastards!
  Wanda, the leader of a bunch of dyke bikers, had
taken cover, along with her Sisters of Lesbos,
behind the walls of an elementary school.
  "I hate that goddamn Ben Raines," she
hissed at no one in particular.
  "I bet he was a Republican,"
Sweet Meat whispered.
  "He's a goddamn man," Sugar summed it
up. "That's enough."
  "I hate Ben Raines," Wanda repeated.
  "About two hours of daylight left," Ben said
to Corrie. "Advise Dan to hunt a hole
until dark. Then really start headhunting."
  Corrie relayed the orders and Dan's
operator acknowledged them.
  "Received, General. They're going deep."
  "I'm hoping that if nothing happens during the
next several hours, the bikers will think we've
pulled out and they'll try to do something cute."
  "We're going to try to save the town?"
  "If at all possible."
  After two hours of silence, the outlaws began
to relax just a bit. Some even began to believe those
Rebels who had infiltrated the town had pulled
back with
the approaching darkness.
  Many of those who believed that would not live out the
night.
  As full night pushed dusk out of the way, and
finished spreading her dark wings of concealment over the
town, Dan Gray and his Scouts slipped
from their hiding places and went about their very silent and very
deadly work.
  The first to be very brutally tossed into that long sleep
was a careless biker who thought he'd slip over to where
the female slaves were held and knock himself off a
quick piece.
  He got knocked off and the piece of himself that got
the most attention was not the member he originally had in
mind.
  The outlaw died with his eyes wide open, the
blood staining the front of his dirty shirt, and his
head nearly severed from his body just as he was unlocking
the door to the slave quarters.
  Buddy cautiously pushed open the door and
looked inside the darkness. He smiled and waved
several members of his Rat Team inside. Working very
swiftly, and whispering to the slaves to be very quiet,
the Scouts freed the men and women and children.
  "Are there any more prisoners being held in this
town?" Buddy whispered the question.
  "The north end of town," the woman told him in
a soft voice. "About twenty or so girls and a
half a dozen boys. They were hand-picked to serve
Snake."
  "Tell me exactly where."
  "Get the others out of here," the woman said.
"I'll lead you there."
"It'll be very dangerous," Buddy warned her.
  The woman's smile, which Buddy observed in the
moonlight coming through a very dirty window, was only
slightly less than savage. "I've been using
a Mini-14 for years and I can probably outshoot
you with a pistol. It took these scum three years
to finally corner and catch me, and before it was over, I
left a dozen of them on the ground that last day."
  Buddy smiled. "Welcome to the Army of Ben
Raines. I'm his son, Buddy."
  "You're a handsome devil, for a fact. But you're
a little young for me." She cut her eyes as Dan
Gray slipped like a shadow into the slave house.
"Now that one!" She let that remark speak for itself.
  "We don't have the time for socializing," Dan
softly chided his people. "Let's go! Get these people
back to our lines."
  Buddy waved him over and pointed to the woman.
"This is, ah ..."
  "Sarah," she said, sticking out her head. "Sarah
Bradford. And you'd be ..."
  "Colonel Dan Gray." He took the offered
hand and looked into her eyes.
  "She'll be leading us to the other prisoner house,"
Buddy told him.
  But Dan and Sarah were busy gazing into each
other's eyes.
  Buddy squatted on the dirty floor and smiled
at the man and woman. After a few seconds, he
asked, "Are you two going to make a career of this?"
  Dan shifted his eyes. "Don't be impertinent,
young man. Get the lady armed and let's go." He
moved to the door and slipped out into the darkness.
"I like a tough man," Sarah said, belting a dead
outlaw's pistol around her waist and taking the Ml6
handed her.
  "Well, you have certainly met one. You ready?"
  "Let's go. You follow me. I was raised on
a ranch over on Crazy Woman Creek. I
know this town better than you know the back of your hand."
  "After you, ma'am."
  Outside, Dan looked on with admiration as
Sarah came upon the body of another outlaw with his
throat cut and reached down with no qualms and took
his sheath knife from the cooling body, slipping it
onto her belt, then testing the edge.
  "I wouldn't want to dress out a steer with it,"
Sarah said. "But it'll do to cut a throat
until I can find a stone."
  They slipped away into the darkness, heading for the
second prisoner house.
  "What a magnificent woman!" Dan was heard
to whisper.
  The Scouts escorting the freed prisoners
swung wide around the town, using the same trails
they came in on, and reached Ben's position.
  Dr. Ling then took command of the survivors while
the Scouts briefed Ben.
  "I think he's in love."
  "Who?" Ben asked, startled.
  "Colonel Gray."
  "Who the hell did he fall in love with?"
  "One of the prisoners."
  Tina smiled. "Isn't this all rather sudden?"
Ben held up a hand. "Wait a minute, wait a
minute! Let's back up. Where is Dan now?"
  "Going to free the other prisoners, with his lady
love leading the way."
  Ben walked away, mumbling to himself, heading toward
the truck that was temporarily serving as a coffee and
ration wagon. "Love!" he muttered. "Love!
I'm trying to fight a war, not run a lonely
hearts club!" He passed by Dan's
Jeep, where Chester was sitting on the front seat,
waiting for Dan to return.
  The little dog wagged its tail at Ben's
approach. "You're about to have some competition,
Chester." Ben stopped and petted the animal. "But
I don't think you'll mind at all. Just one more
person to spoil you."
  Chester jumped up into Ben's arms and Ben carried
it toward the mess truck, enduring Chester's licking
his ear as they walked.
  "There's the house," Sarah said.
  Dan glanced at his watch. "The diversion team
should be in place. Give them two clicks," he
told his radio operator. The signal to open the
ball.
  Seconds later, a huge explosion rocked and
destroyed half a dozen buildings at the south end
of town. Outlaws began shifting about, beefing up that
end of town, believing a major attack had once
more begun from the south.
  Leadfoot and Beerbelly and Injun Sam and the
others braced for attack. Wanda and her followers
began once more to curse Ben Raines.
  Carefully placed Scouts began directing
heavy machine gun fire into the buildings
at the south end
of Buffalo. More outlaws were shifted to the south
to repel the attack.
  Buddy lifted his crossbow and put a bolt through
a guard's back, the force of the heavy bolt knocking
the man down, dead as he hit the ground.
  "What the hell was that?" an outlaw's voice
carried to the Scouts. "Luddy-Luddy? What was that
sound?"
  But Luddy was on the ground, a crossbow bolt
through his heart.
  The outlaw biker who called for Luddy slipped
around the house. He experienced a few seconds of
hideous pain as a knife blade slammed into his
stomach and the blade, cutting edge up, tore through
vital organs, finally ripping the heart.
  Rebels stormed the house, expecting more guards,
and were pleasantly surprised to find none.
  That frightened prisoners were quickly freed from the
ropes that bound them. "Come on, people," Sarah said in
a hoarse whisper. "Let's go. Ben Raines and his
Rebels are here."
  And while the outlaws were busy fighting the
"Big-ass bunch of Rebels that attacked them from
the south side," as Leadfoot would later
report, Dan Gray and his Scouts exited the
town from the north end, with all the prisoners. be
  "Ol' Slim conned you," Matt announced to the
defenders of Buffalo by radio the next morning.
"I warned you about that sneaky no-good. You got to stay
on your toes all the time when he's around. He'll
stick a knife in your back and twist it. Just like he
done to me years back."
  "I didn't know Ben Raines ever stabbed
Snake," Beerbelly said.
  Injum Sam blinked. "Me, neither."
  "He didn't," Leadfoot enlightened them.
""At there's a figger of speech."
  "Leadfoot's pretty smart," Wanda said,
adding, "For a man."
  "You shuck them drawers, Wanda," Leadfoot
replied, "and I'll show you just how much of a man I
really am."
  Wanda flipped him the finger.
  Matt Callahan, aka the Rattlesnake
Kid, then gave a speech that just about bored the
boots off those listening, calling on his boys
to defend the ranch against invaders.
  Since the outlaws had been up all night, too
spooked to go to sleep, many of them dozed off
during Matt's long-winded harangue.
  Three miles away, Ben was climbing into the
Blazer. Settled in the seat, he picked up his
mike. "We don't have any prisoners to worry
about now, gang. Let's take the town."
  "Holy shit I" Beerbelly said, looking through
binoculars at the fifty-ton battle tanks
slowly advancing up Highway 16, all
buttoned up and ready for action. Behind the main
battle tanks came the smaller Dusters.
  Beerbelly had been a Grunt in 'nam-one
of the few bikers who'd ever had any actual combat
experience-and he knew firsthand what those twin-mounted
40mm cannon on the Dusters could do.
  He also knew that the old World War Two Army
surplus mortars Snake had supplied them with
wouldn't dent those big-assed battle tanks.
  The tanks stopped about two thousand meters out and
elevated the muzzles of the 105's for range.
  Beerbelly cussed. Since most of his mortars
were the old M19 models, without mount, the maximum
range was about five hundred yards. Add to that the
bubbles were all screwed up on them and none of the
crews assigned to handle them knew what a klick
was ... so the sum total of all that was a
disaster
waiting to happen.
  Beerbelly lowered the binoculars. "Let's get
the hell out of here! We'll set up about fifteen
miles north of the town on the Interstate. Move,
goddamnit, move!"
  "Snake ain't gonna like this," Blackie told
him.
  "Snake can kiss ass, too. We ain't no
good to him dead. Move, man."
  "Bugging out," Ben said, standing on top of the
Blazer and watching the exodus through binoculars.
  "As soon as they're clear, Dan, take your
Scouts in and inspect for booby traps."
  "Right, sir."
  "Buddy, take your Rat Team in and find the
airstrip. Get it cleaned up for our birds.
We're in no hurry. I intend to make Buffalo
an outpost. We'll probably need to widen and
lengthen the strip for PU!'S."
  "Yes, Father. You'll need a CP. I'll
find one suitable for you."
  Ben and the main force of Rebels stayed clear of the
town for more than an hour, until Buddy and his people
announced the all-clear. Then the Rebel
Army of Ben Raines rolled into Buffalo,
Wyoming, and began the job of cleaning it up for use
as an outpost.
  Ben and Dan inspected the small airport and
Dan said he felt the birds from Base Camp
One could use it as is, as soon as it was cleaned
up.
  Meg and Sarah walked up with a group of
Rebels.
  "How do you feel about staying here, Sarah?" Ben
asked. "Becoming part of the settlers?"
  She shook her head. "No, thanks, General.
Satan
and that bunch of trash with him burned her old ranch out
on the Crazy Woman. They chased me all over
the north half of Wyoming for a couple of years. I
think I'll dedicate the rest of my life to helping
clear the nation of crud like that ... if that's all right
with you."
  "Fine with me, Sarah. You're certainly
welcome. You hid out in this part of the country for a long
time. How many people are out there?"'" He waved his hand.
  "Hundreds, General. I roamed from the South
Dakota line to the Middle Fork of the Powder. I'd
guess about half of the people were too scared
to help me. You can forget about them; they're losers
any way you cut it. I'd guess many of them have
already pulled out for what they think are safer areas-if
there is such a thing-or have been killed by outlaws. The
rest of the people, the tough breed, well, they're making
it. But they're not doing it by being real gentle. They will
shoot you." She wrinkled her nose. "What is that
smell?"
  "An outlaw by the name of Texas Jim," Buddy
told her. "Some of my team hanged him the other
afternoon. I'll cut him down and get him in the
ground."
  "Thank you," Ben said drily. He cut his
eyes to Sarah. "You said you hadn't been a
prisoner long?"
  "About three weeks, I think. You tend to lose
track of time after the first week."
  "What are we facing, Sarah?"
  "A pretty tough bunch of people, General. I'll
give them that much. They've had a long time to get their
act together. These outlaw bikers were pulled in from
all over the west by Matt Callahan. Snake.
It'd be safe to say that Snake controls most of the
Northwest. This part of the country is the easternmost
section of his territory. His headquarters
is just north of Sheridan. A ranchhouse that's
built like a fort. I'd say he keeps about fifty
or seventy-five men on the grounds all the time.
And those guys are really tough. Snake handpicked
them. They're tough, but they're filth. The worst of the
lot. And that's really scraping the bottom of the
barrel."
  "How easy is the access to the house?"
  "Almost impossible. For a year, I tried
to figure out a way to get in there and kill
Callahan. I never could get close enough to get a
shot at him. When he does leave the house to go
riding, he's got dozens of men with him. And they can
sit a saddle, make no mistake about that. They
cover him like a blanket. With you this close, though,
I don't imagine he'll chance leaving the house.
And if you're thinking about cutting the head off the
snake, namely Matt Callahan forget it. You
couldn't get your tanks with the big guns within ten
miles of that place without being spotted. There's one
road in and one road out. Callahan destroyed the
rest of the roads. He's crazy, but smart."
  "You say there is a group of women bikers riding
for Matt?"
  "I'd call them anything but women,"
Sarah said with a grimace. "Bunch of damn
dykes. And they are pure crud. Cruel.
Don't cut them any slack because they're of the
female gender. They're just as bad, or worse, as
the men. And they'll fight just as hard."
  "Can you give me some numbers, Sarah?"
"If Callahan pulls all his people in-something I
don't think he'll do; he'll keep some in
reserve-we'll be looking at several thousand people. And
I heard talk about more coming up from the south and some
sort of army moving this way from the east."
  "That's the story of our life, Sarah," Dan
told her. "We're almost always outnumbered. But
seldom outgunned. What we have that Callahan
doesn't is organization. We can resupply in
ten hours by air."
  "That's good, because you're going to need to do that,
probably more than once." She looked at Ben.
"Matt Callahan hates you, General. You're
an obsession with him."
  "I am fully aware of that, Sarah. Do you have
any idea how he plans to conduct his .. .
campaign against us?"
  She shook her head. "No. Satan might. But
he would be the only one . . . that's
providing Callahan even knows himself."
  "He's that far gone mentally?"
  "I met him when he first came into this area,
several years ago. He's fascinated by the area
around the Little Bighorn River-Custer's Last
Stand. He used to go there quite often. I'd say he
knows as much about that part of the country as any man
living." She studied Ben's face. "Does that have
some significance, General?"
  "God, I hope not," Ben said, the remark
puzzling them all.
  "What's he doin" down yonder?" Matt
asked Satan. "Looks like to me he's settlin in
to stay."
It was the fourth day after Ben and the Rebels had
occupied Buffalo. Those rescued had been flown
back to Base Camp One and Rebels in Wyoming
had been resupplied to the point of overflowing.
  And still Ben waited.
  "Ol' Slim's shore got something up his
sleeve," Matt opined. "I just can't figure out
what."
  "Nothing good for us," Satan said glumly. "You
can bet on that."
  "We'll whup him, Satan," Matt
assured the biker. "What's the latest on them
hardcases comin' up from the south?"
  "They're in Wyoming. But they're having to work their
way up slow to avoid being spotted by them people Raines
put in Rawlins. They're comin' up 191 and then
will cut over on 28. Wind their toward us that way."
  Matt moved to his desk and studied a state
map. He shook his head. "I don't like it but I
reckon it can't be helped. We might have been a
tad hasty in havin' them bridges blown on the
Interstate."
  We, hell! Satan thought. That was your idea.
  "But... we done "er, so there ain't no use
a-wh*" about it now. What'd you hear from this Ashley
person and that crazy woman he's with? What's that
crazy bitch's handle?"
  "Sister Voleta. They're getting close.
Last transmission was sent from around Bismark,
North Dakota. I told them to start heading in a
more southwesterly direction. That Ashley feller got
all uppity with me. Said he was perfectly capable
of reading a map without any help from a cretin."
Satan wasn't really sure what a cretin was,
but he
figured it was an insult.
  "We'll deal with him after Ben Raines is
defeated."
  Satan just had to say it. "There ain't no one ever
beat him yet, Snake."
  Matt's eyes turned killing cold as they
slowly lifted to stare at Satan. Physically,
Satan could have easily ripped Matt apart without
working up a sweat. But deep down inside the man,
Satan both strangely feared and respected the
smaller and older man.
  "I'm gonna kill him, Satan. You can just go
head on and carve his name on a marker. "Cause
I'm gonna kill the sidewinder."
  And for the first time in a week, Satan felt that
Snake really just might pull it off.
  Ben had spent the four days studying maps of
Sheridan and being briefed as to the locations of Pete
Jones and his outlaws, and the advancing army of
Ashley and Sister Voleta. Rebel communications
had them both locked in and descrambled.
  Ashley and Sister Voleta were still days away.
But Pete Jones and his bunch were just about close enough
to start breathing down the Rebels" necks.
  And Ben was worried about Buddy having to face his
mother-admitted nut and perverted killer that
she was-in combat. He called Buddy to his
CP.
  "You wanted to see me, Father?" The son stuck his
handsome head into his dad's office.
  Ben waved him to a chair. "I want you and your
Rat Team to get with Captain Tony of D
Company. Draw supplies for a long field run.
Take two of the self-propelled 81mm mortar
carriers with you. One
fifty-caliber machine gun per platoon. Your
team take one also. I've already sent a crew out
to clear the ambush site in the mountains so you can get
through." He stood up and walked to a state map
thumbtacked to the wall and covered with clear plastic.
"I want you here, son." He pointed to the town of
Worland. "This Pete Jones person and his army of
crud was last reported, about two hours ago, just
south of Lander. You should reach Worland by dawn.
That'll give you plenty of time to pick your ambush
sites and get some rest.
  "Now, boy, I don't expect you and Captain
Tony to stop Pete Jones cold. From what
we've been able to piece together, this Jones person
has put together between five hundred and six hundred
outlaws. But I want you to slow him down.
None of this nonsense about standing or dying. You know how
I feel about that. If you get in a bind, haul your
butt out of there. You'll take your orders from
Tony. Is that clear?"
  "Yes, sir."
  "Start drawing equipment and supplies. I
want you on the road as soon as possible."
  Dan had stood just outside the door, with Ben
knowing he was there, listening. As soon as Buddy
left, he entered Ben's office.
  "You approve, Dan?"
  "Definitely. For more than one reason."
  Ben arched an eyebrow.
  "We can handle Matt Callahan and those coming at
us from the east. Oh, before I forget, the PU!'S are
on the way."
  "Good. The other reasons, Dan?"
  "Buddy knows his mother is a kook, a killer, a
psychopath. That doesn't mean he has to be
present
should she be killed."
  "Thank you, Dan. My sentiments exactly."
Ben sighed. "I sometimes wonder if the bitch can be
killed."
  "She certainly has been a thorn in
our sides for longer than I care to think about."
  "Tennessee, wasn't it?"
  "Urarara? Yes, I believe it was."
  "What have you been able to piece together about their
strength?"
  "We're going to be badly outnumbered."
  "That large a force?"
  "Yes, sir. They're picking up outlaws the
way a magnet draws metal."
  "I want Sheridan intact. So we're going
to have to go in and take it house to house, meeting the
bikers nose to nose."
  "As much as I admire Sarah, I have to question her
opinion as to the outlaws standing firm and fighting us.
I do believe they will make a show of force-at first.
Oh, they'll fight us house to house, but all the
while they'll be falling back. That's my
opinion."
  "And mine, Dan. When are the birds due in from
the base?"
  "This afternoon. They'll be landing with the PU!'S to throw
off any observers Callahan might have watching
us."
  "Cecil confirm he's sending in those spares that
I requested?"
  "Yes, sir. Like you, I think we're going
to suffer some casualties taking Sheridan. With the
extra birds standing by, we can fly out any
hard-hit immediately."
  Ben turned to stare out a window in the office.
"Any word as to whether, ah, HALFASS.. ." He
couldn't keep the broad smile off his face at just
the thought of that stupid name. "dis . . has made any
moves against Emil or Thermopolis?"
  "No moves so far." Dan, too, was smiling.
"I think Callahan is concentrating solely on
us. The man just may be realizing what a big bite
he's taken."
  "Can we get any number at all concerning the
prisoners being held in Sheridan?"
  "Sarah thinks several hundred, at least."
  Ben nodded and continued to gaze out the window.
"Make certain Buddy and Captain Tony have
everything they need, Dan. Then report back to me.
We're going to be on the outskirts of Sheridan
at dawn tomorrow."
  Ben stepped out of his CP several hours before
dawn. He was in full battle harness. His
personal team knew his habits well, and they; were
waiting for him. The entire encampment
was] up, but moving very quietly and using very little
light so those observers watching them from a distance
wouldn't be alerted.
  Ben looked up at the sky. "Going to be a
beautiful day," he remarked.
  Jersey handed him a mug of coffee without comment.
  "Teams in place above the roadblocks on the
Interstate," Corrie informed him.
  "Who led them?" j
  "Colonel Gray, sir."
  "He made good time." Ben took a sip of
coffee.
  "He probably pushed them pretty hard."
  "Buddy and Captain Tony?"
  "They made it to Worland about an hour ago.
Setting up now."
  "The mortar carriers have their rubber pads on?"
"Yes, sir. Done last evening."
  "Tell the crew chiefs to move them out,
Corrie."
  She radioed the orders and the self-propelled
81mm mortar carriers began their trek up the
Interstate to within range of the roadblocks set up
by Beerbelly and the other bikers.
  "Breakfast?"
  "Cold rations, sir. All personnel have eaten
and are standing by to mount up."
  "Let's take a walk, gang."
  Ben walked the long lines of Rebels, stopping
to speak a few words to as many of his troops as time would
permit. He stopped when he reached Tina and her
contingent of Scouts.
  "Move them out, girl. When the 81's have done
their bit, you link up with Dan and spearhead."
  She nodded and slipped back into the darkness,
gathering her team around her.
  Ben walked on, making sure that all his
Rebels had their body armor on.
  Corrie listened to her earphones for a moment and then
turned to Ben. "General Striganov and his people have
crossed the border, sir. They're meeting heavy
resistance from an unknown force."
  "Bikers?"
  "Negative, sir. The general believes it's
one of those racist hate groups that have flourished
since the war."
  "They flourished before the war, too. And a few of
them of them had legitimate beefs against the
government. Now they've just turned outlaw and they're
really coming out of the woodwork," Ben muttered.
"If it's Malone's group, they're well armed
and well trained."
  "Malone?" Beth asked.
  "We go way back, Beth. Sort of a mutual
hate relationship. I knew he was up in the
Northwest, but I didn't know exactly where."
  Company commanders, platoon leaders, and other
Rebels had gathered around Ben, listening. Tina had
paused in her pulling out to hear what her father had
to say.
  "Malone started out in Ohio, back in the
mid-seventies, I believe. He always had a
large following of fanatics. He had a few good
ideas and a boxful of very bad ideas. People like Malone
gave the word
survivalist
a bad name. Let's make sure it is Malone
then I'll give you all a rundown on him.
Move, Tina. We're fifteen minutes behind you.
Mount up, people."
  The Rebels were in position to strike an hour before
daylight.
  Beerbelly stared out at the darkness from behind the
roadblocks. The Interstate stretched like a long
silent snake before his eyes.
  But it wasn't empty, and he knew that for a
ironclad fact. Rubber pads on the tracks,
or not, he'd heard those damned 81mm mortar
carriers come up. Beerbelly was many things: rapist,
murderer, dope-head, slaveowner, but he was not a
fool. Of all the bikers and outlaws, Beerbelly
held a fair education in his head and was
combat-experienced. He'd had listening equipment
set up along the Interstate and knew what various
sounds meant.
"Shit!" he whispered as he crouched behind the
blockades that he knew Ben Raines could, and would,
roll over and squash like an egg. . . any damn
time Raines felt like doing it.
  "What's the matter with you?" Wanda asked, crouched
down beside him.
  "We're playin' a fool's game, Wanda.
We ain't got a snowball's chance in Hell against
Ben Raines."
  "But Snake said-was
  "I don't give a damn what Snake says.
Hell, Wanda, you know the guy's elevator don't
go all the way to the top. I been doin' some powerful
thinkin' the last couple of days. I don't think
Snake gives a damn whether we all
die or not. Whether we win or lose. Just as long
as he can get a good shot at Ben Raines. His
hate has him all fucked up in the head."
Beerbelly pointed a thick finger at the darkness
looming before them. "You know what's out there, Wanda?"
  She shook her head. Others had gathered around,
listening.
  "Eighty-eight-millimeter mortars. They can
toss a round something like thirty-eight hundred
meters. Right behind them are the main battle tanks,
armed with 105's. And here we squat behind this
pissy-assed blockade that wouldn't stop nothin' that
Ben Raines has got."
  "Well, what the hell are we doin' here, then?"
Wanda's voice held a shrillness that clearly
gave away her fear.
  Beerbelly was blunt. "Gettin' ready to die,
far as I can tell."
  "For what?" She almost shouted the question.
"That's the big question, baby."
  "That's your big ass! Why in the hell didn't
you tell us all this before now?"
  was "Cause I had to put it all together in my
head first, that's why."
  "I'm gettin" my girls and pullin'
out, Beerbelly. Like right now!"
  "We're right behind you, baby!" Beerbelly said,
standing up.
  "I think they're quitting," Dan radioed
back to Ben. "They're leaving the blockade and
heading straight for my position."
  "Take them out, Dan."
  "Ten-four."
  The bikers and outlaws rode and drove straight
into an ambush. The guns of Dan Gray's
Scouts sparked the still-dark early morning hour and
turned the Interstate slick with blood.
Beerbelly and Wanda and several other biker leaders
and their followers were in the middle of the column and
veered off and into the brush. That quick move saved them.
But half a dozen of them died when they hit rocks
and ravines and were tossed from their bikes.
  They would be left there for the carrion birds and the
ground scavengers.
  Bullets from the Rebel guns ignited gas
tanks on the downed and still spinning motorcycles,
some of the tanks burning, some of them exploding.
  Tina held her Scouts on the south side of the
blockade, not wanting to go barging up into a
free-fire zone and be mistaken for an
outlaw. They began
tearing down the blockade.
  As dawn began brightening the western skies, Tina
and her team had torn down or pushed aside the last
of the blockade and were waving the mortar carriers and
Dusters and battle tanks through. When the last of the
heavy-tracked vehicles were through, Tina and her
Scouts followed them.
  "We'll secure the airport first," Ben
radioed to his commanders. "That's vital. Tina, you
know the cutoff to the airport; it's right up ahead off
87. Secure the airport."
  "Ten-four, Eagle."
  Beerbelly and Leadfoot and Wanda's group had
cleared the wrath of Raines' Rebels and had
pulled up in a group, shutting down their engines.
