Fire in the Ashes

ONE

Ben had been wrong in thinking the guts had been torn from Americans; that they would not fight; that they did not know the tactics of defense.

What had happened in America was typical of any nation of people who had been so heavily ruled and governed from one central point; who had had the right to defend what was theirs taken from them; who had been stripped of nearly every constitutional right supposedly “guaranteed” them by their forefathers; and who had been told time after time that to do this, that, or the other thing was either illegal, immoral, or bad for your health.

Even the most intelligent of persons will, after a reasonable length of time, begin to believe it if that person is told fifty times a day that they are stupid.

John Adams was not farting the National Anthem when he wrote that fear is the foundation of most governments, or when he wrote that law is as deaf as an adder to the clamors of the populace.

For far too long the government, from the mouths of federal judges, had overruled the wishes of the majority of the population of the United States in so many areas that to list them would be a book in itself.

That was not what our forefathers had in mind.

But that is what happens when the central government assumes too much power… power that rightfully belongs in the hands of its citizens.

It takes Americans awhile to get going. Always has. But once they get going… look out, for any combat veteran will attest that there is no more savage fighting man than the American soldier.

Jake Devine’s tactics had worked to some extent, for a few people, in a few states. Hartline’s brutality had and was working for him in a few states. But the American people have a great will to survive; a great thirst for as much freedom as possible; a need for fair and equitable treatment.

What they needed was a catalyst, but not one that itself would not be affected. One was on his way: Ben Raines.

In a small city in Oklahoma, Mr. Kent Naylor lay wide-awake in his bed, beside his sleeping wife. His four children, ages 13 to 20, were asleep in other parts of the two-story home.

Naylor was the head of a small cell of Rebel sympathizers, fifty strong. He had received word the day before that the federal police, under the direction of Al Cody’s men, were coming to get him, to take him in for questioning.

Naylor knew what that meant: he would never return. He had seen only one man ever return from those camps where Rebel sympathizers were taken, and that man had been turned into a babbling idiot from hours of physical and mental torture.

No, Naylor thought, I’m not going to be taken by the federal police.

Headlights slashed their way through the thin curtains covering the open bedroom window. Stopped. Motors running. Silence. Naylor rose from the bed, quickly slipped into trousers and shoes and shirt. He reached into a closet and took out a twelve-gauge shotgun. It was fully loaded with double-ought buckshot, pushed by magnum powder loads. He clicked the SEND button on a small handy/talkie by his bed and heard the receiver send an answering click.

Everybody was ready. All the members of his cell were ready to make their move toward restoring freedom to their lives.

A hard hammering on the front door. A demanding knocking.

Naylor knew who it was.

“Naylor! Open the door. Police.”

“Fuck you,” Naylor muttered.

“What is it?” his wife sat up in bed, a frightened look in her eyes.

“Stay in this room, Beth,” he told his wife. “Everything is going to be all right. I promise you. Finally it will be all right.”

He pumped a round into the chamber of the shotgun and stepped out of his bedroom, looking down into his den.

The front door was kicked open, wood splintering and cracking.

“…drag the son of a bitch out,” a fragment of a sentence reached the man.

“Drag all of them out,” a voice filled with hard authority said. “His kids are part of it, too. We’ll see how Naylor likes watching his kids take it up the ass.”

His face a hard mask, Naylor lifted the shotgun and emptied it into the three men standing by the ruined front door.

One man’s head flew apart, splattering the wall with blood and fluid and brains. The second man’s feet jerked out from under him as the slugs impacted with his chest, slamming him to the carpet. The third man took the slug in the throat, almost tearing his head from his torso.

All lay dead or dying.

Lights in the houses on both sides of the street clicked on as half a dozen police cars squalled to a halt in front of the Naylor home. Citizens with guns in their hands appeared on the front lawns, men and women and teenagers. A half a hundred of them.

The federal police officers stopped dead still in the Naylor yard.

One officer summed up their predicament as well as anyone could under such conditions. “Oh, shit!”

“Get that crap out of my house,” Naylor jerked his thumb toward the dead men. “And clean up the mess.”

“Yes, sir,” a federal police officer said. “Right away.”

The bodies carried out of the house, the mess cleaned up as best as possible, the gun-carrying citizens went back into their houses, leaving the street empty. But the federalized police knew they were being watched, and the choice of living or dying was solely in their hands.

“I was a cop nine years before the government federalized us,” a man said, his voice low. “I knew it was a mistake. I said when Lowry and Cody started this gun-sweep it was wrong; the people wouldn’t stand still for it.”

Another man removed his badge and dropped it with a clink on the sidewalk. “We’re through!” he yelled to the dark emptiness. “I’m goin’ back to sellin’ furniture. Y’all hear me? I’m no longer a cop.”

Other badges followed the first one. They lay twinkling on the sidewalk and the lawn.

As Hartline had said, speaking for the other side, “It’s just so fucking easy.”

When one has the wherewithal to make it stick.

In West Virginia, a lanky coal miner stood in front of a judge. Sitting beside the local DA were two young men who used to be federal police officers. Their faces were bruised; lips swollen; several teeth missing. There were four federal police officers originally. The other two were dead.

The courtroom was filled to capacity with Levied, booted, work-shirted, hard-eyed men. They sat politely and quietly. They were all armed.

“Your Honor,” the DA rose to his feet. “I protest the presence of armed men in this courtroom. I…” He caught the eye of the man standing in front of the judge. “I… think I’ll sit down.”

He sat down.

The miner looked at the judge. “Can I talk now, Your Honor?”

The judge rubbed his aching temples with his fingertips. He sighed. “Well, I suppose so, Mr. Raymond. I must say, though, in all my years on the bench, I have never seen such a sight in any courtroom. Did you and… your friends come here to fight, or to see justice served?”

“Justice has been served, Your Honor,” Mr. Raymond replied. “My friends just come along to see that it stays served.”

“Incredible,” the judge said. “By all means, Mr. Raymond, do speak.”

“Well… like I tole the sheriff yesterday, me and my friends was gettin’ damn tired of these federal cops a-struttin’ around, actin’ bigger than God; actin’ like they was better than the rest of us. But we figured we’d just look the other way when they come around—long as they left us alone.

“Now, judge, you know how it is in the hill country. You was raised up not twenty miles from where you’re sittin.’ You know there are unwritten laws as well as them you have in all them books I seen in your office. You don’t steal from a man; you don’t put hands on a man; you don’t cheat a man; you don’t insult a man; you don’t badmouth a good woman; and you damn sure don’t take a man’s guns. And there ain’t no son of a bitch takin’ my guns.

“Now there was four of them young smart-mouthed cops come to my house. My house, your honor. My house. And that there is the key words. My house. Me and that woman sittin’ right there.” He pointed. “That house belongs to us. Accordin’ to the constitution of the United States, and I reread it ‘fore I come here this morning, a person has the right to be safe and secure in his person, papers, houses, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures. Ain’t that right, judge?”

“You’re talking about the Bill of Rights, Mr. Raymond. But yes, you are correct in that.”

“Well, those federal cops come up to my house, just struttin’ like they was the Lord God Almighty. I was out back in the field, tendin’ to the garden—God knows there ain’t no work in the mines no more.

“I heard my wife screamin.’ Chilled me. I had a pistol hid in the shed out back; grabbed that on my run to the house. One of them cops had hit my wife, knocked her down on the floor, dress all hiked up past her hips. Them federal cops standin’ around, laughing at my wife’s nakedness. Then one of ‘em kicked her. I shot him in the stomach and he went down. Just then my brother Rodney—he lives right across the road—come in the house just as the other cop was pointin’ a pistol at my head. Rodney shot him and then we whipped the other two in a fair, stand-up fistfight. Did a pretty damn good job of it, too, wouldn’t you say so?”

The judge looked at the badly mauled ex-federal cops (both of them had resigned prior to this hearing). “Yes, Mr. Raymond, I would say that is the truth.”

“Well, judge, you see, ‘bout a year ago, me and about forty-fifty other boys around here joined up with the Rebels come out of Tri-States after the government stuck their goddamn nose where it don’t belong—as usual. I understand from radio broadcasts the Rebels are comin’ out of the Smokies like ants toward honey—so we figured this was as good a time as any to make our move.

“So, judge, you ain’t got no more federal police in this county. We got ‘em locked up over in the jail. The boys that was the law before the government federalized the police is back as the law. And me and mine and my friends is gonna bow out of the lawkeepin’ business and let them that knows a little something about it tend to it. But we’ll keep our guns, just in case.

“Now, your honor, I’m gonna take my wife, my kin, and my friends, and we’re gonna leave this courtroom. I don’t expect to be back ‘cause I don’t expect to break any laws. Especially the new law that we’re going to put in effect in this county. And you know what that law is, don’t you, judge?”

The judge lost his temper for the first time that morning. “Ben Raines’s law, Mr. Raymond—the law that was used in the Tri-States? The law of the jungle.”

“Well, I could stand here and argue with you, judge; but I ain’t gonna. I will say the Rebels’ law is not the law of the jungle—it’s more… a common sense law. But I don’t expect a lawyer or a judge to understand that. You people are like lice: if a dog don’t get the first one, he ain’t gonna get another.”

“I resent the hell out of that analogy!” the judge snapped at the miner.

“I don’t care,” Mr. Raymond said calmly. “It’s true. You’re not interested in really punishing the guilty; you’re not interested in what is right or wrong. Not even before we come under a police state. I’m not gonna argue about it. Your kind of law of fancy words and deals and blamin’ crime on society is over. And I think it’s time—past time.

