William Johnstone: Fire in the Ashes

The old senator sighed. He had been in the Senate longer than any man still alive: since 1960, sliding in on Jack Kennedy’s bandwagon. He had seen much, this old aging liberal. Back during the bombings, and immediately thereafter, he had been presumed dead. But he had been vacationing in the mountains of North Carolina when the rumors of war had first surfaced. He had elected not to return to Washington when he learned of the military’s taking control of the nation just hours before the nuclear and germ warfare blew the world apart.

“Damn little,” Carson finally replied. “I have never, in all my years serving the people, seen such a drastic shift in the feelings of my colleagues. I… can’t get through to them that we cannot— must not— allow this to erupt into a civil war. They just won’t listen.”

“I’ll give you odds Weston Lowry has something to do with it.”

“No takers, Aston. I see his fine devious hand all over this. I warned you, Aston; I urged you not to pick that bastard.”

Aston shrugged. “I had to do something to placate the law-and-order boys,” he explained. “Hell, Bill, you know that.” He met the older man’s level gaze. “They really have the votes—in both houses?”

“Yes.”

“It’s going to be bloody and awful.”

“Yes.”

“Who is Sam Hartline?”

“Sam Hartline is a goddamned psychopath,” Cecil Jefferys told Ike and Ben. “And one hardline nigger-hater. He was with Jeb Fargo outside Chicago back in ‘88 and ‘89.”

The day before Ben first met Cecil and Salina, he had visited his brother in a suburb of Chicago. What he had seen shocked and appalled him. Ben could not believe the change in his older brother.

He had been stopped at a roadblock, refused entrance into the suburbs. “You gotta stay and fight with us,” a man told him.

“What?” Ben asked.

“We’re gonna wipe those damned niggers out,” the man told him. “Once and for all. Then we can rebuild a decent society.”

Ben didn’t believe what he was hearing. Ben Raines was anything but a screaming liberal, but he knew there was good and bad among all races. He let the man rave on until he was finally allowed to see his brother. He could not believe the change in Carl Raines. He had argued with Carl, trying to reason with him, to get him to leave—get his family and come with Ben.

“No way,” Carl told him. “I’m stayin’ here and protectin’ my home.”

“Your home!” Ben had yelled. “Hell, Carl, there are millions of homes standing empty across the nation. Take your choice. Live in the governor’s mansion if you like.”

“Be niggers in there, eatin’ fried chicken and doin’ the funky-humpy in the governor’s office.”

Ben had argued on, attempting to change his brother’s mind, until a voice from behind him ended it.

“Why don’t you just carry your Jew-lovin’, nigger-lovin’ ass on away from here?”

He wore the uniform of a Nazi storm-trooper. A swastika on his sleeve. Jeb Fargo.

The crowd gathering was hostile.

Ben and his brother did not shake hands before Ben left, pushing his way through the crowd.

“Sam came after my time in Africa,” Ben said. “But I kept up with events over there; guys writing me every now and then. I’ve heard of him. He’s an expert at torture. I can’t believe Addison is going along with this.”

“He isn’t,” Cecil said. “Word we’re getting is a power play in Richmond. Lowry wants the White House all to himself.”

“Where does the military stand?” Ben asked.

“My troops are split,” General Rimel of the Air Force spoke to his counterparts of the other services. “But it isn’t an equal balance. I think… perhaps a third of my men would actively wage war against Raines and his Rebels.”

“It galls my balls to say it,” General Franklin of the Marine Corps said, “but that’s about the percentage of my men, too.”

“Same here,” General Preston of the Army said.

“Yeah,” Admiral Calland of the Navy agreed.

“So are we out of it?” Rimel asked.

“Except for selected units, yes, I would say so,” Franklin said. “But about a hundred of Cody’s men are meeting with Sam Hartline down in a deserted town on the Tennessee border right now.”

“Hartline?” Preston said. “The mercenary?”

“One and the same.”

“How many men does Hartline have?”

“Several thousand, and they’re all experienced fighters.”

Calland was thoughtful for a moment. “How many personnel in Raines’s command?”

“The Rebels probably can field no more than three or four thousand fighters at any given time,” Preston told him. “Our intelligence reports just over a battalion in each of the four sections of the nation. He’s got General Krigel in the east; Major Conger in the mid-north; Colonel Ramos in the south-west; General Bill Hazen in the mid-west. But he’s got small units all over the goddamned place. And if Cody and Hartline move directly against the people, Raines will declare a full-scale civil war.”

“And he’ll use guerrilla tactics, too,” Franklin spoke.

“Damn right, he will. Raines was a Hell Hound, trained by Adams and Dean.”

“And he’s still got Ike McGowen with him. Medal of Honor-winner. ex-SEAL,” Admiral Calland said respectfully.

“Well, gentlemen,” General Rimel said, “you all know where I stood on invading Tri-States. I was opposed to it. Now, I—none of us—can directly come out and disobey a Presidential order, or an order from the Congress of the United States. If we do that, we’re taking sides.” He spread his hands in a gesture of “what next, boys?”

“I suggest we speak—very quietly—with our field commanders,” Preston said. “Base CGs and admirals. All conversations private and scrambled; nose to nose if at all possible. I also would suggest, after we’ve done that, that we get word to Raines telling him how many of us are out of this thing.”

“Damn!” General Franklin said. “I hate even the idea of that.”

“Well,” Preston smiled, needling the Marine, “we never promised you a rose garden.”

“Oh, goddamn, Jerry!” Franklin groaned.

Victor watched as the fifth man mounted his sister as if she were a dog. He tried to push her screaming from his head. He could not. “All right,” the young man said weakly. “Get away from her. I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

The man pulled himself from the young woman and wiped his penis. “Gettin’ kinda sloppy anyway,” he said. “She’s bleedin’ from the ass.”

“Get a doctor to see her,” Hartline ordered one of his men. “Immediately. I want the people to know if they cooperate with me, I will be fair with them.”

Rebecca was carried from the room.

Hartline knelt by Victor’s chair. “Now, young man, give me a name.”

Late that night, a man’s front door was kicked in and the man dragged from his bed. He was taken to an old National Guard Camp in Central Virginia, temporary billeting for Sam Hartline’s mercenaries.

The man was taken to an office and tossed on the floor. When he looked up, Sam Hartline was standing over him. The mercenary was smiling.

“Mr. Samuelson,” Hartline said. “You have a lot of knowledge I wish you to share with me.”

“No way,” Samuelson said.

The mercenary’s smile widened. “Why, Mr. Samuelson, surely you don’t mean that.”

“I mean it.”

“Before you make such rash statements, sir,” Hartline said, “perhaps you should speak with your daughter, Ruth. You see, sir, she is… ah… shall we say, busy entertaining some of my men just down the hall.”