west.
Sister Voleta gave the order she was certain would bring victory to her and ensure the death of the man she hated and blamed for all her misfortune. She was
certain that Ben Raines had somehow managed to kill her chances of becoming a singing star. Although she wasn’t real certain how he could have managed that.
“Move our people out,” she ordered. “Death to Ben Raines.”
CHAPTER FORTY
“We intercepted these messages, Joni,” George said, looking at a notepad. “Somebody named Sam Hartline is moving this way, with a lot of armed men. Who in the hell is Sam Hartline?”
Joni felt a chill crawl up and down her spine. She once had a friend who had been taken by Sam Hartline. Back when the United States was struggling to pull itself out of the horrors of germ and nuclear warfare. Back when VP Lowry was running the country. She had seen what Hartline had done to her friend. Hartline and his men had broken the man. They had sexually abused him and tortured him and broken not only his body but his mind.
Joni shook off the hideous memories. “You must have been captured just as Hartline came to power,” she said. “He’s a mercenary. He was one of Also Cody and VP Lowry’s bully-boys. He’s worse than Tony Silver ever thought about being. If Hartline is heading this way, that probably means he’s linked up with Tony Silver. We’ve got to get our people together and move out. We’ve got to get over to Perry and assist those slaves in the fighting. Let’s move, George. We don’t have much time.”
Some of the slaves were still wearing the remnants
of leg irons when George began shouting out the orders to work faster. The banging of hammers intensified, and finally the last ankle-shackle was broken free. Every man and woman there wore the scars of the leg irons.
The former slaves of Tony Silver left the bodies of the captors and guards where they had fallen in the battle for freedom. Left them to stiffen and stink and bloat under the Florida sun.
The work camp and plantation house and guards’ quarters had been thoroughly searched for more weapons and ammunition. The trucks and cars and vans were gassed up and containers filled with fuel for their journey. Food and water were stored in the vehicles. Now they were ready to move out.
When the last vehicle had rattled over the cattle guards at Tony Silver’s old HQ, the small convoy of armed ex-slaves heading for another slave plantation just outside of what used to be known as Perry, Florida, they were only three hours ahead of Sam Hartline and his mercenaries. Sixty-odd men and women, armed with a mishmash of weapons, against the hundreds of trained, combat-seasoned, and well-armed troops of Hartline.
But the slaves possessed something not even Sam Hartline had ever known: a burning desire for freedom and an equally fierce inner flame for revenge and justice. And that is an awesome combination for any army to fight.
The vultures had been slowly circling, high in the blue skies of Florida, watching and smelling the food that lay sprawled on the ground. Now, as the men and women pulled out, the carrion birds began their
slow drift downward, their huge wing span carrying them ever closer to food.
On the ground, the grotesque birds began feasting, their sharp, fierce beaks ripping and tearing at dead human flesh. They worked at the small of the back first, tearing at the choicest and tastiest food: the kidneys.
The carrion-eaters feasted throughout the day, until they were so bloated with dead meat they could not fly. They waddled off and allowed the wild dogs and wolves and coyotes to snarl and tear at what remained.
Then the dusty grounds became as silent as the scattered skeletons that lay in the torn dirt, small bits of red meat still hanging from bones that would soon be picked clean.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
The morning of the day that would forever wipe from the face of the earth the troops of the perverted rule of the Nine Order dawned misty and cold in the mountains. Fall was ebbing in its season in this section of the battered and war-torn earth, the chilly winds of winter blowing close on the waning season’s heels. Breath became white steam in the predawn hours.
Ike and his hand-picked teams had pulled out in the early hours of the morning. By now, they would be moving silently and deadly, deep inside the territory of the Ninth Order, killing quietly and swiftly as they went.
Ike had kissed Nina’s sleeping lips, andwiththe image of Sally and the kids, broken and torn by gunfire, etched in his brain, the ex-Seal had dressed silently and linked up with his waiting teams.
Ike had noticed Ben standing tall and silent in the gloom of predawn. Ben had walked over to his longtime friend.
“What happened to Sally was not your fault,” Ben had spoken softly, so only Ike could hear. “You do not have to go off on what might be a suicide mission simply because you met and made love to
another woman-while the both of you were running for your lives. You know that, Ike.”
“That’s not it, Ben. It really isn’t. Me and Sally had already made up our minds to split the blanket. It’s … hell, I don’t know. It’s the way Sally and the kids bought it that I can’t seem to shake. I talked with Lieutenant Bolden last night. I practically had to drag the story out of him, but I got it all. Damnit, Ben. Killing unarmed women and kids is just too much for me to take.”
“And there is this: Nina told me about meeting warlords wherever she traveled. Warlords, Ben. The country is spinning backward fifty years with every passing month. This has to be reversed, somehow, or we’re going to be in ever-deepening trouble. Willette and Hartline and Silver and this fruitcake Voleta … hell, they’re all one and the same. Put “em in a big sack and shake ‘em up and you couldn’t tell ‘em apart.” Ike caught his breath and his temper and gripped Ben’s arm. “I gotta go, buddy. Luck to you.”
“The same to you, Ike. Let’s put an end to the terror in these mountains today, friend.”
“I heard that, buddy.” Ike turned and walked toward his waiting teams. They vanished silently into the deep timber.
Now, as the first silver fingers of light fought to open against the misty horizon, painting the east a deep gray, Ben stood alone in the center of the encampment, listening. The sergeants had rolled their people out an hour before. The men and women of Raines” Rebels had awakened and become active with the same noises troops had made for thousands of years. Coughing, clearing their throats,
hacking and spitting, grumbling and bitching. Caesar’s Legions probably sounded much the same as they rolled out of their blankets and reached for swords and shields and spears.
Ben looked around him. No light betrayed their position. “I want a cold camp,” he had ordered. “No lights.”
Two full combat companies had quietly joined Ben’s ranks as his people had moved into position just south of Murphy, North Carolina the afternoon past. Two more full combat companies were waiting at Murphy for the general. It brought his strength up to a short battalion.
Cecil and his command were spread out north to south, from Ducktown in North Carolina, to just west of Higdon in Georgia. Mark and Juan had their people covering north to southeast along Highway 11, from the junction of 19 and 129, down to Blairsville in Georgia. The remainder of the Rebels, under the command of a Major Woodward, which included Abe Lancer and his people and the older of Wade and Ro’s young people, were covering the area running west to east in Georgia, from Higdon all the way over to Blairsville.
Colonel Gray and his Scouts, and Colonel McGowen and his teams would engage the enemy in a guerrilla type action, while acting as spear-headers for the main forces, moving in from three directions, slowly pushing the troops of the Ninth Order toward Juan and Mark, who by now had their troops dug in deep and heavily fortified with .50- caliber machine guns, M-60’s and mortars.
The Ninth Order, without realizing, had stepped
into a box, and the doors were closing around them.
Ben’s troops were mounted, in full battle gear, ready to roll, when Ben’s radio crackled. Cecil’s voice was firm and strong. “We have the enemy in sight and are engaging them.”
“Luck to you,” Ben said.
Ben’s radio crackled again. “Have found the enemy and driving them northward,” Major Woodward reported.
“Good luck,” Ben said.
