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Synopsis
In post-apocalyptic, dystopian North America, an ex-mercenary leads forces against an evil brewing in Mexico—from a USA Today –bestselling author. The patriot army of Ben Raines went toe-to-toe with the most powerful enemy in the world—the USA—and fought its way through the hellish chaos and terrorism. But for the free and the brave there is no rest—not when USA leader Claire Osterman has been ousted from power. Her reaction: a plan for revenge that will plunge the North American continent into bloody war. The attack will come from the South, where Osterman has made a pact with the devil—a former Sandinista Rebel named Perro Loco. Rushing up through Costa Rica and Mexico, their unholy alliance is poised to strike at the heart of the SUSA. Ben Raines, however, will not wait until blood is spilled on his own soil. He will lead his own strike force into the jungles of Mexico...to kill the enemy on his own ground. Thirtieth in the long-running series!
Release date: March 16, 2010
Publisher: Pinnacle Books
Print pages: 317
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Tyranny in the Ashes
William W. Johnstone
Claire Osterman looked up into the inky blackness of the night sky as the plane she’d just jumped out of exploded in a fiery ball of flame. The cold air rushed past her face and she flailed her arms, falling at 120 miles an hour toward the Tennessee mountains below.
She opened her mouth and began to scream . . .
“Wake up, lady,” a voice said, pulling her from the depths of the nightmare she’d had every night since her plane crash four weeks ago.
Claire Osterman looked up into Bettye Jean Holt’s face, fighting to come fully awake and put the horrible dream behind her. She glanced around at the small bedroom where she’d been staying since hobbling through five miles of wooded Ozark mountain forest with a broken jaw, broken left arm, and severely sprained left ankle to finally find refuge in the Holts’ small wooden shack a month before.
Bettye Jean Holt was carrying a bowl of what could only be described as gruel. She’d told Claire it was oatmeal, that being the only thing Claire could manage to eat as her broken jaw healed, but if there were any oats in it, they were few and far between.
“What time is it?” Claire mumbled sleepily, rubbing her eyes to erase the picture of General Willford Hall being blown to bits above her.
“Heck,” Bettye Jean said in her thick backwoods accent, “h‘it’s almost five in the mornin’. Billy Bob’s gone out to feed the chickens an’ hog.” She grinned, exposing yellowed teeth with several black gaps where malnutrition had caused them to fall out.
Claire reached for the oatmeal, wincing as pain shot down her left arm, restricted by the crude splint Bettye Jean had taped on it after setting the broken bones.
“He said to git yore lazy butt up an’ fer me to git his breakfast ’fore he came back, Mary,” Bettye Jean said, using the fake name Claire had given them when she found out they hated Claire Osterman and the entire government of the USA.
“He said it was about time you started earnin’ yore keep around here, but”—and Bettye Jean’s voice changed to a conspiratorial whisper as she continued—“I tole him yore arm weren’t healed enough jest yet.”
As Claire took the oatmeal from her, Bettye Jean pulled a folded-up newspaper out of her apron pocket. “I also brung you a paper Billy Bob got when he drove the ol’ pickup into town yesterday. H’it’s a couple‘a weeks old, but I figgered you’d like to know what was goin’ on in the world since you fell outta that tree.”
“What . . . oh, yeah,” Claire said, remembering she’d told the Holts that she’d received her injuries when she climbed a tree to get her bearings after getting lost in the woods. Billy Bob had said he thought she looked like Claire Osterman and if she was, he was going to shoot her. Her cover story had been a quick attempt to save her life until the search party from USA headquarters could find her.
Claire took the spoon and bowl and began shoveling the soupy mixture into her mouth, wondering why they hadn’t already come for her.
As she left the room, Bettye Jean lit a small kerosene lantern on a table next to the door. The cabin had no electricity or running water, and the bathroom was in a small shed fifty yards down the path.
Claire’s face flushed and her heart pounded as she read the headlines of the two-week-old paper: “President Warner and President Jeffreys Make Progress toward Peace Agreement.”
President Warner? Why that backstabbing son of a bitch, Claire thought. When I get back I’ll show him who’s President! I’ll personally put a bullet in the bastard’s mouth!
She finished the cereal and struggled out of the bed, hobbling on a still-sore left ankle toward the kitchen. She had to get to a phone so she could let them know at government headquarters she was still alive. She’d be damned if she was going to let this peace proposal go any further!
“Bettye Jean,” she said from the door to the kitchen.
Bettye Jean looked over her shoulder from the sink where she was washing dishes. “Oh, you scared me, Mary.”
“Bettye Jean,” Claire said, handing her the bowl and spoon, “I’ve got to get to a phone. How far is it to the nearest one?”
Bettye Jean pursed her lips, thinking. “Oh, ’bout five mile down the road. There’s a gas station there that has a phone on the wall.” She shook her head. “Course, they don’t often have any gas to sell, since that crazy Osterman lady done started this here war.”
“But she had to,” Claire said, exasperated that this simple country woman couldn’t understand the dangers the country faced from Ben Raines and his Rebels. “She had to protect the country against the Rebel Army.”
Bettye Jean put her finger to her lips. “Shhh, don’t you let Billy Bob hear you takin’ up fer that bitch. He’s liable to take a switch to you, or worse,” she said, naked fear in her eyes.
“Do you think he’ll take me down to the gasoline station in your pickup?”
“I doubt it, Mary. He says we don’t got no gas to waste on foolishness, what with it costin’ five dollars a gallon now, when they got any.”