They knew some of the others had made it, but just who and
how many was, at this point, unknown.
  To a person, they were badly shaken.
  "Beerbelly," Wanda asked, her voice
betraying her fear, "what are we gonna do?"
  "I been thinkin' "bout that, too." Beerbelly
would have loved to roll a joint and toke it right down
to where it blistered his fingers. But his hands were shaking so
badly he had to hold on tightly to the
handgrips to keep them still. He did not want any
of the others to see how scared he was. "We'll
give Raines and his people plenty of time to clear the
Interstate. Then we'll jump across and take 90
east for Gillette. We'll head north out of there
and then cut northwest, try to get up to where this
Malone person has his operation."
  "Malone and his kind ain't got no love for people like
me and my girls," Wanda said glumly.
"It's either that or Ben Raines," Beerbelly
reminded her.
  "In that case I reckon I could put up with a
stiff dick in order to stay alive."
  "Wanna try mine just to get back in
practice?" Beerbelly said with a grin.
  Wanda told him where he could put his dick. And it
wasn't where Beerbelly had in mind.
  Some tiny, tingling warning bell sounded in Pete's
head as he approached the blasted and shot-up town of
Thermopolis. And it wasn't the bloated and stinking
bodies of Night People that did it. Even though that in
itself was enough to make a buzzard puke.
  "We're taking 120," he told Sam. "I
got a bad feeling, man."
  Sam got on the CB and advised the
others of what was going down.
  "What the hell's the problem, Jones?"
Macationally demanded. "Other than this goddamn
stinkin" town. Jesus, them bodies would gag a
maggot."
  "Just a hunch, Mac. Stay with me. It would be like
Raines to set up an ambush at some point along
the most likely route through the mountains. You want
to stay alive, don't you?"
  "Yeah, yeah!"
  "All right, boys, here's the way it's going
to be. No talking on the military radioes. We
use CB'S only and only then if somebody's
got something important to say. In other words, for you
rednecks and other assorted honkies, keep your
damn mouths shut."
"You an uppity nigger, Jones," Mac shot back
over the airwaves. "You know that."
  "You keep telling me, Mac. You keep telling
me."
  Tina's Scouts were brought to a halt at the
airport. The facility was heavily manned and the
defenders were determined to hold it at all costs.
MattCallahan had told them that the airport was
critical to Ben Raines being resupplied
and the outlaws took Matt at his word.
  Nine o'clock in the morning, and after two hours of
close-up fighting, the Rebels had advanced only
a couple of blocks into Sheridan. Ben stood on
the outskirts of the town and pondered the situation as the
radios from his Rebels kept him informed.
  "Still meeting heavy resistance on all fronts,
General," Corrie relayed the messages.
"Tina is bogged down at the airport. She's
badly outnumbered but holding her own."
  Ben turned to Dan. "Take over here, Dan.
I'll take my team and help out at the airport.
Corrie, what's the word from Buddy."
  "They're in position but so far it's a no-show from
the outlaws."
  Ben nodded. "Let's go, gang."
  Ben and his teams skirted wide around getting to the
airport and it still took them nearly a half hour
to reach it. Matt had dug his people in deep and it was as
Sarah had predicted: they were a tough bunch and they
knew they were fighting to preserve a way of life.
  But as tough as they were, they were not as trained or as
disciplined as Raines's Rebels, and they did not
possess the firepower of the Raines's Rebels.
Like nearly all thugs and punks and
bullies from the dawning of civilization, and before, the
outlaws had always relied on brute strength and
savagery and fear to get their way. That didn't work
with the Rebels. They could be just as savage as those they
faced and fought-more so if need be.
  "They're dug in deep, Dad," Tina radioed
to Ben. "And the little terminal is filled with crud."
  "Lob some tear gas in and shoot them as they try
to escape," Ben ordered.
  Rifle grenades were readied and the tear gas
cannisters were fired into the terminal. The outlaws
came coughing and tear-blinded out. They were coldly and
unemotionally shot down in the parking lot.
  "Occupy the terminal," Ben radioed to his
daughter. "I'm swinging my people around to clean out the
hangers. Snipers, get in place with those
fifties."
  Rebel snipers, using the Browning model
5100 sniper rifle, which is capable of extreme
accuracy in excess of two thousand yards, bipodded
their weapons and dug in for long-range killing. The
.50 caliber projectile, even at the full
one-mile range, still had over one thousand
foot-pounds of punch upon impacting. And the men and
women behind the 36-pound weapons possessed
all the qualifications of a sniper: sharp-eyed,
vulture-patient, and deadly accurate. They
began taking a fearful toll on the outlaws.
  "Inside the terminal," Tina radioed. "Stinks
like a boar's nest in here."
  "Considering the caliber of people who recently
exited the building," Ben told her, "that's being very
unkind to a hog. You forward people, give the mortar
crews some coordinates to work with, please."
  The range coordinates were quickly calibrated and
called in. Mortar rounds began dropping in on the
outlaw bunkers and one by one they were taken out. Even
with the superior firepower of the Rebels, it took them
nearly an hour before the airport was declared secure.
  Leaving a small force at the airport, Ben and
Tina took their people and moved back to the town.
  "Slow going," Dan told him. "But we're
making some headway. We've got a toehold.
We've taken some prisoners. You want to talk
to them?"
  "Might as well. For all the good it will do me."
  "I've set you up a temporary CP. The
prisoners are being held there. They're a sullen,
uncooperative lot."
  "They can be sullen," Ben said, checking
his .45 and returning it to leather, "but they'll talk
to me or get seriously and quickly dead."
  The outlaws might have thought Ben was bluffing. But
after the second body was dragged from the building, with a
.45 caliber slug between the eyes, the remaining
thugs and outlaw bikers became very much aware that Ben
Raines did not give a tinker's damn about such
amenities as constitutional rights, the Geneva
Convention, the right to remain silent, or much of anything
else except ridding the land of human crud.
  They all became very talkative, all at
once, each one trying to outdo the other.
  Ben listened to them babble on for a few minutes and
then turned them over to interrogation teams.
  Picking up his Ml4, Ben walked outside and
rejoined his personal team.
  "What's the word from Buddy, Corrie?"
  "Still nothing, General. And he reports
absolutely no chatter on the radio."
  "The bastards smelled a rat. They're
probably using low-range CB'S
to communicate." He pulled a
map from the pocket of his BDU'S and studied it for a
moment. "They either cut east at Shoshoni and plan
to work their way north using county
roadsdduntil they get past the blown bridges on
the Interstate, or they took 120 out of
Thermopolis and plan to come into Sheridan on 14.
I doubt they'd try old 30." He shrugged.
"But who knows? Corrie, tell Buddy to come on
back. We need him here."
  "What'd you get out of the prisoners?" Tina
asked.
  "Nothing we didn't already know." He looked
around for Meg. She was nowhere in sight. "Corrie,
tell the PU!'S to get airborne. They have the
coordinates. Destroy the ranchhouse of the
Snake."
  But Matt Callahan aka the Rattlesnake
Kid, had seen the handwriting on the wall. He
read it with bitterness on his tongue, but he read it
nevertheless.
  The Rattlesnake Kid was making ready
to rattle his hocks.
  He and his personal crew of range-wise and
gun-ready hands were heading north. There would be another
day to deal with Ben Raines, and he could always put
together another army.
  Matt swung into the saddle. "Let's ride,
boys."
  At his command post in downtown Sheridan,
Satan's radio operator looked at him and
shook his head. "No use, Satan. I can't get
Snake on the horn."
  Satan spent the next few minutes giving the
Rattlesnake Kid a cussing.
  "What's all that mean?" he was asked.
"It means that the Snake just wiggled away and left
us behind to face Raines alone. That's what it
means." He turned around as Rowdy busted into the
room.
  "The guys is fallin' back, Satan. They just
can't hold the Rebels no more. But we still got the
north end of the town open."
  It took the outlaw biker only a few
heartbeats to make up his mind. "Let's ride!
Tell the guys to start falling back. We'll
hold the north end open until they all get
clear."
  Satan began frantically tossing a few
items into a dufflebag. He looked up as his
buddy, Bruiser, entered die room.
  "I guess you heard the Snake turned yellow
and run, huh, Satan?"
  "I figured you'd run with hi caret not,
Bruiser. Seein' as how you and him is so tight."
  "Naw. We got my buddy, Pete Jones, and
his bunch comin' in, remember."
  "So?"
  A frown passed the ape's face. "You just
gonna leave them to be chewed up by the Rebs?"
  Satan stood up and faced the man. Satan was
bigger then Bruiser, but not by much. Just uglier.
"What do you want me to do, Bruiser?"
  "I don't know, man. But it ain't right to just go
off and leave our buddies."
  "Your buddies, Bruiser. Not mine. I don't
like niggers."
  "Well... I don't neither. But I like Pete
Jones."
  "That don't make no sense, Bruiser. But very
little you ever say makes much sense to me."
That bounced off Bruiser like a rubber ball. "You
reckon Pete took the northern route over the
mountains?"
  "He may have, Bruiser. Come to think of it. The
way he was movin', he should have been here by now. All
right, Bruiser, we'll ride up to the junction and
wait for an hour or so."
  "Yeah! Awright, man!" They did a
little hand-slappin' and jivin' and then kissed each other
on the mouth.
  "What you gonna do with the prisoners, Satan?"
  Satan's eyes turned cruel hard. "Go
kill as many as you can, Bruiser. I know how you like
that."
  "Awright!"
  Just as he said that, the sounds of two prop-driven
planes were heard flying high over the town.
  Matt Callahan pulled his men into a huge stand
of timber only a few miles south of the Montana
line and watched as the PU!'S began their slow
circle. It took less than a minute for his fine
ranchhouse to be reduced to smoking rubble.
  "Too bad you kilt them boys and girls "fore
we left," a hand said to Snake. "Even though it was
fun watchin" "em kick and choke. Raines could
have done it for us with all that farpower."
  Snake nodded absently. "I overestimated my
boys and grossly underestimated Ben Raines. I
won't make that mistake the next time we meet."
  They watched as the PU!'S made their way back
south, toward Sheridan.
  Snake and his now considerably smaller army
turned their horses" heads toward the
north. Toward the Rosebud Mountains and the Little
Bighorn River.
  "Do we pursue, General?" Dan radioed the
question as the outlaws rode and drove frantically out of
Sheridan.
  "Negative. Let them go. We've got
to sweep this town and see about any prisoners."
  It did not take the Rebels long to find one
home that had been turned into a slaughterhouse
by Bruiser and his submachine gun.
  Ben viewed the unnecessary carnage through eyes that were
flint hard. "People who would do this ..." He let that
statement slide, then said, "More and more I find myself
agreeing with George Orwell's pigs."
  All animals are equal, but some animals are
more equal than others.
  George Orwell
  "That was a good guess on your part, Bruiser,"
Satan said, his bulk on the saddle of his Harley.
"Yonder they come."
  "Yeah. I know some of them ol' boys. There's
Pipes-I ain't seen him in years. And Bass
is ridin' right behind him. Yeah, this is good."
  "How is that?"
  "Them boys can fight. Like you, Satan,
they's a bunch of them saw combat in "Nam."
  "How come you didn't, Bruiser?"
  "I was in reform school. I raped a woman and
broke her neck. Didn't mean to kill her,
though. I just wanted some pussy. Since I was a
minor I only served three years. War was over
when I got out."
  "You didn't miss nothin", believe me. We
got to have us a sit-down, Bruiser. We'll ride
on up into Montana and then all of us can talk this
thing out. We got to get some organization if we're
goin' to fight Ben Raines and win."
  "You the boss, Satan. Whatever you say is
fine
with me."
  The long line of bikers and cars and pickup
trucks began to stretch out as they moved north. More
than a thousand thugs, punks, and trash.
  Beerbelly and his bunch had safely jumped the
Interstate and had barreled eastward for about an hour,
turning north at Gillette. Once they crossed
the line into Montana, they would continue north for a
few miles, and then cut westward, hoping to link up
with Satan and Pete Jones. Then they would decide
what to do about Ben Raines.
  "The town's in pretty good shape," Ben said after
an hour-long ride through Sheridan. "Remarkably
so." He turned to Sarah. "You think you could convince
some of those hiding out in the hills to come in and
resettle this place?"
  She grinned. "I'm sure of it, General.
It'll take about ten days for me to touch base with those
the others will listen to."
  "Draw what you need and get ready. I'll get
a team together and have them standing by to accompany you. I
won't know how much to request from Base Camp One
until I see how many people you bring in."
  "I'll be on my way in an hour, General.
You'll be surprised how many people are out there." She
waved her hand at the vastness that lay beyond the town.
"General, you're the last hope the people have to put this
country back together."
  As he watched her walk away, Ben muttered,
"It certainly wasn't a job I asked for or
wanted."
Ben chose as his CP a building in the downtown part
of Sheridan. He and his team cleaned up the place
and set up quarters in the rooms above the first
floor.
  Rebels had scoured the town, searching
house to house, locating several more buildings where
prisoners were being held. Many of them were in pitiful
shape. Those who had been held the longest sat in
stunned silence, hollow-eyed and staring vacantly at
nothing, unable to comprehend the fact that they were finally
free from their captors.
  "Will the doctors back at the base be able to bring
them out of their ... I don't know what to call it,"
Meg said to Ben. "Condition?"
  "Some of them, yes. Healing the mind is a long,
slow process. Many of them will always be as you see them
now. After suffering so long their minds simply shut
down. The human defense mechanism, I
suppose. All the doctors can do is try,
Meg."
  "And you believe that the fault of their being captured
lies, to some degree on their own heads, don't you,
General?" There was an odd glint to her eyes that
Ben didn't understand.
  "Yes, I do, Meg. As you say, to some
degree. Lone wolfing it is fine, if one has the
mental conditioning to survive. A lot of people don't.
Especially the older ones who grew up in
society where they were constantly being bombarded by TV
commentators and so-called intellectuals
who told them the use of force was wrong in defending
home, loved ones, or self." Ben shut his mouth
and smiled. "Don't get me wound up, Meg.
I'll bore you to tears with a speech about liberals and
their ilk."
"You're forgetting that I grew up in California,
General. We had a neighbor who killed a
rattlesnake in his back yard-with one of those
so-called terrible handguns. The police arrested him
and took him to jail for discharging a weapon within the city
limits."
  "Exactly what I'm talking about, Meg."
  "You're missing the point. It didn't take me
long to learn to shoot first and ask questions later. Why
me and not these people?" She pointed to the hospital where the
freed prisoners had been taken.
  "Probably, Meg, your father-back in his more
lucid days-raised you to stand alone. I would imagine
that every time one of those anti-gunstanti-use-of-force
messages came on the TV, Matt would tell you
it was all a bunch of crap. Which it was. That had a
lot to do with it."
  She nodded her agreement. "What about that large
gathering of men on horseback that the pilots of the
PU!'S reported seeing?"
  Buddy said the ranchhouse Matt was using as his
headquarters was deserted except for those poor
unfortunates they found strangled to death in the
basement. Matt took his hardcases and headed for the
wilderness."
  "You know where he went, don't you, General."
  Ben sighed.
"I
have a pretty good idea, Meg. From all indications
he was heading for the Rosebud Mountains. Where Custer
made his last stand."
  "He wants you to come after him, you realize that,
don't you?"
  "Oh, yes. The Rattlesnake Kid wants
to face Slim in a stand-up, shoot-"em-out
gunfight. I'm going to disappoint him, Meg."
"You're going to let him go?" Her eyes narrowed and
her lips tightened into a thin line.
  "For the time being, yes. His army is scattered and
Matt poses no immediate threat to us now. I'll
eventually have to deal with him, but not now. Not unless he
forces the issue."
  "He will if he gets a chance."
  Ben shrugged. "That's his problem, Meg. But if
he thinks I'm going to strap on a pair
of hoglegs and face him in some sort of a quick-draw
affair, he's not only crazy, he's stupid."
  Meg studied Ben's face. "You'd better
track him down and kill him now, General. I know
the man far better than you. He'll never give
up."
  "I'm aware of that. But I'm not about to commit
troops and send them searching all over the Rosebud
Mountains. It'd be like looking for that needle in the
haystack. Matt will have to wait."
  The Rebels went to work in Sheridan, cleaning up
the town and tearing down those buildings they felt could not
be used.
  Communications reported that Ashley and his group
had veered north, apparently heading for Malone and his
people, rather than try to launch an offensive against
Ben-at this time.
  Striganov and his Russian-French Canadian
forces were holding their own against Malone, but making no
progress in their attempts to move south. Ben
knew he was going to have to head north to aid
Striganov, but he didn't want to leave
Sheridan until Sarah had rounded up enough people
to defend the
place. And Cecil had radioed from
Base Camp One that Kahmsin had made his way
back to South Carolina and regrouped what was left
of his shattered army.
  Ike was champing at the bit to head for South
Carolina and once and for all wipe Khamsin from the
face of the earth.
  "Negative, Ike," Ben had told him. "The
Hot Wind is nothing more than a slight breeze
now. I might need you and your battalion up here with
me before this mess is over. Just stay put and be ready
to go."
  Sarah and the team of Rebels Ben had sent with her
had rounded up more than five hundred people by the end of
ten days. And from all indications, they were a tough and
resourceful lot, just the types Ben was looking for
to resettle the outposts. Among them were a dozen
doctors and dentists and nurses.
  Ben radioed Cecil and told him to get the
requested equipment on the way to Sheridan. The
town was once more on the map.
  Ben was studying maps when Dan entered his office.
  "You wanted to see me, General?"
  "Get the people ready to pull out, Dan. We've
done what we can here in Sheridan. It's up to the
settlers now. We've got to head north
and give Georgi and his people a hand."
  "I can have them ready to go in the morning."
  "Then that's when we'll pull out."
  Ben walked to a wall map. "The lines have
shifted. Last reports state the main concentration of
fighting is centered along this line, between Cut Bank
and
Harve. And that's a hell of a lot of territory."
  "Malone must have quite an army," Dan said, studying
the more than one-hundred-mile-long battlefront.
  "Obviously. And when Ashley and Voleta and the
various bikers and outlaws link up with him . . ."
Ben let that trail off.
  "Yes," the Englishman picked it up. "And if
we get careless and let them put us in a box, we
could be in serious trouble."
  Ben nodded. "This time we're really outgunned.
We're going to have to go into this fight with a root-hog or
die mentality. Saving towns and cities for
future use as outposts will have to be put on the
back burner during this push north. Since we're
going to be so badly outnumbered during this
campaign, we'll have to make up for it by using every
ounce of firepower we have. And Striganov says
Malone has mortars and heavy machine
guns. But no tanks or long-range artillery."
  "I shouldn't wonder," Dan said drily.
"We've spent the past three years scouring the
country, hauling in every tank we could find."
  Ben grinned. "And we've stripped for parts the
ones we didn't haul in. We've got ten
tanks for every qualified driver." i
  "When will the reinforcements arrive?"
  "I started them moving exactly one week ago.
They should be arriving any day. With the addition of the
vehicle-drawn 105's and the tanks, we'll
give Malone some new headaches. I plan to have the
added tanks lay back, protecting our rear.
Get the people geared up, Dan. We move out in the
morning.
We'll advance to Hardin and secure that town. By the
time we're through there, the new equipment should have reached
us and we'll start our push north to take some
pressure off of Georgi and his people."
  Dan was studying the map. "Miles City?"
  "Will have to wait until we're finished up
north."
  "We'll be passing right by the old Custer
Battlefield site. Do you anticipate an
attack by Matt and what is left of his
army?"
  "I'm not going to give him a chance, Dan.
We're going to be moving as fast as the roads will
allow us. Your Scouts report the Interstate is
in good shape, and they have seen nothing of Matt or his
people. There hasn't been a shot fired at them.
We'll deal with Matt when we've finished with
Malone."
  "Spearheading?"
  "Tina. Have her take command of those Scouts already
north of us, and move out today. She'll stop on the
outskirts of Hardin. And assign a Duster to her
just in case. I can't believe Malone is going to just
let us come up behind him unopposed."
  "He may be having his hands full with General
Striganov."
  "Georgi will damn sure give him all he can
handle; bet on that. I'd like to think if we hit
Malone fast and hard, we can settle this quickly. But
something tells me this is going to be a long
campaign."
  "I'm afraid you're right." Dan seemed
reluctant to leave. As if he had something on his
mind and didn't quite know how to say it.
  Ben helped him along. "Spit it out,
Dan. What's eating at you?"
"Very well, General. Do you trust Meg
Callahan?"
  Ben hesitated. "I don't know, Dan. It just
doesn't seem reasonable that a very attractive
woman, kidnapped by outlaw bikers, was not raped
by them. And Dr. Ling was emphatic on that point.
I've toyed with the idea that my so-called
assassination attempt back in Shreveport was
all rigged."
  "With Meg to be planted within the Rebels."
Dan did not present his remark as a question.
  "Yes. But to do what? Kill me? Hell,
Dan, she's had ample opportunities to do that.
What has she done to arouse your suspicions?"
  "She's just too smooth, General. Everything that
comes out of her mouth is too pat. It's almost as if
she's been rehearsed."
  "By whom? Her father? She's managed to convince
nearly everybody that she genuinely despises
Matt."
  "But not you?"
  "I don't know," Ben said softly. "But I do
sense that something is out of kilter with Meg. Go on,
Dan."
  "General, you've seen the caliber of people we've
been facing. Do you believe that type of scum would
allow a lovely young lady to live undisturbed
within arm's reach of them for a couple of years, as Meg
claims?"
  "It doesn't seem reasonable. And if her father
sexually abused her as a child, as she claimed, why
would he not do the same as an adult?"
  "That thought entered my mind as well."
  "And she's been gently pushing at me to attack
Matt in the Rosebuds. Our interrogation teams
back at Base Camp One have not been able
to corroborate
our suspicions by questioning of the biker women, however."
  "They might not have had prior knowledge. Although that seems
a bit unlikely. I think it's just because they're very
tough women and hard to break."
  Ben nodded and stepped into the radio room, telling
Corrie to get Base Camp One on the horn and
tell them to start using drugs on the biker women;
find out what they can about Meg Callahan.
  "No!" Ben suddenly said. "Ten-twenty-two
those orders, Corrie."
  "Yes, sir."
  Ben slowly turned to face Dan.
"I
don't think she's in cahoots with Matt. I think
she really wants to see her father dead."
  Dan spread his hands, while confusion filled his
face. "She certainly says she does. But if
she isn't working for her father? Then?"
  "Dan, you were there in Shreveport when I spoke
with Meg for the first time. She mentioned that survivalist
group that her father shared power with. And she mentioned that they
did not get along. That somebody had to have been
Malone."
  "Yes, I remember, and I agree." Dan was
thoughtful for a moment and then he smiled. "Ahh, yes.
Now I am beginning to see."
  "She wants to see both Matt and me killed.
If money was worth a damn, I'd bet you that she
takes her orders from Malone."
"So we do what, Father?" Buddy asked.
  Ben had called a gathering of Buddy and Tina,
Dan, Dr. Ling, and his company commanders.
  "We watch her. We have nothing but suspicions.
We have absolutely no solid proof. I'm just
going to play this by ear and be careful."
  "Oh, quite," Dan said, giving Cooper,
Jersey, Beth, and Corrie a glance.
They got the message.
  The eye contact did not escape Ben, but he said
nothing about it.
  "Do you want me to switch her ammo?" Buddy
asked. "Substitute blanks for real?"
  "No. As I said, we have zero proof that she has
done anything wrong. It may just be that I'm getting
paranoid."
  "That
we
are becoming paranoid," Dan corrected.
  "That's it, people. Tina, you all set to go?"
  "Sittin" on ready."
  "Take off. Follow the Duster and we'll see
you in Hardin maybe late tomorrow. For sure in a
couple
of days."
  Tina waved and left the room.
  "Let's start packing it up, people," Ben said.
  The Rebels rolled out of Sheridan just as dawn
was spreading light over the valley. The extra
tanks and artillery that Ben had requested from Base
Camp One were a day behind them and coming hard.
  Ben pushed his people hard and they made Hardin by dusk
of the first day out, driving right through the area where
Ben thought Matt was hiding. But if Matt
Callahan thought Ben was going to waste his time hunting
him, the Rattlesnake Kid was sorely
disappointed.
  Tina had radioed back that Hardin was a ghost
town.
  During the noon break, Sarah had said, "The people
are all along the Yellowstone. When the outlaws
came, many of them left the towns for the country."
  "We don't have time to contact them now," Ben said.
"After we deal with Mr. Malone, then we can
backtrack."
  "Meg appears to be a bit edgy this evening,"
Dan said, walking up to Ben, two packages of
cold rations in his hands. He handed one to Ben.
  "Does she now? It wouldn't break my heart if
she were to desert."
  "Nor mine."
  The men sat down on a curb and opened their
field ration packs, the contents all carefully
mixed under the eagle eye of Dr. Chase, ensuring
the troops the
correct amounts of vitamins and fiber and
nutrients and with all the taste of a tennis shoe.
  All the Rebels carried small
bottles of hot sauce around with them to slop
generously on their field rations. Ben requisitioned
homemade hot sauce by the hundred-case lot.
  "Are you sure Chase retired from the Navy, or
they forced him out before those in his command mutinied?" Dan
asked, looking with distain at the goop he had dumped
into his mess kit.
  Dan gave the paper to Chester to lick and the dog
took one smell and carried it off and buried it,
returning to sit by Dan's side.
  "That has to tell us something," Dan remarked as
he scratched the small animal behind the ears.
  The next morning, Ben held up the column
while Tina and her Scouts checked out Billings.
He took that time to radio back to Louisiana and
tell Cecil to start sending up tins of meat and
dried beans and sacks of rice and potatoes. And
if Chase had the nerve to send along any of his
nutritious field ration goop, have the pilots
dump it into the first swamp they flew over.
  "What's the matter, old hoss?" Cecil said
with a laugh, knowing perfectly well what the matter
was.
  "Very funny. And send along a case of
vitamins for us to take. I'd rather take a
pill than eat any more of Lamar's concoctions."
  Cecil was still laughing when Ben broke the
connection.
  Ben stopped smiling when Dan stepped into the tent
and said, "Tina reports Billings is filled with
creepies, General."
"Here we go again, Dan. All right. We'll hold
up here and wait for the extra tanks and artillery."
  "And if they're holding prisoners, sir?"