“So, you better retire from the bench, judge. You better do that before the Rebels get here, ‘cause I understand they pretty damned tough, and they don’t take a whole lot of truck off folks. ‘Specially folks that backed the police state and the federal police and Lowry and them kind. So we’ll see you around, judge. You take care, now—you hear?”

The Joint Chiefs met in the New Pentagon in Richmond. None of them could conceal their delight at the Rebels moving out of the Smokies.

“Raines’s Rebels are kicking ass up in the Kentucky, I hear,” General Rimel said. “Hartline lost over a thousand men the first day.”

“Yes, the fool tried an assault on three bridges, a simultaneous attack. All Raines’s people did was pull back and suck the troops across the river, then they closed the flanks around them.” General Franklin shook his head in disgust at the stupidity of that move; but he could not hide his smile.

“Let me correct that, General,” General Preston said. “Hartline wasn’t there. I don’t believe he would have made such a move.”

“You’re right,” the Marine agreed. “Hartline was in Richmond, I forgot. Well, anyway, that’s a thousand mercs we won’t have to deal with.”

“Affirmative to that,” Admiral Calland said. “I’m just praying nothing happens that will pull us into this fight.”

“What the hell could happen that would do that?” General Rimel asked. “Raines has given his word that he isn’t interested in toppling the government, per se. All he wants is to return to Tri-States and be left alone. He isn’t going to attack any of our bases.”

“I just have a bad feeling about it all,” Calland replied. “You know—all of you—that I’ve felt for some time Lowry was not really behind it all. That someone is giving him orders. I can’t shake that feeling.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t think Lowry has enough sense to mastermind this. My God, you’ve all talked with the man. He’s just as big a fool as Logan was—maybe more so. All that talk about him being the brains behind Logan. I never did believe it. Somebody else is behind all this. I know it.”

“Again,” General Franklin leaned forward, “I ask who?”

“I don’t know. I got a bad feeling about it, boys. A bad feeling.”

“You dirty, low-life bastard!” Sabra hissed at Hartline. “It isn’t enough you’ve ruined my marriage. Now you have to rape my daughter. You son of a bitch!”

“Relax, Sabra-baby,” Hartline grinned at her. “I just wanted to have a little taste, that’s all. It was tight, I have to admit.”

“Goddamn you!”

When she again looked up, she was indeed looking up, the side of her face aching where Hartline had slapped her.

“Sabra-baby, how would you like me to take little Nancy down to the local barracks and give her to some of my men?”

“You wouldn’t!”

“Oh?”

“You can’t be that vile.”

“Would you like to watch her take two at once?”

Sabra put her face against the carpet and wept from fury and frustration and helplessness.

Hartline kicked her in the butt. “Get up and go take a bath. You’re meeting the vice president tonight. And when you get cleaned up, call Jane Moore, have her meet you here at seven. She’s giving Al Cody some pussy tonight.”

The woman slowly rose from the floor. She faced Hartline, no fear for herself in her. “I despise you, Hartline—you must know that.”

“I know lots of things, baby. But you just go on playing your little games. You’re not going to hurt me.” He cupped a breast and gently squeezed it. “I’ll screw little Nancy anytime I want a nice tight cunt. And there ain’t a damn thing you or anybody else can do about it. Hell, I might even let you watch the next time. Oh, and Sabra-baby? I went over to the studio this afternoon; got me a little peek at your Friday night news script—the little story on me? I made copies of it and took them over to the Bureau. It didn’t take them long to break the code. You’ve been a very naughty girl, Sabra-baby. I’m going to have to think of some way to punish you for that. I’ll give it some thought. I’m sure I’ll manage to come up with something suitable.” He pushed her toward the bathroom. “Now go wash your cunt like a good little girl.”

He was laughing as she stumbled toward the bathroom, the room blurring from the sudden tears of rage in her eyes.

“I have a plan,” the familiar voice said. “Oh, my, yes. A very good plan. I think I know a way to rid ourselves of the president and Ben Raines at the same time. And,” he held up a finger, “get the military back on our side—all at the same time. It’s so simple I’m ashamed I didn’t think of it before.”

Lowry leaned forward, interested. He glanced at the wall clock. Plenty of time before he was to meet Sabra at the retreat. “Tell me,” he said, his eyes bright.

The man leaned back in his chair. He began to speak. By the time he was finished, both he and Lowry were laughing and slapping each other on the knee.

TWO

It began raining on the afternoon of the fourth day out of the Smokies, the weather turning cool. As Ben’s column moved through Kentucky and into Virginia, the skies cleared and the stars seemed close enough to touch. The column moved through the night, meeting no resistance, for the news of their coming had preceded them, and the federal police wanted nothing to do with the Rebels, for those of their kind who had fought the Rebels had died hard and quickly… and the Rebels were taking no prisoners.

After a few hours sleep, the column again headed east, meeting their first roadblock just inside the Virginia line. The scouts radioed back and Ben drove his Jeep to within a few hundred meters of the roadblock. He picked up a portable bullhorn. His message was brief.

“We’re coming through—one way or another. I’m not going around you bastards.” His voice boomed through the early morning mist. “You men can live to tell your grandchildren about this moment, or you can die where you are and be damned with you all. It’s up to you. You’ve got one minute to make up your mind.”

To the federal police, the column seemed to stretch for miles. And then they heard the snick of ammo being snapped into chambers; the rattle of belt ammo being fed into machine guns. The federal police heard too, the rustle of leaves and vegetation on the road banks that surrounded them. They knew to fight now would be stupid. They would die. They looked at each other, nodded, and holstered their sidearms and laid aside their rifles and shotguns. One of the men waved the column through. The lead vehicle passed and then Ben’s Jeep stopped by the side of the road, by the blockade.

“You men showed good sense,” Ben told them. “Now go on home until the people tell you to go back to work.”

“Who is going to keep the peace?” Ben was asked.

“You’ve got to be kidding!” Ben said. “You men don’t really believe you were keeping the peace, do you?”

They shuffled their feet and looked everywhere except at Ben.

“That’s what I thought,” Ben told them. “We’re arming the people as we go. So my advice to you men is to go home and keep your heads down until the smoke clears. If any of you had a hand in torture or intimidation around here, my suggestion would be to hit the trail and keep your head down. And pray none of the victim’s family or friends finds you.”

Ben put the Jeep in gear and moved out, leaving a frightened group of ex-federal police standing beside the road.

An hour later a scout radioed back to Ben. “About seventy-five federal cops and the local National Guard have set up roadblocks just up the highway, General. Town of Marion. They’re getting ready for a fight of it.”

Ben rolled his column to the outskirts of town and then made his way carefully to visual distance of the roadblock. He checked positions and called for mortars.

“I’m not going to lose men fighting those silly bastards,” he told Cecil. “Have they been informed they may surrender?” he asked a scout.

“Yes, sir, several times.”

“Their reply, if any?”

“They told us to come and get them.”

Ben looked down the deserted street. “Have you checked the area for civilians?”

“Yes, sir. The local cell took care of that. It’s all clear except for the federal cops and guardsmen.”

Ben sighted through a range finder. “Call it 700 meters. We’ll use that telephone pole just to the right of them for an aiming stake. Give them ten rounds of twelve-pounders, HE. That ought to clear it out.”

The order was given and the thonk of mortars drifted to them, then the slight fluttering as the projectiles accelerated through the air. The barricade erupted into a mass of wood, burning metal, and mangled flesh. On the rooftops, civilians opened fire with weapons they had, until only a few days back, kept hidden.

In a very few moments, those survivors surrendered. “What do we do with them, General Raines?” a civilian asked.

Ben looked at the man. “Turn them loose or shoot them. I don’t give a damn.”

The wire services and the networks reported the Rebel push without asking permission from the government censors. There were no repercussions; every ham operator in the nation and anyone with a CB unit was reporting on the Rebel’s progress.

Krigel’s Rebels were raising hell in Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana. Conger’s people had pushed up into West Virginia, securing areas as they drove in. General Hazen’s people had already secured more than a third of their designated area of operation, and Hector Ramos was driving hard through North Carolina, picking up support as he went, heading toward South Carolina.

“Welcome to the state of Arkansas,” the governor greeted General Krigel from his new state capital of Pine Bluff. “Am I to understand the government’s police state is over?”

“It is in this area,” the general replied. “You may inform your police they are no longer under the auspices of the federal government.”

“You mean they are under my control?” the governor asked with a smile.

“No,” Krigel told him. “They are under the control of the people.”

“You can’t just walk into a town and take over, declaring martial law!” a police chief in Kansas loudly protested.

“We just did,” Captain Gray said, his British accent sounding strange in the Kansas flatlands.

“But… but…” the police chief sputtered. “What about the constitution?”

Both Captain Gray and Tina Raines smiled. Gray said, “Standing behind that badge, wearing that federal flash on your shoulder, and with your jails and prisons full of innocent men and women, do you really wish to discuss the constitution?”

“I guess not,” the chief replied. He sighed. “What do you want me and my boys to do?”

“Direct traffic,” Tina told him. “Maybe you can do that without fucking it up.”

The column of Rebels moved slowly through Virginia, meeting only scattered and usually light resistance from federal police and some guard units still loyal to VP Lowry. They were given a chance to surrender. If they refused, the Rebels hit them brutally, many times, taking no prisoners. Whenever they came to an armory, the Rebels took everything that wasn’t nailed down, sometimes caching it for later use, sometimes giving it to the people, sometimes taking it.

They burned all police stations to the ground, first gutting them with fire and then using explosives to destroy the buildings. They destroyed all government records of the personal lives of citizens and turned the job of peace-keeping over to the people.

