“A return to the ashes,” he muttered. “Back to barbarism and savagery and paganism. I hope I do not live to see it.”
“We shall persevere,” Cecil called. “Everything Ben has worked for will, indeed, must, endure. It is up to us to see that it does.”
“And when we are gone?” Dan called, feeling the weight of his age, even though he was not yet fifty, fall on him with a crushing invisible force.
Cecil did not reply.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Take the one on the left,” Ike whispered. “Shoot him in the chest. Try to miss that walkie-talkie. I want it. I’ll waste the pus-gutted dude on the right.”
Two rifles cracked. Two men from the Ninth Order went down in howling heaps. One kicked and squalled in agony, his legs jerking as life slowly left him. Nina’s shot had gone high, the bullet striking her man in the throat, almost tearing the head from him with the expanding slug. Blood spurted in two-foot-high arcs until his heart ceased its pumping. The man drummed his booted feet on the earth and died.
“Shit!” Nina said, working a fresh round into the chamber of her .270.
“No point in bitchin’ about it,” Ike told her. “You got him.”
“But I was off the mark by a foot!” she said. “I haven’t missed like that in years.”
“You were shootin’ downhill, little one,” Ike said. “Downhill shootin’ is always tricky. We’ll wait a few minutes, see if any of their buddies come runnin’. Then you cover me while I get the walkie-talkie. Maybe then we’ll be able to keep more than one jump ahead of them.”
The pair lay in the brush on the crest of the hill. Within seconds after the shooting, the birds once more began their singing and calling. No more men of the Ninth Order appeared. Ike counted off another sixty seconds.
Ike rose to his feet. “You see anything other than me movin’ around down there, blow the ass off it.”
She leaned over and kissed his cheek, now rough with beard stubble. “Yes, sir.”
Ike grinned. “This ain’t no time for romance, darlin’.”
He made his way cautiously to the site of the dead men. The air was foul with urine from relaxed bladders and excrement from bowel movements. Ike was especially wary of Dobermans, for he was very familiar with those animals who had been silent-trained. They were awesome and deadly. Few people realize just how much damage even an untrained dog can do to a man, and how quickly. Ike was as fully trained in the art of handling an attacking dog as any man who is not an experienced dog handler. But all that was just training, and Ike hoped he would never have to find out how good the training had been.
No dogs were present, much to Ike’s relief. And no more live men, either.
He stripped the dead men of their warm, lined field jackets, and took the long-range walkie-talkie. He left their weapons; both carried shotguns. He shoved their bodies over the edge of a deep rocky ravine, thinking perhaps if they were found, the missing walkie-talkie would not be noticed. He hustled back up the hill and flopped down beside Nina, extending the antenna. Chatter came to them immediately.
“They done killed Langford and Benny,” the excited voice said. “I heard the shots and then couldn’t get neither of them on the radio. You copy all that? Over.”
“Stand clear of “em. Don’t get any closer than you have to. Sister Voleta says to keep pushin” “em north. ‘Bout five more miles and we’ll have them boxed in the meadow up yonder.”
“How ‘bout usin” the dogs again?”
“Negative to that. The dogs is being sent south to track General Raines and his bunch.”
“That’s a relief,” Nina said.
“In a way,” Ike responded.
The radio crackled once more. “How’s things at the Base Camp?”
“Ever’thang is jam up and jelly tight. The Base Camp is ours.”
“Oh, goddamn it!” Ike cussed. “What in the hell is going on?”
“OK. We’ll keep pushin’ “em north. Point out.”
“Your Base Camp has been overrun, Ike?” Nina asked. “By the Ninth Order? I didn’t think they were strong enough to do something like that.”
“They aren’t. Not by themselves. That goddamn Willette and his pack have to have something to do with this.”
“Willette?”
He told her, briefly, all he knew and suspected about Willette and his people.
She was silent for a moment. “Then … this Captain Willette must be tied in with the Ninth Order, is that what you think?”
Ike nodded. “I guess so, Nina. Like I said before
when we talked about it, this whole business is so screwed up, I really can’t tell you what in the hell is going on.”
Ike got to his feet and helped Nina up. He looked around him, got his bearings, and started walking-south. There was a determined set to his jaw and a cold look in his eyes.
“Ike!” She tugged at his arm. “We’re heading right back toward them.”
“That’s right, babe. We sure are. We’re goin” back to Base Camp. I got the monkey and the skunk syndrome about this mess.”
“You mean, you’ve had all this good stuff you can stand?” she asked with a grin.
“You hit it right, Nina. We don’t have to worry about the dogs, and those sorry bastards up ahead don’t much worry me. I just hope they get in my way.”
“You’re cute when you get mad, Ike.”
“Aw, shit!” Ike said, blushing.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Tony Silver had every available man he could spare in the long convoy. The group from north Florida had rolled in, and the column had rolled out heading north. But Tony was having second thoughts about Ben Raines. He had asked one of Voleta’s people why she hated Raines so.
The guy had mumbled something about Ben Raines being a false god and a scourge on the face of the earth. Tony thought all that to be a crock of crap. Raines probably screwed Betty one night and shortchanged her. Or, he thought with a smile, short-dicked her.
He laughed aloud at that.
His driver met Tony’s eyes in the rear-view mirror. “Something, boss?”
“Naw. Just thinking, that’s all.”
“Boss, what’s the deal with this General Raines, anyways? How come it’s so important for us to take this dude out?”
“That’s kinda what I was laughing about, Bill. “Cause I don’t really know, myself. But we got a deal with this Sister Voleta, and Tony Silver don’t never welch out on no deal.”
“Right, boss.”
Tony leaned back in the comfortable rear seat of the old Cadillac limo. Sister Voleta/betty Blackman was not leveling with him, and Tony did not like to be in the dark in any deal he was part of. Just too damn many unknowns.
He sighed, thinking: OK. First we kick the ass off Ben Raines, and this time there was no doubt in his mind that would be done. They would have Raines outnumbered ten to one. Then Tony would deal with Voleta. Permanently.
After he screwed her.
The men and women of Ben’s contingent dug in deep in the brush and timber on the ridge, digging in carefully, doing so without disturbing the natural look of the terrain. The ridge afforded them the best vantage point they could find, in terms of defense. And to a person, they knew the upcoming battle must be a decisive victory.
In front of them, at the base of the ridge, lay a small creek that would have to be forded by any attackers
