Ashes - Enemy In The Ashes Part 1

ENEMY IN THE ASHES.

WILLIAM W. JOHNSTONE.

To Angus, a loyal friend and a gentle companion.

Claire Osterman drummed her fingers on her desk as her cold eyes roamed over the men sitting in her office. She'd called a meeting of her cabinet officers to discuss their current situation, and she wasn't happy with the news they'd been giving her.

Herb Knoff, her bodyguard and sometime lover, sat on her left, as usual.

He was a large man with broad shoulders, coal-black hair, and a boyish face that belied his violent and unforgiving nature. The other men serving under Claire knew he was mean as a snake when riled, so they tried their best never to make him angry.

Claire glanced at Herb, a scornful expression on her face. "Herb," she asked in a low, dangerous voice, "can you believe this s.h.i.+t they're giving me?"

Herb smirked, shaking his head. "No, ma'am," he answered, his eyes narrow and flat.

Harley Millard, Claire's official second in command in the government, even though he was a weak, mild-mannered man who was completely under Claire's thumb, held up his hand. "Now, Claire," he protested in his usual whining voice, "you asked us how things were. It's not our fault the situation is so bad."

Wallace W. c.o.x, Claire's Minister of Finance, cleared his throat and added, "That's right, Claire. Things could 8.be a lot worse. If Ben Raines and the troops from the SUSA hadn't intervened and helped us defeat those Middle Eastern terrorists, we could all be speaking Arabic now."

Claire fixed him with a steely glare. "How could things be worse, Wally?

We may have won the war, but now you a.s.sholes sit here and tell me we're dead broke."

She stared at the other ministers in the room. "h.e.l.l, what good is it to win the war if we aren't left with enough money in the treasury to run the country?"

Clifford Ainsworth, Minister of Propaganda, nodded his head. "It's true that the treasury is at very low levels, Claire, but we weren't in good shape even before the invasion by El Farrar's men. I'm afraid if we don't do something soon, the people are not going to stand for more restrictions in governmental services."

"Cliff's right," Gerald Boykin, Minister of Defense, agreed. "My troops haven't received a paycheck in over a month. I don't know how much longer we'll be able to keep the soldiers in uniform if we don't come up with some way to pay them what we owe them."

Claire turned back to c.o.x. "I thought the United Nations had agreed to a loan package, Wally. Won't that help to bail us out until we can get the economy moving again?"

"It'll help some, Claire, but with half the country on welfare, the money they've promised us won't last six months."

"What the h.e.l.l's wrong with everybody?" Claire asked, rolling her eyes."Doesn't anyone want to work anymore?"

Ainsworth smirked. "Why should they, Claire, when welfare pays them more for sitting home on their b.u.t.ts than they can make with a job?"

9.Claire stared hard at Ainsworth for a moment, and then she slammed her hand down on her desk. "d.a.m.n it, I'm tired of being told there's no money in the treasury and the government has to cut back while these layabouts are living off the government's t.i.t. Cliff, I want you to announce immediately that due to the current emergency, all welfare checks will be cut by twenty percent."

Ainsworth's eyes opened wide. "But, Claire, that'll cause riots in the streets."

She smiled grimly. "Good, then stopping them will give Boykin's troops something to do to earn their paychecks."

She got to her feet and leaned forward, her hands on her desk. "Now, get out of here and find me some way to get more money into our coffers-raise taxes or levy fines or something. The government cannot function without money!"

Her cabinet members rose from their chairs, casting worried looks at one another as they filed out of her office.

Claire took a deep breath and stretched her arms out over her head.

"d.a.m.n, these meetings always make me tense," she said, glancing at Herb Knoff, still sitting next to her. She gave him a half smile. "How about a ma.s.sage for your boss?" she asked with a lascivious grin.

He returned the look. "Anytime is a good time for a full-body rubdown, Claire."

She moved from behind the desk, took his hand, and led him into her living quarters adjacent to the office. As she went through the door, she began to unb.u.t.ton her blouse.

Suddenly, a man dressed all in soldier's fatigues stepped from behind the door and whipped his left arm 10.around Herb's forehead, stretching his head back while he put a long, curved knife to his neck.

"Holy s.h.i.+t!" Herb grunted, standing still as the razor-sharp blade drew a few drops of blood from his neck.

Claire whirled around, her hands going to her face. "What the h.e.l.l's the meaning of this?" she almost shouted.

"My name is Muhammad Atwa," the man said in a heavy accent. "I have a proposition for you, but I first need your a.s.surance you will not summon help."

"How did you get in here?" Claire asked, her eyes flicking toward the phone on her bedside table.Atwa moved the knife suggestively. "Please do not attempt to call for help," he said. "I am not afraid to die, and I most surely will kill you both before your guards arrive."

"I asked you how you got in here."