They armed all adults who wanted to be armed and told them to protect themselves against arrest should the federal police or troops come in after the Rebels left. In most areas of southern Virginia, the back of the police state was broken.

At noon, Jim Slater and Paul Green landed their twin-engined craft at the small airport of Radford, Virginia. Except for a few curious stares, no one said anything about the way they were dressed, their guns, or what they were doing in Radford. Everyone knew long before they landed. They were met by a Virginia federal highway patrolman. He wore the bars of a captain. Another patrolman, the stripes of a sergeant. They walked to within a few yards of the Rebel pilots and their gunners, the gunners armed with M-60 machine guns.

“I gather it would be rather foolish of me to try and arrest you people?” the captain said.

“Considering the circumstances and all,” Jim replied, “I’d say it would be downright dumb.”

“I know you are the vanguard of a much larger force of Rebels,” the captain stood his ground. “And I know you people have destroyed any law officers who tried to stop your advance in Kentucky and Virginia. Just how much bloodshed do you anticipate in this area?”

“That is entirely up to you people,” Jim told him.

The captain looked at his sergeant. Both men shrugged. “Under this new system we keep hearing about,” the captain said, “will there even be cops?”

“Peace officers,” Jim replied. “We’re going to try to keep cops to a minimum. You men think you can handle the title of peace officer?”

“What’s the difference between a peace officer and a cop?” the sergeant asked.

“You enforce the laws the people tell you to enforce and you don’t hassle.”

“I think we can handle that,” the captain said dryly. “We were both police officers years before the federalization order came down. All right, count us in.”

“Y’all sure give up easy,” Jim’s gunner said. “What’s the catch?”

“Simple,” the captain replied. “You people are going to win the first round of this war. I have no intention of dying fighting you. You’re still going to need officers to investigate accidents, patrol the highways, take care of drunks, and pick up the bloody pieces of stupid fools who shoot themselves with all those guns you people are passing out—right?”

Jim grinned. “Maybe you two will make good peace officers after all.”

The highway cops didn’t see the humor in it. The captain made that clear. “We’ve always been good cops, Reb. So have a lot of other men. But we needed a job. I never tortured any citizen in my life, and neither did Harry here,” he nodded at the sergeant. “Lots of cops didn’t. I like to think we probably saved some people from that fate.”

“Okay,” Jim smiled. “I think you guys will be all right. I’ll take you at your word. Now then, how many troopers in your district are good cops and not bully boys with a badge and a gun?”

“Not very many,” the captain said reluctantly. “Not like it was before the bombings of ‘88. Maybe… thirty percent of the troopers are still good cops.”

“How about the sheriffs and deputies and local cops?”

The sergeant spat on the ground. “Shit!” he said. “Asshole buddy system prevails there. They got their friends who can do no wrong—everyone else gets hassled. Not a whole hell of a lot different from before the bombings, if you know what I mean.”

“I do,” Jim said. “Okay. You two have a lot of work to do if you want to prevent bloodshed. You get in touch with the men and women you think will work with us, cull the rest. Maybe we can pull this nation upright again—if we work together.”

“I wonder how Roanna is doing?” Jane asked. Sabra glanced at her. “Last word I got from her she said she was pulling out with the Rebels. Should be a hell of a story if she makes it.”

The women locked gazes. “Something, Jane?” Sabra asked.

The small woman sighed. “For all the feeling of… unclean I have after the other night, I have to say this, Sabra: Al Cody is not an evil man.”

“I know, Jane. I got the same impression. Tell me, did you get the feeling the VP is not playing with a full deck?”

“Yes,” her reply came quickly. “I certainly did. And that phone call he got. I listened on the extension; I know that voice.”

“Who was it?” Sabra asked, excitement evident on her face.

“It was muffled; I think intentionally so. I couldn’t place it, but I’ve heard it before, many times, I believe.”

“You said Lowry kept repeating, ‘Yes, sir,’ and ‘No, sir.’ Who would Lowry say that to? I know he wouldn’t say it to the president.”

“No. Certainly not.” The woman sighed. “All I can think about is the invitation for next week. I feel like a kid going to the dentist’s office.”

Sabra said nothing.

“How’s Nancy?”

“Coping. Very well, I should think. Hartline has… taken her several more times. I don’t know what to do, Jane. I’ve never felt this powerless in my life. This… helpless to deal with a situation.”

“Then we’ll just have to do what Nancy is doing,” Jane said.

Sabra looked at her.

“Cope.”

At one o’clock in the afternoon, Ben’s column of Rebels rolled into Radford. Two squads of Rebels rounded up all the police, disarmed them, and put them in jail.

“You can’t do this!” the sheriff squalled. “I’m the law around here.”

“Oh, shut up,” a Rebel told him. “Stop bellyaching. If you don’t like it in jail, just tell us, we can always take you out and shoot you.” The sheriff did not see the wink at another Rebel.

“Luther, goddamn!” the chief of police said. “Will you, for Christ’s sake, keep your big mouth shut?”

In the downtown area, many people stopped to witness the arrival of the Rebels. Many thought they were regular Army troops.

“Hey, what outfit you guys with?” a bystander called. He took a second look. He blinked. “Holy Christ!” he said. “There’s women on those trucks; and they’re armed, too.”

A crowd gathered around the lead vehicles of the convoy. A hundred or more people. They fell silent when Ben pulled up and got out, carrying his old Thompson SMG.

When it comes to firearms, the American public is conditioned to react in a measurable way. There are people who will tell you, quite honestly, that a .22-caliber bullet will not kill a person. Those people are not very bright.

An M-1 rifle will bring this reaction: “Oh, yeah. My Uncle Harry has one of those. Uses it to deer hunt.”

Many people still think of the M-16 as a toy.

A BAR is not that well known.

A 155 howitzer just sits there.

But lay the old Chicago Piano on a table, the .45-caliber Thompson submachine gun, and there is a visible sucking-in-of-the-gut reaction.

My God, boys! That thing can kill you.

“There is no need for any panic,” Ben told them. “We’re not here to harm any citizen. We’ll spend the night and be gone in the morning.”

“You people are the Rebels,” a woman said. “You must be General Raines.”

“That is correct, ma’am.”

Dawn walked up to the Jeep, drawing a number of frankly admiring glances from the men. She ignored a few hostile looks from several women. “The local cell has a town meeting set for this afternoon at five,” she said. “They want to know if that’s all right with you?”

“Let’s see what the citizens have to say.” He faced the ever-growing number of townspeople.

“How would you people like to have a town meeting this afternoon? If there is a law you don’t like—change it. It’s your town, you live here.”

“Where are the federal police?” a man called out the question.

“In jail, along with the sheriff and the chief of police.”

Another citizen shared the grins of many in the crowd. Several men and women laughed aloud. “Now, that’s a sight I’d like to see.”

“They haven’t been good lawmen?” Ben asked.

“They were appointed after the federalization order went into effect,” he was told. “Being out there in the Tri-States like you were, you probably didn’t—couldn’t—know all that was going on out here. They got awful high and mighty once they realized the ordinary citizen couldn’t touch them in any way; when the private guns were rounded up and only the cops and a few of their friends were armed. You know what I mean, General.”

“Yes, I do,” Ben said. “Well, all that is going to change—shortly.”

“We’ll see you at the school at five.”

The parking lot of the local high school was full to overflowing, the Rebels forced to park cars in the nearby streets. Inside, teenagers were placed in charge of the very young children, classrooms used as childcare rooms. The adults, those seventeen and older, were packed into the auditorium.

The sight of armed, uniformed Rebels had served a twofold purpose: piquing the curiosity of the citizens and quieting them down considerably. Still there was a low hum of quiet conversation. This was the first time the people had been allowed to meet, en masse, since the government had reformed after the bombings of 1988 and the relocation efforts of the government.

When Ben stepped onto the stage, the hum of conversation ceased.

Ben looked the crowd over and they looked back at him. He clicked the mike on and spoke. “Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention, please?”

The amplifier was set too high and the huge room was filled with electronic feedback. The amplifier was adjusted and Ben continued.

“My name is General Ben Raines. I am commander of what the press has termed The Rebels. Your police and sheriff’s department no longer exist, as such. This town, for the moment, is under martial law.”

There was a roar of conversation and Ben hastened to reassure the people.

“Let me explain, folks; I think you probably have the wrong idea.”

The people showed no sign of quieting, so Ben leaned against the podium and waited. After a moment, a man stood up and began walking down the aisle. Midway, he stopped. “I’m Ed Vickers,” he said. “Mayor of Radford. What in the hell is going on in this country? Particularly here in this town?”

“We—the Rebels—are taking control from the government,” Ben told him. “And returning it to the people, hopefully,” he added.

“Good luck,” the mayor grunted. “Where are the federal police?”

“Outside in the hall, alive and well, under guard. The only thing hurt about any of them is their dignity.”

“Too damn bad about their dignity,” a man’s voice rumbled from the depths of the crowd. “You give that blond-headed, young, smart-mouthed city cop to me and I’ll hurt more than his dignity.”

It was going just as Ben thought it would. He listened for a moment as some others began shouting out their complaints concerning the federal police and their high-handed tactics. Ben propped the butt of the old Thompson on the podium and let his features harden in the harsh lights. He looked tough, dangerous, and very competent.

The packed auditorium grew silent.

Ben laid the Thompson on a low table. “What we are going to do this evening, people, is something I have long advocated for all states of this nation.”

Roanna was carefully recording every word. She did so with a faint smile of admiration on her lips. If she came out of this alive, she felt she would win the Pulitzer for this story.

