William W. Johnstone (5 page)

The rain continued falling, harder now than before. Ben cocked his head and listened to the drumming of the raindrops. “Dan. Double the guards. Tell them ‘heads up.’ If we’ve got unfriendlies out there, this would be an ideal time for them to hit us.”

“Right, sir.” Dan left the small hut.

“Expecting trouble?” Ike asked.

“No. But I do wonder if all those eyes out there are friendly ones.”

“Good point.”

Dan returned in a few minutes. He had a small tin of tea with him. “Now we shall enjoy a gentleman’s drink,” he announced.

“Does that include me?” Ike questioned.

“Heavens no!”

The water boiled, the tea steeping, Ben said, “Ike and his bunch will be going in from the south, Dan, as we agreed. You and your Scouts still want to play it the way we planned?”

“Wouldn’t have it any other way, General,” Dan cheerfully replied. “We shall have a gay ol’ time doing our bloody bit.”

“Always knowed there was something funny about you,” Ike said.

“Imbecile!” Dan told him.

“Flea brain!” Ike returned the cheerfully given insult.

Ben shook his head and took his mug of steaming tea, sweetening it with a bit of honey from a jug.

Sugar was very nearly a priceless commodity.

The men sat and sipped, enjoying the tea, as the rain drummed on the roof.

“Something puzzles me, General,” Dan said.

Ike picked up on the serious note in the question and did not stick the needle to Dan. Yet.

Ben waited.

“In less than fifteen years,” the Englishman said, “how could intelligent men and women revert from civilization back to the caves, as these so-called underground people have done?”

“You’re asking me a question I don’t have a ready answer for, Dan. Maybe they thought underground would be safer. With the roaming gangs of thugs and punks and assorted creeps prowling the land, these people returned to the caves, perhaps driven by some primal urgings. I just don’t know. Maybe on this run we’ll find out, since they’ve indicated they’ll fight with us.”

“And maybe they just gave up on the promise of civilization,” Ike interjected. “A lot of folks have. You both know that; we’ve all seen it.”

“I shall surely never understand that kind of thinking,” Dan said. “I do not understand people who just give up without a fight.”

“And speaking of that,” Ike said, after draining his mug of tea. “I’m gonna ask one more time, and then I’ll shut up about it. Ben … stay back on this one.”

“No. I’m taking my team in, dead center. We’ll be jumping in as planned. And have you heard from your Pathfinders, Ike?”

“Only that they all made it. They’re probably busy laying out the DZs.”

Ben nodded his head. “Now comes the hardest part, boys.”

And they knew what that was: the waiting.

The Rebels waited all that day, that night, and the following day. Still the rains continued. Ike’s Pathfinders called in from their positions. The drop zones were laid out, the coordinates given. Yes, it was raining there, too. Had been for two days. It was a bitch!

The building where Sylvia’s riggers had worked so feverishly leaked; the chutes would have to be unpacked, dried out, and repacked.

If it ever quit raining.

Another full day lost.

And the battalions coming in from the east were bogged down, having to make many detours due to the bad roads. More delays.

And Ben knew that Striganov was not sitting on his hands. The longer his Rebels had to wait, the more time the Russian had to beef up his defenses. For Ben did not delude himself: he knew the Russian knew where he was. And the Russian would be wondering what his old enemy was up to.

And worse yet, the human suffering at Striganov’s experiment stations would continue unabated.

Ben paced his command post and cursed.

“Goddammit!” Cecil cursed, standing in the rain beside his Jeep. “We’re a hundred miles out and bogged down. “Son of a
bitch!”

The Rebels maintained a respectable distance from General Jefferys. The almost-always-eloquent and soft-spoken black man—one of General Raines’s closest friends—rarely used profanity. But when he did … stand clear.

Cecil Jefferys had been with Ben since the inception of the Tri-States, and, for a very brief time, Vice-President of the United States. Cecil was the man Ben Raines leaned on most heavily for support.

Cecil turned to an aide. “Bring a tank up here,” he ordered. “And blow that goddamned bridge clear.”

“Yes, sir!”

