Ashes - Wind In The Ashes Part 18

"They'll be back," Lora spoke with the confidence of the young. "The underground people will help them on their way and while they are inside the warlords' territory."

"Speaking of the underground people ...?" Ben said.

"They vanished as quickly as they came," Tina said. "I never even got a glimpse of any ofthem. But they sure did do some damage to the IPF troops."

"Bows and arrow and knives and axes?" Ben asked.

"Yes," Dan said.

"I want to meet with them," Ben said. "I've got to convince them to surface and rejoin the human race; that their way is wrong."

"They will not listen to that kind of talk," Lora said. "They wors.h.i.+p you, but not your ways. They are content to live the way they do."

Sometimes, Ben noted, the girl spoke as though she possessed much more education than Ben knew she did. He wondered about that.

"I would still like to meet with some of them."

"Perhaps someday," Lora said.

"You know where they live, don't you, Lora?"

Ben asked.

"If you don't ask me that, sir, I won't have to tell you a lie."

Ben nodded and did not repeat his question. An underground society, he mused. A society of men and women and children who, in slightly more than a decade, have reverted to the caves. They shun modern ways and modern weapons. Yet they have survived; indeed, grown.

Is this where we, as a nation, are heading?

No! he thought. Not as long as there is breath left in me to fight. We cannot exist as a nation by going backward.

Tina seemed to know what he was thinking. "Dad?"

He cut his eyes to her.

"Let them live as they see fit."

"I have no intention of bothering them, Tina. They are our allies; I wouldn't harm any of them. I simply want to talk with them and try to understand why they did what they did."

"As Lora said. Maybe someday."

But Ben doubted that day would ever arrive.

Chapter.

Sixteen.

While Georgi Striganov and Sam Hartline sat back in their still-safe areas and licked their wounds and mentally ma.s.saged their bruised egos, Ben Raines was issuing orders and sending out teams to wreak havoc within the IPF'-CONTROLLED territory.

Ike's people returned to the area just north of Vallejo, spread out, and began slowly inching their way north, liberating towns and freeing the residents from the yoke of General Striganov's IPF.

The woods-children, mixed in with Gray's Scouts, remained around the Big Lake area; they would begin working their way slowly westward.

Ben's command would head south to the Lake Almanor area and then cut west, slowly fighting their way westward.

Cecil's command would no longer be held in reserve, for Ben knew that after the Big Lake ma.s.sacre, the Russian and Sam Hartline wouldpull out all the stops in their efforts to halt the advancing Rebels. Cecil's Rebels would free any captive towns east of Interstate 5 and west of Highway 395, with Interstate 80 their southern stopping point.

The recon teams sent out to South Carolina were working their way southeast, but the going was slow, and they were meeting some resistance from Sam Hartline's eastern-based warlords-trash and thugs and outlaws the mercenary had recruited months before, knowing that Raines and his Rebels would be moving westward after him.

The recon teams radioed this new development back to Ben.

"Why didn't they hit us on the way west?"

Sylvia asked.

"Probably because they were ordered not to," Ben told her.

"Then the Russian planned this out very carefully, didn't he?"

"Not Striganov. Striganov is a very vain, arrogant man, with very little imagination. He's a good field commander, as long as it's restricted to book-type war: the movement and placement of great armies. No, this is Sam Hartline's work. Like me, Hartline is a mercenary; a man thoroughly trained in the art of guerrilla warfare, deception, counterinsurgency-that type of warfare.

Sam realized we'd be coming after him, so he planned ahead, and didn't call his middle troops off even when he thought he'd killed me some months back. And that in itself gives me some very personal insight about Sam Hartline."

Sylvia looked at him, waiting.

"The man is afraid of me. And that's both good and bad. If he didn't have any fear in him, toward me, he might do something careless and reckless.

But now he's going to be very cautious. We stung them very badly the other day up at Big Lake. The Rebels put some serious hurt on them. And both Striganov and Hartline will be cautious from this point on. That's bad for us, for from now on, we'll be engaging in pure guerrilla warfare: hit hard and run like h.e.l.l. But from this point on, they'll be waiting and ready for us. And that's not good news for the Rebels."

"Ben ..." She leaned forward, closely facing him. "What are we going to do with the ... people Striganov has experimented on? What happens to them when we free them?"