“You people are going to have a town meeting. An old-fashioned town-hall meeting. It’s your right to do that. This is your town, you live here, your tax dollars help support it—you certainly have a right to have a say in the way it’s run. Within reason, and keeping in mind that every law-abiding citizen has his or her rights, you people may govern this town the way you see fit.”

One man, seated in the rear of the auditorium, jumped to his feet. “I’m the local DA,” he said. “And I want to go on record as being opposed to everything you and your band of outlaws stand for.”

A man seated across the aisle got to his feet, stepped across the aisle, and punched the DA in the mouth, knocking him back in his seat.

“Excuse me, General,” he said, rubbing the knuckles of his right hand. “But a lot of us have wanted to do that for a long time. He’s federal, just like the cops, and he’s come down hard on a lot of us.”

“You’re both of the same size and age,” Ben said. “Hit him again if you want to.”

“I’ll sue you!” the DA shouted.

The room exploded in laughter and shouts of hooting derision.

And many of the Rebels present were suddenly flung back in time, to another day, a more peaceful time, back to the Tri-States.

THREE

The reception center at the entrance to the Tri-States was large and cool and comfortable, furnished with a variety of chairs and couches. Racks of literature about Tri-States, its people, its economy, and its laws filled half of one wall. A table with doughnuts and two coffee urns sat in the center of the room; soft-drink machines were set to the right of the table. Between two closed doors was a four-foot high desk, fifteen feet long, closed from floor to top. Behind the desk, two young women stood, one of them Tina Raines. The girls were dressed identically: jeans and light blue shirts.

“Good morning,” Tina greeted the reporters on their first excursion into the heretofore closed state of Tri-States. “Welcome to the Tri-States. My name is Tina, this is Judy. Help yourself to coffee and doughnuts—they’re free—or a soft drink.”

A reporter named Barney—known for his arrogance, his rudeness, and his obnoxiousness—leaned on the counter, his gaze on Tina’s breasts. She looked older than her seventeen years. Barney smiled at her.

“Anything else free around here?” he asked, all his famous offensiveness coming through.

The words had just left his mouth when the door to an office whipped open and a uniformed Rebel stepped out. He was short, muscular, hard-looking, and tanned. He wore a .45 automatic, holstered, on his right side.

“Tina, who said that?”

She pointed to Barney. “That one.”

“Oh, hell!” Judith Sparkman said.

“Quite,” her boss concurred.

The Rebel master-sergeant walked up to Barney, stopped a foot from him. Barney looked shaken, his color similar to old whipped cream. A minicam operator began rolling, recording the event.

“I’m Sergeant Roisseau,” the Rebel said. “It would behoove you, in the future, to keep off-color remarks to yourself. You have been warned; this is a one-mistake state, and you’ve made yours.”

“I… ah… was only making a little joke,” Barney said. “I meant nothing by it.” The blood rushed to his face, betraying the truth.

“Your face says you’re a liar,” Roisseau said calmly.

“And you’re armed!” Barney said, blinking. He was indignant; the crowd he ran with did not behave in this manner over a little joke. No matter how poor the taste.

Smiling, Roisseau unbuckled his web belt and laid his pistol on the desk. “Now, fish or cut bait,” he challenged Barney.

That shook Barney. All the bets were down and the pot was right. He shook his head. “No… I won’t fight you.”

“Not only do you have a greasy mouth,” Roisseau said. “You’re a coward to boot.”

Barney’s eyes narrowed, but he wisely kept his mouth shut.

“All right,” Roisseau said. “When you apologize to the young lady, we’ll forget it.”

“I’ll be damned!” Barney said, looking around him for help. None came forward.

“Probably,” Roisseau said. “But that is not the immediate issue.” He looked at Tina and winked, humor in his dark eyes. “So, newsman, if you’re too timid to fight me, perhaps you’d rather fight the young lady?”

“The kid?” Barney questioned, then laughed aloud. “What is this, some kind of joke?”

Judith walked to Barney’s side. She sensed there was very little humor in any of this, and if there was any humor, the joke was going to be on Barney. And it wasn’t going to be funny. “Barney, ease off. Apologize to her. You were out of line.”

“No. I was only making a joke.”

“Nobody laughed,” she reminded him. She backed away, thinking: are the people of this state humorless? Or have they just returned to the values my generation tossed aside?

Barney shook his head. “No way. You people must be crazy.”

The camera rolled, silently recording.

Roisseau smiled, then looked at Tina. “Miss Raines, the… gentleman is all yours. No killing blows, girl. Just teach him a hard lesson in manners.”

Tina put her left hand on the desk and, in one fluid motion, as graceful as a cat, vaulted the desk to land on her tennis-shoe-clad feet.

She stood quietly in front of the man who outweighed her by at least fifty pounds. She offered a slight bow. Had Barney any knowledge of the martial arts, he would have fainted, thus saving himself some bruises.

Tina held her hands in front of her, palms facing Barney, then drew her left hand back to her side, balling the fist. Her right foot was extended, unlike a boxer’s stance. Her right hand open, palm out, knife edge to Barney. Her eyes were strangely void of expression. Barney could not know she was psyching herself for combat.

Barney did notice the light ridge of calluses that ran from the tips of her fingers to the juncture of wrist. He backed away.

Almost with the speed of a striking snake, Tina kicked high with her foot, catching Barney on the side of the face. He slammed backward against a wall, then recoiled forward, stunned at the suddenness of it all. With no change in her expression, Tina lashed out with the knife edge of her hand, slamming a blow just above his kidney, then slapped him on the face with a stinging pop. Barney dropped to his knees, his back hurting, his face aching, blood dripping from a corner of his mouth. He rose slowly to his feet, his face a vicious mask of hate and rage and frustration, mingled with disbelief.

“You bitch,” he snarled. “You rotten little cunt.”

Roisseau laughed. “Now you are in trouble, hotshot.”

Barney shuffled forward, in a boxer’s stance, his chin tucked into his shoulder. He swung a wide looping fist at Tina. She smiled at his clumsiness and turned slightly, catching his right wrist. Using the forward motion of his swing against him, and her hips for leverage, she tossed the man over her side and bounced him off a wall. Quickly reaching down, her hands open, positioned on either side of his head, Tina brought them in sharply, hard, slamming the open palms over his ears at precisely the same moment. Barney screamed in pain and rolled in agony on the floor, a small dribble of blood oozing from one damaged ear.

Tina smoothed her hair. She was not even breathing hard. She looked at Roisseau. “Did I do all right, Sergeant?”

The reporters then noticed the flap of Roisseau’s holster, lying on the desk, open, the butt of the .45 exposed. And all were glad no one tried to interfere.

Then, from the floor of the reception center, came the battle cry of urbane, modern, twentieth-century man. Unable to cope with a situation, either mentally or physically, or because of laws that have been deballing the species for years, man bellowed the words:

“I’ll sue you!”

The room rocked with laughter. News commentators, reporters, camerapeople and soundpeople; people who, for years, had recorded the best and worst of humankind, all laughed at the words from their sometimes reluctant colleague.

“Sue!” the bureau chief of one network managed to gasp the word despite his laughter. “Sue? Sue a little teenage girl who just whipped your big, manly butt? Really, Barney! I’ve warned you for years your mouth would someday get you in trouble.”

Roisseau spoke to the girl behind the desk. “Judy, get on the horn and call the medics and tell them we have a hotshot with a pulled fuse.” He faced the crowd of newspeople.

“You’re all due at a press conference in two hours. Meanwhile, I’d suggest you all help yourselves to coffee and doughnuts and soft drinks and study the pamphlets we have for you.” He glanced at Barney, sitting on the floor, moaning and holding his head. “As for suing anyone, I’d forget about it. Our form of government discourages lawsuits. You’d lose anyway.”

“I’ll take this to the Supreme Court!” Barney yelled.

“Fine. Governor Raines is someday going to appoint one for us. Next twenty or thirty years. We don’t recognize yours.”

Several reporters indicated they thought that to be perfectly ridiculous.

Roisseau shrugged. “Works for us,” he said, then walked back into his office, closing the door.

The medics said Barney’s only serious injury was a deflated ego. They sat him in a chair, patted him on the head, and left, chuckling.

“Very simple society we have here,” a reporter observed. “Live and let live, all the while respecting the rights of others who do the same. Very basic.”

“And very unconstitutional,” another remarked.

“I wonder,” Judith said aloud. She would be the only one of the press corps to stay in the Tri-States, becoming a citizen. “I just wonder if it is?”

“Oh, come on, Judith,” Clayton said, shaking his head. “The entire argument is superfluous. There is no government of Tri-States. It doesn’t exist. The government of the United States doesn’t recognize it. It just doesn’t exist.”

Several Jeeps pulled into the parking area. The reporters watched a half-dozen Rebel soldiers—male and female, dressed in tiger-stripes—step out of the Jeeps. The soldiers were all armed with automatic weapons and sidearms.

“Really?” Judith smiled. She pointed to the Rebels. “Well, don’t tell me Tri-States doesn’t exist—tell them!”

Ben allowed several of the citizens to shout at one another for a time, then the majority quieted the few unruly ones down. The general mood of the crowd was good; many had had little to be happy about for years. Most had rejected the present government as soon as it took power, viewing it as a society based on fear rather than respect. They were ready for a change for the better.

But some were thinking: can we really change something we don’t like? Can we do that? After all, the government’s always told us what to do; how to drive our vehicles; how to run our lives; how to run our schools; how we may and may not treat criminals… my goodness! what are we going to do with all this freedom?

