carefully, and my mind is made up.”
The men waited for Ben to give the order to start the killing.
“Cody and Hartline are going to be very disappointed in the Rebel movement for the next six months to a year, I’m thinking.” Ben smiled at the startled and puzzled looks on the faces of the men. “We are going to rebuild —from the ground up. We are going to reopen old training bases in the mountains and the deserts; we are going to stockpile and train and we are going to keep our heads down low; so low if we got any lower our buttons would be in the way.”
Ben began his restless pacing. It was his habit when deep in excited thought. “One year from this date, gentlemen, we are going to strike. We are going to hit so hard, and in so many places, with such force, we are going to knock the pins right out from under Cody, Hartline, and the members of Congress who support them. On June 2, 2000, we are going to take this government and give it back to the people.” He smiled. “At least take the first step, that is.
“Ike, get on the horn and get our field commanders ready to receive. I want the message coded and scrambled. Tell them there will not be one incidence of revenge or retaliation for the hanging of Samuelson and his daughter or for the breaking up of the cells. Not until
“One year, gentlemen. One year. When civilization takes its first struggling steps into the year 2000, that is when we strike.”
The meeting was over.
Outside the tent, out of earshot, Cecil said, “I thought Tri-States’ undertaking was a mammoth operation. But Ben’s about to start taking some giant steps, Ike.”
Before Ike could reply, Doctor Chase said, “Well, boys, I’ll say this for the crazy goddamn gun soldier: if anyone can do it, he can.”
By mid-summer of 1999, the survivors of the bombings of 1988 came full-face with hard reality: America was in the grip of a police state.
All police were federalized; they could cross city limits, lines, county lines, state lines. The Federal Bureau of Investigation seemed to change overnight, turning into an organization of frightening proportions. Some citizens compared the new FBI to Nazi Germany’s Gestapo of years past.
One word against the government in Richmond would bring the police or the FBI thundering to a person’s door. No warrant needed; no knock required.
The Big Eye and the Big Ear seemed to be everywhere. No one knew whom to trust. The government would pay handsomely for information of citizens disloyal to the government. An informant would get extra rations of meat and sugar and gas and clothing.
Shortly after the worldwide bombings of 1988, when Hilton Logan was installed as president of the United States, the government began its program of collecting all handguns and high-powered rifles and the relocating of citizens. Logan settled as much of the east coast as could be, avoiding the “hot areas,” filled with deadly radiation. As a result, many states, especially those states not a part of the bread-basket region, were practically void of human life.
Into those states Ben would send his Rebels to train new people.
The four women and one man had been sexually attacked numerous times as a prelude to their questioning concerning other cells on the east coast sympathetic to Ben Raines’s Rebels.
A Mrs. Linda Ford was then taken into one of the interrogation rooms. The soles of her feet were beaten with billy clubs as were her buttocks and thighs. The beating continued all afternoon and into the night. She was thrown into a basement cell that had several inches of stagnant water covering the floor. Her feet were broken and her toenails were missing. She would die of pneumonia after a month. She would not be allowed a doctor’s care.
A Robin Lewis was sodomized and then tortured with jolts of electricity to her feet. The wires were then clamped to her lips and the electricity turned on. So severe were the jolts she broke her teeth grinding them against the charges of electricity and the waves of pain. The voltage was increased to such a level Ms. Lewis suffered severe brain damage.
Riva Madison was burned with cigarette and cigar butts. All her fingers were broken and her knees shattered with club blows.
Paul Murray was hanged by his wrists, his feet a foot off the floor. He was beaten and tortured by electric shock applied to his genitals. He would lose both hands due to gangrene.
Claire Boiling was repeatedly raped and subjected to every imaginable type of sexual abuse, including electrical current passed through and into her vagina by usage of a metal dildo. A procedure allegedly perfected by the SAVAK in Iran in the 1970s. Claire would live, but she would be unable to bear children.
Neither Mrs. Ford, Robin Lewis, Riva Madison, Paul Murray, or Ms. Boiling was able to tell their interrogators anything but the truth.
And the truth was… they did not know anything concerning the operation of other cells.
On July 1, Ben began traveling from state to state, meeting with his commanders. It was dangerous, but something that had to be done. By the end of August, his field commanders had recruited 7,200 men and women. Ben and his commanders knew there were government informers among them, but did nothing about it until the 7,200 had been broken up into small training groups and sent to various bases in the mountains, the deserts, the plains, the swamps.
It was then the government agents and spies learned the hard truth of infiltrating anything Ben Raines set up.
Each unit had several men and women trained in the use of Psychological Stress Evaluators, polygraph machines, and truth serums such as thiopental, scopoline, and other drugs which induce truth under hypnosis.
There, each volunteer was tested thoroughly and rigorously. Nothing was left to chance. They were hanged and buried in unmarked graves. Nothing was released to the government. Let them think their people were still alive, Ben told his Rebels.
It was frustrating to the federal police and the FBI and Hartline’s men. The silence from the agents supposed to be sending back data on the Rebels’ training bases infuriated Al Cody. The man was too vain and too sure of his people to even consider the possibility his people had been caught and killed.
Not all forty of them. Impossible.
Once the original seventy-two companies of one hundred new Rebels was set, it was very difficult to join Ben’s Rebels. Any new applicant was held in a safe house or spot for two to three weeks. The applicant was subjected to severe testing and questioning the entire time. Shortly the very best of the volunteers got into the actual fighting field units of the new Rebels.
There were ugly rumors circulating around the nation’s capital concerning the military’s alleged policy of total noninvolvement in any upcoming confrontation between the Rebels and the police. These were rumors that amused President Addison and Senator Carson; rumors that infuriated VP Lowry and Director Cody.
Then, on the first Sunday in August, 1999, violence erupted in the Great Smoky Mountains, one of the major training bases for Ben’s Rebels. President Addison was at the presidential retreat and could not be reached for comment, so VP Lowry, with Cody by his side, called a special meeting at the VP’s home outside Richmond.
Seated around the VP and Cody were: General Rimel of the Air Force; General Preston of the Army; Admiral Calland of the Navy; General Franklin of the Marine Corps; and Admiral Barstow of the Coast Guard. The Joint Chiefs of Staff.
VP Lowry cleared his throat, fiddled with his tie, and brushed back a few strands of carefully dyed hair. He said, “Gentlemen, I’ve heard some very unhappy news. Unsettling, to say the least. Heard it on the TV, read it in the
