Fire in the Ashes

ONE

“Let’s go, partner,” Hartline smiled at Lowry. “We lost the ball game and the park is on fire.”

“What!” the VP shouted. “But that’s impossible.”

In as few words as possible, the mercenary told him what had happened. Then, smiling, he unfolded a copy of Lowry’s written promise to him; that damning document backing up Hartline in anything he wanted to do.

Lowry felt his carefully structured and manufactured world falling around him like a house of cards in a strong wind. He felt lightheaded and sick at his stomach. His legs trembled.

“Get yourself together,” Hartline told him. “We don’t have much time.”

“Neither of you are going anywhere,” Al Cody spoke from the office door.

Hartline looked at the Bureau director. Cody held a pistol in his hand. “Don’t be a fool, man,” Hartline told him. “You’re in this up your sanctimonious ass.”

“I’ll take my chances. I feel better than I have in months just knowing I can tell all and purge my soul. Why, I can…”

“Fuck you!” VP Lowry screamed, startling them all. He jerked a pistol out of a side drawer of his desk and began firing at Cody.

Cody returned the fire as dots of crimson began appearing on his white shirt.

Hartline fell to the carpet and crawled behind a sofa as the lead flew in all directions. When the firing stopped, both Cody and the VP were dead.

“Well, now,” Hartline said with a smile. “Isn’t this something?”

“Sure is,” Tommy Levant said.

Hartline spun and shot the agent in the chest with a .22 magnum derringer he carried behind his belt buckle. He put the second round in Levant’s head, made sure the man was dead, then walked out of the presidential retreat, using the back door. He smiled at the sight of Secret Service agents standing with their hands over their heads held at bay by his own men.

“You get the cunt from the barracks?” he asked.

“The blond one. Left the crazy one.”

“Shoot them,” he told his men.

Five seconds later the Secret Service men were dead or dying in bloody piles on the cool ground.

“Let’s get out of here,” Hartline ordered. “You get hold of Jake Devine up in Illinois?”

“Yes, sir. Told him we were on our way.”

“Let’s go.”

“What a terrible tragedy,” Senator Carson said. “I simply cannot believe this nation has endured so many crushing blows in so short a time.”

“That is true, Senator,” General Preston said. “But that does not answer my question.”

“What? Oh, yes, General. Of course I’ll back Ben Raines. I believe he might be the only man capable of pulling this nation back together. A folk hero and all that. You can count on me, General.”

“What about the others?” General Rimel asked.

“They will, I believe, rally around me at this time,” Carson assured them. “Those who threw their support behind Lowry are a badly shaken bunch.”

“They’ve seen the error of their ways?” General Franklin commented dryly.

Senator Carson wasn’t certain exactly how to take that dryly given remark. But being a member of Congress for more years than he cared to remember had its advantages. He was a master of doubletalk and gobbledygook. Carson had once used four hundred and eighty words to say No.

“I believe, taking all the hideous events of the past few days into consideration, most of my colleagues would be only too happy to follow a leader who would strive to his utmost to bring this nation and its people back into the folds of a democratic rule of government. It is my belief that in Ben Raines—although his writings were a bit too racy for my old literary tastebuds to savor—we have found a man strong-willed enough but yet compassionate enough to placate even the most reluctant members of Congress.”

Admiral Calland resisted, mightily, an urge to tell Carson to go blow it out his tanks.

“Thank you,” the admiral said instead.

“You gentlemen are certainly welcome,” the old man beamed his reply.

Things were working out even better than he had originally planned.

Yes, Raines would do quite nicely.

“No,” Ben spoke more sharply than he intended to the circle of friends. “I most certainly will not assume the presidency.” He was sitting in a chair, despite doctor’s orders to stay in bed. “People, listen to me, for God’s sake. Can you—any of you—even visualize me running this nation; arguing with a bunch of goddamn bleeding-heart do-gooders? No. You can’t. And neither can I. Tell the Joint Chiefs to find someone else.”

“Ben,” Ike said, for once a serious expression on his face. “You have a duty.”

“Duty!” Ben yelled, and his side began aching. “Goddamnit, Ike, don’t you start that duty shit with me. That’s what got me into this mess in the first place; that’s what the old Bull told me back in ‘Nam—about a thousand years ago.” He took a deep breath, calming himself. “Any word on Jerre?”

“Hartline took her,” Cecil said. “We know that much. One of those Secret Service agents at the retreat lived long enough to tell us that.”

“Where did the bastard go?”

“Somewhere in Illinois,” Ike said. “He went over there to link up with Jake Devine’s bunch.”

“Getting back to the offer from the Joint Chiefs,” Cecil said.

“No,” Ben repeated. “I’m tired of having to say that word. Seems after a while you people could get it through your heads I don’t want the job.”

Both Ike and Cecil looked at Dawn. She smiled. Ben caught the look.

“Oh, boy,” he muttered. “Now you’re calling in the special troops, huh?”

“We’ll let him sleep on it,” Dawn said.

“Nightmares would be more like it,” Ben groused.

“Well now,” Captain Gray said to Tina. “Big news back in Richmond.”

She looked at him.

“The Joint Chiefs of Staff have temporarily taken over the job of running the country—for a few days, according to the report.”

There was a twinkle in the ex-SAS man’s eyes, and Tina knew she was being led up to something. She refused to bite.

“Not interested, Tina?”

“You didn’t hear me say that, did you, Captain? Come on, give.”

“The Joint Chiefs are going to appoint someone to run the country.”

She waited. “Come on, you Limey misfit!”

He laughed at her. “Your father.”

Tina sat down on the tailgate of the pickup truck. “Ben Raines!”

“Yes. There is a bit of bad news with it, girl, so hang on.”

She waited.

“The general’s been shot…” She jumped to her feet “…but not bad, though. Wound in the side. I think the general needs all the help he can get right now, Tina, so I’ve a plane waiting at the strip to take you to Richmond. No sass, now, girl. Run on with you.” He waggled his fingers in a gesture of extreme impatience and watched her walk to her billet for a few things.

There were other reasons why Captain Dan Gray wanted Tina gone, and when she learned of them she would be furious. But that couldn’t be helped.

She waved good-bye to Gray as she got in the Jeep that would take her to the small strip just out of the Kansas town.

A burly sergeant walked up to Gray. “She’s gonna pitch a screaming fucking hissy when she finds out why you sent her away.”

“I know,” the leader of the Scouts agreed with a grin. “So I hope we will be out of her line of fire until she gets over it.”

“Has the team found Jerre yet?”

“No. But they’re closing. Should hear from them any day.”

The sergeant took a map from his battle jacket. He spread it out on the tailgate. With one blunt finger, he jabbed at a circle. “That’s the last known position of Jake Devine.”

Gray nodded, then a slow smile worked its way across his face. “Hell, Larry—we’re not tied down. Soon as Tina gets airborne, we’ll pull out. Have the lads dress in civilian clothing. Let’s head for Illinois.”

“Doctor Chase!” Tina cried, running the last few steps to the plane.

He held open his arms and the girl rushed into them. “Good to see you, Tina. So good to see you.”

“But…?”

“Let’s get on board, girl, then we’ll talk.”

Airborne, Lamar Chase grinned and said, “You don’t think I’d let Ben suffer at the hands of those Army sawbones, do you? Thought I’d better ease over that way and take charge.”

She laughed at his mock seriousness. “You’ll never change.”

“I hope not, girl. You know the Joint Chiefs want Ben in as president?”

“Captain Gray told me.”

“And…”

“He’ll never take it.”

“Then it’s up to us all to change his mind, Tina.”

“But…”

“He’s got to do it, honey. It’s his duty.”

She looked out the window at the clouds below them. “Sometimes I just hate that word.”

“I know,” the doctor said, taking her hand in his. “I do, too.”

“Well, now,” Jake Devine greeted Hartline and his men. “Are things lookin’ up or are they not?”

His eyes were on Jerre.

“That was a stupid fucking play moving against those bridges, Jake. I cannot believe you gave those orders.”

“I didn’t, Sam. That was young Jefferson. He got ants in his pants and too cocky. We paid hard for it.”

“Give me a report.”

“Illinois and Indiana are ours. Parts of Ohio and Missouri. All of Iowa.”

“Lots of good land,” Hartline said.

“If you’re a farmer,” a mercenary bitched.

“That’s what we’re going to be, boys. Good hardworking honest law-abiding farmers. We are going to do the same thing with this land that Ben Raines did with his Tri-States. Let’s see if he’s so two-faced he’ll condemn us for doing what he did.”

The mercenaries smiled.

“All the while,” Jake grinned, “working for the old man in Richmond.”

“But of course,” Hartline returned the grin. “I spoke with him just before we pulled out. He said to keep our heads down and stay clean. Do some honest work for a change. Like farming.”

“I was raised on a farm,” Jake mused, a faraway, wistful look on his face. “By God, that just might be kinda nice.”

“Jesus!” Hartline gave him a disgusted look. “I can’t believe you said that, Jake. Farming? For real?”

“Well, who the hell else is gonna do it?” Jake demanded.

“The people,” Hartline explained. “They’ll be happy to do it for us. I bet they will.”

“And we’ll be…?”

“The police, Jake. We’ll keep the peace. And for our services… we’ll take just a… small portion of the profits. Can you dig that, Jake?”

“Yeah,” Jake said. “I can dig. But I still want a little piece of ground for my own. I love the smell of fresh plowed earth.”

“Ain’t but one thing that smells better,” Hartline said.

“Oh?”

Hartline grinned. “Pussy.”

Jerre had stood quietly by during this exchange. Hartline glanced at her. “Jerre,” he said, the one word an introduction. He looked at Jake. “How many women you gone through the past few months?”

“Just one. She’s still with me. Lisa.”

“That’s a bit odd for you, isn’t it, Jake?” Hartline asked, a note of suspicion in his voice.

Jake shrugged. “We get along, that’s all.” He changed the subject, not wanting to discuss Lisa with Hartline. Lately his feeling for the teenager had… deepened, he guessed that was the right choice of words. She had begun evoking a feeling within him he never knew he had; certainly had never experienced.

And he had changed in other ways, as well.

And it scared him.

“When do we pull out, Sam?” he asked.

“First thing in the morning. You’ll be ready?”

“Count on it, Sam. Good to see you. See you in the morning.”

Hartline watched Jake walk away. Something about the man had changed. And Hartline sensed it was not for the better.

Well, he thought, time to worry about that later. He looked at a young merc. “Where do we bunk, soldier?”

“We have a nice house for you, sir. If you’ll follow me.”

The house was a relatively new home, with a pleasant warming fire burning in the fireplace in the den. Hartline waited until after the young merc had gone.

“You fix dinner. I’m going to take a shower and read the paper.”

“Aren’t you afraid I’ll run away?”

His smile was as friendly as the permanent grin on a snake. “Look outside, Jerre-baby.”

She looked. The house had armed guards on all sides. She again faced the mercenary. “And then what?”

“You know what.”

“No more Mr. Nice Guy, huh?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that, honey. I never seen a woman yet didn’t like a big cock. And that’s what I got.”

“I’m having my period.”

“No, you’re not. But even if you were, it wouldn’t make no difference. I’d just take the back door.”

Jerre’s temper got the best of her. “Hartline, you are the most despicable person I have ever met.”

He was in a good mood, a good personality. He laughed at her. “I’m a saint compared to some I’ve soldiered with, Jerre-baby. You go run on now. You’re lookin’ a mite peaked from the plane ride. You can take your bath first, then cook supper.”

She looked at him for a moment, thinking: Oh, Ben, where are you?

She remembered when she saw Ben again, after her leaving in North Carolina. But this time he’d been with Salina. Or she with him. They were in the northwest, in the area that would soon become Tri-States.

The young people from the colleges Ben had visited rolled in and looked around. They were wary, for they believed the adults had caused the original mess (which was true), and they weren’t too certain this new state could be any better. But they decided to give it a try.

Jerre saw Ben, at first from a distance, and for a time kept her distance as she realized the woman with him was more than just a friend. Then she worked up enough courage to speak to him.

“Hi, Ben.”

Ben turned from his work and let a smile play across his lips. He was aware of Salina watching intently. He took Jerre’s outstretched hand, held it for a moment, then released it.

“You’re looking good, Jerre. I was worried about you, wondering if you’d made it.”

She nodded, as emotions filled her. She wondered if those same emotions were flooding Ben. They were, but not to the extent they filled her. “This is Matt.” She introduced the beefy young man beside her.

Ben shook the offered hand. “I’m glad you two could join us up here. There’s a lot of work to do. Going to live in Idaho?”

Jerre shook her head, answering for both of them. “No, Ben. We thought we’d try it over in Wyoming. Maybe go back to school in our spare time.”

“That’s a good idea. We’ll have the colleges open in a few months.”

There seemed to be nothing left for them to say; at least that they could say.

“See you, Ben.” Jerre smiled.

Ben nodded, watching the young couple walk away. Matt hesitated, then put his arm around Jerre’s shoulders in a protective way; a possessive way. Ben had to smile at the gesture.

“That your young friend, Ben?” Salina asked.

“That was her.”

“Just friends, huh?”

“Sure—what else?”

“Uh-huh.” She smiled.

“What the hell are you smiling about, bitch?” Hartline’s voice jarred her back to reality.

“Long ago and far away,” she replied.

“Go wash your cunt,” the mercenary said crudely.