“Now, just hold on a minute,” the mayor shouted the crowd into silence. “Radford is a part of the state of Virginia and a part of America. Regardless of what we think of our present form of government—and I’ll be the first to admit it’s got a lot of bad points—we can’t just break away and form our own little society, independent of the central government. We have to…”

“Ah, hell, Ed!” a man stood up. “Shut up and sit down,” he said good-naturedly. “We know there are laws we can’t change; most of us wouldn’t want to change them. But there’s just a whole bunch of laws on the books we can change—that need to be changed. There are laws that might apply to some far-off city that just don’t apply to us. Let’s kick it around some. Won’t hurt to do that.”

There was an unquestioned roar of approval from the crowd. The crowd talked all at once for several minutes, then, as if all of one mind, they turned to face the stage.

Ben said, “I think you people are just like ninety percent of the population: you just want to live as free as possible and obey the law. You work for what you have, and work hard for it. You’d like to see as much of your tax dollar stay at home as possible; you’d like to respect your government, and not—as is now the case—live in fear of it.

“That nine people dressed in black robes, sitting on a bench in some city, have the right to tell millions what is best for them is ridiculous—and most of us know it. But until only recently, we were powerless to change it. It was bad before the bombings—borderlining on asininity; I don’t have to tell you what has happened since the world exploded; you’ve all had the misfortune to live under the rule of a madman and his police state.

“The price of real freedom never comes cheaply—it is, in fact, very high. Sometimes, in order to gain real freedom, one must break some laws—as we are doing. But I believe—and I think you all agree with me—the end will justify the means. If I didn’t believe that, I would not be asking my men and women to lay their lives on the line for you people. I would just take my personnel and head into a section of the nation and rebuild my Tri-States. But I realized that I would have to someday fight the central government. So here we are. Like marriage, for better or for worse.”

The crowd laughed for several moments at that; the men more than the women.

“Okay,” Ben held up his hand for silence. “We’ll be pulling out in the morning, then you folks can have yourselves a real town meeting, without us looking over your shoulders. But at the outset of this meeting, someone in the audience had a beef concerning your local federal police. What was it?”

A man stood up. “I’m the one. First of all, let me say that I think we in Radford are more fortunate than some other folks. We’ve been… well, untouched is not the word, but handled a bit easier than others around us. No torture that I know of—at least not the physical kind, not until the cops grabbed my daughter, that is.

“Most everyone in this room will tell you those of us in the underground—supporting you, General, I mean—kept our kids out of it completely. They had no knowledge of what was going on. We figured that was the best way to go.

“Well… my wife called me at work one afternoon and she was really upset, crying, almost hysterical. It was about our youngest daughter. Pat. I tell her I’m on my way home and I’ll call the doctor from the plant. The Doc beat me home and he was with Pat in her bedroom for a long time. When he comes out, he was angry, red-faced, and cussing.

“The police had got one of those anonymous phone calls telling them Pat and some of her friends were in the Rebel underground. General Raines, Pat is only fourteen years old and small for her age. But she’s definitely female, if you know what I mean.

“Well, the cops took the girls to the jail for questioning; didn’t call me or any of the other parents. They kept the girls down there for almost four hours, and they got pretty ugly with the kids.” He paused and shook his head, as if choosing his next words carefully.

“I guess the best way to say it is just to come right out with it. The cops stripped the girls and searched them… with their hands and fingers. This is embarrassing, General. And just think how it must have been for those kids.

“It… got really… perverted for a time. I won’t go into that. It never was rape—in the strictest sense of the word; but it was dirty, General. Real dirty.”

“Wait a minute,” Ben interrupted, turning to James Riverson standing in the wings. “Go get the cops and bring them in here. Put the young one in question on stage; right over there,” he pointed. “He has a right to hear the charges leveled against him.”

The officers were herded in and placed on both sides of the stage, the young officer in the center of the stage.

The young officer was scared, and looked it. Steve Mailer, standing in the wings on the right side of the stage pegged the young officer with one quick glance. He was the classic example of small-town federal cop; and also the classic example of small-town cop fifty years back. Maybe a high school education, but probably not. He would swagger and bluster. He would be a womanizer and would use his badge to achieve this goal. He would be a failure at almost anything other than being a small-town cop. He would be an amateur all his life. He would be a bully and a coward.

Ben pointed to the young man. “You searched several young girls, including that man’s daughter?” Ben shifted the accusing finger to the citizen standing alone in the crowd. The audience was very quiet.

“Yeah, I did,” the cop said defensively.

Ben looked at the parent. “Tell your story.”

“He searched her after he stripped her naked. It was a very… personal search, and he—all the cops—said things… made suggestions and proposals to the girls. He made Pat bend over, naked, and grab her ankles. Then he used his fingers… on her. Well… when I finally got the whole story, I went looking for that son of a bitch,” he pointed to the federal officer. “I found him outside the police station.”

“Were you armed?” Ben asked the man.

“No, sir. All I had was my fists. I told that punk if what my daughter said was true—just one little part of it—I was going to kick his brains out. I’ve never held much with the way lawyers do things. I feel—maybe wrongly—that when someone does a hurt to me or my family, I have a right to handle it. And I’ll meet the problem head-on, not backing away from it.”

“Is what this man says true?” Ben looked at the cop. “And bear in mind, sonny, I’ll have a team of doctors pop you with truth serum faster than you can blink if you start stuttering.”

“Yeah,” the young man said after only a second’s pause. “That’s right. I’m a cop trying to uphold federal law; just trying to protect the citizens.”

The huge room erupted with laughter and hoots and catcalls at this. Some of the remarks verbally thrown at the young cop suggested a lynch mob could easily be formed from both the male and female members of the crowd. One woman even had a rope.

Ben quieted the crowd and looked at the young cop. “You didn’t feel it wrong for a man to search a young girl… in the manner described?”

“Hell, no! Not when the girl is as mouthy as that one was.”

“What happened when the girl’s father confronted you at the police station about his daughter?”

“He got lippy and I drew my pistol. I’m a police officer and I have the right to protect myself.”

“Against an unarmed man?”

“That don’t make no difference to me. You can’t threaten a police officer and get away with it—nobody can.”

Ben turned back to the parent. “Is that all that happened?”

“No, it isn’t. When I told this punk I was going to stomp him, he laughed and waved his gun around. There was a pretty fair-sized crowd gathering by then, and the chief of police came out and broke it up. Then they arrested me.”

“For what?”

“Threatening a police officer. They took me inside and shoved me around some—nothing serious. Then they fined me fifty dollars and pushed me out the door. The next day was when they started following my wife around, hassling her. Then I started getting tickets; my kids were picked up several times, questioned. If you hadn’t showed up, General, I was going to kill that son of a bitch.” He was looking straight at the young officer.

Ben looked at the chief of police. “You were aware of all this?”

“Yes,” the man replied.

“And you did nothing to stop it?”

“People have to have respect for the law.”

That brought a huge roar of laughter from the crowd, the sound of it rippling around the chief. His face reddened and he became uncomfortable in his chair.

“Seems like the people in this town don’t think much of your concept of law and order, Chief.”

“You’re an anarchist!” the chief hissed. “You want to destroy all forms of law and order.”

“No, Chief,” Ben said, speaking so his voice carried over the PA system. “You’re wrong. I’m going to put the law back into the hands of the people, then they can decide what they want to do with it.”

Applause greeted those words.

Ben looked at the chief. “Tell me, Chief—if that had been your daughter, what would you have done?”

“I would have obeyed the law.”

“You’re a liar and I’ll prove it,” Ben challenged the man. “No cop is going to grab the daughter of a chief of police or a sheriff and subject her to what these local girls went through—and you know it. You would have been notified and the girl would have been handled with kid gloves. And that’s a fact you or no other cop will deny. That’s the double standard that’s been in operation for years. How old is your daughter, Chief? Where is she?”

“She’s sixteen years old,” the man spoke darkly. “And she’s in this back classroom.” He pointed behind him.

“Go get her, Bobby,” Ben ordered. “Strip her and search her.”

The parent leaped to his feet, knocking the chair spinning. Two Rebels kept him from reaching Ben. Ben stood calmly by the podium, a half-smile on his face. “I’ll kill you!” the chief screamed, his face white, ugly with rage and hate. “You put your goddamn hands on my daughter and I’ll kill you! All of you! Can’t subject a young girl to that kind of treatment… that’s my daughter… she’s only…”

He stopped his screaming tirade and stood silent, trembling with rage. It was very quiet in the auditorium. The chief of police looked hard into the eyes of Ben. He knew he’d been sandbagged. All his words about law and order were a lie. He would have behaved just like any other parent and the law be damned.

Ben faced the crowd. “None of you have to be afraid of the law anymore. Put the people you want behind the badges, put the laws you want to be enforced on the books. That’s the democratic way to do it. The law is to be respected, not feared. One way or the other, the hassle is over.”

He looked at James Riverson. “James, take this young cop to the locker room.” He found the parent in the crowd. “Mister, you want your lick at him, man to man?”

The angry parent’s smile was grim. “You better believe it, General.”

Ben jerked his thumb in the direction of the locker room. “Have a good time.”

FOUR

Ben watched as James came out into the hallway by the stage. The big ex-truck driver grinned and gave a thumbs-up sign for victory. Before he reached the stage, there was a terrific crashing sound from the locker room. A man’s body smashing into a metal locker might make a similar sound. All listened for half a minute to the sounds of fistfighting. “Somebody is gettin’ the shit beat out of them,” a citizen spoke.

