Ashes - Wind In The Ashes Part 22

He had wiped out crime simply by not tolerating it.

The underground people squatted and lay silently in the deep timber, watching the young people. They were curious now as to what they planned to do.

The girls had the information they had been sent to find. Now what were they going to do?

"Do we go on?" Judy asked.

"Let's vote on it. That's the way I'm told it used to be," Kim said.

"When was that?" Judy asked.

"Before."

"Ah," she said.

They voted, agreeing to continue; they might pick up more information useful to the general.

The girls picked up their weapons and packs and moved out.

Into the unknown and the ashes of what used to be.

Before.

Chapter.

Nineteen.

"The man's plan might have some merit,"

Khamsin's aides told him.

"Perhaps," Colonel Khamsin said. "It is for a fact that Ben Raines must be removed. With him out of the way, we will have no opposition; nothing standing in our way of total takeover."

"Do you suppose the man is telling the truth?"

"Yes," Khamsin said after a moment of thought.

"I think he is. I believe him. But"-he heldup a warning finger-"we must move slowly and with much caution. We must think this out very carefully."

"Perhaps it would be best to wait," another aide suggested.

"Why?" Khamsin asked.

"Let the fight go uninterrupted in the west.

Let Raines and the Russian thin their ranks during the war. That would help us."

"Yes," Khamsin agreed. "But we need to have people out there, watching. Have you sent out patrols as I requested?" That was directed to a young woman.

"Yes, sir. They reported back that they are halfway to their objective."

"Very good. Keep the man in camp. Give him new clothing and food and lodgings. Give him a woman for entertainment. Watch him at all times.

Be friendly, but firm. Let's move on to more pressing matters. How are the farms looking?"

"Excellent, Colonel."

"The people working them?"

"We've had ... ah, some trouble with a few of them."

"And? ..."

"We shot them."

"And now?"

"The rest seem to have accepted their fate and are falling into line quite well."

"Resistance groups?"

"A few. We're eliminating them one by one."

"See that you get them all. Quickly. Do not let them spread," Khamsin ordered. "Rebellion must be crushed brutally and swiftly."

"Yes, sir."

"Dismissed."

But Khamsin, along with the other terrorists who made up his army, forgot one little item: This was America. Battered, bruised, on her knees, but not yet down for the count. Americans have always been stubborn types, slow to anger, but when angered, many Americans have a tendency to shove back when shoved; to reach for a gun when all else fails-or sometimes before anything else is tried.

More resistance groups than the Islamic Peoples Army thought were forming. They were forming along the borders of Georgia and Florida and North Carolina.

Under the direct command of teams of Rebels from North Georgia. From Ben Raines's Base Camp One. They were getting training in guerrilla warfare and the use of automatic weapons.

And their ranks were growing; slowly, but steadily.

They were not yet strong enough to make any major moves against the IPA. But soon, they hoped.

Soon.

Striganov stood before a wall map of territory controlled-or once controlled-by his people.

d.a.m.n! he silently cursed.

How does one stop the silent wind? he thought.

Then he shook his head. Stupid! he beratedhimself. Silly and childish to compare Ben Raines with the wind. The man is a mere mortal.

A chill touched him lightly.

Or is he?

This time the Russian was successful in pus.h.i.+ng that thought from him. He more closely studied the map.

He began replacing tiny red flags with blue ones, denoting territory lost to Raines and his Rebels.

Great G.o.d! That many?

"Yes," he muttered.

Everything south of Highway 20 was now in Rebel hands. And informants near Santa Rosa reported that one Rebel commander just brazenly drove his column right through the city and up to that settlement of malcontents outside the city.

No doubt that arrogant John Dunning and his people would be linking up with the Rebels.

More problems.

Striganov had felt from the outset that those silos held nothing but rusting, inoperable missiles. But he would not take the one-in-a-million chance that they contained the real thing. The Russian would not risk more radiation in the air. He felt John Dunning was bluffing.

But? ...

The alternative was unthinkable.

With a sigh, he turned away from the map and sat back down behind his desk.

He rubbed his temples with the tips of his fingers.

Where in the h.e.l.l was Ben Raines now?

"They've pulled out, General," a recon patrol reported back to Ben. "Chico, Paradise, and Oroville IPF outposts are abandoned."

"Did they leave anything behind?" Ben radioed.

"Looks like they left behind a lot, General.

They seemed to be in quite a hurry to clear out."

"The civilians?"

A short pause. "Pretty well beat down, General."

"I'm on my way." Ben handed the mike back to the radio operator and checked his maps. About an hour's drive down to Chico. "Let's go," he ordered.

Chico had once been a progressive little city of about thirty thousand. Now, to Ben's eyes, it appeared that no more than three to four hundred people survived.

And they were a sad-looking lot.

"Jesus!" Ben muttered, his eyes taking in the dirty, ragged, and woe-begone-looking bands of men and women. They stood in silence, staring at the Rebels through eyes sunk deep into their heads.

Sylvia and Lora sat in the back of the Jeep, Ben on the pa.s.senger side, front seat, his Thompson in his lap, muzzle pointed to the outside.

"What is it with these people out here, General?" hisdriver asked. "The survivors in the midwest and the south act ... well, different."

"How do you mean, Chuck?" Ben knew what he meant, but he wanted the young man to put his thoughts into words.

"Well, you take those folks we found in Missouri and Tennessee and Georgia and Arkansas. They were fightin' the IPF with everything they had available. Many of them chose death over slavery. It's just ... different out here."

"But yet Ike reports a large colony of people south of here who stood up to the Russian," Ben reminded the young man.

"Yes, sir. But how many of those kind have we seen?"'*

"It's about fifty-fifty, Chuck."

"That don't tell me the why of it, though."

"It's all in how you're raised, Chuck.

States-back when we had states that resisted the government's attempts to disarm the citizens. They fought, sometimes violently, the move toward gun control. But others advocated the disarming of citizens. I remember reading about a man here in California who killed a rattlesnake in his front yard. Killed it with a gun. The courts ordered him arrested and fined him."

"Are you serious, General?"

"Sure am. I came down pretty hard on Harry Reed the other day. Maybe I shocked him enough for him to survive, but I doubt it.

Harry was brainwashed. Since he was old enough to watch TV or read a newspaper, he was bombarded with people saying things like it's society's fault that we have criminals, that guns are evil and the death penalty is wrong."

"General," Chuck said. "Good people don't steal things. a.s.sholes steal things."

"You and I know that," Ben said. "How old were you when the bombs came, Chuck?"

"Eleven, I think, sir."

"And you've blocked out most of the horror, right, Chuck?"

"Yes, sir."

Ben nodded. Many of those he'd spoken with had done the same. Ben didn't blame them. Sometimes he wished he could.