“Whoever Ben appoints, Jerry.”
“I hope it’s you, sir,” Jerry said.
“Thank you, Jerry.”
“I’ll be back in about an hour, Colonel. I’ll bring the C-4 and a couple of pistols this next trip.”
When Jerry’s bootsteps had faded away and the door to the runaround closed behind him, Dan said, “You took an awful chance, Cec. That could have blown up in your face. Awfully cheeky thing you did, but I am so glad you seized the moment and brought it off.”
“So am I, Dan. So am I. It was a risk, but I felt it the only chance we had left us.”
“I will feel ever so much better when I have my hand wrapped around the butt of a pistol,” the Englishman said.
Cecil hefted the .45. “I can tell you, friend. It does feel good.”
CHAPTER NINE
She looked at the small contingent of Gray’s Scouts that had accompanied her out of the Rebel Base Camp. Roy Jaydot, his Russian wife, Katrina. Tina’s fianc`e, Bob Graham. Mary Macklin. A dozen others.
“We’re too small a group to do much damage to Willette’s bunch,” Tina said. “First we’re going to have to link up with the other teams of Scouts that made it out.”
They were camped on the northernmost banks of Carters Lake, just off Highway 382. They were well- supplied, for at Colonel Gray’s orders, each of his Scouts had slipped out of camp several times, each time carrying a load of food or ammo or mortar rounds, caching them in the deep timber. And in teams of twelve or fourteen, Dan had sent them out of the Base Camp, on some pretext or the other-anything to get as many of his people out before the coup went down.
Most of the highly trained and superbly conditioned men and women known as Gray’s Scouts had gotten out, with only a few taken prisoner. Even though the coup had gone down much quicker than anyone had anticipated.
“Have you thought about making an attempt to link up with Dad Raines?” Bob asked her.
“God, yes. Many times during the past few hours. But I don’t know exactly where he is. Odds of us finding him are against us. I think we’re much better off staying in this area and linking up with the other teams of Scouts.”
Tina was team leader, and no one questioned her authority. She was as skilled a guerrilla fighter as anyone in the Rebels, with the possible exception of Ike, Dan or her father.
“Eagle Two to Eagle One,” the backpack radio softly crackled. “Lookin’ for a home.”
Tina moved to the radio operator’s side, taking the mic. “This is Eagle One. We’re out of the home nest. Come on.”
“Jose Ferranza here, Tina. Got my team all with me. Where you wanna link up, Big Momma?”
Tina’s team members chuckled at Jose’s words. Tina was actually a captain in Gray’s Scouts, but like special troops the world over-when there was a functioning world-special troops almost never stood on formality, for theirs was an easy camaraderie that few outside the unit ever understood.
“I’ll Big Momma your ass, you wetback.” Tina laughed the words, knowing Jose would take it in good humor, as it was meant.
“Your boyfriend is much too large,” Jose replied, laughing. “I am a lover, not a fighter.”
“Bullshit,” Bob muttered. Sergeant Ferranza was one of the most feared guerrilla fighters in Gray’s Scouts.
“Give me your coordinates, Eagle Two,” Tina radioed.
Tina checked her grid map as Jose gave his position in coded words. “We’re close,” she said. “We’ll find you. Stay put.”
“Ten-four.”
“Let’s go,” Tina ordered, picking up her M-16 and automatically checking the weapon. The fire control lever was on auto, the safety on. “We’ll find three, four more teams and then we’ll be strong enough to do some damage at Base Camp.” She glanced toward the southeast. “Sit tight, Dad,” she muttered, slipping into her pack. “Don’t get it in your head to do something rash. Just sit tight.”
The team moved out, as silent as ghosts wearing cammies.
CHAPTER TEN
Dan felt the comforting cool press of the 9mm Browning against the skin of his belly. Bradford had succeeded in arming all the prisoners in the jail, and in bringing in enough plastic explosive to blow up half the building. But Dan knew several hundred more had been rounded up and were being held under heavy guard in an old football stadium nearby. Despite the obvious and, to Dan and those now in jail, quite odious fact that the coup had been successful, Dan could not envision how it had been done so swiftly. Neither could the Englishman fathom the why of it all.
He knew more than half of the camp had been subtly swayed by Willette and his people, but that still left more than a thousand Rebels for Willette and his people to contend with. Say, three hundred and fifty had been taken prisoner in the swiftest coup Dan had ever heard of. And most successful, he grudgingly conceded.
But damn it to hell, he thought, that still left over six hundred men and women-all fighters. What had happened to them?
All right, he calmed himself, forcing his anger to
subside and rational thinking to take control. Think about it, he urged his mind. Say, two hundred out of that thousand were setting up homesteads throughout the vast tracts of land newly claimed by the Rebels. They would not have heard anything about the coup. And if they did hear, they would keep their heads low.
That left approximately four to five hundred.
His own Scouts numbered one hundred and fifty. Most of them had gotten free and clear of us in the nick of time.
That left, say, three hundred and fifty. Most of them were with Ro and Wade, with some scattered old-timers mixed in, Doctor Chase and his wife included. That bunch had scattered like the wind, heading in all directions.
So, there it was. All neatly added up.
Some of the more level-headed of the bunch, people like Jerry Bradford, older and better educated Rebels, after speaking with Jerry, had seen how they’d been duped and were now back in the fold, so to speak. But they were few, no more than forty, and that might be stretching it.
Time, Dan knew, was the enemy. The real enemy. Forwith each passing hour, those Rebels with Willette, the younger, more impressionable, poorly educated men and women, would become more firmly convinced Willette was right and Cecil and Dan and the others were the enemy.
Dan ceased his restless pacing and sat down on his bunk. He thought: It’s going to be bloody. And there is no way to prevent that from occurring. Lord God
on High, but it’s going to be a bloody bitch.
As if reading his thoughts, for Cecil had been listening to Dan’s restless pacing, he called softly: “I’m not looking forward to pulling the trigger on some of these people, either.”
“Nor I, Cec,” Dan softly called. “But what I don’t understand is the why of it all. It just doesn’t make any sense.”
“To destroy Ben Raines,” Peggy said, joining in the conversation.
“Yes,” Dan agreed. “But still that does not answer the why of it all.”
“Vendetta,” Juan called. “That is the only possible answer. A blood debt, if you will. Probably one so old it is doubtful General Raines himself even remembers it.”
“The lengths people will go to settle old scores,” Dan muttered. Then, to himself, he said, “It’s coming apart. Everything Ben Raines dreamed of is coming apart. Ike is being hunted; Ben is cut off with only a small detachment, while more than a thousand men are hunting him. The camp is divided, with a bloodbath looking us in the face.” He sighed. “It’s coming apart. Once more, we shall have to pick up the pieces from the ashes of hate and blood and start anew. But what will happen when those of us with age and education and experience are gone?”
The Englishman did not like to dwell long on that last question. For like Ben, he knew only too well what would happen.
