William Johnstone - Fire in the Ashes

Ben sighed. “Well, that’s some good news to come out of this mess.”

“Still no word on Jerre’s whereabouts?”

“Nothing.”

“It would be less than useless to ask the president for help,” Ike said. “Lowry, as far as I know, is still running the country. And I’ve said it before and will again: this whole meeting business smells bad to me.”

“I know,” Ben agreed. “I get the same bad vibes out of it. But what else can I do except meet with him?”

“I don’t like it,” Ike repeated, then walked away.

“Cecil?”

“I think it’s a chance we have to take, Ben. I just wish I knew what was happening to Jerre.”

She lay on a bunk, a dirty blanket beneath her, an equally filthy blanket covering her nakedness. She did not know how many men had raped her, and she really did not care. She did not even know where she was, how she came to be there, what was happening to her, or even who she was.

She sensed more than thought something very terrible had happened to her, but she did not know what it was. Sometimes a flickering nightmare passed through her tortured mind, the scenes so terrible her mind would not permit the mental reply for more than a few seconds before blacking it out and once more dropping her into the depths of nonrecall.

But one man’s face kept entering and reentering her mind, until finally she could attach a name to it: Sam Hartline.

She hated Sam Hartline, but she didn’t know why.

She wanted to kill Sam Hartline, but she didn’t know why she wanted to do that.

Maybe it would come to her in time.

“Spread ‘em, baby,” a man’s voice said.

She felt the blanket jerked from her and cool air on her nakedness.

She opened her legs without question, grunting as a man’s hardness forced its way inside her.

Sabra Olivier lay passively on the cot as the man took his turn with her. She didn’t even resist when he kissed her.

Somehow she knew this wasn’t Sam Hartline.

“You want that to happen to you?” Hartline asked Jerre. He had turned on the lights after viewing the tape of Sabra being raped.

“You know I don’t,” Jerre replied. She was very much aware of her own nakedness. The leather chair was cold against her skin. She did not know where her clothes were.

“Then you’ll do what I ask of you?”

“No.”

“Baby,” Hartline leaned forward, “it isn’t as if I’m asking you to betray Ben Raines. Come Monday afternoon, he’ll be dead anyway.”

“I will not betray the movement,” Jerre said, just as she had said a hundred times already.

“You really want me to make it rough for you, don’t you, honey?”

“I’m no good to you dead, Hartline,” Jerre looked the mercenary in the eye. “And you will never kill Ben Raines.”

He slapped her. “I told you not to mention his name ‘less I asked you to, didn’t I? Goddamn you. Before I’m through with you you’ll be begging me to kill you.”

“Maybe,” Jerre admitted, getting set mentally for the worst.

Instead Hartline laughed and got to his feet. “You got guts, baby—I’ll give you that much. Nice pretty blond cunt, too. I like blond cunts. Turns me on. Maybe I’ll be back to see you later this evening.”

“Bring a sandwich when you do,” Jerre told him. “I’m hungry.”

Hartline was still laughing as he went out the door. Fifteen minutes later, her clothes were handed to her and she was given a hot meal.

“Talk about a case for Jung,” she muttered, taking a grateful bite of hot roast beef. “He’d be beside himself with Hartline.”

“How do I reply to this message, Ben?” Cecil asked. “What do I tell the president?”

Ben rubbed his hands together and paced the floor of the home. “You’ve been in touch with the Joint Chiefs?”

“Yes.”

“What do they think?”

“Reading between the lines, Ben, they would seem to think it’s some kind of setup.”

“To kill me?”

“Right. You and Addison.”

“I don’t understand why they won’t take a side in this thing,” Ben said, slamming one clenched fist into his open palm. “Goddamnit, if they’d throw their weight behind us, we could have this thing over with the country running again in two weeks.”

Cecil shrugged.

“Not another power play among them?” Ben wondered aloud.

“I don’t think so, buddy,” Ike said. “But I’m with the JCs on this: it’s a setup. And I don’t believe it’s all Lowry, either.”

“Then…?”

Ike shrugged.

“I don’t see I have a choice, boys,” Ben glanced first at Cecil, then at Ike. “The sooner we get this thing done, the sooner Jerre is freed.”

“Unless it’s a setup,” Ike persisted.

“You’re a harbinger of doom and destruction, Ike,” Ben managed a grin.

“But other than that, I’m soooo lovable.”

Cecil laughed and Ben had to join him in the humor. “All right, Cec, tell Addison I’ll meet with him Monday morning. The Holiday Inn in Charlottesville.”

“No!” Ike said sharply.

Both men looked at him.

“The first motel on the outskirts of town,” Ike said. “The first one on the right headin’ east. I don’t want us to get boxed in.”

“All right, Ike—if that will make you feel better.” He looked at Cecil. “What about our request to send people into Richmond to meet with committee heads of Congress?”

“Everything is A-OK, Ben,” Cecil assured him.

“Then I guess that’s it,” Ben said.

Ike looked at his watch. “Seventy-two hours to launch,” he said. “One way or the other.”

Six

The questions were almost identical, the answers almost word for word, only the connotation different.

Both meetings were held in Richmond. Both held at night. The meeting places only two miles apart. Both meetings held degrees of selfishness. Both meetings concerned the fate of Ben Raines. But only one was being conducted for the good of the nation and its people as a whole.

“Is it going to work?” the same question was asked at both places.

At one: “If Ben Raines dies.”

At the other: “If Ben Raines makes it.”

“I’ll be glad to see that sob-sister Addison dead, too.”

At the other: “I wish to God there was some other way to do this without sacrificing the president.”

Same meeting: “He’s weak; not the man for this time in our history. I don’t like it either. But I can’t see another way.”

Same meeting: “I feel… traitorous.”

The other meeting: “Lowry will be forced to step down if you threaten to go public with that promise he made you.”

Hartline grinned. “And then we’ll just put you in the Oval Office.”

The old man grinned. “That’s the way it will be.”

Jerre sat in her cell at the camp of the mercenaries. She had not been harmed in any way. She had not seen Hartline since that afternoon he had returned her clothing and ordered her fed.

She wondered what was going to happen to her. She wondered about her babies and about Matt.

She wondered who that woman was that occasionally screamed from down the corridor.

Sabra had been allowed to bathe and wash her hair. She was dressed in a dress that looked like a sack. But she really didn’t care. She had managed in her feverish brain to put a name with the face that tormented her. She had it for a time, but it kept slipping away from her. Now she could keep it with her at all times: Sam Hartline.

She knew this Hartline had done something terrible to her, and to someone else, but she couldn’t recall what it was.