Depression hit Jerre a hammer blow. She turned and walked toward the bathroom. Pausing, she looked around at him.

“I don’t have any clean clothes, Hartline.”

“Get you some in the morning. You won’t need no clothes tonight, baby.”

TWO

Matt had left the twins with a family sympathetic to the Rebels. They worked a small farm just outside Burns, Oregon. The tall, rugged-looking man—who had been in love with Jerre since the first moment he’d seen her, more than ten years back—drove the pickup truck with a determination that belied the murderous thoughts fermenting in his brain. He’d heard Hartline was in Illinois, or maybe Indiana. He touched the M-16 on the seat beside him.

One thing for certain, he was going to kill Sam Hartline.

As he drove, he remembered. He remembered with tears in his eyes.

“When will he be here, Jerre?” the young man asked her.

Jerre turned her eyes eastward. Her face was burned dark from the sun, as were her arms; her hair was sun-streaked and cut short.

She was not the leader of this group. But she knew Ben Raines, and everybody knew Bull Dean, the old Rebel who had killed his best friend to keep the movement alive, had put Ben Raines in charge. So that made Jerre something special.

“He’ll be here, Matt,” she said. “I don’t know when, so don’t ask me, but he’ll be here.”

“Equipment coming in,” a Rebel called.

They all moved to the line of trucks rolling up the mountain road. The young man who had asked the question put his arm around Jerre’s shoulders.

“Will you still be my girl when he gets here?” he asked.

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“I’ll know when he gets here. Then I’ll tell you.”

“I’m going to kill you, Hartline,” Matt muttered, his big hands gripping the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles were white from the strain. “I’m going to kill you.”

“Have you left that crazy bunch for good, baby?” Ben asked.

Tina laughed at him. “Daddy, you’re an ex-Hell Hound and asking me about a crazy bunch?”

Ben grumbled a bit about that, mostly under his breath. He said, “That was different.”

Dawn laughed and Tina liked her immediately. “You must know, Tina, Ben is a closet chauvinist.”

“I am not!”

“How does it feel to be the next president of the United States?” Doctor Chase asked, first winking at both Dawn and Tina.

“I wouldn’t know,” Ben snapped. “Because I have no intention of becoming the next president.”

“Boy, it sure would be nice living in the new White House,” Tina said.

“Well, you’re not going to live there,” Ben said, “so put it out of your mind.”

The doctor and the two women looked at each other. Suddenly they all started laughing.

Ben sat in the chair by his hospital bed and looked at them. He had a sinking feeling in his guts that within the next week or so, he was about to be sworn in.

And he didn’t want the job.

And just didn’t fucking want the job!

“So help me God,” Ben said.

He removed his hand from the Bible and shook the hand of the Chief Justice. Dawn and Tina kissed him, Cecil and Ike shook his hand.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff grinned at each other.

Senator Carson wiped a tear from one eye. Scenes like this always affected him. Deeply.

“Mr. President,” the Chief Justice said. “I’m wondering if I’m going to have a job this time tomorrow?”

“You will as long as you don’t interfere with me,” Ben told him. They spoke so only they could hear.

“I don’t believe I can work under those conditions, Mr. President.”

“Speaking for all your colleagues?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Perhaps, Justice Morgan, I am not the ogre a lot of liberals have branded me.” It was not a question and the Chief Justice did not take it as such.

“Perhaps not, sir,” the Justice spoke firmly, but with a slight twinkle in his eyes. “I rather doubt any man could be as terrible as the portrait that has been painted of you—by… liberals, if you will.”

“Work with me, Justice Morgan. Work with me and I’ll bring honor and fair play back into this nation.”

“At the point of a gun, sir?”

“If that is what it takes to convince some people, yes, sir.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Mr. President. I wanted very badly to refuse officiating at this swearing in. But I simply could not refuse. But I do not have to be a part of martial law.”

“Who said anything about martial law?”

The men had walked away from the platform, out of earshot of the press, and the press was beginning to grumble about it.

“The press doesn’t like this, Mr. President,” the Chief Justice said.

“Fuck the press.”

Justice Morgan smiled. “You see, sir, that is what I speak of. Your attitude toward the press.”

“Justice Morgan,” Ben said. “I used to enjoy watching good news-reporting. My favorite programs on TV were well-produced and reported documentaries. That does not include innuendoes, supposition, biased, left-leaning commentators, and nonobjective reporting. I don’t like doubletalk, dancing around a question, sneering, rudeness, or any of a dozen other repulsive traits that can be hung on any number of reporters, print and broadcast. Are we clear on that subject, sir?”

“Perfectly, sir.”

“Now what is this about martial law?”

“The military put you in office, sir. They can remove you just as easily.”

“No, sir,” Ben replied with a smile. “They sure as hell cannot.”

“Would you be so kind as to explain that?”

“Gladly. The Joint Chiefs of Staff will be going on nationwide TV within a week. They will publicly divorce themselves from any participation in the running of the government of the United States of America. The Supreme Court—all of you—will be present as witnesses. The next night I will be on TV, explaining as many of my policies as I have worked up by that time.

“I will be in office for four years, sir. And only four years. During that time, my people will be reclaiming the area known as Tri-States. You do remember that area, don’t you, sir?”

“How could I forget it, Mr. President?” the Chief Justice’s reply was thick with sarcasm.

“Just so we know where the other stands, sir,” Ben said with a smile. “After four years, I shall step down—sooner, if at all possible, and I will return to the Tri-States. There I shall live out the remainder of my years.”

The Chief Justice’s look was both wary and full of admiration. “All well and good, sir. But I wonder how many citizens of the United States will die during your four-year reign?”

“Just as many as choose not to respect the basic rights guaranteed any law-abiding citizen of this nation. That’s how many, sir.”

“Should be an interesting four years, Mr. President. And a totally unconstitutional period.”

“Depending entirely upon your interpretation of the constitution, sir. But then, I’ve always felt any literate, law-abiding, tax-paying citizen had as much right to bend the constitution as you people on the high bench.”

That stung the Justice. “I resent the charge that we of the court ever ‘bent the constitution’!”

“I guess the sadness in that is you really don’t believe you ever did.”

Ben walked away, to hold his first press conference as president of the United States.

Taking into consideration how he felt about the press, and how the press felt about him, it was a lively one.

Only the first of many.

The people of America, on a whole, could not have cared if Big Bird occupied the Oval Office, as long as he did something to pull the ailing nation back together. Or, perhaps, that should have been: Most of the people of America. For no matter how hard one person, or a group of people try to attain what they not only felt, but knew, from years of observing the world around them, from years of laborious study of the history of civilization, or from just having the good sense to know one does not attempt to pet a rabid dog (one shoots it), there will be those who will proclaim, as loudly as possible, that they are not getting their due; that they are being discriminated against (and race has nothing to do with it); that they are being denied due process; that they are not being paid what they think they are worth. Et cetera. Ad nauseam. Puke.

One week after Ben was sworn in as president, the groups began surfacing.

And as is so often the case, they were not made up of those who fought and bled and were tortured by Lowry’s agents; nor those who made up the underground train supporting Ben’s Rebels. These people are usually made up of those men and women who “just know” they are going to be a success someday; it’s a little vague just how that is going to happen, since these people never seem to do much of anything toward achieving that goal—except bitch about how the world owes them something.

But they are loud—Lord have mercy, are they loud!

“Have you seen the headlines?” Cecil asked.

“Yes! Where in the hell is Ike?” Ben asked, more than a note of exasperation in his tone.

“Gone off to find Captain Gray. And then they will attempt to find Jerre. They…”

“Goddamnit, Cecil! I need as many of the old bunch around me as possible at this time. Where in the hell does Ike get off…”

“Whoa!” Cecil yelled. “Jesus Christ, Ben—calm yourself. You know Ike wouldn’t be happy sitting around Richmond, no matter what position you placed him in. Ben, all Ike has ever been is a farmer or a warrior—that’s all he’ll ever be happy at. Now, I ask again: have you seen the headlines in today’s paper?”

“Which ones?” Ben asked sarcastically. “The ones that accuse me of being a racist because I told the president of the NAACP to get the hell out of this office because I was tired of listening to him bitch? Or maybe the one where the AFL-CIO has accused me of being anti-labor because I ordered that pack of assholes down in Florida to either get back to work or get off the job and I’ll put someone in there who would work? Or maybe it’s the goddamn teachers this go-around? Eh? Oh, and let us not forget that blazing headline in the Richmond Post about me being a baby-killer because I made the statement that whatever a woman wishes to do with her body is her business and nobody else’s. Huh? Which one is it this time around?”

Cecil sat calmly and sipped his coffee, letting Ben get it all out of his system. He knew Ben had not wanted the job; and felt pangs of guilt because he had been one of those who pressured him into taking it. But he had to smile at that, recalling just a few hours after Ben had been sworn in.

“Well, Cec,” Ben had said, walking up to him at the reception. Cecil had thought the smile on Ben’s face sort of resembled a tiger’s smile. “What plans do you have for your immediate future?”

“Going to go back to Tri-States and get the schools and colleges open again,” Cecil said, not quite comfortable with that odd smile grinning at him.

“Oh, no, you’re not,” Ben’s smile had broadened.

“I beg your pardon, Ben?”

“You folks been complaining for years you don’t have enough people in elected positions of power; that you don’t have enough blacks in high government positions. Well, guess what, old buddy, old pal?”

“I don’t like the way you’re smiling at me, Ben.”

“Don’t want to play guessing games, Cec?”

“No! Why are you smiling like that? You’re grinning like Lady Macbeth after a hard night with the knife.”

Ben leaned close and whispered in Cecil’s ear.

Cecil recoiled like he’d been touched with a cattle prod. “Not this nigger, you ain’t!”

“Cec! Shame on you. I’ve never heard such language from a Ph.D. in all my days. The Reverend James Watson would be ashamed of you.”

“Fuck the Reverend James Watson, and fuck his brother, too. You’re not putting me in that hotseat. I know what you plan to do with it.”

“That’s right,” Ben said soothingly, but still with that smile. “We discussed it, didn’t we?”

“Ben—I’m warning you.”

But Ben had already turned around and was calling for silence in the reception hall.

“All right, people! Could I have just a moment of your time? Thank you. Now you all know what I plan to do with the vice presidency—the president and the VP will share equal power over an equal number of departments. One will not interfere with the other. And you know I have been giving considerable thought to the man or woman who would fill that slot. I have made my decision. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the new vice president of the United States: Doctor Cecil Jefferys.”

While the applause was still thundering in the hall, Cecil leaned to Ben and whispered, “You honky motherfucker.”

But he was smiling, and his smile was full of love and admiration for the man who stood by him.

“No, Ben,” Cecil said. “Those aren’t the headlines I was referring to.”

“Well, for God’s sake, Cec, what else could it be?”

“The doctors. They don’t like this plan of yours for a national health care program.”

“Cecil,” Ben said, drumming his fingertips on the top of his desk, “that is your baby. You asked for it, you got it. What we had in the Tri-States will work anywhere if the people will just give it a chance. Not all of what we had there,” Ben amended. “But a great deal of the programs will. You enforce that program in any manner you choose. But make it work.”

“If I have to, Ben, I’m going to get nasty with it,” the first black VP in the history of America told Ben. There was a grim look on his face.

Ben noticed the age in the man’s face—for the first time he really noticed the gray in Cecil’s hair, the deepening lines in the man’s face.

“What are you holding back, Cec?”

“Still read me like a good book, can’t you, Ben?”

Ben smiled. “What are you thinking about, Cec?”

“That time back in Indiana—about a thousand years ago.”

After visiting his brother in the suburbs of Chicago, and having bitter words with the man—a man Ben felt he no longer knew—he drove fast and angry, crossing into Indiana, finding a motel. He prowled the empty rooms, finding the east wing free of stinking, rotting bodies. He gathered up sheets and pillowcases and was returning to his chosen room when he saw the dark shapes standing in the parking lot.

About a half dozen black men and women. No, he looked closer, one of the women was white—he thought.

Ben made no move to lift his SMG, but the click of his putting it off safety was very audible in the dusky stillness.

“Deserting your friends in the suburbs?” a tall black man asked. Ben could detect no hostility in his voice.

“I might ask the same of you,” Ben replied.

The man laughed. “A point well taken. So… it appears we have both chosen this motel to spend the night. But… we were here first—quite some time. We were watching you. Which one of us leaves?”

“None of us,” Ben said. “If you don’t trust me, lock your doors.”

The man once again laughed. “My name is Cecil Jefferys.”

“Ben Raines.”

“Ben Raines? Where have I heard that name? The writer?”

“Ah… what price fame?” Ben smiled. “Yes. Sorry, I didn’t mean to be flip.”

“I didn’t take it that way. We’re in the same wing, just above you. My wife is preparing dinner now—in the motel kitchen. Would you care to join us?”

“I’d like that very much. Tired of my own cooking.”

“Well, then—if you’ll sling that Thompson, I’ll help you with your linens.”

Ben did not hesitate, for he felt the request and the offer a test. He put the SMG on safety and slung it, then handed the man his pillows. “You’re familiar with the Thompson?”

“Oh, yes. Carried one in Vietnam. Green Beret. You?”

“Hell Hound.”

“Ah! The real bad boys. Colonel Dean’s bunch. You fellows were head-hunters.”

“We took a few ears.”

They walked shoulder to shoulder down the walkway. Cecil’s friends coming up in the rear. Ben resisted a very strong impulse to look behind him.