An M109A1 was off-loaded from a flatbed and rumbled into life. It roared up to Cecil’s position. The commander of the twenty-six-ton vehicle spoke to Cecil through a headset. “I think we can push that crap free, General.”

“Then do it,” Cecil said tersely.

The commander reversed his howitzer and ordered the massive machine forward, slamming into the rusting debris that blocked the bridge on the interstate. The tank backed off, allowing a truck with a scoop-mount to roll into place. The scoop shoved what remained of the blockage off to one side and the column began rolling.

“Hang on, Ben,” Cecil said, climbing back into his canvas-shielded Jeep. “We’re almost there.”

Cecil ordered the hammer down. About fifty miles from Ben’s base camp, Cecil’s column caught up with Ike’s motorized battalion. His Jeep skirted the front column and Cecil waved them forward, clenching his fist and working the clenched fist up and down; the infantry signal to
Gol

By late afternoon, the sun began poking through the clouds, the air warming. Forward scouts radioed back that the road was clear and free of any obstacles all the way to General Raines’s camp.

Just before dusk, Cecil’s battalions rolled into the old Tri-States.

It was the first time Cecil had been back since the government assault against Raines’s Rebels. The familiar terrain brought to the man a myriad of emotions. His wife, Lila, had died not too many miles from here, during the government assault on the Tri-States; she had stepped in front of a Claymore mine.

Then, all of a sudden, Ben was standing by the side of the road, tall and erect and seemingly ageless, his beret cocked on his head Ranger fashion. A young woman stood by Ben’s side. Cecil recognized her. Lieutenant Barris.

He grinned, thinking: Ben and his women But he was glad for Ben.

The men did not shake hands. They embraced. “Ugly bastard!” Ben told him.

“Old goat!” Cecil responded, cutting his eyes toward Sylvia.

“Ready for a war?” Ben asked.

“I’ll follow where you lead, Ben.”

“Then, let’s do it!”

General Georgi Striganov’s forward deep recon scouts would make no more radio reports back to the Russian. They would never do anything again. Ever. They lay motionless on the damp ground, widely separated, the earth soaking up their blood. And they had been unable to fire one shot in their defense.

None of the IPF people had ever gotten so much as a glimpse of the men who killed them.

They had encountered the underground people. Silent and deadly.

The first IPF scout to die had risen from his concealed position—a position he thought was concealed. He took an arrow through the head, the point driving out the other side, carrying with it bits of bone and brain and tissue. The scout dropped to the earth, only a bit more loudly than he had risen.

The scouts were widely separated; none of his comrades knew of his death.

The second IPF scout to die never heard the person who crept silently through the brush and timber behind him. He felt only the eyes on his back. He turned to check the source of his concern. The hand axe bit deeply into his skull; blood and fluid splashed from the massive wound. The attacker grabbed the IPF scout before he could tumble loosely to the ground and make any noise as his body came in contact with the ground. The underground man lowered the body to the damp earth. The underground man, dressed in clothing of earth tones, turned and slipped silently back into the timber.

The third scout to die felt first the leather strap-loop around his neck and then the knee in the small of his back, pinning him to the earth. His head began roaring as life-sustaining air was closed off. His frantically clawing fingers could not slip under the tightly pulled leather strap around his neck.

The roaring in his head dimmed all other sounds as life began oozing away from the Russian. He could but vaguely remember his mother and father back in Russia. Most of his boyhood and young adult life had been spent in Iceland. But he thought, now, of his parents. He wondered what had ever happened to them?

And he thought too of the teachings of Marx and Lenin. Was there nothing after life? Only death? Were they wrong?

He knew he was about to find out.

His lungs began to collapse as his heart seemed to literally burst in his chest.

The underground man swiftly tied a knot in the leather as he felt the young Russian’s body grow limp. He slipped away from the body, back into the timber, knowing that they would be back when all the scouts were dead. They would show Ben Raines they were sincere in their offer of help.

The last IPF member of this forward team tried to raise his comrades by radio.

He received no reply.

The team leader placed the radio on the ground. With a terrible feeling in his guts—a feeling that would soon be replaced by a terrible pain—he knew his friends would never again answer anything.

Not on this earth. Not in this life.

