“I think it best that we hold our discussions some miles from this place, don’t you, miss?” Ben said.
She returned his smile. “Yes, I do, General. And that’s ms. if you don’t mind.”
“Right,” Ben said dryly. “What else?”
One young member of the IPF allowed courage to override training and common sense. He grabbed for his pistol and leveled it at Katrina. “You traitor!” he screamed at her.
Ben stitched him from belly to face, left to right, with a short burst from the Thompson. The young man’s feet flew out from under him and he slammed back against the brick wall, bloodying the old bricks as he slid slowly downward, his brains leaving a gray trail edged with crimson.
“James?” Ben called.
“Sir!”
“Gather up all the weapons and ammunition you can find. Take as many people as you need to do it in a hurry. Search all the buildings. I don’t believe these
people represent all the IPF personnel here. If your team comes in contact with any armed men or women, shoot first and ask questions later.”
“Yes, sir.”
Colonel Gray yelled from the top of the building. “You IPF people! Down on your bellies, hands behind your head, fingers interlaced. Move!”
The dozen young people obeyed instantly. Ben thought: well-trained and well-disciplined. The Russian equivalent, of the German Herrenvolk may consider themselves to be the master race, but they damn well want to survive in order to prove it.
Ben motioned Judy, Roy and Katrina to his side. “What was done to you?” he asked the young Russian girl.
“They beat me,” she said softly, her accent giving her voice a pleasing lilt. “They made me take off my clothes and then beat me. They were going to rape me but they were afraid of what might happen to them should they do that. Tell your men they are wasting their time looking for more members of this contingent of the IPF. They are gone. At the arrival of your people, they would have assessed the situation, decided they could not defeat your troops, and pulled out. Do not construe it as any act of cowardice, it is merely good sense.”
“Mikael is the leader?” Ben asked.
“Yes.” She looked at the unconscious young man. Blood streamed from his broken mouth and from one ear. “What is left of him, that is.” She added, “He is a pervert.”
The young people who had elected to remain at the school with the IPF, who had decided to adopt the
philosophy of the IPF, now sat sullenly, defiantly, silently. Katrina gave them little more than a quick glance of dismissal.
“They are what we call hard-core recruits. They needed very little persuasion. You could not reconvert them now, no matter what you said. So far, we have found many like these.”
Ben suspected as much. “All of them young?”
“Oh, no,” the girl replied. “Many people, of all ages.”
“And you?” Ben asked her.
“I have not been content with General Striganov’s views of matters since I found books,” the seventeen-year-old said. “I read books. In them I found a much different world than my superiors described. I began to think-and that is something our leaders and cell coordinators do not like for us to do. They do not like for us to think about anything other than what we are told to think.”
“Education, then,” Ben prompted, “is what swayed you?”
“Oh, my, yes. As much of a broad education as I could give myself with the crate of books I found in Reykjavik.” She smiled. “And some of the books were authored by you, President-General Raines.” She met his gaze. Even badly bruised, the girl was beautiful. Her pale eyes held one.
“And how do you know I am the same Ben Raines, young lady?” Ben smiled at her.
“Two reasons, President-General. One: When I mentioned the name to Roy, he smiled. Two: Your picture was in one of the books. It was, I believe, taken some years ago, but it was you.”
“Don’t compliment him too much,” Gale said, standing just outside the group. “It’ll go to his head and he’ll be more impossible than ever to live with.”
Katrina shifted her pale eyes. “You live with President-General Raines?”
“God, no!” Gale said. “That’s a figure of speech.”
Katrina smiled. “Bot kak!”
Walking away, Gale asked Colonel Gray, “What did that girl say to me back there?”
Dan smiled; he spoke some Russian. “Let’s just say she questioned the validity of your statement.”
“I wonder why?” Gale asked innocently.
“You three get to Doctor Carlton,” Ben told Judy, Roy and Katrina. “We’ll pull out as soon as James is through.”
“He won’t find a thing,” Katrina predicted.
She was right.
The convoy took Highway 63 out of Rolla and rolled to just outside of Jefferson City, pulling into a motel complex in mid-afternoon. They had seen a few survivors, but Ben knew more had seen the convoy from hiding places along the highway. The people were wary and scared. The great unknown had reached out and slapped the nation twice, hard, in little more than a dozen years, knocking those that survived to their knees. He knew that many of those slapped down would never get to their feet.
Ben gathered the seventy-five or so young people from the campus around him. “If any of you want to go home, I’ll try to find some type of transportation for you.”
No one did. Denise explained, “We don’t have homes, General-none of us.”
“For how long?” he asked.
“Years,” she said. “I’ve been on my own since I was ten. You don’t know there are large groups of young people on both sides of the Mississippi River?”
Ben shook his head.
““Yes, sir. The western group is headed by a young man named Wade. The eastern group is headed by a young man named Ro. Both groups live in the woods. They are, well, rather wild, but they’ve never hurt anyone to the best of my knowledge.”
“I see,” Ben said, not sure if he saw or not. “Well, Denise, you and your people have homes now, if you want them.”
“With you and your Rebels, General?” a young man asked.
“That is correct.”
“If we decide to stay with you, General,” Denise said, “what would we do?”
“Stay with us until we can check you out with weapons and survival tactics. Although-was he smiled-“if you’ve been on your own for all these years, I don’t believe you need any lessons on survival.
“After we check you out, you would then move out in teams, attempting to convince other young people that the way of the IPF is the wrong way, that we-Americans-have to rebuild this nation. We have to rebuild with education and hard work, compassion when it’s needed, and toughness tempered with mercy in many cases. How about it?”
The young people thought they liked that plan.
They would stay.
“Tell me about these groups of young people, Denise,” Ben asked.
“I … really don’t know much about them, General, other than what I told you.” She looked at him strangely. “Except, well, their religion is not quite like what the rest of us, well, practice.”
“I don’t understand. They worship God, don’t they?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes, sir.”
“Explain that, Denise.” There was a sinking feeling in the pit of Ben’s stomach. He braced himself for what he knew was coming.
“They worship you, sir.”
Jefferson City contained more than four hundred survivors, but as was the case in most areas, Ben and his Rebels found organization lacking. People had splintered off into little groups, each with their own leaders, with their own varying philosophy as to what should be done and how to go about doing it. In some cases the people were fighting each other.