Cecil smiled. “Go ahead and look around if it will make you feel better.”

“You a mind reader?” Ben laughed.

“No, just knowledgeable of whites, that’s all.”

“As you see us,” Ben countered.

“Good point. We’ll have a fine time debating, I see that.”

They came to Ben’s room.

“We’ll see you in the dining room, Ben Raines. I have to warn you though…”

Ben tensed; he was boxed in, no way to make a move.

“…The water is ice cold. Bathe very quickly.”

Ben didn’t trust black people. He didn’t know why he didn’t trust them. He just didn’t. He despised the KKK, the Nazi Party… groups of that ilk. And he asked himself, as he bathed—very quickly—have you ever tried to know or like a black person?

No, he concluded.

Well, you’re about to do just that.

As he walked to the dining area, the smell of death hung in the damp air. But it was an odor that Ben scarcely noticed anymore.

The dining area was candlelit. Cecil smiled as Ben entered and offered him a martini.

“Great,” Ben said. A martini-drinking black? He thought most blacks drank Ripple or Thunderbird.

Come on, Raines! he chastised himself. You’re thinking like an ignorant bigot.

He sat down at the table. Moment of truth. He smiled a secret smile.

“Something funny, Mr. Raines?” he was asked.

“Sad more than anything else, I suppose.”

“Ever sat down to dinner with blacks?” a woman asked. Her tone was neither friendly nor hostile… just curious.

Hell, Ben thought—they are as curious about me as I am about them. “Only in the service,” he replied.

“Well, I can promise you we won’t have ham hocks or grits,” she said with a grin.

“Tell the truth,”—Ben looked at her—“I like them both.”

A few laughed; the rest smiled. An uncomfortable silence followed. The silence was punctuated by shifting of feet, clearing of throats, much looking at the table, the walls. It seemed that no one had anything to say, or, as was probably the case, how to say it.

They talked over dinner, the conversation becoming easier on both sides. Ben began putting names to faces; his attention kept shifting to the woman called Salina. He still wasn’t certain what nationality she was. Just that she was beautiful.

He liked her immediately.

He hated the black called Kasim just as quickly, and felt the vibes of hate blast toward him from Kasim.

Kasim confirmed the mutual dislike when he said, “How come you didn’t stay in the city with your brother and his buddies and help kill all the niggers?” His eyes were dancing with hate.

Salina shook her head in disgust. Cecil’s wife, Lila, sighed and looked at her husband. Cecil summed up the feelings of all present by saying, “Kasim, you’re a jerk!”

“And he’s white!” Kasim spat his hate at Ben.

“Does that automatically make me bad?” Ben asked.

“As far as I’m concerned, yes,” Kasim replied. “And I don’t trust you.”

“And maybe,” Salina said quietly “he is just a man who sat down to have a quiet dinner. He hasn’t bothered a soul—brother.” She smiled at her humor.

Kasim didn’t share her humor. “I see,” he said, his words tinged with hate. “Zebra got herself a yearning for some white cock?”

Salina slapped him hard, hitting him in the mouth with the back of her hand, bloodying his lips.

Kasim drew back to hit her and found himself looking down the barrel of a .44 magnum. Cecil jacked back the hammer and calmly said, “I would hate to ruin this fine dinner, Kasim, since raw brains have never been a favorite of mine. But if you hit her, I’ll blow your fucking head off!”

Kasim could not believe it. “Cecil… you’d kill me for him?”

Cecil nodded.

“You know what those white bastards did to my sister.”

“Ben Raines wasn’t one of them.”

“He’s still white!”

Ben rose to leave. “I’d better leave.”

Cecil surprised him by agreeing. “I’m sorry, Ben. I was looking forward to some intelligent conversation later on.”

Ben spoke to Cecil. “Perhaps we’ll meet again?”

Kasim summed it all up. “You put your white ass in New Africa, motherfucker, it’ll be buried there.”

“I will make every effort to avoid New Africa,” Ben said. “Wherever that might be.”

“Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana,” Kasim said. “A black nation.”

Ben smiled. “My home is in Louisiana, Kasim, or whatever your goddamned name is. And I’ll give you a bit of advice. I’m going to my room and get some sleep. I’ll put out just after dawn tomorrow. I will start no trouble in this motel. But if I ever see you again—I’ll kill you.”

Kasim sneered at him. “Words. Big words. How about trying it now? Just you and me?”

Ben smiled. “Drag your ass out of that chair, hotshot.”

“Cool it, Kasim,” Cecil warned. “You’re outclassed with Ben. Let it lie.”

Ben spoke to Mrs. Jefferys. “It was a delicious meal. I thank you.”

She smiled and nodded.

Ben’s eyes touched Salina’s. She smiled at him.

He walked out into the rainy night, leaving, he hoped, the hate behind him.

He was loading his gear into the truck at dawn, tying down the tarp when he heard footsteps. He turned, right hand on the butt of the .45 belted at his waist.

Salina.

“We all feel very badly about last night, Mr. Raines. All except Willie Washington, that is.”

“Who?”

She smiled in the misty dawn. A beautiful woman. “Kasim. We grew up on the same block in Chicago. He’ll always be Willie to me.”

In the dim light he could see her skin was fawn-colored. “Does he really hate whites as much as it seems? All whites?”

“Does the KKK hate blacks?”

“They say they don’t.”

“Right. And pigs fly.” They shared a quiet laugh in the damp dawn. “Kasim’s sister was… used pretty badly when he was young. Raped, buggered. He was beaten and forced to watch. The men were never caught. You know the story. It happens on both sides of the color line. He’s about half nuts, Ben.”

“I gathered that.”

“There are a lot of differences between the races, Ben. Cultural differences, emotional differences. The bridge is wide.”

“I do not agree with what my brother and his friends are doing, Salina. I want you to know that.”

“I knew that last night, Ben. I think… we need more men like you and Cecil; less of Jeb Fargo and your brother.”

“Who in the hell is Jeb Fargo?”

“His name is really George, but he likes to be called Jeb. He came up to Chicago about five years ago—from Georgia, I think. Head of the Nazi Party.”

“I met him—didn’t like him. I hope his mentality doesn’t take root.”

“It will,” she predicted flatly. “What are your plans, Ben?”

He told her, standing in the cool mist of the morning. He told her of his plans, his schedule. He told her of his home in Morrison, and how he had literally slept through the horror after being stung by dozen of wasps, knocking him out.

“Probably saved your life,” she said. “The venom, the Benadryl.”

“What are your plans, Salina?”

“I go with Cecil and Lila.”

“Kasim called you a zebra. What does that mean?”

“…You’re not telling me everything, Cec,” Ben’s voice brought him back to the present. “Come on, what are you holding back?”

Cecil grinned at him, the grin quickly fading. “Over in Kentucky, day before yesterday. A woman died because the hospital refused to admit her. She didn’t have the money. I’m not going to tolerate that, Ben.”

“Nor I, Cec. The plans we talked of, you’re in agreement with them?”

“A percentage of a person’s income going into a health fund. Of course the rich are going to scream because they’ll be paying more.”

“They can afford it.”

“Luxury tax on jewelry, smokes, booze, expensive items. The HHS runs it. Those are the high points; yes, I’m in agreement—but Congress isn’t.”

“They are now.”

Cecil lifted an eyebrow.

“Since I told them to be in favor of it. Representative Jean Purcell is the author of the bill. It will pass.”

“The liberals will love you for it.”

“For a week. Next week it’ll be the conservatives who love me.”

“Yours is going to be a very interesting term of office, Ben.”

“So I’ve been told,” Ben said dryly.

THREE

“Ben,” Doctor Chase told him, “I’m just too damned old for this Richmond nonsense. I love you for thinking of me, but no, I won’t become your surgeon general. I do know a good man for the job, though. Doctor Harrison Lane. Army doctor, although it hurts my mouth to admit it. He’s a good man. I asked him to come in, see you about one this afternoon.”

Ben nodded. “If you say he’s the man for the job, that’s it. What are you going to do, you old goat?”

“I’m going back to the mountains, Mr. President,” he said, grinning as Ben flipped him the bird. “That is not a gesture the president of the United States should make. I have… ah… someone back there who is carrying the torch for me something fierce.”

“’Carrying the torch,’ Lamar? God! I haven’t heard that expression since I was a kid.” Ben laughed, a good, hearty laugh; and it felt good, for of late, Ben had not had that much to laugh about. He wouldn’t admit it, but he was more worried about Jerre than he would allow others to see.

“You know, Lamar, I did some research on that back when I was making my living pounding the keys of a typewriter. Close as I could figure, that phrase originated about 1949.”

“I can’t tell you how impressed I am with your knowledge of phrases, Ben. You wouldn’t be implying I’m over the hill, now would you?”

“Not as long as you can get it up!”

Both men shared a laugh at the crudeness. Lamar sobered and said, “Ben—get this nation right side up again, then hand it over to someone else. You should be able to do it in two, maybe three years. I think you’re probably the only man who could do it—that’s why I pressed you so hard to take the job. At least, Ben, you’ll have the knowledge and the satisfaction that every man, woman, and child in this nation will have all the rights afforded them by the Bill of Rights.

“I’m an old bastard, but I’m going to hang on to watch you do these things, Ben—all the while helping to re-form the Tri-States. When you’re done here, come home, back to your dream, and sit with me on the front porch of my house and we’ll talk of things dead and past while we watch my…” he smiled, “…little daughter or son wobble around.”

“Why, you old bastard!” Ben laughed. “That’s why you’re going back.”

“Yeah. I should be ashamed of myself, I suppose; but I’m not. I’m damn proud.”

“You should be. Congratulations. Lamar, you sound as though you believe no matter what I accomplish here, it won’t last.”

The doctor fixed wise eyes on the revolutionary dreamer. “You know it won’t, Ben. It will work for us in the Tri-States, but not for the majority—you said it yourself, back in Tri-States. You’re a student of history, Ben, just as I am. You know that many—too many—Americans don’t give a flying piece of dog shit what’s good for the nation as a whole. We gathered the cream of the crop back in ‘89, friend; the best we could find to populate Tri-States.

“Out here,” the doctor waved his hand and snorted, “hell, you know the majority of Americans—even after all the horror we’ve been through—don’t care for anything except themselves or their own little greedy, grasping group or organization. Americans are notorious for wanting to run other people’s lives.

“No, Ben, for two or maybe three years, if you’re lucky, you’ll see all Americans being treated equal—for the first time in more than seventy-five years. Just think, Ben. Why, a citizen will be able to turn on the TV set and view any damn program he or she chooses to watch, without some so-called Christian organization screaming bloody murder because someone said ‘hell’ or ‘damn’ on the air.”

“The best censor in the world has always been a parent turning off the set or changing channels,” Ben muttered.

“Why of course it has!” Chase said. “Or simply telling the kids they can’t watch a certain program and then belting the hell out of them if they disobey. We know that, Ben. Thinking, rational adults have always known it. But there again, ol’ buddy, comes the truth: people simply cannot stand it if they’re not butting in someone else’s life.”

Ben laughed and shifted his butt in the chair, knowing Lamar was just warming up to his topic. He waited.

“Right now, Ben—this minute—you have done more in two weeks in office than anyone else in the more than a decade since the bombings. You just jerked the lazy folks off their asses and told them if they didn’t work they weren’t going to eat. That should have been done fifty years ago.”

“Yeah, but don’t think I haven’t got a bunch of civil rights groups down on my ass for doing it, either. And the ACLU is screaming that everything I’m doing is unconstitutional.”

Lamar muttered something very uncomplimentary under his breath and Ben laughed at him.

“It isn’t funny, Ben—not really. It’s tragic that some people—and I’m not singling out the aforementioned group—can’t see, won’t see, what is good for the entire nation just might step on the toes of a few.” He shook his white head and sighed. “Let’s say it, Ben. First, when are the twins due in?”

“Tomorrow. Ike tracked them down and is having them flown here.”

“Ben—have you thought that Jerre might be dead?”

“It’s crossed my mind.”

“But you reject it.”

“Yes. I don’t know why, but I just know she is alive. Hartline is holding her—why, I don’t know. Probably as a lever to use against me.”

Lamar looked at him. “The new Moral Majority is yelling about the president of the United States living in sin with a woman.”

Ben grinned. “I wonder how much they’d scream if I was living in sin with a man?”

“Get serious, Raines! Are you going to marry the lady?”

“No.” His answer came quickly.

“Do you love her?”

“No.” Just as quickly.

“She loves you?”

“I… don’t think so, Lamar.” Ben leaned forward, propping his elbows on the desk, his chin in his hands. It made him look like a schoolboy. “Can I talk to you man to man, Lamar?”

“Shore.”

“I’m fifty-four years old, Lamar. And I truly don’t believe I’ve ever experienced the emotion of love. God knows I’ve written about it many times; but as far as my actually having known it—no.”

“Great the fall thereof when it smites thee, Ben. I could have sworn you and Salina were in love.”

“I… felt something, Lamar. I really did. I spoke the words to her just before she died. But I lied.” He shook himself like a big shaggy dog might shake off excess water. He pushed the memories from him and shifted topics. “Did you know Dawn has a degree—a master’s degree—in science?”

“No. But it doesn’t surprise me. Why’d you bring it up?”

“Because I’m going to put her in charge of the newly formed EPA.”

Lamar had to say it. “Congress won’t like it.”

