Ashes - Wind In The Ashes Part 29

Striganov rose and walked swiftly to a wall map of California. He punched a spot. "There!

Right there is where that d.a.m.nable Raines will strike."

Wrong, the XO thought. You're wrong. You're losing your grasp of reality, Georgi. And something has to be done. Quickly.

But Striganov was giving orders. "Move everything from the coast to Weaverville north to form a line from Crescent City to Youreka, west to east.

Order artillery out, immediately. Then I want you to-was "No!" the XO screamed. "No, G.o.dd.a.m.n you, no." He fumbled for his sidearm, pulling out the pistol.

"What?" Striganov said, turning, his face paling in shock. "How dare you!" he shouted.

The XO jacked back the hammer on the pistol.

"Listen to me closely, Georgi. You're sick.

You've got to have help. I respect and admire you, Comrade, but I've watched you deteriorate, mentally, over the months. Please, Georgi, let me help you."

"Put that gun down! Put it down and we'll say nothing about this outrage. But do it now."

"I can't!" the XO'S voice was choked with scarcely controlled emotion. It was tearing his guts out to disobey the man he had served for so many years.

Striganov took a step toward his desk, his hand outstretched for the b.u.t.ton panel.

"Don't do it!" the XO shouted.

"You won't shoot me," Striganov said.

"I will if I have to. Don't make me wound you, Georgi. Please. I'm begging you."

The office door suddenly banged open, startling both men.

General Georgi Striganov's executive officer pulled the trigger.

Chapter.

Twenty-six.

"One more hour," Ben muttered. "I hate waiting."

He looked at his watch.

It was a minute later than the last time he'd glanced at it.

Twice he had detected movement on the rooftop through the long lenses. Those troops up there must be roasting beneath this hot sun, he thought. But that was good. They would not be as attentive with sweat running into their eyes.

He wondered how Ike was taking the waiting.

"G.o.ddammit, I hate waiting!"

Ike b.i.t.c.hed.

Ike and his team were poised on the northernmost finger of Clear Lake, just outside a small town.

An IPF outpost had been spotted and pinpointed.

But unlike Ben's team, Ike had managed, due to the terrain, to get close enough for their small 60 mm mortars to be effective.

He glanced at his watch. "Come on, come on!"

he muttered.

He wondered how Dan was taking it.

"Thank you," Dan said to his batman. "There is nothing like a good hot cup of tea to refresh one.

Please join me, Carl."

"Thank you, sir. I believe I shall."

The two Englishmen sat on the ground and sipped their tea.

Dan's team was located between Big Bar and Helena, waiting for the time to plunge deep into the Trinity wilderness. The former SAS man stretched out on the cool ground and closed his eyes. "Awaken me in thirty minutes, would you, Carl?"

"Certainly, sir."

The slug from the XO'S gun caught Jane in the center of the forehead, busting out the back, splattering brains all over the wall. The girl hit the carpet, trembled once, then lay still.

"Oh, my G.o.d!" the XO shouted. "I didn't mean-was He never got a chance to finish it. Striganov leveled his own pistol and shot the man dead.

The room filled with men and women.

"He went insane," Striganov said, holstering his weapon. "After all the years we spent together, he turned on me, tried to kill me. Poor Jane." He shook his head.

The bodies were removed from the room.

Striganov repeated his original orders.

"Full scale," he told the officers. "We stand and slug it out with Ben Raines. As men of honor should do.

Professionals. Move out."

"Sir!" Carl's voice brought Dan wide awake.

Dan glanced at his watch. "Carl, I've just closed my eyes."

"The entire northern line of IPF troops are moving forward, sir."

"Are you serious, Carl?"

Carl handed Dan his binoculars.

"Look, sir."

Dan looked, then paled slightly as the lenses picked up the northern movement of a couple of thousand men in combat gear, half-tracks and tanks and motorized artillery moving behind them.

"Lady Di's bustle," Dan muttered. "Would you take a look at that."

Carl frowned at this disrespect toward royalty.

Dan waved his second-in-command over to his side. "Order all the lads and la.s.sies to hunt a hole and to keep their heads down. Pick areas where the foot troops and the vehicles are not likely to go. Move!"

Dan smiled at Carl. "Come on, Carl.

We've got to get to a radio."

Momentarily safe in timber on a small rise, Dan raised Ben's radio operator.

"Get General Raines right now!" he said.

Ben listened, disbelief clouding his features. But he knew Dan too well. If the Englishman said IPF troops were advancing en ma.s.se, they were. "How many, Dan?"

"At least three battalions, sir. With tanks and artillery with them."

Ben could hear the rumble of tanks and motorized artillery over the air, through the miles that separated them. "Jesus, Dan! They must be right on top of you."

"Close enough to permit me the indignity of smellingthem," Dan said.

Ben grinned at the Englishman's calmness. "I don't know why Striganov is doing this, but the odds have suddenly swung in our favor. Dan, I've ordered the battalion north of you down. You swing in behind the IPF troops. Hit them hard, Dan."

"Yes, sir." Dan clicked off.

Ben radioed Ike, bringing him up to date.

Ike laughed. "And a good time is gonna be had by all. Good luck, Ben."

"Same to you, buddy. Look at your watch, Ike."

"Twelve straight up, Ben."

"Go!"

Ike turned to his XO. "Drop the little birdies down the tubes."

Ben punched the talk b.u.t.ton on his walkie-talkie. "Hit 'em hard!"

The rockets thunked out of the tubes.

Two hundred miles to the north, fire-frag grenades were tossed onto the roof.

The attack was on.

"We are meeting no resistance," the commander of the IPF'S northernmost troops radioed back to General Striganov. "We have not even seen the enemy."

"Fool!" Striganov screamed into the mike.

"Of course the Rebels are there. Where else could they be?"

All in your crazed mind, the grizzled major thought, but did not vocalize. He had heard the XO had been killed by Georgi. That something terrible had happened. That the young girl, Jane, was dead. That the XO went insane and tried to kill Georgi. That Georgi had, all that morning, ranted and raved like a ...

Like a ...

Madman!

From his APC, the major made up his mind.

"Halt advance!" he ordered through his headset.

The thinly spread column ground to a halt.

The foot soldiers dropped to the ground, thankful for the respite, however brief.

Less than a thousand yards away, a mortar team from Dan's command had leveled the bubble on the tube. His team had panted and sweated and cussed the 115-pound 81mm mortar through and over terrain that would have made a moose stagger.

Now the cammie-painted faces, streaked with dusty sweat, grinned. Now it would be worth it all.

"At the max we're gonna have time for three rounds before that Russian can react and move," the Rebel said. His team was the best in the Rebel army, able to get off one round every 3.05 seconds.

"HE," he ordered, "followed by WP, then a frag round, then a WP. Do it." It was luck, with more than a tad of skill. The first round landed ten feet from the APC. It lifted the armored personnel carrier off the ground and dumped it wrong side up. The second round landed on top of the APC, sending bits and pieces of seared and smoking metal and fried flesh all over the silence-shattered landscape.

There were three battalions of IPF troops spread over a ninety-mile stretch. Two full platoons of IPF infantry were close to the APC when the attack started. The IPF troops had no way of knowing how large a force was attacking them. Or how small a force.

Had they known that only a handful of Rebels stood between them and victory, they would have taken the initiative and easily overrun the Rebel's position.

Instead they panicked and ran.

The leading edge of the battalion of Raines's Rebels, moving swiftly from the north, had barreled down existing highways, the battalion split, one section coming down Highway 96, the other column rolling south on Highway 3. That column turned west at Weaverville and smashed through to Junction City, catching the IPF forces by surprise in a flanking movement.