William W Johnstone - Ashes 27 - Hatred in the Ashes (txt)

KIDNAPPED

"Why kidnap Anna?"

Cecil explained: "To use her as leverage."

"Leverage against me," said Ben. "But... why? I hold no political

office. What the hell do they hope to gain by kidnapping a girl not even

twenty years old?"

"They plan to try her for treason, among other charges. And hang her."

"Treason?" Ben almost shouted. "Anna is not a citizen of the USA. She's

a citizen of the SUSA. How the hell could she be tried for treason?"

Cecil shook his head and took Ben's arm to lead him off the tarmac, but

Ben could not be restrained. "We're talking about a criminal act here,"

Ben said. "An international act of conspiracy. We're talking about spies

and the kidnapping of a citizen of an internationally recognized

sovereign nation. I want Anna back, safe and unhurt." He paused. "You've

got seventy-two hours."

Ben turned away and walked toward a line of military vehicles. He got

into a HumVee and drove off.

Cecil watched Ben leave, then turned to an aide. "Get all the members of

the emergency council together right now. We've got seventy-two hours

before God only knows what hell breaks loose. And if Anna isn't on her

way home by then ... a lot of people are going to pay a very heavy price....

"In blood."

2

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3

HATRED IN THE ASHES

William W. Johnstone

Pinnacle Books Kensington Publishing Corp.

http://www.williamjohnstone.com

4

PINNACLE BOOKS are published by

Kensington Publishing Corp. 850 Third Avenue New York, NY 10022

or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher,

excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this

book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed'' to

the Publisher and neither the Author nor the Publisher has received any

payment for this "stripped book."

Pinnacle and the P logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

First Printing: February, 1999

10 9 8 7 65 4 3 2 1

Printed in the United States of America

5

Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even

though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits

who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray

twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.

Theodore Roosevelt

6

This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and

incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used

fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or

events, is entirely coincidental.

7

Prologue

If we accomplished nothing else, Ben thought as he stared out of the

window at the clouds below him, at least Bottger is dead ... we've seen

the last of that bastard. But we lost a lot of good men and women doing it.

The Rebels had suffered their first major defeat in years at the hands

of Bottger's troops... and had lost hundreds of troops. But the Rebel

spirit was not that easily crushed, and Ben had quickly rebuilt his army

with raw recruits and seasoned veterans pulled in from the SUSA. He had

changed the structure of his army into brigades: ten large brigades,

four battalions to a brigade, and one lone battalion-19 Batt-commanded

by Thermopolis, the ex-hippie turned warrior. Therm and his people kept

track of everything, from troop movements to who needed toilet paper. 19

Batt was comprised of some of the strangest people to be found in any

army anywhere. Most of Therm's people wouldn't know military protocol

from Adam's off ox, but they all did their vitally important jobs and

did them superbly. Ben had no complaints about 19 Batt. For the

8

most part he left them alone and let them do things their own way ...

even though Dan Gray, the commander of 503 Brigade, a former British SAS

officer and a stickler for military discipline, cringed and muttered a

lot under his breath every time he got near the longhaired,

bead-adorned, bandana-wearing members of 19 Batt.

Ben just smiled at the Englishman.

The Rebels had won the battles and the ambushes and the final

confrontation with Bottger's troops in Africa, and now they were

returning home to America to face the growing threat of another civil

war on home soil.

The government outside the SUSA just would not stop their campaign of

hatred against the SUSA. Just would not or could not understand there

were millions of people who did not wish to live under a crybaby, whiny,

ultra left-wing, liberal form of government. Those who refused to

knuckle down and kiss the ass of big, constantly intrusive government

chose to live in the Southern United States of America-the SUSA: The

individualists, the freethinkers, the law-abiding, those who accepted

responsibility for their own actions and deeds. Outside the SUSA were

those types who wanted the government to take care of them from cradle

to grave, people who blamed someone or some thing for every mistake they

made, who would never take personal responsibility for their own actions.