“I don’t give a shit what Congress likes or dislikes,” came the expected reply. “If they dislike too much, they can carry their ass home. You wait until next week, when I abolish about fifteen departments—then listen to them holler.”

“Will I be able to hear it in the Tri-States?”

“Hell, yes. And you won’t even have to turn up your hearing aid.”

Chase told the president of the United States where to shove that last remark.

“Do you love him, Dawn?” Rosita asked.

Dawn smiled at the feisty little Irish-Spanish lady. They shared an apartment in Richmond, Rosita electing not to accompany Colonel Ramos back to the southwest. She worked with Dawn.

“No,” Dawn finally answered the question. “No, I don’t, Rosita. I… have a warm feeling for Ben, as he does for me. But love? No.”

Her next question surprised Dawn. “Well, then who does he love?”

But, she mused silently, perhaps it isn’t so surprising after all. For haven’t you asked yourself that question many times? “Rosita, I don’t believe he has ever been in love.”

“A man of his years and experience?” the petite brunette asked doubtfully.

“I didn’t say in heat.”

And both women laughed. “Sí,” Rosita flipped her fingers as if they were burning. “Yo caigo en ello.”

“Yeah, I just bet you catch on.”

Rosita was silent for a moment, then asked, “Jerre?”

Dawn shook her head. “No. But I think that’s the closest he’s ever been. He worries about her a lot. I wish I knew where she was. What was happening to her. Everybody I’ve talked with says she was a good person.”

“You used the past tense, Dawn,” Rosita said gently.

“I know,” Dawn replied.

Jerre looked out at the first snowfall of the year in central Illinois. In the room behind her, Lisa and several of her friends sat and talked and laughed. Jerre knew the teenagers had come over just to cheer her up, and she should be grateful for that—but she wished they would just leave her alone.

“Jerre?” Lisa called. “You better come on ‘fore this pie is all gone. It’s pretty good.”

Jerre forced a smile and turned around to face the small group. “I don’t think so, girls. Thanks anyway.”

Lisa rose from her Buddha-like sitting position on the floor and walked to her. “Jake says Hartline can get rough and mean at times. He got that way with you?”

That was the problem, Jerre thought. He had not. The mercenary had been every inch a gentleman. And, she fought to hide her smile and the dark humor that sprang into her brain, Hartline had more than his share of inches. “No, Lisa, that isn’t it at all. I just want to go home.”

“I was afraid of Jake at first,” the girl confessed. “But he’s changed in just the time I’ve known him. I… know he’s done some very bad things. Awful things, I’m sure. But with me he’s always been real gentle. Sometimes I even think he loves me. He doesn’t like Hartline.”

Jerre thought she might see a way out of this mess. Maybe. “Jake really does want to farm, doesn’t he?”

The girl’s face brightened. “Yes—yes, he really does. Lately that’s all he talks about. Getting away from here and maybe moving away—up in the northwest someplace…” She trailed it off, her eyes clouding with suspicion. “How come you askin’ all these questions?”

Jerre shrugged. “You came to me, Lisa. I didn’t come to you.”

The girl smiled. “Yeah, that’s right, ain’t it. I guess some of Jake’s feelings have rubbed off on me. I’d like to talk to you some more, but… I ain’t real sure I can trust you.”

“You can trust me, Lisa. If there is anyone in this area you can trust, it’s me.”

“I kinda believe you, Jerre. I want to real bad, you know?”

“How much education do you have, Lisa?”

“Not much,” the girl said bitterly. “They didn’t get the schools goin’ where we lived ‘til I was ten. I guess maybe I got a sixth grade schoolin’. ‘Bout as much as any kid my age.”

“Ben Raines is going to get all the schools going again—real soon.”

“Will you tell me the truth if I ask you something, Jerre?”

“Certainly.”

“Is Ben Raines a god of some sort?”

“No, Lisa. Ben is no god.”

“Then how come he can do all these things in so short a time?”

That stumped her. For in the three weeks Ben had sat in the office of the president, he had accomplished quite a lot. Again, she fought to keep from smiling. Including, she had heard on the radio, hanging about fifty people for various crimes.

“Some people say he is,” the teenager persisted. “They said any man who’s been shot up as bad as he’s been and not die from it… got to be a god.”

So it’s spreading, Jerre thought. And not just among Ben’s own people. Maybe, she thought, there is a way out.

“All right, Lisa,” Jerre said, the lie building in her, leaving a bad taste on her tongue. “Yes. I’ll level with you. Ben… is different from other people.” Not a lie. “I’ve seen what happens to people who make him angry.” Sure have. “It’s not very pleasant.” Sure isn’t. “You don’t want to make him mad.”

The teenager backed up a step. “He ain’t got no call to be mad at me.”

“Not yet.”

“What you mean, Jerre?”

Jerre fixed her gaze firmly on the girl. “You know exactly what I mean, Lisa. And you’d better not tell anyone about this conversation, either.”

“I promise I won’t, Miss Jerre,” Lisa whispered. “But what can I do to help?”

“To help whom?”

Lisa gulped. “You, I guess.”

“That is something you’ll have to decide for yourself, Lisa.”

“I’ll think on it, Miss Jerre. But… something is troubling me. If Ben Raines is so powerful, how come you’re still a prisoner here?”

“Haven’t you ever heard about how gods move in mysterious ways?”

“My folks said there ain’t no God in Heaven; and no Jesus Christ, neither. But I’ve heard that line you just said.”

“Think about that, Lisa.”

“Do I have to?”

“What do you think?”

“Seems like you’re sure putting a lot on me, Miss Jerre?” Jerre’s only reply was a cold look.

“Is there a shrine to Ben Raines, Miss Jerre?”

Jerre thought of Tri-States; of the twins. “In a way, yes, there is, Lisa. And it’s beautiful.”

The girl sucked in her breath. “I sure would like to see that someday.”

Jerre took another step toward freedom. “You help me, Lisa, and I promise you you’ll see it.”

“I’d be scared!”

“No need to be.”

“I’ll think on it, Miss Jerre. And I won’t tell nobody. Cross my heart.”

Jerre wanted to weep at the teenager’s ignorance. Instead, she put her hand on Lisa’s arm. “I know I can count on you to do the right thing, Lisa.” She smiled at her. “We’ll talk again. Come back anytime.”

“I’ll sure do it, Miss Jerre.”

Jerre watched them leave the house. They waved at the guards stationed around the home. Jerre turned her back to the window, gazing into the fireplace, blazing with fire and warmth.

“I don’t know what I’ve started here, Ben,” she murmured low. “It may mushroom all out of proportion. But please forgive me if it does. I just want to get out and go home. I want my babies!”

Matt drove down the west side of the Mississippi River. He had skirted Dubuque, picked up Highway 67, and would cross into Illinois at the bridge at Savannah. He had a general idea where Hartline had made his headquarters. Matt stopped and looked at his map. He had drawn a crude circle in red.

The circle had Peoria almost in the dead center, the line running from Galesburg to Macomb to Springfield to Decatur, then northeast to Farmer City. Then it began a gentle curving north through Gibson City and Chatworth. At Chatworth, it curved northwest to Streator, running straight west for about fifty-five miles to just south of Kewanee. Then the line dipped southwest back to Galesburg.

On a much larger map, Matt had cut the area into quarters, each road in the quarter a different color. He would take them one at a time, just like pieces of a pie. He would find Jerre.

And he would kill Hartline.

About twenty-five miles north of Terre Haute, Indiana, Ike and his team, made up of ex-SEALs, ex-Green Berets, ex-Marine Force Recon, and ex-Rangers, said their good-byes and good luck.

“You all know what to do without me goin’ over it again,” Ike told the men. “For the next few months Hartline is somewhere within a ninety-mile radius of Peoria. Word we got is come next spring he’ll be movin’ up to Iowa to set up his HQ. We got to find him ‘fore then. You boys take care.”

They were gone in teams of three. They would circle the area and on the third day would move in simultaneously. The men drove ragged pickup trucks; but the engines were perfectly tuned and the rubber was new… They looked like movers and drifters, aimlessly wandering the countryside.

They were anything but.

Captain Dan Gray halted his team at Quincy. “Killing Hartline would be gravy on the potatoes,” he told them. “Just remember our primary objective is getting Jerre out. I have not been in contact with General Raines, but I have a gut feeling he’s sent others in ahead of us. So be careful; we don’t want to mistake any of them for Hartline’s men, or be mistaken ourselves for Hartline’s men. Let’s go, boys and girls. Good luck and God speed.”

And Jerre stared out at the snowfall in a small town just ten miles from Pekin, Illinois.

She waited.

FOUR

Roanna Hickman and Jane Moore sat talking in the NBC offices in Richmond. Other reporters and commentators sat quietly, listening. All of them had a hard decision to make. Unpleasant either way they went.

“Have you been back to see Sabra?” Roanna asked.

“I can’t go back there; can’t look at her,” Jane replied. “It’s… I just want to cry.”

“The doctors say she’s going to be all right—in time.”

“She’ll never be back here,” Roanna said bitterly. “Never. We all know that. But we’re dancing around what we gathered to speak of. And it wasn’t Sabra’s mental health. Let’s discuss our… president,” she softened the last word.

“Son of a bitch is not my president,” a man spoke. “High-handed bastard is a dictator.”

“Is he?” Jane “Little Bit” Moore asked. “Seems to me it’s taken him less than a month to do more than anyone else has accomplished in a decade since the bombings.”

“And everything he’s done has been accomplished by spitting on the constitution,” the man countered.

“Oh, fuck the constitution!” Roanna lashed out, surprising no one. She had been a staunch supporter of Ben Raines since her return from the Smokies.

Several of her male colleagues wondered if Raines had gotten into her panties. Several other female colleagues wondered if she might have fallen in love with the Rebel general. The more objective of the group wondered if she saw something in the man they might have missed.

“Goddamnit, Jim,” Roanna continued, “he’s making things work again. He’s feeding the very young and the very old; he’s opening factories and creating jobs; he’s…”

“No one is denying any of that, Roanna,” a black reporter said calmly. This reporter had survived the bombings of ‘88 and continued to go about his business of gathering news and reporting it, fairly and objectively. “There is no in-between with Ben Raines… not among the people I’ve spoken with. It’s either love or hate. But the point is: Do we—as reporters and commentators—condone what he is doing, in other words ignore the gross violations of the constitution and the Bill of Rights, or do we report on those violations as we see them, without giving the man’s credits equal time? I certainly don’t agree with everything he’s done and doing, but by God, he’s got to be given some credit. And I, for one, intend to do just that.”

“Len,” a woman spoke. “Could the fact that he appointed a black VP have anything to do with your decision?”

She wilted under the man’s steely, unwavering gaze. “I won’t even dignify that with a reply, Camile. If you care to recall, sixty percent of those men and women he had hanged or will hang in the near future, are black.”

She sat down, but another woman picked it up. “Len, that is another point that can’t be ignored. He…”

“Ms. Daumier,” Len’s voice stopped her in midsentence. “Those people were murderers, rapists, terrorists—scum! They were not acting out of survival; not out of self-defense—they were behaving in a manner not even befitting a rabid dog! I, for one, do not care to return to the days of the ‘60s and ‘70s, when those types of people were slapped on the wrist and given sentences so light as to be ludicrous. Now, I have had my say. I will report on the president’s excesses and accomplishments. I am not being paid to editorialize or find fault. Good day.” He walked out of the room.

“I could not believe my ears when the president of the United States said, day before yesterday, if a person is attempting to break into your home, be it tent or mansion, feel free to shoot his ass off, because crime is not going to be tolerated in this nation.” The reporter allowed his outrage to overcome his overt liberalism. “Jesus Christ!” he blurted. “The son of a bitch is no more than a savage himself.”

“And you’re as full of shit as a Christmas goose!” Roanna told him.

“I beg your pardon!” the man’s eyes widened.

Roanna got to her feet. “I said…”

“We all heard what you said,” a man’s voice stopped the dispute before it got out of hand. The president of network news had entered the room quietly, without being noticed. Robert Brighton was another of the survivors of the bombings of ‘88—a man in his early sixties. Brighton was another of the objective-type of reporters. He had once stated, publicly, that anyone who satisfied themselves solely with TV news, would probably grow up to be a half-wit.

“We didn’t know you were flying in from Chicago, Mr. Brighton,” a reporter said.

“I didn’t fly in,” Brighton said. “I drove. I wanted to see for myself some of the horrors our president has perpetrated—according to some of my news reporters, that is.”

Several men and women began taking more careful note of their shoes, the ceiling, the walls, anything except the eyes of Robert Brighton.

“But, by golly, gang—guess what I saw?”

More shuffling of feet and averting of eyes.

“I saw smoke coming out of factory chimneys that have lain idle for almost twelve years. I saw men and women going to work for the first time in years. I saw men and women of Raines’s Rebel army giving food and warm clothing and blankets to the elderly and to those with small children. I didn’t see federal police—but I saw some of these new peace officers; talked with some of them. They seemed like pretty nice guys to me. Capable of handling themselves if need be, but also capable of using a large degree of common sense as well—something that has been lacking in our federal police for some years since the bombings.”

“Mr. Brighton,” a man got to his feet.

“Save yourself some grief, Harrelson,” Brighton frosted him with a glance. “And shut your goddamned mouth.”

“I don’t have to be treated in this manner,” the man’s face expressed his shock.

“Then carry your ass to ABC or CBS or CNN—if they’ll have you. Which I doubt. Now you people listen to me,” Brighton said. “Listen well.

