“I’d like to see you try to stop me from running my combat hospital, Raines.” The old doctor stuck out his chin.
“Look, Lamar, be reasonable. Can’t I at least appeal to your common sense?”
“If I had any common sense, you crazy gun-soldier, would I be a part of anything you planned? Huh? Got you there, Raines.”
“Old goat!”
The troops stood back and listened in silence. They had heard it all many times from the general and the doctor.
“You should talk, President-General,” he said sarcastically. “I’m beginning to think you plan on repopulating the world single-handedly. Why don’t you try keeping it in your pants every now and then? Now go tend to your business while I give my doctors and corpsmen some last-minute instructions on how to patch up people.”
“Damned hard-headed old crustacean,” Ben fired back at him.
“Oh, butt out, Raines.”
“That should be corpspersons,” Gale spoke from the silvery background.
“Ye gods!” Chase roared. “Is she coming along? Raines, can’t you control that woman?”
“You’re a male chauvinist pig, Lamar Chase,” Gale said with a smile.
“Damn right I am, sweetie. And proud of it.” Lamar stalked off, roaring and bellowing for his doctors and corpsmen to get off the dime and get their asses to their assigned places in this goddamned circus parade.
Ben took Gale’s hand and together they walked on up the line.
Ben spoke to his Rebels: a word, a greeting, a sentence, a smile. He was very much aware of the fact that every man and woman present would follow him into hell, and he loved them all for that.
He wondered again-as he had many times since he had made up his mind to commit his people-how many would die because ofandfor him?
He pushed that from his mind. As far away as he could.
“Ike,” Ben stopped and spoke to his longtime friend and buddy.
“Ben.”
Ben looked over Ike’s brigade. He spotted Jerre and her husband, Matt. He smiled and nodded at them and they returned the silent greeting. Ben always wondered what went on in Matt’s head, the young man knowing the children he was raising had been fathered by Ben.
He swung his gaze and spotted his daughter, Tina. A tall young man stood beside her. He smiled at them.
He looked again at Ike and noticed the gray in his friend’s close-cropped hair.
And the thought came to him: We are not young. Do we have the years left us to see this war-torn nation rise from the ashes?
I hope so.
“Kick-ass time, Ben?” Ike asked with a gin.
The Medal of Honor winner was spoiling for a fight.
“You ready, sailor?” Ben returned the grin.
“Cast off, mate.”
“Then get them mounted up and moved out, Ike,” Ben spoke the words that would again shake the nation into warfare. “I’ll see you in a few days.”
“Let’s go!” Ike shouted. “Go-go-go!”
Juan’s Solis’s troops had rolled out of Arizona thirty-six hours before Ben’s column headed north. Al Maiden
and Mark Terry moved their people in conjunction with Solis. Almost seven thousand fighting men and women were rolling slowly but steadily toward the most hideous threat to humankind since Hitler’s nightmarish dreams of a master race.
And all knew that madman’s ravings could not, must not, be allowed to again rear its ugly head.
Juan knew it. Al and Mark knew it. Ben knew it. All the troops knew it. Troops of every race and nationality: blacks, whites, Hispanics, Jews, Orientals, Indians, both East and West Indians. If this nation was ever to climb out of the ashes of war and destruction and disease and hunger and lack of faith and hope, it would have to be done without bigotry adding to the seemingly insurmountable task facing those who believe in democracy over slavery, justice over lynch mobs, fairness over prejudice.
This violent confrontation just had to be. The participants had no choice in the matter.
This might very well be their only chance.
The world’s last chance.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The convoys had to move slowly, for the big tanks had a top speed of only thirty mph, and it was essential that the tanks be a part of any assault, for the M60A2 tank not only had a 152mm gun launcher, but also carried thirteen Shillelagh missiles, a .50-caliber commander’s machine gun, and coaxially mounted 7.62-caliber machine guns. It was fifty-seven tons of awesomeness, twelve feet wide, almost eleven feet high, and twenty-four feet long. Ben had thirty M60A2 tanks. Ten in each brigade.
The M60A1 battle tank was just slightly lighter, weighing fifty-two-and-a-half tons, carrying a 105mm cannon, plus .50-caliber and 7.62-caliber machine guns. Ben had thirty of them. Ten per brigade.
The M48A3 main battle tank carried the same type of machine guns, but with a 90mm cannon. It was a half ton lighter than the M60A1, but could fire ten rounds a minute from its cannon, and was more maneuverable. Ben also had thirty of them. Ten in each column.
The scant intelligence reports Ben had received had indicated the IPF had no tanks, but did have rolling howitzers and mortars.
Ben smiled a secret smile as he drove in his pickup, Gale sitting by his side. Occasionally she would rest her hand on his thigh. He knew he had the IPF outgunned with his M109A1 155mm self-propelled howitzers. The big bastards, with a crew of six, could sit back and lob shells a distance of eighteen thousand meters, which was close to eight miles. Nothing the IPF had could get close to them. Ben had twelve of them. Four per brigade.
Ninety tanks, twelve self-propelled howitzers. Ben had 320 people tied up in armor alone. He had 250 people as drivers and relief drivers. That left him with just over 2500 ground combat troops.
Gale glanced at him, taking note of the secret smile on his lips. She matched it until curiosity got the best of her.
“What are you smiling about, Ben?”
He shook his head. “I shouldn’t be smiling. I was thinking that we have the IPF outgunned. But they have us outnumbered.”
“Are we going to win, Ben?”
“No way for me to answer that, Gale.”
“Humor me.”
“The odds are not good,” Ben told it like it was. “I won’t lie to you about that.”
“Where is that famous Raines confidence?” she asked. “That chutzpa that carried you all the way from trashy book writer to president?”
Ben fixed her with a jaundiced look. “Trashy book writer?”
“Well?”
“Oh, I still have confidence, Gale. And I won’t harp on this subject, but I do wish you had stayed at home.”
“I have a personal stake in this, Ben.”
“Oh?” Ben glanced at her from out of the corner of his eye.
“Yeah. I’m a Jew.”
“Really? I hadn’t noticed.”
She called him a perfectly filthy name.
If they could make 175 miles per day, they were doing well, even though the tank commanders were pushing the behemoth machines at max speed. Ben’s column spent the first night on the road at the junction of Highways 67 and 63, in a small town in Arkansas called Hoxie. It was yet another lifeless town, the bones of the dead scattered by wind and animals, bleached ghostly white by the past summer’s sun. No one among the Rebels paid much attention to the bones. It was a sight they had long grown accustomed to seeing.
But the smaller skeletons still bothered most of the men and women. They would not speak of that emotion, but they would avert their eyes and swallow hard, perhaps thinking of their own lost children, or of their brothers or sisters.
That first night, when the troops had been fed and bedded down, the guards posted, Ben rolled a cigarette-one of the few he allowed himself daily-then slipped into the blankets beside Gale. She turned, coming into his arms.
“Hey, Ben?” she softly whispered.