“So you didn’t speak of dividing lines?” Ike said.
“No, I blew it,” Ben replied. “Got mad. Lost my cool. Almost my lunch. I wish I had. I wish I had vomited all over that bastard. He’s got to be stopped, Ike.”
“I agree. Al Maiden time, Ben?”
“With much reluctance, Ike. I don’t like Al Maiden. Cecil doesn’t like Al Maiden. There isn’t a black in all of Tri-States that likes him. He’s a militant white-hater. He’s as bad in his own way as Striganov.” Ben shook his head. “No, he isn’t. I shouldn’t have said that. The man reminds me of Kasim, that’s all. But I know he isn’t that bad.”
Ben had met Kasim back in the late fall of 1988, at a motel in Indiana. The man had been traveling with Cecil, his wife, and several other blacks, including the lady who was later to become Ben’s wife, Salina. Kasim had hated Ben from the beginning, and the feeling had been more than mutual with Ben. Kasim had later been killed by Hartline’s mercenaries; Cecil’s wife and family, along with Salina, had been killed during the
government assault on the first Tri-States.
“Juan Solis?” Ike asked, shaking Ben out of the misty memories of the past. Ike had lost his family during the bloody and needless battle of Tri-States, and, like Ben, sometimes retreated into memory.
“Him I like. Yes, get in touch with both of them. Sorry to have brought you up here on a false alarm, Ike.”
“Got me out of the house for a little while.” Ike grinned. “You want to meet with them in Tri-States, Ben?”
“Yes. Tell them what’s going down.” Ben sighed. “But for God’s sake, Ike, don’t tell Maiden to come in for the meeting. You’ll get him mad and he’ll puff up like a spreading adder.”
Ike laughed and slapped his friend on the back. “Hell, Ben. Maiden is just doing what you did back in ‘89: starting his own little country.” There was a twinkle in Ike’s eyes. He knew only too well he was touching a very sore spot with Ben.
Ben bristled. “Damned if that’s so, buddy, and you know better.” Then he smiled. “You do love to needle me, don’t you?”
“Helps to keep you young, ol’ buddy.” Ike grinned lewdly. “And with Gale, boy, you’d damn well better stay young. That lady is a spitfire.”
“Tell me. OK, buddy, you head on back. I’ll see you in a couple of weeks.”
So often when tragedy strikes, the first glimpse is misleading. The initial scene depicts total desolation, seemingly void of life; but there are almost always survivors
at the second glance: men and women who somehow made it through the impossible.
Such was the case with Juan Solis and Al Maiden and their followers.
Juan had surfaced only a few weeks after Ben and his Rebels and pulled into the new Tri-States. Juan had sent patrols out, looking for Spanish-speaking survivors, urging them to resettle in New Mexico and Arizona. Some eight thousand had, with more trickling in each day. Juan was building, as Ben had done back in ‘89, a society of like-minded men and women whose aim was to rebuild from the ashes of chaos and destruction a workable, fair society, with schools and businesses and a strong economy. Juan’s was not an all-Spanish-speaking society. Just like Ben’s Tri-States, there were people of all faiths, all nationalities.
Al Maiden had surfaced on the East Coast, claiming parts of North and South Carolina. But unlike Juan, Al’s regime was a rocky one, with many of his followers objecting to Maiden’s constant barrage of not-too-subtle hate directed at the whites. When Maiden tried to drive the whites out of his disputed territory, most of his own people had stopped him, horrified at Maiden’s unwarranted actions and bitter vituperation.
Ben’s intelligence corps had predicted that unless Maiden changed his methods, he would, probably within a year, be assassinated, with a much more moderate black coming into power. That would be Mark Terry, a former IBM executive, Harvard graduate, class of ‘83. Mark was a very vocal opponent of any type of New Africa. Mark had met secretly with Cecil Jefferys several times during the past year, seeking advice
from the level-headed VP of Tri-States and the first black to ever become vice president of the United States. When there had been a United States.
Cecil had told him bluntly that, “You would be doing the world in general a great favor if you would just shoot that ignorant, bigoted, biased son of a bitch and pull your followers out and into Tri-States. Then we could get on with the process of rebuilding.”
But no man is totally bad, and Al Maiden did have a few good points, despite his open hatred of whites. He did want the best for his people, but if the whites suffered for it, that, to Al, was of no consequence. He wanted good schools for the blacks, but he insisted upon his teachers teaching myths and half-truths instead of fact. (cecil had once asked Maiden that if indeed there ever was a “great black center of learning located at Timbuktu,” where in the hell was it now-lying somewhere alongside Atlantis?)
In short, Al wanted everything for his people that he did not have as a child in south Alabama. And he did not care how he achieved that goal.
“I can’t do it, Cecil,” Mark had said. “Maybe Al will come around.”
“Doubtful,” Cecil had responded. “I had the same hopes for Kasim, back in ‘89 and ‘90, when I was attempting to build in Louisiana and Mississippi. Kasim’s hatred of whites had made him crazy, just like Maiden.”
“We have to try, Cecil.” Mark smiled. “You know that Al calls you a white man’s nigger?”
Cecil’s returning smile was not pleasant. “I am nobody’s nigger.”
Mark’s smile this time was genuine, knowing he had
riled his friend. “Yeah,” he said softly. “I know that for a fact.”
Ben watched the planes carrying his Rebels lift off and head south. His own people on the ground were mounted and ready to roll. The young people he had gathered at the college in Rolla were ready to move out also, but they would not yet be returning to the new Tri-States. Ben had personally checked them out with weapons-rifles and pistols-and found most of them better than average with each. He had given them plenty of ammunition with which to practice and was now sending them out into the countryside, half of them to the west, the other half to the east. They would spread the word about General Striganov’s IPF and their monstrous plan for a pure race. Each of them carried a signed statement from Ben Raines containing Ben’s condemnation of the Russian’s plan and urging all Americans to arm themselves and resist, to the death, if necessary.
“What are the odds of us succeeding, General?” Denise asked.
“I think they’re better than even,” Ben told her, thinking how young she was and how much she reminded him of Jerre. She wore a revolver at her waist and carried a 20-gauge shotgun.
Ben said, “Striganov was correct when he said a lot of people don’t like minorities. The man did his research well; no telling how long he’s had people in this country, reporting back to him. He’ll get some support-perhaps not as much as he believes, but more than enough, unfortunately.”
The young woman had a puzzled look on her face. “Why do people dislike minorities so, General?”
“Right and wrong on both sides, Denise. A lot of it has to do with arrogance, what the people were taught as young people in the home, and that which the minorities brought on themselves. I don’t think they did so knowingly, many of them, but they did. You’re far too young to remember the social programs designed to help people. They were badly misused, badly administrated and grossly over-budgeted back in the sixties through the eighties and caused a lot of resentment among the taxpayers who had to foot the bills.”
“I don’t understand, General,” Denise said. By now, quite a crowd had gathered around Ben, not just the new young people, but many of his own Rebels.