Again, Ben sighed. That was a question he'd asked himself many times. From the scant intelligence he had on the Russian's experiment stations, located all up and down the California coast, and extending into Oregon, they were each a chamber of horrors.

Just as bad, maybe even worse, than anything Hitler and his goons had envisioned in their mad minds and then implemented back in the 1940's.

Ben had no idea what he and his Rebels wouldencounter when they opened the gates and doors and cells of the IPF'S experiment stations.

But he knew one thing: he was not looking forward to it.

"We've done it!" Dr. Vasily Lvov told General Striganov, excitement in his voice. "The cross-bred babies have an ample degree of intelligence to perform as workers. I've tested them, and know it for a fact."

For a time, the bitterness of being mauled by Ben Raines's Rebels left Georgi. He rose from his chair and waved Lvov toward the door.

"Let's go see them."

They were hideously ugly. But Striganov already knew that, having seen pictures of the cross-bred babies. What both shocked and amazed him were how big they were and how fast they were growing. They were going to be huge.

Georgi knew little about science, but he did know that humans and animals simply could not produce a baby together. Something to do with chromosomes, he thought, if he remembered his college days correctly.

But he had never been interested in those cla.s.ses.

Now he wished he had paid more attention.

"How?" he asked Lvov.

"By altering the reproductive system by the use of deoxyribonucleic acids-was "The what?"

"DNA," Lvov the scientist replied, very patiently. The general was a great leader of men, but a total nincomp.o.o.p in a laboratory. He drew a deep breath and began explaining the procedure.

Georgi waved him silent. "Enough. You're giving me a headache. My G.o.d, these infants are huge.

How much bigger will they get?"

"That, I cannot say, General. But I suspect they will grow to mammoth sizes. Their weight proportionate to their height. I want to put one to death and study its brain," Lvov said calmly.

"Fine. Whatever it takes to further the breed.

What is the gestation period?"

Idiot! the scientist silently fumed. Count on your fingers. Use your toes if you have to.

"Four months and fifteen days."

"Why exactly half the time it takes a human female, Vasily?"

"I don't know," Lvov admitted. "We're working on that."

"Because they're half human?" Georgi said.

"It's a ... bit more complicated than that, General." Vasily Lvov hated it when the general asked a question he could not answer.

"That's probably it," Georgi said. "Half human."

Lvov rolled his eyes but elected to keep his mouth shut. He almost said: You stick to guns,I'll stay with science. Wisely, he kept that unspoken thought to himself.

"Yes, General. That's probably it."

Georgi looked at him. "Of course it is."

He looked at the hideously ugly infant.

"Born with a mouthful of teeth, too. Very good work, Vasily. How about the mothers?"

"Unfortunately, we were forced to take the babies by Caesarean. There was no way the mothers could birth normally. Some did not survive the birthing."

Georgi waved that aside. "The women are expendable. It's the infants that matter. Do you need more women?"

"Always. I have ... other experiments in mind."

"And they are?"

"To improve the breed, General. I'd like to have some black women, General."

Georgi stared at him for a moment. "We're trying to eliminate the black race, Vasily."

"And so we shall," Vasily said smoothly. "But how about a worker race that is totally controllable? The perfect slaves. How does that sound?"

"How could a basically inferior breed be perfect?"

Again, Vasily Lvov launched into a stream of scientific jargon that flew right over Striganov's head. Again, Georgi waved him silent. "Enough. I shall see to it you get your Negro women. Is there anything else?"

"Not that I can think of, General."

Striganov nodded and left the medicinal-smelling building. And as soon as he did, Ben Raines popped back into his mind.

If General Georgi Striganov had an obsession, it was Ben Raines.

At the beginning, he did not hate Ben Raines.

As a matter of fact, he had rather liked the man.

He was intelligent, well-read, enjoyed the finer things of life, and was a good soldier.

But all that had soon changed as Ben Raines and his Rebels seemed to block every effort the Russian could come up with toward perfecting the master race.

Even a few weeks ago, Striganov did not hate Ben Raines.

But now he hated the man.

Despised him.

Ben Raines had to be stopped.

Striganov leaned against the outside of the building.

But, G.o.ddammit- howl Colonel Khamsin turned his cold, dark eyes toward the man who now stood before him.