Ben looked at the pirates and then laughed at them. "Which one of you is Tyrone Power and who is Errol Flynn?" he asked.
The four men scowled at him.Beth came in and laid a piece of paper on the table Ben was using for a desk. Ben read it, his expression changing into a deep frown. He glanced up at the men. "Which one of you gave the orders to slaughter the civilians before you tried to sail out?"
The pirates all grinned. One hawked up phlegm and spat on the floor.
Ben nonchalantly lifted a pistol from his desk and shot the spitter in the knee. The pirate hit the floor, howling in pain, both hands holding onto his b.l.o.o.d.y and ruined knee.
The others started jabbering in a mixture of languages, all pointing at the other.
"It"s a slaughterhouse in town, boss," Cooper said, stepping into the room. He gave no more than a cursory glance at the man screaming on the floor. "These b.a.s.t.a.r.ds killed all the old people. Shot them, hanged them, and killed them in other ways too disgusting to mention."
"Kids?"
"Only a few kids in town, boss. Some of the older people left alive said most of the kids were seized along with the young women several months ago and sold."
"Any idea where?"
Cooper shook his head.
Paula stepped onto the porch of the home. She heard 73.the squalling and rushed into the house. She pulled up short at the sight of the man writhing in pain on the floor. "My G.o.d!" she blurted.
"What"s happened here?"
"I shot him," Ben told her. "And I"m about to hang these others. What do you want, Paula?"
"You"re going to hang them?"
"Yes. You want to watch?"
"You"re not serious!"
Jersey laughed at her.
Paula"s eyes narrowed in anger. "You can"t just hang these men, Ben. Not without a trial."
"You wanna bet?"
Ben thought Paula would barf all over her combat boots when he hanged the pirates, including the man with the busted knee.
"Eased his pain," Ben said, looking at the pirate swinging from a makeshift gallows. "All right, let"s prowl the town and see what we have."
Death.The elderly had been shot and hanged and burned alive and tortured to death and killed in every manner a criminal degenerate mind could dream up ... for sport, their bodies left to rot under the sun. The stench was overpowering.
"Get the troops into protective gear and clear these bodies from the streets," Ben ordered. "Before Dr. Chase starts jumping up and down and screaming."
"I do not jump up and down, Raines," Lamar said, walking up behind Ben and team. "However, I might raise my voice from time to time."
"Where is Paula Pureheart?" Ben asked.
Chase sighed, feigning great patience. "The lady had a very gentle upbringing, Raines. She is just not accustomed to your crudeness and vulgarity."
74."Yeah, Lamar. Right. Her ancestors came over on the Mayflower and all that."
"That is probably true, Raines."
"Mine were here first," Jersey said with a smile. She put one hand on her hip and with great British affectation, said, "I"m quite the lay-dy."
Chase could not hide his grin. He shook his head and said, "What a bunch of characters. Now if you"ll excuse me, I have work to do. Good-bye."
Lamar gone to oversee the setting up of his MASH units, Ben said, "Okay.
Let"s find me a temporary CP. Down by the port area. We"re going to have ships coming in shortly with supplies and more water trucks. Not long after we leave here, we"re going to have one h.e.l.l of a long, dry pull ahead of us."
Agadir had once boasted a population of over a hundred thousand. Now there were approximately five thousand people left in the city, mostly older women.
"Any able-bodied man was taken and sold," Rebel intelligence told Ben.
"And no idea where?"
"None, General."
"What about the Canary Islands. Anything firm yet?"
"Not really. We know it was a haven for pirates for a time. Then for some reason-as yet unknown-the pirates left the islands. They didn"t leave much behind them."
"No communications at all from the islands?"
"Nothing. Not a peep. Flyovers show many of the cities and towns on the islands have been destroyed by fires. We don"t know if they were deliberate or accidental."
"But the flyovers can detect nothing that would pose a threat to us.""That"s correct, sir."
75."Very well. Thank you." The briefing over, Anna asked, "We going to visit those islands, General Ben?"
"Not this time, Anna. We don"t need them for any base, and if they don"t pose any threat there is no point in going."
"No people over there?" she asked.
"Heatseekers show very few of them."
"So where do we head next?"
There are lots of towns and little villages between here and Laayoune, Anna. And then . . . we"re in the desert, into Mauritania and crossing the Tropic of Cancer."
"Not much along the way, huh?"
"Not much. Not once we get away from the coast." Ben looked out the window: black smoke was drifting lazily toward the blue of the sky. The troops were burning the bodies, for the flatbed trucks carrying the earth-moving equipment had not yet reached the main column. They were about a half a day behind, accompanied by tanks and a company of heavily armed Rebels. Many of the bodies were so badly decomposed Dr. Chase took one look and ordered them all burned immediately.