"Oh, it wasn't my fault or his or her fault that convenience store was

robbed and the clerk killed," those who lived outside the SUSA whined.

"Oh, no, not at all. You see, here's where the fault lies-the homecoming

queen wouldn't date the young man, and he got upset about his rejection

and decided to vent his rage against an uncaring society by robbing that

store. So it really wasn't his fault, and it's terribly unfair for you

to blame him. Don't you see?"

Or: "He didn't have enough orange juice in his diet during his formative

years and that created a chemical imbalance in his brain. That's what

caused him to rape

9

and torture and murder that little neighbor girl," the ultra liberals

sobbed and moaned.

Or, the left wingers would squall: as they stomped on hankies and flung

snot in all directions: "He watched too much violence on TV and in the

movies. That's what made him kill all those people," OOOh.

"And the availability of all those terrible nasty evil guns!" the

liberals would piss and moan. "Oooohhh," The left wingers would go

through another box of tissue, wiping tears away. "We must pass more

legislation concerning gun control. We must immediately gather up all

the guns in the nation, and that will solve all the problems."

Or: "He was spanked as a child for torturing animals, and that

traumatized the poor dear. It wasn't his fault he opened fire on a

schoolyard filled with kids. Oh, no, not at all. You see, he read all

those nasty, right-wing books by that horrible, evil gun nut from

Louisiana. That's what it was. That's why he did it. I think the FBI

should launch an immediate investigation of that writer."

Now, Ben and his team were on their way home.

Ben pushed his thoughts away for a moment and looked up as Jersey, his

bodyguard, brought him a fresh mug of coffee. He took the coffee and

thanked her. She smiled at him and returned to her seat, and he buckled

his seat belt. The air was a bit turbulent.

She should be married, raising a family, Ben thought, not knocking

around the world with me. The whole team should be married and settled down.

He looked around at his team, seated a few rows away from him:

Corrie, Ben's radio tech, a very pretty and highly intelligent young

woman. Beth, the team statistician, quiet and studious, very attractive

and shapely and smart. Cooper, Ben's driver, a young man who could take

a screwdriver and have a worn-out engine humming like new. Anna, Ben's

adopted daughter, in her nineteenth year of life on

10

this war-torn planet. A beautiful young lady who would soon be going

through the most brutal training ever dreamed up by humankind to become

a Rebel Scout.

They should all be settled down, Ben thought. But he knew they would

never leave him, not voluntarily. And to tell the truth, he didn't want

them to.

Ben looked out the airplane window again. A few more hours and they

would be home, back in Base Camp One, the capital of the SUSA. Hell of a

name for a town, Ben thought, but it had been called that for years and

no one seemed at all anxious to change it.

Ben frowned as he thought of the growing troubles outside the SUSA.

Conditions were worsening hourly. He had spoken with Cecil Jefferys-the

President of the SUSA- just before leaving South Africa. Cecil had told

him he wasn't sure just who was running what was left of what used to be

called the United States of America. The Congress of the United States

had met in secret session and invoked their slightly altered version of

The Emergency Powers Act.

"Where is the President, Cece?" Ben had asked.

"The official word is he's very ill and not receiving visitors."

"That might mean he's dead."

"It might, Ben. But I think it means he's being held prisoner in the new

White House."

"Then just who is running the country-the vice-president?"

"No. No one knows where he is. It just came over the news that his

helicopter went down somewhere over Michigan. The VP is missing and

feared dead."

"Do you believe any of that, Cece?"

"Only that the VP is dead. I believe that. But I don't believe his

chopper crashed."

"His crew was working for the other side ... whoever that might be."

"That's what we believe."

"Cece ... you're holding back, ole' buddy. Who is really running the

country?"

11

Cecil's sigh was audible. "We think it's the senator from California."

"Which senator?" Ben had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

"Not that it would make much difference. They're both socialist to the

core."

"Claire Osterman."

"Oh, shit! Sugar Babe, herself. That bitch."

