William Johnstone - Fire in the Ashes

Civil liberties groups were howling about the death penalty.

The rich were shrieking about Ben’s plans to make the tax laws more equitable.

On and on and on.

Ben turned off the set.

Then something hit his consciousness: The press wasn’t taking sides. No editorials. No not-so-subtle vocal innuendoes. No facial giveaways as to how the reporters really felt. What the hell was going on with the fourth estate?

Did somebody up there really like him?

Ben decided it had to be a fluke.

He looked at his half-eaten dinner, pushed it from him, and went into his bedroom. He showered, stretched out on the bed with a book, and was asleep in two minutes.

“The C-4 is placed, timers set to go in twenty minutes,” Ike was told. “We should kill or cripple fifty of Hartline’s mercs with that alone.”

“Smoke?” Dan Gray asked.

“In place. We stayed in radio contact with Ike’s group all the way. The smoke will go same time as the C-4.”

“Okay.” Ike looked at Matt. “You and me, boy—we’re going heads up and straight in Hartline’s house. I’ll take the front, you come in the rear.” He glanced at two of Gray’s Scouts. “You two grab that Jeep-mounted fifty and get behind that block wall by the side of Hartline’s house. North.” He looked at two more Rebels. “You two on the south side. Rest of you know your jobs.” He looked at his watch. “Let’s do it, boys.”

“Don’t forget us, you sexist pig!” a woman spoke from the darkness of the home. She chuckled.

“’Scuse me, honey,” Ike grinned, glancing at the three women of Gray’s team. “I keep forgettin’.”

“You didn’t forget last night,” she fired back, her white teeth flashing against the deep tan of her face.

“Darlin’,” Ike smiled. “That was the most memorable moment of my life.”

“Lying Mississippi bastard,” a woman muttered, no malice at all in the statement.

The men and women chuckled, breaking the slight tension.

“Let’s do it, lads and lassies,” Dan said.

They moved out. It was five o’clock in the morning.

Sam Hartline buckled his web belt around his lean waist and looked at Jerre looking at him from the big bed. The only light was a small nightlight.

“You’re a class act, Jerre-baby,” he said. “And I intend to keep you for my own. You understand that?”

“I hear you.”

He chuckled. “No other man will have you, baby. I promise you that. You’re mine. My property. Mine to do with as I see fit. Be honest—has it been a bad life?”

She had to admit it had not. He had never laid a brutal hand on her. She had the best clothes, the finest food, the nicest treatment any prisoner ever had.

But she was still a prisoner.

Worse yet, she had to fight to keep from responding to his lovemaking, for he was skilled and had more equipment than she had ever encountered.

And last night, the memories flooded back, her reserve had broken, and she had clutched at his shoulders as one raging climax followed another.

And that shamed her.

She still hated him.

“Ta-ta, love,” he grinned at her. “You go back to sleep now and dream about my cock.”

He laughed aloud.

A huge explosion shook the darkness of early morning. Fire shot into the predawn skies as a fuel depot went up with a swooshing sound.

His back to her, Jerre jerked the bedside radio from the nightstand and threw it at him, hitting the mercenary leader in the back of the head, dropping him to his knees, blood pouring from a gash in his scalp.

The sounds of gunfire rattled in the morning, shattering the stillness after the blasts. The sounds of the front and back doors being kicked in ripped through the house. Hartline staggered to his feet and jerked his .45 from leather, aiming it at Jerre.

He pulled the trigger.

Ben woke with a start. He thought he’d heard gunshots. He lay very still; but the only sound he could hear was the pounding of his own heart. Then he picked it up: the fall of rain. It must have been thunder he’d heard—not gunshots.

But he couldn’t go back to sleep.

He tossed and turned for half an hour, while the red luminous hands on his digital clock radio glared at him almost accusingly.

Ben glared back. “Hell with you,” he muttered.

He threw back the covers and fumbled for his jeans. Ben never wore pajamas and detested robes.

He fixed a cup of coffee and two pieces of toast and took that into the den. He sat in the darkened den by a window, watching the rain gradually turn into sleet.

Dawn tossed and turned in her own bed, in an apartment across town. She had not heard Rosita come in, and she had not been in when Dawn went to bed. She wondered where her friend was. Something was just not right with Rosita. But Dawn couldn’t pinpoint what it was. The woman seemed… well, too sure of herself. She guessed maybe that was it.

But she knew it was more.

Tina lay in her bed, in her apartment, and wondered how long it would be before her dad exploded and told some of his critics where to get off. And when he did, she knew it would be done in such a manner as to leave an indelible impression on the recipient’s mind—forever. If he confined it to a vocal explosion. He might just take a swing at someone and break a jaw.

She was sorry she had pushed him into the job of president. Very sorry.

She wished they could all just pack up and head west.

Roanna Hickman sat by her window, watching it sleet, a cup of steaming coffee by her hand. With a reporter’s gut instinct, she felt something was about to pop. Jane had suggested as much to her only hours before.

But what?

That she didn’t know.

She picked up the phone and called the station, asking if anything had happened during the night.

“Starvation in Africa. Plague in parts of Asia. Warfare in South America. Europe struggling to pick up the pieces. Some nut reporting seeing some half a dozen or so mutant beings in the upper peninsula of Michigan…”

“What? Say that again.”

“Mutant beings. Not quite human but not quite animal either. Very large.”

“Did Chicago send that?”

“No. We got it off AP. Oh, and there’s something else. Rats. Mutant rats being reported. Big ones. ‘Bout the size of a good-sized cat.”

Roanna felt a tingle race around her spine. Where had she heard that before? Sabra! Sabra had told her that VP Lowry had mentioned… where had he heard it? From both Hartline and Cody. Yes!

She fought to control both her fear and her excitement. “Okay, George. Thanks.”

What a story. If true, she cautioned. Who could she send? She should call Chicago about the Michigan thing, but they’d probably laugh it off. No, she’d send someone from her own staff up there. Who? She mentally ticked off the list. All right.

Jane had been itching to get out into the field. She’d send her to Michigan and… Bert LaPoint to Memphis. Urge them both to BE CAREFUL.

She showered, dressed, and hustled to the office.

Rosita was in a stew. Damn Captain Gray for taking off. He had sent her here, in a roundabout way, for just this reason and then the man goes traipsing off. She didn’t know what to do. Dan had told her if it became necessary, to blow her cover and go to Ben Raines. But was it time for that?

She didn’t know.

She decided to wait one more day.

She did not see the shadow of the man behind her as she turned the corner of the street. She walked swiftly toward her car, parked in front of an apartment building. Rosita maintained a small apartment in the building; there she stored her high-powered tranreceivers, her C-4, her assassins weapons—the tools of her trade. She hoped no one tried to force their way into the apartment, for if they did, someone would be picking them up with a shovel and a spoon. Once any intruder stepped into the door, placing just fifteen pounds of pressure on the carpet, a modified claymore, positioned above the doorjamb, directed downward, would send enough death to blow the head off a lion. And that was just one of several booby traps scattered around the apartment. All lethal.