One mile up the pitted and weed-grown highway they were stopped by a barricade stretching from shoulder to shoulder across the highway. A sign on the blockade read: “NIGGERS SPICS JEWS and ALL OTHER NON-WHITES STAY OU.”
“I have just about taken all this crap I am going to tolerate,” a young Jewish Rebel said. His words were laced with venom.
“Calm yourself,” Dan told him. “Les, get General Raines on the horn and inform him of this development and ask what he wants us to do about it.”
The radio operator was back in a moment. “General Raines says to assess the situation, sir. If you think we can handle it, proceed.”
“Thank you, son. Sergeant Cummings? Inspect that barricade for explosives. If it is not touchy, please remove it.”
“You put your black hands on that blockade, nigger, and you’ll die!” A hard voice shouted the warning from the woods alongside the highway.
A shot cracked in the morning calm. The sounds of a body hitting the forest floor drifted out. One of Colonel Gray’s scouts stepped from the timber, a smoking pistol in his hand.
“I found another one back in the woods always,” the young man said. “I cut his throat.”
“Thank you, Jimmy,” Dan replied, as if thanking a waiter for a fresh cup of tea. “Well done. I take it the timber is secure?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good.”
Dan’s walkie-talkie barked. He listened as the message spewed forth. “We got a fight on our hands, Colonel,” the forward scout reported. “The citizens are armed and hostile and waiting for us. The man who appears to be in charge says this is as far as we go. No nigger-lovers welcome in here. Told me to tell you to turn around and get the hell out.”
“How perfectly inhospitable of him,” Dan muttered. “One would think they were void of manners. How many people involved?” Dan asked the scout.
“Couple hundred, sir.”
“Pull back,” Dan ordered the LETTERRP’S. “Take coordinates for the mortar teams.”
“Roger, sir.”
“Tell me to get the hell out!” Dan muttered. “Halfwits probably never even heard of Lord Byron.”
Col. Dan Gray had come to Ben after serving first with the British Special Air Service and then, after the bombings of 1988, with the American Special Forces. His small company of Rebels were known as Gray’s Scouts. They could aptly be compared to a cross between Tasmanian devils and French foreign legionnaires, with a little bit of spitting cobra tossed in. They were experts at behind-the-lines, guerrilla-type action, experts with the knife, piano wire, brass knuckles and just plain ol’ dirty fighting.
Tina Raines had trained and seen combat with Gray’s Scouts. And Col. Dan Gray had given her the highest compliment one soldier could give another: “That lady,” said Colonel Gray, “is no lady.”
Ben was at the site in half an hour. The barricade had been torn down. Dan quietly and succinctly brought the general up to date.
Ben listened, the anger in him growing as Dan spoke. “Thank you, Dan.” He turned to the young man who had headed up the LETTERRP’S into Rolla. “Are
the people united in there?” he asked, jerking a thumb toward the distant town.
“Yes, sir-all the way. They told us they wanted a pure race of people, free of color. There is a Jewish girl hanging by the neck just down the road. We asked them about it; they admitted doing it. Said she got uppity with some of their women. We asked them what they meant by “uppity.” Said the Jewish girl was unhappy about being a servant. So they hanged her. Real nice people, General.”
“Yes. Just lovely,” Ben said. “How about the minorities that used to live around here?”
“They were either handed over to the IPF, run out or killed.”
“I see.”
“General,” the young LETTERRP said. “They, ah, the men in there-they took turns raping the girl before they hanged her.”
“They told you that?”
“Yes, sir. Seemed proud of it. Said she had real good pussy.”
Ben was profoundly glad that Gale was not present during this conversation. He turned to his artillery officer. “Shell it,” he told the man. “Shell and burn it. Blow the goddamned town off the map.”
“Yes, sir,” the officer said. He began speaking into his headset.
Down the highway, the rumble of tanks and mortar carriers getting into position reached the men by the once-barricaded highway. First to whistle and part the air overhead were the 152mm and 155mm cannon shells. 81mm mortars joined the barrage, the projectiles humming overhead. Ben’s big self-propelled howitzers
began pounding the small city with HE and incendiary rounds. The earth began to shake as the explosions ripped the town. Unit commanders began synchronizing the attack; there was not one full second free of the blasts of artillery, not one full second when an explosion was not rocking and pounding and burning and destroying the coordinated areas.
The limited skyline of the small city was now reduced to burning skeletons of buildings. After five minutes, Ben shouted the order to cease firing.
“Tanks in,” he ordered, his voice quiet in the shocked hush after the rolling thunder. “Infantry behind. Roll it.”
Gale and Nancy stood beside Ben’s pickup truck. Neither of them had ever heard anything to match what they had just experienced. War movies were OK, but this had been the real thing. Both their hearts were pounding furiously. Their mouths were dry. Nancy was the first to speak.
“He doesn’t believe very much in diplomacy, does he?”
“Only the final kind,” Gale replied, removing her fingers from her ears.
“I’m certain there were probably young children in that town.”
“Probably so.”
“That doesn’t bother you?”
“Sam Hartline was once a child.”
Nancy closed her mouth.
Heavy tanks rumbling past them stopped any further conversation for a time. Soon the rattle of automatic weapons drifted through the still air as the mopping up began.
Gale took this time to observe Ben, something she did often, and enjoyed doing. The man was as calm as a professional gambler with a royal flush in a high-stakes poker game. Nothing ever seemed to rattle him. Ben sipped at a cup of coffee-or what now passed for coffee-and munched on a biscuit. He seemed so relaxed he could be watching a croquet match on the greens in England.
Black, ugly smoke from the fires set by the incendiary rounds began pouring into the sky, the flames licking close behind the clouds. With no fire department, the town would soon burn itself out, destroying the ugliness the IPF had spawned.
After an hour, the gunfire had ceased, the tanks had rumbled back to position within the convoy. Far up the highway, Rebels were walking prisoners back to face Ben Raines.
The prisoners did not look overjoyed at that prospect.
They were a beaten and sullen bunch, with no fight left in them. They faced Ben-twenty of them-with downcast eyes. Their hands were behind their necks, fingers interlaced. There was one woman with them, a rather attractive woman. She looked at Ben with frank eyes.
“I give great head, General,” she said. “Let me live and I’ll do anything you want. I like it up the ass, too.”
“Shut your fucking mouth,” Ben told her.
“You dirty whore!” snarled the man beside her. “This is one time your pussy won’t get you out of trouble.”
She laughed and spat in the man’s face.
“I ought to hang every one of you,” Ben told the
group. “Slowly. If torture was my forte, that is what you deserve-then I should hang what is left of you.”
A man lifted very frightened eyes. “General…”