259 Seven d.i.c.k was a good ten years younger than Ben and felt he was capable of taking care of himself in any situation. After all, he had been on his college wrestling team. Besides, he"d been a member of the most prestigious frat house on campus, and that alone automatically made him far superior to anyone else.
d.i.c.k bounced to his feet and took a swing at Ben. Ben slipped the punch and gave the man two hard shots to the belly, a left and right. d.i.c.k grunted in pain and stepped back. Ben pressed and popped him on the mouth with a straight right, the blow bringing blood. d.i.c.k came in like a windmill, both fists flailing the air. Ben sidestepped and clubbed d.i.c.k on the kidney, bringing a cry of pain. d.i.c.k put both hands to his aching lower back and Ben started his punch down around his ankles and knocked the s.h.i.t out of him.
Ben stepped back and waited for d.i.c.k to climb out of the churned-up mud.
The cameras were rolling, recording it all.Ca.s.sie was sitting on the ground, the left side of her 260.
William W. Johnstone face swelling, and a thin trickle of blood leaking out of one side of her mouth. d.i.c.k Bogarde was not a small man, and the blow had hurt.
She looked up just in time to hear Ben"s punch impact against d.i.c.k"s mouth and see d.i.c.k"s b.u.t.t hit the mud, his mouth scarlet with fresh blood. "There is justice in the world after all," she muttered.
Ca.s.sie felt hands on her arms and looked up into the faces of Beth and Corrie, pulling her to her feet. Jersey was standing with her M-16 at the ready, in case anyone tried to interfere on the side of d.i.c.k, against Ben. One of the men present would later report that just one look at Little Jersey would have been enough to scare away Vlad the Impaler.
"Enough." d.i.c.k pushed the words past loosened teeth and b.l.o.o.d.y lips.
"It better be," Ben warned. "For the next time I witness you slapping someone for speaking the truth, I"ll kill you."
d.i.c.k thought plenty but wisely said nothing.
Ben turned to a couple of medics who walked up. He pointed to d.i.c.k. "One of you see to that son of a b.i.t.c.h," he ordered. "The other check out Miss Phillips."
Ben pulled off his gloves and walked over to where Ca.s.sie was standing with Ben"s team. She looked at him; there was a frankness in her gaze that Ben liked.
"A tooth cut the inside of your mouth, miss," the medic said. He dipped a cotton-tipped swab in a bottle of solution. This will stop the bleeding. You"ll be all right."
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"Thank you," Ca.s.sie told him, then winced as the tip touched the small cut.
The medic looked at Ben. "You all right, sir?"
"I"m fine."
The medic smiled. "Good fight. I just hope Doctor Chase doesn"t hear of it."
"Oh, he will," Ben said.
The medic laughed and walked over to where the other medic was working on a moaning and bleeding d.i.c.k.
Ben turned to look at the reporter. Ca.s.sie was staring at him through incredibly pale-gray eyes. Ben suddenly realized that while some men might not consider her attractive, he did. Very attractive."I would say that you are not the first woman he"s struck," Ben told her. "However, that"s just a guess on my part."
"A pretty good guess, General," Ca.s.sie said. "There have been rumors circulating about d.i.c.k for years. Even before the Great War."
"Ben, Miss Phillips. Call me Ben."
She smiled, and she was lovely. "In that case, I"m Ca.s.sie."
The two gravely shook hands, surrounded by the cold winds of January and hundreds of heavily armed Rebels and thousands of tons of the machinery of war.
Beth and Come and Cooper and Jersey looked at each other and smiled as Ben and Ca.s.sie stared into each other"s eyes like a couple of junior high students suddenly struck for the first time with love-tipped arrows from Cupid"s quiver.
"Nice to meet you, Ca.s.sie," Ben said.
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"Very nice to meet you, Ben," Ca.s.sie said.
"Oh, my G.o.d!" The voice of Doctor Lamar Chase came from just behind Ben"s team. "Has that middle-aged lothario been smitten again?"
"Looks that way," Beth said. "How long have you been here, Doctor?"
"I landed at the airstrip about half an hour ago to inspect the MASH unit attached to 1 Batt. Heard about Ben"s fight a couple of minutes ago. That is a handsome woman. Who is she?"
"Ca.s.sie Phillips," Jersey said.
"The reporter?"
"Yes, sir."
"I"ll be d.a.m.ned. Did Ben get hit during the fight?"
"No, sir," Cooper said. "That clown didn"t land a single punch."
Lamar shifted his gaze over to where the medics were working on d.i.c.k Bogarde. The man"s face was a mess from Ben"s blows. He would carry the cuts and bruises from Ben"s fists for quite some time.
The mood of the moment was broken by a shrill voice coming from some distance away.
Chase took one look and said, "I"m out of here, boys and girls. See you later."
The lines of Rebels began parting like the Red Sea under Moses" command.
"General, my General!" the voice called. "I have come to your a.s.sistance."
"Oh, my G.o.d!" Ben said."Who is that little man?" Ca.s.sie asked.
Emil Hite came rushing up to the recent scene of conflict, and his boots. .h.i.t the churned up and muddy 263.
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ground. "Whoa!" he hollered, flailing his arms as he slipped and slid across the area, looking very much like a crazed ballet dancer attempting to dance the tush-push to the mental strains of the 1812 Overture.