Claire was getting awfully tired of the crap this hillbilly named Billy Bob was always spouting. She sighed. It was time to take matters into her own hands before it was too late and Otis Warner and his crowd screwed everything up beyond repair.
“Okay, Bettye Jean. You go on back to your dishwashing and I’ll go out back and ask him myself.”
“ ’Member now, don’t go sayin’ nothin’ ’bout that Osterman woman, or you’ll git a beatin’.”
Claire’s lips curled in a sneer. “Oh, I think Billy Bob’s beating days are over.”
She left the kitchen, Bettye Jean staring at her back with a worried look on her face. Claire went down the hallway to the Holts’ bedroom and opened the closet door. Leaning in a corner was a double-barreled shotgun. Bettye Jean had told her Billy Bob always kept it loaded with 00-buckshot.
Claire picked it up, broke open the barrel, and checked the loads. Both barrels full. She clicked it shut, put it over her shoulder, and headed out back to where the hogs and chickens were.
“Here, chick, chick, chick,” Billy Bob was saying as he scattered a few meager handfuls of grain for the hens. A bucket of slops was next to his feet, intended for the rather skinny hog in a makeshift pen a few yards away.
“Billy Bob,” Claire called to his back. “I need a ride down the road to the gas station. I need to make a phone call.”
Without turning around, he answered, “I ain’t got gas to waste on you and yore foolishness, woman. Now git back to the house and hep Bettye Jean with her chores.”
Claire’s face flushed in anger. No one had talked like that to her in ten years, and she wasn’t about to let this inbred idiot do it now.
“I don’t think so, Billy Bob,” she said in a low, dangerous voice.
“You sassin’ me, woman?” he said as he turned around, eyes widening as he saw the long-barreled shotgun cradled in her arms.
“What you doin’ with my scattergun?” he asked.
“Thanking you for your hospitality, you dumb son of a bitch,” she said, her eyes sparkling with excitement as she pulled the trigger.
The shotgun exploded, twisting her half around as the heavy load blew Billy Bob backward to land half in the hog pen.
“You’ll have something special to eat tonight, hog,” she said as she turned and walked up the hill toward the house.
Bettye Jean came running out of the door, her hands to her mouth when she saw what Claire had done.
“Oh, Mary,” she screamed, tears running down her cheeks. “What’d you do that, fer?”
“I’m sorry, Bettye Jean, but I can’t let you tell anyone I’m here until my people have a chance to come get me. It would be too dangerous with the attitude you mountain people have towards the government.”
“Huh?” Bettye Jean asked.
“I’m truly sorry, Bettye Jean. You were really nice to me, but you had the misfortune to become involved in things more important than your miserable life.”
The shotgun exploded again, knocking Bettye Jean backward through the screened-in rear porch, dead before she hit the ground.
Claire took the keys to their battered pickup truck off a nail on the kitchen wall. She reloaded the shotgun, just in case, and started toward the gasoline station down the road. It was time to call in the troops.
Virgie Malone, Otis Warner’s new secretary and “gal Friday,” stuck her head in the door to the President of the United States’ office and called, “Mr. President!”
Otis glanced up from the latest communique from President Cecil Jeffreys, surprised at the urgent tone in Virgie’s voice. He was interested to see what could make the usually unflappable Virgie so excited.
“Yes, Virgie? What is it?” he asked.
“There’s someone on line one,” she said, a little breathless since she’d run the twenty feet down the hall from her office to give him this message personally rather than trusting the interoffice intercom.
“Who is it?”
“She says she’s Claire Osterman.”
“Shit!” Otis exclaimed, sweat popping out on his brow and his stomach feeling as if someone had kicked him in the balls.
“Should I put her through?” Virgie asked, watching his reaction carefully.
“Uh ... yeah, sure, just give me a minute to ... collect myself. Oh, and get General Winter down here immediately! ”
“Sir,” Virgie said, “I thought she was dead.”
Otis pulled a rumpled handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his forehead. “So did I, Virgie, so did we all.”
She pulled her head out of the doorway like a turtle going back in its shell, and a few moments later the phone on his desk buzzed.
His hand hesitated just a few seconds as he reached to pick up the receiver, as if he were afraid to touch the instrument lest some venom from the bitch on the other end leak through the plastic and eat his flesh away.
Finally, he picked the phone up. “Hello, this is Otis Warner.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t call yourself the President, Otis,” the sarcastic voice on the other end snarled in a tone he remembered so well.
“Claire, is it you? We thought you’d been killed.”
“No doubt,” she replied drily. “Well, as you can see, or rather hear, I’m alive, and I’m ready to get back to headquarters.”
“Uh, sure, okay,” Otis stammered, playing for time as he frantically tried to think of what to do next.
“I want you to send a pickup team immediately, Otis.”
“All right, Claire. Just where exactly are you?”
“I’m at a little log cabin in the woods about seven or eight klicks north of the crash site. You can’t miss it. There’s nothing else around for miles. There’ll be a rusted-out red pickup truck parked in front.”
Otis nodded at the phone, forgetting she couldn’t see him. “Okay. I’ll have an extraction team there in a couple of hours.”
“You’d better,” she snapped. “Oh, and Otis?”
“Yes?”
“When I get back, we’re going to have a very serious talk about this bullshit peace protocol you’ve been trying to push through.”
“Yes ... uh, Madame President.”
He winced at the loud click as she slammed the phone down.
General Joseph Winter knocked lightly on his door, and entered without waiting for his answer.
“Good morning, Mr. President,” he said formally, as was his wont when addressing his old friend.