  Ben sighed, remembering the sign that President
Harry Truman had on his desk. THE BUCK
STOPS HERE. Ben knew only too well what
that sign meant.
  Ben hand-rolled a cigarette, taking that time
to weigh his options-and they were few. "We'll hope
they will survive the shelling," he said, knowing he was
sealing the fates of many, but having no other choice.
  "If it helps," Dan said, "I would have made
the same decision."
  The main battle tanks and the vehicle-drawn
105's joined the column the next afternoon and Ben
gave everybody an extra day to rest before beginning the
attack on Billings. The vehicle-drawn
105's had a range of about ten miles, or
slightly farther, depending upon the type of
shells used.
  Ben laid out the plans, and they involved the
splitting of his command.
  "Ramos, take your A Company along with your
assigned 105's and approach Billings from the
southeast, on this old secondary road. Brad, you
and B Company will cross the Yellowstone here"-he
pointed to a map-"and assault the city from the north.
Anderson, you and Charlie Company will lay back on
the Interstate and drop in your rounds from the east
side. I'll take Captain Tony and Dog
Company and swing wide, coming up on the Interstate
west of the city. Buddy, you and your Rat Team will
secure the airport." Ben sighed and minutely
shook his head. "We'll start the bombard-
ment at oh-six-hundred tomorrow, using Willie
Peter and incendiary. That's it, people."
  The smell emanating from the city was strong even
to those Rebels several miles away as they waited
and glanced at their watches. It was the unmistakable
smell of rotting flesh and death.
  The hands on their watches straight-lined and Ben's
voice came over the speakers. "Fire!"
  Billings, the city on the Yellowstone River,
founded back in 1882 by the Northern
Pacific Railroad, began to reel under the
bombardment from Rebel gunners.
  Buddy and his Rat Team hit the airport coming
off Black Otter Trail, and they struck hard,
with a cold, fighting fury. Rebels did not take
prisoners of Night P. Attempts to do so had
invariably and consistently failed miserably, almost
always resulting in the death of those Rebels who tried
to extend the olive branch of peace to the creepies.
  The cannabalistic Night People were shot down upon
sighting, with the wounded receiving a bullet to the head.
Orders of Ben Raines.
  The earth-shattering pounding continued until eight
o'clock. By that time, the city was burning, black smoke
twisting like mortally wounded snakes into the big skies
of Montana.
  "Shut it down," Ben said to Corrie.
  Corrie relayed the orders and the guns fell
silent.
  "Snipers in position," Ben instructed.
  Rebel snipers, armed with .5- caliber
rifles, slipped into position and waited.
"Airport secured, sir," Corrie told him.
"Buddy is clearing a runway now."
  "Approximate time for clearing?"
  "Two hours."
  "Advise the communcations truck to notify
Base Camp One of that."
  "Advance teams into the city, sir?"
  "Negative. All units hold their
positions. We won't enter the city until tomorrow at
the earliest. Move Tina and her team to the airport
for security."
  "Colonel Gray has a few freed
prisoners that came out of the north end of the city."
  "Take them to the airport. Advise Dr. Ling
to move a medical team over there. Tell Buddy
to prepare to receive freed prisoners. Put them in a
hanger."
  Sniper rifles began cracking as robed Night
People began staggering out of the burning city in a futile
attempt to escape the inferno. They left the
flames behind them in exchange for a bullet.
  The Rebels maintained their positions all that day
as the city slowly began to burn itself out. The flames
leaped into the night skies, dancing macabre
ballets before sparking and vanishing into the darkness.
  The breeze picked up, bringing with it a moist
touch. Ben awakened once during the night, as a
soft rain began falling. The rain picked
up in intensity as thunderstorms began rolling through,
dousing the land and gradually putting out the most savage
of the fires that had devoured Billings.
  When Ben stepped out of his tent that morning, the
fires were still burning, but the most intense had burned
themselves out. The thunderstorms had
lashed out their fury and drifted on; the early
predawn skies were pocked with stars as Ben walked
to the coffee truck.
  Coffee mug in hand, he leaned against the
dew-covered fender of a deuce and a half and sipped
and watched as his team drew coffee and walked to him.
  "The spare planes will be leaving Sheridan at
dawn," Corrie informed him. "The resupply
birds from Base Camp One left at midnight.
ETA here is approximately ten hundred
hours."
  "We will not enter what is left of Billings,"
Ben said. He had already studied a map and knew where
they were going and how they would get there. "Make sure
all units understand those orders. When the birds have
come and gone, we'll pull out. Advise all
units to begin concentrating along Highway 3, just
off the airport. Tell Tina to get her team
ready to roll and check out Highway 3.
She is to wait for us at Lavina. That is
approximately fifty miles north of our
present location, at the junction of Highway 3 and
12."
  Ben turned his back to the dead and smoking city and
walked back to his tent to pack. If he had
to adpot a scorched-earth policy in order to rid the
land of outlaws and scum and Night People, so be it.
Regrets, if any, he could deal with later.
  "You killed about a hundred prisoners!" the
woman screamed at Ben. "Murderer!"
  Ben stood at the edge of the tarmac of the airport
and listened to her tirade, his face expressionless.
She cursed him until she was breathless.
"What would you have had me do, madam?" he asked.
  "Free us!"
  "Madam, you are free."
  "But many of my friends are dead! Thanks to your
callousness."
  Ben stared down at the woman, her clothing no more
than rags, and with her face baering the marks of
recent beatings. He knew he should just turn his
back and walk away; knew it was pointless to stand and
argue with her. But with Ben Raines being what he
was, he wasn' t about to do anything like that.
  Ben pointed toward the smoking ruins of the city.
"Madam, how far away do you think you were from being
served up as dinner to some of those loathe-some creatures
who were holding you captive?"
  "I don't know! That isn't the point. You could have
attacked the city with your army and saved us all."
  "To tell you the truth, I'm beginning to wonder if
you were even worth saving."
  "You can't talk to her in that manner!" a man said,
stepping away from the hanger and walking to the woman's
side.
  Ben blinked. "Now, just who in the hell are you?"
  "I am her friend."
  "Well, friend, you best carry your ass back
inside that hanger before you get on the wrong side of
me. And I might point out that your mouth is awfully
close to getting you there."
  The woman opened her mouth and the man said,
"Sybil, let me handle this. General Raines,
we are not ungrateful for being plucked from the hands of
those
dreadful creatures. But it is distressing that more than
half of our group was killed by the bombings and the
fires that followed."
  "Your . . . group. All of you were from the
same group?"
  "Oh, quite. We are-were-all from the same
scientific organization."
  "And that would be . . . ?"
  "Peace without violence."
  Ben sighed. "And how long has this organization
been around?"
  "Only recently. I would say about six
months. We all felt we could reason with those
poor unfortunates who have turned to a life of
crime and violence."
  "Poor . . . unfortunates?"
  "Q."
  "Ah-yeah! Right. And some of those "poor
unfortunates" came along, grabbed you up, and
swapped you to the Night People, right?"
  "Well. . . yes. But that doesn't mean that our
plan won't work with some other group, at some other
place and time."
  "Ah .. . you mean you want to try again?"
  "Oh, my, yes."
  "Do you want us to arm you?"
  "Oh, no, General. Indeed not. We do not
require arms to exist. We are vegetarians, so
we don't have to kill for food."
  "I wasn't talking about hunting, mister . . .
whatever your name is."
  "Morris Deason. Oh, I see what you
mean. Oh, no. We don't want arms. If we
do come upon some ruffians, I feel we can convince
them that we are
peaceful and mean them no harm."
  "You do, huh?"
  "Yes."
  In a pig's ass, Ben thought. "Well, I
wish you lots of luck, Mr. Deason."
"Cause you're sure going to need it, he
silently added. "Can we, ah, drop you and your
group off somewhere?"
  "That's very kind of you, General, but no. We must
first bury our dead and then take a vote as to where we
will relocate."
  "I would suggest that you don't go north."
  "Oh?"
  "That's where we're going."
  "To kill more innocent people?" Sybil asked, enough
venom in her voice to kill an ox.
  Ben glanced at her and then deliberately turned
his back. "Dan, see to their needs. You can be much more
diplomatic than I." He walked
away.
  "Murderer!" Sybil screamed after him.
The Rebels saw no signs of human life on
the way to Lavina, and when they reached the small town,
there was nothing left of Lavina.
  The tiny town and its few buildings were no more than
piles of charred rubble.
  Ben ordered Tina and her Scouts out toward
Harlowton. As they drove Highway 12, which was in
surprisingly good shape, they followed the
Mussel-shell River, flowing on the south side
of the highway. The lack of any sighting of human
life was beginning to be depressing to all of them.
Beth said as much.
  "They're out there," Ben told her. "Some of them
probably watching us right now. They know what we
are, they just don't know who we are."
  "Maybe I ought to get a brush and a can of
paint," Cooper said with a grin. "Start painting your
name on all the vehicles. General Ben Raines
and the Rebels. Enlistees please fall in at the
rear of the column."
Tina's voice coming out of the speaker cut the laughter
short. "Far Out Scout to Eagle."
  "Go ahead, Tina."
  "Got a few people outside of Harlowton you might
like to speak with."
  "Ten-four. We're about half an hour away."
  "We been down around Lake Lebo," the man
told Ben, after shaking his hand. "We had us a
pretty good little beginning here in Harlowton until that
goddamned Malone and his people showed up. They hit us
hard one afternoon. Killed about a hundred. All we
could do was grab what we could and run like hell."
  Ben had studied a map and liked what he saw
about this area of Montana. "Is there an airstrip
in this town?"
  "If you want to call it that. I reckon we could
clean it up. But it can't handle nothing big."
  "Twin-engine prop cargo planes?"
  "Oh, yes, sir."
  The man's name was Jim Tower and he was the
sterotype Western man. Tanned faced,
lean-hipped, and looked tough enough to handle double just about
anything that came his way.
  "You've heard about the outposts I'm setting up,
Jim?"
  "We still got pretty good radio equipment,
yes, sir."
  "You game for running an outpost here?"
  Jim smiled. "You just try me, Ben Raines."
  Ben halted the column at Harlowton and sent
word
to Cecil to start rounding up more settlers and
equipment. On the morning of the second day, he
spread a map out on the hood of a Jeep.
  "Here's what I have in mind, Jim. Down south,
Sheridan, Hardin, Miles City. Up here,
Roundup, Harlowton, Lewiston. Eventually, if
I live long enough, I plan to have anywhere from six
to twelve outposts in every state in this battered
country. It isn't going to be like the old days,
Jim. It's going to be run just like the
Tri-States. No handouts, no free rides,
justice comes down hard and swift and, in many
cases, final. It's going to smack of
autocracy, but until we get a grip on this
nation, that's the way-in my opinion-it's going to have
to be."
  "You don't hear me complaining, do you, Ben?"
  "What do you know about the present inhabitants of
Lewistown-if any?"
  "Trash. Outlaws. Scum. But there used to be
a pretty fair little airport there."
  "All right. Jim, you begin getting your
people settled in back here. Lewiston is close enough
to the battlelines to serve as our depot and as a
jumping-off place for us. We'll bring the birds in
there." He glanced at Corrie. "Let's go
clean it out."
  Ben left Jim and his people well armed and well
supplied. He also left behind as squad of
Rebels, with mortars and heavy machine guns, just in
case those outlaws Ben knew were still tagging along
somewhere behind him decided to hit the town.
  "We want Lewistown taken intact," he
told his people. "It's small enough for us to do that. The
airport is on the south side of the town; that's
another reason we want to use it for a depot. When
things start looking in our favor, we can always shift
the operation elsewhere. But not Great Falls. Jim
says it's full of creepies. And Corrie,
tell the PU!'S down at Sheridan to stand by. I
want Lewistown cleaned out by this time tomorrow. Let's
go!"
  Ben and the Rebels were knocking on the outskirts
of Lewistown at dawn the next morning.
  Standing between two rumbling main battle tanks,
Ben lifted powerful binoculars and looked over the
scene. What he saw was a bunch of
unshaven and dirty crud armed mostly with hunting
rifles and pistols, staring back at him from behind
crude roadblocks.
  "Dan, use loudspeakers and tell those men to lay
down their arms and stand aside if they want to live
to see tomorrow."
  Dan relayed the message, the cold, hard words
hurled electronically over the short distance.
  The outlaws" reply was expected. A volley
of gunfire erupted from the edge of town, the
bullets wanging and howling off the armor of the tanks.
  Ben lifted his walkie-talkie. "Let's show
them that we have just a tad more firepower than they, people.
About a minute's worth should be convincing enough."
  Ten tanks opened up with .50 caliber and
7.62 machine gun fire. Big Thumpers began
roaring. And the Dusters opened up with 40mm cannon
fire just as mortar crews began laying down
patterns.
  The roadblock had been rusted-out old cars and
trucks and concrete blocks and sandbags spread
along a five-hundred-foot line.
  When Ben ordered the firing stopped, there were great
gaps blown into the blockades. Vehicles and
nearby buildings were burning, and bodies
lay sprawled in bloody heaps all along the
line.
  Ben looked at Dan. "Dan, tell them we
are a very understanding group of people. . . but not very patient.
So if they want to live, they had best lay down
their weapons and stand aside."
  Bedsheets and pillowcases and handkerchiefs and
T-shirts began waving in surrender from that part of the
town that was visible to the Rebels.
  "That's better," Ben said. "I do so enjoy
dealing with reasonable people."
  Tina and Buddy looked at their father and rolled their
eyes.
  "Take your Scouts in, Dan."
  Lewistown was in Rebel hands.
  They numbered just over two hundred and they were a
scabby-looking lot. Ben walked up and down the
line, looking at the men and women, disgust evident
on his face. He could see fleas jumping about on
all of them.
  Chester sat on the front seat in Dan's
Jeep, not wanting to get too close to the
prisoners.
  "You ain't got no right to come a-bustin' up in here
and jist take over!" one mouthy man
popped off to Ben.
  Ben surprised the entire group by saying,
"You're quite correct. I have no right to do that. But we
did it. Now the immediate problem facing us is this: what
are we going to do with you?"
  "I be your woman, General!" a
not-unattractive female called from the lines.
  Ben looked at her. "Madam, I wouldn't touch
you with a sterilized crowbar."
  She glared hate at him.
  "I can do all sorts of happy things for a
sweetie like you," a man simpered, batting his eyes
at Ben.
  Ben shuddered and tried to ignore the laughter from
Tina and Buddy.
  Not accustomed to taking prisoners, Dan walked
up to Ben and whispered, "What in the world
are
we going to with them?"
  "I haven't the foggiest notion, Dan. Lock
them all down and get Jim Tower up here. We'll
dispose of the murderers and rapists and so forth; try
to talk to the others."
  "Paul Simpson"-Jim Tower pointed him out-
"he's the so-called leader of this pack of
filth. He's a cold-blooded killer." His
eyes turned flint hard. "He killed my mother and
father just after the bombs came . . . just for the fun of
it."
  "I shore liked the way they hollered and begged
"fore I kilt 'em, you pussy!" Simpson
shouted at him. He spat at Jim. "You ain't
got the guts to do nothin" to me, you puke."
  Jim did not reply. He reached into the back of
his pickup and took out a coil of rope and began
building a noose.
  Ben backed away. "You're in charge here,
Jim. Salvage the ones you think have any decency
left in
them ... do what you want to with the rest of them."
  Paul Simpson and twenty-one others of
Paul's gang were hanged that morning. No one
among Jim's group could positively state that
any of the others had ever killed or raped or
terrorized-although all knew they had,
  "What the hell do we do with the rest of them?" Jim
asked.
  "That's a problem we face all over the
country," Ben replied. "But I am certainly
glad I have someone else to help make those
hard decisions."
  "Who?"
  "You," Ben said with a smile.
  In the end, Jim turned the others loose,
unarmed, andwitha warning that if they ever showed their faces
in any area of the country that he and the Rebels
controlled, they would be shot on sight.
  "That ain't fair!" a woman said. "Wedin't
haveno choice in the matter."
  "That's crap!" Jim spat the words. "No one
forced you to follow Paul Simpson. You could have done
what the rest of us did: live as decently as
possible, plant gardens, open schools, try
to pull this country back together."
  She sneered and spat at him, verbally hanging
several uncomplimentary titles on him.
  "If you're in my sight one minute from now,"
Jim warned, slowly pulling a pistol from leather,
"I'll kill you."
  The freed outlaws and their followers scattered,
most leaving at a run.
Ben looked at Jim Tower. There was not a doubt in
his mind but that Jim would have killed the woman had she
pressed her luck. Ben had made another good
choice in picking people to help lead the nation out
of the ashes of devastation and near hopelessness. It was a
hard time-much harder than the opening and winning of the West
a century and a half back-for those earlier
pioneers, many of them, at least, once the mountain
men had blazed the way, had the support of friends and
family back East, and in many cases, the Army was
there to help out.
  Not so now. Now there was no one to turn to for help.
Now the help had to come from within, and it would take hard
men and women to reclaim the land and enforce the few
laws that Ben would hold over from the old system.
  Yes, Jim Tower and men like him would make it
work. Ben had met Jim's wife, and had been
impressed by her. She had worked right by her husband's
side, both of them sharing equally in the seeing to it that the
kids in their group had at least some schooling every day,
the planting and harvesting of small gardens . . . and
in the day-to-day struggle to survive in a land gone
hostile.
  The light in that long, long tunnel shone just a
bit brighter. The end was still years away, and Ben
doubted that he would ever live to see it. But it was
comforting to know that now they could at least see the light.
  Ben drove around to the airport. It could handle the
Rebels' twin-engine cargo planes with
no problem.
  Ben walked to the communications truck to talk
directly with Cecil and Ike.
  "I'm going to make Lewistown my jumping-off
pint, Cec. From here, the supplies can be trucked
up to Fort Benton. That's going to be about fifty
miles south of the present battle lines. Great
Falls is out; it's full of creepies, or so
I've been told. I don't have the time to check it
out now."
  "You want me to get some trucks rolling up
there, Ben?"
  "That's ten-fifty, Cec. Jim Tower, the man
who will be in charge of this section once we're gone,
tells me there are plenty of vehicles in this area
to more than adequately do the job. If I can pull
it off, by that I mean keeping the towns intact, I'd
like to have the other triangle of outposts be Fort
Benton, Shelby, and Harve."
  "You going to need some help up there."
  Ben hesitated. "I... don't know yet,
Cec. I just don't know what I'm up against. If
I need help, it'll be West and his men, I'm
thinking. We're beginning to spread ourselves pretty
damned thin leaving troops behind at every
outpost."
  "Ike is not going to like that."
  "Ike is needed where he is and Ike knows it.
He's got to stay there and see to the training of new
personnel. And speaking of that, how's it look?"
  "Fantastic, Ben. We'll be able to field
another battalion in a few months. Ben, I
believe, by God, we're really going to pull this thing
off!"
  Ben paused before keying the mike and replying. So
the feeling or sensation of victory was that infectious.
"Years of hard fighting ahead of us, Cec."
  "I'm champing at the bit to get back into the
field, Ben."
  "How's Patrice, Cec?" Ben brought his friend
back down to earth.
  Cec sighed. "Right, Ben. And Ike has a
family to look after. So you're telling me that you're
in the field and we're back here."
  "That's it. I'm doing what I do best, Cec.
And I have nothing to bring me back there."
  "And no one, you think," Cec added.
  Ben said nothing. Damned if he was going to discuss
Jerre. Only he and Jerre knew the cold
hopeless depths of their strange
relationship.
  "You still there, Eagle?"
  "Right here, Cec."
  "What do you need, Ben?"
  "Sharpen your pencil, Cec. It's going to be a
long list."
The supplies began coming in around the clock. Using
portable generators, the Rebels lighted the
runway and kept the small airport going
twenty-four hours a day.
  Ben had spoken to General Georgi Striganov
several times since arriving in Lewistown, and the
Russian's situation was getting grimmer with each
radio transmission. Malone seemed to have what
appeared to be an inexhaustable supply of men-kill
one and two took his place.
  "All right, Georgi," Ben radioed his onetime
enemy and now close friend. "I've got my CP
set up in Fort Benton and we're ready to strike.
Start shifting your troops. I'll take everything
east of Highway 223 to Harve. You take everything
west of 223 to Cut Bank."
  "That's ten-four, Ben. And be alert. We
captured several who stated a large group of
outlaws are moving up Highway 89
to attack you from the rear."
  "That would be Pete Jones and his bunch."
"That is correct. He has perhaps a thousand men with
him. The numbers vary with each man we
interrogate."
  "Any intel on Ashley and his bunch?"
  "We've lost them. I personally believe they
plan to attack from the north and try to box us in."
  "How are your supplies?"
  "More than adequate. We have factories in
Alberta and Saskatchewan working around the clock.
It's the sheer numbers of Malone's army that are
threatening to overwhelm us."
  "We're on the way, friend."
  "Looking forward to seeing you again, Ben."
  Ben ended the transmission and glanced up at
Dan. "Take Tina and her section, and Companies
C and D. You'll head up 87 to Harve. I'll
take Companies A and B and head up 223
to Chester."
  "Meg Callahan?" he questioned.
  "I'll take her with me. It will be interesting
to see her reaction when we get to the front."
  "You watch your back, Ben."
  "Don't worry," Ben assured him.
"I think Meg began to suspect she was under
observation some miles back."
  Dan stuck out his hand and Ben took it. "Nut
cuttin' time, Dan," he said with a grin.
  The Englishman faked a grimace. "What
marvelous expressions you Americans have."
  Fort Benton had been turned into a staging area.
It was from here that supplies would be trucked to the
battlelines. And just moments before Ben and Dan
were to jump off, forward recon teams radioed back
the grim news.
  Corrie broke it to Ben. "We're looking at
four or five thousand men, General. Well armed and
well trained and seeming to be highly dedicated and
motivated."
  Ben took it stoically. "It doesn't
surprise me. These are second-generation
race-haters. Their mothers and fathers belonged to every hate
group known to mankind back in die seventies and
eighties. They've had twenty-five years
to fine-tune their hate. Motivated? Oh, yes.
I can believe that. The sad thing is, the
government-back when there was a government- helped them
fuel their hate." Ben was very conscious of Meg's
hot eyes on him. It was not a very comfortable
sensation.
  "Whenever the government singles out so-called
minority groups and helps them over the majority,"
Meg said, "there is certain to be resentment. The
government should have stayed out of the private lives of
white people."
  Ben sighed heavily. There it was. "Your first
statement has a ring of truth to it, Meg. Your last
statement smacks of racism. But we put your
personal puzzle together some days ago."
  "I felt that the game was just about over," she
admitted.
  Beth took the weapons from the daughter of Matt
Callahan while the muzzle of Jersey's M16
was pressed against the woman's belly.
  "You going to kill me, General Raines?" Meg
asked.
  "No. You may be salvageable, Meg. We'll
just have
to wait and see about that."
  "You're living in a dream world, Ben Raines.
Are you even aware of why you and your Rebels can mix
the races and get along?"
  "You tell me, Meg."
  "Because you've got the cream of the crop,
that's why. A cottonpatch nigger or
welfare-raised slope or greaser wouldn't last a
day in this organization. Hell, they don't have the
mental capabilities to pass your goddamned
tests, so consequently they don't try."
  "People of any race who do not meet our
requirements are not accepted," Ben admitted.
"But that doesn't mean we wash them out and forget them.
You're only half right in your thinking, Meg."
  She cocked her head to one side and narrowed her
green eyes. "What do you mean, General?"
  "Those who don't make it on the first try are not
tossed to one side and forgotten, Meg. We have the
finest schools in all the world. There is no limit
to the number of times a person may try to join us.
Sometimes a man or women is just sized up by a
Rebel and admitted into our ranks and accepted without
question. If there are any doubts, they're sent
to school and evaluated. We don't distrust or
dislike people because of race, Meg. It's concepts and
ideas that contradict ours that we're wary of."
  She opened her mouth to argue and Ben waved her
silent. He turned to several Rebels. "Lock
her down in the old jail and keep her under guard."
  He watched as Meg was led away. She
offered no resistance, knowing the Rebels would not
hesitate to shoot her. "Corrie, give base a
bump. Tell Cecil to get West and his people up here
by bird. Land at Lewistown."
"Do we push on, General?" Dan asked.
  "Yes. Get your troops moving. Let's go,
people."
  They met their first resistance twenty miles
outside of Fort Benton and it was a stiff attack
by disciplined and well-armed troops of the survivalist
Malone's army.
  The two sides slugged it out for over an hour
until Ben's superior firepower finally drove the
racist survivalists back. But they retreated
grudgingly, fighting all the way, not giving up one
inch of ground easily.
  In his command post in the town of Conrad, Malone
listened to the field reports coming in.
  "Root hog or die time," Malone said to the men
gathered around him. "Raines; doesn't give up.
And don't sell his Rebels short. They may be
a mixture of niggers and other inferiors, but they can
fight, and fight damn well." Malone stood up
and walked to a wall map. He was stocky, and in
excellent physical shape, as were all the
men who were members of his organization. Malone's
hair was peppered with gray. He was the same age as
Ben, and had hated the man for years. No particular
reason was outstanding in his hatred; Malone just didn't
like anybody who had anything to do with those he considered
inferior . . . and that included anybody who was not
white, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant.
  Malone considered himself to be a very religious and
God-fearing man. He could point to passages in the
Bible which he interpreted to read that all nonwhites were
inferior. So were Jews and Catholics and so on and
so forth. Malone did not smoke, did
not drink, did not consort with loose women-he'd
been married for years-and only rarely cursed.
  When he did curse it was almost always directed
at either some inferior ... or Ben Raines.
  Back when civilization was the rule rather than the
exception, Malone was always organizing some
book-burning or book-censoring event. And anyone
who did not agree with his whacked-out views was a
"damn hairy hippie commie pinko Godless
queer!"
  Either that or they worked for some national network news
team and everybody knew those types couldn't be
trusted. Bunch of damned left-leaning
liberal punks.
  "Where is that pack of hoodlums that is supposed
to be joining up with us in this fight?" Malone asked.
  "Between Helena and Great Falls the last
report," he was informed. "But I believe they were
changing routes."
  "War certainly makes for strange bedfellows,"
Malone muttered.
  "That's profound, sir," one of his lieutenants
complimented him.
  "Thank you."
