taking on diversion. Abruptly, without any warning, the silent forest erupted into blood and violence. A platoon of paratroopers, quiet and deadly, came at the Rebels; the peaceful woods turned into hand-to-hand combat.
With his old Thompson on full automatic, Ben burned a clip into the paratroopers, bringing down half a dozen. Salina screamed behind him, Ben spun in time to see her impaled on a bayonet. Her mouth opened and closed in silent agony; her hands slowly crawled snakelike down her stomach to clutch at the rifle barrel, to try to pull the hot pain from her stomach. The bayonet had driven through the unborn baby. Salina screamed as she began miscarrying.
“Jesus Christ!” the trooper yelled, as he saw what he had done. He tried to pull the blade from her belly. The blade was stuck. He pulled the trigger—reflex from hard training—and blew the blade free, sending half a dozen slugs into Salina, throwing her backward from the force.
Ben shot the trooper through the head with his .45 pistol, blowing half the man’s head off. Salina collapsed to the ground.
Ben was at her side as his Rebels, offering no mercy, took the fight to the troopers. The Rebels took no prisoners.
Salina was fading quickly. She smiled a bloody smile and said, “Sorry ‘bout the baby, honey. But with our luck it would probably have been a koala bear.”
She closed her eyes and died.
At Ben’s orders, the Rebels drifted silently into the forest, taking their wounded, leaving their dead; Salina and the boy lay among the still and the quiet and the dead. Ants had already begun their march across her face. She lay in a puddle of thickening blood, one hand on the arm of her dead child.
TEN
“How are the new people working out, fitting in?” Ben asked Cecil.
“A-okay, so far. Slater and Green are both prior-service. Air Force. Judy Fowler’s going to be fine. I think they’re all going to make it, Ben. But we’re getting to the point of overtraining.”
“Some of the people getting edgy?”
“More than a few. Jimmy Brady is hell-on-wheels with a rifle. Ike says he’s never seen anyone better. Dawn Bellever is never going to be any great shakes with any weapon, but she managed to qualify on the range. I’ve assigned her to your office,” he dropped that in without pausing.
“All right,” Ben said absently. “I want only the very best to hit the field—if that time comes. Assign all the others to non-combat duties; but make sure they understand they are to fight if it comes to that.”
Cecil looked at his friend.
Ben looked up, catching the worry in the man’s eyes. “Something, Cecil?”
“Guess I’ve delayed long enough, Ben—you’d better hear it from me and not from the grapevine.”
“We’ve been together a long time, Cecil. Never been any lies between us.”
“Call a spade a spade, eh, Ben?” Cecil laughed at the old joke.
“I’m glad you said that and not me, buddy. Come on, Cecil—what gives?”
“Tina.”
Ben sat up in his chair.
“She’s left the base camp.”
“Got her a boyfriend?”
“No, Ben,” Cecil spoke softly. “She’s gone with Gray’s Scouts. Out in the field.”
Ben started to blow wide open. He caught himself and forced himself to calm down. Ben took several deep breaths and relaxed in the chair. “I keep forgetting she is a grown woman. And damn good at her work. But I would like to know why I wasn’t told of this.”
“You know the rules, Ben: no questions asked in that outfit.”
“Where are they training?”
Cecil shrugged. “I don’t know, Ben. If I did, I’d tell you. You know that’s the way Captain Gray wanted it. But he is due to call in next week… if you choose to interfere.” There was a definite note of disapproval in Cecil’s voice.
Ben picked up on it. “I won’t do that, Cecil. It’s her life.”
“I didn’t think you would,” Cecil said with a smile. “Thought I knew you pretty well.” He left the big tent, walking toward his own. He thought: I know Tina is adopted; but Ben thinks of her as his own. I wonder how I would react if a kid of mine joined that crazy bunch?
Gray’s Scouts were formed during the weeks just after the government invasion and consequent crushing of the Rebel’s dream. Their job was to infiltrate government offices; act as saboteurs; perform long-range recon into enemy territory; and anything else Captain Dan Gray might dream up that was dirty, dangerous, and bloody.
Captain Gray had left Special Forces before the invasion, having no taste for civilized man fighting civilized man, when, as was the case, the “enemy” was simply a group of men and women attempting to build a livable society and take care of their own.
Which the Tri-States were doing perfectly well and without so-called “Federal Government advice.”
Gray had spent five years in Britain’s SAS (Special Air Service) and was as wild and randy as those boys are trained to be.
To date they had been involved in only minor hit-and-run operations against the military units loyal to Lowry and Cody. But like Ben’s Rebels in the mountains, they were chomping at the bit for a good fight.
It would not be long in coming… for any of them.
Colonel Hector Ramos headed the first convoy to reach the mountains. He and his personnel set up on the western boundaries of the Great Smokies, patrolling a seventy-mile stretch of terrain, from the Georgia line to just south of Maryville, Tennessee. They had traveled across Texas, Louisiana, then angled northeast through Mississippi and a portion of Alabama.
General Bill Hazen’s convoy rolled in the day after Ramos arrived and took up positions from Maryville to Newport. Major Conger was less than three hours behind him. Conger deployed his personnel—the smallest detachment—as roaming scouts and listening posts along the Virginia line.
General Krigel pulled in last and set up positions on the eastern side of the mountains, from Greenville, Tennessee, well down into North Carolina.
The combined forces were not, as great armies go, terribly impressive. But there were no more great armies of the world. What world remained was still staggering and reeling under the aftereffects of the great war of 1988. So now, ten thousand armed men and women was a very impressive sight to behold.
Especially as they began setting up local militia and kicking out all federal police and arming the people.
“You mean,” a man in Greenville asked a Rebel captain, “it’s as simple as this?”
“Nothing is as simple as it appears,” the Rebel told him, “if you don’t have the balls to use that weapon we just gave you. Don’t think for one second the central government isn’t going to come in here after we leave. Because they damn sure will send agents in. But if those agents see that you people are prepared to fight and die for your beliefs, and are organized and trained to do so, they’ll back off. They don’t have the people to fight an entire nation; they can’t put you all in jail—not an entire nation. It would deplete the workforce and destroy the government. It’s just like General Black said back in the mid-eighties, in one of his books: If the people would organize, by the thousands, and just stop paying taxes—what is the government going to do? Put several million people in jail? How? Where? Fifteen police officers in this town are going to arrest five thousand armed citizens? No way. It’s all been a colossal bluff and we bought it for nearly two hundred years.
“Now General Black is not advocating total anarchy—not at all. All he wants to do is restore power back to the people. And it looks like a gun is the only way to accomplish that.
“All right—you’ve got the guns and the meeting places. The rest is up to you. We’re not going to wet-nurse you. If you don’t want freedom, fine, hang it up and roll over and take it in the ass. But if you love freedom, then
