But I"m not surprised that you"d come up with something this half-c.o.c.ked."
"I might go along with it only if I could accompany you," Dan said.
"You"ll be in command of my section here," Ben told him. "And Cecil will be in command overall."
The yelling started anew.
Ben poured another cup of coffee, petted Smoot, who was laying on the desk, and waited it out.
"Ridiculous!" General Georgi Striganov snorted his disapproval. "If anyone at all goes, it should be me."
"I"ll take two companies, a complement of armor, and Buddy and his Rat Team. We"ll pull out in twenty-four hours."
"You will, by G.o.d, take a platoon of my Scouts!" Dan stood up. "And that is something Iinsist upon, General."
Ben knew to argue with the Englishmen, who was as hardheaded as Ben was, would be futile. He nodded his head in agreement. "All right, Dan. Fine."
Ben was going out into the foreboding and mysterious area called the zone.
"I"ll put together a medical team for you," Chase said, knowing the brief argument was over. Once Ben made up his mind, there was no turning him around.
"Well, s.h.i.t!" Ike said, disgust in his voice.
"I"ll order flyovers to start immediately."
Ben nixed that. "Keep the planes on the ground,"
he said, scratching Smoot behind the ears. The husky rolled over on her back and grumbled in contentment. "We don"t know whether or not the warlords out there have rockets capable of bringing a plane down. Let"s don"t risk it."
"Ben," Georgi said, trying one more time. "I wish you would reconsider. That area called the zone is hundreds and hundreds of square miles of hostile territory. None of us really knows what is out there."
"That"s why I"m going," Ben replied. "To find out. We do know that there are slave and breeding farms out there, and I"m going to put a stop to them. It"s something that will have to be done at some point in this campaign, so let"s get it done now. Dan will take over for me here. Cecil is Forces Commander. That"s it, people."
The unit commanders filed out, to a person b.i.t.c.hing and grumbling and cussing, but all knowing there was no point in arguing further with Ben.
Ben smiled at Linda. "Well, how about it?
Ready for a little adventure?"
She returned the smile. "Oh, sure, Ben. I mean, it"s been so d.a.m.ned dull around here."
Ben walked the line, inspecting his command just moments before pullout. Five main battle tanks, five Dusters, five M113"s, five LAV-25 Piranhas. A line of tankers and supply trucks. Two full companies of Rebels, a platoon of Dan"s Scouts, and Buddy"s Rat Team.
It was a lot more personnel and equipment than Ben wanted to take with him, but it was better than having to put up with several days of argument from the others. And Ben also knew that his days of just taking off and lone-wolfing it were gone. Too many people depended on him; he had too many decisions to make. This was about the closest that he was going to come to being a lone wolf in search of action.
"The first good-sized town we come to," Ben told Dan, "I"ll secure an airstrip for supply planes. Providing there are no surface-to-air missiles out there. I have a hunch we"re going to be taking a lot of people out of the zone. And they are not going to be in very good shape."
"You know that I should be leading this expedition," Dan said, trying one more time.
Ben smiled and ignored the statement. "Keep the home fires burning and the feet of the punks in theflames, Dan. I"ll be in radio contact. Good luck."
"Good luck to you, sir."
"Mount up!" Ben yelled. "Let"s go."
The column headed north, driving through all the still-smoking devastation they had earlier wrought. They cut east until they found a winding two-lane highway that ran through the San Gabriel Mountains.
The Rebels bivouacked that evening in the mountains, and were all both pleased and somewhat spiritually moved at the serenity of their surroundings, untouched by all the hideousness and suffering that lay only a few miles to the south.
At dawn, they were rolling eastward, and soon picked up Interstate 40.
"How far do we take it, General?" Cooper asked.
"All the way to Needles, Coop. We"ll stop at every town and look it over. Beth, did the vehicles" water tanker fill up last night at that stream?"
"Yes, sir. Filled to capacity."
"That"s good. Because it"s about to get dry up ahead."
Bone dry. "Like in a desert," was Jersey"s comment about the country they were pa.s.sing through.
Barstow had been destroyed. Little remained of it except for burned-out buildings, and the walls of those structures were pockmarked with old bullet scars.
Barstow had been a thriving community of nearly twenty thousand. Now there were no signs of life.
"h.e.l.l of a battle fought here," Cooper remarked.
"Several years ago, I"d say."
The convoy had stopped in the center of the burned-out town. "Scouts out," Ben ordered. "Look it over."
No signs of human habitation, they reported back.
The convoy rolled on.
There was nothing left worth salvaging in the tiny towns that had once existed alongside the Interstate. They had all been destroyed and picked over countless times. Carrion birds and rats had picked the human skeletons clean of flesh, leaving the bones to bleach in the sun and be eventually scattered by the desert winds. The Rebels inspected the towns and then rolled on. They made a very dry camp at the southern edge of the Bristol Mountains. Since leaving the northern edge of the sprawling city of L.a., none of them had seen any sign of a living human being. They had seen the fleeting shapes of coyotes darting, seen tracks of wolves once more returning to their rightful place in the scheme of things, and had heard the screams of pumas at night. But no signs of humans.
"It"s eerie," Linda said over a second cup of coffee as they all sat around a campfire. "It"s like we were suddenly transported to a new world, void of life.""And technically," Buddy said, warming his hands over the fire, for the nights were cool, "we"re not even in what is referred to as the zone."
"I believe that this is called a no-man"s-land,"
Ben said. "And I can certainly see why."
"Tomorrow, Father?" Buddy asked.