“This is make-or-break time for our nation. Can you all understand that? Make or break! Yes, President Raines has and will do some things that will—if you all will permit the use of an outdated word—outrage your liberal minds. It’s a hard time, people. The world is still staggering about, many nations still on their knees; it’s doubtful if some of them will ever get to their feet.

“And you people are nit-picking. Nit-picking because a few are complaining while the majority is happy to be going back to work; happy that crime is dropping so rapidly the statisticians can’t keep up with the decline; happy to have a pay check in their pockets; happy to be alive. And you people are whining and complaining—setting yourselves up as the conscience of the nation; the upholders and guardians of liberty and freedom.

“Get off Raines’s back. Let the man put the nation back together again—he can do it. When it’s together once more, he’ll step down and hand the most disagreeable job in the world to some other sucker.”

Jane Moore stood up. “Am I to understand we are not to report on Ben Raines’s excesses, sir?”

“I didn’t say that, Bitty. I said get off the man’s back. I’ve just come from a meeting with the department heads of all the majors—we’ve agreed to give him a chance. Ben Raines, in case any of you missed the placement of the pronoun, and I want it to be very clear. And just to make it perfectly clear,” he looked at Roanna. “You’re in charge of this flag station.”

“I’ll step down when Sabra returns, Mr. Brighton,” Roanna replied, shock evident on her face at the promotion to Top Gun in the nation’s capital.

Brighton shook his head. “Sabra died an hour ago.”

“I want this to be the toughest tax bill to ever pass both Houses,” Ben said. “I have no doubt that when I leave the White House it will be repealed, but for my term in office, the tax laws will be as equitable as I can make them.”

“Senator Henson told me yesterday she doubted it will get out of committee,” an aide informed him.

Ben turned in his chair and fixed the man with a look that would freeze water in the middle of the Mojave in July. At noon. “You will personally inform Senator Henson that if this bill is not out of committee and on the floor by this time next week, I will personally go on radio and television and inform the middle and lower-income citizens of this nation that effective immediately, they may commence paying into IRS what they feel the government is worth. And if Congress doesn’t like it, I will station armed troops around every IRS office in this nation with orders to shoot any agent that attempts to harass any non-taxpaying citizen. Is that clear?”

The aide paled; looked appalled. “Mr. President, you can’t mean that!”

“Try me,” Ben said calmly, but his voice was charged with emotion.

“Yes, sir,” the aide replied weakly. “I will so inform Senator Henson.”

“Fine.” Ben turned to Steve Mailer, the new head of the Department of Education. “Are you going to be a harbinger of gloom and doom, too?”

“No,” the ex-college professor laughed his reply. “But I’m running into stiff opposition with your mandatory high school education plans.”

“I expected it. Steve, I hope I don’t have to convince you that education is the key that will turn the lock for survival in this nation.”

“You know you don’t, Mr. President. But you must know there are any number of… how do I put this… ?”

“…Hillbillies and rednecks who don’t want their kids exposed to much education. I am fully aware it all begins in the home, Steve. Because of that, the teachers that will staff our schools will have to be a special breed. Not only will they be teaching the three Rs, this time around they’ll be teaching fairness, ethics, honesty, ways to combat and ultimately eradicate all the deadly sins that have plagued this nation for so many years. I know that is in part why the NEA is opposed to me. I understand it, and whether they believe me or not, I sympathize with the teachers; they’ve never been asked to do anything like this before. How is the mail from parents running?”

“It’s really too soon to tell. But from what we have received so far, it pretty well reinforces what we have known all along: the higher the educational ladder attained, the more in favor of what you are proposing. The lower the educational rungs achieved… against it.”

“The teacher organizations, Steve—why are they really opposed to this plan?”

Steve shifted in his chair. An ex-teacher, part of his emotions stayed with his chosen field. But as a highly educated person, he knew the more education a being possessed, the less the chances of that person abusing the children; the less chances of crime; the more apt to stay away from the baser types of music and violent sports… and so much more. But, just as Ben knew, Steve knew, too, that education without a solid base of ethics supporting it all, without a framework of decency and fair play and honesty and a stiff moral base left a great deal lacking.

But was it, should it, be on the shoulders of teachers to instill those qualities into the hearts and minds of the young?

Steve had been appalled when he learned that back in the Tri-States, Ben had ordered children taken from their parents if the parents were teaching the young hatred or bigotry and values that went against the foundation of what the Tri-States was built upon.

But shock diminished, falling away from him gradually when he gave Ben Raines’s plan a deeper study. How could a nation ever do away with the deadly sins if parents continued to practice those sins at home?

Like father and mother, like son and daughter.

Steve was conscious of Ben watching him very closely, waiting for his reply.

“Because many of the teachers are afraid they’ll lose their jobs, Ben. They are afraid they will not come up to your expectations.”

Ben smiled. “But Steve, we haven’t even discussed guidelines. Aren’t they getting a little panicky for no reason?”

The teacher met the revolutionary’s eyes. “All right, Ben—you want to cut right through the grease to the meat. Okay. Many of them know they will lose their jobs. They are fully aware they cannot meet any standards set higher than the ones currently in practice. There it is.”

“That’s their problem. They can learn to adjust.”

“What if they are fine teachers but still somewhat, shall we say, immoral outside the classroom?”

“Get rid of them.”

“Ben…”

“No! I will not have drunks, womanizers, whores, bigots, playboys, or playgirls shaping the minds of this nation’s young people. Damn, Steve! Kids have to have someone they can look up to standing in front of that class. And I mean standing. Unless the teacher is handicapped and unable to stand.

“The teachers that will staff the public schools of this nation will be of the highest quality, and they will be very highly paid. And their personal lives will be exemplary. Religion has nothing to do with it. I don’t care if they are Christian or atheist. Religion is not going to be taught in the public schools.

“There is a very great difference in religion and ethics. Just do it, Steve. You said you could, I believe you, so do it. Steve, we can’t have a government based on common sense without the citizens of that nation openly practicing ethics and honesty and trust. If those qualities are not taught at home, then they must be taught in our schools.”

Steve gave a mighty sigh. “You are going to stir up a hornet’s nest, Ben.”

“Steve, I’ve been making waves for forty years. My daddy said I came out of the womb arguing with the doctor.”

Steve laughed. “I don’t doubt that, Ben. I really don’t.” He stood up. “All right, Ben. It sounds so easy the way you put it.”

“It’s going to be anything but easy, Steve. If it was easy it wouldn’t be worth a damn.”

The men shook hands and Steve left to do his task. The intercom buzzer sounded on Ben’s desk.

“A General Altamont to see you, sir.”

“Who?”

“Representative Altamont’s brother, sir.”

Ben was thoughtful for a moment. A sense of alarm sounded silently in his guts. “Susie? We’ll be rolling on this one.”

“Yes, sir.”

Which meant everything was to be taped.

FIVE

Just before Captain Dan Gray slit the throat of one of Hartline’s mercenaries, the man gasped, “Just outside Pekin.”

Gray took the life from the bullet-riddled man with one expert slash. He looked at his team. “You all heard him. Get on the horn and call the others on tach.”

That done, one of his men said, “Damn sure narrows it some.”

“Damn sure does, lads,” Gray grinned, wiping his bloody knife on the dead man’s shirt. “Let’s go.”

They were fifty miles south of Pekin.

Matt let the tortured body of the mercenary fall to the cold white earth. He looked at the mercenary’s trussed-up buddy. His eyes were as cold as the snow that was slowly being stained red under the body of the merc.

“You want to die this hard?” Matt asked.

“Man—you’re nuts!”

That got him a kick in the teeth. The mercenary spat out pieces of broken teeth and blood. “I’d rather not die at all.”

Matt just looked at him.

“Outside Pekin—‘bout ten miles.”

“Which direction?”

“East.”

Matt cut his throat and left him beside his buddy.

The ex-Green Beret smiled at the mercenary. “My granddaddy used to tell me stories about his granddad. He rode with the Comancheros in Texas. Ever seen a man hung up by his ankles with his head ‘bout a foot from a slow fire?”

Ike and an ex-Marine Force Recon squatted in the cold empty house and waited.

“You wouldn’t do that to me?” the mercenary blustered.

Ike’s team member grinned. It was, the mercenary thought, the ugliest grin he had ever seen.

“I guess you would,” the mercenary said. “I tell you where she is, I die easy—is that it?”

“You got it.”

“Tremont. Just outside Pekin.” The mercenary cut his eyes to Ike. “Long time, Mississippi boy.”

“It’s growing very short, Longchamp.”

“We went through UDT together, Ike.”

“That don’t make us brothers.”

“I don’t think you can do it, nigger-lover,” the onetime UDT man said with a grin.

He was still grinning as Ike shot him through the heart with a silenced .22 Colt Woodsman.

“I reckon he figured camaraderie went further than it oughtta,” the ex-Green Beret said.

“He never was worth a shit at figurin,’” Ike said. “Let’s go.”

“Let’s stop dancing, General,” Ben said. “Sit down and put the cards face up.”

The AF general smiled and removed a small boxlike object from his briefcase.

Ben ruefully returned the man’s smile.

Altamont began a search with the dial until Ben stopped him with a curt slash of his hand. “I’m taping, General.” He punched a button on his desk. “Stop taping, Susie.”

“Yes, sir,” she replied.

“Am I to take you at your word, Mr. President?”

“I don’t lie, General.”

The general studied Ben’s face for several long seconds. “All right, sir. I believe you.”

“Why so hinky about my taping our conversation?”

“You have… ah… shall we say, more than your share of people who dislike you intensely.”

“To say the least. That isn’t news.”

“You are aware of my brother backing Lowry and Cody and Hartline?”

“Yes.”

“He is not loyal to you, sir.”

“Are you?”

Altamont smiled. “Yes, sir—believe it or not. I was the one feeding false information to my brother and his… ah… colleagues.”

Rain began drumming on the window, the drops mixed with ice and sleet. The winter sky darkened, casting a shadowy pall on the Oval Office and its occupants. Ben waited.

“I want you to know I am not a traitor to my country, sir. I was one of those who met in the Missouri lodge, back in ‘88. Just before the bombings.”

“Yes, I know.”

Tension, heavy and ominous, hung in the huge room as the room filled with men in groups of twos and threes. Each man seemed to know exactly where to sit, although no name tag designated individual place. The men looked at each other, nodded, and took their places at the huge square table.

The men were military. Line officers and combat-experienced chiefs and sergeants. Career men.

There were generals and colonels of all branches; fifteen sergeant majors and master chiefs making up the enlisted complement.

Guards were sentried around the two hundred acres of Missouri hill country. They wore sidearms in shoulder holsters under their jackets.

“Who ordered this low alert the press is talking about?” the question was tossed out.

“It came out of the Joint Chiefs. It’s confused the hell out of a lot of units and caused several hundred thousand men to be shifted around, out of standard position. Goddamn, it’s going to be days before they get back to normal. We not only don’t know who issued the orders, but why.”

“Maybe to get us out of position for the big push?”

“I thought we had more time—months even?”

“Something’s happened to cause them to speed up their timetable,” General Vern Saunders of the Army said. “That means we’ve got to move very quickly.”

“Hell, Vern,” General Driskill of the Marine Corps said, “what can we do… really? We’re up against it. We all think we know where ‘it’ is. But we’re not certain. Do we dare move? If we do, what will be the consequences?”

Admiral Mullens of the Navy looked around him, meeting all eyes. “I don’t think we dare move.”

Sergeant major of the Army, Parley, stirred.

The admiral said, “If you have something on your mind, Sergeant Major, say it. We’re all equal here.”

“Damned if that’s so!” a Marine sergeant major said.

Laughter.

Parley said, “I don’t believe we can afford to move. But if we don’t, what do we do—just sit on our hands and wait for war?”

“I think it’s out of our hands,” Admiral Newcomb of the Coast Guard said. “We’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t. If we do expose the location of the sub—where we think it is—we stand a good chance of war. A very good chance of war. I think we’re in a box. If we expose the traitors, they’ll fire anyway. And we’re not supposed to have that type of missile.”

“Which is a bad joke,” Sergeant Major Rogers of the Marine Corps said in disgust. “Russia’s still got us outgunned two to one in missiles of the conventional nuclear type. God only knows how many germ-type warheads they have.” He forced a grin. “Of course, we have a few of those ourselves. Jesus! Thirty damned guys control the fate of the entire world. Even worse than that, if our intelligence is correct, it’s a double double cross.”

Master Chief Petty Officer Franklin, of the Navy, looked across the table. “Admiral? Do you—any of you—know for sure just who we can trust?”

The admiral shook his head. “No, not really. We don’t know how many of our own people are in on this… caper.”

“You mean, sir,” a colonel asked, “one of us might be in on it?”

“I would say the odds are better than even that is true.”

A Special Forces colonel said, “General? You think some of my people are involved in this?”

“No,” General Saunders said. “Our intelligence people—of all services—seem to agree on one point: no special troops involved. But this touches all branches of the service, not just in this country, but all countries—Russia included.” His smile was grim. “I take some satisfaction in that. Those men in the sub have friends all over the world. That’s why they’ve been able to hide for so long.”

“Then Bull and Adams are really alive?”

“Yes. I talked with Bull. It came as quite a shock to me.”

A master chief said, as much to himself as to those around him, “I really don’t understand what they have to do with this… operation.”