  Ben paused at the battle site long enough to make
a thorough inspection of the dead and wounded and their
equipment. Their weapons were well maintained, their
clothing well kept, and their boots in good shape.
Ben knew then he was up against a paramilitary
group that was well trained and motivated. He
squatted down beside the body of a young
man-maybe eighteen or nineteen years old.
Unlike so many of those the Rebels fought, this was a
nice-looking and clean-cut young man, from all
appearances the kind any father would be glad to see his
daughter date.
  Until the boy opened his mouth and started spouting his
political leanings.
  Ben stood up with a sigh that had nothing to do with the
fact that he was middle-aged. For Ben was in better
physical shape than most men half his age. He
had heard his son walk up and stand just behind him and
to his left.
  "If you're thinking that there but for the grace of God
go I, Father," Buddy said, "you are wrong."
  Ben turned to look at his son. "Oh?"
  "I learned how to think very early in life, Father.
And I have very little patience with those who are content
to stagnate in the murk of their minds."
  Ben smiled as he looked at his son. The boy
was built like a weightlifter and was as handsome as he was
strong. More importantly, Buddy could think. Just a
few more campaigns, Ben thought, and he'll be ready
to take over his own battalion. After that . . . his
Buddy knew he was being groomed, along with this
sister, Tina, to take over if something happened
to Ben.
  Ben shook those thoughts away. "Get your team up
the road, boy. Let's see what's happening
north of us."
  Buddy's team was stopped cold and thrown back
at the junction of 223 and Highway 366, about
fifteen
miles south of Chester. He pulled his people back a
mile or so and radioed the news to his father, calling
in the coordinates.
  Soon the air over his head was filled with 105
rounds from the vehicle-drawn howitzers. Buddy
corrected the range until the rounds were dropping in
right on target, clearing out a line five hundred
yards east and west of the highway. Buddy called for the
barrage to cease and waited for Ben to come up.
  It wasn't a very long wait.
  At Ben's orders, Corrie got General
Striganov on the scramble frequency.
  "Georgi, I just heard from Colonel Gray.
He and his people are stalled between Big Sandy and Box
Elder, on Highway 87. I'm pulled up
short about fifteen or so miles south of Chester.
I'm going to start spreading out and digging in.
Colonel West and his mercenaries should be here sometime
tomorrow. We will then attack on three fronts south of
your lines. You copy that?"
  "Ten-four, Ben. You will need my coordinates
and I shall need yours so our artillery will not
overshoot."
  They exchanged coordinates and agreed not to shift
present battlelines without notifying the
other.
  "Dig in," Ben ordered. "And bunker deep.
I expect mortars in very shortly. I want
forward observers on the high ground to spot enemy
mortar sites. The instant you get something, bump it
to me so we can lay in artillery. Captain
Ramos, have the 105's deployed well back, out
of mortar range. Get them stabilized for action."
  "Yes, sir."
  "The rest of you people get busy digging. I want
to see that earth fly. Get to filling bags for use
around
the pits. Move, people!"
  Malone did have mortar capability, but they were
light mortars and did not have nearly the range of
Ben's heavier pieces. But a suicide or sneak
attack was not out of the question . . . not when one was dealing
with any type of fanatic. And Malone was a
fanatic of the worst type.
  He actually believed his was a Holy War,
sanctioned by God.
  "About the same mentality as that nut over in
Iran," Ben muttered.
  "Beg pardon, sir?" Jersey asked.
  "Nothing, Jersey. You were just a gleam in
your daddy's eye when that disgrace went down."
  "How come we never heard of this Malone character before
now, General?"
  "He was busy building his (empire and army and
keeping his head down. I kriew about him. But I
never guessed he'd ever get this strong. That's what
I get for guessing, I suppose."
  "We'll deal with him," she said confidently, her
head just about even with Ben's chest. But the M16 she
held and could use with expertise made her as tall
as anybody in Ben's command.
  "You damn right, Jersey!" Ben said with a laugh.
"Especially if they mess with you."
  "Fuckin' A," she told him.
  Laughing, Ben began a quick inspection of the
digging-in of his people.
  The Rebels had just completed their bunkering in-some
of them with holes dug just deep enough to cover their
butts-when Malone's mortars began chugging.
  "Order everyone to stick their berets in their
pockets and get into helmets," Ben told
Corrie as the first volley of mortar rounds came
crashing in, jarring the ground.
  "FO'S calling out enemy positions," Corrie
said, after relaying the helmet orders.
  "Advise the artillery to adjust and commence
firing."
  The long range 105's soon silenced
Malone's mortars.
  "Get some night glasses up to the FO'S,"
Ben ordered. "As soon as it's dark, Malone's
people will be moving back up. Double the guards. Tell
them to be alert for any sneak attacks. Malone
might have knee mortars; if he does, he'll
sure use them if he can work his people in close enough.
Corrie, get Dan on the horn."
  "Coming under heavy attack, General," Dan
reported. "I don't know if we can hold. I
don't know if we should."
  "Explain that reasoning, Dan."
  "We'll plant Claymores and fall back.
Make it look like we're running for our lives and
suck Malone's people in. The Claymores will
shorten the odds against us."
  "Sounds good, Dan. Go ahead. Report back
to me when the operation is concluded. Corrie, have we
locked in on Malone's frequency?"
  "That's ten-four, sir. Fort Benton is
monitoring now. He's being very cautious on the
air."
  "He would be. Malone is a fanatic but he's
not a stupid man."
  "Troops from Base Camp One are on the
way, General. They'll be landing in Lewistown
around
midnight. Colonel West had an accident.
Broke his ankle. He will not be leading."
  "His XO taking over?"
  "Ten-fifty, sir. Third battalion of
Rebels coming
up.
  "Under whose command?" Corrie smiled. "Ike."
Ben opened his eyes as soon as the person drew
close to his sleeping bag. He closed one hand
around the butt of a cocked and locked .45, then
relaxed as he made out Corrie's shape.
  "What's up, Corrie?"
  "General Ike, sir. He pushed his people hard as
soon as they deplaned. He's at Fort Ben ton
now. Be here in about an hour."
  Ben looked at his watch. Three-thirty. He
unzipped and rolled out of his sleeping bag, pulling
on his boots and speed-lacing them. "Let's get
some coffee."
  "You'll really be glad ta see Ike,
won't you, General?" Corrie asked as they
walked to the coffee truck.
  "Oh, sure. I bitched about his coming up, but
I'm never going to keep Ike out of the field. He
loves it as much as I do and hates paperwork as much
as I do. Cecil, on the other hand, enjoys
administrative work, and is the best I've ever seen
at it. Ike and I go back a
long way, Corrie. I gather Malone didn't
try anything last night?"
  "No, sir. Nothing spectacular, at least.
Some of his people tried infiltration. They didn't make
it."
  Dan had successfully pulled off his fake rout
and the carefully planted Claymores had done the
rest. Dan's people had returned, deactivated those
Claymores that were not triggered, and counted the dead.
Malone had lost more than a hundred of his men, and that
was sure to be very demoralizing to the man who believed
he was engaged in a Holy War.
  Over hot coffee and cold field rations, Ben
waited for Ike and his battalion to arrive. He
knew Ike would exit his vehicle whooping and
hollering like a painted-up buck on the warpath, and
he was not disappinted. If any Rebels were
still in their sleeping bags when Ike arrived, they
weren't in there long. Ike jumped out of his Hummer
and hit the ground yelling.
  Ben and Ike shook hands and stood for a moment
grinning at each other. Then Ike's eyes narrowed
as he began making out the hastily dug bunkers.
  "Outnumbered again, huh, Ben?"
  "You got it, Ike. You know it's a tough crew
when Georgi and his people can't punch through. You and your people
want to catch some sleep?"
  The ex-Navy SEAL shook his head. Like
Ben's, Ike's close-cropped hair was peppered
with gray. "We slept on the planes and dozed some
on the way up here. Let's get something to eat and go
over this operation. Then we can kick some ass."
  Walking over to draw rations, Ben said, "How's
West?"
Ike laughed. "Mad as hell! It was one of those
freak accidents. He was stepping out of a shower stall,
stepped on a silver of soap, and went elbows over
butt on the floor. Busted his ankle. He was still
cussin' when we pulled out."
  "He probably wanted to see Tina as much as
getting into combat."
  "There is that to consider, for a fact." As
they approached the truck, Ike put out his hand.
"This is not some of Dr. Chase's goop we're
having for breakfast, is it?"
  "I buried that crap."
  "Good. I hope it doesn't poison the earth."
  Buddy and Captains Ramos and Brad joined
them, and after drawing their breakfast packages and
mugs of coffee, they walked over to a vehicle and
sat down on the ground. Ben pulled a map out of a
pocket of his BDU'S and Buddy shone a light on
it.
  "Dan and two companies are here," Ben said,
placing a finger about halfway between Box Elder and
Big Sandy. Georgi has swung his troops
around and is covering from Chester over to Cut Bank."
  Ben explained what Dan had done the previous
afternoon and Ike smiled with satisfaction. Ike was
Mississippi born and reared, but he despised
bigotry and all those who practiced it.
  "Where is Malone's CP'-ANYBODY know?"
  "Somewhere around Conrad. Right here." Ben punched the
map.
  "Pretty good move on his part," Ike said
"Things get too hot, he could easily duck into this
wilderness area just west of his location and it'd
take ten times the people we have to flush him."
"I'm thinking that's where he and his people live. I'm
recalling that back in the mid-eighties the government
had to go in there and arrest him a time or two."
  "That's right," Ike replied, looking up from the
map. "I remember this bunch now. So where do you
want me and mine, Ben?"
  "There is no way in hell you could effectively
spread your people out, north and south along Highway
89, to put Malone in a box. We just don't have
the troops. Ike, we've got a bunch of
outlaws and bikers and crud coming up behind us. Up
Interstate 15 or using county roads, we really
don't know what route they're taking. And we
don't know how many. It might be five hundred, it
might be fifteen hundred. Both Georgi and I
feel that Ashley and Sister Voleta have swung
north to try to box Georgi. But I think we've
pretty much nixed that by shifting Georgi over to this
other sector. I've left one frequency open so
Ashley can listen to us . . ."
  "And hope that he's arrogant enough to stop his
westward advance and cut south to butt heads with you,"
Ike correctly guessed.
  "That's it. We're a lot fresher than
Georgi and his people. They've been getting a pounding for
long enough. They don't need Ashley and Voleta
breathing down their necks."
  Ike glanced at Buddy. The young man caught the
glance and said, "I'm tired of being shifted around,
Ike. If I have to meet my mother in combat, so be
it. Though I am
of
her, that does not mean I am
for
her."
  "My, my," Ike drawled in his
Mississippi best.
"The boy shore do talk fancy, don't he?"
"Put it in your ear, Ike," Buddy told him.
After the laughter, Ben said, "I've already notified
Georgi of this move. Now then, we're going
to punch a hole through Malone's lines and cut his people
in two. When that is done, one battalion will turn
east to push those troops back and eventually link up
with Dan, the other battalion will push west, to link
up with Georgi."
  "Sounds good to me, Ben." "Sounds good . . . but
will it work?" "There is one way to find out, Father,"
Buddy said, standing up.
  "Oh?" Ben looked up at his son. "Do it."
  The Rebels struck Malone's lines at
dawn. There was nothing fancy about the attack; it was
straight out of a textbook. Tanks and mortars and
vehicle-drawn 105's laid down a smoke
pattern and the tanks led the advance, ground troops
coming in behind them.
  And when Ike and Ben said they were going in with the
troops . . . who among them was going to argue and
tell them they could not?
  Jersey and Beth.
  "Stupid!" Jersey said, a disgusted look on
her face.
  "Foolish and childish!" Beth said, a
reproachful look in her eyes. "It smacks of
typical male bravado."
  Ike beat it back to his own battalion and
left Ben to handle it.
  "Coward!" Ben called after him.
  Jersey and Beth bitched and pouted, with both
knowing it was not going to change Ben's mind. Ben leaned
up against a fender in the predawn darkness and let them
wind down.
  "You all through?" he finally asked.
  Jersey and Beth glared at him.
  "Get into body armor and helmets if you're coming
along with me. Corrie, Cooper, the same goes
for you. Gear up, we're moving out."
  The Rebels busted through Malone's lines at the
junction of 223 and 366. For almost a half hour
it was eyeball to eyeball and hand to hand along a
two-mile stretch of Montana countryside.
Cooks, medics, supply personnel, clerks, and
radio operators fought with pistols and camp axes
against the troops of Malone.
  Ben came face to face with a man who looked as
if he ate trees for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Out of ammo, the ape reversed his AKBLEDG and
swung it like a club at Ben. Ben ducked and
pumped the man's belly full of .308 rounds from
his old Thunder Lizard and kept on advancing.
  Jersey was tackled and brought down by a young man,
screaming out his hate. She gave him a knee in the
balls and a knife blade across his throat, grabbed
up her Ml6, and kept pace with Ben.
  Corrie's backpack radio took the brunt
of automatic weapons' fire, knocking her off
her boots. Cooper tossed a grenade into the nest
of hate mongers and hauled Corrie to her feet.
  Ben, Beth, Jersey, Corrie, and
Cooper found themselves a full two hundred yards
ahead of the main body of Rebels, looked around, not
liking their openness, and jumped into a bunker. Ben and
Jersey
and Corrie began heaving bloody dead bodies out
of the bunker-brought to their present state of final
unpleasantness by two Rebel-fired mortar rounds-
while Cooper righted the .50 caliber machine gun
and yelled for Beth to feed it.
  Then he turned the weapon on Malone's men and
let the big .50 rock and roll.
  A breech in the line had been opened and secured.
  "Cease fire!" Ben finally yelled. "Pass it
up and down the line. Cease fire!"
  The landscape was littered with the ghostly silence of the
dead and the moaning and crying of the badly wounded and the
dying.
  Ben used a walkie-talkie for communications
while Corrie waited for another radio
to replace the ruined backpack. "Approach the
wounded cautiously," he ordered his people. j8Work in
two-person teams. One medic with an armed guard
to watch for suicide tries. Bear in mind that these people
are fanatics."
  "I got a wounded man over here won't
let Jimmy work on him," Ramos radioed.
"He says no goddamn nigger is gonna play
doctor on him."
  Ben did not hesitate with his reply. "Then let
the son of a bitch die."
  "Our lines have been split," Malone was informed.
"Raines pulled in more troops from down south and
busted through. He's now controlling about a five-mile
stretch along Highway 2."
  Malone took the news stoically. There was no
point in ranting and raving about it. That would not
accomplish anything. Casualties?"
  "Unknown at this time, sir. But from first reports,
it's going to be at least several hundred. And the
Rebels have seized mortars and hundreds of
rounds."
  "Crabtree's men?"
  "Cut off."
  "Communications?"'"
  "Spotty. He's trying to keep it to a minimum
to avoid being electronically pinpointed by the
Rebels."
  "Damn Ben Raines and his black heart to the
pits of Hell!" Malone let a little of his temper
slip through as he walked to the wall map.
  Malone studied the map for a moment. "Tell
Crabtree to make a run for it. Head north and
try to link up with this Ashley person. He should be
between Willow Creek and Wild Horse. Tell
him to pull out now."
  "Yes, sir."
  "Get in touch with this Pete Jones person. ...
Is he a white man?"
  "No, sir. I mean, I don't think so. But
you can't tell by talking to him."
  "Probably one of those educated niggers.
They're the worst kind. Uppity. Don't know their
place." He looked again at the map. "Tell him
to attack Fort Benton. But don't do it head on.
Make a series of sneak attacks. That might
force Raines to shift some of his men back down
south."
  "Yes, sir." The aide hesitated. "Sir?
We have word that Meg is in jail in Fort Benton.
We picked it up by monitoring radio
transmissions."
  "She's too good a soldier to waste. Tell this
Jones
nigger to get her out of there and bring her to me. If he
can pull that off, that will be points in his
favor. I might give him a watermelon."
Laughing, the aide left the room.
  "Dan and his people have taken the airport at
Harve," Corrie informed Ben. "Tina says
Malone's men have bugged out."
  "Which direction?"
  "North."
  "They're going to link up with Ashley and
Voleta. Advise Ike of this development and
tell Dan to stay put. Also advise Fort
Benton to go to middle alert. Jones and his outlaws
just may try to attack there."
  Ben stepped out of the building he was using for a CP
and looked up and down the street. There was not much
left of the small town, certainly nothing
salvageable. It had been carefully picked over,
probably by Malone and and his people. He mulled
matters over in his mind, rubbing his chin as he thought.
  Stepping back into the building, he picked up the
mike and got Ike on the horn. "Ike, swing your
people around and head for Harve. Get with Dan and finish
Ashley and his bunch once and for all. I'm going
to hold what I have here until you're finished.
I've got a feeling Fort Benton is going to come
under attack and they might need our help.
We can be down there in about ninety minutes."
  "Ten-four, Ben. Rollin' now."
  "Corrie, locate Buddy for me and get him
over here."
His son was in the CP within moments. "Buddy, take
your Rat Team and an additional platoon and get
down to Fort Benton. Take heavy mortars and
heavy machine guns. If an attack comes from this
Jones person, it will more than likely come from the
south." He walked to the wall map. "Move
into position here," he said, pointing out the area.
  Buddy studied the spot. "Your thinking is that the
outlaws left Highway 89 and are moving north
on these old county roads?"
  "Yes. They had to avoid Great Falls and the
creepies. They know we're using 90 as a
supply route. That doesn't give them many
options. Get your people together and move out."
  Buddy hesitated, meeting Ben's eyes. "And
you intend to do what, Father?"
  Ben's smile was slight. "You're quick, boy.
What do you think I'm going to do?"
  "You're sending Ike east to link up with Dan, and
you used an open frequency doing it. Now you're
sending me south to Fort Benton. I think
you're giving this Malone person an opportunity that
will be too good friend him to pass up."
  "That's right, Buddy. I'm the bait that's sitting
on a nice sharp hook just waiting for the big fish
to swim by and grab it."
"What do you make of it?" Malone asked his staff.
  "I think Raines is taking a big gamble. I
think he's too confident and this may be our chance
to move in and cream him once and for all."
  But Malone wasn't sure. He had carefully
studied Ben Raines over the years. Had read, with
some distain, most of the man's actionstadventure
books, and knew the man was, among other things,
totally unpredictable when it came to unconventional
warfare. The man was as sneaky as a snake and
totally void of morals . . . why, he didn't
even attend church!
  "I don't know," Malone finally said. "He's
certainly leaving himself vulnerable. Whether by accident
or design is something I can't be certain of. I do
know this: before we commit to an assault against his
position, we'd better review the options very
carefully."
  "He only has two companies of Rebels with
him. We've got him outnumbered ten or
twelve to one."
"Ben Raines went into New York City
outnumbered
fifty
to one and came out victorious," Malone reminded
them. "I warned you all from the outset: do not
underestimate this man. Leave me, I've got
to think about this for a time."
  "You think Malone will take the bait?" Ramos
asked Ben.
  "I'm hoping. As badly as he hates me, I
can't see him letting an opportunity this good pass
by. Are the people getting into position?"
  "Quietly and quickly."
  "Now we wait."
  "How are we gonna do this?" Sweet Meat
asked Beerbelly.
  Everybody had linked up with the instincts of a homing
pigeon. Beerbelly, Satan, and Pete Jones
and his crew.
  "This is all Pete's show," Satan said. "And
I'm damn glad of it."
  "Why is that?" Bruiser asked.
  "Just to prove once and for all that a nigger can't do
nothin' right."
  Pete looked at the man. "If you feel that
way about it, you ugly ape, why did you link up with
us?"
  "So I can watch you make a fool out of yourself,
that's why. And when this is all over, I'm gonna
kill you!"
  "You ain't neither," Mac said. "I am."
  "Why don't you draw straws?" Pete
suggested. "Or
have some sort of raffle?"
  "Why don't we all settle down and plan out
the job ahead of us?" Lopez suggested.
  Mac muttered something about coons and spies and then
shut his mouth.
  "Because I'm waiting for the scouts to return and
give me a report on the town," Pete said
patiently. "Just as soon as they return, we can
map out strategy."
  "You sure you can spell that word?" Satan smiled
after the question.
  "Can you?" Pete popped back.
  "I got a suggestion," Wanda said. "Why
don't we all put the hard feelings behind us until
this job is over and Ben Raines is dead. We're
never gonna get anything done if we
don't work together."
  The majority of those biker leaders and warlords
gathered around agreed with that.
  "All right, all right!" Mac said, after receiving a
nod from Satan. "I don't like your black ass,
Pete, but you give the orders and we'll carry them
out."
  "Agreed," Satan said.
  "Fine." Smiling, Pete rubbed his hands together.
"Here come the scouts. Now we can put our heads
together and plan this operation."
  Crabtree met Ashley's column about
twenty-five miles north of Havre, just about the
time Ike's battalion was dismounting in Havre and
Ike and Dan were preparing to map out the campaign.
  "Beautiful!" Ashley said with a laugh. "We've
been monitoring Raines's radio transmissions
and
know that he's vulnerable. We've got him,
Crabtree. I'm finally going to put an end to Ben
Raines." He looked at the man. "You are
Southern, aren't you?"
  "Michigan," Crabtree corrected.
  "Oh. Well... no matter. You had no say
over your birthplace. Here's what we're
going to do . . ."
  The Rebels had the finest and most sophisticated
radio equipment in the world, and given the least little
break of luck they could track the movements of any
enemy. Just as they were now doing with Crabtree.
  "Crabtree has linked up with Ashley and
Voleta," Corrie told Ben seconds after the
communications truck relayed the news to her.
  "I was hoping he would do that," Ben said with a
smile. "Now let me put myself in that arrogant
bastard's boots for a moment. We've
deliberately been transmitting on an open
frequency, so Ashley knows I've split my
command and I'm sitting here with about two hundred and
fifty people. If I were he, I would drive straight
south and hook up with Highway 2, then as fast as
I could, I'd head for my enemy's position. The
enemy being me. I would smash into my enemy's
position with a frontal attack, depending on sheer
numbers to completely overrun the position." He
winked at Jersey. "How's that sound to you,
Jersey?"
  "Frankly, not worth a shit, General! Are you
tryin' to get us killed?"
  Ben laughed and patted her on the
shoulder. "Relax, Jersey. This place is going
to be filled with
people, but those people ain't gonna be us."
  "Sir?"
  "Malone has just given the orders to move out,"
Corrie told Ben.
  Ben glanced at his watch. "All right, people. It's
going to take Malone and Ashley about an hour and a
half to get here. That'll put them here at sixteen
hundred hours; with about two and half hours of good
daylight left. We've got an hour to set things
up and a half hour to get into position. Let's get
to work."
  "You in position, Ike?" Ben radioed on
scramble.
  "Ten-four, Ben. Me and Dan are about ten
minutes behind. Bogies should be passing through Rudyard
right about now."
  "That's ten-four, Ike. Malone's main force
is just below us. They used 336 to travel east, and
they'll be cutting north at any moment. How's it
looking on your end, Georgi?"
  "Fantastic, Ben!" the Russian radioed.
"I can't believe our luck. They're taking the
bait like a hungry shark."
  "What is your position, Georgi?"
  "Just approaching Galata. Tliat will put us
eleven miles from your position in about five
minutes."
  "That's ten-four. Say a prayer for luck,
boys and girls. We just might break the back of the
snake this afternoon."
  From a few hundred feet out, the town of Chester
looked as though it had an armed Rebel in each
window. What the buildings and houses contained
were the bodies of Malone's men who had been killed
earlier that day, stiffly and permanently grinning and
grimacing in puffy death, the staring eyes seeing
nothing-so far as mortals have been able to ascertain.
  Ben lifted his walkie-talkie. "Mortar
crews, when they get within range, start dropping a
few rounds in on them. But keep it wide as if
we're unable to get on target. We want them
close enough to smell their hate before we open up with
everything we've got."
  And that was plenty. Some of the rear walls of
buildings had been knocked out in order that tanks
could hide, the muzzles of their cannon lowered to the
max-they would be firing at almost point blank
range.
  The Duster and Big Thumper crews and many
machine gun crews were hiding in the ditches and behind the
ridges and in the underbrush at both ends of the town.
Claymores had been planted alongside the
roads, and every Rebel had his or her pockets
bulging with grenades, for this was going to be very close
up work.
  Not to mention one hell of a gamble on the part of Ben
Raines.
  From the top of the tallest structure in town, a
Rebel lifted his walkie-talkie. "I have them in
sight, and there is a bunch of them, General."
  "The more the merrier," Ben said brightly.
  "Everybody got what they're supposed to do?"
Pete asked the group.
  "We make a bunch of noise upriver from the
town," Bass said.
  "Create a diversion, yes," Pete acknowledged
patiently. "Fire off lots of rounds, toss a
couple of grenades . . . and keep it up for
several minutes. Give us time to get into position.
That way, the Rebels in town will have to split their
forces to see what is going on."
  "This better work," Mac warned.
  "You'll never know if it doesn't,"
Pete said with a smile.
  "Huh? What you mean?"
  "If it doesn't work, Mac, you'll be dead!"
  "Fire!" Ben gave the signal to attack as the
trucks entered the perimeters of the Rebels.
  The first thirty seconds of the ambush turned the
road into a hideous deathtrap for the advancing armies
of Malone and Ashley. The first ten trucks entering
the town from both east and south, with each truck carrying
twenty men, were torn apart by the deadly shards from
Claymores, heavy machine gun fire, and the hot
balls of fire from Big Thumpers.
  When the men of Malone and Ashley realized- much
too late-that they had been neatly suckered into an
ambush, they attempted to turn around and run for their
lives. When they did so, they found escape routes
blocked by Striganov's people who had cut across
country in all-terrain vehicles, and Ike and
Dan from the east, the Russian and the Rebels
advancing ruthlessly.
  The tiny, nearly ruined town became the
Waterloo for Malone and Ashley. But as Ben
suspected and
would later prove to be correct, neither Ashley
nor Malone would be counted among the dead.
Unlike Ben, those two did not lead men
into battle, they only directed from a distance.
  There was no place for the badly shaken survivors
to run, and death was waiting impatiently to take them
into cold bony arms.
  Rebels began popping up out of hiding places
to hurl grenades into the confused mob. Crossfires
were the order of the day. Booby traps were the order of the
bloody afternoon; every door seemed to be wired
to explode.
  And then the ultimate plan of Ben came true:
Malone's men and Ashley's men began shooting at
each other, each one believing the other was the enemy.