"Get out of the way!" Ben yelled, two seconds before Emil impacted against him, and both of them went to the ground in a sprawl of arms and legs.
Sitting on top of Ben, his helmet drooped over one side of his face, Emil cried, "Are you hurt, General Raines?"
"Only my composure, Emil. Now get off of me!"
Emil climbed off Ben, only managing to step on him about five times in the process. Cooper and Jersey finally jerked the man off Ben and helped Ben to his boots.
Ca.s.sie was nearly doubled over with laughter. Ben brushed and wiped the mud off his BDUs and said, "Emil, what the h.e.l.l are you doing here?"
"To be truthful, General," Emil said, "I think I was beginning to get on Thermopolis"s nerves. I got the first small inkling of that yesterday when he suddenly started screaming and chasing me around the camp with an baseball bat. I truly believe Therm was having some sort of temporary breakdown. I decided that my talents were no longer needed in that vicinity, and thought I might be of more help here."
"I can"t begin to tell you how much I appreciate that gesture, Emil."
Emil beamed. "I knew you would feel diat way, General. I brought my entire flock with me."
"That"s . . . wonderful, Emil."
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William W. Joknstone "What important a.s.signment do you have for me, General?"
Ben thought about that for a couple of seconds, then smiled. "Emil, I want you and your . . . flock to act as rear guard for this column. I"m expecting a sneak attack as we work our way up the coast, so this is a very important move. You"ve got to be on guard constantly. You think you can handle that a.s.signment?"
"With the diligence of a trained Doberman, my General."
Ben thought a ba.s.set hound might be a more apt description, but he kept that to himself. He pointed to a Rebel sergeant trying to hide behind aHumVee. "The sergeant over there will get you all set up, Emil. We move out in the morning."
"Oui, mon General!" Emil gave Ben a French salute, palm out.
As Emil was being led away by a reluctant Rebel sergeant, Ca.s.sie said, "You certainly have some strange people with your organization, Ben."
"Have you ever met Thermopolis?" Ben asked.
"I haven"t had the pleasure."
"Hummm," Ben said with a smile.
With Rebels closing in from the west and the north, and Ben"s 1 Batt coming up from the south, the thugs who had gathered along the way fled northward, paused briefly in Narbonne (very briefly, for the citizens left in the small city started shooting at them with recently dug-up rifles and shotguns), and fled on up the highway to Beziers. They received a less than warm 265.
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welcome in Beziers and kept on traveling, with Ben"s 1 Batt closing the distance.
At Montpellier the thugs turned and made their stand. To a person they had vowed to die rather than surrender and be tried and probably, for most of them, hanged, either in France or back in America.
"Corrie," Ben said, as his battalion waited at the edge of the old university city of Montpellier. "You have contact with this bunch?"
"Affirmative."
"What"s the name of the leader, if any?"
"Mahmud the Terrible," Corrie said with a straight face.
"From Toronto?"
"Right."
"The lion of the Desert?"
"Affirmative."
"Lawrence of Somalia?"
"Right."
"The one with the silly hat?"
"That"s the one."
"The one who claims to be bulletproof?"
"Right.""s.h.i.t!" Ben said. "This is part of the bunch who commandeered that ship and killed all the crew members."
"Affirmative."
"Tell Mudpie the Terrible he has ten minutes to surrender. If he chooses to fight, I will wipe out his entire gang of punks, and I will show no mercy."
Corrie relayed the message, listened for a moment, then said, "And the same to you, too, a.s.shole!" She 266.
smiled sweetly and turned to Ben. "Mahmud the Terrible, lion of the Desert, Lawrence of Somalia, and one mean motherhumper said to tell Ben Raines to kiss his a.s.s."
"Really?"
"That"s what he said."
Ben smiled. "Take the town."
By the afternoon of the second day, the punks had been forced into the downtown area, and they had suffered terrible losses in their retreat.
The weather had turned bitterly cold, too cold for it to snow, and while the Rebels were equipped in the finest gear for cold weather operations, the punks were not. Dozens of bodies, frozen in the most macabre positions, littered the streets of the old city.
Most of the residents who remained had fled when the hordes of punks descended upon the city, and Ben had his people take time to clean out shelters for them and to supply blankets, food, and camp stoves for cooking and heat. Those survivors were mostly the very old and the very young, with little in between. But they were not a beaten people. They were the survivors, and Ben was proud of every one of them and told them so.
On the other side of the coin, Mahmud the Terrible, Chief Doo-Da and Poo-Pa of the Mau Mau gang was finished, and even he had sense enough to realize that. He had never been so cold and so hungry in all his life.
And like nearly all of his ilk, the thought never once crossed his mind that he and he alone was responsible for the predicament he was now in.
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It was somebody else"s fault. Liberals had told him that before the Great War; he"d heard countless news programs that supported their claims. All his friends said that society owed them something, and if society wouldn"t give it (whatever it might be) then by G.o.d they"d just take it. Which was exactly what he"d been doing since long before the Great War. And it had been a great war to Mahmud"s mind. Ever since the Great War he could rob and ripe and a.s.sault and kill and all that other good stuff and not have to worry about the cops.
Then along come Ben Raines and screwed it all up.Maybe he could use that "you owe me" approach with Ben Raines? It was worth a try.