"I wonder if it"s going to be this way all the way down to Bottger"s territory?" Corrie asked, standing with Ben by the window.
"Worse, probably. The further south we go the more populated the land.
What about the other battalions?"
"We seem to be catching the worst of it, boss. All the battalions are reporting burying or burning bodies, but not as many as we"ve found. Ike says Egypt was a piece of cake, no trouble at all there. He"s going to hug the coast through the Sudan and Eritrea."
"Nothing new after we received that report?"
"Nothing new."
"Supplies?"
76.William W. Johnstone "Ships have docked and off-loaded. Shoving off shortly. Planes in and out with no trouble."
"Miss Priss is about to make an entrance," Jersey called from the open door.
Ben smiled. "Be sure and show her right in, Jersey."
Jersey muttered something under her breath and Ben laughed aloud.Paula Preston entered the room and marched up to Ben. "General, I need to make a report to my government."
"Of course, Ms. Preston. Corrie will be only too happy to get an up-link for you. That is, providing your government has managed to allocate enough money for radios. The last report I got was they were very busy sending federal agents out into the countryside gathering up weapons from private citizens."
Paula stared at him for a moment. "Sarcasm is not necessary, General. I am very much aware of your contempt for my government."
"I really doubt, Ms. Preston, if you fully comprehend the depth of my disdain."
"Perhaps we can discuss the merits of our respective governments at some later date, General."
"Anytime, Ms. Preston. Corrie, see if you can get through to, ah, her government, please."
"That should prove to be a good trick," Corrie mumbled.
"I"m sure you"ll succeed, dear," Paula said to her.
"Only if they have enough sense to find the on/off switch . . . and flip it in the right position," Corrie popped right back.
Paula sighed with the great patience of a career diplomat.
Ben laughed at the expression on her face.
It was turning out to be a very interesting trip.
77 Ten A vast emptiness stretched out before the column, seemingly void of any living thing. The Rebels had left the looted and burned city of Laayoune behind them, after doing what they could for the few thousand residents left.
It was almost unbearably hot, and to make matters worse, the Western Sahara and the bordering nation of Mauritania were in the grip of a long drought, and the sun burning every living thing. The Rebels had removed their shirts and stripped down to T-shirts in an attempt to cool off during the day; at night it was sometimes downright cold. During the day, no vehicle air-conditioning could be run because of overheating.
"G.o.dd.a.m.n miserable country," Jersey b.i.t.c.hed. "Why in the name of G.o.d would anyone in their right mind willingly choose to live here?"
"You were raised in the desert," Cooper said. "I thought you liked this?"
"That"s what you get for thinking, Coop," Jersey came right back. "What was that last village we pa.s.sed through?"
"Guelta Zemmur," Beth told her, fanning herself with a magazine.
"We"re in Mauritania now," Ben said. "Crossed the78 border a few miles back. Bir Moghrein is a few miles ahead."
"Which used to be called Fort Trinquet," Beth injected.
"A French Foreign Legion outpost?" Cooper asked.
"I guess so. The brochure doesn"t say."
"What does it say?"
"Not a whole lot. One paragraph stating that there is nothing there."
"How far to some vestiges of civilization?" Jersey asked.
"About a hundred and thirty miles," Beth replied. "Give or take twenty or so."
"And that would be? ..." Anna asked.
"Zouerate."
"Is there anything at ... whatever you called it?" Corrie asked.
"Not much."
"What a s.h.i.thole," Jersey muttered.
There was even less at Bir Moghrein than the travel brochure mentioned-nothing but the skeletons of a few dozen long dead humans, their bones bleached white.
"This place gives me the creeps," Cooper said, looking all around him.
"For once I agree with Coop," Jersey said.
"What do you think, Doctor?" Ben asked the Rebel doctor who had been inspecting the bones.
The doctor stood and looked at Ben and Lamar Chase, the chief of medicine, who had just walked up to stand alongside Ben. "Disease and starvation would be my guess. Possibly bad water. There are no broken bones on any of these remains. No bullet holes in the skulls; skulls have not been smashed."
Rebels had been testing the water supply; what there 79.was left of it. "Water"s bad," they replied. "It"s been contaminated."
"Well, let"s get the h.e.l.l out of here," Ben said. "We"ve got a long dry pull ahead of us."
There were about five hundred people left in Zouer-ate, and they were all in bad shape.
"Used to be almost twenty-five thousand people living here," Beth statedsoftly.
Lamar had been observing his doctors check over the people. He left the tent and walked over to Ben. "About twenty percent of these people are dead and don"t realize it," he said. "They are too far gone for us to be of any help. Ravaged by disease, lousy diet, bad water. If the others remain here, they"ll all be dead within a year. There is just nothing we can do."