  Those who did escape the town were cut down by an
almost solid line of fire from Ike, Dan,
andGeorgi Striganov and his army of Russians and
Canadians. Perhaps forty percent of the attackers
managed to escape, most by running into the
countryside, some by taking Highway 223 to the south
and a gravel road to the north.
  The fight was over in twenty minutes.
  "Cease fire," Ben ordered, and gradually the
area fell silent except for the moaning and screaming
and crying and begging of the wounded. And they lay several
deep in places, piled on top of one
another. The streets of the town were littered with the dead
and wounded. Burning trucks added fire and smoke
to the confusion and the screaming.
  The Rebels did not have to be told what to do. This
scene had been played out many times over the long
and bloody years. They began gathering up weapons
and ammo, stripping the boots from the dead. The
Rebels wasted nothing; everything that could be later used
was taken, cleaned up, inventoried, and warehoused in
any one of a dozen locations around the battered nation.
  The wounded were cared for, the Rebels and Rebel
supporters first, regardless of the severity of the wounds.
Ben Raines put the well-being of his people first, the
well-being of his enemies last.
  Ben had once told a wounded outlaw, who was
loudly protesting that he was being denied treatment while
Rebels, not wounded nearly as badly, were getting
aid, "I am not the Red Cross, punk."
"It's all gone to shit!" Pete was notified by a
badly shaken biker who was manning the radio.
"Malone and them others comin' from the east was damn
near wiped out by Raines up near the border."
  It did not take Pete more than a few
seconds to recover from his shock and begin to issue
orders. "Call the people back. Let's
get out of here. Abort the mission."
  "Do what to it?"
  "Call it off."
  No one needed to be told that twice. As the
news of the ambush north of them spread, the bikers and
warlords and outlaws went into a near panic getting the
hell gone from the vicinity of Fort Benton.
  But as they headed back south, to eventually cut
west and then . . . who the hell knew where,
Pete's mind was working frantically. This might not be
as bad as he'd first thought. Perhaps something good could be
salvaged from the ruins of what remained. Yeah, it just
might work. Hell, he could make it work!
  With Pete Jones in charge, he thought, a smile
cutting his lips.
  Ben stuck out his hand and the Russian shook it.
"Good to see you again, Georgi."
  "The pleasure is mine, Ben. But I have to say
I was holding my breath there for a moment. If this had
not worked, we would have all been in a hard bind."
  "Tell me about it. I wasn't breathing two
times a minute for a while there."
  Ike and Dan walked up and shook hands with the
Russian. Dan said, "Neither Ashley nor
Voleta are among the dead. At least not
so far."
  "Nor is Malone," Georgi added.
  "That doesn't surprise me. Ashley and
Voleta seem to lead charmed lives." Ben looked
around him. "Where is Buddy and his Rat Team?"
  "I told him to stay in Fort Ben ton." Dan
said. "The main reason is to keep him away from the
scene should we find his mother's body," he added.
  "I'm sure you didn't fool him."
  "Oh, I'm certain of that. But he didn't question
the orders."
  "We're going to be here working the better part of the
night," Ben said, looking around him. "Ike, take
your battalion and go after Malone. Before dark, shut
it down. Resume the chase at first light and bump
me as soon as you make contact."
  With a smile and a sloppy salute, Ike
trotted off, hollering for his people to mount up.
  "We've broken the back of the monster," Ben
said. "But the head and teeth are still venomous. They'll
never fall again into what happened today, so tomorrow morning
begins the slow and dan-
gerous job of hunting them down and killing them.
Let's mop it up here and get some rest. We
shove off in the morning."
  In his command post in Conrad, Malone was still not
functioning at one hundred percent. The shattering
news of losing more than half of his men had numbed
him.
  He had worked for years to build a pure Aryan
nation, weeding out the inferiors, with an army of men who
would spread his message across the land.
  Now it was devastated, destroyed, what was left
of his army scattered and demoralized, stumbling around
in the darkness like lost children.
  All because of Ben Raines and that bunch of
inferiors he had gathered around him, clinging like
bloodsucking parasites to his every utterance.
  Then the thought came to him that while Ben Raines's
Rebels might be made up of inferiors, they had
sure kicked his ass and had done it soundly.
  "More men coming in, sir," an aide told him,
jarring Malone out of his bitter reverie.
  With a sigh, Malone heaved himself out of the chair,
forcing himself into action. "Have the women and children been
evacuated caret was
  "Yes, sir. Most of them have been moved toward
the wilderness area and the rest will be clear of the town
by dawn."
  "How do the men look?"
  The aide hesitated, unsure of how to put his
answer. He plunged ahead. "Scared, sir. And
badly disoriented. More than a few are in some sort
of shock. Babbling incoherently."
Malone suddenly snapped out of his depressed
mood, if not completely, at least enough to once more
take command and make the necessary decisions. "We can't
spend any time here. Ben Raines will be after us very
soon. Treat the more severely wounded and then get
everybody onto what trucks we have left. Move
them into the wilderness. Go, Carl. We'll
rebuild; that's a promise."
  When Carl had gone, Malone turned toward the
east and muttered, "And I'll kill you someday,
Raines. And that, too, is a promise. For I have
God Almighty on my side, you heathenistic
nigger lover!"
  "How come you look so worried, Pete?" Mac
asked. The outlaws had made camp deep in the
timber, fixed their meager dinner, and doused the fire.
"Ben Raines likes coons. He'd probably
pat you on your bald head and make you a colonel
or something in his army."
  Pete sighed. "Once again, you have your information
all twisted, you redneck. Ben Raines
doesn't give a damn about a person's skin
color."
  "That's what I just said!"
  "No, what I meant is this: Ben Raines will
shoot me just as fast as he would you."
  "Well, that don't make no sense, Pete, not
when you takes into consideration that all you people look
alike."
  Muttering under his breath, Pete picked up his
blankets and moved far away from Macationally.
Ignorance could be catching.
Meg Callahan had asked to see a doctor; said
she was feeling really rotten. The Rebel
hesitated, then reached for the keys. He figured that
since she hadn't caused any trouble up to now,
maybe she really was sick. For a fact, she
didn't look so hot. He opened the cell door
and Meg jammed stiffened fingers into his throat,
smashed his nose with an expert blow, and then using the
heel of her hand, drove the cartilage up into his
brain. The Rebel was dying as he hit the floor.
  She belted his sidearm around her waist and picked
up his Ml6. She slipped out into the hallway and
worked her way to the front office. Another Rebel
sat at a desk, reading an old
magazine.
  Damn!
  She turned and slipped toward the back. If the
luck was with her... It was, and the back door was
unlocked. Meg Callahan slipped out into the
night. Even if someone did spot her, she
probably wouldn't be recognized, since she was still
wearing her Rebel tiger-stripe BDU'S. She
felt pretty good. She had a fully loaded
sidearm with two extra clips for it, and a fully
loaded M16, with a half-dozen clips for it on the
web belt. Now to find out where Ben Raines was and
get to him.
  So she could kill him. All in the name ofandfor
Malone.
  Ashley and Sister Voleta and their remaining
troops had beat it when the frantically broadcast
news of the ambush reached them. Ashley and Voleta
had halted their personal troops at the junction
of a gravel road leading south, about ten miles
outside of Chester.
When they heard the news, they split. At the next
intersection, they turned west and both almost had
collective heart failure when the next road
they came to was 223 and they realized they
were only a few miles south of Ben Raines. They
sped on across, cut south at the next intersection,
and then once more west when they came to a sign telling
them that Conrad was sixty miles.
  Meg had killed another Rebel with a club and
stolen her Jeep. She knew this country and didn't
need road signs or maps to tell her where she
was. She wound around a series of county roads
until coming to 218 and followed that into Conrad. She
arrived just moments after Ashley and Voleta and was
stunned to see the place nearly deserted.
  "I don't understand!" she shouted at Malone.
  "My dear, listen to me. I'm overjoyed that
you're still alive and free of that jail. But we've
been badly mauled by the Rebels. We've lost,
conservatively speaking, sixty percent of our
troops. And it took about fifteen minutes for
Raines to do it," he added with the bitter copper taste
of defeat on his tongue.
  "We're going back to the wilderness?"
  "We have no choice. Raines won't come in there
after us. Even that arrogant, Godless dictator
knows that would be a foolish thing to do. We'll
rebuild, Megan. We have time and God on our
side."
  Ashley and Sister Voleta exchanged glances
at that. Even though the both of them were a couple of
bricks shy of a load, they knew they didn't
want to get tied up with some religious
fanatic... he might pull something like what
happened years back down in Jonestown. And
Ashley had never acquired a taste for poison.
"You're welcome to join us, friend," Malone told
Ashley. "Since your ranks are free of
inferiors, you obviously are a man who believes
in maintaining the purity of the races."
  "Oh, quite, sir. But I fear we must push on
at first light. We're going to gather more troops and
strike again at Ben Raines."
  Malone was pleased to hear that. This Ashley fellow
seemed to be a man with some breeding behind him and was quite the
gentlemen, but that woman with him looked like a witch.
  Which she was-a practicing witch of the Dark
Arts, known as the Ninth Order.
  "I wish you luck," Malone said.
  "Thank you."
  "They've bugged out, Ben," Ike radioed from the
deserted town of Conrad. "They left a trail that
a fool could follow. Leads straight toward the
wilderness area."
  "That's ten-four, Ike. Do not pursue.
Repeat: do not pursue. We'll deal with them on a
later date. Hold what you've got. We'll
make Conrad our westernmost outpost. I'll start
tanks and troops out within the hour. Let's clean out
Great Falls."
  Leaving a contingent of Rebels at Haver, busy
cleaning up the airport, Ben and his people pulled out about
an hour behind the tanks, taking Highway 2 over
to Shelby-which turned out to be only a burned-out
shell of a town-and then cut south on the Interstate
down to Ike's position at Conrad. There, at Fort
Benton, he sent Buddy to take his Rat Team,
with one extra platoon of Rebels and a couple
of Dusters, on ahead to check out Great Falls.
  "Used to be a city of sixty thousand," Ben said,
checking the maps. "It might hold anywhere from five
hundred to five thousand creepies."
  "Considering the sparseness of this country- speaking in
terms of human population, that is," Dan said,
"I would opt for less than a thousand of the buggers."
  "Yeah, I'm with Dan," Ike said. "This is
some of the most beautiful country in the world, but it always
was kin da short on people."
  Ben glanced at his watch. "Buddy should
be there in about half an hour. Corrie, tell him
to take the airport first, if possible, and stay
put. We can fly supplies in from Lewistown if
the runways are operable."
  "You reckon this Callahan woman linked up with
Malone?" Ike asked.
  "Yeah . . . probably."
  "I think we all know where our next campaign
is going to be," General Striganov said, "and it
damn well better be during the summer or early
fall."
  "Yes," Ben agreed softly. "And Beth has
done some figuring on that place."
  "Approximately one hundred and
seventy-five miles long, from the Canadian
border down to Mullen Pass, near Helena.
Approximately one hundred and thirty-five
miles deep; that's over to the Idaho line. That's
roughly twenty-four thousand square miles."
  "Holy shit!" Ike said.
  That pretty well summed up everybody's
feelings.
  "The airport at Great Falls is secure,"
Buddy radioed back to his father. "We met some
resistance, but it was put down."
  "Runways?"
  "Oddly, they are clean and in good shape. And we
have taken possession of half a dozen cargo
planes, which are also in good shape."
  The people who had gathered around the radio in Mai
one's old CP in Conrad all exchanged quick
glances, none fully understanding what this latest
development meant; but all of them with the same thought,
and it was an unsettling one.
  "Any estimates on the strength of the creepies
in the city?" Ben asked.
  "Only a guess, Father," Buddy radioed.
"I would put them at about seven hundred and
fifty."
  "Based on what information?"
  "Six planes with a capacity of thirty-five
human beings. That comes to two hundred and ten people being
transported in each month, with each person
weighing an average of one hundred and sixty
pounds. Say fifty pounds of eatable flesh per
person comes to just over ten thousand pounds to consume.
We know that the creepies eat only about three times
per week. That would give each of the seven hundred
fifty Night People in the city approximately
fifteen pounds of food a month."
  "Holy Jesus Christ!" Ike blurted, then
grimaced and belched.
  "His arithmetic is correct," Beth said.
  "Thank you both," Ben said, his breakfast lying like
a lump in his belly.
  Dan opened a window for a breath of fresh air.
  "Hold what you've got, Buddy," Ben
radioed. "We're moving out within the hour."
  "That's ten-four, sir," the son acknowledged.
  Ben did not ask if his son had taken any
prisoners, or if he had, what to do with them. The
Rebels did not take adult Night People
prisoners. That was standing operational procedure.
  "The slimy, hideous bastards are setting up
outposts around the nation!" Dan said, turning from the
window, his tanned face mirroring the inner shock and
disgust of the man.
  "Yes," Ben said. "That is my feeling."
  "How many fronts are we going to have to fight,
Dad?" Tina asked.
  Ben cut his hard eyes. "Every one that rears up
before us. Everything that stands between us and rebuilding a nation
of as much civility that is possible in the times we're
living in. Mount up and move out, people."
The Rebels made the run down to Great
Falls in an hour and a half. Ben spread out his
tanks, mortar carriers, and vehicle-drawn
105's facing the east. Planes carrying
supplies from Lewistown had already begun landing at
the airport by the time Ben arrived.
  Standing on an overpass, Ben studied the city through
binoculars for a long time. "A lot of history about
to go up in flames," he was heard to mutter. He
turned to Corrie. "Bring it down, Corrie."
  She spoke into her mike and the relentless and
destroying thunder erupted from the guns of the Rebels.
The artillery dropped in WP, HE, and
napalm. The gunners took the outer perimeters of the
city first, setting it blazing. Then they began walking
in rounds, from the outside of the circle inward, offering
no creepie any avenue of escape.
  The guns roared and spat and thunked their deadly
rain all that morning. By noon, the city was a blazing
valley of fire and smoke and destruction.
  "Shut it down," Ben ordered. "Troops up
to seal it off south and east."
  The Missouri River prevented any escape
north and west.
  Small-arms fire began popping and cracking as
Rebels brought down any creepies who
had escaped the artillery barrage and now ran in
sheer panic from the flames of the ravaged city. They
did not run far.
  By two o'clock that afternoon, there were only the sounds of the
flames consuming the city, walls of buildings
collapsing, and the occasional sounds of explosions as the
flames hit pockets of gas or cached
supplies of ammunition.
  Ben had dispatched teams of Rebels to build
fire
breaks around the city, to keep the flames from spreading
into the countryside.
  "We'll wait here until the fires have burned
down to where they present no danger of spreading,"
Ben told his people. "Then we'll mount up and move
south to Helena." He glanced at Buddy. "I
want you to take your Rat Team and a platoon down
to Helena. Take this route." He traced it with a
finger. "That will take you down to a little place called
Canyon Ferry. Cross over and work your way
north from there up to the airport at Helena and
secure it. Crush any resistance-any
resistance-on your way there. Shove off in the
morning. Considering the country you'll be going through, and the
condition of the roads, it'll probably
take you a good two days to reach your objective.
We'll pull out on the morning of the second day.
It's about a hundred-mile Interstate run for us.
We'll be sitting on the outskirts of Helena when
you make your first thrust at the airport. Any
questions?"
  "No, sir."
  "Get supplied and ready to move."
  "After Helena?" Ike asked.
  "Butte and Bozeman. We bring them all
down. And we do it in every state. I am not going
to give the creepies a place to hide en masse.
We'll make a complete circle and end the
campaign back up at Conrad. We should be
finished by mid-June. Then we strike at
Malone's people in the wilderness area."
  "When do we start flybys?" Colonel Rebet
of Striganov's army asked.
  "Not until we've finished this campaign and are
geared up and ready to move into the area. Flybys
will be a tip-off for Malone. And something else:
we've still got those thousand or so outlaws roaming
around this state, and then there is Matt Callahan
to be reckoned with. We're going to have a very busy
summer, people. It's going to be anything but a
cakewalk."
  "How about outposts in the western parts of
Montana?" Ike asked.
  "I don't know, Ike. It's rough country.
I'm thinking that after we clean out Malone and his
crud, I just may let the animals have it. All the
way from the Canadian border down to Butte. We
may try to set up something around Dillon. We'll
just have to wait and see how things work out." He turned
to Striganov. "How are things up in your part of
Canada now that Malone has been, ah,
relocated, so to speak?"
  "Getting back to normal. I spoke with home
base this morning. There's been no more trouble. Ben?
We're in this to the finish. We're not going to go off and
leave it half-done. My people are under your command.
It's going to be a big, big job."
  Ben folded his map case. "Well, let's
get to it, then."
  Beerbelly was unhappy and getting more so with each
passing day. Pete Jones was getting delusions of
grandeur and he was going to get them all killed if
he followed through with his plans.
  Beerbelly had not been an outlaw all his
life, but he had a full decade of
outlawing behind him. He'd been unhappy with it for some
months . . . No, that
wasn't entirely the truth. He had, for some
months, begun to realize that Ben Raines was not going
to be stopped. Raines was going to bring law and order
back to the battered nation. And he was, to put it quite
simply, going to kill anybody who stood in his
way. Ben Raines, Beerbelly knew, did not
give a damn for constitutional rights. He was like an
unstoppable steamroller, and if you were dumb enough to stand in
his way, then, hell, you deserved what you got-and that
was to be flattened like a damn pancake.
  "What's the matter with you, Beer?" one of his
cohorts in outlawing asked. "You been walkin'
around with your lower lip draggin' the ground for
two-three days."
  "It's over, Hoss. It's all over."
  "What's all over?" the man nicknamed Hoss
asked, sitting down beside Beerbelly. Nobody
knew Beerbelly's real name.
  "U."
  Hoss looked at him. "What'd you been tokin'
on, Beer? You sound plumb pro-found."
  "Hoss . . . what'd you think about Pete's
plans for us?"
  "Well, I don't think too much of "em,
to tell the truth about it. I think Pete's done
bit off more than he can chew. What about you?"
  "I feel the same way. The other guys?"
  "Oh, they all for it. They're gonna ride
into Butte and strike a deal with those turrible
cannibals and together they're gonna whup Ben
Raines."
  "So they think."
  "Yeah. You got that right, man." He cut his
eyes to
Beerbelly. "Beer, there ain't nobody never
gonna whup Ben Raines."
  "That's exactly my point, Hoss. Anybody
with any sense knows it's over for guys like us. Oh,
there's always gonna be people foolish enough to try Raines.
People like Malone and that Ashley person. Raines will be
fighting from now on out. But he ain't gonna be
fightin" none of me."
  "What are you gonna do, Beer?"
  "I'm gettin' out, Hoss. I'm gonna check
it all to them. I'm givin' it up. I'm gonna
find me a woman that wants to settle down and
raise me a garden and some hogs and chickens and so
forth. I might have me some kids."
  Hoss mulled that around for a few seconds. "You
want some company, Beer?"
  "Yeah. That'd be nice."
  "I know a couple of ladies over in Central
California. They ain't the best-lookin' women in
the world, but then, good God, look at us. We sure
ain't win no prizes neither."
  "Tomorrow, we just sort of lay back and let the
others get on around us. Then we cut west. Some
miles behind us, we cut off our hair, shave, and
find us some duds like normal people wear. We'll find
us a pickup truck somewheres, get it runnin', and
stash the bikes in the back. How's that sound?"
  "Better and better, Beer."
  The Rebels resupplied at Great Falls and
rested for a day. They pulled out at dawn, heading for
Helena on Interstate 15, for the most part,
following the
Missouri River down south.
  The Rebels spotted no one as they made their
way south, but all could feel eyes on them. They were
not hostile eyes, just curious and wary. By now, most
in the state knew Ben Raines and his Rebels were
working the area from top to bottom. But those watching just
couldn't be sure this was Ben Raines and his
army, for Malone's army looked pretty much as this
one . . . and Malone was hostile to the core.
Plus being a nut. So they would wait and see. Then
they would step out and greet Ben Raines.
  Ben pulled his people off the Interstate at a rest
area about thirty miles north of Helena and stood
them down for the rest of that day. Buddy had made
better time than expected and was in position to strike
at the airport located on the east side of the
city.
  "This won't be as easy as Great Falls," Ben
admitted, once more studying maps spread over the
hood of a vehicle. "We'll be coming in on the east
side of the city; however, that will be a break for Buddy.
If he runs into trouble, we'll be practically
sitting in his lap. Ike, the next exit down the
road leads to just west of the city. When we shove off
in the morning, you take your battalion out about an
hour earlier and head down there and get in place.
Georgi, you and your bunch take this 453 and work on
down south of the city. We'll start the bombardment at
oh-eight-hundred."
  "Are we heading straight for Butte after
Helena?" Dan asked.
  "No. I think we might be expected
to do that, and I don't like to do the expected. We'll
take Highway 12 over the Continental Divide
and bring Missoula
down. We'll be moving through some rough country, so
make sure the tanks are boomed down tight. On
the way back, we'll checkout Anaconda and then
strike Butte and Bozeman. We'll head on
over to Matt Callahan's territory and put an
end to him while we're at it, then head back
to Conrad and prepare for the campaign in the
wilderness."
  "This is one state that's going to be nice and clean
when we're through with it," Tina observed, then added,
"In a manner of speaking, that is."
  The attack came as no surprise to the Night
P. They all knew that Ben Raines was driving
hard to rid the earth of them; all knew, through a
nationwide communications linkup, where Ben and the
Rebels were, most of the time. But owing to the very
nature of their miserable existence, the creepies had
to band together to survive. They had to have adequate
storage facilities for the human beings they feasted
on, and had to have airport access, which meant they had
to live in the larger towns. Their way of life had
predoomed them ... as long as Ben
Raines lived. So the top priority of the Night people
was finding out some way to get rid of Ben Raines.
They would grab at any straw.
  They accepted the offer of Pete Jones and his
outlaws. Just as those trapped in the ravaged city of
Helena now prepared to die under the guns of Ben
Raines.
  As Pete and his motley gathering-minus
Beer-belly and Hoss and several others-were racing
toward Butte to link up with the Night People there,
to plan some skullduggery, Ben was giving the orders
to destroy yet another bastion of the macabre, the
hideous, and the Godless.
  "Fire!" he ordered, and the guns thundered, just as
Buddy and his Rat Team were striking hard at the
defenders at the airport.
  Butte began burning.
  Ben kept up the pounding rain of death for two
hours, using the same tactics he and the Rebels
had perfected while destroying other cities. The
outer limits of the city were set blazing and the artillery
began walking in rounds toward the center, from all
sides, effectively sealing the city from escape.
  Buddy and his team faced much stiffer resistance this
time, for the Night People knew they had but two
options: live or die. They knew there was no
hope of surrender; Rebels shot them on sight.
  But slowly, with a curse on their lips, the
creepies were forced back and out of the airport under the
relentless advance of Buddy and his command.
  Then the Rat Team began the dangerous job of
clearing each room of each building of the airport
complex. It was cautiously walking up and down
darkened and stinking hallways, not knowing when or if a
black-robed maniac would come hurling out of a room,
foul-smelling with human blood still on their lips,
screaming and cursing, with an auto-matci weapon in
his or her hands, bent on killing a hated Rebel
of Ben Raines's army.
  It was slow and nerveracking and sweaty, deadly
work. But Buddy and his team had worked it out to an art,
and the airport was cleared and secure in an hour.
Over the pounding of artillery, Corrie informed Ben
of the seizing of the airport and the clearing of it. He
nodded his head in acknowledgment and once again lifted the
binoculars, studying the rapidly destroying city from
a vantage point on an overpass of the
Interstate.
  Ben continued the pounding of the city for another hour,
until the city itself was obscured by the smoke
from hundreds of fires.
  "Cease firing," he toldCorrie. "Sniper
teams move closer and knock them down as they try
to run."
  "Dan reports that once again we have rescued
Mr. Deason and some of his people," she said.
  Ben looked at her. "Who?"
  "The man from Billings. That one who headed the
group called Peace Without Violence."
  "Ahh, yes. That one. It didn't take him
long to get his butt back in the stewpot again, did
it? Is that loudmouth woman with him?"
  "Yes, sir. Dan is bringing them up here now."
  Ben sighed heavily. "How wonderful for me. I
get another cussing. My day wouldn't be complete
without that."
  But it was a very different Sybil and Morris who
once more stood in front of Ben.
  "They were about to eat us," Sybil said. "We were
scheduled to be devoured tomorrow."
  "It was quite disheartening," Morris said. "Not
to mention disgusting."
  "I can imagine," Ben said, eyeballing the
pair. "Were they going to serve you up as hors
d'oeuvres or as the main course?"
  "How crude!" Morris said.
  "You're a vile, despicable man," Sybil
told him.
"How can you joke at a time like this?"
  "Because I'm looking at a couple of jokes.
Where the goddamn hell do you people think you are? At a
reception before a recital by a string quartet?"
  Morris and Sybil and what remained of their little
group stood in silence and glared at Ben.
  Ben finally sighed and shook his head. "What the
hell am I going to do with you people? I turn you loose
and you end up right back in the hands of the creepies.
Can any of you do anything?"
  "I beg your pardon?" Morris asked.
  "Can you do anything? You say you're scientists-
what field?"
  "We're from a great many fields."
  "You want to go to work for me, down at Base
Camp One?"
  Striganov had wandered up, an amused look on
his face.
  "You!" Sybil shouted, staring bug-eyed at the
Russian.
  "In the flesh," Georgi replied.
  "You know these people?" Ben asked.
  Behind them, the city burned.
  "Oh, yes. We've rescued them several times
from the hands of outlaws and slave traders."
  "You're just as bad as he is!" Sybil yelled,
pointing at Ben.
  "Thank you, madam," Georgi said. "I take
that as quite a compliment."
  "You would!"
  "What the hell am I going to do with these people?" Ben
pleaded.
  "The Great God Blomm," Dan said with a
straight face.
"What?" Georgi asked.
  Ben smiled. Then the smile faded. "No, I
couldn't do that to Emil. The little con artist fought his
heart out in New York City."
  "Do not feel obligated to do anything for us,"
Morris said. "We are perfectly capable of
taking care of ourselves."
  That brought a chuckle from all those standing around.
  It's unfair, Ben thought. These people, naive as
they might be, are attempting to live
nonviolently in a world filled with violence . . .
and we laugh at them. Have we all become so
callous, so battle-hardened, that we have
lost sight of one of the most important things that
we're fighting for?