“Can the shit, Joe!” Otis said. “We’ve got trouble.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. Claire Osterman just called me on the phone.”
“What? But . . . she was confirmed dead.”
“No, she wasn’t. Evidently the plane went down without her on it. She’s at a little cabin just north of the crash site. She wants an extraction team ASAP.”
Winter paused to stare out of Otis’s window, thinking.
“We’re royally fucked, Joe,” Otis said, wiping more sweat from his face.
Winter’s eyes found his. “No we’re not, Otis. Just because we missed once, doesn’t mean we can’t try again.”
“You mean . . .”
“Sure. We’ve got her location, so instead of an extraction team, we send a hit team. I’ll send an Apache gunship and blow the cabin all to hell.”
“Have you got men you can trust to do this?”
“Absolutely. As I told you, I’ve weaned out most of the men sympathetic to Osterman’s ideas.”
He got to his feet. “Just leave everything to me, Otis. Remember, don’t sweat the small stuff, and . . .”
“I know, it’s all small stuff,” Otis said, finishing the joke between the two men who had engineered a takeover of one of the most powerful governments on earth.
“Let me know when it’s over, will you?” Otis asked.
Winter nodded as he put his cap on his head and pulled it down tight. “Hang in there, Mr. President,” he said as he walked out the door.
Otis swiveled in his chair so he could stare out his window. It was all so close to becoming reality. The war with the SUSA was days away from being history. Now was no time for that bitch to show up and put a monkey wrench in his plans.
Claire Osterman drove back to the cabin in the Holts’truck, parked it in front, and went inside. She walked around the cabin, but found nothing she wanted to take with her.
She made a pot of coffee, using the last of the grounds in the Holts’ cupboard. Ha, she laughed to herself as she emptied the can. They wouldn’t have need of it any longer.
After she had been waiting for an hour, her stomach began to cramp from the four cups of coffee she’d downed. Damn, she thought, one more trip to that misbegotten outhouse.
She walked the fifty yards down the path through the woods to the small shed and went inside. As she sat on the wooden bench with the two holes in it, she thought, Why in the world do they make these things with two holes? Surely people don’t sit here next to each other and use them at the same time.
She was only half-finished when she heard the unmistakable whoop-whoop of helicopter blades overhead. Damn, she thought, wouldn’t you know it. The goddamned Army never comes at an appropriate time. She was in the process of pulling up her pants when the sound of the helicopter blades changed, becoming higher in pitch and much louder as it roared by less than twenty feet over her head.
She jerked the door of the outhouse open just in time to see the tiny log cabin virtually disintegrate under the onslaught of thousands of rounds of ammunition from the Gatling guns of the attack ship. She ducked back inside the outhouse as the Apache warship made a sweeping bank to the left, lined up on the cabin, and fired two Hellfire missiles into the roof.
The shock wave from the explosion hit the outhouse like a mighty fist and knocked it over on its side. This probably saved Claire’s life, as the outhouse was now flat among a row of bushes at its rear and covered from sight.
As the flames from the explosion died down, the helicopter landed and two men jumped to the ground, automatic rifles cradled in their arms.
They walked into the smoldering wreckage of the house, and Claire could see them stirring a smoking lump of charred flesh with their boots. One of them turned and gave a thumbs-up to the pilot, and both men ran back to the helicopter.
After it took off, Claire pushed broken boards off her body and struggled out of the bushes, finally getting to her feet. She ran to the house to see what the men had been looking at. She held her nose as she stood over Mrs. Holt’s still-burning corpse. Those bastards were making sure a female had been killed in the attack! she thought. The sons of bitches were sent to kill me!
The realization stunned Claire as nothing else ever had. She stumbled from the burnt-out shell of the cabin, thinking furiously. She had to clear her mind and be sharp, or else she’d never survive this.
She walked around the ruins of the cabin and found the pickup on its side, flames licking the rusted red paint from the metal. So much for transportation, she mused.
She ran back to the outhouse, picked up the shotgun she’d carried with her, and began to walk toward the gas station. She figured she had a couple of hours’ walk to figure out her next step. But one thing was sure. She was going to make that son of a bitch Otis Warner rue the day he fucked with Claire Osterman.
Ben Raines, Commander in Chief of the Rebel Army of the Southern United States of America, threw the rubber ball as far as he could. His malamute puppy, Jodie, took off in a lumbering run after the ball, her tongue hanging out as she panted from the workout Ben was giving her.
Cooper, Ben’s driver and friend, squatted on his haunches nearby. “That’s a pretty good throw for an old man, Ben. You missed your calling. You should’ve been a major-league pitcher.”
Ben glanced at the young man as he sleeved sweat off his forehead. “I don’t know who’s getting the best workout here. Me or the dog.”
Jersey, Ben’s female bodyguard who was never very far from his side, said, “It’s a shame you don’t have two balls, Ben. Then you could throw one for Coop to fetch, too.”
Coop glared at Jersey. “Ben, what’s another word for female dog?”
Jersey pointed her finger at him. “Don’t even go there, Coop, or you’ll be wearing those little ornaments hanging between your legs on your head.”
Coop snickered. “Hell, might as well be wearin’ ’em for all the use they’ve gotten lately.”
As Jodie brought the ball back to Ben and dropped it at his feet, he leaned down and petted her head. “That’s enough, girl. You’re wearing Daddy out.”
Jersey, unwilling to let Coop off the hook, observed, “Well, Coop, now that the war with the USA is on hold, maybe you can find some undiscriminating females at a local bar who’ll consent to go out on a date with you.”