“You won’t get away with this!” the sheriff yelled from the stage. Ben turned to face the man, but the sheriff wasn’t speaking to him. He was addressing the townspeople.

“Have your fun,” the sheriff shouted. “But these… hoodlums will be leaving town shortly, then by God we’ll see who runs this country—this town. Goddamn you, law and order will prevail—I’ll see to it.”

Ed Vickers jumped to his feet and ran down the center aisle. He moved well for a fat man. “I don’t like your attitude, Sheriff.”

Crashing noises from the locker room.

Ed shook his finger at the sheriff. “By God, the people didn’t put you in office, Jennings; but the people will damn sure remove you. And as to who runs this country—this town, the people run it, you son of a bitch! That’s who runs it.”

Crash. A yell of pain. A curse. Another crash.

“Are you condoning that type of justice?” the sheriff asked. “That’s nothing but vigilante justice.”

“No, it isn’t,” the mayor disagreed. “That’s just two healthy adult men fistfighting. And that’s been going on for five thousand years before Christ. But, as far as vigilante action goes, maybe it takes something like that to get a town back to dead center again.”

Crash.

Ed looked at Ben. “I don’t agree with everything this man advocates; I didn’t agree wholly with his Tri-States. But most of what he says makes sense to me. This is our town, our community, and the people make the laws. The police enforce what the people tell them to, not the other way around.”

The fistfighting parent walked back into the auditorium. His shirt was half ripped off and there was a thin trickle of blood from his mouth. But he was smiling.

“Somebody better get a doctor for that punk,” he said. “I know I busted some of his ribs and I know I kicked out some of his teeth. Other than that, he’ll live.”

“Is the debt paid?” Ben asked.

“As far as I’m concerned, it is.” The man used a piece of his shirt to wipe blood from his chin. He looked hard at the sheriff and the chief. “It’s over, boys. I’ll be carrying a pistol with me from now on, just in case any of you want to try anything. If you do I’ll kill you both.”

He walked back to his place and took his seat beside his wife.

Ben spoke into the mike. “We’ll bivouac around your town tonight. Tomorrow we’ll be gone. Radford now belongs to the people. What you make of it is entirely up to you. Good night.”

VP Lowry sat with his back to the roomful of men and women. He sat staring out the window, in reality, looking at and seeing nothing. He had been badly shaken by the events of the past few days. Portions of nine states were now under solid Rebel control… more threatened. The people were in revolt. Sons-of-bitches hadn’t turned over their firearms after all. They had buried them! Now, in addition to their arms, Raines was arming the citizens wherever he went, with weapons taken from guard and reserve units and disarmed federal police.

The Army, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Navy still would do nothing to stop the Rebels. They would only assure Lowry they would act if Richmond was threatened. Act how? was the thing that bothered Lowry.

And President Addison just behaved as if nothing had happened.

Maybe, Lowry thought, the old man’s plan was the way to go. Since they had discussed it, Lowry had become unsure. But now…

And Lowry was becoming more and more unsure of Al Cody. Something was wrong with the man.

Lowry swiveled in his chair and faced the group around him. “Well, ladies, gentlemen, ideas, anyway?”

“Not unless we can include the military,” Senator Slate said.

“We can’t,” the VP replied. Lowry noticed Sam Hartline smiling. “What in the hell do you find so amusing at a time like this?”

“I have an idea how we can get rid of Ben Raines and perhaps the entire Rebel movement,” the mercenary said.

The VP leaned forward. “How?”

Just as Krigel and Hazen and Conger and Ramos were doing in their sectors, Ben’s Rebels rolled through the Virginia countryside. They were now only a few miles south of Roanoke. Their plans were to drive on to Charlottesville, then turn east to Fredericksburg. There, they would wait for Hector’s people to punch up from North Carolina, halting at Petersburg. By that time, Ben felt, Lowry would be ready for a sit-down and talk.

There had been hard resistance from federal agents and federal police and a few guard and reserve units. The Rebels had crushed it, brutally. They had taken casualties: twenty-nine dead, seventy wounded. But the toll on the federal people, including Hartline’s men, was staggering by comparison. Fresh graves marked the battle sites all along the Rebel route.

Now, the Rebels were adamant in their refusal to take prisoners; they had no place to keep them, did not have the time for political indoctrination. If you fought the Rebels, you were dead. The enemy knew better than to attempt any surrender.

Recruits were joining the Rebels at the rate of more than twenty per day, usually men and women between the ages of eighteen and thirty. Ben incorporated the best of them into his regular ranks, using the rest as drivers, cook’s helpers, runners, and any small jobs that would free his experienced men and women for combat.

Ben sent a company into the middle of Virginia to a national guard camp. They returned with sixty trucks loaded with arms, ammo, clothing, and food.

Other Rebel units had fared just as well in personnel, equipment, and supplies. All units had—at Ben’s orders—bypassed the cities, focusing their attention on the small towns and communities. The larger towns remained cordoned off and under martial law from the federal police. Ben’s Rebels ignored them.

The evening meal over, Ben and Dawn were relaxing. His command post, for that night, was the home of a man so overjoyed to see the Rebels and be free of federal police, he insisted Ben use his home for as long as the Rebels remained in the area. Ben had gladly accepted; it had been a long time since any of them had enjoyed the comforts of a lived-in home. He was enjoying the glass of brandy and reading about himself in the Richmond Post when Cecil knocked on the door.

“Hey, Cec,” Ben called, as his friend appeared in the foyer. “Don’t be so formal. Come on in and have a glass of brandy with us. I…” He cut his sentence when he noticed the young man with Cecil. “Anybody I should know?” Ben grinned.

“Ben,” Cecil said, a look of deep concern on his face. “…this is Jerry James, he’s a DJ at a radio station in Roanoke. They’re on an AP wire. He… got an urgent release in just about an hour ago. He came straight to us with it. You’d… better fix another drink and sit back down, Ben.”

Ben shifted his gaze from Cecil to Jerry to Dawn. He sat down on an ottoman. “Give it to me, Cecil.”

Cecil nodded gravely. “Some of Hartline’s men made a commando raid in northern California early this morning. They parachuted in. Others came in from the sea. An Air National Guard unit loyal to Lowry backed them up. It was swift and professional, Ben. We lost a lot of people. Crescent City and the surrounding area were destroyed—they used napalm. The report says nothing was left and the federal men took only one prisoner…”

“Jerre,” Ben finished it for him. “I know she had twins a little over two months ago. Any word on them?”

Cecil shook his head. “I’ve got people moving into that area as fast as they can get there, Ben. All we can do is hope.”

Ben sat motionless for several long heartbeats. Then he stood up quickly and faced his friend. His eyes were hard with a diamond-like quality. They glittered like a snake’s eyes. “You know, of course, why it was done?”

“Surely. To try to suck you into some kind of rash action.”

“Where is Ike?”

“He left this morning. Took a team and went up to Camp A P Hill. Said he knew where a lot of goodies were stashed up here.”

“Well, a personal vendetta won’t help Jerre; we don’t even know where the hell Hartline has her.”

“I can radio Ike. He’ll personally handpick a team and…”

“No! No good, Cec. I don’t think he’ll kill her. She would be no good to him dead. It’s going to be rough for her, but until we find out where she is, there is little we can do. Get hold of General Preston in Richmond; ask him if his people will help us on this—quietly. Once we locate her, then we’ll move.”

“Right away, Ben.”

“Thank you, Jerry,” Ben said to the young man.

“Yes, sir.” He left with Cecil.

Dawn came to his side, putting her hand on his arm. “Is there anything I can do, Ben?”

“I think the only thing that would help Jerre now is not of this earth.”

“I… don’t understand, Ben.”

“God,” he said.

“Hello, baby,” Hartline smiled at Jerre. “My, you are a fine-looking cunt.”

Jerre looked up at him. “Where am I?”

Hartline laughed. “’Bout a hundred miles from Ben Raines. You’re in Virginia, baby. Didn’t you have a nice flight out here?”

“Not particularly. Some of your men kept feeling me up. Where are my children?”

“They got away, so I’m told.”

“Matt.”

“I don’t know his name. Big blond fellow.”

“Matt,” she repeated with a smile. “I know that my children are safe.”

She seemed satisfied with that.

Hartline sat in a chair opposite her, a puzzled look on his handsome face. He didn’t understand these people, these followers of Ben Raines. Even though he had broken half a hundred of them, physically, and tortured another half a hundred, including rape and sodomy, they always seemed to look at him as if he were the loser.

Her smug expression infuriated the mercenary. He slapped her hard across the face, leaving a momentary imprint of his fingers on her flesh. She slowly brushed back her blond hair and continued staring at him.

“What’s with you people, anyway?” he demanded, his voice harsh. “You sluts and losers seem to think Raines is some sort of god. What kind of fucking special goddamned society did you people have, anyway, make you think you’re so fucking much better than the rest of us? Answer me!” he shouted at her.

Jerre realized at that moment she was dealing with a psychopath—at least that. And she had best walk softly in his presence.

“We don’t think we’re better than anyone,” Jerre told him. “But we do believe we had a good society.”

“Perfect one?”

“No. I don’t think that’s possible with humans being the carpenters of that society.”

“Ain’t that pretty?” Hartline said, his voice leaking ugly sarcasm. “Did you make that up in your pretty little head, baby?”

“No. Ben Raines did.”

“I’m tired of hearing about that motherfucker!” Hartline roared at her. “Sick of his name, you hear me? I don’t want you to say it in my presence unless I ask you to. You understand that?”

“Yes.”

