"Headache, Lamar?" Ben asked.
"Yeah. Ben, is the city going to be put to the torch?"
"Yes. Unfortunately. I wish it could be saved, but that"s impossible."
"And the same with Los Angeles?"
"Yes. Is that what"s bothering you?"
"No. It"s the highly infectious diseases our people will probably encounter once in the city comcities -- proper."
Ben sat on a corner of an old desk. "You have some intelligence you"d like to share with me?"
"Recon brought back some prisoners this morning; they grabbed them last night comy know that.
I"ve had lab people doing blood work. It ...
worries me, Ben."
"AIDS?".
"Well ... closely related. But resistant to anything we"ve got. And anything we"re likely to have for years. Ben, I"m afraid Los Angeles is going to be the same."
"It"s h.e.l.l fighting in gas masks, Lamar. They restrict vision."
The doctor shook his head. "I don"t think it will come to that. But I would advise surgical masks and gloves taped tight on the wrists. As little exposed flesh as possible."
"All right. That will present only a small problem. What else?"
"Anyone with an open wound-however minor- to be used as rear-echelon personnel."
"Done."
"When we establish a toehold, Ben, I would suggest that we use artillery to bring down the city.
Try to avoid as much physical contact with the creeps as we can."
"I"ll go for that. Fine. I"ll have Beth and Corrie send out directives right now."
"Ben?"
Ben met the doctor"s eyes.
"I don"t want any prisoners taken. No creepies or anyone in the city with them."
Ben arched an eyebrow. For Doctor Chaseto suggest something that drastic meant that he was really worried about disease. "Is it that bad, Lamar?"
"Yes. It"s that bad, Ben. I want this city destroyed by fire. I don"t want anything left, Ben. Nothing."
Ben studied the toe of his jump boot for a moment.
He looked up. "Lamar, if you"re telling me that the creeps and their a.s.sociates are infected with some disease that we are powerless to combat, medically speaking, that means that more than likely every creep and a.s.sociate in this state has the same disease."
"Yes. That is a very good possibility. Carriers, at least."
"d.a.m.n!" He turned to Corrie. "You heard it all, Corrie. Get on the horn and advise all unit commanders. They make no moves until we get surgical masks and gloves on every person. Anyone with a wound comno matter how minor-is to pull back to the rear. Get on it, please."
"Do you want Dan to pull out, sir?" she asked.
"No. Tell him to hold up until he and his people are masked and gloved. Tell him to stand down and wait for my orders."
He waited until Corrie had sent the orders out, then said, "I want all our planes, two-engine and above, to start coming in here. Travis AFB is clear. Tell them to land there and come bomb-equipped. Napalm only."
"Yes, sir."
To Lamar: "We don"t have that many pilots and we don"t have that many planes that are equipped for bombing raids. This is going to be quite a jury-rig operation."
"Anything will help, Ben. Los Angeles is what"s got me worried. It"s such a sprawling place."
"We"ll deal with L.a. when we get there, Lamar. Now I"m going to ask a layman"s question.
How far are we from a vaccine for this disease?"
"Ben, we weren"t even close when the Great War hit us. There were so many variants in the AIDS thing, we"d get one whipped and three more resistant strains would pop up. The powers that be back then just would not put the needed money into research; I don"t think they realized what a dreadful plague upon the land it really was."
"Or they didn"t care. Remember that many of our so-called leaders knew that the power play that led to the war was on the way."
"It"s moot now, though, isn"t it?"
"Unfortunately. Well ... this new development is going to delay the attack for a day, maybe two."
"This is also going to let the creepies and the outlaws grow stronger," Buddy pointed out, speaking for the first time since Chase entered the room.
"I know," his father said. "But with this new twist, it can"t be helped. Corrie, have our scanners pickedup any word on the whereabouts of Khamsin, Villar, and that bunch?"
"Not a peep, sir. Wherever they are, they"re maintaining strict radio silence."
"That tells me they"re so weak in number they don"t want us to find them. We"d wipe them out.
We really creamed them in the mountains. We had to have cut their numbers by a good sixty, seventy percent. Maybe more than that. We certainly buried and burned a lot of bodies."
"And then the remainder just drop off the face of the earth?" Chase said. "That doesn"t make any sense. Unless they all decided to go straight for a change, and that doesn"t seem a very likely probability to me."
"Oh, no, Lamar. They"re holed up somewhere, keeping their heads down. You can bet on that. And what is worse is that they"ll rebuild quickly. You know as well as I that there are thousands of thugs and punks just waiting for an opportunity to link up with a gang.
Sometimes I honest to G.o.d think there are more crud than decent people left. Sure appears that way at times. No, we"ll just deal with one problem at a time. That"s all we can do."
"Like about a million creepies in the Los Angeles area?" Buddy said.
Ben smiled. "Not that many, son. But for sure, we"re going to be outnumbered-again."
Chapter Six.
Ben stood on the edge of the tarmac at Travis AFB with his mouth hanging open and watching his own new-or old comair force come winging in.
He shook his head, closed his mouth, and turned to Ike. "Ike, where in the h.e.l.l did the pilots come up with those planes, for Christ"s sake?"