“Really… neither do we,” an admiral admitted. “But we do have these facts, one of which is obvious: Bull and Adams faked their deaths years ago, in ‘Nam; we know they are both superpatriots, Adams more than Bull when it comes to liberal-hating. All right. We put together this hypothesis: Adams and Bull had a plan to overthrow the government—if it came to that—using civilian… well, rebels, let’s call them, along with selected units of the military. Took years to put all this together. But the use of civilian rebels failed; couldn’t get enough of them in time. We think. We know for a fact that many ex-members of the Hell Hounds turned them down cold.”

“How many men do they have?”

“Five to six thousand, at the most. We think.”

“That’s still a lot of people. And knowing Bull and Adams, those men are trained guerrilla fighters. How have they managed to keep that many people secret for so long?”

The admiral allowed himself a tight smile. “You didn’t know the Bull, did you?”

“No, sir.”

“If you had known either of them, you wouldn’t have asked.”

“I knew both of them,” a Ranger colonel said. “If they even suspected a member of any of their units was a traitor, they would not hesitate to kill them—war or peace.”

“I see. So, Bull came up with the sub plan?”

General Saunders shook his head. “We don’t think so. We believe it was Adams’s idea. I couldn’t discuss that with Bull; only had two minutes with him. Besides, he and Adams have been friends for twenty-five years. But I did manage to plant a seed of doubt in his mind. We believe Adams has lost control; slipped mentally. Mr. Kelly of the CIA shares that belief.”

“There is something I don’t understand,” a Coast Guard officer said. “Obviously, this plan had been on the burner for a long time—years. To overthrow the government, I mean. Why have they waited so long?”

“We don’t know,” the general replied. “And we’ve got dozens of computers working on the problem right at this minute. I didn’t get a chance to ask the Bull that. So many questions I wanted to ask. Men, I don’t think we have a prayer of stopping those people on the sub. I think we’re staring nuclear germ warfare right in its awful face and there isn’t a goddamned thing we can do about it.”

“I gather,” a Marine officer said, “the Joint Chiefs don’t know about this?”

“We don’t know if they do or not,” Admiral Mullens said. “But we can’t approach any of them for fear one of them is involved.”

“And we can’t do to them what we’re about to do to each other,” General Driskill said, as an aide, as if on cue, wheeled in a cart with a machine on it.

All the men had taken these tests before; all had the highest security rating possible. The machine was a psychological stress evaluator. PSE. Of the most advanced type.

“Sergeant Mack is the best PSE technician around,” General Driskill said with a smile. He laid a pistol on the table before him. “This won’t take long.”

A few seconds ticked by. An Air Force colonel tried to light a cigarette. His hands were shaking so badly he finally gave up the idea of smoking. He met the hard eyes of the Marine general. “Save yourself the trouble, General. I don’t know where the sub is; I don’t know who on the JCs—if anyone—is involved in this operation; and I don’t know anyone who does know.”

“You damned fool!” Driskill snapped at him. “Don’t you people realize—or care—you’re bringing the world to the brink of holocaust?”

“Oh, the hell with that!” the colonel said. “Let Russia and China fight it out. Let them destroy each other. We’ll pick up the pieces and be on top once more.”

“So that’s it,” someone muttered.

The Air Force colonel smiled.

“I don’t believe that’s all of it,” General Crowe of the Air Force said, pulling out a pistol. He pointed it at the colonel. “You traitorous son of a bitch. Which one of the Joint Chiefs is it?”

The colonel was suddenly calm with the knowledge he would never leave the room alive. He was not going to squirm; would not give any of them that satisfaction. He lit a cigarette with steady hands and let his gaze touch each man. “I don’t know—and that’s being honest with you. I think it’s an aide, but I’m not sure. You can test me; I won’t fight it.”

He was tested. He knew nothing of substance.

“Explain what you know!” General Crowe snapped, holding the .38. “I’ve seen men tortured before, sonny.”

“I don’t know who the architect is; neither do the men on the sub. That was deliberate.” No one in the room believed him. “My orders are to report what I heard here, that’s all.”

“He’s lying!” a master chief said.

General Crowe said, “Colonel, make it easy on yourself. We can do this one of several ways. We’re not savages, but the fate of the world may very well rest in this room.”

The colonel glanced at his watch. A smile tugged at one corner of his mouth. He gave the general a Washington, DC, phone number.

“Trace it,” Driskill told Sergeant Major Rogers.

“Let’s tighten up the loose ends, Colonel. Too many ropes dangling in the breeze.”

The colonel again glanced at his watch. After a slight smile and a deep breath, almost a sigh of relief, he said, “We—those of us in the operation—knew that Brady would eventually put it all together and go to President Fayers.”

“Harold Brady of the CIA?”

“Yes. We hoped he wouldn’t put it together until after the elections.” He glanced at his watch.

“Why are you always lookin’ at your goddamned watch?” an AF commando asked. “You takin’ medicine?”

“He’s stalling!” a SEAL said. “Playing for time.”

The colonel was hit in the mouth with a short, hard right fist, slamming him out of his chair. General Driskill kicked the man to his feet and shoved him back in the chair.

“Now, speak!” the general barked.

The colonel shook his head, wiped blood from his mouth, then smiled.

“What do you find amusing about all this?” he was asked.

The colonel’s smile broadened.

“Because,” Admiral Newcomb said quietly, “there aren’t going to be any elections—right, Colonel?”

“That’s right, Admiral.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s 1207, that’s why.”

“Explain.”

“Brady put it all together much sooner than we expected. I should have received a phone call before 1145 hours. I didn’t. That means our computers have concluded that no one can beat Hilton Logan in the fall elections. Even if it’s close, too close, no clear majority, it’ll be thrown into House, Logan will come out on top, and that liberal son of a bitch will find out we’ve built new nukes and order them destroyed.”

General Saunders leaned close. “Son—don’t do it. Don’t do this to your country. Logan is just a man.” He grimaced. “Not much of a man, but still a man. We can weather the storm.”

“No, we can’t, General.” The colonel’s voice was low, his eyes sad. “This country’s had it. We’re moving back to the left and we can’t allow that to happen. This is the only way we can get back on top. China will give Russia every missile she’s had hidden for years, then pour half a billion troops across the border. They’ll destroy each other. The two-bit countries will blow each other off the map once we start the dance. Africa will go like a tinderbox, the Mideast with it.” His eyes grew wild with fanaticism.

“And what of America?” General Crowe asked.

“Oh, we’ll take casualties. Somewhere in the seventy-five to ninety-million range; you all know the stats. But we’ll come out far better than any major power. When we’re back on top, this time, by God, we’ll stay there.”

“You’re crazy!” Sergeant Major Parley blurted. “My God, man—think of all the innocent people you’re killing. You guys are fucking nuts!”

Rogers came back into the room. “That number in DC’s been disconnected. What’s happening here?”

“Holocaust,” a buddy informed him.

Driskill looked at the colonel. “I believe the colonel is about to give us all the details, aren’t you, superpatriot?”

The colonel laughed. “Sure, why not. There isn’t a damned thing any of you can do about it.”

Only blow your fucking head off when you’re through flapping your gums, General Crowe thought, his hands tightening on the butt of the .38.

“There won’t be any election,” the turncoat said. “Not for a long, long time. The military is going to be forced into taking over the country: suspending the constitution and declaring martial law. That’s all we wanted, all along. All we were doing, once we learned Brady was onto us, was buying time—getting set. We’re five days from launch.”

The men in the room sucked in their guts. One hundred and twenty hours to hell.

“No one could have stopped us—even if you had found out. You couldn’t have gone to the Chinese to tell them the Russians were going to launch against them. No proof. Big international stink was all you would have accomplished. Same if you’d gone to the Russians. It all boils down to this: An American sub will launch American missiles. Both countries would have turned on you. You brass know the type of missiles we’re going to fire. Missiles so top secret not even the president knew of their existence. You clever boys got too clever, that’s all. We used your cleverness against you, that’s all. Oh, and don’t blame the old Bull—he knows nothing about it. It’s Adams all the way.”

“What type of missiles are you using?”

“Supersnoop missiles,” Admiral Mullens answered the question. “Thunderstrikes. Neither side has anything that will stop them. Needless to say, we’re not supposed to have them. When the Russians learned we were building them, they signed SALT 5—that is the only reason they signed it. Neither the president nor Congress know anything about the Thunderstrikes.”

“I can feel the lid being slowly nailed on the coffin,” a Navy man said. He looked at the AF colonel. “What about him?”

General Crowe jacked back the hammer on the .38 and shot the colonel between the eyes.

“Good shot, Turner,” General Driskill observed.

Five days later, the world exploded in germ and nuclear warfare.

“I often wondered what happened in that room,” Ben said. “I’m glad you cleared it up.”

“I’d hate for anything even remotely resembling that bombing to happen again,” General Altamont said.

“You’re waltzing again,” Ben said. “Come on, General, say it.”

“Do you know what SST means, Mr. President?”

“Wasn’t that a plane?”

Altamont smiled. “Would that it were. It means Safe Secure Trailers. In 1988, this nation had forty of them. They were used to transport inactive atomic or hydrogen bombs, missile warheads, uranium or plutonium—things of that nature.”

Ben felt a chill surround him. “Go on,” he said softly.

“When the bombing began back in ‘88, a few of those SSTs were on the road—despite the SALT treaty. The drivers headed for cover. Two of those SSTs took shelter at a secret underground storage depot in New Mexico. They were found last year.”

“I don’t think I’m going to like the ending to this story,” Ben said.

“No, sir,” General Altamont said. “I don’t believe you are.”

Six

Jerre was surprised when she answered the doorbell. Jake Devine and Lisa stood on the porch. She motioned them in.

Lisa came right to the point, the words exploding from her mouth in a rush of words. “Me and Jake talked it over last night, Miss Jerre. We’ll help you get out and away if you’ll let us go with you.”

Jerre looked at the mercenary. He nodded his head. “I’ve had it with Hartline, Jerre. He was bad when I first met him—I’m no angel myself—but Hartline is nuts. I’ve told Lisa everything I’ve ever done. I didn’t leave a thing out—including ordering the execution of several civilians over in Indiana. Says that doesn’t make any difference to her. Said she loves me. I know I love her.”

Jerre believed him, for Lisa had confided in her more than once about her feelings toward Jake and what he had told her.

“When?” she asked.

“It’ll have to be in open daylight,” Jake said. “How about tomorrow at noon?”

“I’ll be waiting. What about the guards?”

“They won’t say anything if you’re with me,” Jake assured her. “But they’ll be on our asses like bears to honey in less than an hour—bet on it.”

“Do we have a chance?”

The mercenary shrugged. “Fifty-fifty.”

“I’ll take it.”

Lisa hugged her. “We’ll be here at noon tomorrow.”

Jerre watched them leave. It was growing dark out, spitting snow.

“Whoa, Colonel McGowen!” Matt fought to keep from screaming the words. “It’s me, Matt.”

“Damn, boy,” Ike said, lowering his knife. “You ‘bout bought the farm. What the hell are you doin’ here?”

“Same thing you’re doing here. I came to get Jerre.”

Ike and his team had surprised the young man in the deserted house, just outside of Tremont.

“Old home week, lads,” the voice came out of the darkness.

The men spun around, weapons at the ready. Ike grinned when he saw Dan Gray in the dim light that was preceding wintry dusk.

“Well now,” Ike said, lowering his CAR-15. “I reckon they’ll soon be enough ol’ boys here to put what’s left of Hartline plumb out of business.”

Dan winced. “Colonel McGowen, you certainly have a way with the English language. How many in your team?”

“Twenty-one, all told. Rest will group with me in the morning. Hour ‘fore dawn.”

“That gives us just a bit over fifty fighters,” Dan said with a grin. “Oh, my, yes. More than ample for the task ahead. Let’s get our teams settled in for the night and make our plans.”

General Altamont removed a piece of paper from his briefcase. The single sheet of white paper had been placed in what looked to Ben an oversized Baggie. “This was delivered to me this morning—at my office at the Pentagon. The messenger was from a courier service. Allied. I tried to find that service listed in the phone book. No such courier service.”

He placed the plastic-enclosed sheet of paper on Ben’s desk. Ben read through the plastic.

Ben looked up. “Kirtland Air Force Base?”

“Yes, sir. I immediately put people checking on any records that still might exist on the movement of old SSTs. We lucked out. A team from New Mexico was dispatched to that storage site. No trace of the drivers, but transport tickets left in the cabs told us what we wanted—wrong choice of word—what we feared. The SSTs were carrying enough materials to make several very large nuclear devices; perhaps a dozen smaller ones.”

“Who sent the message?”

“We have no idea, sir.”

“You are in charge of Air Force Intelligence, are you not, General?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Forgive me. I’m still attempting to put faces with job titles.”

“Understandable, sir.”

“Well, someone obviously doesn’t like me. But what threat is implied here?” he tapped the plastic-encased note.

“I don’t mean to be flip, Mr. President; but your guess is as good as any.”

“From within or from without? Take a guess.”

General Altamont was thoughtful for a moment. “Sir, you have enemies all around you. I don’t believe the Secret Service is in any way involved in this. That’s a gut feeling. Since Cody’s death, you have purged the FBI.” A very slight smile played around the corners of his mouth. “Demoralized it, might be a better word, if you will forgive me. And you are rebuilding it, or reshaping it, back to what it was intended to be. I don’t believe there is any danger there. You have enemies in the armed forces, but none that I am aware of in high or sensitive places. In the House and Senate—yes, surely you know how hated you are among some of those people.”