“Unlike some of the female members of this team who haven’t had any dates since reaching puberty, I won’t have to look too far. The babes are lined up waitin’ for me to ask ’em out.”
Jersey turned to follow Ben into their offices in SUSA headquarters. “That’s gotta be the shortest line in the country,” she muttered.
“Hey, I heard that!” Coop said, falling in behind her and Ben. “And if I hadn’t been so busy this past year pulling your butt out of the fire, I’d’ve had plenty of chances to score.”
Jersey’s heart fluttered at the words, and her mind flashed back to the night Coop was referring to ...
The jump master and his helpers shoved large wooden crates out the door, alternating equipment drops with the jumps of Ben’s team so the matériel would land within easy reach of the Rebel forces. Finally, only Coop and Jersey were left in the big C-130.
Coop gave a low bow, sweeping his hand to the side. “After you, my pet,” he said with a sardonic leer, glancing at the way Jersey’s battle fatigues fit snugly over her buttocks.
“Pervert,” she said, noticing where his eyes were fixed. “Have a good look, ’cause that’s all you’ll ever get!”
She hooked her chute cord on the overhead line and bent to step out of the doorway. Just before she jumped, the Big Bird hit an air pocket and suddenly lurched and dropped fifty feet straight down.
Jersey was thrown out the door, tumbling uncontrollably in the updraft as the plane plummeted earthward. Her chute deployed and was immediately snagged on the tail fin of the airplane, ripping to shreds and streaming behind her as she fell.
“Shit!” screamed the jump master, leaning out the window to watch her fall. He turned an ashen face to Coop. “She’s a goner.”
Coop whipped out his K-Bar and slashed his chute line. “Uh-uh, pardner, nobody dies tonight,” he said, and dove out of the door after her.
He tucked his chin onto his chest and put his hands tight against his sides to minimize drag, and blinked his eyes against the hundred-mile-an-hour-wind as he arrowed downward, desperately trying to catch sight of Jersey’s black silk against the darkness.
Jersey’s body tumbled, her arms loose and flopping like a rag doll’s, unconscious from the jolt she’d received when her chute was ripped apart.
This saved her life, as she fell much more slowly than Coop did, and he caught up with her in a matter of seconds. When he came up to her, he spread his arms and legs to slow his fall, and grabbed the tangled shreds of her chute, wrapping his hands around the silk.
He took a deep breath, grabbed the D-ring of his chute release, and jerked. When his parachute opened, the jolt nearly took his arms off, and he felt as if both his shoulders were dislocated by the force of the sudden slowdown.
Even though the Ranger parachutes were specially made for low-level drops, they weren’t designed to hold two people at once. Coop and Jersey fell with alarming speed through the night.
Coop gritted his teeth and bent his knees slightly, hoping he’d be able to hit and roll without breaking a leg, or even worse, his neck. “Mamma always said there’d be days like this,” he muttered to himself.
In a stroke of great good fortune, Jersey and Coop plummeted into the outer branches of a giant sugar maple tree, the limbs slowing their fall enough to cause them to suffer only minor bruises and cuts.
As soon as he could untangle himself from the lines of his chute, Coop took a quick inventory of his body. No major bones seemed to be broken, and other than a deep gash on his left thigh, which he wrapped with a piece of silk from his chute, he seemed in fair condition.
When he was satisfied the bleeding from his leg was controlled, he scrambled through the darkness to where Jersey lay, still unconscious.
He gently unwrapped her from the shroud of silk covering her, and spread her out on the ground. He was running his hands over her limbs and body, checking for major wounds or broken bones, when she opened her eyes and stared angrily at him.
“Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?” she asked, propping herself up on her elbows.
Coop sat back on his haunches. “Just coppin’ a quick feel, darlin’,” he answered, more relieved than he cared to show that she was all right.
“Well, unless you want to pull back a nub, keep your hands to yourself, Coop.”
He grinned. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, holding his hands out palm up. “Whatever you say, Jersey.”
“What happened?” she asked, and tried to stand up, collapsing when she put her weight on her right ankle, which was already swollen to almost twice normal size.
He leaned forward and took her leg in his hand, untied her combat boot, and pulled it off, causing her to shout in pain.
“Hold on there, big boy,” she said. “What’re you trying to do, pull my foot off?”
He gave a low whistle when he saw her ankle. It was black and blue and grossly misshapen. Slowly, he moved it through a complete range of motion, again bringing tears of pain to her eyes.
“I don’t think it’s broken, but you’re not going to be walking on it anytime soon,” he said.
As she stared at him, her eyes glistening with moisture in the half moonlight, he explained what had happened, and how her chute had fouled on the tail fin of the C-130.
“Damn!” she exclaimed, looking heavenward.
“What is it?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Now I owe you my life, and I can’t think of a worse thing to have happen.”
“Oh, things could be worse.”
“How?”
“I could be scraping your body up with a spatula about now,” he answered.
She snorted. “I don’t know if that would be worse or not.”
He leered at her. “Oh, don’t make such a big thing of it,” he said. “I figure you did this on purpose, so we’d be marooned alone out here in the woods, like we were in Africa.” 3
He shook his head. “Hell, you didn’t have to go to all this trouble to be alone with me ... all you had to do was ask.”
She kicked at him with her injured ankle, then moaned in pain. “Don’t flatter yourself, pervert. I’d sooner be alone with a snake than with a lecher like you.”
“Speaking of being alone, why don’t you try to bump Corrie on your headset? Mine got ripped off when I sky-dove to catch up with you.”