He changed as quickly as the flit of a fly. He was now calm, smiling at her. “I think we’ll get along just swell, Jerre-baby.” He reached out and cupped a breast. “That’s nice, baby. I bet you could give a guy a ride, couldn’t you?”

“I… don’t know how you want me to answer that.”

“You like to fuck?”

“I enjoy making love.”

Hartline leaned back in his chair. His eyes were once more clouded. “Tell me about love, baby.”

“Are you serious?” she blurted.

She realized that was a mistake.

He slapped her.

Through her tear-blurred eyes she watched the mercenary unzip his pants and take out his penis. She felt hard hands on her shoulders and allowed herself to be forced to her knees, between his legs.

“I miss it, baby,” Hartline ordered. “Just pretend it’s a pork chop and lick on it. Unless, of course, you’re a Jew. Then you can pretend it’s a bagel.”

He thought that hysterically funny.

Jerre bent her head.

Tommy Levant wondered if he’d been found out. He thought all sorts of things as he walked to Director Cody’s office in the new Hoover Building in Richmond. He was told to go right in.

Cody pointed to a chair and Tommy sat, becoming more apprehensive with each tick of the wall clock. Al Cody turned and looked at the senior agent.

“I want you to know I had nothing to do with that raid out in northern California, Tommy.”

“I… didn’t think you did, sir.”

“Tommy, I feel dirty. I feel like I’ve… I don’t know how to describe it. You know, of course, about VP Lowry’s… ah… activities with Sabra Olivier. Tell me the truth, now, Tommy.”

“Yes, sir. The talk is out about it.”

“He’s a sick man, Tommy. He’s… something must be done. And I don’t know where to start.”

“I know how you feel about Ben Raines, sir.”

Cody shook his head. “Did feel, Tommy. I’ve had a lot of time to think about my feelings. I still don’t like Ben Raines—but in retrospect, he perhaps had the right idea, after all. And he never harmed one innocent person; not to my knowledge.”

There was a desperation in Cody’s eyes that Levant had never seen there before this. And more: the man seemed to be haunted by—Tommy didn’t know what.

“All those people killed out there in California,” Al said, as much to himself as to Levant. “Just to get one woman, to try to pull Raines out in the open, to do something rash. It won’t work. And God only knows what Hartline is doing to that poor woman.”

He startled Tommy by suddenly grabbing the man’s hands in his own. “Tommy,” he said, a wild look in his eyes. “I think we’d better pray.”

“What do you want?” the president asked Lowry.

“Peace.”

“With whom?” Aston was immediately suspicious.

“Both you and Ben Raines?”

“You’re not serious?”

“Very much so, Aston. I’ve been doing some hard thinking lately. Thinking about… myself and this nation. I don’t want to see it torn apart any further. I think you should meet with Raines and sign a peace treaty. Let him rebuild his Tri-States. Let’s put an end to this war. And I’ll step down as vice president.”

“You’d make a public statement to that effect?”

“Just as soon as you meet with Raines and get it all on paper. I give you my word. I’ll even put it in writing and sign it and date it; you can keep it.”

Aston thought about that. He didn’t trust Lowry, but a signed document… “Why, Lowry? Why now? Why the sudden change of heart?”

“I’m trying to make peace with myself, Aston. I… haven’t liked what I’ve become. Believe that or not.”

I don’t, Aston thought. But he nodded his head. “Draw up your paper, date it, sign it, have it on my desk first thing in the morning. As soon as that is done, I’ll send out feelers to Raines for a meeting.”

Lowry smiled, rose from his chair, and extended his hand to the president. “You won’t regret it, Aston. My God, I feel better already.”

Aston sat at his desk for a long time after the VP had gone. He wondered if Lowry was sincere. Wondered if the man would really draw up and sign that paper. If he would, well, this nation might have a chance of making it.

The president wondered about a lot of things.

“It’s all set,” Lowry told the old man. “Aston bought it. Do you have an agent you can trust in the Secret Service?”

“Oh, yes,” the voice said. “I’ll take care of all that.”

“Why wasn’t I notified of Hartline’s move in northern California?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t know about it myself until I read it in the papers.

“No matter. I knew Hartline was going to do it, but I didn’t know when. Well, it’s done.”

He broke the connection.

The old man placed the receiver back in the cradle. He sat for a time, smiling. If it all worked out, not only would he get rid of Addison, but he’d get rid of Lowry, too.

And then what he had longed for and sought for years would be his. After all those years of kowtowing to niggers and spies and Jews, pretending to be the poor man’s friend; the great liberal.

With Addison and Lowry dead, the logical choice for the presidency would be one man.

The old man laughed aloud.

FIVE

Sabra lay in her bed and listened to Hartline pleasure himself with her daughter. Nancy no longer cried out and fought the mercenary, just accepted her fate with a stoicism that was frightening in its repression.

“Come on, baby,” Hartline’s voice drifted to the mother. “Move your ass. I might as well be fuckin’ a log.”

Sabra slipped from her bed at an alien sound from the living room. She thought she heard a key being turned in the lock. Stubbing her toe on the dresser cost her several seconds of sitting on the bed and uttering quiet curses. A shout brought her to her feet, the pain in her big toe forgotten. Gunfire blasted and ripped the night, sparking in the dark house. There was a short bubbly scream, and the sounds of someone falling to the floor.

Sabra literally stumbled over the body of her husband, sprawled in a pool of blood on the den floor. She stood for a moment, the scream building in her, not quite ready to push out of her throat.

Hartline stood in the archway that separated hall from den, a gun in his hand. The mercenary was naked, and his phallus was slick from her daughter’s juices. The violence seemed to have enlarged him further, as if the act of killing was an aphrodisiac.

“I thought I heard someone prowling around,” Hartline said calmly. “Well, baby, you don’t have to worry about a divorce now.” He grinned at her.

Sabra began screaming.

Nancy dipped up behind Hartline, a wild look in her young eyes. She carried a softball bat in her hands. She was naked.

Some primal sense of warning dropped the mercenary to the carpet, in a crouch, just as the girl swung the bat. The bat hit the side of the archway, knocking plaster and wood into the air. She raised the bat high over her head, animal sounds coming from her throat. Hartline leveled the automatic and shot the girl in the stomach, pulling the trigger three times. A row of crimson dots appeared on the girl’s belly. She was flung backward against the wall and slowly sank to the floor. She began screaming.

Sabra joined in the screaming of her daughter. She ran toward the fallen child. Hartline slapped her, backhanding the woman, knocking her to the floor.

Sabra thought of the butcher knife she had secreted between her mattress and box springs; the knife she had not been able to use on the mercenary.

Through her screaming and the screaming of her daughter, Sabra heard the mercenary’s words ringing in her head. “I found the butcher knife, Sabra-baby. Sorry ‘bout that.”

Then, as her daughter died before her eyes, the woman felt her robe being ripped from her and a sharp pain digging into her anus.

Hartline was taking her like a dog.

As the stink of blood and urine from relaxed bladders filled her head, the woman’s frayed nerves finally popped. Her own screaming would be the last thing she would remember for a long, long time.

“I wish you hadn’t done that,” Lowry pouted, his lips pursed like a spoiled child. “I think she was beginning to really like me.”

Asshole, Hartline thought. With your vienna sausage-sized cock. You’d have to stick it up her ass before she’d know you had it in her. “It couldn’t be helped,” the mercenary said, brushing off the deaths and mental collapse. “Anyway, what difference does it make now? You want some strange pussy, let me know; just point her out and I’ll get her for you. How about some real young stuff?”

Lowry licked his lips, his mental deterioration becoming more evident. “How young?”

Hartline shrugged. “Name it.”

“You promise no one will know?”

Hartline laughed. “Yes, Mr. Vice President, I’ll promise.”

“General Preston’s people say Jerre is somewhere in Virginia, Ben,” Ike told him. “But they can’t get a fix as to exactly where he’s got her.”

Ben sighed heavily, his rage and frustration just scarcely concealed, lying fermenting just under the surface of the man. Ben had advanced his column of Rebels to within twenty miles of Waynesboro and had halted them while his other commanders geared up for the big push north. He had heard rumors about some proposed meeting between the president and himself, but so far nothing had come of that.

Cecil walked up to the men, a broad grin on his face. “Ben, communications just handed me this. It’s from the president. If you’ll hold your troops in their present positions, he’ll meet with you next Monday to sign a peace agreement.”

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.

Something elusive kept flashing through her brain: scenes of bloody bodies and nakedness and ugliness and perversion.

She screamed. No reason for her screaming; she just felt like screaming.

“I wish Nixon were still president,” the head of network news spoke wistfully. “Or somebody like him. Then we could do like they did back in the ‘70s. We’d jump on him and stay on him until we rode him down.”

“Yeah, that’s really what a news department is all about, isn’t it,” the spokesman for CBS said, his voice thick with sarcasm.

CNN looked at ABC. “I am so glad we were not a part of that disgraceful happening.”

“Nixon or the news reporting during that time?” NBC asked.

“Guess,” CNN spoke with as much sarcasm as CBS.

“What are you, a Republican?” AP asked.

“Maybe she is just putting into words what we all secretly feel,” UPI injected. “That our dead colleagues just might have been something less than objective. But that is all water over the dam. Let’s talk about what is confronting us at the moment.”

“We have no proof the military is setting anyone up,” NBC said.

And that brought huge laughter.

When the laughter had faded into memory, ABC said, “That isn’t the issue. The issue is are we getting tit for tat, or is it a better trade-off.”

“Anything would be better than Lowry and Cody and Hartline. You all have heard, by now, about Sabra and her family?”

“Rumors of gunshots in the night. The apartment is sealed off. No one has seen any of them.”

