Krigel looked at the retreating derriere of Dawn. “No shit!” he said.
Work halted briefly outside the tent as laughter erupted from inside.
“What’s going on there?” a dark-haired, small young woman asked Dawn.
“Damned if I know. Dawn Bellever.” She stuck out her hand.
“Rosita O’Brien.” The women shook hands. “I’m with Colonel Ramos’s detachment. Sounds like the brass is having a stag party in there.”
“That… very well may be true. Boys being what they are.” She had a pretty good idea what the men were laughing about.
“I heard that. What’s going on, Dawn? Why all the commotion?”
Dawn opened her mouth, then closed it. She shook her head. “Beats me.”
Rosita laughed. “Okay, I get it. Well, I’ll get the word in time.”
“Come on,” Dawn took the woman’s arm. “Walk with me to the mess tent.”
“Thanks, but I’ve already eaten.”
“No, I’ve got to get some coffee for the brass.”
Rosita stopped dead in her tracks. “I’m no goddamn delivery person.” The fire in her eyes was a smoldering emerald green. “And neither are you; you’re a soldier, remember?”
“Sure. I also remember something else, as well.”
“Oh?” the little Irish-Spanish lady stood with hands on hips. “What’s that?”
“Ben said he wanted some coffee.”
“Ben? Oh… I see. I think.” Her face brightened. “Some people get all the luck. Come on, let’s get that coffee. I have a million questions I’d like to ask you.”
“If they’re about General Raines, forget it.”
“Aw, come on, Dawn! We’re on the same team, aren’t we?”
“Sure,” Dawn’s reply was dry, then she joined in Rosita’s laughter.
Hartline ignored the girl’s pleadings and shifted her into another position. “That’s my little fox, now,” he laughed. “Isn’t this way all better?”
She sobbed her reply.
“Oh? Well… let’s do it this way, then.” He grinned as he took her, his grin broadening as Nancy Olivier’s cries filled the bedroom. She jerked under his assault and tried to pull away. His hands held her, clamped tightly on her shoulders and he bulled his way inside her. “You just hang on, now, baby—it’ll start gettin’ good in a minute or so. Ol’ Sam Hartline guarantees it.”
The girl groaned as his manhood filled her.
“Yes, indeed,” Hartline laughed. “Won’t momma be surprised?”
“Okay,” Jake Devine spoke to the roomful of young people. “This is what I want you folks to do: Now you’ve all seen the treatment your friends are receiving; you’ve seen that the talk of mistreatment and torture is nothing but a pack of lies. So I want you all to spread the word in the towns I’ve given you. Tell the folks no harm will come to any of them. All they have to do is lay down their arms and go back to work. My people will come through and gather up the guns and they won’t see us again. That’s a promise. Now I’ve given you cases of food and clothing for the people—you young folks distribute them as evenly as possible; be sure the old folk get enough to eat and warm clothing and medicine. That’s all, kids—take off.”
Lisa was still in his quarters, sleeping. Jake watched the young people file out to the cars and trucks waiting for them. They were well-fed, wore new clothing, and had sidearms belted around their waists.
“I gotta hand it to you, Jake,” a lieutenant said, walking up to him. “This way is a hell of a lot better than shooting it out with the citizens. Do you think it’ll work?”
“Slicker than an ol’ redbone hound. Kindness always works better than force.”
“Fine-lookin’ little gal you picked out for yourself, too.”
“You like her? Hell, John. Soon as we move from this area into Illinois, I’ll give her to you, then you can pass her around when you get tired of the same old snatch.”
“How about the ones we’re holding now—that bunch from Huntington?”
“How are they responding to the talks?”
“Very well. We have the few diehards separated from those who just want to go back home and forget all about fighting the government.”
“Okay. Send those back home.”
“What about those we couldn’t brainwash?”
Jake looked at him. “Shoot them.”
Ben looked at the message just handed him. He gritted his teeth and swore, loud and long. When he had exhausted his profane vocabulary, he looked at Conger.
“Move your people out of here this afternoon. Block all the bridges leading from Indiana into Kentucky, starting at Madison. Pull some extra personnel from General Krigel’s troops. We’ve got to write off Indiana. We’ve lost it. I don’t want the same shit to happen in Kentucky.” He glanced at Cecil. “Radio Captain Gray. Tell him to start a guerrilla movement, working east. I want a terror campaign against all federal police, effective immediately. General Krigel, your people will have the states of Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana. General Hazen, take Alabama, Georgia, and Florida. Hector, North and South Carolina. My bunch will move in behind Major Conger and secure Kentucky, then move into Virginia.”
Ben looked at his commanders. “Hit hard, hit fast, and make it brutal. If they work for the government of the United States… they have two choices, either quit, or die. Any questions?”
“Kick-ass time,” Hector said, getting to his feet.
The men filed from the tent. In exactly nineteen hours the second civil war in one hundred and thirty-eight years would rock the nation, eleven years after the world had exploded in nuclear and germ warfare. It was a testimony to the desire of men and women who wished to live free: free of government constraints, free of government bureaucracy, free of crime, free to live their own lives free of fear of the central government.
Free.
PART TWO
ONE
Ben had been wrong in thinking the guts had been torn from Americans; that they would not fight; that they did not know the tactics of defense.
What had happened in America was typical of any nation of people who had been so heavily ruled and governed from one central point; who had had the right to defend what was theirs taken from them; who had been stripped of nearly every constitutional right supposedly “guaranteed” them by their forefathers; and who had been
