“I know what you mean. Yeah, I heard about Tri-States. Tried to get there a time or two. Got as far as Kansas one time. I think I was sixteen. Near “bout that. Some men caught me and gang-banged me.” She said it with no more emotion than discussing a can of green beans. “One of them ol” boys had him a dick looked like a fence post. He really hurt me. I started bleedin’ real bad and I guess that scared them. They dumped me and took off. Just left me buck-assed naked in a old house. After I got better, I started I practicin’ my shootin’. That’s when I got me my first
270. I tracked them sorry bastards for two months, lad me a horse back then, too. Good horse. I named rim Beauty. I remembered that out of a book I read about a horse and a girl. Me and Beauty followed them men. Took me awhile, but I found “em and I killed ‘em all. Lost Beauty the next year. He just got sick and up and died. I cried.”
She said it all so simply, but with such deep feelings in her voice, Ike felt a tenderness touch him in hidden places within his soul.
“You best get some sleep, Nina,” he said gently. “And don’t worry. I promise you, everything will be all right.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Captain Tom Willette felt his coup attempt coming apart. Gathering up four of his men, they drove to the football stadium amid the wild shooting and shouting. The men stood by the old fence and then, as if on silent signal, they walked to the .50-caliber machine guns placed around the field and without a word opened fire on the weaponless, defenseless prisoners. Willette had a grim smile off satisfaction on his lips as the heavy .50 bucked in his hands, rattling out its death song. The bastards and bitches followed Ben Raines, they were Willette’s enemies. That was that. He felt no sympathy for the women and children dying by his hand. Really, he rather enjoyed their screaming and crying.
The belts reached the end of their brass and the .50’s fell silent. The Rebels guarding the prisoners looked at the sudden red carnage with horror in their eyes. They knew most of those who now lay dying, chopped to bloody bits on the grass of the old playing field. The screaming was something hideous.
A coup for the sake of General Raines was one thing. But this … this monstrous act… this was just plain murder.
But before they could react, Willette and his men had vanished.
The young guards threw down their weapons and ran onto the field, calling for the medics to come quick.
Abe Lancer and his men appeared at one end of the old playing field. The scene before their eyes was unreal. That could not have happened. Young children and women lay sprawled in twisted death, the ground beneath them soaked with blood. None of the men had ever witnessed anything to match this awful sight in the blood red night.
“Oh, my God!” Abe said.
“Must be three, four hundred women and kids out there,” Andy said. He turned his head to one side and vomited on the grass.
Through the glare of the portable lights that illuminated the field, Abe and his men saw the young guards running toward the fallen victims. Believing them to be the ones responsible for this act of horror, Abe yelled, “Kill them sons of bitches. Kill all them bastards.”
Rifles cracked in the smoky, dusty, confused and bloody night.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
On the edge of the Talladega National Forest in eastern Alabama, Sam Hartline sat in his communications truck and monitored the radio traffic from Raines” new Base Camp in north Georgia to Ben Raines in South Carolina. The mercenary’s smile was huge. He was thinking about a statement made years before, from a Red Chinese leader, speaking of the United States of America. “We won’t have to attack that country,” the Red leader had stated. “For America will destroy itself from within.”
Hartline laughed aloud. He said, “Quite true. And it happened rather along those lines, too. And now-he laughed again-“the same thing is occurring among the troops of President-General Ben Raines.” He threw back his handsome head and howled his laughter. “Oh, I love it! I truly love it. Ben Raines, you sanctimonious son of a bitch, you’re finally getting your comeuppance at last, and it’s long overdue. Oh, I love it!”
Hartline had suffered too many humiliating and disgraceful defeats at the hand of Ben Raines to possess any feelings toward the man other than raw hate. True, that hatred was intermingled with some degree of respect, but the bad blood between the two men far
overrode anything else.
“My nemesis,” Hartline muttered. “The stinking albatross hanging about my neck. Ben Raines. But this time, Ben, I am gleefully witnessing your little kingdom crashing down around your ears. And I am pleased. Oh, I am so very, very pleased to hear it fall.”
Friend shooting friend. Women and babies being slaughtered like dumb animals. This was better than the Civil War.
“I love it!” the mercenary yelled. “Oh, I love it.”
He turned up the volume. “And it looks like about two hundred or more people dead or dying,” the unknown Rebel from north Georgia said to Ben Raines. “Most of them are women and kids. It’s bad, General. The camp is still in a lot of confusion. But we think we’ve put down the coup attempt. Willette and his immediate group got away.”
“But not before they killed the prisoners?” Ben radioed from the depths of the Sumter National Forest.
“Yes, sir. And many of the young Rebels who joined Willette ran off into the deep timber, after grabbing a lot of ammo and other supplies. We have teams out looking for them.”
In South Carolina, Ben released the mic button and cussed.
“Probably cussing a blue streak of profanity,” Hartline said with a mocking, knowing smile. The mercenary was as freelance now as when he was working for the CIA in Laos in the early seventies, for the Mozambique-based units of SWAPO in the late seventies, for Qaddafi out of Libya in the early eighties, and for the Russian IPF forces only recently.
Sam Hartline answered, totally, to no master. His services, his army, was for hire to the highest bidder; and unlike most mercs, Hartline would switch sides as quickly as a snake strikes-money was the only master.
Of late, though, money was no good. It was power and women Hartline sought. And now he had broken, temporarily and very amicably, with the Russian general, Striganov, and his IPF forces. Hartline pulled his army out with him. His army was a short combat battalion of thugs and perverts and malcontents. Hartline was looking for Tony Silver. Tony was a man Hartline could understand, for although Hartline would not admit it-indeed, he did not know it-he was as mentally twisted as Silver. Hartline enjoyed torturing people. He enjoyed listening to women scream in pain and sexual humiliation. He enjoyed breaking people, mentally and physically, reducing them to slaves, eager to do his bidding, however perverted and cruel it might be-and usually was.
His men were as twisted as Hartline, most of them-but just like Hartline, they were excellent soldiers, understanding tactics and logistics and weapons and discipline.
And that was something Tony’s men were not: good soldiers. But once Hartline got them under his command, he would whip them into shape, both mentally and physically.
Sam Hartline and Ben Raines had one thing in common: They were both fine soldiers. Any similarity ended there.
Hartline turned cold eyes to his radioman. “You have them located yet?”
“Yes, sir. They’re in the Sumter National Forest in South Carolina.”
“Very well. We’ll let those foolish people who call themselves the Ninth Order suffer some losses trying to take Ben Raines. They’ll fail. I don’t care how they have him outnumbered, they won’t take him. His troops are too good. With any kind of luck, Raines will suffer some casualties. We’ll take him on his way out.”
He turned to a man standing quietly in the darkness, just outside the open door at the rear of the truck. “How are the men, Captain?”
“Well rested and spoiling for a good fight, sir. They’re getting fat and lazy with nothing to do.”
“Well, if we tangle with Raines’ people, they’ll damn sure have a good fight on their hands,” Hartline assured