“At least Hartline can’t use the tape,” NBC said. “We found it and destroyed it. It was disgusting.”

“We’re all still dancing around the point for this meeting,” CNN said. “Let’s stop playing patty-cake and get down to it.”

“I never heard of any proposed setup,” NBC said, standing up, slipping into his topcoat.

“I’m with that,” CNN said, rising to her feet.

In a moment, all were in agreement: they would not report on speculation, on news that had not occurred.

But no one really said what was on their mind, what lay like a dark hairy creature in the far corners of the brain: The end will justify the means.

They had to believe it.

After all, it was for the good of the country.

President Addison grew more apprehensive the closer he got to Charlottesville. One of his agents had told him he feared a setup. Aston had gone to Tommy Levant of the Bureau and asked him.

The senior agent had denied any knowledge of any setup.

That should have reassured the president.

But it didn’t.

At the motel, it distressed the president to see the Rebels so military in appearance. They looked like a crack unit. He had wished—secretly—they would all look rag-tag, with beards and beads and unwashed bodies and blue jeans. Anything but this. But, he reminded himself, he should have known Raines would have a crack outfit.

The motorcade rolled up to a motel and stopped.

“Here it is, sir,” a Secret Service man said.

“It isn’t even a nationally known chain,” Addison muttered. “Figures.”

“Sir?” the Secret Service man looked at him.

“Nothing,” Addison said. He stepped out of the limousine into the cold air of late fall. No honor guard to greet him; no band playing “Hail to the Chief.”

There was a squad of Marines present. But what Aston did not know was these Marines were actually part of Hartline’s mercenaries.

Three Rebels, two women and a man, lounged under the awning over the front of the motel office. They looked at the president of the United States with about the same interest an aardvark would give two cockatoos copulating.

One of the women jerked a thumb at a closed door. “In there,” she said.

“You’re addressing the president of the United States,” an aide said irritably.

“Excuse the hell outta me,” the woman replied.

“Let’s do it, Benny,” Addison said. He pushed ahead of his man and opened the motel room door.

The beds and dresser had been removed, a large table taking that space. Four men in field clothes sat at the table. A tape recorder sat in the center of the table. A rather pretty young lady sat off to one side, a stenographer’s pad in her hand.

Aston recognized Raines, Krigel, and Hazen. The fourth man was introduced as Major Conger.

No one on either side seemed terribly impressed with the other.

The president, his Secret Service men, a few of his aides crowded into the room. Aston shot a thought across the table to Ben: I had nothing to do with the kidnapping of Jerre Hunter, he feverishly projected the thought.

If Ben received the mental projection, his expression did not note it. He continued to stare at Aston Addison. Fourteen people in the room had less than one minute to live.

The man is scared to death, Ben thought. He is actually trembling.

Ben’s pistol-filled holster was chafing his leg painfully, rubbing a raw spot. He moved his hand downward to ease the pressure.

Maybe that will stop it, he thought.

President Addison watched the man’s hand slip toward the pistol butt. He, along with several of the Secret Service men, had noticed the grimace pass across Ben’s face. They had all misinterpreted the movement.

He’s going to kill me! Aston panicked.

It’s a setup! a Secret Service man thought.

“Stop him!” Aston shouted, pointing to Ben. “He’s going to kill me.”

The frightening suddenness of the president’s screaming jarred everyone in the room; except for the one Secret Service man who was supposed to initiate the killing. It scared the hell out of him.

The government agents grabbed for their guns; the Rebels grabbed for their weapons. The stenographer, a combat-trained Rebel, dropped to the floor and grabbed an M-16.

The room exploded in gunfire.

President Aston Addison, who never really wanted the presidency in the first place, watched in a second’s horror as one of his own agents leveled a .357 magnum at him and pulled the trigger. Aston’s head erupted in a mass of gray matter, blood, and fluid. The president of the United States was dead before he hit the carpet.

General Krigel fired twice, one of his slugs hitting a Secret Service man in the chest, rupturing the heart. The other slug hit an aide in the side of the head, entering the man’s right ear. His head swelled as blood gushed out of his nose and eyes. An agent emptied his .357 into Krigel before Ben shot him in the face.

Major Conger fired his .45 into the knot of government men. He was still pulling the trigger when a half dozen slugs hit him, slamming him to the floor, dead.

General Hazen was struck by a dozen slugs, but still managed to kill the turncoat service agent before he died.

The stenographer burned a full clip into the knot of government men before a slug hit her in the eye, passed through her brain, and blew out the back of her head.

Ben dropped one agent with a gut shot and was flung to the carpet as a bullet hit him in the side. He killed the last remaining government man as he was going down.

General Ben Raines slumped against a wall, the only person left alive in the motel room.

The room was thick with gunsmoke and the stink of urine, sweat, and blood. Thirteen men and one woman had died in less than one minute. Outside, the battle took a little longer, but not much.

Several of the president’s aides died instantly, caught in a hideous crossfire between Hartline’s phony Marines, the Rebels, the government agents. Several Rebels, not knowing what had happened, ran around the corner of the motel, heading for the sounds of battle. They ran point-blank into eternity. Long after the battle was over, bits and bloody pieces of them could be found embedded in the brick of the motel wall.

A Rebel officer leaped into the back of a Jeep, spun the mounted .50-caliber machine gun in the direction of the phony leathernecks and cut them to ribbons. A Secret Service agent shot the Rebel in the chest. The agent was bayoneted through the neck a heartbeat later.

A Rebel sergeant, wounded, crawled up to a dead “Marine” and grabbed for his M-16. He noticed the dog tags around the neck seemed strange. He looked up just in time to see a Secret Service man pointing a pistol at him.

“Wait a minute, man!” the Rebel yelled. “I think we’re on the same side.”

“What!” the agent screamed.

“Look!” the Rebel jerked the dog tags off the dead man, holding them out to the agent. “These guys aren’t Marines. They’re Hartline’s mercenaries. We’ve been set up—all of us.”

“Cease fire!” the Secret Service man yelled.

“Kill ‘em all!” a merc yelled his reply. “They’ve all got to die to make it look good.”

“To make what look good?” the wounded Rebel asked.

“The setup,” the agent snarled. “We’ve all been had.” He looked down at the Rebel. “Grab that M-16 and give me some covering fire.”

“Will do.”

Hartline had not counted on so many Rebels being in the area. With all sides no longer in contradictory fire, the fight was over in two minutes.

Ike, Dawn, and Cecil were the first to reach the bloodied motel room. Ben opened the door to face them. Blood squished under his boots. The carpet was soaked with it. A small river of thick crimson ran past the open door into the sidewalk.

“Ben!” Dawn cried.

“I’ve been hit worse,” he told her. He looked around for a Secret Service agent. Found one. “One of your people killed Addison. Shot him in the head.” He pointed to the body sprawled on the floor. “That one. He opened the dance.”

“Baldwin,” the agent said. “But… why?”

“I don’t know,” Ben said, stepping out of the stinking slaughterhouse. “It’s a double cross of some kind, though, I can tell you that. How many of your people bought it?”

“Too goddamn many,” the agent replied. “Somebody is damn well going to pay with their ass for this.”

“Ben,” Ike said. “Let’s get you to the hospital.”

In the distance, the sounds of sirens wailed mournfully, cutting a path through the traffic.

“The ambulances will be here in a minute,” Ben told him, his face gray with pain and shock.

“We got a problem,” a Secret Service man said, walking up to the senior agent.

“No shit!” the senior agent looked at him, exasperation in the glance. The sounds of airplanes filled his head.

“Yeah,” the man said, ignoring the sarcasm. He pointed up to the sky. “Look.”

The sky was filled with blossoming parachutes.

“Has to be the 82nd,” Ike said.

“But why?” the senior agent said.

“This fellow looks like he might know the answer,” Ben said, nodding toward a bird colonel running with his M-16 at port arms.

“You people hold your fire but stand at the ready!” Ben yelled at his troops.

“No need for that, General,” the colonel panted the words. “We’ve been standing by just a few miles out, circling until we got the word.”

“What word?” Ben said. The pain in his side was momentarily forgotten as a strange feeling slipped into his head. It was a heady feeling of déjà vu; but yet more than that. Somehow Ben knew all that had taken place was more than a double cross—it was more like a triple cross; or a double double cross.

“The word that things had gone our way,” the colonel said.

“I don’t understand,” the senior Secret Service agent said.

“Or that we had to come in and clean up the mess,” the colonel added.

“I’m with him,” Ben said, looking at the agent. “What in the hell is going on?”

“We’ve taken over the government,” the colonel said calmly.

“Oh, shit!” Cecil blurted.

“But only for a few days,” the colonel added, as more of his men crowded the parking lot. The medics among them were tending to the wounded.

Ben felt lightheaded. He put out his hand and Dawn slipped under his arm, taking part of his weight.

“We’ve got to get you to a hospital, General Raines,” the colonel said. “If you can hang on, we’ve got a dust-off coming in smartly, sir.”

“Are you British?” Ben asked.

“Yes, sir. British Royal Marines until the bombings.”

“Goddamnit, Ben!” Dawn’s temper got the best of her. “Can we discuss nationalities at some later date? You’re bleeding on me.”

“Over here, lad!” the colonel shouted at a medic. “See to the general. Step lively now.”

“You said ‘but only for a few days,’” Ike looked at the colonel. “What happens then?”

“Well, by that time, General Raines will be up and about. Not a hundred percent, but well enough.”

“Well enough to do what?” Ben asked.

The colonel lit his pipe. “Why, to be sworn in as president of the United States.”

Ben passed out.