Ike laughed and slapped Ben on the shoulder. "They found some of them in museums over in Nevada. The rest came from the old Confederate Air Force in Texas."
"Good G.o.d, Ike!" Ben said, laughing as he watched another plane make its approach and come gracefully in for a landing. "That"s a B-17!"
"Yep, it sure is. Only two of them in existence -- that I know of-and we"ve got them both.
They"re both well over fifty years old."
"Oh, yeah," Ben said. his Well over fifty years old." He chuckled as he watched two B-25"s touch down on the runway.
"Ike, what a h.e.l.l of a way to run a war."
"Yeah, but you know, Ben, that half of our pilots used to be jet-jockeys, but they say they"d rather fight with these old jobs. Look yonder," the Mississippi-born-and-reared Ike said, pointing.
"P-51"s comin" in."
"And those?" Ben asked, his eyes to the sky.
"Beats the h.e.l.l outta me, Ben."
"P-40"s," Doctor Chase said. "The old Flying Tigers. Hot d.a.m.n, boys! That is a beautiful sight for these old eyes, I"ll tell youthat."
"Those planes are over sixty years old!" Ben yelled.
"That"s our air force, Ben" Ike said, grinning.
"They should certainly strike fear in the hearts of the creepies," Ben said drily. "If for no other reason than fear of them falling out of the sky and landing on them."
Ike got a laugh out of that, then said, "Oh, they"ve all been reworked, Ben. h.e.l.l, there isn"t an original part on any of them."
"How about bombs that will fit the racks?"
"Well now," General Georgi Striganov said, walking up and hearing the question. "I must admit, that is a, well, slight problem."
"I"m not sure I want to hear this," Ben said.
"We sort of had to do some home boy engineerin" when it came to that," Ike said, smiling. "But we believe it will work. We"ll see in a couple of days, won"t we?"
Ben shook his head. "This is going to be good. I can just feel it."
"It will probably revolutionize modern warfare,"
Ike said, trying to keep a straight face.
"I"m sure. Let"s have a practice run." Ben pointed across the tarmac to a field.
"Right over there. Now."
Ben watched the bombs leave the bomb bay and hit the ground, reasonably close to the target. The bombs bounced but did not explode.
He looked at Ike. The ex-Seal grinned.
"I think we may have screwed up just a tad. But nothin" that we can"t correct."
Ben nodded his head and sat down in a camp chair, thinking that this was a h.e.l.l of a way to run a war.
The second practice bombing run went off without a hitch comexcept the bombs missed the target- and Ben smiled as the old World War Two planes came roaring in, dropped their payloads -- this time the bombs exploded comand soared gracefully back into the skies.
Many of the Rebels in Ben"s command had gathered around, seeing for the first time in their lives the planes that had helped to win a war that was over, for many of them, decades before they were even born.
"They"re prettier than jets," one remarked.
"It just seems like that"s really flying!"
"Do you remember World War Two, General?" a Rebel asked Ben.
Ben laughed and shook his head. "I"m afraid not. I wasn"t born when that war was going on. My war was Vietnam. Hueys and Dust-offs and B-52"s. h.e.l.l, Doctor Chase just barely remembers World War Two, and he"s as old as dirt."
Lamar glowered at him while the young Rebels laughed. When the laughter subsided, Chase asked, "Ben, how about the guns on those old Flying Tigers?his "They had to be reworked or replaced. We couldn"t find ammo for the originals. The .303"s were pulled off and 7.62"s were put in their place. We can"t use the synchronized propeller gun at all. The P-51"s have six machine guns. All in all, it"s going to be a very interesting campaign, I"d say."
Chase said, "All the troops have been a.s.signed gloves and masks."
"Then we jump off in the morning."
Early morning fog still hung low over the coastline when Ben gave the orders to move out. The mighty machine of war called the Rebels surged forward as the Rebels" air force took off from Travis AFB. B-17"s, B-25"s, F51"s, and F40"s. The old planes that had helped to win the war to end all wars were back in action. And the pilots were not above hamming it up. They wore leather jackets, white scarfs, and baseball caps. Ben had wanted them in more protective headgear, but they were in such high spirits, he decided against making them wear anything except what they wanted to wear.
The bombers roared over the city, dropped their payloads, and returned to base to load up again while the fighters staffed the city streets with machine-gun fire. Since many of the pilots had been crop-dusters before the Great War, they took chances that few World War Two pilots would had ever thought of taking. They tilted their fighters on the wingtips and roared between the tall buildings, machine guns spitting and hammering out lead. They didn"t inflict many causalities flying that way, but they sure scared the h.e.l.l out of a lot of creepies.
Ike, Cecil, Georgi, and West got into position around the city while Ben and his people were stalled between San Jose and Palo Alto and Dan"s bunch pushed on toward Half Moon Bay.
It was hard going for those south of the city, for the creepies were grouped en ma.s.se against such a move.
Dan and his bunch made it across the maze of Interstate interchanges and headed for the Pacific, while Ben and his contingent had to slug it out for every yard gained.
Ben called for Tina. "Kid, take your people and some Dusters. Cut west through what"s left of the Stanford University complex. Take Sand Hill road and try for the Interstate. Plug it up."