"We"ll have us a look at Needles, and then cut south, on Highway 95. We"ll take that down to Blythe, and from there we"ll head on down to Yuma.
From Yuma to Calexico. There, we"ll have to figure out a route."
"Do we have any intelligence on what we might find there?" a Rebel asked.
"Only what some prisoners have told us, and how much of that we can believe is up for grabs," Ben said.
"Outlaws, punks, thugs, drifters, slavers, murderers, human crud of the worst sort. If you can hang a name on the dregs of society, you"ll find them where we"re going."
"And we are going straight in, right, General?"
Beth asked.
"That"s right." Ben smiled at her. "We"ll just call ourselves ... ah, well, missionaries.
Going on our way spreading the good word."
Buddy returned his father"s smile. "Are you going to give us bibles to pa.s.s out, Father?"
"You already have them, boy. They"re just in a slightly different form than the King James version."
Buddy held up his old Thompson.
"That"s it, son. Yea, verily, and all that.
Amen."
"Somebody drag them out of the road and burn the bodies," Ben said, as he looked down at the dead outlaws who had tried to block their entrance into Needles. "Buddy, take a couple of tanks and a company and secure the town, please. We know they have prisoners in there, so try to take them alive. Corrie, get me Ike or Cecil on the horn."
After a moment, Corrie said, "Cecil is out of pocket. Ike is on scramble."
"Yo, Ben." Ike"s voice came out of the speaker. The sounds of artillery booming in the background was strong. "What"s your twenty, Eagle?"
"Needles. The town"s got some crud in it and we believe they"re holding prisoners. We"ll take it and move on. How"s it going on your end?"
"Moving right along, Eagle. We"re advancing three or four blocks a day, pushing the punks and the creepies south. Ben, you might find yourself in a very bad position if you advance further west than Calexico."
"I know. But I haven"t made up my mind what we"re going to do yet. We"ll secure the airstrip at Blythe and b.u.mp you from there. Eagle out."
Ben handed the mike to Corrie and listened as a shortbattle raged within the shattered remains of the small town. Buddy returned, escorting a band of prisoners.
"I knew it!" a woman hollered, as she came within sight of Ben. "I done tol" you and tol" you it had to be him. I tol" you we all ought to run."
"Shut up," a man said.
"Civilians?" Ben looked at Buddy.
"They killed all the prisoners before we could get to them, Father," his son told him. "They just lined them up and shot them."
"Why would they do that?" Linda asked.
"To keep them from talking, telling us all the horrors these crud have put them through." Ben faced the man who had told the women to shut up. "You comwhat can we expect in Blythe?"
The man spat on the ground. "Screw you, a.s.shole!"
Ben b.u.t.t-stroked him with the M-14, knocking the outlaw to the ground. Ben placed the muzzle of the rifle against the man"s forehead. "I am accustomed to having my questions answered in a civil manner, punk. Now do so."
The outlaw with the busted and b.l.o.o.d.y mouth spat out broken teeth and lay on the ground, looking up at Ben. Fear crept into his eyes. He had known for years that Ben Raines and the Rebels would someday come; had known for years that he should change his ways and stop his career of lawlessness. And now he knew it was too late. His guts knotted in fear as he realized that death lay laughing at him just around a dark corner.
"I"ll be good," he mumbled. "I promise that I"ll be good. I swear it!"
The hard eyes of Ben did not change. Contempt for the outlaw touched his face briefly. "You"ll be good only as long as the Rebels stay around. So let"s don"t kid each other. You can live three more minutes, or you can die right now. It"s up to you.
What"s in Blythe?"
The outlaw was shaking in fright. He used to think it funny when his prisoners trembled in fear, crying and begging for their lives. Now he could not find a single amusing thing about it as he p.i.s.sed his dirty underwear.
"You don"t strike a very good deal a-tall, General."
"I don"t make deals with punks," Ben told him. "It"s not a good practice. Speak your piece."
"f.u.c.k you!"
Ben shot him. He walked over to another man. The man dropped to his knees and began praying. He prayed for forgiveness for all the women he"d raped and sodomized. The men he"d tortured and enslaved.
The children he"d s.e.xually abused. Jersey listened to him and spat on the ground.
"What"s in Blythe?" Ben asked, when the punk paused to catch his breath.
"Texas Jim!" the man screamed, his spittlespraying Ben"s trousers. "Jesus G.o.d Almighty! You ain"t got no right to do this. We human bein"s. I"ll admit we done wrong, but give us a break. I got const.i.tutional rights, General. I want to see a judge. I want me a lawyer. I got rights under the Geneva Convention.
I got-was A bullet.
The thugs and punks and outlaws and their women began crying and praying and begging.
Ben moved to another man. Put the muzzle of his M-14 on the man"s forehead. "The longer you talk, the longer you live."
Linda understood it then -- finally, why the lawless feared Ben Raines so. There was no give in the man. None. You obeyed the few laws that the Rebels laid down, or you lay down dead. He was flint-hard and uncompromising. And he was going to win. She knew in her mind that nothing was going to stop him. No woman would ever change him, no man would ever break him.
"Texas Jim is a warlord, General," the outlaw told him, his voice numb with shock and fear.
"He"s got him a good-sized army down yonder.
"Bout two hundred and fifty tough ol" boys.
You know what I mean?"
"I certainly know the type. White trash and a.s.sorted other a.s.sholes who believe they are above any law. Go on."
The outlaw thought about that as beads of sweat broke out on his forehead. "He be waitin" for you, General."
"You think maybe I should run back to my vehicle and hide my face in fear?" Ben asked.