Sugar, as she was called (presumably because she just loved everyone who

agreed with her left-wing politics) hated Ben Raines above everyone else

on the face of the earth, or in the pits of Hell. She had once publicly

stated during a press conference-when she was the lieutenant-governor of

California and before the Great War tore the world apart-that the world

would be a much nicer place if Ben Raines wasn't in it. Furthermore, she

stated, his writing was awful, the characters much too macho for her

delicate sensibilities. (Sugar was, Ben thought, about as delicate as a

tractor.) In her opinion his books, along with all the privately owned

guns in the nation, should be banned. Later, when away from the press,

she had added that Ben was a rabble-rousing, right-wing, gun-loving,

politically incorrect son of a bitch.

Ben had called her a ten dollar a night whore selling five dollar pussy.

She had later become one of President Logan's advisors. Ben had thought

that typical of Logan's administration- hiring as many flakes and kooks

and left wingers as he could. Ben had lost track of Sugar after Logan

was killed with a briefcase filled with explosives-handed to him by a

member of one of Ben's Zero Squads. (They were called Zero Squads

because that was the odds of their returning alive from an

assignment-zero.) Now Sugar was a senator, and still praising the

government's confiscation of all privately owned firearms above a .22

caliber or a 20 gauge shotgun. And absolutely none of those nasty,

horrible pistols would be left in the hands of law-abiding, taxpaying

citizens, Oh, heavens no! Positively not! How unthinkable! Tsk, tsk.

12

And the people who lived outside the SUSA, most of them, dutifully

handed over their weapons to the federal agents who came calling. Yes,

sir, master, I'll bow down and kiss the ass of Big Brother ... you just

mark the spot and I'll get down on my knees and give you a great big

sloppy smooch.

Ben stirred in his seat, and his frown deepened as his thoughts grew

darker. In his opinion-and in the opinion of millions of others-people

like those had helped to destroy America. The Great War just nailed the

lid on the casket, that's all. All their pie in the sky, half-baked

ideas about how best to educate kids had led to teachers being unable to

maintain discipline in the classroom. Schools had turned into war zones,

with metal detectors, students cussing teachers, sometimes physically

attacking them. Many teachers lived in fear for their lives, and not

just in the classroom. Many had their car tires slashed, received

threatening phone calls at home, and much worse. And what type of

punishment did the punks who attacked the teachers and threatened them

receive? In many instances, very little. In some instances, no

punishment at all. They certainly didn't get their butts whipped. Oh, my

goodness, no. That might traumatize the poor little dear, and we

certainly don't want that. Were charges brought against the punk, and

was he or she hauled off by the cops and sentenced to a term in some

juvenile detention facility- what back in Ben's youth had been called

reform school? Not very often. "My goodness gracious me," whined the

left wingers, "we couldn't have that. Oh, my, no. Certainly not. After

all, the teacher wasn't hurt that much." Sometimes the teachers wouldn't

even report the incident.

"Shit!" Ben muttered. But he knew the kids were not entirely to blame

for their behavior. Many parents couldn't or wouldn't instill or

maintain discipline at home, for a variety of reasons, not many of them

valid to Ben's way of thinking.

At times like these, Ben's thoughts usually drifted back to his own

youth ... a period when life was supposed to

13

have been much simpler ... a statement that nearly everyone Ben's age

knew was total, absolute bullshit. Times weren't that much simpler. Kids

had peer pressure on them then ...just as much as the next generation

did. As far as the violence on TV and in the movies causing violence in

youth, Ben placed no credence in that unproven theory, whatsoever ...

that was just more horseshit from the mouths of whiny liberals.

Ben lectured often at the SUSA's many colleges ... and his lectures were

well-attended, the auditoriums always filled to capacity. The students

were well aware that all of Ben's theories about government had proved

to be correct, and they wanted to meet and hear the man himself ... for

Ben was that rare commodity: a legend in his own time.