He shrugged, his lips curled in a cruel smirk. "Your soldiers are very lazy. Anyone in a uniform is allowed to pa.s.s almost without questions."

Claire sighed and sat on the edge of her bed. "What is it exactly you want?"

Atwa reached around Herb's chest, took the pistol from his shoulder holster under his coat, and motioned for him to join Claire on the bed.

Once Herb was sitting next to her, Atwa sat on a chair across the room and leaned back, crossing his legs with the pistol resting on his knee, the barrel pointed at them.

"I represent an organization called Al Qa'eda, based in Afghanistan."

"Al-Qa'eda?" Claire asked, her brow furrowed. "I thought we got rid of them back in the early part of the century."

Atwa smiled again, though without the slightest bit of 11.11.humor in his eyes. "Yes, that is what you thought. You did manage to kill our leader, Osama bin Laden, but we had others ready to take his place."

"And what proposition does Al Qa'eda have for the United States?" Claire asked.

"A friend of our organization, Abdullah El Farrar, has come to us with a plan to bring the world to its knees."

"El Farrar?" Herb asked. "Wasn't he the crazy b.a.s.t.a.r.d who led the terrorist attack against us this year?"

Atwa shrugged. "A misguided effort, as it turned out. He had neither the troops nor the materiel to complete his mission, though I think he would have succeeded had it not been for Ben Raines and the SUSA's intervention."

"I doubt it," Claire said. "We would have beaten him even without Raines and his troops. It would just have taken a little longer."

Atwa smiled again, showing he didn't believe her. "At any rate, the SUSA and the UN. have frozen all of El Farrar's family's a.s.sets, and he is angry. He has come up with a very intriguing scheme to make them pay for what they did to him."

"Yeah? And just what does he have in mind?" Claire asked.

"To take control of the world's oil supply," Atwa answered simply.

"Oh, is that all?" Herb asked scornfully."Let me explain," Atwa said, moving the pistol so it no longer pointed at them. "As you know, almost all of the working oil fields are in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait since your country destroyed most of the others in Iran and Iraq during your hunt for Osama bin Laden years ago."

"You're forgetting our fields in Alaska," Claire said.

Atwa waved a dismissive hand. "Yes, you have enor- 12.mous reserves, but your environmentalists have so far blocked you from exploiting them to any degree."

Claire nodded grimly. The tree-huggers were the bane of her existence.

She'd been trying for years to get the Congress to let her open up the fields to full production, but so far they'd resisted.

"So, how does El Farrar plan to take control of those oil fields?"

Claire asked. "They are under the protection of the UN."

"My organization is prepared to put fifty thousand of our best troops at his disposal. He will use them to gain control of the oil fields and oust the U.N. troops, which are very poorly disciplined."

"So, and then what?" Claire asked. "Ben Raines and his SUSA troops would take them back in less time than it takes to tell it."

Atwa shook his head. "Not if you agree to help us."

"In what way could we help you?" Claire asked. "As much as I hate to admit it, our troops have never been a match for the SUSA's."

"We don't need your troops," Atwa said. "We merely need fifty pounds or so of the plutonium you have in storage."

"Plutonium?" Claire asked, puzzled. "You want to make an atom bomb?"

"No. We intend to place small amounts of the plutonium near all of the oil wells, rigged to explode if our demands are not met. As you know, plutonium is one of the dirtiest of all radioactive materials. If we set the bombs off, it will contaminate the oil reserves for thousands of years and make them unusable."

"But," Claire said, horrified, "that would throw the world back into the Dark Ages."

"That is how we have been living in Afghanistan for 13.13.decades," Atwa said, shrugging. "But I doubt it will come to that. Once the U.N. sees that we have the means and the will to destroy the world's oil supply, I think they will accede to our demands."

"And what will the United States get for our help?" Claire asked, a thoughtful look on her face.Atwa spread his hands, a wide-toothed grin on his face. "Why, you'd get to be our partners in ruling the world, of course." He hesitated a moment, and then he added, "And Ben Raines would have to come crawling to you to get the oil his country needs to maintain their style of life."

The thought of Ben Raines having to beg her for anything persuaded Claire. She'd hated him for as long as she could remember, and now was her chance to get back at him for all he'd done to make her life miserable.

She stood up and stuck out her hand. "We'll do it!"

14 TWO.

As Ben Raines ran, his breath came in short, gasping bursts and his chest felt like a giant hand was squeezing it. Sweat poured from his brow and ran down into his eyes. Finally, he stopped and bent over, his hands on his knees as he glanced at his malamute dog, Jody, who'd been running effortlessly at his side. She wasn't even breathing heavily, and was looking back at him as if to say, "Come on, let's run some more."