“Senator Carson,” Ben said with a small smile.

Altamont glanced at him sharply. Then a look of admiration passed briefly across his face. “Not much escapes you, does it, Mr. President?”

“Not much. I wouldn’t trust that old bastard any further than I can spit. And I never was a chewer or a dipper.”

“I don’t have any concrete proof about him. But I can tell you he plays footsie on both sides of the aisle.”

“Don’t I know it.”

“My brother, bless his pseudo-liberal heart, never did let me get too close to the inner circle. So I can’t give you much on them—except their names, and I’m certain you already know that.”

“True.”

“But before I come down too hard on those who lean left, as compared to our thinking, let me say there are some men and women in both Houses who call themselves conservative that are not what I would call in your camp.”

“Yes, and that troubles me, General. Well,” Ben sighed, “stay with this thing,” he once more tapped the letter of warning. “Keep me informed.”

“Yes, sir.” Altamont stood up, retrieved the letter, and left the Oval Office.

When he was certain the general was gone, Ben punched his intercom. “Susie? Have Mitchell put a tail on General Altamont.”

“Yes, sir. Want him to report straight back to you, sir?”

“Yes.”

“Very good, sir.”

“Did he buy it?” Senator Carson asked General Altamont.

“All the way, Bill,” the general said with a laugh.

“When do we detonate the first one?”

“Next week. I’ll blow it in a deserted town so no one is likely to get hurt.”

“Lovely,” the old senator said. Then he slapped Altamont on the back. The three men shared a laugh in the night.

Altamont turned to the Secret Service agent. “When you report back to Raines, tell him I went straight home.”

“Yes, sir,” the agent responded.

“Does Bob Mitchell suspect anything?”

“Not a thing, General. He’s fat, dumb, and happy.”

“Good. Let’s be sure we keep it that way.”

The three men broke apart, walking out of the small park just a few miles from the White House. They got in separate cars and drove away.

“Cute,” Rosita said, stepping from the shadows. “Con que esas tenemos! Gentlemen, I will show you how my mother’s people deal with traitors—very shortly.”

She walked swiftly back to her car, got in, and drove away into the damp night. Not even the president of the United States knew the Spanish-Irish lady had come to Colonel Hector Ramos’s command from Captain Dan Gray’s Scouts. She was as thoroughly trained in the art of counterinsurgency as a person could be. And she was as lethal as a ticking time bomb.

Ben sat alone in his office. He had dismissed Susie, sending her home. The White House was quiet, and he was alone with his thoughts. The twins were with their nanny, in their rooms down the hall, but Ben had no desire to go and play with them. They reminded him too much of Jerre. He wished he had someone to talk with.

He tried Cecil. No, the secretary told him, the VP was out for the evening. A meeting with several department heads.

He knew Dawn had gone out of town; Ike was off in search of Jerre. Lamar was back in Idaho. So many of the old bunch dead and gone.

What the hell was he doing here in the White House? He didn’t want this damned job! Loneliest goddamned job in the world.

And what about those SSTs? The message? Ben Raines beware?

What the hell was that all about?

Damn! but he was tired of double crosses and triple crosses and backbiting and the whole scene.

He wondered if his house in Louisiana was still standing. And suddenly he thought of Salina.

Ben pulled into his driveway at five o’clock in the afternoon. He had been wandering for almost a year since the bombings. Nothing had changed except the lawn had flowers where none had been before. A station wagon parked in the drive.

Since the outskirts of Shreveport, Ben had seen hundreds of blacks. No one had bothered him; they had all been friendly, waving to him and chatting with him when he stopped.

But the vague and somewhat amusing—to him—thought was: he knew how Dr. Livingstone must have felt.

Ben got out of the truck thinking: there is a lot of land to be had. I’m not going to spill any blood for an acre of land in Louisiana.

He felt kind of silly knocking on his own front door. But as he raised his hand to tap on the door, it swung open.

“Come on in, Ben Raines,” Salina said. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

“Hello, Salina.” Ben revised his original appraisal of her: she was not just good-looking. She was beautiful.

“I was about to invite you in, Ben, but that would be rather silly of me, wouldn’t it? This is your house.” She looked at Juno. “What a beautiful animal. What’s his name?”

“Juno.”

She held out her hands and Juno and Ben stepped into the house. Not much had been changed except the house was a great deal cleaner and neater than when he’d left it. He said as much.

She smiled. Lovely. “Most bachelors aren’t much on housekeeping. ‘Sides,” she said, a mischievous light creeping into her eyes, “us coons have been trained for centuries to take care of the master’s house while he’s away seein’ to matters of great import.”

“Knock it off, Salina,” he said, then realized she’d been ribbing him. He gave back as much as he got. “You’re only half-coon. So the house should be only half-clean.”

She laughed. “Call this round a draw. Dinner’s at seven. Guests coming over. We knew you were coming.”

“How?”

“Tom-toms!”

Ben grimaced. “I’ll be hungry by seven, I assure you.”

Her eyes became a flashing firestorm of humor. “Got corn bread, fatback, and greens.”

“Salina, you’re impossible!”

She laughed. “You think I’m kidding?”

She wasn’t.

Cecil and Lila and Pal and Valerie came over. After dinner the six of them sat in the candlelit den and talked.

“Are you planning to stay, Ben?” Cecil asked.

“No. I’m heading over to north Mississippi in the morning, then striking out for the northwest.” He told them about President Logan’s plans to relocate the people; and that most of them were going along with it. Logan’s stripping the citizens of firearms.

It did not surprise Ben to learn they knew more about it than he.

“We won’t bother Logan as long as he doesn’t bother us,” Pal said. “We just want to live and let live.”

Ike’s words, Ben thought.

“You’re welcome to spend the night with us, Ben,” Lila said.

“This is my house,” Ben said.

Lila looked at Salina. “Then perhaps you’d better come with us, Salina.”

“I like it here,” Salina said. Ben could feel her eyes on him.

“It will only cause hard feelings, girl,” Cecil reminded her of Kasim.

“Kasim is a pig!”

“You’re half black, half white,” Lila said, a touch of anger in her voice. “Are you making your choice, is that it?”

“You’re the only one talking color and choices. If Ben is colorblind, so am I.”

Pal and Valerie stayed out of it, as did Ben and Cecil. The two women argued for a few moments until finally, in frustration and anger, Salina jumped to her feet and ran from the room, crying.

After a moment, Juno rose from the floor, stretched, and went into the room after Salina.

Cecil said, “When both man and beast accept a woman, I guess that pretty well settles it.” He lit his pipe. “Be careful, Ben, many of the pressures in an interracial relationship come from within rather than from without.”

“I’m aware of that.”

They spoke for a half hour or more, and Ben found he shared most of Cecil’s ideas and dreams, and that Cecil shared his.

“…You know what I’m saying, Ben. I don’t have to convince you. We both agreed that education on both sides is the key to wiping out hate and racism and all the deadly sins that rip at any society. And we must have conformity to some degree. I agree with that. And I also agree that educated people must get into the home to see that all we’ve talked of is accomplished; but how to do that without becoming Orwellian with it?

“Ben? I didn’t ask for the job of leader down here. One day I looked up and it was being handed to me. No one asked if I wanted it. I don’t want and don’t need any New Africa. I have been accepted in both white and black worlds for years. My father was a psychiatrist and my mother a college professor. I hold a Ph.D.—from a very respectable university. 3.9 average.

“Hilton Logan? He’s a nigger-hater. Always has been. Those of us with any education saw past his rhetoric.

“Kasim? Piss on Kasim. His bread isn’t baked. He was a street punk and that’s all he’ll ever be.

“You’re going to look up someday, Ben—one day very soon, I believe—and the job of leader will be handed to you. Like me, you won’t want it, but you’ll take it because you believe in your dreams of a fair world, fair society. I read you, Ben, like a good book. You’re heading west to the states Logan is leaving alone for a time. And you’re going to form your own little nation. Just like we’re attempting to do here. Good luck to you—you’re going to need it. I—we—may join you out there.”

“You’d be welcome, Cecil. There are too few like you and Lila and Pal and Valerie.”

“And Salina,” Lila said with a twinkle in her eyes.

Ben smiled.

“And you’re right, Ben,” Cecil said. “The root cause is in the home.”

Cecil leaned back and reminisced. “One of my earliest recollections is of Mozart and Brahms. But do you think the average southern white would believe that? Not a chance. He’ll put down soul music—which I abhor—while slugging the jukebox, punching out the howlings and honkings of country music.

“Ben, my father used to sit in his study, listening to fine music while going over his cases, a brandy at hand. My mother was having a sherry—not Ripple—” he laughed,—“going over her papers from the college. My home life was conducive to a moderate, intelligent way of life. My father told me, if I wanted it, to participate in sports, but to keep the game in perspective and always remember it was but a game. Nothing more. No, Ben, I did not grow up as the average black kid. That’s why I know what you say is true. Home. The root cause.

“I went to the opera, Ben—really! How many violent-minded people attend operas? How many ignorant people attend plays and classical concerts? How many bigots—of all races—read Sartre, Shakespeare, Tennyson, Dante?” He shook his head.

“No, you find your bigots and violent-minded ignoramuses seeking other forms of base entertainment. And not just music.

“Do you know why I joined the Green Berets, Ben?”

Ben shook his head.

“So I could get to know violence firsthand. We didn’t have street gangs where I grew up.” He laughed and slapped his knee. “Well, I found out about it, all right; I got shot in the butt in Laos.”

Lila punctured his reminiscences. “Let’s not refight the war. I’ve heard all your stories. Tomorrow is a work day, remember?”

After they all said their good-nights and good-byes, Ben walked into the bedroom. “Are you all right, now?”

“Of course, I am,” Salina’s voice was small in the darkness. “I always lie about bawling and snuffling.”

“You heard everything that was said?”

“Of course, I did. I’m not deaf.”

“Well—you want to head out with me in the morning?”

“Maybe I like it here.”

“Sure. You could always marry Kasim and live happily ever after. Or get killed by Kenny Parr’s mercenaries.”

“The latter preferable to the former.”

“I repeat: would you like to head out with me in the morning?”

“Why should I?”

“You might see some sights you’ve never seen before.”

“Ben, that is a stupid statement for a writer to make. If I haven’t seen the sights before, of course I’d be seeing them for the first time.”

“What?”

“That isn’t a good enough reason, Ben.”

“Well… goddamn it! I like you and you like me.”

“That’s better. Sure you want to travel with a zebra?”

Ben suddenly thought of Ike’s wife, Megan. “I’ll tell everyone you’ve been out in the sun too long. But let’s get one thing settled: when I tell you to step-and-fetch-it, you’d better hump it, baby.”

She giggled. “Screw you, Ben Raines.”

“I also have that in mind.”

She threw back the covers and Ben could see she was naked. And beautiful. “So come on. I assure you, whitey, it doesn’t rub off.”

Ben shook himself back to the present and all the woes it brought with it.

Threats and atomic bombs; unions screaming at him for putting people back to work (that made absolutely no sense to Ben); Congress fighting him on a national health plan while people died from lack of medical care (that had always infuriated Ben); teachers outraged because Ben wanted to nearly double their salaries and have them teach ethics and morals. It seemed that no matter what was good for the nation as a whole, some group or organization howled about it.

“People don’t care, boy,” Lamar’s words returned to him in a whisper of memory. “They don’t care—and never have cared—what is good for the entire population; only for their own little group. Woman shows her titty on TV it’s a sin—never mind that half the babies in America were breastfed and that is their earliest memory. Make sense, Ben? Hell, no! Some church groups want to ban and burn any book that says ‘fuck’ in it while others want to make it legal to have sex with children.

“It’s out of control, Ben; has been since the ‘60s. You just do the best you can in the time given you… then get the hell out of that man-lulling office.”

Ben rose from his desk, stretched, and walked to his quarters. He ordered dinner sent up to him and flipped on the TV.

News. If one wished to call it that.

Organized labor was meeting in Florida, the leaders calling President Raines a dirty communist for practically forcing members to go to work at substandard wages.

Ben chuckled grimly. Only about five percent of the world’s population was working and 3.5 percent of that was in America; he really didn’t see what the union members had to bitch about.

Certain religious groups were screaming at him because he believed what a woman did with her body was that woman’s business and no one else had a right to tell her she could or couldn’t have an abortion.

Civil liberties groups were howling about the death penalty.

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

On and on and on.

Ben turned off the set.

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

Did somebody up there really like him?

Ben decided it had to be a fluke.

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

SEVEN

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

“Smoke?” Dan Gray asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The men and women chuckled, breaking the slight tension.

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

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

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

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

“I hear you.”

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

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

But she was still a prisoner.

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

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

And that shamed her.

She still hated him.

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

He laughed aloud.

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

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

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

He pulled the trigger.

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

But he couldn’t go back to sleep.

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

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

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

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

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

But she knew it was more.

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

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

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

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

But what?

That she didn’t know.

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

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

“What? Say that again.”

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

“Did Chicago send that?”

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

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

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

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

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

She showered, dressed, and hustled to the office.

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

She didn’t know.

She decided to wait one more day.

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

Rosita’s taillights faded into the rainy-sleety gloom of early morning. The man walked to a phone booth and punched out the number.

“She is not what she appears to be,” he said to the voice on the other end.