  Ben looked at Dan. The Englishman's eyes
were sad. He knew what Ben had been thinking.
  Ben looked back to Morris and then at
Sybil. They had lost their hostile expressions as
they studied Ben's face; as if they, too, knew
what Ben had been thinking. "You'll stay here with us
until the birds . . . planes start arriving. That
will be tomorrow. I'm sending you back to Base Camp
One, down in Louisiana. If you want to stay and
work for us there, that's fine."
  "And live under your rules, General?" one of the
women in the group spoke up.
  "Under
our
rules," Ben said, waving his hand, indicating all the
Rebels. "We live in more of a democratic
society than you might think-or have been led
to believe. We have only a few laws, but those few
are quickly and very harshly enforced. We have a great deal
of solar heating and cooling, so as not to pollute the
skies any more than we have to. We
will never have nuclear energy . . . we will never have
nuclear weapons. We have zero crime in
our outposts. That is very easy to accomplish, and it
always has been: we just don't tolerate it. We
don't have lawyers-practicing lawyers, that is.
We do have courts; they are run by the people, and conducted
in language that anyone can understand. So far as I
know, we have the finest schools in all the world, and
attendance is mandatory until age eighteen. We
have adult education classes. We do not have
illiteracy; there again, we don't tolerate it.
We would appreciate your joining us as teachers. And
yes, we have noncombatives in our ranks. How
about it?"
  Morris studied Ben for a moment, then smiled and
stuck out his hand. "It would be a pleasure, General
Raines. You paint quite a different picture of your
way of living than we have been led to believe."
  Ben took the offered hand with a smile. "Good to have you
with us."
  The Rebel column cut west, leaving the smoke
of the ruined city, and the smell of death behind them. They
drove over the Continental Divide, with Buddy and
his Rat Team spearheading, and hooked up with
Interstate 90, taking that northwest to the outskirts
of Missoula.
  "It's deserted," Buddy reported
back to the column. "But only recently. I'd
say the creepies bugged out until we leave."
  "Hold what you have, son. I want to inspect the
town."
It was disgusting to all of the Rebels. The stench of
Night People clung over the small city. What was
left of the bodies of human beings was found in several
locations around the city. It was obvious to all that had
the stomach to look at the human garbage heap that the
men and women and kids had been carved on, the choice
cuts taken for food.
  "You think they might have bugged out for
Kalispell?" Tina asked.
  "I doubt it. That's right in the middle of
Malone's territory. He hates the creepies
nearly as bad as we do. If I had to guess,
I'd say they joined others like them over in
Spokane. It isn't that far from here. Destroy the
airport and bring the town down with explosives.
Georgi, what do you know about this Indian Reservation
just north of here?"
  "They've gone, Ben. Same with the Blackfeet
tribe just to the east of them. And we don't know where
they went. Danjou led an expedition down there a
couple of years ago. Nothing. The place
was deserted."
  "They probably spread out in small bands all
over the west. I'd like to have them as allies, but I
damn sure don't blame the Indians for not
trusting the white man, and I don't blame them for
wanting to return to their own ways and cultures. It
worked for them for hundreds of years. All right,
let's take the town down, people."
  This was something else the Rebels had become
experts at: the destroying of buildings
by explosives. Stress points were quickly located
and the buildings
brought down with relatively small amounts of
explosives. And with towns recently inhabitated
by creepies, the Rebels thoroughly enjoyed their
work.
  They worked fast and effectively. When they pulled
out, they left behind them only a shell of a town,
totally uninhabitable.
  "It's not just the cities that are going to have to be
destroyed, is it, General?" Beth asked on the
drive down to Anaconda.
  "I'm afraid not, Beth. But the bringing down of the
small towns is something that the residents of the
outposts will have to do-for the most part. We'll do
it if we have the time." He lifted his map and studied
it. "There's a dam just south of our present
position. I'm curious as to how it-and all the
others-are holding up. They've been years without
maintenance. Beth-was
  "I know," she interrupted with a smile. "Make
a note. Right, sir."
  For the next several miles, Ben rode in
silence, thinking that there was just too goddamn much
to worry about; far too much for one man to handle. No
wonder the governing of a nation-any nation- almost
invariably turned into a massive, ponderous
bureaucracy. As well this one might again, Ben
thought. But as long as I live, there won't be any
deadheads in it.
  And, he was forced to smile, no taxpayers'
dollars being spent for foolishness. One advantage
of not having any taxpayers.
  And how long could they get away with that?
  Just as long as possible, Ben answered his own question.
At a rest stop, Corrie said, "Fort Ben ton
has intercepted radio transmissions, General.
It was an open frequency. Pete Jones and a
large force of outlaws have linked up with the creepies
in Butte. They're going to dig in in the
city and try to slug it out with us."
  Ben thought about that open frequency business for a
moment. "No, they're not," he finally said. "That's
just a ruse to throw us off. They know they don't have a
chance of winning by fighting us nose to nose."
  "Anaconda?" Ike asked.
  "I'd bet on it. They knew we seldom
shell the smaller towns; especially if they're
deserted. We go in, inspect, and then bring them
down with explosives." He smiled grimly.
"My, my. But are we going to have a surprise for
Mr. Jones."
  Ben split the column, sending Ike and his
troops down Highway 1, while he continued on
south toward Anaconda, using the Interstate.
Buddy and his Rat Team, as usual, were ranging far
in advance of the main party, sending scrambled
messages back to both his father and Ike.
  "If they're in there," Buddy reported to Ben,
"they're well hidden." He was looking at the town,
studying it through binoculars. "There is no movement,
no smoke, no nothing to indicate any sign of
life."
  Ben had halted the column a few miles north
of the town, waiting for Buddy's report.
Now he was wondering if Pete Jones and the
creepies were stupid enough to fortress themselves in Butte
and actually attempt to hold the city.
  Nol He rejected that almost instantly. But if
they were not in Anaconda, laying in ambush . . .
then where were they? There were literally hundreds of
places along the route where explosives could be
used
to bring down tons of rock on the column. But that was
not the creepies' style and Ben doubted they would
change tactics this late in the game.
  Also Ben doubted any citizens trying to live out
their lives in some degree of normalcy would
attempt to do that so close to a creepie stronghold
such as Butte.
  He got his artillery in position and then radioed
Ike, who was set up on the west side of the town.
"What do you think, Ike?"
  "Let's bring it down, Ben. I've got people in
position on both sides of the Interstate about three
miles southeast of the town. Any who try to escape
that way will run slap into an ambush."
  Ben turned to Corrie. "Commence firing."
  When the first rounds began dropping in, shaking the
earth and rattling the buildings right down to their
foundations, a creepie turned to Pete Jones.
"You son of a bitch!"
  Pete had a sick look on his face. "Win
some, lose some, my friend," he managed to be heard
over the roaring of incoming.
  The creepie shot Pete in the face just as
Bruiser and Satan and several hundred other
outlaws, who had managed to place themselves near a
road leading to the east, cranked up and got the hell
out of the town.
  Pete Jones twitched once on the dirty
floor and then died with his eyes open andwitha very startled
look on his face.
  Injun Sam and Blackie and their outlaw
following tore out of town, heading southeast on the
Interstate. They rode right into the ambush set up
by Dan Gray and Tina Raines and the Scouts.
It was like riding right through the gates of Hell, one
biker who managed to escape the killing fire later
told a group of outlaws. The Rebels would look
you right in the eyes and then shoot you dead with no more
emotion than opening a can of beans. It wasn't
nothin' like the good ol' days, back when the cops had
to read you rights and tend to your wounds and be careful how
they spoke to you and you could stomp the snot out
of a citizen and even a sorry lawyer could get you
off with a slap on the wrist and a lecture from the
judge.
  But these damn Rebels were bad-asses, man!
  While the town was being systematically destroyed,
including everyone in it, the outlaws and bikers and other
assorted crud who thought they had gotten away stone
clear were dying in screaming and moaning and crying and
begging piles of lower forms of life on the
Interstate.
  Dan and Tina took no prisoners. Ben had
said that anyone who aligned himself with the Night People was
to be shown no mercy.
  No mercy was shown.
  Bikers and outlaws tried to surrender from out of the
bombarded town. A few tried. Those who watched
them shot down resigned themselves to their fate with either a
curse or a long-forgotten-until-now prayer for
forgiveness from their Maker.
  God's mercenary, Michael, mighty warrior that
he is, probably got a good laugh out of that, for the
skies over that area of the state suddenly began
to darken from what had previously been a clear blue
and a hard rain began to fall, accompanied by wicked
lightning and rolling peals of thunder.
The relentless bombardment continued through the storm and the
rain as mortars thunked and cannon howled and
boomed, and snipers patiently waited for targets
to bring down, all combining to hurl Rebel justice
down upon the occupied town.
  Several hundred escaped the ruined town,
slipping out furtively, large humans emulating
the disease-carrying and beady-eyed rats that they really
were.
  Ben ordered the bombardment shut down after an
hour. The town lay smoking and silent.
  "Do we go in?" Buddy asked.
  "No," Ben said. "To hell with those in there. It's
only about twenty miles to Butte. We take it
down this day. There is no really effective way I
can find on any map to get you and your team south of the
city to the airport. You spearhead the column, stay
on the Interstate, and start marking out artillery
positions when you get there."
  Deuce and a halves with scrapers on the front
were used to shove aside the mess on the Interstate just
south of the town. Bodies and vehicles were pushed
unceremoniously into the ditches. No attempt was
made to bury anyone.
  Ben and his people had declared a
no-holds-barred war on the crud that roamed the land,
preying on those who were trying to rebuild from out of the
ashes. The Rebels offered no mercy, no
compassion, no sympathy . . . and no surrender.
  "Jesus God!" Macationally whispered, watching
from a brush-covered ridge as the Rebels mounted up
and pulled out from the ravaged town, heading south toward
Butte. "Them people ain't
human!"
  Bruiser sat in shock at the suddenness of the
attack
and the harshness with which his friends had been dealt. Even
Satan was having a hard time believing the ruthlessness
of the Rebels. The big man finally shook himself out of
his slight daze.
  "They ain't gonna get away with it," he
announced, standing up. "I'm gonna kill Ben
Raines. I don't know how I'm gonna do it.
But I'm gonna do it." He moved toward his
motorcycle.
  "Where you goin', Satan?" Mac called.
  Satan turned around. "Ben Raines is makin'
a big circle, clearin' this state of Night People and
outlaws. It don't take no genius to figger that
out. And I betweenya on the final leg, he's
gonna go after Snake, over there where that soldier
boy got hisself and all them men killed a
hundred and some-odd years back. Pu.in',
custard. . . something like that."
  "General Custer," Bass said.
  "Yeah, that's him."
  "So?"
  "I'm gonna be there wait*in on Ben
Raines, boys." He held out his massive hands.
"And I'm gonna tear him apart with my bare hands."
  "That'd be a sight to see, all right," Wanda
allowed. "I think me and the girls will just ease over
that way with you." i
  "You're welcome to ride along." He looked
at the still-shaken gathering. "Anybody else?"
  One by one, those remaining outlaws stood up and
walked toward their motorcycles and cars and pickup
trucks.
  "We gotta do something, man," Morgan
muttered. "It ain't no fun out here with Ben
Raines on the
prowl. Not to mention that it ain't safe neither."
  Matt Callahan stood in the valley of the Little
Big Horn, his horse picketed nearby. He
felt it in his bones: Ol' Slim was
a-comin'. He knowed it was gonna be thisaway all
along. Ol' Slim and him would step out to face each
other and they'd take that walk that would be a one-way
stroll for one of them. And just about when fifty feet
separated them, they'd both drag iron and commence
to lettin' the hammers down and the lead flyin'.
  Matt drew, cocked, and fired in one
experienced and very fast move. He plugged a small
tree.
  Smiling with satisfaction, Snake punched out the
empty brass and filled the cylinder up. He
didn't twirl his guns; that was for tinhorns and
punks.
  He sat his Colt down in leather and walked over
to the river, scooping up water in the palm of his hand
and drinking. He suddenly whirled and drew his
left-hand Colt and killed a piece of
driftwood.
  "Let Ol' Slim beat that," he muttered.
  When the bombs came, the period that history would
call the Great War, Matt Callahan had
snapped. Already not too-tightly wrapped, Matt
had spent the first few years tracking down and killing
any writer of "dirty books" that he could find.
Fortunately, he couldn't find too many of
them; but he got a great deal of satisfaction out of
killing those he could find. Especially those who
write those dirty Westerns. Hard, tough,
straight-shootin' cowboys in this real old West just
didn't do the things that were so vividly and profanely
outlined in the pages of those
filthy books. Everybody knew that. Cowboys
stood tall in the saddle and said "howdy" and
"ma'am" and they didn't say bad words. And they
especially didn't use their big toe in a manner
like that cowboy did in one of those adult Western
books. Matt knew that for a fact. He'd tried
it with one of his girlfriends. Threw his back out of
whack and couldn't walk for two weeks.
  The only thing that Matt could say good about Ben
Raines was that he hadn't written any really
dirty books.
  But that didn't make no difference. Snake was
gonna gun him down like the low-down skunk he
was.
  Ashley and Sister Voleta had drifted down
south. They had lost about half of their people and that had
turned them very cautious. They had wound their way
south, and were now camped just south of Crazy Peak in
the Gallatin National Forest. They spent
their time monitoring radio transmissions from the
Night People and Ben Raines's Rebels.
  And they knew Ben was winning.
  "Damn him!" Voleta said. "And damn that
bastard son of mine."
  Ashley didn't pay her any attention. He was
used to her rantings and ravings. He waited until
she had wound down and said, "I think, my dear, that
Montana has withdrawn the welcome mat for us.
Rather rudely jerked it out from under our feet would be more like
it."
  "Then carry your ass," she bluntly told him.
"What do you hope to gain by staying?"
  "A chance to kill Ben Raines."
  "Voleta, I have been trying to kill that man for
years. Our day will come, believe me. But it isn't
in the cards this time around. Our armies have been
halved. We simply don't have the manpower to fight
the Rebels."
  But the woman was unshakable. "I intend to stay right
here, monitoring Ben Raines's moves. There is
plenty of game to hunt, and we have water and shelter.
We all need a rest and right here is as good a
place as any."
  "Might I suggest a better place?"
  "Go ahead."
  "Further south. On the Wyoming-Montana
border. In the Custer National Forest."
  "Why there?"
  "Because the Rebels have already cleaned out Sheridan.
They won't be expecting us to move in that close to a
secure area."
  Voleta thought about that for a moment. "All right. That
sounds good to me."
  The early summer campaign was winding down and
Ben sensed its closing. It had been a brief
campaign, but a highly successful one. For the most
part, Montana was clear of human crud with
outposts put securely in place. Ben was looking
forward to a week's rest before tackling Malone and his
bunch.
  But, he thought with a barely audible sigh, there still
remained some unfinished business.
  Matt Callahan aka the Rattlesnake
Kid.
Ben knew a lot of bikers and other outlaws had
broken free of the assault on Anaconda. Had
they retreated only to once more link up with Matt?
It was a possibility that he had to consider. And how
about Ashley and Voleta-where were they?
Wherever they were, they were keeping their heads down and
staying off the radio, for communications had heard
nothing from them.
  The ambush up north had cut deeply into the
troops of Ashley and Voleta, but they still had enough
men to be a problem. And it worried Ben because nothing
had been heard from them. Ashley could be just as sneaky
as Ben; there were lots of differences between the men, but the
main difference was that Ashley was a coward.
  Not so with Sister Voleta and her troops of the
Ninth Order. She was a nut, but one with cunning and
courage. Neither she nor Ashley could be discounted.
Not yet.
  And how in the hell was he going to flush Matt out
of the Rosebuds without losing some people and wasting a lot
of time?
  Ben couldn't just turn his back on Matt,
postponing the showdown until a later date-as much as
he would like to do that-for the man would only rebuild his
army and resume his warlord activities.
  No, Matt had to be taken out during this sweep.
With that done, Montana, from the Continental Divide
over to Miles City, would be clean.
  Ben smiled faintly, thinking: Only forty-nine
states to go.
  The Night People had pulled out of Butte. They
had seen the futility of fighting Ben Raines on his
own terms and had gathered their stinking robes about them and
slithered away. The city lay silent and stinking under
the sun.
  "Check it out and bring it down," Ben ordered.
  The Rebels spent the rest of that day and much of the
night carefully going over the deserted city. No
prisoners were found; obviously the creepies had
taken their food supply with them as they bugged out.
  The next morning, Ben's Rebels began
destroying the city with explosvies while Georgi
Striganov and his troops moved on over
to Bozeman.
  "Nothing," the Russian radioed back. "The
town is as deserted as a grave."
  "Interesting way of putting it, Georgi," Ben
replied. "Start bringing it down, please."
  Ben pulled his Rebels over and spent the night
in a small town on the banks of the Missouri
River, about
halfway between Butte and Bozeman. His people were
tired, and Ben was tired. They had circled the state
in a very short time, with all of them pushing themselves hard.
The Rebels had taken very few
casualties, but they were, to a person, very weary.
Ben made up his mind that after Bozeman was
destroyed, they would travel the Interstate for a few
more miles, and then stand down for a few days, doing
routine maintenance on the vehicles, checking
weapons, and resting. Then they would move against Matt
Calla-han and those still with him.
  Ben felt he knew what Matt wanted him
to do, but damned if he was going to oblige the man.
Ben had no intentions of any such foolishness as standing
up and quick-drawing like a scene out of some grade B
Western movie.
  At the airport in Bozeman, while the city
burned, the Rebels checked out the aircraft the
creepies had left behind them and found several
planes in excellent shape. Ben radioed for
pilots to be flown in to fly them out.
  The Rebel convoy moved on. At a small
town on the Yellowstone River, Ben halted the
long column and told his people to relax and have some fun
for a change. The Rebels were unaware that just south of
them, the bikers and outlaws were gathering, and Ashley and
Sister Voleta had joined them.
  "We're still no match for them," Ashley warned.
"I hate to keep harping on that, but
Raines has, with the addition of the Russian's
troops, about four battalions of troops."
  Satan glared at him. "So what do you have in
mind, pretty boy?"
"We pull this ragtag bunch of misfits into some
sort of fighting force while we're waiting to see
what Raines does. I have a hunch that he's going
to launch a summer campaign against Malone up in
the wilderness. Now while we're training, we add
to our strength by pulling in all the smaller groups
of... ah"-he looked around with some disdain- "outlaws
and bikers. Then when Raines commits his troops
into the wilderness, we go in behind him and box them in."
  Satan squatted his bulk down and eyeballed-as
best he could-Ashley. Finally he nodded his head.
"All right," he said slowly. "I'll go along with
that."
  "Voleta?" Ashley asked.
  The woman took her time in replying. "If I
agree to go along with that-and I haven't said I would-
the campaign is going to have to be very carefully worked
out. Malone has to be notified, and not by radio.
Raines would pinpoint us in a flash. We are going
to have to be just as sophisticated in warfare as Ben
Raines. And that means coming up with weapons
that are on a par with his. Tanks are out of the question;
they would be useless in the wilderness. But heavy machine
guns and mortars-with people who know how to use them-will be
essential. Discipline is something else. Your
bunch of bikers and outlaws, Satan, have no
discipline. You're going to have to put some steel in their
backbones and make them understand that for this operation
to succeed, they must follow orders and do so without question."
  "Who gives the orders?" Satan rumbled.
  "The mercenary, Kenny Parr, had a son. The
boy is now a grown man and commanding a large group
down in Florida."
  "Who the hell is Kenny Parr?"
  "A mercenary who used to work for President
Hilton Logan. A man named Kasim killed
him years ago. But not before Parr taught his son
to hate Ben Raines and everything he stood for."
  "How many men?" Ashley asked. Voleta was a
constant source of amazement to him. It seemed that she
knew every army of warlords and outlaws in what used
to be the United States. And Ashley also knew that
Voleta had more troops than she ever let him know
about. She had Ninth Order people all over the country.
  "About a thousand. But they are well trained and
disciplined troops, skilled in the use of
mortars and machine guns and rocket launchers."
  "In other words," Satan said, a nasty tone
to the question, "they're professionals and we're a bunch
of bums and no-goods?"
  There was no back-down in Voleta. She
returned the glare and said, "Yes."
  Satan smiled his horrible disfigured grin. "You
a gutsy bitch, I'll give you that much." Then he
shrugged. "All right, I'll take orders from this
Parr." He looked at Ashley. "How about you,
fancy pants?"
  "I ran you out of Kansas once, you ugly
bastard- remember?"
  Satan smiled. "Yeah ... so you did. That's
when you was pimpin' for King Louie. So what about it?"
  "Just keep it in mind. And also keep in mind that
when you put a hand on me, probably twelve or
fifteen of my men will shoot you so full of holes
you'll be dead before you hit the ground."
Satan looked around him. True enough, about a
dozen of Ashley's men were nearby, the muzzles of
their guns ready to come up and blow him all to hell and
gone.
  "All right, Ashley," Satan verbally backed
away. "You and me will work together. But when
Ben Raines is dead, and we start splittin' up
the country, you and me will stake our claims far
apart."
  "That suits me."
  Satan walked away.
  Voleta watched him go and said, "We will use the
lout and his kind to achieve our goals, then we can
dispose of him."
  "And doing that will be a pleasure, Voleta. How
do we get word to Parr?"
  "I'll send some of my people. I'll dispatch them this
afternoon. They'll go down into Colorado to one of my
cells and send a coded message to the mercenary.
He can be here in a week or ten days."
  "It certainly would be a much nicer place to live
without Ben Raines around," Ashley said wistfully.
"I am so looking toward to the day."
  "Not nearly as much as I am." Voleta spat
the words like an angry snake.
  There were dozens of questions that Ashley would have liked
to ask, but each time he had tried to bring up the
personal side of Voleta-such as her real name-she
brusquely rebuffed him. And only once had he
asked her about her son Buddy. The look she gave
him silently warned him not to bring it up
again.
  "So you're in?" Ashley asked.
  "All the way. Until either I am dead, or
Ben Raines
is rotting in his grave."
  Ben woke up that night bathed in sweat. He had
worked his way through and out of the damnest nightmare he'd
experienced in years. Someone had conked him on the
head and tied him to a stake . . . then brush was
piled all around his bare feet and the brush ignited.
  He was being burned alive, and as he screamed
while the flames licked at his flesh, Sister
Voleta and her Ninth Order stood and grinned.
  He awakened and flung the covers from him, his chest
heaving, trying to catch his breath.
  "Damn!" Ben whispered as he dressed and
stepped outside for a breath of air.
  A sentry was by his side almost instantly.
"Something wrong, General?" she asked.
  "Before he could answer, Buddy stepped out of the
shadows and said, "My mother."
  The sentry knew that Buddy was the son of Ben
Raines through an affair with a Nashville woman
years back, before the Great War, and father and son had
been united only a few years back.
  She knew that Buddy's mother was the leader of that
strange and dangerous group called the Ninth
Order. And she also knew that Buddy possessed some
sort of mysticism about him ... no doubt about that,
his mother being a witch. The sentry moved away, sensing
that family business was about to be discussed.
  "What about your mother, son?" Ben asked.
  "She is very close."
"How do you know these things, boy?"
  "I don't know, Father. I just do. The Old
One, my grandfather, once told me I was born
marked, and could have gone either way; that being good or
evil, I suppose."
  "Marked . . . how?"
  "I don't know, Father. He never brought it up
after that one time."
  "What's got your hackles up about your mother?"
  "I had a dream. A nightmare. I was being
burned at the stake. That is my mother's favorite
way of punishing those who violate her rules. You
should know."
  "What do you mean by that?" Ben spoke more sharply
than he intended. Goddamn! Did the boy
actually know what he had been dreaming?
  Buddy stared long at his father. When he
spoke, his voice was soft. "I meant only that you
encountered my mother, for the second time, after the Great
War, while she was burning someone at the stake, did
you not?"
  "Yes. Over in Tennessee, I think it was."
Ben sighed. "Did you know that I just awakened from a
hellish nightmare?"
  "No. But it doesn't surprise me. There is
a little of my mother in me, and a lot of you in me."
  Ben didn't know exactly how to take that
statement. He minutely shook his head and then
glanced at his watch. Nearly four o'clock. Time
to get up anyway. "How close do you feel your
mother to be?"
  "Close enough for me to sense a great deal of
danger."
  "I ought to send you back to Base Camp One."
"No. I wouldn't want to disobey your orders, but
on that one, I would."
  "I'm going to have to kill her, Buddy."
  "No, Father. I think not. I think my mother will
meet her end at my hands. I think that is truth."
  "I hope you're wrong, son."
  Buddy shook his head. "I am correct in my
thinking. But I believe that my mother will live
a very long and very evil life before she meets her
end."
  "I'll certainly go along with this evil part of
it," Ben said. "Will I be around to see her demise,
son?"
  "Yes," the young man replied. Then he turned
and walked away.
  "That's a weird kid, Dan." Ben had heard
the Englishman come up, moving as silently as a
wraith.
  "Weird? Oh, I don't think so, General.
I think he is simply blessed, or cursed, with the
Insight, that's all. Considering the way he was
raised, I think he turned out very well."
  "Oh, I do too, Dan. No doubt about that.
But he spooks me at times."
  "Did you ever stand among the great rocks of
Stonehenge, General?"
  Ben smiled. "Oh, yes. Years ago, when I
was visiting England. Yes, I know what you mean."
  "Now
that's
spooky. I will be the first to admit that I got the
hell away from there in a hurry."
  Ben's smile broadened. "I rather
enjoyed the sensation. I felt I was actually a part
of those old ones who came and went long before us."
  "And you call Buddy weird!"
It was a quiet time for the Rebels. A time that all
of them had earned. They slept, they played, they
swam, they gossiped, and they enjoyed just doing nothing.
  All of them knew that it would probably be their
last time for total relaxation for several long, hard,
bitter, bloody months once the campaign against
Malone was launched. That campaign, they knew,
would be one where they could not rely on battle tanks
and Dusters; it would be war in the deep forests, a very
personal and, in many cases, one-on-one type of
warfare. And while none of the Rebels were looking
toward to it, they all knew it was something that had to be
done.
  Corrie came to Ben, several messages in her
hand. "Base Camp One has picked up several
coded transmissions, General. The first one
originated in Colorado, they believe. The
reply came out of Florida; they're pretty
sure of that. They have not been able to break the
code.""