"Jesus, Jody," he managed to gasp between breaths, "give your master a break." They'd just jogged five miles, a trip he used to make without even breaking a sweat. He looked at his watch. They'd averaged six-minute miles, a feat most men would have been proud of. But not General Ben Raines, leader of the Southern United States of America Armed Forces.

He bent down, rubbed the back of Jody's neck, and ruffled her ears, something she loved. "It's h.e.l.l to get old, Jody old girl," he murmured to her as she looked up at him with adoring eyes, her lips curled in a smile of delight.

Maybe it's finally time to step down and give someone younger a chance, he thought to himself. His adopted son Buddy had been champing at the bit lately, wanting more responsibility. Perhaps now was the time to give it to him, 15.Ben thought as he finally managed to slow his breathing down to normal levels.

He glanced back down the road running along the periphery of his base, and figured he had about another mile to go to get home. With a deep sigh, he began to jog toward his quarters, hoping he wouldn't have a ma.s.sive coronary before he made it back. Jody barked with happiness as she ran alongside him, keeping a sharp lookout for a squirrel or rabbit just in case one happened to show itself alongside the road.

After a shower and a lunch with his troops in the mess hall, Ben met with his team of advisers in his office. As he sat at his desk, he looked around at the men and women in the room, his heart swelling with pride at the excellence of the team he'd formed so many years ago.

Mike Post, his Chief of Intelligence, sat smoking his pipe as usual, filling the room with the aromatic smell of fine tobacco.

Jersey, his bodyguard, who was half Apache, sat on a chair near his desk, her hand resting on the hilt of the K-Bar a.s.sault knife that was her favorite weapon. Her long dark hair was tied in a braid at the backof her neck and hung down almost to her waist.

Cooper, called Coop by most everyone, was his driver and sat next to Jersey, where he could whisper insults to her as the occasion arose.

Their constant bantering was legendary and a source of constant amus.e.m.e.nt to the other members of the team.

Anna, Ben's adopted daughter, sat on the couch next to Harley Reno, also part Indian, with the characteristic red hair and blue eyes of the band of aborigines who were his ancestors.

16.Beth, the team statistician, sat next to Carrie, who was in charge of communications for the team. They were quietly talking to Scott "Hammer"

Hammerick, Harley's closest friend and fellow commando.

On an adjacent couch sat Buddy Raines, Ben's son, who'd led the special-ops battalion until the previous year, when Ben had asked him to join the team as second in command The final member of the group was Dr. Larry Buck, who'd recently taken over from Dr. Lamar Chase, who'd semiretired to play golf and lie about his handicap.

It was a fine team, one that had fought together over many campaigns.

Ben took a sip of his coffee and then cleared his throat. "Okay, boys and girls," he said with a slight grin. "How about a status report on our current situation?"

Mike Post took his pipe out of his mouth and glanced down at a sheaf of papers, resting on his ever-present briefcase on his lap. The team often joked that if they ever wanted to separate Mike from his briefcase, it would have to be surgically removed.

"Well, to begin with, the good news is it seems all of the terrorists who invaded the United States have either been killed or captured. Other than a few stragglers who shouldn't be any problem to round up, the threat of any overthrow of Claire Osterman's government is over," Mike said.

"What of the leader, Abdullah El Farrar?" Ben asked. "Any news of him?"

Mike's lips curled in a sardonic grin. "The last intel I have says he returned to the Middle East, either Iran or Iraq, in disgrace for his failure. I'm also told his family is none too happy with his aborted attempt to destabilize 17.17.the U.S. since it resulted in all of the family's a.s.sets being frozen."

"Oh, darn," Coop interjected sarcastically, "now they'll have to live like all the other poor people they've been robbing for the past twenty years."

Mike laughed. "Well, not really. They still have relatively substantial funds available from bank accounts the U.N. wasn't able to find, b.u.t.their standard of living has definitely gone down."

"How about the governments that supported him in his takeover bid?" Ben asked. "Are they still behind him?"

Mike shook his head. "Don't know, since our intel is limited over there, but I would think not. They're not exactly fond of failure in that culture."

"So you think we can forget about El Farrar as a threat?" Buddy asked, leaning forward, his head c.o.c.ked to the side in a characteristic mannerism.

"I wouldn't go that far," Mike answered. "But I doubt we'll be hearing anything from him for quite a while. After all, he lost almost twenty-five thousand of their best troops. It should take him some time to reestablish a force we'd need to be concerned with."

"I wouldn't be too sure of that," Harley Reno said.

"Oh?" Buddy asked.

Harley nodded. "Yeah. As you know, I spent some time over there a few years back. There's no shortage of crazy young Muslims who are willing to take a short ride to meet Allah by blowing themselves and any followers of the Great Satan in the West up with them. If El Farrar survives his return and isn't killed or disavowed by the leaders over there, he could rearm and have another twenty-five thousand fanatical followers before you know it."