"We went to the movies and saw our western heroes kill dozens of bad

guys and hundreds of Indians," Ben told the students. "We watched

captives being hideously tortured on the screen. We saw and heard

Christians being fed to lions and nailed to crosses, whipped to death,

drawn and quartered. We watched our western heroes beat people half to

death with bullwhips, and watched gangsters and cops shoot it out in the

streets. Did that provoke us to pick up guns or knives and shoot or stab

our classmates, or attack our neighbors or our teachers or stick up a

store? No, it certainly did not. I'm not saying those things didn't

occur, but they were so extremely rare they were aberrations.

"We had-at home, in the schools, and in society-a sense of order and

discipline. We had, and did our best to maintain, such now old-fashioned

and out of date qualities as honor, morals, ethics ... a code of

conduct, if you will. Old-fashioned and out of date outside the borders

of the SUSA, that is."

Ben believed that young people needed discipline. They want it, whether

they admitted it or not. And the young people of the SUSA both loved and

respected Ben Raines.

In the SUSA everybody served in the military; the entire nation was an

armed camp. There were weapons for everyone

14

of age in every household in the SUSA, plus emergency gear, and plenty

of ammunition. If war broke out, every resident knew his or her job

assignment.

Anna left her seat to come back and sit with Ben. She fixed her pale,

blue eyes on him and said, "You've been sitting alone and speaking to no

one for hours, Daddy Ben. What's the matter?"

Ben smiled at her. "Nothing really, Baby. Just doing a lot of thinking,

that's all."

"We going to have a fight in America?"

"Looks that way ... it sure looks that way. Unless I can somehow talk

some sense into the heads of the powers that be outside the SUSA."

Before Anna could ask another question, Corrie walked back. "Pilot just

got a flash from home, Boss. National elections have been suspended

indefinitely. Martial law has been declared in some sections of the USA.

Those sections that are considered sympathetic to us, that is. And it's

official-the vice-president is dead. The president has been declared too

ill to work. The country is being run by a coalition ... a decidedly

left-wing coalition."

"Headed by?"

Corrie shook her head. "That we don't know for sure, but the word is

it's going to be Harlan Millard."

Ben sighed. "God help us all if that's true. That is the most liberal

left-wing son of a bitch ever elected to congress. Any info on who else

is on this coalition?"

"Not yet, Boss."

Ben thanked her, and Corrie returned to her seat. Anna studied her

adopted father's face for a moment, then asked, "You know this Millard

person?"

"Not personally. But I know all about him. He's been around for years

spewing his left-wing garbage. He's big government all the way. He had a

radio program long before the Great War and wrote a syndicated column

that was carried by a number of newspapers. Then he was elected to

congress. He's one hundred percent pure socialist, and real trouble for

anyone who believes in capitalism."

15

"This coalition... they have the military behind them?"

"They have the newly formed military behind them. We saw this coming

months ago. The new military is nothing like the old armed forces. It's

much smaller, and made up of thugs and bullies and people who have been

brainwashed against everything the SUSA stands for. But it's a

well-trained army, and they'll fight. We can't underestimate them for a

minute. That would be a very bad mistake."

"Larger than our army?"

"Oh, yes. By several hundred thousand, I'd say."

Anna was silent for a moment. "A lot has happened in the year we've been

gone, hasn't it?"

"Yes. And none of it good ... at least, not for us."

"So we fight, right?"

"I guess so, Baby. Looks that way."

Anna kissed Ben on the cheek and returned to sit with the team, leaving

Ben alone with his thoughts again, and his thoughts were turning darker

and darker.

"Why can't those outside our borders leave us alone?" he muttered.

"We're not bothering them."

It was a question Ben had asked many times. He knew the answer, but it

was like calculus to the unfamiliar: he did not understand the why of

it. Why does one nation always want to meddle in the affairs of other

nations? Why is the SUSA so hated ? We don't bother our neighbors living

outside our borders. We had trade agreements with them, and were living

up to our end of the contractual terms.

Ben sighed. Another civil war. A dirty little war to once more be fought

on American soil. How many more bloody conflicts before the issues of

sovereignty, states rights, morals, honor, ethics, fair taxation, and

the rights of the law-abiding were finally settled? Or would they ever

be settled?