  "Parr's bunch is the largest still operating in
Florida," Ben said. "The young man is
as tough as his father and twice as smart. He also
hates me as much as Kenny did, thanks to his
father. I've been wondering when he would break out and
make his move. This may be the time. Go on,
Corrie."
  "Reports from Sheridan state that a large force
is camped on the west side of the Bighorn
River, around Fort Smith. The force has made no
hostile moves and the Rebels garrisoned at
Sheridan have no idea who they are. They are
requesting orders."
  "They could well be Ashley, Voleta, and the
outlaws," Ben said. "The settlers in Sheridan
are too small in number to tackle them ... if
they are
hos tiles. Tell them to take no direct action
until fly-bys have been done, Corrie."
  "Yes, sir. Khamsin has been reinforced
by foreign troops. Pilots flying recon state that
several large ships have docked in ports along the
coast of South Carolina. Several more ships are still
at sea, enroute. We lost one plane and crew
to what is believed to be a Stinger, or missile of
that type fired from shipboard."
  Georgi was studying maps. "Ships coming
from
where?"
he questioned. "And carrying troops of what nationality?"
  "Fair questions, Georgi," Ben said. "They could
be from South America, West Africa, Europe.
Son of a bitch!" Ben cussed. "About the time we
think we're gaining ground, something like this sails in and
sets us back."
  "Ben," Georgi said, "if we strained every
resource, using every man and woman and young person,
say, over the age of sixteen, how many people could we
field?"
  "If we count the people at the outposts, oh, maybe
five thousand tops. But I'd hate to think it could
come to that."
  Ike said, "The instant we start stripping and
abandoning outposts to move troops east, the outlaws
and crud would move in."
  "And we'd have to do it all over again," Dan said
with a disgusted look on his face.
  "And we don't even know the nationality of the
troops landing." That was put forth by Tina. "Could it be
a multinational force?"
  "It could be anything," Ben said softly. "But what
keeps puzzling me is this: why are they
leaving their
homelands? What is pushing them toward America?
We now know, through intercepted radio
transmissions, that the death toll, worldwide, was not
nearly as high as first thought. We now know there are
millions of people who survived the Great War. What
in the hell is going on in South America,
Europe, China?"
  "Night People," Buddy said.
  "Probably," Dan agreed. "But the troops
landing belong to Lan Villar." His voice was very
soft. "Bet on it."
  Ben shifted his eyes. "Lan is dead."
  "That was never confirmed, friend," Georgi said.
"Our overseas intelligence people could never
au-tenticate his demise. And neither could your CIA
operatives. As a matter of fact, our people swore
they saw Lan in West Africa several times after
his reported death."
  That was fact and Ben knew it.
  "Talk about a name from the past," Ike said. "I
was on the SEAL team who was given the nod from the
NSA to kill Villar back in '86. Then
certain members of the House and Senate got wind of
it and damn near pissed their lace
drawers. Whole operation had to be scrapped."
  "Dad," Tina looked at her father, "who is
Lan Villar?"
  "The most murderous, deadly, dangerous,
despicable, and feared terrorist who ever lived."
  "So they drove you out, too?" Khamsin, the
Hot Wind, said to Lan Villar.
  "Nobody has ever driven me out of
anyplace," Lan corrected him. "But it looks
like Ben Raines has sure done a dandy job of
kicking your ass."
  Khamsin offered no rebuttal to that. How can one
rebut the truth? Instead, he said, "I cannot
believe that you sailed only God knows how many
thousands of miles just to pay me a social call."
  One terrorist sat down across the table from the other
terrorist. Lan Villar was a mixture of
Scandinavian, Algerian, and Spanish. Back
when such things were important, he had held dual
citizenship between Algeria and Spain. Norway
wanted nothing to do with the bastard. And said as much.
  Lan had never felt any really allegiance
to any country. He sold his skills to anybody,
for the highest price. He would kill one, or a
thousand. It made absolutely no
difference to Lan whether they were men, women, or children.
Lan was now in his late forties, but still a very handsome
man, and in the peak of physical conditioning. He had
always been very vain about his looks, and with his black
eyes and blond hair, Lan was a very
striking-looking man. A big man, well over
six feet, and a powerful man.
  "So it's true, then: New York City is
no more?"
  "It's true. Ben Raines destroyed it, and
almost destroyed me," the Hot Wind admitted.
  "Ben Raines," Lan mused softly. "I met
him a couple of times, in Africa, back in.. .
?" He shrugged his heavy shoulders. "I can't even
remember when it was. He was there working for the
Company. No matter. How many Rebels does
Raines have under his command?"
"I
would say he could field, and that would have to include the
troops of the Russian, Georgi Striganov,
between four and five thousand. But they are top troops.
The black man, Cecil Jefferys, is in command
of the base in Louisiana. The ex-Seal, Ike
Me-Gown, is in command of another battalion;
he's with Ben in the west. The mercenary,
West, commands another battalion. And that damnable
ex-Sas man, Dan Gray, commands the Scouts.
They are nothing but ruthless thugs."
  "I know Dan Gray. He tried to kill me
twice, and almost succeeded the last time-when I was working
for the IRA. If if had not been for the timidity of
certain British politicians, Dan and his
SAS men probably would have killed me."
  "I heard you were badly wounded."
  "I was. Came close to dying. Thanks to that
British son of a bitch."
"It seems as though you despise Dan Gray almost
as much as I do Ben Raines."
  Lan locked gazes with the Libyan. Khamsin
felt it was like looking into the eyes of a deadly
snake. "More," Lan replied.
  They all compared notes as to what they knew of the
terrorist, Lan Villar. Only Dan seemed
to hold back. Ben picked up on it.
  "What's the matter, Dan?"
  "There is something else you all should know about that
bloody bastard, Villar. He despises me.
I wounded him back in ... oh, '85 or '86.
I don't remember exactly. But he almost died
from it." Dan smiled, and it was not pretty.
"I hand-loaded my own ammo. Hollow-nose. But
I sealed into the nose a liberal dose of cobra
venom. I understand the terrorist son of a bitch
hovered near death for months after that."
  Everyone noticed the near-sadistic glint in
Dan's eyes; and that was not like him. Dan was a
professional soldier-he fought and killed the enemy
because that seemed to be the only way to bring some sort of
stability back to the earth-not because he was a person who
took glee in inflicting pain on any living thing.
  It appeared to all looking at Dan that Lan
Villar was the exception to that.
  "Tell it all, Dan," Ike said.
  "Before I put lead into him, and poison, Lan
Villar had kidnapped my sister. She was thirteen
years old. He tape-recorded every . . . session
of perversion
with her. Took delight in passing her around to his
men . .. and some of the women who fought with him. It
took Marilyn a long and very painful time to die.
Ben, compared to Lan Villar, Sam Hartline was a
courtly English gentleman. And let me add this:
If I ever get my hands on Villar, and take that
rotten plague upon the earth alive, I assure
all of you he will not die well."
  The Englishman turned and put his back to the
others for a moment, old memories heavy on his
broad shoulders.
  "Settle down, people," Ben said. "We don't
know that it is Lan. Odds are that it is not."
  "It's Villar," Dan said. "Before the Great
War, he had settled in Angola and was fighting for the
Communists there."
  "That still doesn't prove anything, Dan,"
Georgi said.
  "Oh, but it does." Dan turned to face the
group. "Those communiques in several different
languages we have been intercepting over the past
couple of years, but all being spoken by the same man
with the same strange accent, almost like a slur? The
ones we believed originated in Africa? Well,
Villar is multilingual and was born with a slight
speech impediment. Add it up."
  "I'd say you're getting warmer," Ben
admitted. "But there still is a lot of room for
doubt."
  "In one way I hope you're right, General.
But in another, I hope you're wrong." Dan
nodded his head at the group, then turned and walked
away.
  "If it is Villar or isn't Villar," Ben
said, "it still means that Malone and his bunch will
probably have
to be put on hold. Malone and his pack of
screwballs represent only a fart in the wind
compared to whoever is landing in South Carolina."
  "Did you know Villar, Dad?" Tina asked.
  "I met him twice in Africa years ago,
when I was doing Company work. It was instant dislike
from both sides. I knew who he was, but I was
under no orders to kill him. I've already regretted
that I let him walk away. Looks like I might
regret it even more if Dan's suspicions are
true."
  "He certainly feels very strongly that he is
correct," Georgi said.
  "Do we head north, Father?" Buddy asked.
  Ben shook his head. "No. We keep heading
east on 94. I still want to finish up with Matt.
We'll pull out in the morning."
  "We have been sent help," Voleta said,
walking up to Ashley. She was smiling, and that was
something the woman did not do very often.
  "Parr?" Ashley asked, rising as was his custom
when a lady approached-even Voleta,
whom he knew was the farthest thing from a lady.
  She sat down on a log. "No. Are you
familiar with a terrorist named Lan Villar?"
  "I've heard the name. From newscasts years
back. I thought he was dead."
  "So did I. We were both wrong. He has
landed in South Carolina with several thousand men and that
many more on the way."
  "He's linking up with what is left of
Khamsin's people?"
"That is correct."
  "I don't know whether that is a help or not,
Voleta. Khamsin might not be too thrilled
to see us after New York City."
  "He will be after Ben Raines makes his move and
we pull in behind them and get them in a box."
  "Just us?"
  "Don't be foolish. Parr will join us, I'm
sure of that. Parr's father and Villar were old friends,
when both of them were fighting in Africa. And I have
other people I can commit."
  "I thought as much," Ashley said drily. "Ben
Raines's enemies are certainly popping out of the
woodwork of late."
  "It isn't Ben Raines that Villar
is terribly interested in. It's Dan Gray.
My people have just decoded messages they picked up
sent from shipboard days ago."
  "Villar came here solely to kill Dan
Gray?"
  "No. Europe and Africa are not safe. The
Night People are worldwide-or at least in many
countries. It seems they don't have a Ben
Raines over there."
  "Thank God for small favors. One of him
is quite enough."
  "We can't fail now," Voleta said,
excitement in her voice. "Now I get my
revenge against Ben Raines." Her eyes were wild
with hate and fury.
  Crazy bitch! Ashley thought.
  Messages from Base Camp One confirmed
Ben's worst suspicions: the army that was stepping
ashore from the big ships was huge, several thousand more
than Ben could ever hope to field. And according
to citizens who still resided in South Carolina and
spied for the Rebels, Dan had been correct. It
was Lan Villar.
  "We're in trouble, Ben," Cecil radioed from
Base Camp One.
  "We're in for a hell of a fight, that's for
sure." Ben wanted to present a calm front,
even though he knew he did not need to do that with
Cecil. Someone once said, after watching Cecil
Jefferys handle hours of a stressful combat
situation, that if Cecil got any calmer, he'd
go to sleep.
  "Villar made any firm moves yet?"
  "Negative. According to the people we have in the area, it's
all pretty much in the staging status as of now. They
report artillery, all the way up to 105's; but
it's vehicle-drawn. I don't think Villar
has any tanks."
  "Probably hoping to pick up those over on this
side of the waters. We'll disappoint him on that
score."
  Years back, the Rebels had gone to every
military base and national guard and reserve
facility in the nation, and had picked through what
remained. They had hidden depots of everything from
long-range 155's to BB guns.
  "Uncork everything we've got, Cec. Get it
operational. I want the self-propelled 155's
ready to roll by the time I decide to commit."
  "Eight inchers, Ben?"
  "Everything, Cec. We've got to be able to give
a hell of lot more than we receive."
  "This Parr fellow is going to try an end-around,
Ben. He's moving now. Intel seems to think
he'll attempt to link up with Ashley and
Voleta. And some of her people have been coming out of their
caves and holes around the country."
  "That's ten-four. I expected it. How is
West?"
  "Able to hobble around and command from a Jeep."
  "Tell him to get his people geared up and ready to go.
We're going to need everybody on this operation."
  "Thermopolis and his group?"
  "If he wants to throw in with us, yes. I'm
sure that Emil will want in."
  "He's standing right here now, Ben, listening."
  "At your service, General Raines," the
unmistakable voice of Emil Hite traveled
over the miles. "Always ready to assist the great
General Raines, supreme commander of all allied
forces on planet earth, great benefactor of-was
  "Emil, for Christ's sake!"
  "dis . . the oppressed and the down-trodden.
Protector of the aged and infirm-was
  "Good God, Emil!"
  Georgi Striganov and Ike and Dan, Tina,
and Buddy stood around the communications truck,
listening and laughing, mostly at the expression on
Ben's face as Emil prattled on.
  "dis . . the greatest military mind since
Napoleon, with the possibly exception of Genghis
Khan, and the man to whom Gods speak ..."
  Ben laid down the mike and rubbed his temples with
his fingertips, knowing the only way to get
Emil to shut up was to let him run his course.
  "I commit my small band of fearless warriors and
warrioresses..."
  "Warrioresses?" Dan questioned, a puzzled
look on his face.
  "We shall fight from the hedgerows and in the
streets..."
  "Oh, no!" Ben muttered, sensing that Emil was
just getting wound up.
  In the background, they could all hear Cecil's
laughter.
  "We shall never surrender! And ever with liberty be.
We shall defend the Alamo until the last bit of
shot and powder is gone ..."
  "I think he's getting confused," Buddy said.
  Ben looked at his son.
"Getting
confused? I've never known him when he wasn't
confused."
  "I know how to shut him up, Dad," Tina said.
  "Quick, tell me!"
  "Is Michelle Jarnot still with Danjou's
group?" she asked Georgi.
  The Russian smiled. "Yes. Good thinking."
He turned to an aide. "For God's man, get
her over here immediately."
  Emil had fallen elbows over ankles in love
with the French-Canadian while helping Ben in the
fight against the Night People in New York City.
  Emil rattled on over the miles. "In the
words of that great and immoral commander, Montgomery
  "Immoral!" Dan blurted. "Oh, I say
now! He's gone too far ..."
"I have returned!" Emil shouted.
  "I think he's got his generals confused,"
Georgi said.
  "I think he's got everybody confused," Ben
muttered.
  Michelle ran into the truck.
  Ben handed her the mike. "Here! Talk
to Emil."
  "Do I have to?" the woman asked. "I still have
nightmares about that little man following me around New
York City singing "Bridge Over Troubled
Waters.""
  "Speak," Ben said. "Please!"
  "Emil," Michelle said softly.
  "My poopsie whoopsie!" Emil shouted. "I
feared I had lost you forever." Then he started singing.
  Ben led the parade out of the huge truck, leaving
Michelle with the mike. She dug in a pocket of
her BDU'S for aspirin . . . and silently
cursed.
  While Michelle was being treated by Dr. Ling's
medics for a mild case of shock, brought about
by Emil's singing-or attempting to sing-"Some
Enchanted Evening," during which he lost his train of
thought and slipped into "Shake, Rattle, and
Roll," ending with a sermon given him, so he said,
by the Great God Blomm, Ben was preparing to move
against Matt Callahan and whatever forces he might
still have.
  Ben looked up as Danjou walked up. "How
is Michelle?"
  "The doctors sedated her. She drifted off
muttering something about beware the frumious
Bandersnatch and the Jubjub bird and the Jabberwock."
  "A conversation with Emil can do that to people," Ike said.
"That little con artist can drive you up the wall, but
he'll stand and fight. . . I'll give him that much.
When did he first wander into our lives, Ben?"
  "Years ago," Ben said with a laugh. "He and his
group once joined the Ninth Order, Emil thinking
Voleta was running a scam like his. Didn't
take him log to discover that he had made a terrible
mistake. He got the hell away from that group."
  "Hours before my mother was to have him burned at the
stake," Buddy said. "I remember that quite
vividly. I never knew Emil could move so
fast."
  "All right, people," Ben said. "Listen up. Ike,
you are to assume command and take the column on east.
I'll be cutting south here"-he punched the map-
"to deal with Callahan and what's left of, ah,
HALF ASS. It might take us a day, it
might take a week or more. But I have a hunch
it's all going to be settled very near where Custer and
his men fell."
  "And you want us to wait where for you?" Georgi
asked.
  "At the Mississippi River.
You'll be angling south all the time, so let's make
St. Louis our rendezvous point. Stay in contact
with Cecil at all times. When Villar makes his
move, it's going to be fast, and we don't want
to be taken by surprise."
  "You're going to be in trouble if Ashley and
Voleta swing in behind you and box you in about where Custer
was trapped," Georgi cautioned.
  "You don't know Ashley," Ben said with a smile.
"Before Ashley attacks, it's got to damn near be
a sure thing. He has a yellow streak running right
down the center of his back."
  "There is one thing I have learned about a coward, my
friend," the Russian said. "Corner him, and he'll
kill you."
  Ben and his column cut off the Interstate when they
reached 416. They cut south for a few miles, and
then headed due east, traveling right through what had
once been a Crow Indian Reservation. They saw
no one. Ben halted the column on the Bighorn
River at Saint Xavier and sent Buddy and his
team south, to check out that a large force that had
reportedly camped there.
  Ben bivouacked his people along the river and waited.
  "Nothing, Father," Buddy radioed.
"There is evidence that there were men here, but no more."
  "Any indications of when they pulled out?"
  "Not more than twenty-four hours ago. If that
long. Coals are still hot in cook fires. They
headed north, Father."
  "North?"
  "Yes, sir. I would say we missed them by no
more than a few hours."
  "All right, Buddy. Watch yourself and head on
back."
  "Yes, sir."
  Ben checked his maps. "Yeah," he said with sigh.
"They could have done it. Probably took 313 and
cut across to the old Crow Agency and picked up
212. That was chancy on their part, but just about the only
route they could have taken to avoid our new outposts."
  "They might be trying to stay south of the main
column, but all the while parelleling them," Dan
suggested.
  "That's probably it. Ike will know soon enough."
Ben turned toward the northeast, toward the Custer
Battlefield National Monument and the Reno-
Benteen Battlefield Memorial. Matt was out
there, waiting. Ben had been informed by the pilot who
had spotted the group on horseback, some
weeks back, after Sheridan had fallen, that it was
no more than a hundred men. But those would be Matt's
real hardcases, fighters all.
  Ben had no intention of chasing Matt all over the
Rosebuds. He had already ordered Scouts out
to locate the man. He had ordered the PU!'S at
Sheridan to stand by. He was not going to screw around with
these HALFASS people, and certainly wasn't going
to risk losing troops to Matt and his followers.
He would locate them, then call PU!'S in
to finish what he could not do with artillery.
  He turned and headed back to his tent for an
early supper. He had a hunch that tomorrow was going to be
a busy day.
  He was awakened at two o'clock in the morning.
  "Scouts report a large number of
campfires, sir. In the valley of the Little
bighorn."
  Ben shoved out of his sleeping bag. "That damn
fool Callahan."
  "Sir?"
  "He's telling me where he is and to come and get
him."
  "That's rather stupid on his part, isn't it, sir?"
  "Yes. It is. Radio the Scouts and
ask if there is any possibility the fires could
belong to Indians?"
  "That's negative, sir. Colonel Gray
already did that. According to Sarah, this reservation has been
deserted for years."
  "Corrie?"
  "Here, sir."
"Advise Sheridan to get the PU!'S up. Have
Dan give them the coordinates for the location of the
hostiles. Tell them to cream that valley."
  "Yes, sir."
  An hour later, Ben and the Rebels, now all
up and dressed and ready to go, heard the PU!'S
drone overhead and to the east, heading north.
  "Ask them if they can see the campfires," Ben
said.
  "That's ten-four, sir."
  Ben shook his head. "Suicide. But why."
  "He didn't think you'd play it this way,
General," Dan said. "He is so far gone, he
probably had delusions of you riding up on a
horse and challenging him to a gunfight like in the
Western movies."
  "Then he damn sure didn't know me nearly as
well as he thought."
  When the PU!'S cut loose, the sight was
visible for miles in any direction. From the
Rebels' position, it was like a silent fireworks
display as cannon and machine gun fire ripped the
night.
  To Matt Callahan, it was an act of
betrayal-the code of the West had been ignored
by Slim. When Matt had heard the planes coming,
he guessed what they were and shouted for his men to hit the
trail over to where their horses had been picketed.
  The horses came through the deadly barrage
alive; they had been picketed down near a
creek. But very few of Matt's men made it off the
ridges.
  The Rebels waited until dawn before moving out.
they took the two-lane highway over to the site of
Custer's Last Stand and then followed the old road
that wound through the entire battlefield. The carrion
birds were already feasting on the dead,
sprawled on and along the ridges.
  Ben got out and walked among the silent and
mangled dead. There was no one who even vaguely
resembled Matt Callahan.
  "What do we do with the horses, General? They're
picketed down there along that creek, or
river . . . whatever it is."
  "Turn them loose. They'll join up with some of the
wild herds we've seen out here."
  It bothered Ben that Matt was not among the dead.
For that meant that it was not over. And Ben wasn't about
to go off and leave Matt alive to rebuild.
  He walked back to the main building, which used
to house artifacts of the battle and the era. It had
long been looted. He sat down on the steps and
rolled a cigarette, thinking and smoking. Ben
guessed that if he sat there long enough, Matt would
make an appearance.
  "Rider coming," a Rebel called, pointing toward
a ridge.
  Ben didn't have to look up to know it was Matt
Callahan.
  "He's yelling something, General," another
Rebel sid. "Sounds like Jim."
  "Slim," Ben said, taking a final puff and
grinding out the butt under the heel of his boot.
  "You want me to shoot him out of the saddle?" a
Rebel asked.
  "No. That would be cutting against the grain of the code
of the West."
  The Rebel looked at Ben to see if
he was serious.
  Tina walked to her father's side. Matt was still on
the ridge, sitting his saddle. "Dad, what
cockamamie
idea are you thinking of in dealing with that nut?"
  "Cockamamie idea? Me? Daughter, you know
me better than that. Get me a bull horn, will
you. I'm not going to stand here and shout at that nitwit."
  Bull horn in hand, Ben clicked it on and
lifted it to his lips. "Matt! You think you're
tough? I think you're as yellow as a damned
sheepherder!"
  "What's wrong with being a sheepherder?" Buddy
asked.
  "Cattlemen didn't like sheep on their range,"
an older Rebel said. "They were always fighting with
each other."
  "How strange," Buddy remarked.
  "Strap on your hoglegs, you yellow coyote!"
Matt hollered.
  Ben lifted the bull horn. "Get off that
horse and face me man to man, Snake! Let's
settle this with fists, if you've got the guts for
it."
  The Rebels had all turned, standing
quietly, listening to the strange exchange.
  "Guns, Slim!" Matt yelled.
  "I always knew you were a coward, Snake. Why
don't you get you a sidesaddle?"
  Matt screamed his outrage at this insult to his
manhood.
  "Come on, Snake," Ben taunted him.
"Let's settle it man to man. You're afraid
of me, aren't you? You damned yellow weasel!"
  Matt slowly dismounted and untied the leather thongs
that held his holsters to his legs. He unbuckled
his gun belt and dropped the Colts to the ground.
He started walking down the hill.
  Ben laid his M14 aside and unhooked his web
belt.
He took off his shirt and removed his restrictive
body armor, put the shirt back on and rolled up
the sleeves then started walking up the hill, all the
Rebels following.
  "I'm a-gonna clean your plow, Raines,"
Matt said as he approached Ben.
  "I doubt it," Ben told him, and knocked the
man sprawling with a hard right to the jaw.
  Ben stepped back, allowing Matt to get to his
boots, something that he ordinarily would not do.
If he had been taking this fight seriously, he would
have kicked Matt's face in while he had him on
the ground.
  Matt jumped at Ben, swinging. Ben blocked the
punch and let him have five in the belly, following that
with a short left hook to the jaw. Matt went down
again.
  He was slower getting up, but he got up,
circling Ben warily. He snapped a couple of
quick rights and then sneaked a left in, snapping
Ben's head back and bloodying his mouth.
  Ben shook his head to clear away the gathering
cobwebs and chirping birdies and waded in, swinging
both fists, standing toe to toe and slugging it out.
  Ben was bigger and heavier and his punches held more
power. He gradually drove Matt back.
  "Time! Time!" Matt hollered.
  "That's your ass!" Ben told him, and hit him in
the mouth, busting his lips and loosening some teeth.
  "Ungentlemanly!" Matt hollered, shaking his
head and sending blood flying from his smashed mouth.
  Ben hit him again and turned the man sideways.
Stepping in, Ben caught a left to the body and a
right to the jaw that stopped him.
  Falsely sensing victory, Matt
closed with Ben and that move got him a boot to the
knee that sent him to the ground. Rolling, he got
to his feet and faced Ben, his fists held high and
close.
  Ben faked a left and Matt followed it,
dropping his guard. Ben hit him with a solid right to the
mouth and a tooth flew past bloody lips.
  Screaming his rage, Matt charged, running
into Ben and sending both men sprawling to the hot, dry
earth, both of them panting for breath. They rolled on
the grass, kicking up dust and cussing.
  "Damn dirty book writer!" Matt panted.
  "You're a liar, Callahan," Ben told him,
all the while thinking: This is the most childish thing
I've done in more years than I can remember.
  Matt tried to knee Ben in the groin and Ben
blocked the move and shoved him off, rolling to one
side, getting to his boots and lifting his fists.
  "Dirty book writer?" Dan questioned.
  "Professional jealousy maybe," Beth said.
  "I think it's demeaning," Corrie said. "The
General shouldn't be rolling around on the ground like a
common thug."
  "It's stupid!" Jersey frowned.
  "I think it's funny," Buddy said.
  "Come on, Pops!" Tina yelled. "Give him
hell!"
  Matt knocked Ben down with a solid right to the
jaw and then jumped on top of him, both fists
flailing away.
  Ben gouged Matt in the eye and that brought a roar
of pain as the man twisted away from the painful
fingers. On his knees, Ben clubbed the man on the
side of the neck and got to his feet.
  Matt tried to tackle Ben and Ben put a
boot in the man's face. The sound of Matt's
nose breaking was clearly heard over the panting and
cussing.
  With blood dripping from both their faces, the men
circled each other, fists held high.
  Matt closed and Ben hit him a combination, left
and right, that jerked Matt's head back and glazed his
eyes. Ben pressed on with a left to the windpipe
and a right to the jaw. Matt's knees buckled and he
almost went down, catching himself at the last moment.
  He threw himself at Ben and again, both men went
down, rolling in the dust.