Carl Harrelson, still smarting from the dressing-down he’d received from Robert Brighton—in front of a crowd, no less, asked, “What name is she using?”

Jim Honing, a reporter for the Richmond Post who occasionally worked with Harrelson said, “Susan Spencer.”

“Wait for me,” Harrelson said. “We’ll toss the place together. I’ll be there in half an hour.”

Jerre rolled from the bed just as Hartline pulled the trigger, the slugs tearing smoking holes in the sheets and mattress.

“Girl! Stay out of there!” she heard Ike’s voice shout.

“Miss Jerre!” Lisa called.

“Setup,” Hartline snarled.

“Lisa!” Jake Devine called. “No!”

Lisa appeared in the doorway just as Hartline jumped for the side window. He paused, spotted the girl, and pulled the trigger. The slugs took the girl in the face, blowing off half her jaw before twisting up into her brain. Dead when she hit the carpet.

Hartline felt the shock of a bullet hit him in the left shoulder, turning him, spinning him, dropping him to one knee. He looked out the window at the savage face of Jake Devine, a gun in his hand. Hartline shot him in the chest and jumped for the shattered window. He hit the ground and rolled as slugs whined around him, cutting paths of death through the thick smoke from the smoke grenades.

He was off and running, serpenting through the smoke and the mist. He jumped into a car and roared off, toward the airstrip.

“To hell with him,” Ike yelled. “Find Jerre.” He stumbled over the dying body of Jake.

“That bedroom,” Jake pointed. “Me and Lisa was going to get her at noon—try and… make a break for it. The kid’s dead, isn’t she?”

“The girl I tried to stop from entering the house?” Ike asked, kneeling down beside the merc.

“Yeah.”

“Yes. Hartline shot her in the face.”

“Least she went quick.”

The sounds of gunfire were fading as the Rebels went about the grisly business of finishing off Hartline’s mercenaries.

“I was tryin’ to do the right thing for once in my life,” Jake said. “As usual, I fucked it up.”

“No,” Ike said softly. “No, you didn’t, partner. You tried.”

Jake held out his hand. “I’d like to shake your hand, mister. If you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind at all,” Ike said, a catch in his voice. He looked up at Jerre, standing over them, tears running down her face.

“She loved you, Jake,” Jerre said.

Jake clasped Ike’s hand hard. “I loved her, too, Miss Jerre.”

The hand went limp. The mercenary died.

Captain Dan Gray cleared his throat. “I think we should give this one a decent sendoff.”

“He’d like that,” Jerre said, shivering in the cold morning air. “I think he was a good man; at least toward the end.”

Jake and Lisa were buried together, arms around each other. Captain Dan Gray read from Ephesians, a few verses about forgiveness, and the service was over.

Jerre looked at Matt, young and tall and strong and fierce-looking with his new beard. She smiled at him.

“Take me home, Matt.”

“But, Ben…”

She shushed him with gentle kiss while Ike and Dan and the others grinned and looked away.

“Home, Matt. You and me—together. I want us to go home.”

Matt blushed and shuffled his feet awkwardly.

“Ain’t love grand?” Ike said.

Captain Gray smiled. “Ah, love, let us be true to one another! for the world, which seems to lie before us like a land of dreams.”

“Now that’s pretty,” Ike said. “I think I heard that on a Rollin’ Stones album.”

Captain Gray looked horrified. “I rather doubt it,” he said frostily. “That was from Matthew Arnold’s Dover Beach.”

“Who’d he pick with?” Ike grinned.

“Cretin!” Gray said. “Philistine.”

Gray was still lecturing him, waving his arms and shouting about the lack of culture in America when Jerre and Matt slipped away from the group and headed for Matt’s pickup truck. They walked hand in hand, smiling at each other.

One of the women in the group mentioned she thought the air about them was a bit steamy.

EIGHT

“You sure you know how to pick this lock?” Harrelson asked.

Honing smiled patiently. “I worked for several gossip rags before I came to Richmond,” he said. “I haven’t seen the lock I couldn’t pick.”

The tumblers meshed, clicked, the door swung open, the apartment yawning darkly in front of the men.

“I still don’t understand why you’re so interested in this half-breed spic,” Honing said, pausing for a moment before entering.

“She lives—supposedly—with Dawn Bellever, our president’s steady pussy. I saw her a dozen times at the White House when I was covering that. One night I was going home and passed this apartment, saw her entering, thought it was strange. I waited for several hours. She never did come back out. I thought at first I might blackmail her into working with me… using her shack job as the carrot, but I never could catch a man with her. That’s why I called you to tail her and find out as much about her as possible. I’ll do anything to get that no-good son of a bitch out of the White House. And maybe this will help.”

“Well, let’s do ‘er,” Honing said.

Together they stepped into the dark apartment.

It was seven o’clock before Ben received the news of Jerre’s rescue. For a time he allowed himself the luxury of sitting quietly in his den, savoring the feelings of joy welling up from deep within him.

Ike had told him of her leaving with Matt, and Ben felt only a slight pang of regret at the news. He knew they had run their course months before and it was time for her to settle in with a good person who loved her and would take care of her and the twins.

The twins.

He would make arrangements for the twins to be sent to Jerre as soon as he knew they were settled in and safe.

Ike was returning to the Tri-States, having told Ben Richmond was a great big pain in the ass, as far as he was concerned. He was a farmer and a fighter; fuck politics.

Ben wished it was that easy for him. God! he wanted so desperately to chuck the whole business of big government right out the nearest window and get the hell back to Tri-States.

But he knew he couldn’t. Knew he was not going to leave any job half done.

He looked at his watch. Eight o’clock. He punched the intercom button.

“How many waiting, Susie?”

“An officeful, boss. Got four holding on the horn.”

“Any of them important?”

“No.”

“Tell ‘em I’ll call back. Who is first?”

“The surgeon general.” She paused for a second. “He’s kind of antsy, boss. Pale looking.” She whispered the last.

“Send him in, Susie.”

“You had your coffee, boss?”

“I could use another cup.”

“Coming up. Two cups.”

Doctor Harrison Lane looked rough. Like he hadn’t slept well in a week. They talked of small things until Susie had brought the coffee and left the room.

“What’s on your mind, Harrison?”

“Rats.”

“I beg your pardon?” Ben paused in lifting the cup to his lips.

“I said rats, Mr. President. Of the family Muridae, genus Rattus. The big rat; I’m guessing it’s the big brown rat.”

“The humpback?”

“If that’s what you wish to call them, yes. You find them in sewers and in garbage dumps and alleys. Ugly bastards. Two—two and a half feet long from nose to tail. Filthy sons of bitches.” He spat out the last and lit his pipe with shaking hands. Ben could see he was wound up tight as a dollar watch.

“But these are bigger rats. I haven’t seen them, Mr. President; only had reports of them. And I hope to God the reports are wrong. I can’t imagine a rat the size of a small poodle.”

“Are you serious?” Ben asked.

“One report said they spotted rats that stood maybe six to eight inches, weighing in at between five to eight pounds.”

“Jesus Christ!”

“The rats are only part of the problem, sir. It’s what they carry on them that worries me.”

“Fleas.”

“Yes, sir. One thing I have confirmed: they are carrying the plague.”

“What kind?” Ben felt a cold shiver race around the base of his spine. The nation had been lucky in that respect. Despite the millions and millions of dead bodies and animal carcasses that rotted under the summer sun of ‘88 immediately following the bombings, there had been no serious outbreaks of disease. No anthrax or airborne deadly viruses.

Yet.

Until now.

“We don’t know.”

“Again, I beg your pardon?”

“It’s… a type of black plague, sir. Bubonic… but it’s more. I wish to hell the CDC was bigger. When Logan relocated the people, the stupid bastard pulled out of Atlanta and left all that equipment to rot and rust.”

Ben smiled. “We have it.”

“Sir?”

“I ordered my personnel to go in and get it. It’s in Tri-States. Most of it safely hidden in concrete storage bunkers, deep underground.”

Harrison matched his smile. “Very good,” he said dryly. “Well, I have the microbiologists and epidemiologist in my department working on it. But… like I said, it’s more—much more. Hemorrhagic pneumonia.”

“Meaning every time they cough, they spread it.”

“Well… yes, you can put it that way.”

“And the blood they spit up—and the phlegm—is contagious?”

“God, yes!”

“I wrote a book about this sort of thing years ago,” Ben said. “In my book the hero wiped it out using… let me think. Yes. Tetracycline, streptomycin, and… I can’t recall the other drug.”

“Chloramphenicol,” the doctor finished it.

“Yes, that was it.”

“Tests indicate the… disease will respond to any of those drugs. But if the victim has already been exposed—already has the disease in his or her system, the success ratio is drastically reduced.”

“I see,” Ben said, shaking his head. “Suppose we initiated a crash program of inoculation—say, oh, tomorrow morning. How long would it take?”

“Weeks, if we’re lucky and have enough of the drugs. But… this is moving much too fast for any ordinary type of plague. Anyway we’re using streptomycin and chloramphenicol, together, in full therapeutic doses as the antibiotic. It isn’t stopping it if the victim has been exposed.”

“You saying that as if Jesus had suddenly lost the power to heal. What’s the matter with tetracycline?”

“Nothing. It’s a good antibiotic. It’s just that we wanted to really punch this disease out so we used the two I told you we were using. Should have stopped it cold. It didn’t. A hundred reported cases so far. Incredible!”

“In layman’s language, Harrison, please.”

The surgeon general rose from his seat to pace the carpet. He stopped, whirled around, and glared at Ben. “I’ll tell you what it means, Mr. President. It means we’ve got a stem-winding son of a bitch on our hands. If we had the drugs to pop everybody in America, and if we could somehow do it in a month—which is impossible. We’d still lose half the population—if we were lucky! One infected person can infect five hundred, a thousand others. One person on a bus, a plane, can infect 75 percent of the other passengers. They in turn infect everybody they come in contact with. And this is moving faster than anything I have ever seen. Three days from contact to death.”

Ben jumped to his feet. "Three days!"

“Three days, sir. First twelve hours brings a fever and coughing. Next twelve hours brings pneumonia, bloody phlegm spraying everybody close. Then huge sores in the groin and armpits, running with pus. High fever, blackouts. Unconsciousness—death.”

“You should have been a writer, doctor,” Ben told him. “I don’t recall anything quite so graphic.”

“Or deadly,” Harrison said.

Ben buzzed his secretary. “Cancel all appointments for the rest of the day. Tell the people I’m not feeling well. Get Cecil in here.”

“Mr. President? Where is the washroom? I’ve been up all night and my eyes feel like they are full of sand.”

Ben pointed. When the bathroom door had closed, he jerked up the phone and dialed the emergency number in the Tri-States. Somebody manned that constantly since Ben took over as president.

“Yes, sir?” the voice two thousand miles away said.

“This is General Raines. Don’t talk, just listen. Close the borders immediately. Start a rodent eradication program right now! But for God’s sake, be careful and don’t handle any of them. I don’t know how far a flea can jump, but I’m betting it’s two or three feet. I don’t want a panic; just tell Doctor Chase—within the hour—that the Middle Ages is upon us with all the blackness that period brought. You have ample supplies of vaccines in storage. He’ll know what to do. Tell him I’ll call him at 1800 hours, his time. You got all this?”

“On tape, sir.”

Ben hung up just as Doctor Lane walked into the room. Cecil opened the office door just as Lane was sitting down.

“Tell Cecil what you just told me,” Ben said. “I’ve got some calls to make from the outer office.”

The Joint Chiefs were meeting when Ben called. General Rimel was on the phone in seconds. “Yes, sir, Mr. President?”

Ben put it on the line for the men, knowing his voice was on the table speaker. “I want all airline flights canceled immediately. Ground every plane in America except military and emergency medical flights. Inoculate your people and have them cordon off the cities. Nobody gets through. Understood—nobody! I’ll have the state police in each state begin setting up roadblocks. I want the citizens to stay put. You people coordinate with the local police in this. I don’t want one word of this to leak out until your troops are in place. If we all pull together we can save maybe half the population—maybe more if we’re lucky. I want all interstate commerce halted by no later than 1200 hours today. No trucks, no buses, no cars, nothing. If I have to do it, I’ll impose martial law to keep people home.

“Get your people inoculated and have every available medic ready to go assist the private sector by 0600 in the morning.”

Then he told him about the bomb threat.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” General Franklin roared. “What kind of shit are these people trying to pull?”

“I don’t know what they want or what they represent,” Ben told the JCs. “And I don’t have time to worry about it. You people get rolling and stay in contact with this office.”

He hung up and walked back into his office. Cecil looked shaken by the news. Harrison looked up at Ben.

“I got a phone call, Mr. President. Six more cases confirmed in the past hour. So far it’s confined east of the Mississippi River.”

“Don’t count on it remaining so.”

“I’m not, sir.”

Ben told the men what he had ordered done.

“But…” Harrison sputtered. “I thought Congress had to be consulted before something like that was done?”

“I don’t have time to consult Congress and have them jaw about it for two weeks. Those people would blither and blather and waste precious time arguing about ten dozen things before they made up their minds to do anything about it.”

A doctor from the joint military hospital located just outside Richmond walked in.

“I called him,” Harrison said, responding to the unspoken questions in Ben’s eyes.

“Roll up your sleeves,” the doctor said. “This is going to hurt you more than it does me, I assure you.”

“You’re not related to Lamar Chase, are you?” Ben grinned.