Jersey reached up to trigger the speaker on her headset, only to find it smashed to pieces, hanging uselessly around her neck.
“Damn, no can do, Coop. Looks like we really are alone. Do you have any idea where we are, or where the rest of the team is?”
“Don’t have a clue. After the plane hit the air pocket, we could have turned in any direction. There is no way of telling where we are, at least not until daylight.”
Jersey glanced at the chronometer on her wrist. “It’s about one A.M. now, so that gives us at least five hours until dawn.”
Coop got to his feet and dusted his pants off. “I’ll cut some bra. . .
She opened her mouth and began to scream . . .
“Wake up, lady,” a voice said, pulling her from the depths of the nightmare she’d had every night since her plane crash four weeks ago.
Claire Osterman looked up into Bettye Jean Holt’s face, fighting to come fully awake and put the horrible dream behind her. She glanced around at the small bedroom where she’d been staying since hobbling through five miles of wooded Ozark mountain forest with a broken jaw, broken left arm, and severely sprained left ankle to finally find refuge in the Holts’ small wooden shack a month before.
Bettye Jean Holt was carrying a bowl of what could only be described as gruel. She’d told Claire it was oatmeal, that being the only thing Claire could manage to eat as her broken jaw healed, but if there were any oats in it, they were few and far between.
“What time is it?” Claire mumbled sleepily, rubbing her eyes to erase the picture of General Willford Hall being blown to bits above her.
“Heck,” Bettye Jean said in her thick backwoods accent, “h‘it’s almost five in the mornin’. Billy Bob’s gone out to feed the chickens an’ hog.” She grinned, exposing yellowed teeth with several black gaps where malnutrition had caused them to fall out.
Claire reached for the oatmeal, wincing as pain shot down her left arm, restricted by the crude splint Bettye Jean had taped on it after setting the broken bones.
“He said to git yore lazy butt up an’ fer me to git his breakfast ’fore he came back, Mary,” Bettye Jean said, using the fake name Claire had given them when she found out they hated Claire Osterman and the entire government of the USA.
“He said it was about time you started earnin’ yore keep around here, but”—and Bettye Jean’s voice changed to a conspiratorial whisper as she continued—“I tole him yore arm weren’t healed enough jest yet.”
As Claire took the oatmeal from her, Bettye Jean pulled a folded-up newspaper out of her apron pocket. “I also brung you a paper Billy Bob got when he drove the ol’ pickup into town yesterday. H’it’s a couple‘a weeks old, but I figgered you’d like to know what was goin’ on in the world since you fell outta that tree.”
“What . . . oh, yeah,” Claire said, remembering she’d told the Holts that she’d received her injuries when she climbed a tree to get her bearings after getting lost in the woods. Billy Bob had said he thought she looked like Claire Osterman and if she was, he was going to shoot her. Her cover story had been a quick attempt to save her life until the search party from USA headquarters could find her.
Claire took the spoon and bowl and began shoveling the soupy mixture into her mouth, wondering why they hadn’t already come for her.
As she left the room, Bettye Jean lit a small kerosene lantern on a table next to the door. The cabin had no electricity or running water, and the bathroom was in a small shed fifty yards down the path.
Claire’s face flushed and her heart pounded as she read the headlines of the two-week-old paper: “President Warner and President Jeffreys Make Progress toward Peace Agreement.”
President Warner? Why that backstabbing son of a bitch, Claire thought. When I get back I’ll show him who’s President! I’ll personally put a bullet in the bastard’s mouth!
She finished the cereal and struggled out of the bed, hobbling on a still-sore left ankle toward the kitchen. She had to get to a phone so she could let them know at government headquarters she was still alive. She’d be damned if she was going to let this peace proposal go any further!
“Bettye Jean,” she said from the door to the kitchen.
Bettye Jean looked over her shoulder from the sink where she was washing dishes. “Oh, you scared me, Mary.”
“Bettye Jean,” Claire said, handing her the bowl and spoon, “I’ve got to get to a phone. How far is it to the nearest one?”
Bettye Jean pursed her lips, thinking. “Oh, ’bout five mile down the road. There’s a gas station there that has a phone on the wall.” She shook her head. “Course, they don’t often have any gas to sell, since that crazy Osterman lady done started this here war.”
“But she had to,” Claire said, exasperated that this simple country woman couldn’t understand the dangers the country faced from Ben Raines and his Rebels. “She had to protect the country against the Rebel Army.”
Bettye Jean put her finger to her lips. “Shhh, don’t you let Billy Bob hear you takin’ up fer that bitch. He’s liable to take a switch to you, or worse,” she said, naked fear in her eyes.
“Do you think he’ll take me down to the gasoline station in your pickup?”
“I doubt it, Mary. He says we don’t got no gas to waste on foolishness, what with it costin’ five dollars a gallon now, when they got any.”
Claire was getting awfully tired of the crap this hillbilly named Billy Bob was always spouting. She sighed. It was time to take matters into her own hands before it was too late and Otis Warner and his crowd screwed everything up beyond repair.
“Okay, Bettye Jean. You go on back to your dishwashing and I’ll go out back and ask him myself.”
“ ’Member now, don’t go sayin’ nothin’ ’bout that Osterman woman, or you’ll git a beatin’.”
Claire’s lips curled in a sneer. “Oh, I think Billy Bob’s beating days are over.”
She left the kitchen, Bettye Jean staring at her back with a worried look on her face. Claire went down the hallway to the Holts’ bedroom and opened the closet door. Leaning in a corner was a double-barreled shotgun. Bettye Jean had told her Billy Bob always kept it loaded with 00-buckshot.