  Ben pinned Matt to the ground and started working on his
face, both fists pile-driving. He stopped when
he realized the man was unconscious,
Matt's face a bloody smashed mask.
  Slowly, Ben got to his boots, his chest
heaving. "Clean him up, tie him up, and toss him
in a truck. Let's get the hell out of here."
  "What are we going to do with him, Father?" Buddy
asked while Ben was washing his face and soaking his
swollen hands.
  "I don't know, son." Ben dried his face and
hands and put on a clean shirt. "Nearly everything
within me says we ought to shoot him. But I just can't
bring myself to do that."
  "He is a perverted, dangerous man," the son
reminded the father. "And we do not have prison
facilities."
  "I am fully aware of that fact. But I do not
believe in executing the mentally ill. I just don't
know what to do with him." i
  Dr. Ling walked up and stood looking at Ben.
  "Well?" Ben met the man's eyes.
  "How are your hands?"
  "Everything works without any crunching or grinding."
  "You're lucky. The bare human hand was not meant
to be used as a weapon."
"How is Matt?"
  "He isn't going to make it."
  "What!"
  "He suffered a heart attack just after the fight.
It's massive and there is nothing I can do for him.
He probably will not last the hour. He's fading
fast and he's asking to see you."
  Ben walked over to where Matt lay, on a
field cot, protected from the sun by a tarp. Under
the swollen and bruised face, the man's color was
awful. Ben pulled up a camp chair and sat
down.
  "Ben," he said weakly.
  "I'm here, Matt."
  "I've got a lucid moment; they come and go.
Mostly go of late."
  Ben said nothing.
  "Tell me about Megan."
  "She's working for Malone. She spun a pretty
good yarn there for a time. She fooled me for a while."
  "She tell you I sexually abused her as a child?"
  "Yes."
  "I did. I've been sick for a long time.
Tried to get help when the world was still in one piece.
But I guess I really didn't want it. I
only went for a few sessions, under an assumed
name."
  Ben rolled a cigarette.
  "Roll one for me, partner," Matt said.
"Hell, I know I'm not going to make it. Feels
like an elephant is sitting on my chest."
  Ben lit the cigarette and placed it between the
man's lips.
  "You remember Luke Wynne, Ben?"
  "Sure."
"I killed him."
  Ben thought about that for a few seconds. "Why?"
  "He wasn't a very good writer."
  "Hell of a reason to kill somebody, Matt."
  "It's as good a reason as any. You believe in
life after death, Ben?"
  "Yes. I do."
  "I don't know whether I do or not. Is the
light fading, Ben."
  "Yes," Ben lied.
  "You're lyin', ol' buddy."
  "Yes. I am."
  "Whole chest hurts, Ben." The cigarette
fell from his lips. Ben picked it up and crushed it.
"And my head feels like it's about to explode."
  Dr. Ling came in and gave the man a shot.
  "What's that for?" Matt asked.
  "It'll make it easier for you."
  "Dying, you mean?"
  "Yes."
  "You just induced dying, didn't you?" Matt
asked, no malice or alarm in his voice.
  "Yes. I did," Ling told him.
  "How much time do I have?"
  "About a minute."
  "Powerful stuff," Matt murmured.
  "V."
  Matt closed his eyes and let the lethal dose
take him.
  "Ben?"
  "Right here, Matt."
  "See you, Slim."
  "Up in the High Lonesome, Snake."
Matt Callahan shuddered once and his head lolled
to one side. When he spoke, the words were slurry.
"I'm not going to bother to ask for forgiveness." He
closed his eyes and died.
  The Rebels buried Matt Callahan in a
mass grave, piled in among his dead hardcases,
and moved on, following Highway 212 east.
  Even though Matt had been a no-good, and only
God knew how much misery and grief he
had caused over the years, his death bothered Ben for a
brief time.
  That night, camped in the Custer National Forest,
Ben said to Tina, "You never know about a man. I
always thought Matt was arrow-straight. He sure had
a bunch of us fooled."
  "If you could say anything about him, Father," Buddy
asked, "what would it be?"
  Ben smiled. "He was a good writer."
  They pulled out at dawn and all were pleased to find
that the old road was in surprisingly good shape. They
would stay with 212 until just inside South
Dakota. There they would cut south for a few miles
and pick up Highway 79 south and follow it down
to 385. That would take them south to Interstate 70.
They would avoid the cities-not wanting to take the time
to confront the Night People-and head as straight as they
could for St. Louis.
  "Do we check out the interior of any of the
cities?" Buddy radioed to Ben.
  "No. And we take action only if we are
attacked. Spearhead us to St. Louis, Buddy."
  And the highway, first in such good shape, soon
began deteriorating rapidly. A few bridges
were out, some destroyed deliberately, others
weakened by years of flash flooding and no maintenance.
The Rebels were forced to detour many times and their
advance became slowed to sometimes less than a
hundred miles a day.
  Buddy had approached Rapid City, on
Interstate 90, and reported back that it was full
of creepies. The awful stench of them and the remains
of the rotting carcasses they had dined on was almost
overpowering even without entering the city.
  "Leave it, son," his dad told him. "Get
back over to 385 and lead us down south. We'll
deal with them later on."
  None of the Rebels liked the idea of leaving
cities filled with creepies. But they also knew that
Lan Villar was the threat they had to crush first-if
they could. And that thought was one they all had to entertain
at some point.
  Ike had taken the northern route-no particular
reason, he just wanted to see the country-and was making
good time. He had bypassed the cities full of
Night People, even though it galled him to do so.
  The Rebels were ready for a rest by the time they reached
Sidney, Nebraska. What they got was a
fight.
  As fights go, it wasn't much of a
fight, but it did slow them up for several hours.
  Several hundred bikers, including Wanda and her
Sisters of Lesbos, had broken away from Satan
and his linking up with Ashley and Voleta and had
struck out on their own. When they reached Sidney,
they decided they liked it and were going to stay.
  About four hundred people were occupying the
town when the bikers and other trash rolled in. And that
was the only reason that Ben did not order the town
blown off the map by artillery.
  Scouts reported that prisoners were being held in
the town.
  "Orders, General?" Dan questioned.
  "I guess we don't have a choice, Dan.
Let's take the town. Swing your people around to the east
side and I'll drive straight in from the west.
I'm getting very weary of these types."
  The Rebels took control of the town by using the
same tactics of the bikers and outlaws: brute
force. The Rebels tried not to shoot up the city,
since people were living there and trying to carve something out of the
ashes.
  It was a sorry and bedraggled-looking bunch of
misfits that finally lay down their arms and signaled
frantically that they wanted to surrender.
  Ben had them lined up, sitting on their butts on
the concrete, with their hands behind their heads, while
waiting for a report on how many townspeople had
suffered from the actions of the outlaws.
  "Rape, mostly," Dan reported back. "A
half a dozen killings of townspeople when the
bikers roared in."
  "Have the people point out the guilty ones."
  They did so.
  "Take them out and shoot them," Ben ordered.
  Several of the Sister of Lesbos and more than one
biker pissed their dirty jeans at the
emotionless-given execution order. But all of them
knew that they had one chance of staying alive, and that was
to keep their
mouths shut tight.
  The prisoners visibly flinched as the firing
squads carried out Ben's orders.
  "No more free rides, people," Ben told the group
of about a hundred and fifty. "Those days are long
past. How many of you were working for Matt Callahan?
And don't even think about lying to me."
  Most of the hands were raised.
  "He's dead," Ben informed them. "I whipped his
ass in a stand-up fistfight near where
Custer is buried. His men were wiped out the night before
by PU!'S. Most of you know what those are. Matt
Callahan, aka the Rattlesnake Kid, died
of a heart attack about fifteen minutes after the
fight. That stupid HALFASS business just got
put out of business."
  Ben walked the lines of prisoners, glaring at
them. And since they were already very badly shaken, Ben's
cold stares did nothing to induce any feelings of
immediate relief. "Now then, I have another problem:
what in the hell to do with you people."
  The bikers did a magnificent job of looking
everywhere except at Ben.
  "I have discussed this with Colonel Dan Gray."
Ben pointed to Dan. "That rather imposing-looking
gentlemen right over there."
  They looked. They also knew that Colonel
Gray was the man who had selected and led the firing
squad. They shuddered.
  "How would you people like to do something worthwhile just once
in your miserable lives?"
  The bikers blinked. All had but two thoughts on
their minds: what is it, and what's the catch?
  Leadfoot was the first to speak. "We're listening,
General."
  "Join us," Ben said simply.
  The bikers and outlaws and assorted other crud and
crap blinked and looked at one another, not sure
they had heard correctly.
  "What's the catch?" Wanda was the first to speak.
  "You fight with us and you obey the rules," Ben
told her. "This is probably the last chance you'll
ever have to turn your lives around and live decently."
  "And if we don't join you," a biker asked,
"you goin' to kill us?"
  "No. You're free to ride on out of here. But
if we ever meet again, and we will, bet on that, and
you're not living a very quiet and law-abiding life,
I'll kill you. And I think by now you all know that
I mean that."
  Leadfoot stood up, very carefully. A big
man with a shaggy mop of hair and sharp, intelligent
eyes. "Say we go along with you, General-what do
we get out of it?"
  "You mean as in pay?"
  "Yes ... sir," he added.
  "Three meals a day, clothes, medical
attention, weapons and ammo."
  "That's it?"
  "That's it."
  The outlaws looked at each other; they'd never
heard of such a whacky deal.
  Wanda stood up. "Well. . . what do you people
get out of doing"-she shrugged her shoulders-"all that you
do?"
"A feeling that they're helping to restore some
degree of civilization back to America," a
biker said, standing up. "Pride in themselves.
Intangible things. But very important things."
  All the Rebels standing nearby, including Ben,
turned to look at the well-spoken man.
  "That is correct," Ben said. "Your name?"
  "Frank."
  "You sound as though you have some education."
  "I got my degree from Stanford. Why I
started outlawing is my business. Yours only if
I decide to go back to it."
  "That's fair enough. Are you in or out?"
  "I'm in."
  "Report to Colonel Gray." He once more
faced the outlaws. "Make your decisions. I
haven't got all day to waste."
  "Oh, what the hell!" Wanda said. "Come on,
girls. "We've been given a second
chance-let's take it."
  Leadfoot slowly nodded his head. "Might as
well get on the winnin' side for a change."
  "You might die on this side, too," Ben
reminded him.
  Leadfoot smiled and the smile changed his entire
face. "That's a fact, General. But I haven't
been real happy with myself the past few months. I
think that's true for most of us. No one could really
put into words why we pulled away from Satan and his
bunch. We just did. Most of us here now was against
takin' this town. But it's what we've been doin'
for a long time. It's over, and I'm glad."
  Leadfoot and his bunch formed a line, waiting
to see Dan and the other Rebels who had joined him,
taking names and blood types and other important
personal history from the now ex-outlaws.
  Buddy walked up to his father. "This just has to be
the strangest army in the history of warfare," he
observed.
  Ben smiled. "I can hardly wait to see what
happens when this bunch meets Emil and
Thermopolis."
  "Like I said: strange."
  The Rebels pulled out the following morning, after
seeing to the needs of the townspeople and having
them flatly reject Ben's offer of becoming a part
of the outpost chain.
  "Then you're on your own," Ben told them.
"Don't expect us to come to your rescue-not again.
Because we won't."
  "You're a hard man, General Raines," the
spokesperson told him.
  "I'm trying to rebuild a nation," Ben
replied. "And you're either with me or against me.
You've made your choice. Good day."
  The Rebels crossed the South Platte with
Buddy and his Rat Team spearheading some
twenty-five miles in advance of the main column and
they rolled eastward.
  Ben had decided that the bikers who joined them could
dress as they always had-after they bathed- and could carry
weapons of their choice. But they would, like all the
rest, wear body armor. Leadfoot
was in command; the second in command was Frank. Ben had
no idea how the bikers would work out; all he could do
was hope for the best.
  Buddy reported back that the Interstate was
blocked at North Platte. The town seemed
to be filled with outlaws. Ben told his son to stay
put and out of sight. He halted the
column and walked up to Leadfoot.
  "You know these people in North Platte,
Lead-foot?"
  "I don't have any idea who they are,
General," the biker said, "Most of us have mainly
been working the northwest and southwest the past couple of
years. Everything east of the Wyoming line is unknown
to us."
  Ben decided to put them to the test. "You think you can
go in there and Size things up for us?"
  "Damn right!"
  "Well then, carry on, Leadfoot. I'll
hold the column here."
  With the column two miles behind them, Leadfoot
pulled the bikers over. "This is our chance to prove
ourselves, people. Let's don't screw it up. I
kinda like being on the winnin' side for a change."
  "It does feel sorta good, don't it?" Wanda
said.
  "All right, folks," Leadfoot began, "lock
and load and get ready for war. And remember: we
ain't outlaws no more; we're part of Ben
Raines's Rebels. Let's roll."
  The one hudnred and fifty bikers, Leadfoot in
the front, rode brazenly around the
roadblocks and right up the main street of North
Platee. Wanda gunned her Harley and rode up
alongside Leadfoot.
"I seen a bike that I know," she called. "This
is Pistol's bunch."
  "I heard of him. He's worser than we ever
was. Him and his gang is people that even
we
could look down on. Piss on talkin', let's
take the town!"
  Frank took one group and Leadfoot took the
other, and taking tactics from the Rebels, the bikers
hit the town hard and fast and offered no mercy to the
outlaws. They were all armed with Uzis and they knew
how to use them. The fight was very short and very brutal.
What was left of Pistol's gang, caught totally
unaware by bikers they thought were going to be friendly,
turned tail and hauled their butts out of town.
  Using a walkie-talkie, Leadfoot radioed
Ben. "Come on in, General. The town is
yourn."
  Smiling, Ben acknowledged the message and turned
to Dan. "I believe we made the right choice,
Dan."
  "I believe we did, General."
  Ben shook hands with every biker, complimenting them on a
job well done. "From now on, you'll be known as the
Wolf pack."
  To a person, the bikers were grinning. Then they
raised their Uzis in the air and cheered Ben . . .
and another small but extremely loyal and
hard-nosed unit had been added to the army of
Rebels.
  The Rebels spent a day in North Platte,
seeing to the needs of the several hundred townspeople
who had been virtual slaves of Pistol and his
outlaw bikers. Unlike those a hundred miles
back, this group was
eager to become a part of the Rebel outpost system.
Ben arranged for planes to start coming in, bringing
much-needed supplies and weapons. Ben left a
few of his own Rebels to oversee the training and
setting-up of the new outpost and pulled out. Ike and
General Striganov had reached St. Louis and were
waiting for Ben.
  Ben allowed a few of the Wolfpack members
to ride with Buddy and his Rat Team spearheading the
column. He wanted the bikers to learn military
tactics concerning recon, and what Buddy couldn't
teach them, Dan sure would.
  Kearney was in the hands of outlaws and warlords and
Grand Island belonged to the creepies. Ben ordered
them both bypassed and said a silent prayer that both
factions would end up killing each other.
  Omaha had taken a nuke during the Great War
and was hot; one of the few cities that had actually
taken a nuclear strike. Lincoln was another
stronghold of the Night People, so Ben ordered the
column to cut south at York and took 81 down
to 136. They would follow that all the way
into Missouri.
  They spent the night at a long-deserted town on
the Missouri River and crossed over into what had
once been the state of Missouri the following
morning. Buddy cut the column southeast until
linking up with Interstate 70. They would take that
all the way across to St. Louis.
  The Rebels found pockets of survivors all
over the state, and stopped whenever they could to explain
what was happening and why they could not linger any longer
than to give medical attention to those
needing it and radioing to Base Camp One with the
locations.
  And then there would be miles and miles of not sighting
a living being. But all had the uncomfortable
sensation of having unseen eyes on them.
  "Just like in so many of the other states," Beth
remarked. "They want to come out and meet us, but
they're wary of us."
  "We'll be back," Ben said. "God willing."
  His team in the Blazer knew then just how serious
conditions were, for Ben rarely invoked God's name.
  "The Wood's Children live along this stretch,"
Ben said. "They range from North Dakota all the
way over to the Illinois line." He reached for his
mike, hesitated, and then picked it up. "Eagle
to Rat."
  "Go, Eagle."
  "Start leaving messages for the Wood's Children,
Rat. I told you about them. Wade and Ro and the
others. Tell them to meet us in St. Louis. Theirs
are the eyes that have been on us. They'll be there-bet
on it."
  "The people that worship you, General?" Jersey
asked.
  "Unfortunately, yes. But I think I got
through to them the last time we met. j We'll know in a
few weeks." Ben was silent for a time, remembering
his first face-to-face meeting with the Wood's Children,
or the Orphans' Brigade, as Ike
had named them.
  "Here comes the Orphans' Brigade," Buck
said,
sticking his head into Ben's quarters. "General, you have
to see this to believe it."
  "That bad?" Ben questioned, moving toward the door.
  The columns of young people were still about a mile away from
the HQ. They were marching steadily. Ragged and
dirty, the kids marched with their heads held high.
  Ben, with Gale by his side, watched the young people.
One column was marching from the northwest, the other from the
northeast.
  "Damnest thing I believe I've ever seen,"
Ben remarked, lowering his binoculars.
  "They're children!" Gale said. "Babies."
  "Don't you believe that, Miss Roth," Buck
said. "Those kids have been on their own for years.
They're tough little guys and gals. And the way it was
told to me, most of them would as soon kill you as
look at you."
  Gale's heart went out to the little ones in the
column. "That's hard to believe, Buck."
  "Believe it," Ben told her. "They've had
no schooling, no parental or adult guidance, no
discipline other that what they impose on
themselves. A sort of tribal law, I imagine.
They have had but one thought in all their waking years:
to survive. Yet another sad postwar fact."
  Gale wouldn't give it up. "But they look so
helpless."
  Ben said, "Bear in mind that those two columns of
kids helped destroy four battalions of trained
IPF personnel. And they took no prisoners."
Mary Macklin had joined the group. "Colonel
Gray thought they looked helpless. He offered one
little girl, about nine years old, a candy bar. She
bit his hand to the bone. The colonel's Scouts said
that Colonel Gray then became quite ineloquent."
  "Poor little girl," Gale said.
  Mary smiled. "Then that poor little girl grabbed
the colonel's weapon, kicked him in the shins, and
ran off into the woods."
  Ike walked up and looked at the approaching young
people, only a few hundred feet away. They marched
forward, stopping a few yards from Ben and the group.
  "Aw!" Ike said. "Look at them poor little
kids. Makes your heart ache, don't it? Me and
Sally got to take in a few of them to raise."
  Ben had smiled.
  Ike walked into the street and stood
smiling down at the group. He felt his heart
soften as he looked at a small girl, ragged and
dirty. The stocky ex-Seal knelt down in
front of her.
  "Howdy, honey," he said in his best
Mississippi drawl. "My, but you sure are
pretty. How'dyou like to come live with me and my
wife?"
  The girl, about ten years old, pulled a pistol
from a holster, cocked it, and stuck the muzzle in
Ike's suddenly pale face. "How'd you like to eat
some lead, fatso?"
  Ben had to struggle to keep from laughing at the
expression on Ike's face. It was very difficult
to get anything over on Ike, and Ben knew this
story would fly around the Rebel camps. Ike would
never live
it down.
  "Now, darlin'," Ike said, very carefully getting
to his feet. "There ain't no call for nothin' like
this. I don't mean you no harm."
  "Yeah?" the cute little girl asked
belligerently. "That's what them other guys told
me, too. I believed them. You know what they done
to me?"
  "I'd really rather not hear about it, if you don't
mind," Ike said.
  "I guess you and your wife is gonna love me
and hug me and give me food and pretty clothes and
all that shit?" The little girl demanded that Ike
reply.
  Ike winced at her language. "Well, ah,
yeah, that's right."
  "That's what them men told me, too. So I
believed them. They took me to a house and did bad
things to me. They hurt me real bad and left me
to die. Then Wade and his people come along and him and his people
killed them men who raped me. I believe Wade.
I don't know you, so I don't believe you, and I
don't trust you. I got my reasons, mister."
  Ben stepped forward as the crowd began to swell with the
arrival of more young people. "You can believe him," he
told the girl. "Ike is sincere in wanting you
to come live with his family. Ike and Sally are good
people."
  The ragged little girl with the pistol in her hand swung
oldstwisestyoung eyes to Ben. She holstered the
pistol. "Maybe," she said, suspicion in her
voice. "I don't know you neither, but you look
familiar. Who you is, mister?"
"Ben Raines."
  The girl reached into a leather pouch on her belt and
removed a plastic-covered picture. She compared
the picture to the man then turned to face the large
group of young people, hundreds strong. "It's really
him!" she yelled.
  The little girl fell to her knees and every boy and
girl in the crowd followed suit. Ben stood
open-mouthed, astonishment on his face.
  "What the hell?" he muttered.
  Wade crawled toward Ben. Clearly
embarrassed, Ben tried to motion the young man to his
feet. But Wade would have none of that.
  "Get up!" Ben whispered to him. "What do you
think you're doing?"
  With his eyes downcast, Wade called out, "All
praise Ben Raines!"
  "What!" Ben almost shouted the word. His own people were
looking at him strangely.
  "All praise Ben Raines!" the crowd of young
people echoed.
  Ben lost his temper. "Now just a damn minute!"
he yelled. "All of you kids-get off your
knees. Get up and face me."
  Ben handed his old Thompson to Ike.
The eyes of the young people followed the movement. They now
viewed Ike in a different light. Ben, feeling
awfully foolish, motioned the young people up from their
prostration.
  Reluctantly, and with fear on their faces, the
kids rose to their feet.
  "You young people do
not
worship
me!"
Ben told
them firmly.
"Nobody
worships me. I won't have it. It's silly.
Where did you young people get such an idea?"
  "It... is written," Wade stammered out in
reply.
  Ben looked hard at him. "Written? Where is
it written that I am to be treated like some sort of
god?"
  "An old man told us that. I mean ... he
didn't exactly say it like that, but he talked real
funny; old-time like. And he said that to worship a
false god was a sin in the eyes of the Lord. I
told him that maybe was so, but there was only
one man I would ever bow down to, and that was Ben
Raines."
  Ben nodded, not knowing how the young people would interpret that
nod. "Was the man's name the Prophet?" The
old man with the long beard and robe and staff that
sometimes popped up in several places at once.
Ben had seen him; didn't know what to make of him.
  At the mention of the old man's name, the young people
drew back, as if very much afraid.
  "Yes," Wade said, standing his ground but looking very
much as if he would like to cut and run.
  "What did the old man say and do when you told
him that?"
  "He said that perhaps you-Ben Raines-might be the
man to do the job at hand. But that on your head would
lie the .. . con-con ..." He struggled with the
word. "Consequences should you try but fail."
  "What do you think the old man meant by that?"
  A look of confusion passed over Wade's
face. He finally shrugged his shoulders. That you are a
god-
what else?"
  "I am not a god. Not someone that you should
worship."
  "No, sir." The young man's reply was
soft. "No, sir. I don't think so. And none
of the people who travel with me think so neither. I been
all over this land, from big water to big water, east
to west. I been to Canada all the way down
to Mexico. I have seen what some people have built in
reverence to you."
  Ben stirred. The rock and stone monuments that some
had erected to him. But how to combat that was something that
eluded Ben.
  "You have many, many followers, Mr. Ben Raines.
Some who live on the land, some who live under it, in
tunnels and caves."
  At that time Ben had only heard of the Underground
P. He had never seen them.
  Wade motioned to another young man and he stepped
forward. "Ro," Wade said. "He leads the
second group of young."
  Ben extended his hand. Ro backed away from it.
  "It is not permitted, Mr. Ben Raines."
  "What is not permitted?" There was an edge
to Ben's voice.
  Ro looked at Ben and smiled. "It is as the
Prophet said: you do not yet know who you are. But it
still is not permitted."
  Ben thought: I ask a question and get
riddles.
  Ro further irritated Ben by bowing to him. Ro
turned to his people and said something that Ben could not understand.
It sounded very much like Pidgin English.
Dear God! Ben thought. Have we reverted to this-
already?
  "And do they still worship you?" Cooper asked, after
Ben had told them the story.
  "I don't know. I hope not. We've only
scratched the surface of what really lies out there."
He pointed to the passing landscape. "And under it,"
he added softly.
  A subterranean society did exist in what was
once known as America, South America,
Central America, Asia Minor, Africa,
Asia-all around the globe. In Europe, the
Night People were called Children of Darkness . . . they
worshipped Satan. Their enemies, the People of
Darkness, still worshipped a more kinder and caring God,
a deity who had a face strangely like Ben
Raines.
  The people who lived in the caves and tunnels had
long ago given up on modern technology and
weapons and what was once considered the acceptable
mode of dress and manner of living. They
wore the skins of animals, and the soles of their
feet were as tough as leather.
  Some worldwide worshipped Satan, and all the
horror that went with it. Others worshipped some form of
higher entity, but for the most part they did not believe
He was all-powerful. No true all-powerful God
would have permitted the world to become as it now was.
Blind faith in the unseen was unacceptable to many
survivors of the Great War.
  But Ben Raines, now-he was real. Ben Raines
was doing something to correct all this misery and
awfulness. So, many of them reasoned, Ben Raines
must be in touch with some higher power. And if that were
true, then Ben Raines must be the man-God here
on earth.
  In a manner of speaking, the older and wiser of them
cautioned.
  Ben knew only too well that he was combatting
much more than a tangible enemy.
  That other enemy scared the crap out of him.
  "This Wade and Ro," Jersey asked, "are they
still alive?"
  "I don't know. They would be older now, and perhaps
no longer in the field. We'll just have to see. They
live a hard and dangerous life. And they
resist my efforts to bring them into our settlements."
  The long column rolled on. They crossed the
Missouri River at St. Charles and cut onto
270 just outside of St. Louis. All along the
Interstate were mounds of equipment with more equipment being
trucked and flown in daily from Base Camp One.
  Cecil had brought his battalion up from
Louisiana. West was there, the mercenary limping around
with a cast on his ankle.
  Ben stepped out of the Blazer and let the bad news
hit him.
  "Khamsin and Villar are massing for attack,
Ben," Cecil told him. "They've already started
moving
units westward."
  "Here we go again," West said, leaning on his
cane.
  Ben nodded his head. "And this time we'd better do
it right the first time, or there won't be another time-for
any of us."
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