William Johnstone - Fire in the Ashes

Into those states Ben would send his Rebels to train new people.

June 10, 1999

Hartline’s Base Camp, Virginia

The four women and one man had been sexually attacked numerous times as a prelude to their questioning concerning other cells on the east coast sympathetic to Ben Raines’s Rebels.

A Mrs. Linda Ford was then taken into one of the interrogation rooms. The soles of her feet were beaten with billy clubs as were her buttocks and thighs. The beating continued all afternoon and into the night. She was thrown into a basement cell that had several inches of stagnant water covering the floor. Her feet were broken and her toenails were missing. She would die of pneumonia after a month. She would not be allowed a doctor’s care.

A Robin Lewis was sodomized and then tortured with jolts of electricity to her feet. The wires were then clamped to her lips and the electricity turned on. So severe were the jolts she broke her teeth grinding them against the charges of electricity and the waves of pain. The voltage was increased to such a level Ms. Lewis suffered severe brain damage.

Riva Madison was burned with cigarette and cigar butts. All her fingers were broken and her knees shattered with club blows.

Paul Murray was hanged by his wrists, his feet a foot off the floor. He was beaten and tortured by electric shock applied to his genitals. He would lose both hands due to gangrene.

Claire Boiling was repeatedly raped and subjected to every imaginable type of sexual abuse, including electrical current passed through and into her vagina by usage of a metal dildo. A procedure allegedly perfected by the SAVAK in Iran in the 1970s. Claire would live, but she would be unable to bear children.

Neither Mrs. Ford, Robin Lewis, Riva Madison, Paul Murray, or Ms. Boiling was able to tell their interrogators anything but the truth.

And the truth was… they did not know anything concerning the operation of other cells.

On July 1, Ben began traveling from state to state, meeting with his commanders. It was dangerous, but something that had to be done. By the end of August, his field commanders had recruited 7,200 men and women. Ben and his commanders knew there were government informers among them, but did nothing about it until the 7,200 had been broken up into small training groups and sent to various bases in the mountains, the deserts, the plains, the swamps.

It was then the government agents and spies learned the hard truth of infiltrating anything Ben Raines set up.

Each unit had several men and women trained in the use of Psychological Stress Evaluators, polygraph machines, and truth serums such as thiopental, scopoline, and other drugs which induce truth under hypnosis.

There, each volunteer was tested thoroughly and rigorously. Nothing was left to chance. They were hanged and buried in unmarked graves. Nothing was released to the government. Let them think their people were still alive, Ben told his Rebels.

It was frustrating to the federal police and the FBI and Hartline’s men. The silence from the agents supposed to be sending back data on the Rebels’ training bases infuriated Al Cody. The man was too vain and too sure of his people to even consider the possibility his people had been caught and killed.

Not all forty of them. Impossible.

Once the original seventy-two companies of one hundred new Rebels was set, it was very difficult to join Ben’s Rebels. Any new applicant was held in a safe house or spot for two to three weeks. The applicant was subjected to severe testing and questioning the entire time. Shortly the very best of the volunteers got into the actual fighting field units of the new Rebels.

There were ugly rumors circulating around the nation’s capital concerning the military’s alleged policy of total noninvolvement in any upcoming confrontation between the Rebels and the police. These were rumors that amused President Addison and Senator Carson; rumors that infuriated VP Lowry and Director Cody.

Then, on the first Sunday in August, 1999, violence erupted in the Great Smoky Mountains, one of the major training bases for Ben’s Rebels. President Addison was at the presidential retreat and could not be reached for comment, so VP Lowry, with Cody by his side, called a special meeting at the VP’s home outside Richmond.

Seated around the VP and Cody were: General Rimel of the Air Force; General Preston of the Army; Admiral Calland of the Navy; General Franklin of the Marine Corps; and Admiral Barstow of the Coast Guard. The Joint Chiefs of Staff.

VP Lowry cleared his throat, fiddled with his tie, and brushed back a few strands of carefully dyed hair. He said, “Gentlemen, I’ve heard some very unhappy news. Unsettling, to say the least. Heard it on the TV, read it in the Richmond Post . I can only conclude that at least part of it is true. Now, I’d be the first to concede that we may have a bit of a problem within the borders of our nation. But it’s nothing that can’t be cleared up if we all cooperate.

“The press is making a bad mistake, gentlemen. They have begun to romanticize Ben Raines’s Rebels, calling them Freedom’s Rebels and Freedom’s Rangers. That pack of off-center screwballs has to be stopped…”

“Are you referring to the Rebels or to the press?” General Rimel asked with a straight face.

VP Lowry’s expression grew hard and he started to fire his reply back to the general. Instead, he fought to calm himself. He took a deep breath and drummed his fingertips on the desk.

“General Rimel, I do not believe this is the time for levity—lame as it may be, and certainly in bad taste. You all know where the president stands on this issue. Like Pilate, he has washed his hands of the entire matter. But gentlemen, the majority of both houses of Congress backs my plan to rid the nation of these Rebels—and were I you, I would bear that in mind. Now I want to know where the military stands on this issue.”

“The military stands where it always stands,” Admiral Calland said, a flat tone to his voice. “Ready, willing, and able to repel any invaders who threaten our shores.”

“Would that it were,” Preston muttered under his breath. It was muttered so only Admiral Calland could hear.

The Navy man fought to hide a smile.

VP Lowry spun in his chair and turned his back to the men gathered around his desk in the study. Lowry looked out the window. It was raining again. Miserable day. He sighed. He had just received word—after hearing it on TV, which irritated him—of the closing of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee and North Carolina. It was estimated that about 1,500 Rebels were located in the more than half million acres of the park. They had taken it over. They had mined the place and stuck trip flares all over the area. Manned machine-gun posts were hidden in well-stocked bunkers, and Tennessee and North Carolina had already lost more than a hundred federal police and highway patrol and they hadn’t even gotten close to the main area. They were ambushed every time they turned around. Both states were requesting help from the Army or the National Guard or some goddamned thing.

When Lowry had called President Addison, Aston had laughed at him.

Lowry knew the military would refuse when he asked them for help. The bastards had said, and Lowry’s informants had relayed the news to him, that the military would not lift a finger against Raines.

Lowry turned slowly to face the military. “This nation,” he said, “is on the verge of civil war, and you tell me some drivel about repelling foreign invaders. What foreign invaders? There isn’t a power on the face of this globe strong enough to even consider the idea of attacking us. Now… you men listen to me. I want those… these Rebels stopped, and by God, you people,” he pointed his finger at all the military men, “are going to stop them.”