Claire picked it up, broke open the barrel, and checked the loads. Both barrels full. She clicked it shut, put it over her shoulder, and headed out back to where the hogs and chickens were.
“Here, chick, chick, chick,” Billy Bob was saying as he scattered a few meager handfuls of grain for the hens. A bucket of slops was next to his feet, intended for the rather skinny hog in a makeshift pen a few yards away.
“Billy Bob,” Claire called to his back. “I need a ride down the road to the gas station. I need to make a phone call.”
Without turning around, he answered, “I ain’t got gas to waste on you and yore foolishness, woman. Now git back to the house and hep Bettye Jean with her chores.”
Claire’s face flushed in anger. No one had talked like that to her in ten years, and she wasn’t about to let this inbred idiot do it now.
“I don’t think so, Billy Bob,” she said in a low, dangerous voice.
“You sassin’ me, woman?” he said as he turned around, eyes widening as he saw the long-barreled shotgun cradled in her arms.
“What you doin’ with my scattergun?” he asked.
“Thanking you for your hospitality, you dumb son of a bitch,” she said, her eyes sparkling with excitement as she pulled the trigger.
The shotgun exploded, twisting her half around as the heavy load blew Billy Bob backward to land half in the hog pen.
“You’ll have something special to eat tonight, hog,” she said as she turned and walked up the hill toward the house.
Bettye Jean came running out of the door, her hands to her mouth when she saw what Claire had done.
“Oh, Mary,” she screamed, tears running down her cheeks. “What’d you do that, fer?”
“I’m sorry, Bettye Jean, but I can’t let you tell anyone I’m here until my people have a chance to come get me. It would be too dangerous with the attitude you mountain people have towards the government.”
“Huh?” Bettye Jean asked.
“I’m truly sorry, Bettye Jean. You were really nice to me, but you had the misfortune to become involved in things more important than your miserable life.”
The shotgun exploded again, knocking Bettye Jean backward through the screened-in rear porch, dead before she hit the ground.
Claire took the keys to their battered pickup truck off a nail on the kitchen wall. She reloaded the shotgun, just in case, and started toward the gasoline station down the road. It was time to call in the troops.
Virgie Malone, Otis Warner’s new secretary and “gal Friday,” stuck her head in the door to the President of the United States’ office and called, “Mr. President!”
Otis glanced up from the latest communique from President Cecil Jeffreys, surprised at the urgent tone in Virgie’s voice. He was interested to see what could make the usually unflappable Virgie so excited.
“Yes, Virgie? What is it?” he asked.
“There’s someone on line one,” she said, a little breathless since she’d run the twenty feet down the hall from her office to give him this message personally rather than trusting the interoffice intercom.
“Who is it?”
“She says she’s Claire Osterman.”
“Shit!” Otis exclaimed, sweat popping out on his brow and his stomach feeling as if someone had kicked him in the balls.
“Should I put her through?” Virgie asked, watching his reaction carefully.
“Uh ... yeah, sure, just give me a minute to ... collect myself. Oh, and get General Winter down here immediately! ”
“Sir,” Virgie said, “I thought she was dead.”
Otis pulled a rumpled handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his forehead. “So did I, Virgie, so did we all.”
She pulled her head out of the doorway like a turtle going back in its shell, and a few moments later the phone on his desk buzzed.
His hand hesitated just a few seconds as he reached to pick up the receiver, as if he were afraid to touch the instrument lest some venom from the bitch on the other end leak through the plastic and eat his flesh away.
Finally, he picked the phone up. “Hello, this is Otis Warner.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t call yourself the President, Otis,” the sarcastic voice on the other end snarled in a tone he remembered so well.
“Claire, is it you? We thought you’d been killed.”
“No doubt,” she replied drily. “Well, as you can see, or rather hear, I’m alive, and I’m ready to get back to headquarters.”
“Uh, sure, okay,” Otis stammered, playing for time as he frantically tried to think of what to do next.
“I want you to send a pickup team immediately, Otis.”
“All right, Claire. Just where exactly are you?”
“I’m at a little log cabin in the woods about seven or eight klicks north of the crash site. You can’t miss it. There’s nothing else around for miles. There’ll be a rusted-out red pickup truck parked in front.”
Otis nodded at the phone, forgetting she couldn’t see him. “Okay. I’ll have an extraction team there in a couple of hours.”
“You’d better,” she snapped. “Oh, and Otis?”
“Yes?”
“When I get back, we’re going to have a very serious talk about this bullshit peace protocol you’ve been trying to push through.”
“Yes ... uh, Madame President.”
He winced at the loud click as she slammed the phone down.
General Joseph Winter knocked lightly on his door, and entered without waiting for his answer.
“Good morning, Mr. President,” he said formally, as was his wont when addressing his old friend.
“Can the shit, Joe!” Otis said. “We’ve got trouble.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. Claire Osterman just called me on the phone.”
“What? But . . . she was confirmed dead.”
“No, she wasn’t. Evidently the plane went down without her on it. She’s at a little cabin just north of the crash site. She wants an extraction team ASAP.”
Winter paused to stare out of Otis’s window, thinking.
“We’re royally fucked, Joe,” Otis said, wiping more sweat from his face.
Winter’s eyes found his. “No we’re not, Otis. Just because we missed once, doesn’t mean we can’t try again.”
“You mean . . .”
