the IPF people as well are perverted. They enjoy inflicting pain, and Hartline likes to do it in a sexual manner. And that is all I’m going to say about that.”
Mark touched her hand. “You don’t have to say anything, Peggy. Some of the refugees that came into our area told us a lot about Hartline. What the women said was … sickening.”
Her eyes, filled with the horror of what had been done to her, touched his eyes. “We need to get to a safer place, Mark, and I need to fix up that shoulder of yours.”
Something deep within Mark, something very soft and gentle, moved slightly, touching him in a manner he had never known before. He was unsure of the origin or the meaning. “Yeah,” he said softly. “Right. And … Peggy?”
He looked at him. “Yes?”
“People do adopt kids, you know.”
He put his good arm around her and she put her
ace against his chest and wept.
“Holy Mother of God!” Juan whispered. “That isn’t warfare-that’s evil. his
He stood gazing in disbelief and shocked horror at the line of APC’S coming at them, naked women and naked young boys and girls roped to the front of the carriers.
“Take a look at what is coming up behind them,” a soldier said, his voice hushed with shock in the early morning.
Juan lifted his binoculars to his eyes. After a moment, he lowered them and began cursing, long and passionately, in his mother tongue.
“What do we do, Juan?” The question came out of the knot of company commanders standing behind him. It was a question Juan did not want to hear, but one he knew had to be answered.
After a moment that seemed like an eternity to Juan, he said, “We stop them; we have no choice in the matter.” There was a deathlike quality to his reply.
“Juan, we can’t-was
“Yes, we can!” Juan whirled around, his face tight with anger as he recalled Ben’s words: “If they can’t cut it, Juan, let me have it all up front.” And Juan’s reply now returned to haunt him: “They will do what I tell them to do. They might not like it, but they will do it.”
God, Juan silently implored the Almighty, let my people have the courage to do this awful thing.
“We have to stop them!” Juan shouted the words.
A company commander lowered his binoculars,
tears streaming from his eyes, rolling in rivers down his cheeks. “The little ones are all crying,” he said, his voice breaking under the strain. “The-was
“Stop it!” Juan shouted.
“… Old people are naked and barefooted. Must be two-was
“Goddamn it, fire!” Juan screamed. He looked up and down the line of the first defense. “Fire on them, goddamn you!”
“…Or three hundred of the old people.” The man appeared to be in shock.
Juan slapped the man, the force of his open-handed blow rocking the man’s head back, bringing blood to his lips.
Juan jerked up a rifle, firing at the mercenaries, the IPF, the young and the old. A few more defenders joined him. But most did not. They could not.
The forces, under the command of Colonel Fechnor, drew closer.
Juan’s men began backing off the small ridge, bucking under the awfulness of what lay before them, growing nearer with the screams and cries of the young and the old.
“You have no place to back up to!” Juan shouted at his men.
Over the rumble of the APC’S and Jeeps, the sounds of the children’s weeping drifted to the men on the hill. About a third of Juan’s first line of defense stayed by his side, fighting at his orders. The others drifted back, not out of cowardice, but because they loved life so much they could not bear to fire on the very young and the very old. “Cobardes!” Juan screamed at the backs of his men. “Chacals!” But he knew those men were not cowards or jackals. They simply could not bring themselves to fire on helpless old people and babies.
“Fall back to the river!” Juan yelled to those men who elected to remain by his side. Far in the distance he could see trucks rolling toward the bridge at Blair. He turned to his radio operator. “Order them to stop,” he told the woman.
She shook her head. “I have them now, sir. They say they are not defeated or running away. They say they will defend our homelands, but they will not kill women and babies and old people.”
Alvaro, Juan’s brother, hurried to his side. “Juan, we have about one minute before we meet eternity.”
The screaming and the crying of the children lashed to the front of the APC’S was now very clear. The old people were stumbling, almost down from exhaustion. They were being prodded forward by rifle barrels.
The taste of the defeat was ugly on Juan’s tongue. He gave the order he knew must he must give to save at least some of his forces. “Fall back!” he shouted.
As Juan rode in the Jeep, crossing the bridge over the Missouri River, he muttered, “God help Ben Raines.”
CHAPTER THREE
Ben listened grimly to the reports from the Rebel’s LETTERRP’S. He stood in his command bunker and cursed. When he ran out of obscenities, he looked at the woman manning the radio.
“Sorry about that,” he apologized.
She grinned. “I haven’t heard such cussing since the time my daddy caught me in a hayloft with a kid from down the road.”
Ben felt some of the anger leave him and he grinned at her. “I bet that was quite a moment.”
Her grin widened. “It was worth it.”
Ben laughed. “OK. Get on the horn and tell Colonel McGowen to cut and run. Head south. Instruct Colonel Ramos to break through his south lines and do the same. Order all forward units to hunt holes and get in them and keep their heads down until they receive orders from me to resume guerrilla activities. No last-ditch stands for any unit. No heroics out of anybody. Pull back. We’ll regroup along Highway 60 in southern Missouri, from Springfield to Poplar Bluff. Pull back with all speed.”
“We’re retreating, sir?”
“No,” Ben told her. “We are executing what the marines used to call a strategic withdrawal. Get to it, Sergeant.”
“This isn’t as much fun as the hayloft,” she said.
Chase walked into the battle-scarred bunker. “I’ve got badly wounded people, Ben. To move them at this time would be endangering their lives.”
“Move them,” Ben said. “It can’t be avoided, La-mar. We don’t have a choice.”
The doctor looked at the man for a long moment. Then he nodded his head. “All right, Ben. I’ll start pulling them out now.” He turned to leave.
“Lamar?”
The doctor turned around.
“I’m sorry, Lamar.”
“I know, Ben. I’m sorry, too.”
Gen. Georgi Striganov was furious. The deaths of the old people, the young women and the children did not bother him as much as what it had done to his self-image. The Russian perceived himself as a fair and just person. History might well paint him as an evil person for condoning something like this. That bothered him more than anything.
“I gave no orders to do anything this monstrous!” Striganov raged at Sam Hartline and Colonel Fechnor. “Killing old people and little children.”
“Only a few old niggers died,” Hartline said. “One nigger woman took a round in the guts and one got her brain cooked when her hair caught fire. There were a
few greasers killed over in Iowa. No big deal. Anyway, if you have to yell at somebody, yell at me,” Hartline