Never, Ben thought, not as long as left-wing liberals have anything to

do with the running of the country and the making of laws.

Ben felt the airplane change course ever so slightly. They were on the

last leg of the long flight home. Home. It

16

would be good to get back, regardless of what might be taking place

outside their borders, it would be good to sit in his favorite chair

with Horowitz playing a Chopin polonaise or nocturne in the background

while he read the newspapers.

Ben especially enjoyed reading the newspapers from outside the SUSA's

borders. They were filled with the same old tired crap they had

contained before the Great War ... only this time few issues were

published without some mention of the SUSA or some highly inflammatory

or derogatory piece about Ben Raines.

Ben got a big laugh out of the reporter columns and the letters to the

editors. Nobody seemed to be able to grasp the philosophy of the SUSA.

Some thought it was communistic, others thought it was socialistic.

They were both wrong.

The SUSA was a experiment in living that worked to the satisfaction of

the millions of people who lived there. It had a philosophy of

government based on the old Constitution of the United States and The

Bill of Rights, with a healthy dose of common sense all mixed in.

More importantly, it worked for several million people. And those men

and women were willing to fight for their right to live in the SUSA ...

and die.

"And a lot of us are going to do just that," Ben muttered. "There might

not be a government of any sort left when the smoke clears-anywhere in

North America."

17

Chapter One

Cecil had a very worried look on his face when Ben stepped off the plane

and the men shook hands. Ben smiled, gripped his longtime friend's

shoulder with a big hand, and squeezed. "You look as though you're

carrying the weight of the world around, Cece."

"And you look disgustingly healthy and tanned, Ben. God, but it's good

to see you."

"And you look the same, Cece," Ben said with a grin. "Of course, you

always have a nice tan."

That brought a smile to the black man's lips, then a big booming laugh.

He punched Ben lightly on the shoulder. "The liberals would frown on

that remark, Ben. You're not being politically correct."

The two walked across the tarmac toward the terminal, Ben's team and

Cecil's security people all around them yet far enough away so the men

could talk privately in low tones.

Even in the SUSA, at Base Camp One, the capital of the fledgling

breakaway nation, security around Ben and Cecil was tight.

18

"I gather that there have been no hostile moves against us to date?" Ben

asked.

Cece shook his head. "Not yet, Ben. Just some small probes at our

borders. Nothing major. But intelligence says it's coming. All signs

point to it."

Ben nodded his head. "And here we go again."

"Big time, Ben. Both Sugar Babe Osterman and Harlan Millard hate you ...

intensely. They have both stated publicly that you're a traitor to the

democratic way, and must be captured and tried as such ... taken alive,

if possible."

"Fuck 'em," Ben said.

Cecil laughed at his longtime friend. "They have both sworn to bring the

SUSA back into the Union," he added.

"They can both kiss my ass," Ben replied. "Don't those two whiny left

wingers know we have the weapons and the delivery systems to nail the

lid down tight on everything outside our borders?"

"They don't believe you'll do it."

"Then they're both bigger fools than I originally thought. What the hell

is the matter with those two?"

"They claim you're bluffing. They say you won't harm civilians."

"I don't want to harm civilians. But I will if those civilians support a

regime that is trying to destroy everything we've built."

"They're talking about the kids, Ben."

"I know it, Cece. And I especially don't want to harm any kids. What are

they going to do, hide behind the kids? Use them for cannon fodder?"

"In some instances, I think the answer would be yes. We know that

rabble-rousers are working among many of the people outside the SUSA,

urging them to be ready to march on our borders when they get the word."

"Any idea when that word will come down?"

"Not a clue. But it's my belief that it will be very soon. I think you

can safely bet on that." He glanced over at

19

Ben as they walked. "Are you still planning to use chemicals to stop them?"

"Yes. It's the most humane way to go. You have the factories running

around the clock?"

"For several weeks, now. We've got enough chemicals to stop a major

invasion. The no-man's-zone around our borders has been enlarged, and

William W Johnstone - Ashes 27 - Hatred in the Ashes (txt)

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