“Sure. We’ve got her location, so instead of an extraction team, we send a hit team. I’ll send an Apache gunship and blow the cabin all to hell.”
“Have you got men you can trust to do this?”
“Absolutely. As I told you, I’ve weaned out most of the men sympathetic to Osterman’s ideas.”
He got to his feet. “Just leave everything to me, Otis. Remember, don’t sweat the small stuff, and . . .”
“I know, it’s all small stuff,” Otis said, finishing the joke between the two men who had engineered a takeover of one of the most powerful governments on earth.
“Let me know when it’s over, will you?” Otis asked.
Winter nodded as he put his cap on his head and pulled it down tight. “Hang in there, Mr. President,” he said as he walked out the door.
Otis swiveled in his chair so he could stare out his window. It was all so close to becoming reality. The war with the SUSA was days away from being history. Now was no time for that bitch to show up and put a monkey wrench in his plans.
Claire Osterman drove back to the cabin in the Holts’truck, parked it in front, and went inside. She walked around the cabin, but found nothing she wanted to take with her.
She made a pot of coffee, using the last of the grounds in the Holts’ cupboard. Ha, she laughed to herself as she emptied the can. They wouldn’t have need of it any longer.
After she had been waiting for an hour, her stomach began to cramp from the four cups of coffee she’d downed. Damn, she thought, one more trip to that misbegotten outhouse.
She walked the fifty yards down the path through the woods to the small shed and went inside. As she sat on the wooden bench with the two holes in it, she thought, Why in the world do they make these things with two holes? Surely people don’t sit here next to each other and use them at the same time.
She was only half-finished when she heard the unmistakable whoop-whoop of helicopter blades overhead. Damn, she thought, wouldn’t you know it. The goddamned Army never comes at an appropriate time. She was in the process of pulling up her pants when the sound of the helicopter blades changed, becoming higher in pitch and much louder as it roared by less than twenty feet over her head.
She jerked the door of the outhouse open just in time to see the tiny log cabin virtually disintegrate under the onslaught of thousands of rounds of ammunition from the Gatling guns of the attack ship. She ducked back inside the outhouse as the Apache warship made a sweeping bank to the left, lined up on the cabin, and fired two Hellfire missiles into the roof.
The shock wave from the explosion hit the outhouse like a mighty fist and knocked it over on its side. This probably saved Claire’s life, as the outhouse was now flat among a row of bushes at its rear and covered from sight.
As the flames from the explosion died down, the helicopter landed and two men jumped to the ground, automatic rifles cradled in their arms.
They walked into the smoldering wreckage of the house, and Claire could see them stirring a smoking lump of charred flesh with their boots. One of them turned and gave a thumbs-up to the pilot, and both men ran back to the helicopter.
After it took off, Claire pushed broken boards off her body and struggled out of the bushes, finally getting to her feet. She ran to the house to see what the men had been looking at. She held her nose as she stood over Mrs. Holt’s still-burning corpse. Those bastards were making sure a female had been killed in the attack! she thought. The sons of bitches were sent to kill me!
The realization stunned Claire as nothing else ever had. She stumbled from the burnt-out shell of the cabin, thinking furiously. She had to clear her mind and be sharp, or else she’d never survive this.
She walked around the ruins of the cabin and found the pickup on its side, flames licking the rusted red paint from the metal. So much for transportation, she mused.
She ran back to the outhouse, picked up the shotgun she’d carried with her, and began to walk toward the gas station. She figured she had a couple of hours’ walk to figure out her next step. But one thing was sure. She was going to make that son of a bitch Otis Warner rue the day he fucked with Claire Osterman.
Ben Raines, Commander in Chief of the Rebel Army of the Southern United States of America, threw the rubber ball as far as he could. His malamute puppy, Jodie, took off in a lumbering run after the ball, her tongue hanging out as she panted from the workout Ben was giving her.
Cooper, Ben’s driver and friend, squatted on his haunches nearby. “That’s a pretty good throw for an old man, Ben. You missed your calling. You should’ve been a major-league pitcher.”
Ben glanced at the young man as he sleeved sweat off his forehead. “I don’t know who’s getting the best workout here. Me or the dog.”
Jersey, Ben’s female bodyguard who was never very far from his side, said, “It’s a shame you don’t have two balls, Ben. Then you could throw one for Coop to fetch, too.”
Coop glared at Jersey. “Ben, what’s another word for female dog?”
Jersey pointed her finger at him. “Don’t even go there, Coop, or you’ll be wearing those little ornaments hanging between your legs on your head.”
Coop snickered. “Hell, might as well be wearin’ ’em for all the use they’ve gotten lately.”
As Jodie brought the ball back to Ben and dropped it at his feet, he leaned down and petted her head. “That’s enough, girl. You’re wearing Daddy out.”
Jersey, unwilling to let Coop off the hook, observed, “Well, Coop, now that the war with the USA is on hold, maybe you can find some undiscriminating females at a local bar who’ll consent to go out on a date with you.”
“Unlike some of the female members of this team who haven’t had any dates since reaching puberty, I won’t have to look too far. The babes are lined up waitin’ for me to ask ’em out.”
Jersey turned to follow Ben into their offices in SUSA headquarters. “That’s gotta be the shortest line in the country,” she muttered.
“Hey, I heard that!” Coop said, falling in behind her and Ben. “And if I hadn’t been so busy this past year pulling your butt out of the fire, I’d’ve had plenty of chances to score.”
Jersey’s heart fluttered at the words, and her mind flashed back to the night Coop was referring to ...
