William Johnstone: Fire in the Ashes

The White House

Richmond, Virginia

March, 1999

“Are you sure Ben Raines is dead?” President Addison asked the agent.

“Yes, sir. Positive. He was hit three times in the chest area with M-16 rounds. Then he fell off a mountain. The man is dead. No human could have lived through that.”

“Where was this?”

“Montana, sir. The man is dead.”

“I’ve heard that before. Ben Raines is hard to kill.” The president dismissed the agent and whirled around in his chair, looking out the window. Alone in the Oval Office, Addison’s thoughts were as mixed as they were many.

Ben Raines finally dead. Finally. Funny, I should be experiencing some… some sort of glow of victory. But I don’t. I met him; I rather liked him. I wish to God we could have reached some sort of agreement, for I don’t believe he was ever an enemy of the people.

The president sighed heavily and rose from the comfortable leather chair. He stood by the window, watching the drops of rain spot and splatter against the bulletproof glass. He stood for several moments, experiencing a dozen different emotions. He turned at a knock on his office door.

“Come in.”

Al Cody, director of the FBI, walked in, a huge smile on his face. “I can’t believe it, sir. The son of a bitch is really dead?”

Al Cody was not one of the president’s favorite people. The man had pushed hard for the new anti-handgun bill; had been instrumental in stripping the citizens of pistols, and in setting up what amounted to a virtual police state in America. The majority of the citizens of the United States hated Al Cody.

But they were stuck with him.

“Yes,” Aston said with a sigh. “I believe Ben Raines is dead.”

“Is there any way we can get Congress to make this a national holiday?”

Aston Addison could only look at the man.

Al flushed, realizing he had perhaps taken that one step too many and crossed the invisible line. “Sorry, sir. But my feeling for Ben Raines is a lot deeper than yours. His Rebels killed my brother in the battle for Tri-States.”

“There is right and wrong on both sides, Mr. Cody. Our forces raped and tortured a lot of Rebels—or have you forgotten that?”

“No, sir.”

“Is there anything else you want, Mr. Cody?”

To see you out of the White House for one thing, the FBI chief thought savagely. That would be marvelous. “No, sir,” he said.

“That will be all, then, Mr. Cody. Thank you for stopping by.”

Cody deliberately slammed the door as he left.

“Bastard!” President Addison said.

The president turned to the window and once more stared out at the rainy afternoon. Dead, the word came dully to him. Dead. He shook his head.

“I don’t believe it,” he said aloud. Then, for a reason not even the president could fathom, he added, “I hope it’s not true.”

“You’re lucky, Ben,” Doctor Lamar Chase said. “You’re the luckiest man I’ve ever seen.”

But some of Ben Raines’s Rebels were beginning to think there was something more than luck surrounding their commanding officer.

“You’ve got a broken collarbone, three cracked ribs, and a small bit of bone gone from your left shoulder. This would have killed a lesser man. Should have killed you.”

Jerre knelt by Ben’s bed. “Old man,” she grinned at him. “I wish you’d quit scaring me like this.”

Ben touched her face, ran his fingers through her blond hair. His face was pale from shock and the pain of his wounds. “I keep telling you, babe,” he whispered, “I’ll go when I’m damn well ready to go.”

She kissed his cheek.

“Everybody out!” Chase ordered. “Let the man get some rest. He’s not immortal, you know.”

The doctor did not notice the strange looks he received at that statement.

Ben’s personal contingent of Rebels was camped near Hell Creek, not far from the southern shores of the Fort Peck Recreation Area. Many of these Rebels had been with Ben for years: Judith Sparkman, James Riverson, Ike McGowen, Ben’s adopted daughter, Tina, Cecil Jefferys, Doctor Chase, in his early seventies and still spry as a mountain goat—and just as cantankerous.

The tent cleared and Ben closed his eyes, fighting back waves of nausea that alternated with the peaks and valleys of pain coursing through him. The shot Doctor Chase had administered began to take hold, dropping Ben into drug-induced sleep.

But his sleep was troubled, and he called out for friends long dead. Men he had known in Southeast Asia; men he had fought with during his years as a mercenary in Africa—that period of his life when the adrenaline-surging high of combat would not be appeased by civilian life. But he’d finally gotten it out of his system and returned to a normal life, as a writer.

He called out for friends who had stayed with him after the bombings of 1988, men and women who had toiled, giving their sweat and blood, and ultimately, their lives for a dream called Tri-States; a country within a country. It was a dream carved out of three states, an area free of crime and unemployment, where men and women could leave their homes unlocked and the keys in their cars and trucks, knowing they would not be robbed or their vehicles stolen.

Ben Raines and his Rebels had proved their concept of government could work; that people do not have to be bogged down by government bureaucracy and red tape. That schools could function without the Supreme Court and federal judges interfering with the process of education.

Tri-States worked. It had worked. And it would work again.

Ben groaned on his cot.

“You bring back Ben Raines’s body,” Al Cody told a group of agents. “I don’t care if it takes you six months to find the rotting bastard—you bring it back.”

“Wild country out there, Mr. Cody,” the FBI chief was reminded.

“I am well aware of that.”

“And still full of Rebels,” another agent said.

“Take as many men as you need. Do it. Find the son of a bitch and bring it back. I want it on public display. The people have to learn that this is a law-and-order society. Anarchy will not be permitted.”

The agents left the office and drew weapons. They called their wives and girlfriends and told them they were going on assignment.

No, they did not know when they would be back.

They boarded a plane at Byrd Field and headed westward. The agents were in high spirits. Hunting traitors was the name of the game. They were loyal to the red, white, and blue, Ben Raines and his Rebels were all traitors and anarchists, and that was that.

It was all cut and dried. No gray area between the white and the black.

By tomorrow at this time, all the agents would be dead.

“We hit them here,” Colonel Hector Ramos told his Rebels. He thumped a wall map and smiled grimly, a big predatory cat on the trail of a blood scent. Ramos had lost his entire family to government troops back in ‘98. His wife and daughter had been raped and tortured and then cut open like pigs, left to die in the sands like hunted animals.

Ramos looked at his people. “Our informants in Richmond said the agents left two hours ago. A planeload of them. Fifty agents, all heavily armed. They are to find General Raines’s body and return with it to Richmond; put the body on public display…”

A hand shot up.

Ramos said, “Captain Garrett?”