And for a moment, both of them were caught up briefly in the grips of memory.
Sabra Olivier had called Roanna into her office*, intercepting the reporter outside the door and leading her to the washroom. As she had seen in countless TV *See Fire in the Ashes.
shows and movies, Sabra turned on the water in the sink to cover any noises of conversation.
Knowing Sam Hartline as she did, Sabra would not put it past the man to bug the ladies’ room.
“Roanna, you know all about Hartline. I’ve never pulled any punches with any of you. But what do you really think of him?”
“I’d like to cut the bastard’s cock off and stuff it down his throat,” Roanna replied without a second’s hesitation.
Sabra was mildly shocked. She had never heard Roanna be so crude. “He got to you, Roanna?”
“Oh, yes.” The brunette’s smile was more of a grimace. “From behind. Said he’d been watching and listening to my stories for a long time, didn’t like what I’d done about mercenaries. Wanted to give me something to remember him by. He did. I walked funny for three days. The son of a bitch.”
“How many other women?”
“Sabra, it’s not just the women. Some of his men are twisted sexually-really bent all out of shape in the head. I don’t know what you’re planning, but be careful, you’re dealing with a maniac in Hartline. He’s a master of torture. He’s got most of the people in the networks frightened out of their wits; men and women-old, hard-line, tough reporters tremble at just the mention of his name. All of us wonder how it got this far out of line so quickly.”
“Yes, I was wondering the same thing a few moments ago. Roanna, look, I’ve got to get someone in Ben Raines’s camp, and I’ve got you in mind. I think I can convince Hartline it’s for the best. You do a story on Raines; I’ll do one on Hartline. I’ll make him look like
the coming of Christ. We’ll do little three-minute segments each week, but they’ll be coded with messages for Raines.”
“Sabra…”
“No! It’s something I believe we’ve got to do. I’ll accept some responsibility for what’s happening-what has happened to this nation; it’s partly our fault. Hartline … visits me twice a week. Lately I’ve been accepting his visits as something I have no control over. He thinks I’m enjoying them. He’s an egomaniac; I can play on that. Really build him up. It’s amazing what a man will say when he’s in bed with a woman. We’ll work out some sort of code to let Raines know what is going on, or what is about to happen. Are you game?”
“You know what will happen to both of us if Hartline discovers what we’re doing?”
“Yes. Very well.”
“All right,” Roanna said. “Let’s do it.”
“What kind of game are you playing, Miss Hickman?” Ben asked her.
They were seated outside, a cool but not unpleasant breeze fanning them. Roanna sat beside Dawn-the two women had known each other for years-the women facing Ben and Cecil and Ike.
“No game, General,” Roanna said firmly. “Game time is all over. We’re putting our lives on the line this go-round. For the women, our asses, literally.”
She brought them all up to date on what Hartline was doing and had done.
“If this is true,” Cecil said, “and for the moment, we shall accept it as fact, Ms. Olivier is playing a very dangerous game.”
“And you, as well,” Ike looked at Roanna.
“More than you know,” Roanna’s reply was filled with bitterness. “Sabra’s husband said if she saw Hartline again, he was leaving. She couldn’t explain what she was doing, for fear Hartline would torture the truth out of Ed-that’s her husband. Ed walked out the day before yesterday, took the little boy, left the daughter behind. I wish it had been reversed. Sabra’s told me Hartline is looking at Nancy … you know what I mean.”
“How old is the girl?” Ike asked.
“Fifteen. Takes after her mother. She’s beautiful.”
“Hartline is, ah, somewhat perverted, is he not?” Dawn asked.
Roanna snorted in disgust. “To put it quite bluntly, Dawn, he’s got a cock like a horse and doesn’t care which hole he sticks it in.”
“Jesus Christ, lady!” Even Ike was shocked, and to shock a Navy SEAL takes some doing.
Ben resisted a smile and said, after looking at the reporter for a moment, “You have any objections to taking a PSE test, Miss Hickman?”
“Not at all,” Roanna replied. Then she smiled, and her cynical reporter’s eyes changed. She was, Ben thought, really a very pretty lady. “What’s the matter, General, am I too liberal for your tastes?”
“Liberals are, taken as a whole, just too far out of touch with reality to suit me,” Ben said, softening that with a smile.
“I’d like to debate that with you someday, General. Yes,” she mused, “that might be the way to go with the interviews. Hard-line conservative against liberal views.”
“I’m not a total hard-line conservative, Miss Hickman,” Ben informed her. “Although many have branded me as that: unfeeling and all that other garbage. How could I have been a hard-line conservative and advocated women’s rights, abortion, the welfare of the elderly and children… and everything else we did in Tri-States?”
“Yes,” Roanna said. “There is all that to take into consideration. But you did shoot and hang people there.” She fired the reporter’s question at him.
“We sure did.” Ben’s reply was breezy, given with a smile of satisfaction. “And we proved that crime does not have to exist in a society.”
“But not to the satisfaction of everyone, General.”
“But to ours, Miss Hickman, and that was all that mattered.”
“Still miss the hustle and bustle of big-city living and reporting, Roanna?” Ben brought them both back to the present.
“Yes, and I’m looking forward to the day when it will return.”
“It will never return, Roanna.” Ben dashed her dreams with a splash of hard reality. “Civilization, as we have known it, is over.”
“I have running chills up and down my spine when you say that, General.”
“It’s truth time, Roanna-and I have spoken the hard truth.”
“But you can’t know that for certain, General. That must be a personal opinion, nothing more.”
“It’s over, Roanna. From this moment on, either learn to adapt or die.”
“I believe I shall continue to cling to my dreams, General.”
Ben’s smile was sad. “Your option, Roanna. But while you’re clinging to them, use the other hand to cling to a gun.”
“Goddamn jungle bunnies fight better than I thought they were capable of,” Sam Hartline remarked to one of his field commanders. “I just didn’t believe the niggers had it in them.”
The men stood on a bluff overlooking the scene of two days of very fierce fighting between Al and Mark’s troops and the IPF and Sam’s mercenaries. The IPF and Hartline’s mercenaries had been unable to punch through the black troops dug in on a far ridge, a small valley between the opposing forces.
“For a fact,” the young mercenary replied. “For a sure fact. The niggers got more guts in them than I figured.”
Hartline suddenly laughed, an idea shaping into solid form in his twisted mind. “I got an idea,” he said. “Oh hell, yes-a damn good one, too. Max!” he called. His X.o. walked over.
“Yeah, Sam?”
“Get on a plane and go back to Wisconsin, with a side trip to Minnesota. I want you to bring me fifty of the best-looking coon gals we got-including Peggy Jones. Then round up about fifty or seventy-five old niggers, the older the better.”
The executive officer looked at Hartline, a curious glint in his eyes. “What have you got cookin’ in that brain of yours, Sam?”