The jump master and his helpers shoved large wooden crates out the door, alternating equipment drops with the jumps of Ben’s team so the matériel would land within easy reach of the Rebel forces. Finally, only Coop and Jersey were left in the big C-130.
Coop gave a low bow, sweeping his hand to the side. “After you, my pet,” he said with a sardonic leer, glancing at the way Jersey’s battle fatigues fit snugly over her buttocks.
“Pervert,” she said, noticing where his eyes were fixed. “Have a good look, ’cause that’s all you’ll ever get!”
She hooked her chute cord on the overhead line and bent to step out of the doorway. Just before she jumped, the Big Bird hit an air pocket and suddenly lurched and dropped fifty feet straight down.
Jersey was thrown out the door, tumbling uncontrollably in the updraft as the plane plummeted earthward. Her chute deployed and was immediately snagged on the tail fin of the airplane, ripping to shreds and streaming behind her as she fell.
“Shit!” screamed the jump master, leaning out the window to watch her fall. He turned an ashen face to Coop. “She’s a goner.”
Coop whipped out his K-Bar and slashed his chute line. “Uh-uh, pardner, nobody dies tonight,” he said, and dove out of the door after her.
He tucked his chin onto his chest and put his hands tight against his sides to minimize drag, and blinked his eyes against the hundred-mile-an-hour-wind as he arrowed downward, desperately trying to catch sight of Jersey’s black silk against the darkness.
Jersey’s body tumbled, her arms loose and flopping like a rag doll’s, unconscious from the jolt she’d received when her chute was ripped apart.
This saved her life, as she fell much more slowly than Coop did, and he caught up with her in a matter of seconds. When he came up to her, he spread his arms and legs to slow his fall, and grabbed the tangled shreds of her chute, wrapping his hands around the silk.
He took a deep breath, grabbed the D-ring of his chute release, and jerked. When his parachute opened, the jolt nearly took his arms off, and he felt as if both his shoulders were dislocated by the force of the sudden slowdown.
Even though the Ranger parachutes were specially made for low-level drops, they weren’t designed to hold two people at once. Coop and Jersey fell with alarming speed through the night.
Coop gritted his teeth and bent his knees slightly, hoping he’d be able to hit and roll without breaking a leg, or even worse, his neck. “Mamma always said there’d be days like this,” he muttered to himself.
In a stroke of great good fortune, Jersey and Coop plummeted into the outer branches of a giant sugar maple tree, the limbs slowing their fall enough to cause them to suffer only minor bruises and cuts.
As soon as he could untangle himself from the lines of his chute, Coop took a quick inventory of his body. No major bones seemed to be broken, and other than a deep gash on his left thigh, which he wrapped with a piece of silk from his chute, he seemed in fair condition.
When he was satisfied the bleeding from his leg was controlled, he scrambled through the darkness to where Jersey lay, still unconscious.
He gently unwrapped her from the shroud of silk covering her, and spread her out on the ground. He was running his hands over her limbs and body, checking for major wounds or broken bones, when she opened her eyes and stared angrily at him.
“Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?” she asked, propping herself up on her elbows.
Coop sat back on his haunches. “Just coppin’ a quick feel, darlin’,” he answered, more relieved than he cared to show that she was all right.
“Well, unless you want to pull back a nub, keep your hands to yourself, Coop.”
He grinned. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, holding his hands out palm up. “Whatever you say, Jersey.”
“What happened?” she asked, and tried to stand up, collapsing when she put her weight on her right ankle, which was already swollen to almost twice normal size.
He leaned forward and took her leg in his hand, untied her combat boot, and pulled it off, causing her to shout in pain.
“Hold on there, big boy,” she said. “What’re you trying to do, pull my foot off?”
He gave a low whistle when he saw her ankle. It was black and blue and grossly misshapen. Slowly, he moved it through a complete range of motion, again bringing tears of pain to her eyes.
“I don’t think it’s broken, but you’re not going to be walking on it anytime soon,” he said.
As she stared at him, her eyes glistening with moisture in the half moonlight, he explained what had happened, and how her chute had fouled on the tail fin of the C-130.
“Damn!” she exclaimed, looking heavenward.
“What is it?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Now I owe you my life, and I can’t think of a worse thing to have happen.”
“Oh, things could be worse.”
“How?”
“I could be scraping your body up with a spatula about now,” he answered.
She snorted. “I don’t know if that would be worse or not.”
He leered at her. “Oh, don’t make such a big thing of it,” he said. “I figure you did this on purpose, so we’d be marooned alone out here in the woods, like we were in Africa.” 3
He shook his head. “Hell, you didn’t have to go to all this trouble to be alone with me ... all you had to do was ask.”
She kicked at him with her injured ankle, then moaned in pain. “Don’t flatter yourself, pervert. I’d sooner be alone with a snake than with a lecher like you.”
“Speaking of being alone, why don’t you try to bump Corrie on your headset? Mine got ripped off when I sky-dove to catch up with you.”
Jersey reached up to trigger the speaker on her headset, only to find it smashed to pieces, hanging uselessly around her neck.
“Damn, no can do, Coop. Looks like we really are alone. Do you have any idea where we are, or where the rest of the team is?”
“Don’t have a clue. After the plane hit the air pocket, we could have turned in any direction. There is no way of telling where we are, at least not until daylight.”
Jersey glanced at the chronometer on her wrist. “It’s about one A.M. now, so that gives us at least five hours until dawn.”
Coop got to his feet and dusted his pants off. “I’ll cut some bra. . .
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Tyranny in the Ashes
William W. Johnstone
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