the man.
“Looking forward to it, sir.”
“Yes. So am I.”
“Transmissions from the Ninth Order commanders to the men planning to attack Raines, sir,” the radio operator said. “They just received the go-ahead.”
“Good,” Hartline said with a smile, rubbing his hands together. He turned once more to the captain. “Get the men up and moving. Warm up the trucks. I want us to be east of the ruins of Atlanta by dawn.”
“Yes, sir.”
Hartline said, “You’ve got a hundred tired troops, Raines. I’ve got five hundred fresh ones. This time, you bastard, I’m going to kill you.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“I hear them,” Ben said, appearing by the sentry’s side on the bluff of the crest. “Head’s up now. Be ready for anything.”
Dawn was three hours old, the air clear and cold on the ridge. Dogs bayed in the distance. The wind was blowing west to east, a point in the Rebels’ favor.
“You sure can move quiet, General,” the young Rebel said. ““Bout as quiet as anyone I ever heard walk.”
“Some people think I’m a ghost,” Ben kidded the Rebel.
And knew immediately it had been the wrong thing to say.
The Rebel looked at Ben strangely, an odd glint in his eyes.
“Don’t take that seriously, son. I was only kidding you.”
“Yes, sir.” But the young Rebel wasn’t so certain about that. He’d heard, many times, all the stories told about General Raines. All the amazing things. General Raines just had to be a little bit more than mere human. Or, the thought touched him with a light chilling effect, a little bit less.
Ben looked at his watch. 1000 hours. The troops of
Tony Silver and the Ninth Order were right on time.
The Rebel Ben had spoken to the previous night was also checking his watch. “The general said they’d be here at ten o’clock,” he said to a group of Rebels. “And here they are. Right on the money.”
The Rebels shook their heads. No one ever questioned Ben Raines.
One more rung on the ladder of legend.
The distant baying of the dogs changed. “All right,” Ben said. “Get ready. The dogs have picked up scent.”
The thin line of defenders waited for several moments. The dogs drew closer, their barking more excited.
“I can’t spot the dogs, sir,” a lookout called.
“They’ll be along,” Ben said. “Mortar crews facing southeast, stand ready with twelve pounders. You have coordinates, observers?”
“Yes, sir! Still too far away for effect, but they’re closing fast.”
“Sing out when they reach range.”
“Yes, sir. The dogs are visible, sir.”
“The first wave will be right behind them.”
Several hard explosions reached the Rebels dug in on the hill, faint screaming following the explosions.
“Claymores got a few of them,” Ben said with a faint smile. He knew first-hand how deadly the feared Claymores could be.
Mines buried in the ground began crashing, flinging bits of bodies into the air. The painful howling of dogs could be heard.
“I hope it killed all them damn dogs,” the young
sentry said. was ‘Fore I joined up with you, General, I was travelin” with this girl. Beth was her name. I was seventeen, she was fifteen, she thought, wasn’t really sure how old she was. We was over in central Texas, between Austin and Abilene. Come up on these men. They turned dogs loose on us. No reason for it. They just done it to see what we’d do, I guess. I guess they thought it was sport. The dogs got us separated. I will never forget it. There wasn’t nothing I could do. Them dogs tore her to pieces. Them men just laughed like it was the funniest thing they’d ever seen. I got back to our truck and got my gun. Killed two of “em. Or at least hit them. The others run off. I hate dogs. I know it ain’t right for me to hate all dogs for what just a few done, but I can’t help it. Can’t seem to ever get that sight out of my mind.”
Psychiatrists could have a field day with me and my bunch, Ben thought. The shrinks would be leaping for joy. I wonder how many shrinks are still alive? Ben silently pondered. Not many. Those liberal bastards probably couldn’t survive in the real world.
Ben, like so many men who were a part of military’s special, highly elite troops, had a dim opinion of most psychiatrists.
“No one in their right mind could blame you for feeling the way you do,” Ben told him. “Not after seeing what you saw.”
The observer halted any further conversation. “The first wave has halted at twenty-five hundred meters, sir,” he called, his voice crackling out of Ben’s speakers. He had them hanging loosely around his neck.
Ben put on the headset and asked, “You have them locked in?”
“Yes, sir,” the mortar crew chief replied calmly. “I can put them right up their noses.”
“All right, Sergeant. Then go ahead and clear up their sinuses.”
Ben heard the sounds of tubes being loaded, the thonk and the following flutter as the rockets flew toward target.
A few silent seconds lapsed between firing and impact. Then the ground below the men and women on the ridge erupted in sound and fury. The mixed mortar rounds, HE and WP, turned the area into an inferno, the white phosphorus rounds igniting the dry brush and timber. Burning shards of WP slammed into human bodies and began burning their way into flesh. Men ran screaming in agony; some flopped on the ground and rolled about, trying to ease the burning.
Nothing they did would stop the horrible pain as the phosphorus burned through flesh and bone.
“Gonna be forest fires come out of this,” the young Rebel standing beside Ben observed.
“It will be raining by two o’clock this afternoon,” Ben told him, not taking the binoculars from his eyes. He viewed the wreckage below with a soldier’s satisfaction.
The young Rebel looked toward the skies. The sky was clear and cloudless. But if General Raines said it was going to rain … get your poncho out.
“Continue lobbing them in,” Ben spoke into his headset. “Drive them back. Let’s clear their ranks out as heavily as possible during the first wave.”
The mortar crews continued working steadily for two more minutes before Ben called for them to cease firing. Lifting his field glasses to his eyes, he viewed the ripped low ground before him. He smiled as he looked at the smoking battleground.
Broken, shattered and bleeding bodies littered the scarred landscape of the earth. Arms and legs and heads had been torn from torsos and flung yards from the mangled trunks. Small fires were burning on the south side of the creek. A burning pine tree suddenly exploded like a bomb going off as the sap ignited.
“I count almost a hundred dead, General,” Captain Rayle said, appearing at Ben’s side. “They’ve probably dragged forty or fifty wounded out of our line of sight, back into the deep timber. We hurt them, all right.”
“They’ll leave us alone from that direction for a while,” Ben said. “You lookouts on the flanks and to the rear, heads up, now. They’ll be sending out sniping teams.” Ben walked to the hastily dug communications bunker. “What’s the word from the Base Camp?”
“Nothing since last night, sir.”
“Mopping up,” Ben told her. “The worst job of them all.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
“How many did we lose?” Tina asked Colonel Gray.