His own thoughts startled him, and for a few seconds, shamed him.

Then he turned to meet his fate.

A spear flew out of the lush greenery. The young soldier had but a few seconds to respond, but he seemed unable to do so. Or unwilling. He did not know which it was. He knew only a horrible pain in his belly as the spear tore open his guts. He dropped to his knees in the forest, in a vague praying position.

It was in that fashion that life left him.

The underground man who had hurled the spear stepped out of the timber, walking to the cooling body of the IPF scout. “Gather them up and take them to the camp of Ben Raines,” he ordered. “Tonight. Leave them.” He turned to face another man dressed in earth tones. “Send a runner out. Your very best. He must travel far and fast to warn the others that Ben Raines will need our help in this fight. Warn him to travel only at night. Our like kind will offer him shelter during the light hours. Go.”

And then the forest was once more as silent and nature-controlled as it was ten thousand years ago. With no sign of human life.

“I suppose,” Ben said to Dr. Chase, “you’re going to tell me you plan on jumping in with us?”

“I hope your leadership qualities are better than your wild suppositions,” the doctor fired back. “I have no intention of hurling my body out of a moving airplane with only a few pounds of silk—if it opens—to float me to earth. Piss on you, Raines.” Dr. Chase had never been one to tap dance around Ben. The ex-Navy doctor, now in his seventies, was yet another of the few remaining who had been with Ben from the beginning. And one of the few who would treat Ben as Ben wished to be treated: as a mortal man, nothing more.

“What are your plans, Lamar?” Ben asked him.

“There will be wounded to be cared for. I shall set up my field hospitals as close as is possible to the front. As soon as a front is established, that is.” He looked at Ben and Ben knew what was coming. “I shall treat
all
wounded, Raines. But our allies will get top priority.”

“All right. As yet, we have no communication with Striganov or Hartline. I suppose you’ll want to lay down some sort of honor system with them concerning the treatment of prisoners and the wounded?”

“If at all possible, Ben, yes.”

“We’ll try. But don’t expect too much, Lamar. For our part, we’ll be engaging in a guerrilla war. There aren’t too many amenities offered guerrillas.”

“I am aware of that fact.”

“Just clearing the air, Lamar.”

“It’s clear.”

A sergeant stuck his head into Ben’s command post. “General. Would you come see this, sir?”

Ben, Cecil, Ike, Dan, Lamar Chase, and Sylvia walked out into the cool, starry night of spring in the Northwest, following the sergeant.

He led them to a pile of bodies, piled in a heap on the outskirts of the compound. The bodies still had the arrows and spears and leather.

“Good God!” Lamar blurted.

Ben looked at the sergeant. “No one heard them being brought here?”

“No, sir.”

“They’re IPF scouts,” Dan said, kneeling down beside the stiffening carcasses. “See the shoulder flash?”

“They were brought by those who live in the caves and tunnels,” a young voice spoke from behind the gathering.

All turned.

Ro and Wade stood in the night. The young leaders of the woods-children had arrived with the motorized battalion, but this was their first public appearance. They chose to sleep in the timber, shunning tents and other shelters offered them by the Rebels. They carried their survival with them.

“Ro. Wade,” Ben greeted them. “Did you see the bodies brought here?”

“Yes,” Wade said. “The underground people are telling you, in their way, they are ready to fight for you.”

“Why didn’t they just come talk with me?” “Because that is forbidden,” Ro informed him. “Who forbids it, Ro?”

The question confused both the young men, really no more than boys, and in the starry light their uncertainty was evident.

“It is forbidden,” Wade ended it, reaching the end of his understanding.

“All right,” Ben said softly. “We all have to accept some things on faith alone.”

Chase and the others were looking at Ben strangely.

Ben said, “I want to meet with all commanders first thing in the morning. Wade, you and Ro be there.”

“We shall be.” The two leaders of the woods-children turned and vanished into the starlit darkness, leaving without a sound on footgear made of animal hide.

“Them kids spook the shit outta me,” Ike said. “They woulda made fine SEAL instructors.”

Dan grinned in the night; the opportunity was just too great to resist. “Indeed?” he said. “So would have the Boy Scouts, I should imagine.”